Is diplomatic victory nearly impossible? It seems as though you try to be friendly with almost all other civs, that another one gets mad at you just for being nice to a certain civ. That and they want you to go to war with a friend of yours. How do you get around this to achieve a diplomatic victory?

Does anyone here even try for diplomatic victory?

I once tried for diplomatic victory and won after being nice for most the game (the only things I refused was war declarations and stop trading requests). I won in 2001. It was a nice victory on Settler for 1926 points.

I managed to win in a one-continent map (maybe pangaea, I don't know) diplomatically while Washington (my vassal) and myself (as Huayna Capac) were kicking Genghis Khan's butt; I had managed to capture enough of his cities to get the required vote.

So are you saying the more land and cities that you have, the more votes you get for your self vote?

I just built UN and got unanimously (save for 2... I was at war with ceasar) as Secratary General. But when I held the victory vote, everyone abstained.

I played four games with vanilla now and won two of them with a diplo victory on Noble level.
First, I was never nice to the AIs; in both games I kicked one of them right away out of my home continent.
In the first game I looked for a vicious AI like Monty or Toku who is the pain for all civilised nations. I kicked him out of the game which gave me a heavy sympathy bonus with some of the AIs. With this bonus I collected enough votes.
In the second game things got a bit more difficult, since half of the AIs voted against Georgey being on the second place in the ranking, simply because they shared the same religion. Then I started three tactics: first I urged all to jump over to Free Religion (you do not need to have as many votes for that UN resolition as for diplo victory) which made them as bit more indifferent. Second I strove for growth as much as possible (remember the number of votes depends on you population). Third I could bribe one of the AIs to share a war against the one who insisted on abstention, which enhanced my share of votes. Just before I was about to conquer his capital, I got enough votes.
Hope some of these experiences may help you also for BtS...

also poison the water of people either abstaining or voting against you. I think it is generally easiest to do on continents map. If you are on the big continent especially. Just convert everyone to your religion. By the time you meet everyone else, you will have the most population and they will be a differnt religion. You just have to hope one of them has taken over a lot of the continent and can beat your people in population. That way you'll be going against him. Butter up everyone on your continent and you've got a victory. Getting people the same religion as you is the easiest way to win. Using spies to convert people to your religion, or out of their favorite civics that they may share with others is the next easiest. I think I remember someone said you had to be +10 in modifiers to get them to vote for you.

Like Giovanni mentions, military is the easiest way to win a diplo victory. But that's not really a diplomatic victory, it's basically just a domination victory that you win a few turns earlier. If you're going for a military diplo victory you need to take vassals, as you can't vote yourself to a diplo victory. You need others to vote for you to, and vassals always vote for you unless they're the other candidate.

Also a civ won't vote for you for diplo victory unless it's friendly. At pleased it'll vote for you for secretary general, but not for diplo victory



So how do you get a REAL diplomatic victory? You need to find enough civs that don't hate each other. You can't have your friends hating each other because they'll constantly be asking you to stop trading with the other and each time you decline you'll get -1. You might also get the -4 "you traded with our worst enemy."

It's incredibly easy to get +9.
+1 Years of Peace
+2 Open borders
+2 You have provided us with resources
+4 Our trade relations have been fair and forthright (just gift a tech or two for this one, or money works too.)

To get to friendly you need +11 for most civs. The easiest way is to have their favorite civic. AIs don't always switch to their favorite civic, but if you switch to it first, and they're pleased with you, they'll usually agree to switch if you pay them.

Religion is another way, but this might give you negatives with another civ, so you can't rely on it.

Defensive pact is another possible +2. Giving in to demands for techs or resources is another +1 each time. Gifting techs isn't a very effective way to raise it after you get that +4 "trade relations have been fair" bonus. I don't know the exact number, but it takes a ton of techs to get the +1 for "you have shared your technological discoveries: and even more to get to +2. Forget about +3 unless the civ is ridiculously backwards.

Mutual military struggle is a great one. Find a civ that nobody likes, and bribe people to declare on them. A common problem with this is that they'll say "we would have nothing to gain." But i found a pretty reliable way around this. If you declare on that target civ first, a lot of the time they'll change their response and will be willing to be bribed. I guess that they find helping you as something to gain. Plus it'll be cheaper to bribe them if you're at war. Also each additional civ you bribe will be cheaper. I've seen a civ want 2 or more techs to be bribed to war, but if i go to war first, and bribe some other civs to go to war, the original civ might lower their price to a thousand gold or something relatively cheap like that, as they'll see the civ everyone's beating up on an easy target.

