Hi, I'm new to these forums and to the game itself so bear with me if I completly manage to noob something up. I just wanted to share something I found to be useful and I'm sorry if it's been posted in the 20 something pages in the forums and I missed it.

Anyways, Diplomatic victories. I had alot of trouble with this one when I first got started, it was probably the second hardest for me to get next to a cultural victory. I tried many times for a Diplomatic victory and each time weilded mixed results. Sometimes it would happen and sometimes I would just get aggrivated and end up killing everyone and walking away with a Conquest or Domination victory. What I found out the last couple of times has gotten me a Diplo victory 4 out of 5 times.

First, religion, religion, religion. Found as many if not all the religions. This should be your first and main goal. Don't worry about military, just build enough to guard your cities with, you're never really going to need a military with this strat. Also, do not, DO NOT implement any of the religions as a state religion yet!

After you have founded your first few religions look and see which religion most of the other Civs are using. Usually its one or two mainly but just pick the one that the majority are going with and then select it as your state religion and use a Great Prophet to build the Holy Shrine for that religion. After that, build as many temples, monostaries and catherdrals as possible for that religion. Also, set your civics to best suit you and your new religion craze. I went with Theocracy and Pacisfism for the better part of the game.

Now, since your religion should have been founded by you, you have the Holy shrine built and you have all of these holy buildings, you'll see your raking in a massive amount of money per turn, which comes in handy in the future. Once the religion phase is complete go straight for researching Military Tradition and Facism. (You probably see were this is going).

While your doing that, bribe other civs into declaring war and wiping out the one or two civs that didn't accept or convert to your state religion. Your goal is to have everyone on the planet as the same religion. Also, try to build as many wonders with all this free time you have as well, that will cut down on the number of specialty buildings you need to build and a few wonders have effects that can be felt throughout your country.

Now, you should have MT and Facisim by now. Start signing Defensive pacts with as many of the civs as you possibly can, and try to keep them as long as you can. Now I'm not sure exactly how many turns it takes but before long you can start signing Permenant Alliances with a few of them. At first, just by looking it appears as if you can sign one with everyone but be careful, as soon as you sign on PA it pisses everyone else off and most will cancel thier DP with you.

Now when trying to decide who to sign the first PA with, take the obvious choice, the most high scoring civ that will have you, OR, the most powerful civ in military, you will need this. After you sign that and all the civs who will cancel the DP's go ahead and cancel, you'll notice there will be two or three who did not cancel. These are the civs who are most fond of you. Wait about 5 turns and try to get a PA with the second most powerful civ.

Now, going for a 4 way PA has been a little etchy for me but I've always managed to do a 3 way everytime, the most was a 4 way. You follow basically the same pattern as before. Now that you have your 3 or 4 way PA you need to start building your military back up. Have your second best city work on the UN and the rest work on producing military units. Once this has happened it is time to go in to the final stage.

The UN is being built, you now have a powerful military and you also have two or 3 allies. It's time to start the inquisition. First declare war on any civ that doesn't have your religion. In my case I really haven't had to do much fighting being as my allies usually do a pretty good job of mopping them up, especially if they are bording any of them, PLUS all the other civs that carry your religion usually jump right in and help.

Around the time you are eradicating the infidel civs the U.N should be getting close to or just about to finishing up. I think you know what happens now. Just initiate the vote for Diplo victory and any civ that does votes for the alternate canidate has to go. The most civs I've had to destroy at this point was 2, so you don't have to do much, but when it comes to this point you have to use your own military more because all of the remaining civs are either friendly or pleased with each other and your allies don't attack as hard, plus the other civs don't help you any.

Before you know it, you are a Diplomatic Victor!


Here is what my most successful game went:

Map-Pangea
Size-Large
Terrain-Highlands
Sea Level-Medium
Difficulty-Warlord
Civ Used-Saladin

Other civs involved:
Cyrus--------Voted for me
Catherine----Permanent Alliance
Bismark------Seocnd place canidate and war ally (Couldn't get him to join the PA, something about "You've grown to powerful")
Ceaser-------Destroyed (Religous Infadel)
Tokugawa----Destroyed (Wouldn't vote for me)
Mao Zedong--Destroyed (Wouldn't vote for me)
Ghandi-------Destroyed (Religious Infadel)
Washington--Voted for me
Montazuma--Destroyed (Gengis Khan destroyed him early in the game)
Huyana Caput-Permanent Alliance
Elizabeth-----Voted for me
Gengis Khan--Permanent Alliance
Napoleon----Voted for me

Game ended in or about 1600. Final score was around 9k with a rank of Constantine.

I hope this helps someone, I know it worked for me and I just thought I'd share it. Please feel free to add anything or to critique it.

Just a side topic... I really want to see the diplo victory movie, but I am a little lazy to wait to build UN (my game is usually over at infantry).

Is there some way I can peek at the movie? Where is it stored? Thanks a lot. ;)

Interesting strategy. I have been playing on prince with diplomacy turned off as a victory condition. Ive had two really good games where I was going to win the space race...and I lost in diplomatic victories, both times to the Mongols who spent the whole game terrorizing every other AI.

yeah, sounds like someone I'd like to vote for! :mad:

still, good post. Nice to know there are some ways to win the diplomatic victory. Good use of religions! :goodjob:

Just a side topic... I really want to see the diplo victory movie, but I am a little lazy to wait to build UN (my game is usually over at infantry).

Is there some way I can peek at the movie? Where is it stored? Thanks a lot. ;)

Actually, you're not missing anything. There is no movie. It just shows your character in the middle of the screen surronded by the pictures of all the remaining civs and the UN emblem is in the background. Then it goes into the normal game replay and HOF screens.

