If the poll questions don't fit your opinion, feel free to write it out.

Keep in mind, this poll is designed to see whether people think the current condition(s) is/are sufficient, or whether they should be changed as part of the base game (ie, via a patch, or more specifically, the unofficial patch).

edit: More of the options deal with the AP than the UN - I personally feel that the change was made to "fix" the AP, and only was applied to the UN for consistency's sake.

Also, while I'm sure some more esoteric options would be considered by people (ie, having the UN form a "world government", or some-such), I'm not considering changing the actual result of the voting - merely the method.

Bh

I think that the UN should revert to the way that it was, the change was obviously to deal with the AP. I think the change helped the AP situation, but I don't think that it is a total fix. It's not that hard to have other people wanting to vote for the AP resident since shared religions are usually involved. So you can have a small continent with 3 friendly civs on it who spread their religion to one city of everyone but you. Then you invade their continent and take a city and now there is a vote and the game is over. I think some measure of how widespread the religion is worldwide should be a factor, and I guess that 50% of the world population does that.

The 50% of the worlds population requirement would revert the UN back to its former state since that automatically happens for it.

Bhruic,

Could you please explain what the conditions were in 3.02 and how they are now in 3.13? This would allow people to compare the poll choices more easily (or maybe come up with other suggestions).

If the poll questions don't fit your opinion, feel free to write it out.


Personally, I don't see what was so wrong with the SMAC method, but that's just me.

I'm not entirely sure how it was changed. Most of my diplomatic wins were prior to the patch, though I did it "the old-fashioned way", through diplomacy, rather than nukes or the Apostolic Palace. I found it a little cheesy that you could win a religious/diplomatic victory by sending one missionary to each civilization, then bringing up the vote, and voting yourself in. From glancing at the changelog, this aspect of the Apostolic Palace was changed. If I understand correctly, Apostolic Palace(/United Nations) victories now require someone else to actually vote for you, rather than you simply voting yourself in.

It doesn't especially bother me either way. I use U.N. Diplomatic victories mostly as a shortcut victory, when the game is dragging on and on, and it's obvious that I'm going to win. I don't care if Diplomatic victories are harder to win, just as long as they don't take more time. Sometimes, I get too bored waiting for SS parts to be built, added to the ship, and for the ship to land. Diplomatic is my way out.

Sure, I could conquer the world, but that takes even more micromanagement than the blasted SS victory. I hate micromanaging thousands of units. I never go for Conquer or Domination above Standard (usually Tiny or Small).

Im really glad that the UN has been changed so it isnt a copout domination victory. Imo if people want to win domination they have to have the required land/pop.

I think the AP should require 50% population voting for you, and the UN 50% of civs + the required votes.

Could you please explain what the conditions were in 3.02 and how they are now in 3.13? This would allow people to compare the poll choices more easily (or maybe come up with other suggestions).


Good point.

In 3.02, the AP work thusly: You needed 75% of the vote, and every Civ had to have at least one city with the AP religion. Each city that had the AP religion gave its Civ the population's votes (eg, a city of size 8 gave that Civ 8 votes). If that Civ had the AP religion as its state religion, it got 2x the number of votes (the previous example of a size 8 city would now give 16 votes). All other cities give no votes. Therefore, it was possible for a Civ to spread a religion to all its own cities, and then select one small city from the other Civs to spread your religion to. Your vote percentage would be greater than 75%, and you could simply vote yourself the victory.

In 3.13, the entire system works the same, the only change is that the victory condition will not be triggered if your team has more than 75% of the votes. However, if you have 74% of the votes, and can convince one other Civ to vote for you (a Vassal, for example), you can still win - even if your Civ is only 10% (or less) of the total population in the game.

Bh

I agree with powerslave. I use it when I know I have won, the AI could not come back but winning my domination victory is getting too laborious.

I use it as a cop out, so that at least the game gets on my scoreboard.

Ive never been a great diplomat myself, want to try this soon.

Can you trigger the elections yourself, or what is the trigger that, well, triggers them?

AP or UN.

When you are Secretary General, click on the top option.. Diplomatic Victory or whatever. Then vote. Then hope that all your vassals and colonies vote for you.

