Apostolic Palace sneaky question

[Airefuego]

I'm debating whether or not to build this AP thing in my current game. The civilopedia entry is not entirely clear on how it all works, and I can't tell if this cheeky strategy will work or not:

I rule an entire massive continent of Jewish cities, and the other continent is all Buddhist (two civs)

So if I sent two missionaries in, get Judaism into one tiny city of each rival, and then build the palace, am I right in thinking that they will be voting members with hardly any votes, and I will totally dominate the voting?

And can I then win the religious victory vote really easily this way? It doesn't seem that this would be the intended effect of the AP, but from reading the Civilopedia, it seems ok...

Can someone let me know where the flaw is in my logic before I go and do it?

 

[SwordofStriker]

You pretty much have it all figured out.

 

[Inspector Javert]

Unless you installed the patch I think that 3.13 nullifies that sneak attack.

 

[Carabodes]

"Can someone let me know where the flaw is in my logic before I go and do it?"
No flaws here, just go ahead.

 

[Airefuego]

Well, that sounds way too easy! I'm doing it.

And I guess another reason that I'd better build that AP fast is that if one of them builds it, and then one buddhist missionary makes it across my borders, I am in trouble.

And GPShaw, thanks for the tip, could you give details of the rule change in 3.13 that you say might nullify this approach?

 

[MrFrodo]

The rule change in 3.13 is that at least one other civ has to vote for you, as well as you having the 2/3 majority. You can't solo dominate the votes, someone has to like you.

So this trick isn't going to work unless one of your Buddist rivals will send their piddly votes your way. If you have 3.13. You have to be nice to one of them perhaps.

It can also be hard to infiltrate your Missionaries if they have Theocracy, or will not open borders. So you might have to pull some other sneaky tricks with Spies, gifting cities or planting cities in their militarty path to make them see the joy of Judaism.

Good Luck!

 

[jray]

The rule change in 3.13 is that at least one other civ has to vote for you, as well as you having the 2/3 majority. You can't solo dominate the votes, someone has to like you.

So this trick isn't going to work unless one of your Buddist rivals will send their piddly votes your way. If you have 3.13. You have to be nice to one of them perhaps.

The exact wording in the 3.13 changelog also implies that diplomatic victory is impossible if you have enough votes to win all by yourself, regardless of whether someone else votes for you:

"Can't vote on a winner if one team already has all the votes necessary to win"

Can anyone confirm/deny this? I haven't played 3.13 yet.

 

[Infantry#14]

^^that kinda sucks. I understand this is justified for AP diplomatic victory as you can limit other ai's power in voting. However, the new rule should not apply to the UN as all ai are full voting members. If I am achieving domination, but want a backdoor for diplomatic (if I have the pop but not land), I should be allowed to do this. Sometimes if I am winning but it will take me another hour or more to win, I would just take the diplomatic over domination.

 

[Airefuego]

Thanks MrFrodo and others for the update.

I have downloaded 3.13 but not installed it yet... I'm waiting to finish the current game, as I have read that 3.13 changes AI behaviour a little (more aggressive etc).

But I've decided not to do the sneaky AP religious win, it seems like an exploit (confirmed by the fix in 3.13) and it's a shame to win that way when the game is going so well anyway! I am caning, it's my first BTS game so I dropped the skill level, probably shouldn't have

I am going to build the AP though, so the buddhist brothers can't try the same trick on me.

 

[Naismith]

From what I've seen post-3.13, if you have enough votes to win AP diplo all by yourself, the AP diplo victory vote simply won't come up. It doesn't matter if other Civs are willing to vote for you or not.

I suspect the same applies to the UN diplo victory vote.

 

[Martinus]

^^that kinda sucks. I understand this is justified for AP diplomatic victory as you can limit other ai's power in voting. However, the new rule should not apply to the UN as all ai are full voting members. If I am achieving domination, but want a backdoor for diplomatic (if I have the pop but not land), I should be allowed to do this. Sometimes if I am winning but it will take me another hour or more to win, I would just take the diplomatic over domination.

Actually, the "back door diplomatic" aka "poor man's domination" is the exact reason why this rule was introduced.

