I just finished a game where I was about to take the Mayan capital with a stack of Oromo warriors. They were one turn away from taking it and all of a sudden I see Pacal has won a diplomatc victory. This feature needs some improvement, or any religious pacifist could just swing the entire game his way because he neglected his military. So I say make more conditions for the early diplo victory, like maybe put military into the weight of the votes not just religion.

I just finished a game where I was about to take the Mayan capital with a stack of Oromo warriors. They were one turn away from taking it and all of a sudden I see Pacal has won a diplomatc victory. This feature needs some improvement, or any religious pacifist could just swing the entire game his way because he neglected his military. So I say make more conditions for the early diplo victory, like maybe put military into the weight of the votes not just religion.

Did you have his state religion in any of your cities before you began your offensive?

If not, then ironically, by taking one of his cities, you enabled the victory resolution for the Apostolic Palace. Apparently, it will appear if all civs have a city with the Apostolic Palace's religion.

Wow, so you're saying in one of your games, the ai won an early diplo victory. I don't think a human player has accomplished that yet.

I always turn Diplo vic off. It's a pretty cheap way to win imo.

Wow, so you're saying in one of your games, the ai won an early diplo victory. I don't think a human player has accomplished that yet.


I have. First game with BtS. But it wasn't early, 1986 to be precise. ;)

I mean an early diplo victory, to me that means pre-libralism (basically the time when most civs are running theocracy).

I remember you saying that too, but I'm refering to the initial complainers running around saying the AP is counter-intuitive/broken/bad implementation/etc. The idea was that you spam your religion in all your cities and then only get 1 city of every other civ with your religion. This would give you a huge enough vote advantage so you could just vote yourself in.

I always turn Diplo vic off. It's a pretty cheap way to win imo.

so not winning through warfare is a cheap way to win?

I played my first completed game of BtS last night. I had the Apostolic Palace, but it seemed totally useless but then the diplomatic victory was proposed. I voted for myself and won. The only other resolution proposed was to stop me from attacking my nearest neighbor, which I voted against. I suppose I could have won a lot earlier if I had spread my religion like I usually do, but I was lazy.

so not winning through warfare is a cheap way to win?

I suspect that what was meant was how I feel about Space Race: "Gosh darn it all, as soon as I'm about ready to start plowing through AI's one of the uppity gits goes and nabs a Space Race victory on me!"

I leave Space Race enabled in the futile hope that I will become a better player. :mischief:

I always turn Diplo vic off. It's a pretty cheap way to win imo.

Well firstly this is complete ********.

Everyone needs to have the AP religion in at least one of their cities for a diplo win to be proposed, so on a continets map this will be quite a stumbling block. Also the 2 main contenders for the AP diplo win will have the same religion and therfore probably the same friends. So even if a civ is friendly to 1 contender, it may vote for the other cos it has an extra +1 modifier.

Example: pangaea 7 civs. 4 civs are hindu, with all their cities converted. In order starting with larfest pop they are: Arabs, America, Aztecs, Chinese. The other civs each have i hindu city but are buddhist. They are Egypt, England, France. Obviosly the 2 contenders are Arabs and the one who builds the AP, suppose that is America. It is probable that even if Aztec and China voted for Arabia then, they would not win a diplo victory, because America and the buddhist will have enough votes to stop this. The buddhist block may be given more votes by converting cities, but this will not be a good thing for Arabs or America winning diplo. Moreover it is very difficult for America to influence Aztecs or China to vote for them. Also the fraction of votes required for the win is higher than for the UN vote (im not 100% certain).

Basically, the point im trying to make is that it is NOT easy to win a diplo win very early.

Edit: the best and most efficent way i can think of winning is to convert 1 city of each opponent to the AP religion and then convert all your cities to that religion. This will get you at least 1/2 the total votes. But then ofcourse you have the problem of the religion spreading to other ppl and giving them more votes.

I won with the Apostolic Palace, and also lost through it, on the same day. When I won it was right around liberalism, I don't remember but I have some screenshots. It was totally without trying to. Map size makes all the difference. If you can get your religion to everyone, the trick is to get it in just one city of each rival, so you still control the votes.
Oh, and read the resolutions carefully, I voted for someone else to win once because I thought it was the same old "AP resident" election! :lol:

oh yeah, and I think it might be good to have a minimum religion influence % requirement for that vote, to limit the strategy I just suggested.