Someone else who has the UN can trigger then, but they are more likely to win it if its on another continent with people you have warred against.

Other than that, if you gain enough votes = win.

Although it is very anti climax, no video no nothing.

Quite a pathetic way to end it to be truthful.

With the AP, a majority of a minority can decide the fate (faith ;) ) of the world. That's a bit weird and quite gamey. I like somewhat more 'realistic' victory options where you really need a majority to claim victory.

A majority (more than 50% of the votes) of a majority (more than 50% use the religion) could work for the AP. But it would still mean that someone could win with 25% of the people in the world voting for him/her and I wouldn't really like that if it would occur in a game.

My personal preference: the voting for other things than the diplomatic victory in the AP occur with the standard AP voting rules: every citizen with the religion counts as 1 and every citizen with the religion as state religion counts as 2. In this sense, the AP has power and you really want to spread it around your land and use it as your state religion.

For the voting for the AP diplomatic victory, everyone has a say: every citizen counts as 1 and a majority (50%) is enough for victory. You can still get this majority by pleasing other civilisations by converting them to the AP state religion. And of course, every civilisation needs to have the religion in at least one of its cities before this victory condition can occur. Maybe every citizen counts as 2 in a civilisation that has the AP religion as the state religion. But whether the citizen is converted to the AP religion shouldn't matter.

I voted for option 4. Option 5 could also work, but I would definitely prefer option 4 as option 5 doesn't require a real majority. Option 3 could lead to tiny civilisations winning the 'majority' vote.

Note that the UN diplomatic victory requires something like 60% of the votes (don't know the exact number, but it is close to 60%). I think it is a good thing to require a lower percentage like 50% for the AP because it is already a hard thing to get the AP religion to every civilisation in the world.

It's hard to explain in poll questions. :)

Option 3 was intended to be on top of the majority vote - ie, you'd need a majority vote as well as the 50% of the Civs voting for you.

Bh

So there's no option in the poll for 'other'...

I'd like a system almost identical to 3.02, but where you must have at least one other civ voting for you in order to win, regardless of how many votes you have yourself. I'm a little uneasy about people getting voted in by their vassals though - perhaps a vote from a non-vassal should be required. Anything to get rid of the lame "backdoor domination" thing. Diplomatic victory really ought to be primarily a peacemonger option - I don't have a problem with warmongers winning it if they have at least one friendly AI, but backdoor domination makes a total mockery of "diplomatic" victory. "True" diplomatic victory is an interesting and challenging peacemonger victory type; I don't think it should be compromised with backdoor domination just because some players want to get a domination score without finishing a game properly. If Firaxis had got it right in the first place, I doubt anyone would be saying "Firaxis should change the UN so that, as well as true diplomatic victories, it allows players who tried to get domination victory, but messed up and didn't get enough land, to win early if they can't be bothered to finish the game; we want a multi-purpose UN!". I'm guessing no-one would miss backdoor domination if it hadn't originally been part of the game.

It's hard to explain in poll questions. :)

Option 3 was intended to be on top of the majority vote - ie, you'd need a majority vote as well as the 50% of the Civs voting for you.

Bh

With the standard voting system of the Apostolic Palace, that could still lead to diplomatic where you get the majority of the votes and a majority of the civilisations voting for you but still only a small percentage of the worlds population actually voting for you.

I do think this option is a good way to make the diplomatic victory condition more diplomatic and less conquest oriented.

You're actually asking two questions in one:
1) how do you make the diplomatic victory more diplomatic and less conquest oriented?
2) how do you stop AP diplomatic victories where only a small percentage of the world population supports the winner?

Requiring a majority of the civilisations is an answer to 1, requiring a majority of the total population is an answer to 2.

I'd say adding 50% of civs would be a good idea

I think the REAL change needed to be made is there are two ways to get a diplo Win

1) get voted Winner
AND
2) Vote for the Winner

so that Diplo Win is counted like a mass Permanent Alliance. If someone votes for you, they share in your win.

I'd say adding 50% of civs would be a good idea

I think the REAL change needed to be made is there are two ways to get a diplo Win

1) get voted Winner
AND
2) Vote for the Winner

so that Diplo Win is counted like a mass Permanent Alliance. If someone votes for you, they share in your win.