If the civ that build the apostolic palace hasn't discovered mass media, the AP can also give you some votes, as you can get the +2 "you voted for us" bonus.

My personal record for a friendly relation is +26 with Elizabeth.
+1 years of peace
+2 open borders
+2 def pact
+3 mutual military struggle
+5 wise civics
+4 fair trade relations
+1 past events have brought our people together
+3 you have shared your technological discoveries with us
+2 you voted for us
+4 past events have proven your good nature to us
-1 you refused to help us

I didn't even have the resource bonus.

Pretty sure they'll vote for you even at +9, assuming the other candidate isn't higher.

Diplo isn't possible in all games, but if there are several AI's that are friendly/high pleased to each other and you, and none are score leader, then consider going for it. You can also go for it if you're close to domination and 1-2 civs like you.

Also, diplo votes are based entirely on population, so emphasize food if you are going for it and it's close. I had one where I was missing it by 8 votes, ramped up food massively, and won the next go around merely by increasing my pop, with the EXACT amount of votes needed.

Non-conquest diplomatic is one of my favorite victories because it's really, really hard to do - and if things go right you have space as a backup.

Learning to win diplomatic victories will vastly improve the rest of your games, by the way - even if you don't go for diplo victories.

Well I tried again like 2 or 3 more times for a diplomatic victory vote and I still had the same results. EVERYONE abstained. Yet, I still got re-elected twice as Secratary General. But I wound up losing to my ally Frederick of Germany because he launched Alpha Centuri way before anyone else came close.

At least now I know that this isn't like Diplomatic victory in Civ III where you just kiss up all game long. At least the fun of War can still happen in diplomatic victory games.

But what if you don't want to win through conquest and if relations between every one are so diverse that there is always a couple annoyances within each diplomatic triangle? (I play with alot of civs.) How do you manage to get around the trading with enemy and war demands? Is it even possible to win a diplomatic victory if this happens?

But what if you don't want to win through conquest and if relations between every one are so diverse that there is always a couple annoyances within each diplomatic triangle? (I play with alot of civs.) How do you manage to get around the trading with enemy and war demands? Is it even possible to win a diplomatic victory if this happens?

I've found diplo to be one of the victories that I use most commonly. If that is what I have decided to go for in a game, then I get an early religion and open borders. I then send out missionaries as fast as I can to everyone that I can reach. On multiple continent maps, I will get caravels as early as I can and use them to spread missionaries elsewhere. Once they have my religion in their country, I ask the AI to convert. If necessary I bribe them. I pay careful attention to which AIs like each other and cultivate a group of them as my friends. To keep them friendly, I will trade freely with them, even if the trade is a little lopsided in their favor. If they go to war against an AI not in our group of friends, I will join in to get the diplo boost. Any time that I go to war with an AI not in our group, I always ask all the AIs in my group of pals to join in, even if I know they are unable to do anything to help. Just being at war together gives a further diplo point boost. As soon as defensive alliances are available, I make those with my buddies, which gives a further diplo boost. I also establish cities as fast as I can wherever I can, whenever I can afford them, which gives me more votes. Diplo victory almost always comes late in the game but so far I have been quite successful. FWIW, I am playing at Noble level currently in Vanilla.

Is diplomatic victory nearly impossible? It seems as though you try to be friendly with almost all other civs, that another one gets mad at you just for being nice to a certain civ. That and they want you to go to war with a friend of yours. How do you get around this to achieve a diplomatic victory?

Does anyone here even try for diplomatic victory?

Well, there is an easier way: you could kill every one, build the UN and vote for yourself. Yes, it's cheesy so I will say no more of it.

I did it a few times. Usually it involves making sure that your opponent (the guy with the UN, or the biggest nation) is hated, or that most of his friends are the smaller nations.

Also, most of the time when I went through diplo I did declare war, many times... Actually they may be the games I declare war the most. Anytime one of your religious buddies asks to go to war with a crappy civ from another religion, accept. Even if it's just a phoney war for you, you start racking up the "mutual military struggle" points. I even got Tokugawa to vote for me in my last diplo victory, and that after he had declared war on me earlier in the game, only because after that I went to war with him on his annoying neighbour that nobody liked. He voted for me despite being despised by everybody else in our nice little Jewish clan. I was in trouble though because my biggest opponent was also in the Jewish clan... That is... until an unpleasant civ (Mehmed) decided to annihiliate his neighbour (Mansa Musa) and became the biggest civ, and consequently my UN opponent. Next election; victory for me. Interestingly, that was the first time I saw a civ completely wipe out another civ from a game (like, not vassalized, completely wiped out).

