Diplomatic Victory too easy.

I don't know if it was G&K or just one of the mods I was using but the AI used to coup 1-3 of my CSs a turn before BNW. It was annoying but it certainly did slow down the diplomatic game. I haven't had it happen once yet in BNW(though to be fair I've only completed 2 games)

I really do with the AI would do more than just sit there when you're about to win. In my last game I pulled off a cultural win while Russia/America just camped on my borders. If the AIs had worked together they could have slowed me down at the very least. Having only one more civ you need influence in, all the CSs in your pocket, or having built the Apollo program should make you a target as it would if you were playing online.

Eunomiac said:

I still cite Venice as an issue: No one, at least no AI, can compete with Venice's ability to rake in the cash. Venice buys all the things. Competition for City States? I might as well be playing against ants. Impoverished, over-taxed ants

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Venice gets extremely crippled by any wars, however. So in any games with early DoWs (or basically any MP game), Venice can very quickly go bankrupt. However, if you are free to spam your trade routes, then yeah...

Realistically, as others have said, a real world diplomatic victory would be similar to how it is in game. The United States is an example. Any smaller countries we are "allies with" are basically countries that we fund.

The system isn't perfect but I don't see a lot of ways to fix it. Someone has to win by something and I'd rather it be diplo than a boring time victory.

This is why the City-State Diplomacy Mod (by Gazebo) should have been incorporated into the actual game by the developers. As its name suggests, it makes City State Diplomacy *much* more interesting....and less "gamey", by tying diplomacy more to units than to gold!

Aussie.

totally agree. I play Greece (influence with CSs recovers at twice and increases at double rate), then i pick up Freedom and open a policy that makes my influence with CSs increases by 4 every turn. After a while, i allied with all the CSs without competition. Too easy!

Feeling like I'm doing something wrong but I found my first diplo victory not so easy.

Played Morocco (King, Large map, 10 civs, Fractal). I had a plenty of space to expand so I went really wide and tried diplomatic victory. Some civs were wiped away and there were the following notable AIs:

Huns - They were warmingering since the beginning of the game and wiped 1-2 civs and captured american capital. However they were scientifically backward and became really poor after the embargo I proposed.

Kamehameha - He was really cool in science and almost in an era ahead of me.

Germany - They were heavily cultural (I'm not kidding!) and built almost every wonder.

There were 4 more civs not worth mentioning: Brazil, Denmark, America and Celts.

I was trying to avoid any wars, so I was trying not to go against someone's interests with exception of Hun embargo (they were hated by all the other civs, so I got a relationship boost with others) and bribing city states (obviously). So there weren't any wars during all the game, but I had a large army to discourage anyone to DOW me. All the civs with the exeption of Huns were friendly to me with 3-4 "green" relationship modifiers.

As soon as there is an World leader election is proposed I am being denounced by Denmark, Brazil, Kamehameha and Germany (and not by Huns!). And after 15 turns these 4 civs DOW me and start capturing the allied city states. For example, I haven't seen any Kamehameha units on my territory but there were almost 15 of them near the city states. Germany has captured 3 in 2 turns. For the remaining game I was keeping gifting the units just to let my allies last long enough until the election.

Of course, it may be a coincidence. But in previous unsuccessful games I also found diplomatic victory not so easy if there is Greece, Shoshone or any huge runaway civ.

Just had my first DV on Emp. Byzantium with so much gold from religion.

Although I found it easy, it did take a long time. 400 turns, when I usually can get a SV around 350. I ignored the bottom part of the tech tree, and beelined to globalization (with the exception of quickly dipping into fertilizer [sounds wrong] after stealing two techs to get there).

So it was easy but took a long time.

I thought diplomatic victory was too easy after my first three games, and I still do, not to the same extent anymore though. Similarly to cultural victory, it becomes much harder if an overall strong AI player is going for it as well.

Also, in the current CS system, the current ideology tenets like Treaty Organization, Arsenal of Democracy and Gunboat Diplomacy make it possible to make eternal CS allies - others can't feasibly take over the position if the current ally is willing to maintain it. The system is, frankly, a bit broken and not suited for the big numbers of the post-Industrial influence game.

I can not say it is easy. First of all: Play on Immortal (or deity I guess). The AI starts having so much of a gold bonus that it starts dumping everything into CS and will have hundereds of influence pretty early on. They also always go for banking and almost always beat you to the forbidden Palace. 1-2 civs will also super spread their religion, decreasing their and increasing your influence decay.

