AI Voting and the World Congress

[blackcatatonic]

Apologies if this has already been asked...

I've noticed on several occasions that the AI, when bribed to vote one way in the World Congress, will allocate some of its delegates to vote as instructed, but will usually have at least one delegate also voting the other way for the same proposal. I'm assuming this isn't a bug, since it's happened so many times, but can provide a screenshot if necessary.

My question: how is this possible, since the human player doesn't appear to have the option of voting both ways on the same proposal?

 

[Browd]

The AI only commits its "core" (for lack of a better term) delegates when trading its vote. It is free to vote extra delegates (e.g., from CS allies) differently.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Apologies if this has already been asked...

I've noticed on several occasions that the AI, when bribed to vote one way in the World Congress, will allocate some of its delegates to vote as instructed, but will usually have at least one delegate also voting the other way for the same proposal. I'm assuming this isn't a bug, since it's happened so many times, but can provide a screenshot if necessary.

My question: how is this possible, since the human player doesn't appear to have the option of voting both ways on the same proposal?

You also have this option... if you sell your votes ("core votes") to an AI on their proposal, you can use the rest of your votes to vote against the votes you sold.

 

[EK834]

Apologies if this has already been asked...

I've noticed on several occasions that the AI, when bribed to vote one way in the World Congress, will allocate some of its delegates to vote as instructed, but will usually have at least one delegate also voting the other way for the same proposal. I'm assuming this isn't a bug, since it's happened so many times, but can provide a screenshot if necessary.

My question: how is this possible, since the human player doesn't appear to have the option of voting both ways on the same proposal?

Beside Browd's explanation, if you see many AI having an extra delegate, it's because between the turn you bought their core delegates and the turn of the session the world has passed into a new era. You always only buy the vote of the AI's current core delegates on the turn you buy them. The new one it gets with the passage in a new era remains theirs to vote with as they like (I never had the opportunity to test if you can go back to buy the new delegate if you bought the others in the previous era, or if the option is greyed out). If you bought their 3 delegates in Modern and the session end up taking place in Atomic, all Civs you bought votes from will have a fourth delegate they are free to assign as they wish (like the ones they get from CS allies, those from the FP, or the extra(s) for being host of the congress).

When you buy many delegates it's always worth looking carefully at the risks of a change of era occuring before the next session (by looking at how many techs each civ is from switching era), and if the risk is high to make sure that if everyone likely to vote against you were to get one more core delegate + the new extras from CS etc. that won't be enough votes to ruin your strategy. That could lead to very expensive failures.