A Diplomatic Victory isn't very diplomatic when you vote yourself the winner, is it?

One of my first BTS games, and I lost to Gilgamesh because he was Hindu and I was blocked off from attacking him because of Sitting Bull.

I didn't really know anything about the AP, and I didn't know you could win with it (I barely glance at the Victory Conditions screen until someone gets into the Space Race). For all I knew it was a bloddy annoying Wonder that stopped me trading with everyone.

A little backstory- I'm not Hindu because two other Civs really didn't want me to be. I think it was... Cyrus and some person with green cultural borders. I defeated them and just never really changed back to Hinduism, and was warring with Sitting Bull, one or two cities to go when BAM- Gilgamesh wins. He votes for himself and wins. A diplomatic victory.

I probably sound bitter, and I am a little, but, honestly, doesn't anyone see this as a silly thing and a problem?

I can't think of any solution, and I'll probably edit out the AP because, honestly, next time I'm playing on continents I don't want to get any further down the drain when the other guys already are buddies with the same religion, but are voting on eveything.

e: It's not that I'm a sore loser; I'd be fine if Gilly here had been building up units all game and just destroyed me, it's just I wouldn't want to lose because Isabella gets Meditation, the AP and never spreads her religion (which I admit isn't likely, but replace with any appropriate leader)
Though I might not be included in the AP at that point, I think they'll still be able to pose resolutions, correct?

You're far from alone in seeing this as exploitable to the point where it's a bug. It simply makes no sense to be able to "win" by declaring yourself head of a religion which is virtually irrelevant outside your land. There needs to be an additional factor (e.g the religion should be present in at least half the cities of every civ, not just present in each one), to make this "win" actually worth anything.

It's even worse than the old UN used to be in Civ 3.

Did you only have 3 civs including yourself on the map?

Bast said:

Did you only have 3 civs including yourself on the map?

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At that time, yes. It started out with 6 inc. myself. And Sitting Bull was Christian.

Just prepare better next time:
-build the AP yourself or
-take care that you spread the AP religion in all your cities so that your vote has enough weight to prevent the AI from getting enough votes to win
-play with more civs - the situation would not have been very different in your case with the UN. If you destroy all non-Hindu civs and then the only remaining Hindu civ wins that is really a result of very bad planning on your part It's like destroying all your friends and then lose in the UN because all your enemies vote for an AI.

Quotey said:

At that time, yes. It started out with 6 inc. myself. And Sitting Bull was Christian.

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Oh, that's probably why too. You should play with at least 10 civs, it makes it a lot harder for them to win.

But I agree this needs to be fixed.

If you'd voted no (if you could vote no, that is), rather than abstaining, Gilgamesh wouldn't have won...

DrJambo said:

If you'd voted no, rather than abstaining, Gilgamesh wouldn't have won...

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Well, that's not correct. Gilgamesh needed 100 votes and had 108 own votes, so it would not have made a difference.

Besides, you can't vote No. You can only vote for one of the candidates, or abstain. And I bet in this case Gilgamesh was the only candidate because he had built the palace and was also the civ with the most Hindu population - thus filling both roles.

DrJambo said:

If you'd voted no, rather than abstaining, Gilgamesh wouldn't have won...

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There was no "No" option. I was either Gilgamesh or no one. I haven't seen the UN in a long time, so it could be the same and you don't need to hear this, but it seems every vote Is Yes, Abstain, No or NEVER. The Diplo victory is the only one I've seen that doesn't.

And to the guy who said play with more than 10 civs: I usually do, I was just breaking in BtS, going for an Espionage game, with a few Corporations (which didn't work out too well, because I didn't know you needed a great person for them )

Hmm, in that case, this is definitely not good. There should always be two candidates.

If he's the builder and holds the highest population of the religion, then the second candidate should just be the person with the next highest amount.

Still wouldn't have made any difference here, since Gilgamesh can simply vote himself in regardless of how the others vote. Thats the problem with this version of diplomatic victory; it's all too easy to ensure that you have enough votes to be able to vote yourself to victory, even if every other civ hates you. Just ensure your religion is present in all your cities, but only in one of the smallest cities of each other civ.

A "victory" which requires so little effort really isn't an achievement.