I found myself winning my first diplo victory against a religion, super spreading (I had the resting point belief though), heavily investing in CS Ethiopia on the opposite site of the Rainforest-Pangea. Only because I killed 2 other religion-civs and convinced the remaining ones to accept my world religion, giving me additional votes and then globalization & diplomats.

VainoValkea said:

Similarly to cultural victory, it becomes much harder if an overall strong AI player is going for it as well.

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essentially this.

I've played just two games so far in BNW. The first one as the Shosone in Prince was pretty easy , and i ended up winning a diplomat victory just a few turns before culture victory. Second time,now playing Portugal in King, i'm still getting there but since I'm allied to every city state but one, seems like a diplomat victory is not that far away. I guess the key issue here is that city states tend to be overwhelmed by whoever has the most power (in the sense of combining of culture, faith and money). I don't recall that much games in CIV5 where the city states were fairly distributed among remaining players, that seems to be the issue to me!

PhilBowles said:

How are you defining "diplomatic interactions" - that you don't get a pretty picture when you open up the screen to give them things in exchange for their influence? That, after all, is largely what diplomatic interactions with the civs involve (not to mention diplomatic interactions in real life. If you were to tell the average diplomat that Civ games have a diplomatic victory based on economic domination, they'd probably recognise that as a pretty good approximation of the real world).

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At the base, the entire mechanic driving the CS for diplomatic victory is bribery, nothing else. Thats what was implimented at launch and thats the mechanic that the devs are trying to 'fix' with G+K and BNW. You are bribing these City States to become pseudo puppets to your empire - ones that will instantly declare wars regardles of whether they 'want' to. They willingly give you all their resources no matter how much of a piece of garbage you might be in the world, and they let you walk through their borders without any kind of treaty.

If city states were treated as a minor Civilization with the ability to negotiate minor treaties in order to increase influence and relations between nations, which could eventually lead to their support for you in a world Congress, or for World Leader, that would be meaningful diplomatic relations. If they could refuse to support your wars, or refuse to provide you with luxuries, or even not allowing you to enter there country unless you actually make an effort at improving relations, that would be 'diplomatic interaction'.

See, if you're a big bully going around taking over other Civilizations then you're a warmonger and conquering a City state should be the goal rather then befriending them. As it stands, a warmonger has the same opportunity for a diplomatic victory as someone who's played a fairly careful defensive game, fostering strong allies, and being a generally nice dude, because all the warmonger has to do is bribe enough city states with gold, rather then putting any real work into it.

As for graphical crap, I'm not saying that the city states should have fully animated leader screen like major civs, thats not what I was getting at, and i'm not the type of person to want fancy graphics over functioning core mechanics.

Gehennas said:

As soon as there is an World leader election is proposed I am being denounced by Denmark, Brazil, Kamehameha and Germany (and not by Huns!). And after 15 turns these 4 civs DOW me and start capturing the allied city states. For example, I haven't seen any Kamehameha units on my territory but there were almost 15 of them near the city states. Germany has captured 3 in 2 turns. For the remaining game I was keeping gifting the units just to let my allies last long enough until the election.

Of course, it may be a coincidence. But in previous unsuccessful games I also found diplomatic victory not so easy if there is Greece, Shoshone or any huge runaway civ.

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You know, you may be onto something there. In my last game I wasn't really going for diplomatic victory but I was friends with the majority of the CSs. It was about the same time of the world leader elections and I was preparing to go to war with France(who were on the other side of the world). On my way over I passed their navy headed in my direction... but they never showed up at my borders. Being that I was really the only one accessible by that route that left me confused.

Jump forward a few turns to when I attacked them, it came to light they had surrounded a few of the city states on my side of the world(and their ground troops were surrounding those on their continent. They were also blocking the exit to the bay my capital was in(about 20-30 tiles from my cap) but I feel that may just be a fluke as there were friendly city states all over that part of the map.

Throughout the war the majority of their firepower was directed at my city states, and this would also explain why the other AIs started denouncing me. The other AIs didn't go after me, but they did all declare on my 2 'allies'(everyone had denounced me at that point but they still were a little friendly), those 2 civs being the only ones sharing my ideology.

mabalogna said:

At the base, the entire mechanic driving the CS for diplomatic victory is bribery, nothing else.

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Agreed, but my point was that this is exactly the way you interact with civs for the most part in obtaining their favour - give them luxuries when they ask for them, declare war when they ask you to, making trades in their favour, opening trade routes that give them extra commerce, all fundamentally amount to bribery.

