Reworking the Diplomatic Victory

I know this is like the umpteenth time this has been brought up on these forums, but it's clear that the diplo victory is somewhat unsatisfying. It can be achieved much earlier than a cultural or scientific victory - with much less effort.

I have some suggestions for reworking this victory.

1) Make the UN a buildable wonder again. Building the UN triggers the Diplomatic Victory voting stage after the next proposals are voted on.

2) This is the real meaty part of the suggestion: Completely rework CS relations.

Right now, there's only one way to track CS relations. Either you're allied with them, friends, neutral, or at war, really. But wait a minute. Suppose you've been allied with Jerusalem for thousands of years, but over time your influence with them has waned. Although you may no longer be allied, surely neither you or the city state should forget the relationship you once had?

Thus my proposal: Two relationship bars for each CS.

Allow me to give you an example on how this would work. Let's say you meet Jerusalem early on in the game. They are a Neutral CS (as opposed to Hostile, Friendly or Irrational). You are entirely neutral and have no past history. We'll write your influence as 0/0.
Then, you complete a few quests for them, and get up to Friends status. Let's say your influence is now at 45/0. Click next turn. Your Influence now sits at 44/5. Next turn? 43/10.

What I am proposing is that the first number is how influence works right now in the game - and the second number represents a longterm relationship with the CS as the years go on by.

If you were friends with a Neutral CS, your Long-term Influence would rise by 5 per turn. If they were friendly, 7 per turn, if they were hostile, 3 per turn, and if they were irrational, randomly between 3 and 7 per turn. If you were allied with this CS, the number would double: 10 per turn for a neutral CS, 14 for a Friendly, 6 for a Hostile, and 6-14 per turn for an Irrational. Having negative relations with a CS would also degrade this long-term influence - and a hostile CS would quickly discard its longterm influence with you over war than a friendly CS, which would be a bit more willing to forgive - thus, slower degrade. Similar to how regular influence works.

So what would this Long-term Influence do for you in the long run?

Well, my next proposal would be as follows:

3) Have CS rewards be affected by your long term influence.

If your long term influence is higher with a particular CS than anyone else's, they'll give you a small boost to rewards. Let's say +33%. Thus, you could be friends with a CS while some other civ is allied with them, but because you've been allies with them in the past for the last two thousand years, they'll still give you a little more in acknowledgement of your past friendship.

When CSs start getting delegates, long term influence would affect this as well. When all CSs have 1 delegate, they would grant it to the civ who they are currently allied with. Once they have 2 delegates, they would grant them as follows: 1 delegate for being allied, 1 delegate for your long term influence trumping anyone else's. So sure, feel free to buy out every city state on the turn before a congress vote - they'll only grant you 1. That other 1 will be awarded to the civ who's been allied and friends with them in the past - thus, buying out every city state to win a diplo victory would become a weaker strategy. Now, you would have to invest in their friendship right from the early stage to gain their full support.

4) )As an after thought, CSs should also adopt Ideologies. They would adopt Ideologies based on who they are currently allied with (the stronger modifier), who their greatest long-term ally is (2nd strongest modifier), and geographical location (weakest, but still notable modifier.)

As an example: In the late game, Jerusalem is chosen by the game to adopt an Ideology. They are long-term allies with Siam, who has gone Order, (+3 to chance to pick Order) but are now currently allied with Germany, who's gone Autocracy (+5 to chance to pick Autocracy.) However, their neighbours are Germany, the Inca, and Geneva - and the Inca and Geneva have adopted Freedom. (+1 to chance to pick Freedom for the Inca and Geneva, and +1 to chance to pick Autocracy from Germany - all thus due to neighbour passive diplomatic influence.) The likelihood is that they would probably go Autocratic, but there would be a small chance for Order, and a miniscule chance at Freedom.

Being allied with a city state with a differing Ideology would increase the chances of them changing their ideology and picking yours - although this would take time to happen. In the meantime, having similar ideologies would grant a 33% bonus to both current AND longterm influence gains, while having differing ideologies would grant a -33% penalty to current and longterm influence gains.

