Diplomatic Victory too easy.

Hey

I have now played to two games with the new expansion and both of the games I did win on the first voting session for world leader (playing on emperor). I think it's to easy to get all the city states as allies when you are producing so incredibly much gold from the trade routes. Meanwhile it feels like the Ai doesn't care at all to gather delegates for the congress and they are not very active in competing for the favor of the city states which makes it rally easy to keep them as your allies.

What do you think about the new condition, what changes can be done or is it good as it is?

Cheers

Play immortal?

Yeah I was playing Portugal, going for a Science victory, but when the election for world leader happened, I won almost by accident!

100 percent agreed. I heavily rely on City States and the patronage tree to give a longstanding and hearty boost to my military, science and food (the occasional GP doesn't hurt either lol) and I can consistently win a diplo if i'm going to win at all.

Was shooting for a cultural vic the first BNW game I played, and accidentally won a diplo lol

Sirre said:

Hey

Meanwhile it feels like the Ai doesn't care at all to gather delegates for the congress and they are not very active in competing for the favor of the city states which makes it rally easy to keep them as your allies.

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I don't understand, I've played 3 full games now, two on Emperor and one on King, and in two of them there was one Civ constantly buying city states. I ping ponged a city state 8 turns in a row with Ghandi and throughout the game.

I agree it's kind of easy to buy out the city states before the vote, but that's the point - you are going a gold based build using your trade routes on gpt rather than city growth and not spending gold on buildings or units. It's kind of the point, right?

Playing through a game as Venice right now, I'm inclined to agree---I've Allied every CS on the map, have complete control of the World Congress, and have Trade Route'd my way to enough money for a strong army and tech lead. Meanwhile, not a single CS has been targeted by another Civ (Austria hasn't even tried to marry one in). It's like they're totally oblivious to my embarrassingly-obvious impending victory.

I thought BNW was supposed to make the endgame more interesting/contentious? All I'm seeing is a whole lot more money making it a whole lot easier to just dominate CS's into an easy Diplomacy Victory.

Of course, I'm inclined to think this is an issue with Venice---it probably needs a few balancing tweaks; at the very least, the AI needs a few lessons on how to play against it. I thought the Merchant of Venice was going to be strong, but that's the least of the weapons in my arsenal: Venice's complete and utter domination of the money game is just ridiculous. It feels like cheating, like I entered a secret code for God Mode. Forget about World Congress votes: I can buy the best army on the planet in a few turns, and I'm sitting pretty with 16 Allied CS's sending a ton of perks, double the resources, and Great People my way (thank you, Patronage). I haven't been able to see how I could possibly lose this game since I built my first Harbor.

The only reason I'm hedging a bit on my statements is because I've played one game, and started on an island near a bunch of City States: a rather optimal start for Venice, to say the least. Perhaps on a larger map, where trade routes are harder to establish, Venice would feel more balanced. But that's an issue unto itself, isn't it?

Yes, diplo victory is now very stupid.

Moreso, the AI is very stupid about it. In the same way every AI doesn't DoW you 20 turns before you win a cultural/science victory, they don't screw with you when you try to win Diplomatically. They are not aware that the "World Leader" vote will end the game.

Only certain civs even care that you're ahead or about to win. This is just a part of the game, as it would be equally weird if every single civ just DoWed whoever's 20 turns away from winning any peaceful victory condition after being friends all game.

I've had a similar experience in my most recent game, but only because there were only three civs that survived past the early game, one happened to be focused on culture and one on domination (that one captured two of the CSes early on). In larger maps, AIs always compete for city-states in my experience.

It is a weakness that civs tend to be oblivious to victory conditions other than their own for the most part, but on any large map expect to have to fight for city-states.

I agree, so I just disable it in my games.

PhilBowles said:

I've had a similar experience in my most recent game, but only because there were only three civs that survived past the early game, one happened to be focused on culture and one on domination (that one captured two of the CSes early on). In larger maps, AIs always compete for city-states in my experience.

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I still cite Venice as an issue: No one, at least no AI, can compete with Venice's ability to rake in the cash. Venice buys all the things. Competition for City States? I might as well be playing against ants. Impoverished, over-taxed ants

Diplomatic Victory seems very easy to me too, although the AI can really hold on to those CS allies to the point where I consider the CS system a bit broken.

The key to Diplo Vic, it seems to me, is getting a good start at the Congress. The WC is very easy to game with Forbidden Palace and first host position.

IAmOzymandias said:

Was shooting for a cultural vic the first BNW game I played, and accidentally won a diplo lol

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heh, I just pulled the opposite. My first game as Morocco, I figured diplo would be an obvious choice. I had all the city states allied from medieval age forward...but I won by culture 5 turns before the vote.

