I call BS

And his name is Alexander. I just played a game where it was literally IMPOSSIBLE to win against him. There was nothing I could have done to win.

He spawned on another continent from me. He got the forbidden palace. And I'm not even joking: He had EVERY SINGLE CITY STATE as ally. And not just 'barely', his average bonus with them was about 300 and this was only emperor!!! To make things worse, something made him snowball like crazy and he was keeping up with me in tech (but barely), and...you know how it goes. On the very first world leader election he already had 40 delegates and won straight away.

This is absolute BS and I'm very angry right now! I feel like I wanna smash in the face of whoever designed their UA, as it is clearly broken in the hands of an AI who was already cheating in the first place.

AND THIS WAS ONLY ONE EMPEROR! Who was that moron who thought that making him unbeatable (unless you spawn on his continent I assume) was a good idea?

He was entirely on the other side of the world, and if I abandoned my cultural victory (I was playing France) and commit to a massive invasion then Brazil would have won the cultural victory instead of me?

What do you say, possible to beat him in this specific situation?

Again: By the time we discovered each other he was already out of control. He also had 3 foreign capitals btw. Something made him snowball like crazy but I never found out what.

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I won't claim it's easy or foolproof or without risk of losing to some other AI, but if you had discovered Alex much sooner you could have waged war to weaken him and protect his neighbors.
So if it's unwinnable at this point, chalk it up to 'poor scouting' perhaps.

We're some of the capitals he'd taken coastal from eliminated civs? Was Athens coastal.
AI is atrocious at naval warfare so you could have sent over just a few battleships or frigates and taken some of his cities to slow him down. For the eliminated civs reviving them will cause them to vote for you and increase the amount of votes required to win.

Did he take the capitals early? It could be that just having a couple of good cities with city state allied allowed to run-away.

And sometime you just have to adapt to what's happening in he game. If your current course of action is going to result in a loss, then you need to change what your doing.

Challenge accepted.

Are you able to post a turn 0 save?

Xiao Xiong said:

Challenge accepted.

Are you able to post a turn 0 save?

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This may not end up with a runaway Alexander

The game may be unwinable after some point, but not from the start.

What were the chances to perform coups in some of the city states? If you prevented him from winning diplo then I don't think there would be a problem. Just take the necessary CS and dow him so it won't flip them back.

@OP: Alex can be dealt without war, you just have to pursue a diplo victory. Keep him at war and sell him your stuff. Although harder to achieve is get a DOF so you buy all his gold.

I agree that it sounds like the best solution was war as soon as you saw that he was a runaway. You should be able to outsmart the AI in naval warfare. If Athens is coastal, then it soon have been YOU with the Forbidden Palace. If not, then it might take a bit longer to truly cripple the Greek empire, but still, taking a few of his coastal cities would've crippled his trade, and you can still slowly make your way inland from there. And as already stated by Illianor, liberating the civs that he eliminated would score you major diplomatic points too.

Post some screenshots from when you first discovered that he was a runaway, if you still have a save from near that period of time, and I'm sure there that some of the more "experienced" players in this forum will have loads of advice.

Conquer 3-4 city states on your own continent. Buy 2-3 more with hard earned cash. Then declare war on Alexander and he cant get them back as long as you are at war.

This is very effective and has worked on runaways before for me. It buys you enough time to do a science or culture win.

jbavon said:

Conquer 3-4 city states on your own continent. Buy 2-3 more with hard earned cash. Then declare war on Alexander and he cant get them back as long as you are at war.

This is very effective and has worked on runaways before for me. It buys you enough time to do a science or culture win.

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that's smart, though to note I think after your wipe out a civ or CS the amount of votes he needs to win also falls though removing his friends will weaken him economically. You need a certain percentage of the current AVAILABLE votes and conquering CS's lowers the available votes.

Strange. I seem to remember the required number of votes staying the same as city states disappeared. 40 votes for the first vote in a standard game. I know I have done it. Has the mechanic been changed at some point?

Number of required votes is "determined by the number of players and City-States still in game". Quote from wiki. Not sure if it changed but I began playing after BNW.

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Diplomatic_victory_(Civ5)

The reason for this is precisely to prevent warmongers from ruining a vote by killing people. Otherwise it would be possible for a warmonger to rig the votes so that no one could ever win by killing a minimum number of players or CS's so you couldn't gather the minimum number of votes. Imagine a game with the mongols who wipe out most of the CS for instance. There'd never be a chance for diplomatic victory on that game short of liberating a lot of them unless the vote was dynamic to the current remaining people. It also makes sense. this is a vote among the current world civs. Counting dead ones wouldn't make sense as they have no votes to cast.

Unfortunately for the OP this does make Alexander very hard to shut down though I seem to remember that you can't win Diplo on CS alliances alone. You need the approval of at least one of civ AND all CS's. He may be using diplomats for this...not sure. Getting other civs to declare war on him may help if it prevents diplomat placement but I must confess I don't know if it does. I'd assume though since it cuts off all other deals.

