Can a diplomatic victory be avoided?

[Louis XXIV]

Probably just not something they've thought of before.

Personally, if anything should disqualify you from a diplomatic victory, it would be nuking and razing the United Nations. They should consider adding that in a patch (I think I should make a list of minor changes that would have cool results. This definitely qualifies as one).

 

[Martin Alvito]

Disappointing, but not unexpected. I am also curious whether the timer restarts. If it does, that's a serious design oversight that just lends extra credence to the theory that 2K forced the game out the door before Firaxis was ready.

 

[elthrasher]

Disappointing, but not unexpected. I am also curious whether the timer restarts. If it does, that's a serious design oversight that just lends extra credence to the theory that 2K forced the game out the door before Firaxis was ready.

Yeah that or Firaxis said it was ready when it wasn't and 2K believed it (I used to work for a guy who would do this - ugh!).

I have no horse in that race and don't care who's fault it is, only that they learn from the mistake.

 

[atteSmythe]

I'm not sure it's that serious of an oversight, really. Consider that if the UN was founded in any capital city, there would be no way of getting rid of it. Having your remedies depend on what city the UN was built in is probably a worse situation.

It's interesting in that it makes the Diplomatic victory the only one that's completely unavoidable once it's set in motion. The Spaceship is partially so, though I still think its...odd...that the whole ship moves to the new capitol in a turn without skipping a beat. (Then again, in this game, I had the pleasure of destroying one of Hiawatha's booster rockets with a stealth bomber while it was in transit to the capitol. That was worth the price of admission). Culture may be, but I'm assuming you'd get a notification when a civ gets their fifth tree done, so you can at least try to stop them from building the Utopia project.

But even if I were to eliminate China right now, the vote would go on.

 

[Bluebird]

Disappointing, but not unexpected. I am also curious whether the timer restarts. If it does, that's a serious design oversight that just lends extra credence to the theory that 2K forced the game out the door before Firaxis was ready.

I don't find it hard to believe that this was overlooked, it's a very specific and arbitrary situation really. The OP has cities all over the map while going for a cultural victory, which is really the least suited for his situation. He could snap his fingers and win any other way a long time ago.

It would be interesting if razing the UN would cancel the vote though, especially in a situation where you aren't already emperor of the world.

 

[alpaca]

Ha ha. 66 uranium. Don't spend it all in one place!

I'd be curious to know whether the UN vote keeps coming up every 10 turns after the UN is destroyed. Seems like a bug to me. Or at least it would be nice to have confirmation of designer's intent.

When you raze it, the UN turns into a secret organization bent on world domination and therefore is able to enforce victory votes despite being destroyed.

 

[atteSmythe]

First vote passed, without ending the game. Every CS I declared war on decided to abstain, luckily. Now it's damage control time...lost some Maritime food, which seems to have put the larger city governors in OMG FREAK OUT mode, where they refuse to run any specialists, but have 10+ unemployed citizens . I even lost a city to a military CS that decided to unload some cruise missiles. Sigh.

After the vote passed with no victor, the timer restarted for the next vote. China still has their bonus vote from building the UN, too.

The game crashed again, so I'm posting this quick update, but I should have my last policy next turn, and I expect that the Utopia Project will be done before the next meeting of the UN Underground. I'll post a savegame when it's all wrapped up.

 

[stormerne]

This is all fascinating. Thank you so much for posting it all.

Now prepare for the anticlimax when Utopia is built.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

This is all fascinating. Thank you so much for posting it all.

Now prepare for the anticlimax when Utopia is built.

I agree that the Utopia building phase is somewhat underwhelming. They should have used something like "having to strictly observe the rules of your chosen civics for so and so many turns" instead of making Utopia some kind of silly building project.

 

[atteSmythe]

A Cultural victory! Truly, changing the every aspect of my civilization within the last 10 years demonstrates what a constant influence our culture has been!

As promised, there are links. It was way too late, and I was way too tired, so I forgot to grab a screenshot of the final demo screen. It's not so different than the previous one, I assure you.

Replay of the Game
Last Turn Savegame

It's going to be a long time before I play another Huge map. I'm holding out hope that they'll address the performance issues at some point, but I spent probably 80% of my time during those final hundred turns or so just waiting. Waiting for a unit to select, waiting for a city to finally found itself, waiting at the end of turn, waiting for graphics chug as the Choose Production and Unit Needs Orders buttons wildly fling me across the landscape, waiting for the game to load again after being wildly flung across the landscape causes a crash (every...2-3 turns, I'd say, depending on activity. Or the first time I hit one of those buttons in the DX11 version).

If you're feeling particularly masochistic, that savegame is ready to just hit the Next Turn button, except for one activated settler in an appropriate city spot. Hit the Found City button and let me know how long it takes to finish. The time is over a minute on my machine.

 

[stormerne]

I agree that the Utopia building phase is somewhat underwhelming. They should have used something like "having to strictly observe the rules of your chosen civics for so and so many turns" instead of making Utopia some kind of silly building project.

