Runaway world congress members...

AW Arcaeca · May 14, 2014

In any game I've played where I have the attention span to play to about the atomic era, there's always this one civ that ends up holding 3x- 4x as many delegates as everyone else, usually including me. It's usually Pocatello (such a fun game when I ~~get~~ have to deal with him :rolleyes:

), but once it was Harun al-Rashid. Anyways, so basically what they vote is what happens.

Now in my current game I have... 18(?) delegates vs. Pocatello's hovering between 38 - 44 deletgates. I have the second most. I also have the best literacy, GNP and military. Given that, what can I do to reduce Pocatello's grip on the WC by approximately a lot? I only have four uranium, so only 4 atomic bombs or 2 nuclear missiles. :sad:

I'm assuming war will be necessary to cripple his economy to the point where he can't buy CS friendship anymore... or is there a better way? I only have 5 spies and 4 of them are stationed in his allied CSs preparing for coups.

Advice?
Save is attached. (just barely exceeded the size limit for .Civ5Save files so I had to zip it)
Also I'm not sure if this would get better results in the S&T forum, so I'll leave that up to the mods.

Silverman6083 · May 14, 2014

My advice: Build A-Bombs NOT MISSILES. Start spamming XCOMS. Find all of his allied city-states, nuke->paratroop->victory. Or do the same thing but with his cities. Sometimes ya just have to kill the pesky natives!

Koiranputki · May 14, 2014

I'm not sure "crippling his economy" will always yield logical results....I've reduced AI civs to one miserable little tundra city and they still seem to manage to be a nuisance at the WC....sometimes you just have to try to destroy them if nothing else looks like it will work...and to heck with the warmonger penalty....you may even have to sell or giveaway some of the cities you capture and maybe even some of the CS's...to the most innocuous looking of the surviving AI....

And, yeah, Pocatello can be a pain. In one of my current games...fairly early stages ... he is making himself a nuisance with his city spamming and "super-boundaries". But he made the mistake of DOWing me....and he will pay the price.....I have him now on the ropes... I've almost totally pillaged a couple of his cities with about six Salt between them... I've captured four or five of his Workers and eliminated most of them within my boundaries for the Gold... [I don't know how they can spam so many Workers....and still build wonders and have a huge army [Well, his army is not so huge now, but he did have to build it at one point].

I'm a couple of turns away from Crossbows and I have lots of Composite Bows ...and an adequate number of Pikemen and lots of Gold....so I'll have to decide if I want to totally eliminate him or reduce him to one city.....but one thing is for sure...he won't get "Peace"....

AW Arcaeca · May 14, 2014

The trouble is I couldn't actually put Pocatello down in the early game, since he's halfway across the world, and I didn't meet him until the league of nations was formed. He also has twice the production output that I do, just completed the Manhattan Project and has 8 or so Uranium. I have one atomic bomb... (everyone's afraid of me) but I'm not building the other 3 currently since I made the mistake of proposing the ISS project to the WC. :cringe:

Still don't have XCOMs, but in 5 or 6 turns I'll get the tech. How much does the mech infantry > XCOM upgrade cost?

joncnunn · May 14, 2014

AgressiveWimp said:
Given that, what can I do to reduce Pocatello's grip on the WC by approximately a lot?

Send your spies that have been promoted to secret agent and coup his city states.

AW Arcaeca · May 14, 2014

joncnunn said:
Send your spies that have been promoted to secret agent and coup his city states.

...That would be only one of my spies who's a secret agent. Already in a CS, but their chance of success is only 76% or so, and given my bad luck...

Ryika · May 14, 2014

If it happens every game, then you should probably put more efford into quests, there are 3 City States right now that want you to clear 2 barb camps, that's free rep - It'd take a while until you reach them, but considering that the camp still exists while you're in the information era, it's likely that the camp has been there for a while - and it's likely that it will still be there once you reach them.

You could also just pimp your gpt, so you can buy all of them. You've got almost twice as much army power as the second-best civ has, for defensive purposes that's just WAY too much. Just by deleting half of your military, your gpt went up to +350, and your army value is still WAY over the top. (/edit: using your great artists to enter golden ages even led to +400gpt, imagine how much gold you could have spent on city states)

On huge maps I'd also invest a few points in patronage. The 20 additional influence for every single city state on the map become so much more useful, when there's 26(?) of them, getting more influence per gold can be very helpful, too.

But then again, most of the time you can't have everything you want (if you play on a difficulty that's at least somewhat challanging for you), you've invested in science, and aesthetic (Don't really know why), so of course that cuts into your abilities to keep all the city states allied. You're on your way to win the science victory though and all you have to do is to keep Poccatello from getting enough votes to win the diplo-victory, which should be easy to do. He's even chosen the same ideology as you have, so he's probably not going to use the congress to get you into trouble.