I think that is a good idea, because you will never see one single player win a diplomatic victory in a multiplayer game as no one is crazy enough to vote someone else as the winner. It would make sense if the voter would also win at the same time.

On the other hand, it is a massive change and thus I don't think you'll get the community behind such a change in an unofficial patch. :sad:

I'd agree there more of a Civ V idea

In the meantime... the unofficial patch probably shouldn't change it since its not buggy.. just wierd

The 50% of civs voting in your favor rule might be good for an official patch

For the AP disproportionate victory... 50% of civs or 50% of world pop works (50% of civs works for both AP and 50% of world pop)

Anyone who checks my sig can see my full proposal for Diplo victory

I don't think it should be changed as part of the unofficial patch. That would clearly constitute a gameplay change rather than a bug fix.

I've never liked the diplo system in CivIV. Diplo win voting should not be population based, but should instead be based on one Civ, one vote, with a majority required for a win. But that sort of change would have to be accompanied by a reworking of diplomacy in general, I think. Great diplomats, bribing for votes, etc.

I think that is a good idea, because you will never see one single player win a diplomatic victory in a multiplayer game as no one is crazy enough to vote someone else as the winner. It would make sense if the voter would also win at the same time.
Then everybody will vote for the leading civ to share the victory and everybody is the winner. That's stupid. Voting for someone else is no achievement at all.

Voting for someone else in MP can make sense under specific circumstances: If I'm in a good (but not leading) position but in serious danger of losing that position (someone rapidly catching up, a bad-going war etc) I would want to end the game so I finish second or third. Especially in ladder play this will usually still earn me a lot of points.

Then everybody will vote for the leading civ to share the victory and everybody is the winner. That's stupid. Voting for someone else is no achievement at all.

Voting for someone else in MP can make sense under specific circumstances: If I'm in a good (but not leading) position but in serious danger of losing that position (someone rapidly catching up, a bad-going war etc) I would want to end the game so I finish second or third. Especially in ladder play this will usually still earn me a lot of points.

Well you may win, but you win with less points.

And who is the 'leading' civ? not necessarily the one with more population, but the one with more friends population. Each candidtate needs to persuade the voting civs that they might actually win.

I think that is a good idea, because you will never see one single player win a diplomatic victory in a multiplayer game as no one is crazy enough to vote someone else as the winner. It would make sense if the voter would also win at the same time.


Pleas correct me if I am wrong but why don't you just create a PA in this situation and then have the vote and win.
You share a victory condition when in a PA correct?

^ firstly PAs are allowed through a Variant rule only

Secondly you can only have 1 PA

At present, the diplomatic victory is a bit of a none-issue in multiplayer. You could easily turn it off at startup and that would be of little consequence.

In table top strategy board games, working together is usually extremely important. In civilisation multiplayer, it's not that important in the early game just because you haven't met the other players yet. And even later in the game, you will be far more interested in the close neighbours than the civilisations who are on the other side of the world. At the end of the game, when the diplomatic victory arises, working together would be of the utmost importance. The players who have friends in the game can join together and vote one of them (and thus their coalition) as the winner, even if each of them are small and not that significant by themselves. Whether that is a desired form of victory is another question. And that is something that should be decided beforehand when the various allowed victory conditions are decided.
As it is now, diplomatic victory just is a none-issue in the multiplayer game.

In single player, it is weird that the AI votes for your diplomatic victory in some cases. They actually vote to lose the game. From a game point of view that is weird. From a simulation of a world of civilisations, it could make sense if these civilisations actually vote for working together and not for total subjugation of their civilisation. So from a realism point of view a joint victory would also make more sense.

By the way, the restriction to one single PA is also a bit weird.

In a future version of civilisation, the diplomatic victory and the Permanent Alliance could well be combined into one single diplomatic effect. When an alliance between various civilisations becomes large enough, then they have won the game. Something similar to the domination victory with your civilisation + vassals only a peaceful variant.