Civ V does a better job than previous Civ games at adding politics to interactions, with the importance of shared alliances/denunciations and now ideology, but at its heart the diplo victory has been a thinly-disguised "bribery victory" since it was introduced to the series (at least when it's not a "conquer everyone to obtain their votes/force them into vassalage" victory).

Influence with CSes basically works exactly like the modifier system in Civ IV with the exception that influence degrades rather than accumulates over time without any intervention by the player (and, of course, the exception that you now get to complete quests to earn that favour, something that was limited in Civ IV to occasional "a random event has hit another civ and it needs your help" events).

As for graphical crap, I'm not saying that the city states should have fully animated leader screen like major civs, thats not what I was getting at, and i'm not the type of person to want fancy graphics over functioning core mechanics.

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Quite possibly not, but it does seem that you're letting the difference in graphics guide your perception of how different civ relations actually are. Pretty much none of the options you want for city-states are available to fully-fledged civs either, and the treaties that do exist - declarations of friendship - work "under the hood" in pretty much exactly the same way as CS influence: if a civ decides it likes you enough based on its positive modifiers, it will offer or accept a DoF. Relations with CSes are handled not very differently from relations with civs; if a CS decides it likes you enough, it will become your ally. Which boils down the essential differences between the two to the leader screens and the fact that the influence slider is visible for CSes but not for civs.

The only thing that particularly irritates me about the CS system is the inability of CSes to act in their own interests if attacked - a CS that has an ally has no ability to break the alliance to save itself if it's about to be captured. Also, in the World Congress/UN, "independent" city-states have no vote at all (if a vote comes up just as influence has deteriorated with its former ally, or if an ally has been destroyed, for instance).

The banning movement already effectively exists; walk through a CS's territory if it's not friendly and it will get angry. This is quite a good way of reflecting the fact that these are minor powers - they have no more actual ability to prevent a civ walking through their territory than, say, Nicaragua had to prevent US forces hunting drug-runners and terrorists in its territory.

And none of this is far from the way diplomacy works in reality - even the role of war (famously, diplomacy by other means) in securing a diplomatic victory.

The thing is, the AI doesn't pull the shenanigans that players do. Namely, they don't leverage their wealth to simply buy up votes. I've seen the AI sit on thousands of GP and not spend it.

Of course, they used to coup constantly, but players complained, and that got nerfed.

What if along with demanding tribute, you could intimidate a CS into giving you its delegate, or at least abstaining from WC votes?

steveg700 said:

The thing is, the AI doesn't pull the shenanigans that players do. Namely, they don't leverage their wealth to simply buy up votes. I've seen the AI sit on thousands of GP and not spend it.

Of course, they used to coup constantly, but players complained, and that got nerfed.

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That was a bad move - that and/or programming the AIs to favour diplomats over spies even if not going for cultural victory, and when the AI never requests support for Congress resolutions anyway. I suspect the fewer coups are just a consequence of the AI assigning fewer spies to city-states.

People who had trouble with AI coups were just the ones who didn't play diplomacy properly and relied on gold-rushing that generally gives you the bare minimum influence needed to retain an alliance. If coups broke that playstyle, so much the better. Back in G&K I very rarely had problems with coups with city-states I'd fostered game-long alliances with; past a certain point of relative influence, even a level 3 spy can't orchestrate a successful coup.

PhilBowles said:

That was a bad move - that and/or programming the AIs to favour diplomats over spies even if not going for cultural victory, and when the AI never requests support for Congress resolutions anyway. I suspect the fewer coups are just a consequence of the AI assigning fewer spies to city-states.

People who had trouble with AI coups were just the ones who didn't play diplomacy properly and relied on gold-rushing that generally gives you the bare minimum influence needed to retain an alliance. If coups broke that playstyle, so much the better. Back in G&K I very rarely had problems with coups with city-states I'd fostered game-long alliances with; past a certain point of relative influence, even a level 3 spy can't orchestrate a successful coup.

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The problem there was that the AIs rarely failed their coups. I lost city states I had hundreds of influence with to AIs I knew had been broke all game and only had a lv.1 spy(their old one having been killed in my capital <10 turns prior.)

When I'd try and coup the CS back I'd have about 15% chance of success, the fact that same AI took the same city state back each turn for 7 turns in a row was beyond annoying.(burned through my whole gold stockpile too)

I'm glad they nerfed it, but I think they went too far.

I completely agree with the point of the thread.

I wanted to beat each VC with BNW, so I started a Shoshone game (King difficulty) entirely focused on science.