Frankly, it hardly made any sense to have a "diplomatic" victory in which all you needed to do was to go on a conquering rampage.

Also I don't see any difference between using the 3.13 system for AP and UN.

 

[kazapp]

So what do you need to do if you have more than the 75% of the votes?

Spread the religion further (or convert a Civ to double his votes) to drop you below that magic limit (as well as making sure you're really well liked by the Civ you're spreading it to)?

 

[MrFrodo]

The exact wording in the 3.13 changelog also implies that diplomatic victory is impossible if you have enough votes to win all by yourself, regardless of whether someone else votes for you:

"Can't vote on a winner if one team already has all the votes necessary to win"

Can anyone confirm/deny this? I haven't played 3.13 yet.

I haven't either, I probably misunderstood the rule change. It definitely sounds like the vote wont even come up if you have enough votes to win by yourself. So not only do you have to get another civ to like you, you have to spread the AP religion to them like crazy to make your % of votes low enough to get the vote to come up. If you are too good at spreading it to your friend, and the rest of the world likes your friend better than you, your friend might just change state religions and win instead of you.

This seems to take care of the borderline exploitive manipulation of this Wonder to get a Diplomatic Victory. On the other hand, people will still not understand how this works and loose occaisionally by taking a city into their civ that has the AP religion.

 

[MrFrodo]

The exact wording in the 3.13 changelog also implies that diplomatic victory is impossible if you have enough votes to win all by yourself, regardless of whether someone else votes for you:

"Can't vote on a winner if one team already has all the votes necessary to win"

Can anyone confirm/deny this? I haven't played 3.13 yet.

I haven't either, I probably misunderstood the rule change. It definitely sounds like the vote wont even come up if you have enough votes to win by yourself. So not only do you have to get another civ to like you, you have to spread the AP religion to them like crazy to make your % of votes low enough to get the vote to come up. If you are too good at spreading it to your friend, and the rest of the world likes your friend better than you, your friend might just change state religions and win instead of you.

This seems to take care of the borderline exploitive manipulation of this Wonder to get a Diplomatic Victory. On the other hand, people will still not understand how this works and loose occaisionally by taking a city into their civ that has the AP religion.

Anyway, good luck trying to win a less sneaky, and more glorious victory without the AP!

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Is these the only other civs in the game? All civs must have a city with your religion in order to achieve the diplo victory from the AP (at least in the previous patch, that was the rule).

That being said, I would definitely build the AP anyway only to prevent the AI from having it. And employing trade sanctions against you. If they are the only other 2 civs in the game, though, it wouldn't matter much. At that point, I might actually skip the AP and just start preparing to violently teach the heathen a lesson.

 

[Naismith]

I think it's worth building the AP just so you can dictate which religion will get the +2 hammers for temples, monasteries and cathedrals. Otherwise you may end up having to spread your rival's religion in your own cities to get the bonus - probably giving them +1G for each city you convert.

If your state religion is the AP religion, you get the hammer bonus, which combined with Sankore and the Spiral Minaret gives you beakers, gold and hammers galore for building those temples, etc. Very nice if you can manage it.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

This is a very good point. It depends on your difficulty level. Below noble, you should be alright leaving the AP alone and just going for a steamroll. The hammer bonus is already in your difficulty setting . Noble / Prince, you'll probably want to grab that AP and take advantage like Naismith says. Higher than Prince and you may not even be able to complete it in time (at this point in the game).

 

[Airefuego]

OK - there is lots of good advice in there, thanks!

So I'm going to build the AP to get the production bonuses, and to stop the buddhists from shafting me if they build it later. I already have that wonder that increases the culture of religious buildings, is that Sistine Chapel, can't remember..., so my half-price Jewish temples (spiritual) will be beautiful little buildings pumping out 6 and 2 per turn plus the usual happiness bonus

Meanwhile I'm not going to use the AP for victory, it's pretty clear I'm going to win this one anyway so I'm going to keep the game going until Corporations so I can play around and learn about them while securely in a position of power.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

The Sistine Chapel indeed, Airefuego (fire air?)

 

[Veritass]

OK, I built it. How do I propose a resolution? Thanks.