One option

Perhaps Diplo Victory could only come up if all civs are at peace with each Other? That would make it
A-Easy to block in the case of the AP if you only have one cit with their religion in it, declare war on them... and Defy every resolution to stop (ruins that city,, but its OK otherwise)
B-have a good reason for that 'make peace with X' function
Also would mean that the UN/AP leader would be using the 'Stop the War against' Often to get to their victory condition or at least to punish the Warmongers.

I think this might be the best solution
You need to achieve universal peace to get a diplomatic solution
(universal peace can also be achieved through a conquest victory)

nah, AP is fine in 3.13, but UN should revert back to before. It's not really exploiting as everyone can vote base on their pop. If I have more pop, then I should win. Also a good backdoor for domination, where in some games I will win definitely, but it will probably take me like 1-2 hours in order for domination victory to take place. It just feel tedius as I know the result of the game anyway and I want the recognition now.

nah, AP is fine in 3.13, but UN should revert back to before. It's not really exploiting as everyone can vote base on their pop. If I have more pop, then I should win. Also a good backdoor for domination, where in some games I will win definitely, but it will probably take me like 1-2 hours in order for domination victory to take place. It just feel tedius as I know the result of the game anyway and I want the recognition now.

I modded the XML to make domination victory occur at a lower percentage. I believe on a large map, I need around 38-40% of landmass and pop. The game is really over once you reach that point. Even so, I have to agree that the UN backdoor diplo win is a plus for the reasons you stated.

Well usually if you have that enough for a backdoor domination you can play for maybe another 30-45 minutes and win with space race.

warning: lots of replies grouped together.

I think that the UN should revert to the way that it was, the change was obviously to deal with the AP. I think the change helped the AP situation, but I don't think that it is a total fix.

i agree.

I'd like a system almost identical to 3.02, but where you must have at least one other civ voting for you in order to win, regardless of how many votes you have yourself. I'm a little uneasy about people getting voted in by their vassals though - perhaps a vote from a non-vassal should be required.
...
"True" diplomatic victory is an interesting and challenging peacemonger victory type; I don't think it should be compromised with backdoor domination just because some players want to get a domination score without finishing a game properly....

in nonHoF games that i want diplo victory, i save it before the vote and if no non-vassals vote for me i consider that not a win and i go back and reload, but mileage varies of course.

the ultimate in "get them to like me" diplo victory is probably OCC diplo, where your votes frankly don't count worth a bean. that's one of my absolute favorite variants, so obviously i like "true" diplo victories (for lack of a better term). but i do see how some folks want to finish a game that they surely could win by playing longer to get space or domination since that can be long and frustrating. the point of the game is to have fun, not go through the motions for a rule that to me (YMMV) feels arbitrary. people should play to have fun, and IMO "true" victories and "comprised" victories are in the eye of the player.

I think the REAL change needed to be made is there are two ways to get a diplo Win ...
so that Diplo Win is counted like a mass Permanent Alliance. If someone votes for you, they share in your win.

i've read your proposal and i completely disagree, for whatever that's worth.

At present, the diplomatic victory is a bit of a none-issue in multiplayer. You could easily turn it off at startup and that would be of little consequence.

i don't play MP except teamed with hubby so i can't really relate to the problem there. but turning off diplomatic victory isn't a non-issue ... that disables the option to even build the AP and UN. i'd like to see that option turn into "the wonders work for everything except that the victory vote is never an option no matter what."

Well usually if you have that enough for a backdoor domination you can play for maybe another 30-45 minutes and win with space race.

takes me much longer. i like micromanaging and can't bear to just hit enter to get it over with. that's my own choice of course, but again falls back to my "every player should play the way that's fun for them" bias.

i agree.

in nonHoF games that i want diplo victory, i save it before the vote and if no non-vassals vote for me i consider that not a win and i go back and reload, but mileage varies of course.

the ultimate in "get them to like me" diplo victory is probably OCC diplo, where your votes frankly don't count worth a bean. that's one of my absolute favorite variants, so obviously i like "true" diplo victories (for lack of a better term). but i do see how some folks want to finish a game that they surely could win by playing longer to get space or domination since that can be long and frustrating. the point of the game is to have fun, not go through the motions for a rule that to me (YMMV) feels arbitrary. people should play to have fun, and IMO "true" victories and "comprised" victories are in the eye of the player.


