World Congress voting irks

Hey folks -

A couple of situations I've run into with the World Congress have caused some irks for me, and I thought I'd share.

1. Buying a Civ's votes doesn't mean you buy all their votes. Or even prevent that Civ from voting against it, too.

In one game, I bribed Babylon to vote to establish mine as the World Religion. At the time, I even made it in his interest; I'd recently converted his cities to my religion and he hadn't founded one of his own. Nebbie committed his votes to me. Unfortunately, Russia, the game's runaway, converted Babylon's cities to her religion right before the vote and I wasn't in a position to respond quickly.

I poured my votes in the World Religion vote to gain ground against Russia, confident that between my votes and Babylon's, it would barely pass. And it would have...except Babylon voted 2 votes Yay and voted 2 votes Nay, as well! (He had two more votes that went to the other proposal.) Needless to say, I was both aggravated and confused.

2. A diplomat doesn't allow you to discuss how YOU are planning to vote in the World Congress.

In my latest game, I barely failed to found the World Congress, and neither proposal made by the host or Austria were going to effect/interest me much. Austria's proposal was to embargo the Ottomans, who I'd just met and likely wouldn't have any interaction with. I saw an opportunity to offer/sell my assistance.

So I established a diplomat...only to find I couldn't discuss my vote in the World Congress without the Ottomans establishing a diplomat in my capital. How does this make sense? Why do I need to rely on the Ottomans placing a diplomat to make a vote exchange? Surely my Diplomat is capable enough to know and discuss how I'm going to vote. It's counter-intuitive and immersion shattering.

***

I generally like the World Congress, but some of its implementation is irksome. (Another thread on these forums discuss how the city-states being brought in and the vote for the new host comes out of nowhere and with no warning, another sore point for me.) Since I encountered these situations unexpectedly, I thought I'd share.

Anyone run into a similar situation? What are your thoughts?

I am sure they put the Half the votes on cap so the AI could still vote in the upcoming WC. Lets say the AI you are bribing is the one who put up 2nd proposal? If you took all of his votes he wasted a proposal.

It's not half the votes, I think, but the "core delegation" (the votes from the civ itself, not City-States) that can be bought.

You didn't take all their votes, you bought them. He wouldn't agree to vote a certain way if you didn't pay him.

VainoValkea said:

It's not half the votes, I think, but the "core delegation" (the votes from the civ itself, not City-States) that can be bought.

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Sadly, that's not explained anywhere. And it is obnoxious that after agreeing to vote my way, he can also vote against me.

How was he able to vote Yea and Nay on the same proposal? From what I could tell that wasn't possible. It certainly wasn't possible for me to do that so I'd be surprised if they could. (Or maybe I haven't figured out how....) In fact, I usually bribe the one with the most votes so I can get their 2 or 3 votes in favor so they can't use all of their votes against the proposal I want to pass.

Are you sure they can vote both ways on a single proposal?

DuseCutter said:

How was he able to vote Yea and Nay on the same proposal? From what I could tell that wasn't possible. It certainly wasn't possible for me to do that so I'd be surprised if they could. (Or maybe I haven't figured out how....) In fact, I usually bribe the one with the most votes so I can get their 2 or 3 votes in favor so they can't use all of their votes against the proposal I want to pass.

Are you sure they can vote both ways on a single proposal?

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I took a screenshot. I'll happily post it later tonight when I get home.

I assume my "buying" their votes through the trade menu locked their two votes into place, and then they got to assign the rest of their votes as normal.

DuseCutter said:

How was he able to vote Yea and Nay on the same proposal? From what I could tell that wasn't possible. It certainly wasn't possible for me to do that so I'd be surprised if they could. (Or maybe I haven't figured out how....) In fact, I usually bribe the one with the most votes so I can get their 2 or 3 votes in favor so they can't use all of their votes against the proposal I want to pass.

Are you sure they can vote both ways on a single proposal?

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I think its because the 2 that were promised via trade don't technically show on the yay/nay voting (like it wont automatically have a 2 for yay the screen pops up). To nebbie, it showed that he only had 2 votes to spend (2 were used in the trade) and he put both of them toward nay. However because the 2 he promised yay for you were still counted, it would show both 2 yay and 2 nay.

As for how many votes you can "trade" Im pretty sure its related to the spy/diplomat level.

When you buy or sell core delegation votes you can still vote on that proposal.What you want is to bribe a civ that only has core delegation votes so they can't vote the other way.

bcaiko said:

I took a screenshot. I'll happily post it later tonight when I get home.

I assume my "buying" their votes through the trade menu locked their two votes into place, and then they got to assign the rest of their votes as normal.

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Cool. I'd like to see it. Now I'm questioning what I thought I saw in my game. Hmm...

Either way I'm not sure how I feel on the issue. Part of me thinks it's ridiculous for an AI to vote both ways and I think it should be locked into a certain way. But I can also see it as being something akin to an exploit to lock an AI out of a vote on a certain proposal. (Like what I was attempting to do.) I could have sworn it worked, but maybe I only noticed it with the core votes like how phillipwyllie mentions.

phillipwyllie said:

When you buy or sell core delegation votes you can still vote on that proposal.What you want is to bribe a civ that only has core delegation votes so they can't vote the other way.

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It's right there, in the bold! Something to use to your advantage!