First I thought: "Truly inspired. What a great way to describe it." Then I thought: "Wait! You could open Rationalism to counter Piety during those turns, and it would break observing the rules of your chosen civics but the victory would still go through." (All completed trees count, whether or not overridden.) Oh well...

 

[stormerne]

Many thanks once again for all this!

If you're feeling particularly masochistic, that savegame is ready to just hit the Next Turn button, except for one activated settler in an appropriate city spot. Hit the Found City button and let me know how long it takes to finish. The time is over a minute on my machine.

In the interests of comparative research:

• 5 minutes 30 seconds = Time to load saved game
• 4 minutes 30 seconds = Time to found new city
• 8 minutes 20 seconds = Time from Next Turn to Victory screen
• 18 minutes 20 seconds = Total

Guess I'll not be playing many huge games on this laptop.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

First I thought: "Truly inspired. What a great way to describe it." Then I thought: "Wait! You could open Rationalism to counter Piety during those turns, and it would break observing the rules of your chosen civics but the victory would still go through." (All completed trees count, whether or not overridden.) Oh well...

That would make the game more complex, which everybody seems to agree would be a Good Thing(TM).

 

[atteSmythe]

In the interests of comparative research:

• 5 minutes 30 seconds = Time to load saved game
• 4 minutes 30 seconds = Time to found new city
• 8 minutes 20 seconds = Time from Next Turn to Victory screen
• 18 minutes 20 seconds = Total

I don't think I would've been able to keep myself waiting that long before declaring the game hung. Yikes.

Edit: I reread my previous post, and it was unclear - only founding the city takes a minute on my box. It's still another couple minutes after I hit End Turn.

 

[alpaca]

I don't think I would've been able to keep myself waiting that long before declaring the game hung. Yikes.

Edit: I reread my previous post, and it was unclear - only founding the city takes a minute on my box. It's still another couple minutes after I hit End Turn.

And this is why I never play huge maps

 

[Louis XXIV]

Wow, that's quite a lot of time. Do you want to submit your save to Firaxis? They're looking for saves in huge maps played from the beginning to the end as part of an effort (presumably) to speed up late game performance.

You could pass on the UN razing request as well

 

[atteSmythe]

Wow, that's quite a lot of time. Do you want to submit your save to Firaxis? They're looking for saves in huge maps played from the beginning to the end as part of an effort (presumably) to speed up late game performance.

I actually already sent it to them, back a little bit ago when I was plagued by an end-of-turn crash that ended up being caused by a helicopter with move promotion on an entirely railroad path, and which also caused run-on sentences.

 

[HermannLombard]

. . . and which also caused run-on sentences.

The horror! A bug bad enough to damage grammar! Like that.

 

[Civsassin]

It was easy to avoid a diplo victory in IV, but If I remember correctly, the vote in civ v is simply to end the game.

I've been working on a culture victory, and I'm about 11 turns away from finishing my last SP tree. One of the two remaining AI just completed the United Nations. I'm currently allied with every city state, so i fear the game just got a 10-turn timer attached.

I wanted to get one cultural victory under my belt, but this has been rather tedious, and I'd like to avoid having to do it again. Is there any way to avoid the vote, or refuse the victory? Will I have to find a way to declare war in half my CS allies?

To the original question on this thread, I had TWO interesting games in which Alexander outdid me to win diplo victories. Both were at Emperor level, standard map, pangea geography. The first game, I knew he was courting many of the CSs, I just didn't pay close enough attention, and found myself on the losing end. The next game, I was pursuing a space victory when Alexander finished the the UN. I aggressively began courting as many CSs as possible to either nullify his victory or possibly grab one of my own. BTW, in this game, I went to war a few times, but it was mostly strategic. I had specific objectives, and when I achieved them, I ended the war. I had about 20 cities. Anyway, As I grabbed his CSs, he tried to counter with greater offers. At the first UN vote, we were both under the required 10 votes. I had ten turns to repeat the process and hopefully grab more city states than Alexander. It turned into a bidding war, and he had more money than I did. Every time I turned a CS, he went right behind me and countered. I couldn't keep up with him, and by the time the UN vote came around, he had 12 CSs to my 8. He expanded wantonly during the game, and I was on the opposite end of the continent, so it wasn't easy to get to him. His empire was larger than mine, and his ability to generate gold was obvisoulsy better than mine. It was an interesting back and forth to win the CS bidding war.

 

[fromar]

I got an unexpected dipolmaocy win from bismark building the un. He was the #1 civ and I was number 2. His military was huge, but we had some good space and geography between us to protect me. When he built the un, I stole his allies a few turns before the vote. Big mistake, as he declared war on me and his former allieed cs. I was safe, but my new allies took the full force of bismark's cruise missile arsenal, and I was left with not enough votes to win.

I am sill learning on prince, so I did a reload and waited a few turns before the next vote to court his allies. I got bismark to agree to a couple resource trades and research agreement. A couple turns before the vote, before I stole his friends. The second time around, he left my new allies alone and I won the vote.

I think that was my last pre-patch game, so maybe it's different now.