Though the technological gap between me and the best AI was huge and I could easily have won the science victory I aimed for, I eventually went for diplomatic victory.

Simply because it was much faster to beeline Telecommunications to enter the Information era and trigger the vote countdown, and then grabbing the extra delegates from globalization, than completing the (almost) whole tech tree to build spaceship parts.

And as I had the scientific upper hand, I had no problem getting also a well-run economy and enough cash to buy out the CS I needed.

So, I won a victory I had not especially prepared for ; I really took it off the cuff. Worse, winning Diplomacy proved to be easier than winning the VC, here science, I had pursued for the entire game (excepted the game).

As a side note : Augustus sat on piles of cash for years. Two turns before the vote, as I had a DoF with him, I "borrowed" his 2400 in exchange of 80 gpt. And got an even bigger amount of delegates. Stupid Augustus.

Magean, you would really need to jump up two levels of difficulty given your success on King. I'm not saying Immortal/Deity could be difficult for you but I think too many people are wanting changes based on playing at levels way too easy for them. Unfortunately, Immortal/Deity are way too easy for really good players and what should they do since there are no challenges left? This thread, and what Magean pointed out, is another example of an element being dumbed down to produce an easy victory at all levels.

I was considering jumping to Emperor. I wanted to beat all victory conditions in King because it was for me like, you know, an exam. A certificate before the next class.

Though I was very, very lucky with my start position in this game. The map was Small continent and I started in an isolated part of my continent. I usually go tall at the beginning, but this time I went wide. This proved extremely efficient on the long run (wide religious empire + Jesuit education is an awesome combo), but at the beginning I was very vulnerable. I remained last in tech for a while, until the Medieval Era when I finally completed my NC and bought many universities with faith.

My closest neighbour, Nebuchadnezzar, scared me at the beginning - since Babylon usually cruises its way through the tech tree. Fortunately, Shaka bullied him for a long time and even burnt his second tallest city. Placement luck, once again.



Anyway, that fact remains : no matter the difficulty level, Diplomatic victory proved to be easier than the VC I had in mind for the entire game and always prepare for. And THAT is, in my opinion, a problem.

I think I'm going to turn off diplomatic victory. It won't harm anybody. CS-oriented civs already get enough bonus from their alliances.

Just to highlight the ridiculousness.... This was an Immortal game btw. Diplo victory as it stands isn't even a "gold" victory. You don't need gold. You don't need planning. You certainly don't need diplomacy. You just need to decide 50 turns before the vote that you want to win the game. And then, you have to stay alive. Auto-win.

I was dead last in all demographics from turn 1 to turn 250. All 6s ranked (2 civs had been eliminated). I did not have any wonders that produced gold (was going for a very poorly executed culture victory). I only had 3 cities. 2 of the 5 remaining civs DoW-ed me, and I couldn't get international trade routes to anyone besides my one immediate neighbor (so, as low gold as someone can get). No Civ picked my ideology. I was constantly bribing my neighbor to DoW multiple civs just so he wouldn't crush me (this cost about 1k per 15 turns). He was military leader. I had 3 military units only. This was the definition of a fail-game. I have never played worse and lived (I was trying something, and it didn't go well). It could not have gone worse without me being eliminated from the game. I also did not have any tenants for CSs, no shot at reaching globalization, no Forbidden palace, only one friend.

On turn 250, realizing this, I dumped my next 3 social policies into the Patronage tree, stopped production on all other things and started building spy-buildings to get the wonder to upgrade my spies. I completed as many city state quests as possible. I used all my upgraded spies to coup "realistic" (75%+) options. This investment, obviously, made me fall even father behind in all the demographic markers.

World leader came up on turn 322 (because I was so late to the Atomic Era, had to steal a tech to even get there). Two turns before that, I traded all my gpt for gold from my one friend, and bought out / couped all the city states, except for one (Sweden had 600+ influence there for whatever reason).

32 votes. I win.

Yayyyyyyyyy. =(

Used to be my favorite victory condition in G&K, back when coups were happening all the time, Aggressive civs took out CSs to prevent victory, and you could not vote for yourself, so it actually paid off to have good diplo w/ your Civ neighbors. Now, it's just awful in every way.

edit: The 5 civs besides me remaining were Siam (CS civ), India, Sweden, America and Spain. All of them besides Spain "actively" competed for city states throughout the game. Until of course, I decided to win the game. There was no Greece, but Siam's still a top 5 "I care about CSs" civ.