NKVD · May 14, 2014

I took the idea of someone here on the board. I just put a low amount of CS. I play on Huge and i put the same # of CS as there are civs..

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

reddishrecue · May 14, 2014

Try not to rely on the world Congress. Ais can embargo wll they want, but won't harm w civilization sometimes.

peterw1987 · May 14, 2014

Pocatello is nothing. You never play with Alex AI yet.
When not in his worst day, Alex can get almost 1/2 of the total vote. He can get almost 20ish vote when others only get 3 or 4 votes. He consistently allied all CS, putting spy on CS, and at the same time conquering other civ. Badass Alex.

Doktor Vic Tim · May 15, 2014

peterw1987 said:
Pocatello is nothing. You never play with Alex AI yet.
When not in his worst day, Alex can get almost 1/2 of the total vote. He can get almost 20ish vote when others only get 3 or 4 votes. He consistently allied all CS, putting spy on CS, and at the same time conquering other civ. Badass Alex.

Thanks for bringing back horrible memories.

Still, he is quite an adversary in terms of WC and CSes. And unfortunately for me he spawned far away from me, but had Gandhi as a neighbour and promptly ATE him. The other AI, in proper AI fashion, decided to hate me for no reason, even GANDHI. Just beause I want Freedom instead of their stupid Autocracy.

Then I murdered them all.

What is it with the AI's steaming unhealthy relationship with Order and Autocracy and utter mindless HATRED for Freedom?

phillipwyllie · May 15, 2014

I usually don't bother trying to control the WC until I've reached the Industrial era, or modern era(when you get to vote for the host). gold and coups(with level 3 spies) after a successful election rigging are my tactic. This requires me to only have the same number of units as cities so I don't have to pay maintenance, to focus on economy from the Renaissance era onwards, and have my spies leveled up. When I have around 10k gold I can usually thwart a WC runaway.

To answer the OP:even if the Shoshone only have 1 city left they will still be a WC runaway as you have left it too late, they need to be eliminated(but by not you). Gain allies and capture his choice cities and let the AI take care of the rest.

Koiranputki · May 15, 2014

phillipwyllie said:
I usually don't bother trying to control the WC until I've reached the Industrial era, or modern era(when you get to vote for the host). gold and coups(with level 3 spies) after a successful election rigging are my tactic. This requires me to only have the same number of units as cities so I don't have to pay maintenance, to focus on economy from the Renaissance era onwards, and have my spies leveled up. When I have around 10k gold I can usually thwart a WC runaway.

To answer the OP:even if the Shoshone only have 1 city left they will still be a WC runaway as you have left it too late, they need to be eliminated(but by not you). Gain allies and capture his choice cities and let the AI take care of the rest.

Yes ...good advice...though sometimes you can wait in vain for the AI to finish off some AI one-city annoyance. Sometimes you just have to soak up the warmonger penalty....which isn't always a big problem particularly if it looks like you're going to have to "warmonger" several of the AI anyway in order to win the game....

And as to the WC, I try to get the Forbidden Palace....two WC votes plus some Happiness....but it seems it's a easy one to mistime or otherwise screw up getting...

In my current game as Spain, I eventually found the FoY in a choice location for a productive city.....anyway to make a long story short before I could do anything about it a small city showed up right next to it. I decided to buy the Pop. 1 city which Gustave had bulilt... Amazingly he sold it relatively cheaply, though it was a bit of a 30-turn pain having to give up some Luxuries, but worth it....Venice, which is very close, grabbed the Forbidden Palace. So I'll build my FoY city up with a powerful military..double healing.... And, of course, become an unrepentant warmonger.... Venice will be puppetted and so will nearby Stockholm.....and all at a good point in the game to be able to dominant the WC.....

Some of these games can unfold in surprising and fun ways...it is probably best to be openminded about what strategy to use as the the game develops....

With the AI often so inept militarily, you can often deal surprisingly well with strong opponents once you get to Crossbows..... And the warmonger penalty means you will have no illusions about losing any "Friends" or getting RAs and Trade deals.... You're on your own....

reddishrecue · May 15, 2014

You can keep wc city states if you pay them off and meet their needs. The forbidden palace also gives you extra delegates.

Sturmgewher88mm · May 15, 2014

Doktor Vic Tim said:
What is it with the AI's steaming unhealthy relationship with Order and Autocracy and utter mindless HATRED for Freedom?

It's called WW2 and the Cold War

peterw1987 · May 15, 2014

Doktor Vic Tim said:
What is it with the AI's steaming unhealthy relationship with Order and Autocracy and utter mindless HATRED for Freedom?