I agree there... but if I have enough of the planet, why should I have to wait to research Mass Media, wait to build a Wonder and then wait for several more turns to get a vote in?

Domination Victory is the true 'short cut' victory

The reason the UN is a "short-cut" is because we know we've won the game even Before we've hit the domination limit.

so Realistically, what should happen is
1-Lower the Domination limit; Say *50%+ of both population and land area (Vassals count half still) (maybe add that you must have a tech score greater or equal to everyone as well)
2-Once you reach the Domination limit you don't automatically win, but you can retire with a win [as opposed to retire with a loss], or push on for another 'complete' win (conquest, diplomatic, cultural, space, time)

partially since I like the conquest and space movies far more than the domination one.
*maybe also say 10% more population and land area than the next biggest civs in each of those categories (so 2 player wins don't become too fast)

Actually, if i had to make a ' you should definitely win' category
1. noone can beat you in Space Race... you should be ahead/equal in tech, and noone has the Apollo Program (and you have enough size to get the research for the space race finished before anyone else)
2. noone can beat you in Cultural..Much harder to calculate possibly they just have to race you (getting Cultural before you get a massive enough control of the world)
3. Noone can beat you diplomatically...you need enough votes to stop them (population)
4. Noon can beat you in conquest...you need enough military power and the ability to maintain it (land and tech)

So I'd stick with
50+% of world land and population, 10% higher land than second largest land, 10% higher population than second largest pop
and 'points from Technology' score that is equal to or greater than anyone else's



PS revised some of the Diplo victory proposal in my sig... now just two ideas
1. Require universal peace for it to be an option (possibly 10 turns)
2. Sharing win (requirements they must vote for you AND have good relations with you.. possibly Open borders+Defense Pact or require Xturns of Open borders/Defense Pact.. or else let humans have the same 'relationship status' as AIs do, ie playing Isabella am 'Friendly' with my fellow Buddhist Theocrats who haven't spied on me.) so the AIs only vote for you if they like you enough to share your win.

i don't play MP except teamed with hubby so i can't really relate to the problem there. but turning off diplomatic victory isn't a non-issue ... that disables the option to even build the AP and UN. i'd like to see that option turn into "the wonders work for everything except that the victory vote is never an option no matter what."

I agree that the diplomatic victory and the other options offered by the AP and the UN are quite different and should be distinct game settings.

I agree that the diplomatic victory and the other options offered by the AP and the UN are quite different and should be distinct game settings.

I agree as well. You can get the same effect pretty easily if you're willing to mod a couple of properties in one XML file (the diplo win voting percentage for both AP and UN). Just set them both to 99%.

In Civ3, you could change the domination percentages, cultural win threshold, etc. when setting up a custom game. I wish Civ4 allowed finer control of game settings in general.

I agree as well. You can get the same effect pretty easily if you're willing to mod a couple of properties in one XML file (the diplo win voting percentage for both AP and UN). Just set them both to 99%.

In Civ3, you could change the domination percentages, cultural win threshold, etc. when setting up a custom game. I wish Civ4 allowed finer control of game settings in general.

I'd also like such options. But it is very difficult for the designers to predict what options would be appreciated by players. There are quite a lot of startup options in this game, but still I've seen lots of other different requests by various players. I think that you can't please them all and thus they made the game extremely moddable. In the end, a good decision I think.

What if the victory conditions were changed to the following?

Criteria:
1) Poll option 3, 4 or 5 (either is fine with me)
2) At least 25% of the 75% favour must come from rival civilizations that are not your vassal (i.e. even if your contribution is > 50%, it's set to 50%).

I'd also like such options. But it is very difficult for the designers to predict what options would be appreciated by players. There are quite a lot of startup options in this game, but still I've seen lots of other different requests by various players. I think that you can't please them all and thus they made the game extremely moddable. In the end, a good decision I think.

If they took all our suggestions for startup options, there would probably be 5 screens of them. :lol: That would be fine with me, but might seem overwhelming to more casual players. I'm sure Firaxis also realizes more startup options means more stuff to QA.