Interesting strategy. I have been playing on prince with diplomacy turned off as a victory condition. Ive had two really good games where I was going to win the space race...and I lost in diplomatic victories, both times to the Mongols who spent the whole game terrorizing every other AI.

yeah, sounds like someone I'd like to vote for! :mad:

still, good post. Nice to know there are some ways to win the diplomatic victory. Good use of religions! :goodjob:

Thank you, as I said, founding the religions is key to this type of victories, but I assume this strat will not work on higher difficulties when the AI handicap allows them to found two or three religions 4 turns into the game. But it works on Noble and below for sure.

Also, your reply brought up a question I've had for sometime now. If you trigger a Diplomatic Victory vote and the other canidate gets the required amount of votes, does he win and the game ends or does it just pass it off as a failed vote on your behalf? I've never had a canidate get more votes than me so I don't know.

If an AI Civ gets sufficient votes to win a diplomatic victory, the game ends and you are defeated.

Actually, you're not missing anything. There is no movie. It just shows your character in the middle of the screen surronded by the pictures of all the remaining civs and the UN emblem is in the background. Then it goes into the normal game replay and HOF screens.

Argh... that's too bad. So far I have only seen the Conquest, Space Race and Domination movies. So does this mean that there is no movie for Cultural / Time victories as well? :rolleyes:

There is a movie for cultural victories. Not an exciting one, but there is a movie.

I haven't played at this difficulty level, but in my diplomatic victories, it came with only one excellent ally. Basically, I got it from having a lot of cities, and allying myself with the 2nd most powerful nation. As long as those two nations have more than half the votes, then you'll get it ;).

If you focus on really supporting the other nation(s) - especially by attacking their enemies, giving them free techs & trading with them, and sharing religions, then by end-game you should have enough support. Generally you just have to look at the number of votes that you need, and add in the number of the allies to see how many you need. In my game (where I wiped out 1 civ and was at war with the #2 civ) I got votes from the #3 civ while 2 others abstained, and I got the victory.

I haven't played at this difficulty level, but in my diplomatic victories, it came with only one excellent ally. Basically, I got it from having a lot of cities, and allying myself with the 2nd most powerful nation. As long as those two nations have more than half the votes, then you'll get it ;).

If you focus on really supporting the other nation(s) - especially by attacking their enemies, giving them free techs & trading with them, and sharing religions, then by end-game you should have enough support. Generally you just have to look at the number of votes that you need, and add in the number of the allies to see how many you need. In my game (where I wiped out 1 civ and was at war with the #2 civ) I got votes from the #3 civ while 2 others abstained, and I got the victory.

I just got beaten last night by Alexander with a Diplomatic Victory. I cannot believe that I let that happen! He did exactly what you said to do and I missed it until it was too late. He had 20 votes more than he needed to win.

On a side note, after calling for the vote he invaded me. Had he not won the vote, I would have won the war, since I had reached tanks and he was still at the Cavalry and Infantry stage.

Tom

I accidently scored a diplo victory last week, I wasn't paying attention and didn't want any other resolutions passed so I voted for myself when the elections happend and did nothing when it was my turn to choose, I had basically the same strategy outlined above, I had converted every city to confucianism (plus I had acquired every religious holy city by this time) I was actively engaged in preparation for the final War of Religious Unification when Hept voted for me. good thing for her too, I had 12 ICBMs at this point so so close to converting the remaining heathens into radioactive dust.

Is there some way I can peek at the movie? Where is it stored? Thanks a lot.

Go into world builder, give yourself 900 cities and the UN. Wait about 6 turns. Prepare to be dissapointed, though.

I accidently scored a diplo victory last week

It is the one most likely to be arrived at accidentally, isn't it? "Wait, I won? But I haven't taken Timbuktu yet. Aw crap."

I've found myself a number of times putting global civics through, just so it wouldn't mess up the victory I'm really going for. What sucks is when your "real" victory falls through and you're no long the secretary general because you switched religions or something.

i believe that you don't need everybody to have the same religion as you. but, you need a total of about +8/+9 nett relationship. that can come from mant other factors like same civics, resource supply, trade "fair & forthright", etc...

Its much harder on higher difficulty levels on a huge Archipelago map because you can't wipe people out so easily and the AI is far more aggressive. Diplo I find is one of the hardest victories to pull off behind Conquest and domination on such maps. Space and Cultral are much easier on such maps. You need about a +8 relationship before they vote for you.

I haven't played at this difficulty level, but in my diplomatic victories, it came with only one excellent ally. Basically, I got it from having a lot of cities, and allying myself with the 2nd most powerful nation.

That doesn't really work. If you build the U.N. you are always on the ticket and so is the 2nd most powerful nation. So if your allied hardcore with the 2nd best nation, you are going to vote for you and he is going to vote for himself.

Nice diplo strat pitbull - I will have to give that a try. But this is assuming you don't have an aggresive civ like tokugawa or monty who don't care if your religion is the same as thiers, which is unlikely since having an aggresive civ neighboor almost always happens.

Nice article, Pitbullnix! Thanks!

A random question, if you don't mind, from a guy who's incidentally at war with both Tokugawa and Monty right now, those jerks ;). Does anyone know if Diplo victories are worth less than Domination or other victories? I've spent many turns battering these two civs, and could probably get a domination victory <20 turns later than a potential shot at a diplomatic victory. Anyone have any rough idea what would typically yield a higher score? Emperor/Large/Epic, FWIW (Oh and I'm Arabic, I think (random), if it matters (Phil/Spiritual)). Camel Archers suck horribly, btw.

Or you could just keep expanding and killing people until you get enough votes to declare yourself the winner. By then you might as well just go with a domination victory though..