I also quite curious with this. I dunno why AI rarely choose Freedom. I suppose that it is because Freedom only has 1 tenet regarding military and only good for tall empire due to half food and unhappiness specialist.

Autocracy is acceptable for the insane military power and happiness, but I dunno what is good from Order.
IMO Order is far better as opening Social Polity trees (maybe better than tradition/liberty?) rather than late ideologies.

But some AI quite prefer Freedom in my games, like Korea/India/Brazil

Doktor Vic Tim · May 16, 2014

Order is actually a pretty good ideology. The downside to it is that the ideology wonder, the Kremilin, s pretty crap compared to Statue of Liberty and Prora

danaphanous · May 16, 2014

I've never been in this position, so I'm not sure what I'd do. However, I suggest one of the following:

Your pick:

The Peaceful, Competition Route: Play with reduced CS, sounds like you're playing huge with all the recommended amounts, you are likely to get an AI who has CS advantages and will runaway in WC. Also, 24 is insane to keep up with and the other AI suck at competing with CS-whoring Civs. Alternatively you can play the full amount and just grab patronage and duke it out (basically give yourself the advantage). Though this almost seems OP to me, having the benefits of 10+ CS is ridiculously game-breaking, I decided this was too easy after a huge Venice game where I allied the whole world and just started reducing numbers.
The Sneaky Route: Bribe several other civs to attack pocatello to distract him and start saving the gold, doing quests, and strategically using all your spies to reduce his influence. When the dust clears you'll then be dominant.
The Direct Route (Alexander's Only Acceptable Punishment): Destroy them with fire. Usually the other AI hate these guys too and will be happy to mount a global crusade. You may have to enter the fray to ensure they finish the job--perhaps crippling him and then letting the opportunists clear the rest of his weakened empire. If they fail to finish him and he is still a problem, bribing them after the 10 turns is up is usually easy when they are left weak. The other AI will pick up the pieces and there will be roughly equal representation afterward. It's fun to dance on their grave. If you feel your army is not up to snuff, then you can do #2 and then follow with #3 after he's burned a lot of his military on neighbors.

I'm surprised Pocatello is your problem. He probably just went patronage then otherwise you should be on equal footing. Usually the troublemakers are:

1. Alexander
2. Siam
3. Sweden
4. Venice
5. Austria

Greece, of course is just terrible, bc his influence degrades 50% less. So he can own twice as many CS with the same effort. He also just has a high flavor for them and is uncannily successful with coups. I have never seen him fail in his 20-something attempts across-game. I actually thought at one point this was his ability, but no, he's just super lucky I guess. Venice and Austria have equal footing in influence sources, but have the annoying habit of liking CS's (so spending the money or going patronage) and also taking over CS's with their ability. I consider Venice a worse threat bc they seem to ignore their own allies and decide to merchant of Venice your own strong allies which you've sunk lots of influence into. Austria I think needs to invest a bit before they can use their ability but it is more flexible. I hate seeing Venice simply "convert" my 250 influence ally to his nation. These two won't get extra votes for the actions though so more annoying than anything else. Siam also is equal footing but due to his UA he will try to hog all the CS he can get bc he benefits 50% more. Sweden can flip CS's with his GP-gifting but I've actually seen him go both ways and sometimes not seem to care.

AW Arcaeca · May 16, 2014

Ryika said:
If it happens every game, then you should probably put more efford into quests, there are 3 City States right now that want you to clear 2 barb camps, that's free rep - It'd take a while until you reach them, but considering that the camp still exists while you're in the information era, it's likely that the camp has been there for a while - and it's likely that it will still be there once you reach them.

You could also just pimp your gpt, so you can buy all of them. You've got almost twice as much army power as the second-best civ has, for defensive purposes that's just WAY too much. Just by deleting half of your military, your gpt went up to +350, and your army value is still WAY over the top. (/edit: using your great artists to enter golden ages even led to +400gpt, imagine how much gold you could have spent on city states)

On huge maps I'd also invest a few points in patronage. The 20 additional influence for every single city state on the map become so much more useful, when there's 26(?) of them, getting more influence per gold can be very helpful, too.

But then again, most of the time you can't have everything you want (if you play on a difficulty that's at least somewhat challanging for you), you've invested in science, and aesthetic (Don't really know why), so of course that cuts into your abilities to keep all the city states allied. You're on your way to win the science victory though and all you have to do is to keep Poccatello from getting enough votes to win the diplo-victory, which should be easy to do. He's even chosen the same ideology as you have, so he's probably not going to use the congress to get you into trouble.