I know all the numbers are probably completely unbalanced, but hopefully I've got the gist of the idea across to you guys. What do you think, everyone?

It sounds good to me, though it may be better if votes only cared about long-term influence, to force players to be more proactive in gaining them.

I really like the idea of city states gaining ideologies.

The big problem with diplo victory now is that cash is king. You can just pour thousands of gold down a CS's gullet until it makes you its ally.

I've had a lot of ideas on how to fix the diplo victory, but the simplest fix would simply be to have gifts be an exchange of gold-per-turn for influence-per-turn for a number of turns determined by the civ. Influence doesn't start decreasing until after the deal expires. Likewise, gifting a unit is also a per-turn deal, with the strength of the unit determining the length of the deal.

Galgus said:

It sounds good to me, though it may be better if votes only cared about long-term influence, to force players to be more proactive in gaining them.

Click to expand...

The problem with CS's only caring about long-term influence is that it can give civ's an unshakable hold on CS's, to the point where the diplo victory is effectively secured long before the world-leader vote. While it's lame that civ's can simply write 1000-gold checks until they're your ally.

A more complicated fix than the one I suggested is to separate gold from influence. Gold is a means of renting a CS's special services (mercs from a military CS, food from a maritime CS, etc), while influence is earned solely from fulfilling quests and a few other actions (gifting units, pledging protection) and can make that CS your ally. The former is a business relationship, while the latter is a diplomatic relationship.

There can be crossover between business and diplomatic relationships, naturally. Striking a business deal can have the added benefit of triggering a quest. Conversely, gaining enough influence to become a CS's friend or ally boosts the benefits of renting that CS's services.

Quests should be offered infrequently earlier in the game, but offered very frequently in later eras. This is yet another way to de-emphasize gold.

steveg700 said:

The big problem with diplo victory now is that cash is king. You can just pour thousands of gold down a CS's gullet until it makes you its ally.

I've had a lot of ideas on how to fix the diplo victory, but the simplest fix would simply be to have gifts be an exchange of gold-per-turn for influence-per-turn for a number of turns determined by the civ. Influence doesn't start decreasing until after the deal expires. Likewise, gifting a unit is also a per-turn deal, with the strength of the unit determining the length of the deal.

Click to expand...

Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't see how that changes things much. In current system, you give 1000 Gold and get, say, 50 influence. In your suggestion, maybe you'll give 20 GPT and get 1 IPT (influence per turn). I can see that it will make it harder to buy out a CS from one turn to the next, but other than that, it would amount to the same. Or is that all you wanted to achieve?

kaspergm said:

Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't see how that changes things much. In current system, you give 1000 Gold and get, say, 50 influence. In your suggestion, maybe you'll give 20 GPT and get 1 IPT (influence per turn). I can see that it will make it harder to buy out a CS from one turn to the next, but other than that, it would amount to the same. Or is that all you wanted to achieve?

Click to expand...

Sounds good to me.
Quests can stay the same with immediate jumps of influence which will make them more rewarding/important.

It is simple, although I also like the proposal of two counters for CS's. Not sure if it should be as complex as the OP suggests. I would think of a simple LongTerm counter which gives 1 point each turn you are Allied, no change for Friends and -1 point otherwise with a minimum of 0 points. Probably a maximum of LongTerm points is also good to prevent unshakable leads too early in the game.

kaspergm said:

Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't see how that changes things much. In current system, you give 1000 Gold and get, say, 50 influence. In your suggestion, maybe you'll give 20 GPT and get 1 IPT (influence per turn). I can see that it will make it harder to buy out a CS from one turn to the next, but other than that, it would amount to the same. Or is that all you wanted to achieve?

Click to expand...

Other than that, it would amount to the same.

