Diplomatic Victory too easy.

kaspergm · Jul 23, 2013

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.

I disagree. If I've seen the last of a CS coup ever, it will be one of the best things to happen to the game!

I do think, however, that AI interaction with City States need to change. I definitely feel that AI should pay more attention to player closing in on diplomatic victory, and if necessary throw some money into either buying out the city state or alternatively, conquer it to absorb votes.

I also wouldn't mind some more interaction between espionage and city states, but please give us something that's not so much of a pain in the *** as coups are. Suggestions could be:
- Use diplomats with city states to increase their opinion of you (Hostile -> Neutral -> Friendly).
- Use spies to decrease their opinion of others (Friendly -> Neutral -> Hostile).
- Use diplomatics to make propaganda, increasing the value of gifts you give to city state or even to give you a relationship boost.
- Use spies to make propaganda, decreasing the relationship between the city state and another civilization.
- Possibly a more refined option for election rather than the current deadpan 15-turn cycle.
These things should be activated ability with diplomatic consequences if failing!

As for the original topic, I'm not sure I agree DV is exactly "easy", but it's certainly boring. Buy all city-states, enter atomic era or whenever the vote starts, win. The vote starts way too early, btw. Can anyone ever win a Science victory when space ship parts lie in information era and voting for World Leader starts already in atomic? The sad irony is that often you will win a DV even though all major civs hate you. How diplomatic is that? :rolleyes:

DuseCutter · Jul 23, 2013

Or that you CAN'T win it when every Civ in the game loves you but only votes for themselves. The fact that the only way you can win a DV is by buying off city states is the biggest problem I see. Why does every Civ always vote for themselves? Does this fall under "they are all trying to win" parameter?

I can see a Civ with 11 delegates only voting for you with 3 delegates. It may not be enough to get victory, but if each one does then you should get the win. It's a reward for juggling all those relationships. But, of course, the way it's designed you can't vote for more than one Civ so they vote for themselves and don't split. It's a poorly designed victory condition that could be greatly improved with minor tweaking.

Dai · Jul 23, 2013

I haven't really thought through the implications of this, so bear with me, but what if city-states developed ideologies at some point, and - more importantly - split themselves reasonably evenly between them? Civs that share an ideology with a city-state benefit from reduced decay, improved recovery, and larger influence bonuses from gold and quests. Civs that don't share an ideology with a city-state suffer from greatly increased decay, penalized recovery, and smaller bonuses from gold and quests. This should "spread the wealth" a bit in terms of who's in good with the city states, and make it harder for any one civ to be BFFs forever with every single one of them. It might be possible to pressure a city-state into flipping its ideology to yours if you're able to exert lots of influence on it over an extended period of time in spite of the penalties. That way there'd at least be a sub-game of trying to flip city states to your ideology, instead of just dropping a mountain of gold on all of them at the last minute.

MadHaxxor · Jul 23, 2013

I agree, the ai just doesn't understand how to win. I think it would be more interesting if it was more like it was in gnk. Each civ gets 1 delegate, you can't vote for yourself. All allied city states will vote for their ally, city states get 1/2 a delegate.

Buccaneer · Jul 24, 2013

On immortal, it wasn't easy, at least for me. Just finished a 40 hour game in which nearly everything happened.

I had a good hold on most of the city-states but I had to sit back and watch most of them get conquered. I pushed through my ideology without much effort fairly early but still didn't have the votes and easily failed the first time. I knew there would be one maybe two more votes left before I lose to space. I barely managed to get the last city-state to give me all 8 (8 had been captured).

I proposed my world religion despite it being the 2nd smallest and had to give up a lot to secure the votes. That was actually quite hard but fun. But I would still fall short so I had to also ramp up science with labs and specialists so I could get Globalization before the vote. There were no chance to get other civs to vote for me but I managed to get the vote on my own to win, barely, in my first attempt.

All of this on top of investing a lot into culture and tourism to hold off Ethiopia, and staying alive during all of the many late game wars.

And having a tiny 4 city civ that was dead last nearly all game in demographics except for techs.