It just becomes problematic when one of your friends is also a nutso like Togugawa or Montezuma... These are hard to deal with as they declare war on their friends or just about anyone and then you start to get requests among friends to declare war on this "friend" and you start getting "you declared war on our friend!" negatives from certain civs and.. yeah.

Well, there is an easier way: you could kill every one, build the UN and vote for yourself. Yes, it's cheesy so I will say no more of it.
Unless you're playing BtS 3.13...... :cry: If you have the votes to win by yourself, the option of Diplo win vote will not appear....

The mistake that most people make is assuming that you have to be nice to everyone. Which is wrong especially if you are playing at at anything over Chieftain.

Be friends with enough people. And it doesn't hurt to become especially friendly with those who don't like whoever the other choice is.

What do you do if you are the only civ to hold a certain tech (thus it's valuable and rare) that is used for war and every other civ keeps requesting you just give it to them? Especially if it's a war tech and you want to keep the AI from trading it around to each other for your safety while you build up culture?

Does declining to just hand over a tech in the ancient era still count way forward in the modern era, and does it add up for each time you decline them?

Basically, is there ever a way to make a negative disapear with time? (IE in real life how America and England have re-united and become friendly).

Maybe you guys could also give me advice for the predicament I'm in. I have Ghandi as a neighbor. Normally I would be happy to be friendly towards him. But he wound up putting a city down right in my way and has bottle necked me preventing me from getting to 2 other of my cities. This was directly after I granted the Mayan's request to stop trading with them (open borders.) I want to declare war on Ghandi to take that city and get it out of my way, but my big issue is that he is friendly with most other civs, and is also 1 civ in the huge jewish coalition that we have. We share the same state religion. What would you do here to acheive the objective city and still salvage your diplomatic relations?

I never give away a military tech I have a monopoly on, diplomatic relations be damned.

The negative modifiers from "you refused to help us" do go away with time. The more they like you the faster it'll go away. It'll go away pretty quickly if they're friendly. If they're annoyed or furious it might never go away.

If you attack Ghandi you will get a -1 with every civ that was pleased or friendly with him. That's permanent. It's not too bad if you only declare on him once. But do it multiple times and they'll start stacking and that's when it can become a problem.

Just like other types of victories, you have to plan and even sacrifice other things to meet your objectives. That means you may have to give in to unfair tech demands (or you could simply not grab the techs first or instantly trade them to the civs you want happy the second you get them).

Note that gifting a tech that is asked for gives you +5! +4 for trade, +1 for giving in.

Why do you need to build culture for a diplomatic win?

I'm trying to keep the option open between diplomatic and culture victories.

What do you do if you are the only civ to hold a certain tech (thus it's valuable and rare) that is used for war and every other civ keeps requesting you just give it to them? Especially if it's a war tech and you want to keep the AI from trading it around to each other for your safety while you build up culture?

Maybe you guys could also give me advice for the predicament I'm in. I have Ghandi as a neighbor. Normally I would be happy to be friendly towards him. But he wound up putting a city down right in my way and has bottle necked me preventing me from getting to 2 other of my cities. This was directly after I granted the Mayan's request to stop trading with them (open borders.) I want to declare war on Ghandi to take that city and get it out of my way, but my big issue is that he is friendly with most other civs, and is also 1 civ in the huge jewish coalition that we have. We share the same state religion. What would you do here to acheive the objective city and still salvage your diplomatic relations?

I never get the "You refused to help us" penalty. Here is why. When an AI asks or demands that I give them a tech, I don't answer yes or no. Instead, I always choose the Would You Care to Negotiate (or whatever the exact words are) choice. This takes you to the negotiation screen. Instead of making an offer, I just clear the table and exit. They don't seem to count this as a refusal. ;)

As far as Ghandi goes, I would have open borders with him to allow movement and connection between my cities and build all the high culture producing buildings that I can in the cities on both sides of him. Eventually, your cultural pressure will cause his city to revolt and join your empire! :D

Um... As far as I know, you can't "negociate" when they threaten you.

It's not too hard....just give in to demands, make peace between enemies and such.

Try it with a OCC, you'll really need to focus on diplomacy :)

What is a OCC?

One City Challenge. Check this when you start a game and you must (and can only) win with only one city.