Thanks for the advice, I totally forgot about using GAs to pop golden ages. :wallbash:

I disbanded all my artillery and made some golden ages, ended up buying all 4 nukes. Dropped them all on key Shoshone cities. :nuke:

It didn't do the job however - I couldn't mobilize my invading mech infantries fast enough so the cities largely recovered from the nuclear attacks. I got a whole 3 coastal cities. Yippee. Probably could've disbanded more mech infantries back at the home front. Luckily I'm just one piece away from an SV so as long as Pocatello doesn't do anything stupid in the WC...

NKVD said:
I took the idea of someone here on the board. I just put a low amount of CS. I play on Huge and i put the same # of CS as there are civs..

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

Yes, I've learned my lesson now. Typically I set the game to maximum CSs under the naïve assumption "Now everyone will get lots of votes in the WC!"
...Never works out like that... :lol:

reddishrecue said:
Try not to rely on the world Congress. Ais can embargo wll they want, but won't harm w civilization sometimes.

The problem is mostly if Pocatello decides to enact a world religion (not that it would pass; his religion has spread to literally 0 cities) or build the ISS or something else stupid like that - or just shoot down my proposals.

reddishrecue said:
You can keep wc city states if you pay them off and meet their needs. The forbidden palace also gives you extra delegates.

I might have the best GNP but nowhere near the kind of gold output I'd need to do that. Also, I couldn't build the FP since I almost never go Patronage. (I should probably change that...)

danaphanous said:
I've never been in this position, so I'm not sure what I'd do. However, I suggest one of the following:

Your pick:

The Peaceful, Competition Route: Play with reduced CS, sounds like you're playing huge with all the recommended amounts, you are likely to get an AI who has CS advantages and will runaway in WC. Also, 24 is insane to keep up with and the other AI suck at competing with CS-whoring Civs. Alternatively you can play the full amount and just grab patronage and duke it out (basically give yourself the advantage). Though this almost seems OP to me, having the benefits of 10+ CS is ridiculously game-breaking, I decided this was too easy after a huge Venice game where I allied the whole world and just started reducing numbers.

The Sneaky Route: Bribe several other civs to attack pocatello to distract him and start saving the gold, doing quests, and strategically using all your spies to reduce his influence. When the dust clears you'll then be dominant.

The Direct Route (Alexander's Only Acceptable Punishment): Destroy them with fire. Usually the other AI hate these guys too and will be happy to mount a global crusade. You may have to enter the fray to ensure they finish the job--perhaps crippling him and then letting the opportunists clear the rest of his weakened empire. If they fail to finish him and he is still a problem, bribing them after the 10 turns is up is usually easy when they are left weak. The other AI will pick up the pieces and there will be roughly equal representation afterward. It's fun to dance on their grave. If you feel your army is not up to snuff, then you can do #2 and then follow with #3 after he's burned a lot of his military on neighbors.

I'm surprised Pocatello is your problem. He probably just went patronage then otherwise you should be on equal footing. Usually the troublemakers are:

1. Alexander
2. Siam
3. Sweden
4. Venice
5. Austria

Greece, of course is just terrible, bc his influence degrades 50% less. So he can own twice as many CS with the same effort. He also just has a high flavor for them and is uncannily successful with coups. I have never seen him fail in his 20-something attempts across-game. I actually thought at one point this was his ability, but no, he's just super lucky I guess. Venice and Austria have equal footing in influence sources, but have the annoying habit of liking CS's (so spending the money or going patronage) and also taking over CS's with their ability. I consider Venice a worse threat bc they seem to ignore their own allies and decide to merchant of Venice your own strong allies which you've sunk lots of influence into. Austria I think needs to invest a bit before they can use their ability but it is more flexible. I hate seeing Venice simply "convert" my 250 influence ally to his nation. These two won't get extra votes for the actions though so more annoying than anything else. Siam also is equal footing but due to his UA he will try to hog all the CS he can get bc he benefits 50% more. Sweden can flip CS's with his GP-gifting but I've actually seen him go both ways and sometimes not seem to care.

I like option 3, it's what I tried although it didn't really work too well.
And none of those 5 civs are in my game, except Sweden, who strangely has only about half as many delegates as me.

reddishrecue · May 16, 2014

You don't always have to pay city states to get them to he your ally. Some city states will be impressed and you will know because the news tells you when a city state is impressed and for what.

Runaway world congress members...

Deus Vult

Attachments

History-Lover

Prince

Deus Vult

Senior Java Wizard

Deus Vult

Lazy Wannabe Artista

Cossack

Some dude on civfans

Prince

King

Wannabe Deity

Prince

Some dude on civfans

Kaiser

Prince

King

religious fanatic

Deus Vult

Some dude on civfans

Similar threads