Sheershaw · Jul 24, 2013

DuseCutter said:
Or that you CAN'T win it when every Civ in the game loves you but only votes for themselves. The fact that the only way you can win a DV is by buying off city states is the biggest problem I see. Why does every Civ always vote for themselves? Does this fall under "they are all trying to win" parameter?

I can see a Civ with 11 delegates only voting for you with 3 delegates. It may not be enough to get victory, but if each one does then you should get the win. It's a reward for juggling all those relationships. But, of course, the way it's designed you can't vote for more than one Civ so they vote for themselves and don't split. It's a poorly designed victory condition that could be greatly improved with minor tweaking.

This is something you see when voting for the next host of the congress as well. All AI's will vote for themselves, even if they have no chance of winning.

I'd much prefer to see the AI calculate their chances of winning the host vote. If they are a little off, it might be time to buy a vote and ally a city state. If they are really off, I would like to see them vote for the person most likely to put forward proposals that they enjoy.

kwidem · Jul 24, 2013

Gamgee · Jul 24, 2013

I agree it's so easy and more so as Venice I am just torturing my friend voting him banned from everything. Soon to be life.

rferrao · Jul 24, 2013

adwcta said:
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.

Perfectly put! I had a similar experience except I was playing Emperor, in a archipelago scenario. My demographics sucked and all I had to do was basically stay alive. I got to pass world ideology with the help of my friends (Iroquoi) but that was really the only fullfilling part of the game. From that point, I bought/couped all the city states needed easilly. My opponents where sitting on huge amounts of cash, for instance Greece had like 30 thousands of it. And that was Greece!! Alexander didn't even bother staying in the way... I believe they should get this patched/modified soon because it is really frustrating!

95soram · Jul 24, 2013

I agree, right now many of ai civs don't actively prevent you from buying up all the city state votes. I have won several games where a couple of the ai civ's had enough money to buy some city states out from under me but didn't. I am tempted to turn off the diplomatic victotry condition, but I don't want to hurt the civs that are designed to go for that type of victory.

teqofc · Jul 24, 2013

Wuddel said:
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.

essentially this.

It's easy on Immortal if you play Venice. I won a diplomatic victory on turn 251 (quick game pace) with 30 votes, 2 more than needed. I did that without religion and without a forbidden palace and only 2 World Wonders. I had a high unit maintenance cost for quite a while to fend off Napolean in the early game but once he was sent scurrying away and my trade routes stabalized I had all the money to burn on keeping CS allied. I also sent every spy I could to a CS not near me to keep them under my control with election rigging. I had +464gpt at the end and it would have been more if I had scaled down my military but I kept a good size force around for "just in case"

I kept open borders with India, Egypt and Siam. We were all good buddies and all had Order Ideology I had very prosperous trade routes with them. The only thorn in my side was the Shoesone. They were the hosts in the early game and had 8k gold but their warmongering with Indonesia and France and being the only Autocratic ideology got them into trouble with public opinion and eventually denounced by all my buddies. After pumping more and more money into CS I finally overcame him with enough votes to be host and enacted an embargo on him and it was all cruising after that becoming allies with 10 CS and Order being the official ideology. I didn't generate much culture but enough so I had the entire patronage tree filled out.

And I still had four MoV ready to pop for extra money at the end if needed

Arksa · Jul 24, 2013

I think the Lead Designer said something the AI competing for the CSS so you don't get diplo win easy, but in my first win on BNW I won diplo win with my nemesis France having 30 000 gold and did not even try to stop me...

so yeah because of that alone Diplo win is kind of silly.

Buccaneer · Jul 24, 2013

That has been my biggest complaint about civ5 - the AI opponents not being aggressive enough to win. In vanilla, I've opponents sit on ten of thousands of gold and now the same thing in BNW. As I mentioned in my game, I won when finally got all 8 city-states so why didnt some of the opponents try and stop me? They did ok in not wanting to vote for me - why would any player let an opponent win?!? But apparently there's a majority that want passive AI and that's what we got. On immortal, I should not be so incredibly weak demographically and win.

But I do have to add that I've been playing civ for 17 years and this was the most fun I had in a standard game. The new mechanics and features were awesome.