Before you start dissing this aspect of the game, realize one thing: you allowed the Hindu peoples' of the world to wipe out all the non-Hindus. What do you think was going to happen? The fact that Hinduism isn't your state religion has no bearing, as the power of religion in CivIV does not always lie in the leadership. The game is simulating history to some extent. There was a time when the Pope, for example, was more powerful than any king. And that's exactly what happened in this game. There were just enough followers in your territory to force you to bend under the rule of the awesome religious leader of the world.

=$= Big J Money =$=

PS -- I'd be willing to accept that some percentage of a nation's population should be a given religion before they count towards a Diplo victory, though.

Big J Money said:

PS -- I'd be willing to accept that some percentage of a nation's population should be a given religion before they count towards a Diplo victory, though

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I think that's the main problem. As it stands, you're actually most vulnerable if some tiny fishing village has the religion present than if it's a major religion in many of your cities. It doesn't make sense to declare victory over someone (and indeed for it to be easiest to do this) by declaring yourself leader of a religion that an utterly trivial percentage of their population follows. Present in at least half of a nation's cities seems about as low as you can go for there to be a genuine diplomatic element to this so called "diplomatic victory".

It is just another thing you have to watch out for. Rampaging around the plannet may not will you the game the book is mightier than the sword

MrCynical said:

Still wouldn't have made any difference here, since Gilgamesh can simply vote himself in regardless of how the others vote. Thats the problem with this version of diplomatic victory; it's all too easy to ensure that you have enough votes to be able to vote yourself to victory, even if every other civ hates you. Just ensure your religion is present in all your cities, but only in one of the smallest cities of each other civ.

A "victory" which requires so little effort really isn't an achievement.

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But this is actually only a problem for the AI because the player can always just spread the religion in his cities. In BtS religion doesn't give city visibility to the founder so there is really no downside to it, except some gold for the founder if he built his religion's shrine.

For the AI it's a bigger problem because currently they don't actively spread the AP's religion if their state religion is a different one.

IronCrown said:

For the AI it's a bigger problem because currently they don't actively spread the AP's religion if their state religion is a different one.

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That might not be the case. I've seen AI civs with 3+ religions in each city. All they need is a monastry of the religion in question and they can build missionaries. A human player in a position to be able to win through the AP won't wait for this however, and as soon as the religion has been spread to a single city of the remaining civ, will push for AP victory.

One of the best ways to keep from being blocked out of voting without having the religion, as has happened to you, is to take either through conquest, or culture, a single city of the religion you need then you can build the buildings and spread as normal to your home lands.

This requires some forthought though since you have to know ahead of time you will not be building the AP and that you can go to war with some other civ that might be on a different Continent requiring sea travel, and all the techs to get there.

I have done this before and it works quite well and since I am going to invade the other continents (when there are some) anyways...

@DrJambo: You're right, but I think in most games this will not be a big problem. You must be the one who builds the AP in the first place, which you will not always be able to if you play a level that matches your skill. If you do build it, it is not so easy to spread it to everyone so fast that they don't have time to further spread it in their empire before every civ has it. Furthermore, some civs may run theocracy and be hostile to you so you can't convert their cities without waging war.
And if a civ is about to win through the AP although its religion has little world-wide influence, that civ is quite likely rather weak and someone can attack them and take the AP for themselves or raze it.

So I agree that the new AP victory can be too easy, but it really depends on the game settings.

this is just a way to win a relgious victory... i see it as a way to win if you get stuck on a crappy "snow island." The game I'm in right now I am stuck on an island isolated from all other 18 civs. I founded confusionism and was the first to astronomy and used a GE to build the Apolistic Palace to block the Hindu AI from getting it, and have a decent population. I'm considering spreading confuscionism to the smallest city each AI has, so I can elect myself diplomatic winner... but this is a last resort victory measure at this point (i'm too lazy to do it). It'll be interesting to see if new AI tries to stop me from doing this by spreading confucionism himself, which is only in like 3-4 other cities in the world because of my isolated start. The AI will either have to concede victory to me, or pay the shrine. .

One way of improving this (and other votes as well) is to introduce a mechanism of double majority - essentially any resolution in order to succeed must be voted for by both (i) majority of civilizations, and (ii) majority of populace. For diplomatic victory the same would apply only the required majority would be higher (like right now, i.e. 2/3).

This way you prevent diplomatic victory from being essentially a "poor man's domination", since you would need to get at least some of the civs to like you enough to vote for you.