If you want to slow down diplo wins, remember that the UN is triggered by the average age of all the civs. In this game I signed ZERO research agreements...that is probably why the overall tech pace was slow enough such that I had time to win by culture.

I think the AI needs an adjustment to fight against the diplo win. I won a diplo win as Venice, but Austria had 13,000 gold sitting in the bank doing nothing when I won. Seems like she should have tried to steal a couple CS allies from me...

That being said, I have ALWAYS felt this way in Civ V. I found it very rare in G&K games that if I was going to win by another method that I didn't also have enough money to buy city state allies and win diplo victory. Maybe the occasional science game, but still, I often had to intentionally avoid just buying diplo victory if I wanted a different one.

Cannot disaggree either. I just won the most easiet and boring victory I have achieved.

I just finished Diplo Victory exactly one turn before the Science victory would have happened. I had just bought my last spaceship part and only had to add it to the spaceship. Although I think I could have focused much more on science. In my opinion diplo victory can be easily beaten by a SV, when you do everything right with bulbing, RA's, finishing rationalism, etc... I did not focus on any of these things, except for the bulbing.

But diplo has always been to easy and still is... When it can only be beaten by a highly specialised science tactic, then its OP.

VainoValkea said:

[...]CS system a bit broken.

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This is the real culprit of diplomatic victory ever since vanilla and it can't be fixed with expansions, it can only be 'improved' upon.

BNW has done everything it can to make the Diplo victory...more diplomatic...but the City States are still fickle puppets that require little to no actual diplomatic interactions, which is the ultimate flaw of the whole system.

Eunomiac said:

I still cite Venice as an issue: No one, at least no AI, can compete with Venice's ability to rake in the cash. Venice buys all the things. Competition for City States? I might as well be playing against ants. Impoverished, over-taxed ants

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I can't disagree, but then playing as Venice for the first time (Emperor) no one seems able to compete with me in any other field either. Just because of the limitation on archaeologists (since they can't be bought) Venice might struggle slightly with a culture victory, but pretty much anything else seems fair game. They can buy units at a rate that would make Askia green with envy, so domination's no trouble.

The problem there is with Venice, not with the victory condition.

I agree that the victory is too easy. I was playing Shoshone on King and I wasn't doing too well. I was dead last in military, and, if it wasn't for the fact that Azteca was a cultural giant, Rome would've easily won by culture (they had already achieved influential over every other civ in the game). All of a sudden, I find myself with a lot of delegates rather accidentally; I was third in delegates, but the host, William, was eliminated from the game. Sweden, my closest ally, took over as host, and, as the two of us shared ideology and religion, the delegates kept piling on. He would be first and I would be second in every election. I hoarded my gold and disbanded most of my units for the GPT until, 1 turn away from the next World Leader elections, I took most of Sweden's allies away from her and stole the game. I didn't deserve to win, Rome did, but I won anyway. The victory feels really cheap.

landlubber said:

I agree that the victory is too easy. I was playing Shoshone on King and I wasn't doing too well. I was dead last in military, and, if it wasn't for the fact that Azteca was a cultural giant, Rome would've easily won by culture (they had already achieved influential over every other civ in the game). All of a sudden, I find myself with a lot of delegates rather accidentally; I was third in delegates, but the host, William, was eliminated from the game. Sweden, my closest ally, took over as host, and, as the two of us shared ideology and religion, the delegates kept piling on. He would be first and I would be second in every election. I hoarded my gold and disbanded most of my units for the GPT until, 1 turn away from the next World Leader elections, I took most of Sweden's allies away from her and stole the game. I didn't deserve to win, Rome did, but I won anyway. The victory feels really cheap.

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That doesn't sound a case of "too easy" when it appeared to rely on a whole bunch of particular scenarios arising - William's removal, his happening to be replaced by a civ sharing your religion and ideology (which itself may take work - I usually find I need to actively spread my religion and play to maximise tourism sufficiently to develop an influential ideology), an AI civ able to resist cultural victory which you yourself were unable to do. If you can only goldrush to victory in those circumstances (notwithstanding the need to accumulate that gold to begin with), there's hardly a problem with the victory condition.

BNW has done everything it can to make the Diplo victory...more diplomatic...but the City States are still fickle puppets that require little to no actual diplomatic interactions, which is the ultimate flaw of the whole system.

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How are you defining "diplomatic interactions" - that you don't get a pretty picture when you open up the screen to give them things in exchange for their influence? That, after all, is largely what diplomatic interactions with the civs involve (not to mention diplomatic interactions in real life. If you were to tell the average diplomat that Civ games have a diplomatic victory based on economic domination, they'd probably recognise that as a pretty good approximation of the real world).

Playing against uber Greece is not easy. Almost lost by not paying attention.