GreekIrish · Jul 24, 2013

I think it's because of how easy it is to get money now. In most games I will get up to at least 100 GPT during the Renaissance era. As long as you just save save save save save, you'll end up with enough gold to keep buying city state influence over and over again. In all of my diplomatic victories, I usually win them way before civs start building the Apollo Program. I think to balance it, they should stop giving you TWO diplomats for things like the Forbidden Palace, World Religion and World Ideology.

Inhalaattori · Jul 24, 2013

Well I played Indonesia on Emperor and won Diplo victory extremely easy. Netherlands had 35000 gold, but he just decided not to use his money on anything. I got enough money from trade routes and golden ages to pay all city states and AI Civs didnt seem to care. I know I played only on Emperor, but the thing is that all other victories are much harder to achieve on Emperor. Diplo victory is piece of cake even when you dont go patronage or commerce. In my Indonesia game I went for domination and culture, but when the diplo victory was there - I just took it.

Paradigne · Jul 24, 2013

I've dumped 3k into one city state and STILL did not get ally. I guess it depends on who your opponents are.

Txurce · Jul 24, 2013

Buccaneer said:
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.

So far, winning in BNW takes longer than it did on G&K. This may change, but not by a lot, or we'd have seen the signs already.

Buccaneer said:
That has been my biggest complaint about civ5 - the AI opponents not being aggressive enough to win. In vanilla, I've opponents sit on ten of thousands of gold and now the same thing in BNW.

I mentioned this elsewhere - the AI isn't nearly focused enough on any VC except for domination (the only one that's impossible). Half the problem would be solved if the devs just dialed up focus, at least on the higher levels. I have no idea what holds them back - they are not going to alienate the mainstream audience by making Immortal and Deity much harder (and without gimmicks).

But this would then make the other problem - too much late-game gold - a gamebreaker. The AI would win every DV, and it would be a race to stop them from doing this. That's an improvement, but a better solution would be to dial down late-game gold - and to program the AI to spend what they have above a threshold number, as Thal's mod does.

MadHaxxor said:
I agree, the ai just doesn't understand how to win. I think it would be more interesting if it was more like it was in gnk. Each civ gets 1 delegate, you can't vote for yourself. All allied city states will vote for their ally, city states get 1/2 a delegate.

The G&K approach to a DV is better than the BNW one, but it's mainly because of the amount of gold available to the human player. (We haven't even mentioned borrowing from those rich allies.) I think a more focused AI, with less gold available in general, would solve all but one of the VC issues that BNW has.

The only one it doesn't solve is that a CV is harder to achieve than all the other VC, because it's much easier to defend against. The AI's overall preference for it makes winning the game even easier for the human player. Even if a DV were more competitive - which would be very easy to accomplish - a SV is always going to be easier. I wouldn't make a CV easier, since I think it's one of the all-time Civ series accomplishments. But I would make the SV tougher for everyone, if only by adding more techs. (There are probably other ways to do this, but that's the obvious one.)

Doing some version of all of this could result in a more balanced and more competitive game.

7Horse · Jul 24, 2013

Has anybody gone for a cultural victory? I found that, because you really need to play the WC game to get tourism boosting stuff (International Games, etc.), you end up in position that you will have enough delegates to win the victory whether you want it or not.
BTW, I was playing Brazil

DeutschDachs · Jul 24, 2013

About to win a dv as mmorocco. Was competing heavily with indonesia but they seem to have given up... They're sitting on over 25k of gold! Not going to use it to try to stop me, weird

Simplicity2 · Jul 24, 2013

From what I've seen so far, I also kind of agree. The major problem in my opinion is that the most powerful Patronage ability (+20 resting influence) is way at the beginning of the Patronage tree. Combine that with Pledges to Protect and/or that religious ability and you have City States easily locked up almost without spending any gold at all.

Pledges to Protect are also too powerful.

Finally, I have always found the coup mechanic completely annoying. Why can't I send a diplomat to a city state to increase influence there over time? Isn't that exactly the sort of thing a diplomat should be able to do?

Diplomatic Victory too easy.

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