Then again, the "that" in question is the elephant in the room. It's the beast that overturns the applecart. The fact that you can drive a dumptruck full of money up to a city-state and stage an instant eleventh-hour buyout is the main thing that makes the diplomatic victory absurd. The only thing that keeps it from being blatandly problematic is that the AI is evidently programmed not to do this, which is why you'll see AI's sitting on hoards of gold the turn that the players wins the world leader election. It's still absurd, just not *blatantly* absurd.

Like I said before when I proposed the above fix, it was only offered as the simplest of remedies. The big, complicated fix that i've proposed in other threads is to create a division between gold and influence. Gold should be the means for acquiring a civilization's services (food from maritime CS's, mercs from military CS's, etc), while influence grants their political (and, in times of war, military) allegiance.

In that model, you'd only gain influence from quests, pledges of protection, and offering military assitance in times of war--in other words, diplomatic actions. In a departure from the current model, becoming a friend or ally doesn't grant their services automatically. You'd still have to strike up a business deal with gold; however, being a friend or ally grants a perk that sweetens the deal, either by discounting the cost of renting their services, or keeping the cost the same but augmenting the benefit the service provides.

Conversely, giving a city-state gold to procure its service is no longer a "gift", but rather is more properly thought of as a contract to receive that CS's benefit for a fixed number of rounds. It doesn't directly yield influence, but when you give the gold you may receive a quest, dependent on how many quests are currently active and the amount of gold you give. Giving smallest amount (currently 250 gold) only unlocks a quest if you don't currently have one, while the largest gift (1000) will allow you to have up to three quests.

So, gold and influence wouldn't be directly related as input and output, but they would, err..."influence" each other.

steveg700 said:

The problem with CS's only caring about long-term influence is that it can give civ's an unshakable hold on CS's, to the point where the diplo victory is effectively secured long before the world-leader vote. While it's lame that civ's can simply write 1000-gold checks until they're your ally.

A more complicated fix than the one I suggested is to separate gold from influence. Gold is a means of renting a CS's special services (mercs from a military CS, food from a maritime CS, etc), while influence is earned solely from fulfilling quests and a few other actions (gifting units, pledging protection) and can make that CS your ally. The former is a business relationship, while the latter is a diplomatic relationship.

There can be crossover between business and diplomatic relationships, naturally. Striking a business deal can have the added benefit of triggering a quest. Conversely, gaining enough influence to become a CS's friend or ally boosts the benefits of renting that CS's services.

Quests should be offered infrequently earlier in the game, but offered very frequently in later eras. This is yet another way to de-emphasize gold.

Click to expand...

Sounds good to me, though the quests could probably be shaken up a bit.

Galgus said:

Sounds good to me, though the quests could probably be shaken up a bit.

Click to expand...

Absolutely! Passive quests like "generate a great person" or "connect a resource to your network" are fine, but how about as the relationship progresses, you start getting more serious requests....like "GIVE US a great person" or "GIVE US a resource"? Completing a major quest would not just yield a lump sum of influence, but would also raise the resting point with that CS permanently.

I would put the "build a road" request in a category of quests that should actually evolve the benefits of an alliance, by having that city connection provide gold as if it were one of your cities. Ultimately, I think it would be great if every civ had a means to absorb a CS into its empire as Austria and Venice currently do.

steveg700 said:

Other than that, it would amount to the same.

Then again, the "that" in question is the elephant in the room. It's the beast that overturns the applecart. The fact that you can drive a dumptruck full of money up to a city-state and stage an instant eleventh-hour buyout is the main thing that makes the diplomatic victory absurd.

Click to expand...

I can see that this would help with the Diplomatic Issue, but I'm not sure I think this is the overall best solution. There are other times in the game where I actually think it's fine that you can donate a lump sum and get an instant reward in terms of friendship/alliance. As such, I personally think that the other suggestion for how to "fix" the DV problem is better (namely that your sum up all the positive influence you've earned since, say, foundation of World Congress, minus all the negative influence you've earned, and then whoever is the leader with a specific city state gets their vote). Plus we want DV to be harder but not impossible to get, and I could be afraid that this solution would make it hard to move any votes within the time frame of a voting cycle.