I can see your point. Maybe conquering CS never had any effect for me then. Buying 2-3 CS and then declaring must have been what did the trick for me.

As for the reasoning behind the rule one could also argue two counterpoints:

1) You can sneak a diplowin by conquering your opponents CS shortly before a vote.

2) The fewer CS the less money is needed for the diplo win. Making it an even cheaper victory condition.

Not that those arguments are necessarily better than yours. Perhaps diplo is just a weakly designed victory condition in general.

yeah I wasn't thinking about the winning side. I personally dislike the diplo win anyway. Kinda underwhelming. I usually disable it so all the AI and I can focus on other win conditions.

danaphanous said:

Number of required votes is "determined by the number of players and City-States still in game". Quote from wiki. Not sure if it changed but I began playing after BNW.

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I believe the required vote decreases by 1 whenever someone conquer/annex/puppet CS. Also, if you remove AI's vote by either buying/couping/capturing CS, his vote will decrease by 2. So it is possible to prevent a diplo win this way. If Alex has 300 influence on immortal, I'm pretty sure you've been ignoring CS for far too long.

phillipwyllie said:

@OP: Alex can be dealt without war, you just have to pursue a diplo victory. Keep him at war and sell him your stuff. Although harder to achieve is get a DOF so you buy all his gold.

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Like I said, he had every single CIV in the game with between 200-400 points.

Dof was impossible since he hated my guts since the beginning. You know...he's Alex. He hates you because you exist.

He spawned right on the other side of the world, he was a millitary beast and took out multiple opponents by the end of the renaissance era. He basically decimated everyone on his continent. Scouting would not have done me anything since I still didn't have the numbers to take him on or to take his cities. I couldn't even secure a sizeable tech advantage despite my best attempt, and I tend to get way ahead in science at this difficulty by the end of the Industrial era.

The earliest save I could provide for those who wanna wreck him would be turn 164 in the Medieval era. My army is camping on the Bizantine borders, ready to take her out, since his last city was in the way of my 4th city. I had the Oracle and the Hanging Gardens in Paris, only Paris was on coast, my top city was a failed attempt at a Petra city (but it still grew very nicely). I had fully maxed out Tradition, and 3 points in Aesthetics. My intent was a cultural victory and further into the game I managed to get all wonders except the Louvre because Alex got Exploration.

How do I post the game?

Sclb said:

I believe the required vote decreases by 1 whenever someone conquer/annex/puppet CS. Also, if you remove AI's vote by either buying/couping/capturing CS, his vote will decrease by 2. So it is possible to prevent a diplo win this way. If Alex has 300 influence on immortal, I'm pretty sure you've been ignoring CS for far too long.

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He went for autocracy and my guess is that he picked gunboat diplomacy. How the hell do I beat that?

Things you could have done:

1. Conquer city states so he has fewer votes. Treat his allies like they are in his empire.
2. Get other civs to DoW him so they conquer their neighbor city states
3. Liberate city states conquered by other civs which immediately jumps you to 150 Influence
4. Take Gunboat Diplomacy or Treaty Organization
5. Take his capital so he loses forbidden palace
6. If you were doing cultural victory, you should have been able to coup with spies (success chance goes up if you are influencing the Allied Civ). Get National Intelligence Agency.

Vajrajina said:

He spawned right on the other side of the world, he was a millitary beast and took out multiple opponents by the end of the renaissance era. He basically decimated everyone on his continent.

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If you had liberated these other Civs, they would have voted for you for world leader and not Alex.

Vajrajina said:

He went for autocracy and my guess is that he picked gunboat diplomacy. How the hell do I beat that?

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Destroy his army so he can't intimidate CSes anymore

durron597 said:

Things you could have done:

1. Conquer city states so he has fewer votes. Treat his allies like they are in his empire.
2. Get other civs to DoW him so they conquer their neighbor city states
3. Liberate city states conquered by other civs which immediately jumps you to 150 Influence
4. Take Gunboat Diplomacy or Treaty Organization
5. Take his capital so he loses forbidden palace
6. If you were doing cultural victory, you should have been able to coup with spies (success chance goes up if you are influencing the Allied Civ). Get National Intelligence Agency.

If you had liberated these other Civs, they would have voted for you for world leader and not Alex.



Destroy his army so he can't intimidate CSes anymore

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I definitely could have wrekt some CSes but that would only have delayed the issue.

There was literally nobody else relevant in the game by that point but him and me. He wiped the Incas out completely, he took the capital of Sweden, Brazil somehow survived but...it's Brazil, you know.

On my continent, the Iroquois were living in a small reservoir, Theodora had 1 city left, and Mongolia was 2 eras behind us because of all his warmongering (guess who took out the Iroquois cities? )

It was a very specific situation and I'm more than happy to send you the turn 164 save if you think you can do better. Difficulty is 6-Emperor.

Trust me, I was in no position to wage any meaningful warfare on him.

I was not influencing him either because his culture was the 3rd highest after me and Brazil. He was getting Dissidents because of my influence but that's nothing big.