Need help understanding Diplomatic Victory

I am a poor-to-average Civ player. I normally play on Warlord (do not always win) on Standard size and time maps. I do not enjoy Domination, so I normally attempt Science or Cultural victories. I once did a Diplomatic Victory in the vanilla game, back when all you had to do was raise a lot of and spend it on , but found it boring and never looked at it again.

In a recent game where I attempted a Science Victory, the game got to the point of the United Nations and votes for Diplomatic Victory. No one won this, but I could not understand how anyone COULD win it. I had used all my Spies on city states (since they were not going to steal any tech from other civs) and, as a result, had the most votes. IIRC, I had 16 Votes and the Diplomatic Victory required 36! That sounds impossible!

I really need to learn how to do this, so I can add it to my options. How do you possibly get enough votes to win a Diplomatic Victory? I assume Spies in city states is a must. Does help win you ? Do Religions directly help this victory condition, or only indirectly (eg more )? What do you do about rival civilisations? Are there Wonders you must prioritise, as with other victory conditions? Essentially, I need an Idiot's Guide to My First Diplomatic Victory so I can understand the fundamentals of this victory condition

You have to be allied with the city states. Not just have spies in them. Each allied city states are worth 2 votes. In a standard map with a standard number of city states you'll then have 32 votes available from city states.

Then you get some base votes and some additional if you are the host. You also get one vote for each spy used as a diplomat once you have Globalization. Finally the Forbidden Palace, World Ideology and World Religion all offer a bonus of 2 votes. You also get 2 more votes if you had the majority at the previous world leader election.

You can finally bribe friends to vote for you.

If city states are conquered the requirement is reduced by 1 for each (and the pool of votes is reduced by 2).

If I remember right, there is a site called Carl's guides that have basic mechanics and articles on each victory condition, that would be a great place to start.

Basically, you need to first trigger the world leader vote (that happens every other vote when you reach the info era or half of the civs reach Atomic). Then you need enough votes to win, 40 on standard if I remember right. In the info era, that is 2 each from city states (32, they need to be allied), 4 for being the host, 2 for world ideology, 2 for world religion, 2 for Forbidden Palace, as you can see that gives you a grand total of 42, so some leeway there.

Not sure if you're able to get it on the first world leader election, but the top two world leaders (by votes) get 2 extra votes for the next world leader election (afaik). So, this keeps building up and after a few elections you should win (make sure you have a number of CS allies and optionally World Ideology, World Religion, Forbidden Palace, Host).

Thank you for the tips. I also looked up Carl's Guides and am currently reading through the info there. I have already picked up on a few useful details I did not properly understand in the game mechanics.

there's also a top tier high quality guide for Diplomatic victories in this very subforum wink wink nudge nudge

Apologies missed that. Where? In War academy?

stormtrooper412 said:

there's also a top tier high quality guide for Diplomatic victories in this very subforum wink wink nudge nudge

Click to expand...

Bleidraner said:

Apologies missed that. Where? In War academy?

Click to expand...

Yes, Stormtrooper412 is referring to War Academy.

I just found out something...
There are actually 5 levels of spies (although you can only promote them to lvl 3)

If a lvl3 spy performs a coup on a CS whose ally they are dominant over with, then they are considered lvl 5. A lvl 5 spy can coup a CS with around 100 influence difference (yes, you read that right) at almost 85%.
To get an idea how strong a lvl 5 spy is... take a look



Basically if Alex or whoever's been hogging the CS have low culture or somehow you manage to become at least influential with them (spy lvl +1 is still pretty good), you will have a VERY easy time taking all their CS. So in this case an aborted CV attempt might still be able to translate easily into DiploV.

I read Carl's Guide (mentioned above) and got my first ever Civ 5 win, Diplomatic with Portugal.

I actually ended up with way more votes than I needed, because I had about 75% of the city states with me, plus bribed all but 2 of the other civs (the biggest rivals) to vote for me. I guess this is because I never went to war all game. Not once. Any requests to join a war were refused.

I don't know if the guide covers it, but you will want to have spies stationed in rival capitals leading up to the World Leader election. This is what allows you to bribe them over to your side. If it isn't obvious, surplus gold and resources are highly valued for these trades/bribes. (This is one reason Portugal was so great, the Feitoria secured pretty much every resource in the game, and the Nau gave more than enough cash to bribe city-states and rival civs.)

I found the National Intelligence Agency incredibly useful since spies allow you to rig elections and open up bribes for the big election. Combined with the basic bonus from Patronage (seems kind of must-have for Diplomatic wins) you should be able to maintain a good number of allies. The more quests you complete leading up to the election the less gold you'll need for city-states. Look for overlapping quests. For example I completed the Louvre before the election just because 3 city-states wanted it.

If you are next to a war-monger I imagine a different strategy will be required. Still, if you have to go to war try to make just 1 or 2 enemies and focus on keeping good relations with everyone else. You don't need everyone's vote, just enough to win. Refusing to join in people's wars didn't seem to affect my diplomacy much. This is on King difficulty.

Edit: Re-read your post. Just to clarify, spies should be kept in city-states up until about 5 turns before the election, when you can move them as Diplomats to the rival civs that you want to bribe. But prior to that, yes, they should be in city-states to rig elections and possibly attempt coups. I never actually attempted a coup (though I almost tried one that was 80%.) By the time I needed them for the election they were all at 0% success, I guess because Polynesia had so much influence in those city-states.

On the low difficulties, just focus on a few things:

- Very early warring is OK. Then either be Mister Peaceful -or- use your army to take down empires that could outvote you later.
- Found a religion and spread it to everybody. If you get Tithe and one of the buildings you're doing great.
- Do the Patronage track, followed by commerce (money to buy CS) or rationalism (tech to buy CS)
- Use spies and take tenets that tend to increase influence with CSs, either in Autocracy or Freedom.
- Vote for and win the World's Fair and the Olympics, as well as world ideology and world religion.

If you are on the edge, eliminate one or two of the AIs. This is also how you get yourself a cultural victory when a large Order state hates your Freedom empire on the other side of the map and you just can't pump out enough tourism. Just make sure you keep up city state votes.

joncnunn said:

Yes, Stormtrooper412 is referring to War Academy.

Click to expand...

oh, so it got accepted and moved to the War Academy then? Nice

Another way of receiving votes is liberating a civilization that was conquered by another civilization and thus bringing them back in the game, granting you all their votes.
With the globalization technology you get an additional delegate for every spy in a capital.