Can a diplomatic victory be avoided?

[atteSmythe]

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?

 

[MouseyPounds]

AFAIK there is no way to avoid the vote. While you can cast your own 1 or 2 votes for someone else, all the CS will vote for their allies, so if you have "too many" allies the only way to keep from winning is to declare war on enough of them to put you under the limit. You could also probably disable the diplo victory condition through the tuner, but that's kinda like cheating.

 

[stormerne]

Hmm... obviously you can avoid it before the game by switching off that option on advanced game set-up. Your CS allies will vote for you. You get a vote too so you can vote for someone else. But it's really contrived to abandon your CSs, and you might set them all irreversibly at war with you and never get them back.

What other drastic measures can you take? Nuke the city with the UN perhaps? Admit it: you've always wanted to! Go back to an earlier save perhaps. (We really need a "cheesy" smilie for options like that.)

 

[atteSmythe]

What other drastic measures can you take? Nuke the city with the UN perhaps? Admit it: you've always wanted to! Go back to an earlier save perhaps. (We really need a "cheesy" smilie for options like that.)

I'm not ashamed to say that I had the same idea. Fortunately, Wu Zetian built the UN in a city bordering my lands that was also not the capital. Crossing my fingers...

Man, first had to eliminate Hiawatha because he insisted on building spaceship parts, and now this!

 

[atteSmythe]

Nuke took it down to size 5, couldn't get to it before it grew back to size 6. Captured the city, which took it down to size 3, and set it ablaze. With 6 turns left before the vote, the city should be gone in plenty of time. It'll be really interesting to see if the devs considered this course of action.

If not, I guess I'm going to have to destroy some city states. Since I'm allied with them all, will some start breaking alliances as I beat up on their brethren? If so, is there some way to 'coach' the game so that I lose as few maritimes as possible?

 

[Martin Alvito]

You nuked the UN and then burned it down? I suspect that just about every world leader has entertained that dream at some point.

 

[alpaca]

Best idea ever what to do with the UN. Iirc you could also have declared war on your city state allies but this sounds a lot more fun.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Disable the diplomatic victory when setting up the game.

 

[Paeanblack]

Can't you just go to war with a few of your allied City States?

 

[atteSmythe]

If this doesn't work, I should still have time to war with the CSs before the vote. Regardless, China must be punished for forcing my hand. And also, for building the United Nations when she'll lose the vote (she's dead broke, and has no allies)

I'm nuking the UN...for Science!

 

[stormerne]

We're all behind you! Half the civ world is hanging on this thread with bated breath. You MUST tell us what happens!

 

[Martin Alvito]

Can't you just go to war with a few of your allied City States?

Where's the fun in that? I mean, he nuked the UN! And then he burned it!

My only concern is that I suspect the first timer will resolve anyway.

 

[Kyroshill]

It would be a nice touch if the devs actually considered this possibility and the vote gets cancelled.... let's see

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Strangely, i crunch the numbers beforehand -- so, i can always foresee what if any single CS can bridge the necessary votes gap at any given time more so when the UN auto-triggers a calendar frozen diplo-victory to meet. Ya know, Ally_Friendly_Influence for X-Y-Z turns... gosh Diplo-Willard is sooooooo precious!

Given any variable map conditions against the many or the few Majors, the player must plan far ahead to truly hope having enough control over such issues. Including how the game is setup.

 

[atteSmythe]

All images click through to the full size.

War. War never changes.
Diplomatic Vote : T-6
Culture per turn : 11463
Next Policy : 8 turns

Last turn, I nuked Xian and moved forces up to capture. This turn, I take Xian, knocking it down to size 3 for easy razing. Plenty of time. I also captured two cities in the south (Bamako, Boussa) to give myself some room to maneuver. I'm still trying to get policies as fast as I can, but I won't be able to gain a whole two turns on this vote. It's mostly just fun. At 1160 per broadcast tower, I gain 20 culture. 58 for a culture per turn from a city ain't bad.

Spoiler :

Landing Party
Diplomatic Vote : T-5
Culture per turn : 11589
Next Policy : 7 turns

Nothing much happens. Xian burns, I move the bulk of my forces out of the water, just in case. Buy a couple more towers. Tried to take Beijing, but got a terrible roll.

Spoiler :

The Capitol Wasteland
Diplomatic Vote : T-4
Culture per turn : 11758
Next Policy : 6 turns

A golden age! I should've been paying more attention, I thought that was still a couple turns out. Time flies when you have 900

Forces in the south fortify. I have to be careful not to wipe China out, because it's only me, them, and the Songhai. If razing the UN doesn't work, I need to pray that the city state allegiances split between the two left, or I hand victory to my opponent.

Also, this is the turn where I double-check my screenshots and learn that the DX9 client doesn't take screenshots well. Sorry for the black blotches above. I fired up FRAPS for the remainder, and it worked just fine.

Spoiler :

The moment of truth
Diplomatic Vote : T-3
Culture per turn : 11885
Next Policy : 5 turns

Xian is no more! What do we get for our efforts?

Spoiler :

The vote is still on! I always knew the UN was a sham. There's no way the shadow government would announce their presence with so many flags. Curses! In a big old FU from the computer, the first new city (of 5 or so) I found this turn is Xian. :shakefist:

On a positive note, culture gain is still accelerating. At T-6, that '8 turns' was actually 7.95 or so. Now, the '5 turns' is only 4.75.

Maybe we'll get lucky, though! After all, the UN still existed at the beginning of the turn. Perhaps the count for the vote is only updated during beginning of the turn maintenance, like most other things.

Wishful Thinking
Diplomatic Vote : T-2

No dice. As of the beginning of next turn, the vote is still on. Here's the victory progress screen for the game so far:

Spoiler :

I didn't put the SP progress up because it doesn't much matter at this point, and I haven't played through this turn yet. Sorry City-state buddies. If I can't convince you to split the UN leadership vote, you'll just have to die.

 

[Roughly 6 Owls]

Interesting. Once the UN is built, the vote is forced.

Does anyone know what happens if the UN vote fails? I haven't yet gotten to a difficulty where the AI starts building the UN before I do, nor a difficulty where I could lose the UN vote by getting CS' bribed out from under my gold piles.

EDIT: 115940 Culture for your last policy? Thats a little ridiculous. You have a ton of cities. Look at all those dots on that minimap. How long is the Utopia Project going to take to actually build?

 

[MouseyPounds]

Does anyone know what happens if the UN vote fails? I haven't yet gotten to a difficulty where the AI starts building the UN before I do, nor a difficulty where I could lose the UN vote by getting CS' bribed out from under my gold piles.

If the vote fails the timer resets and you vote again 10 turns later. I've had a couple games where I was right on the edge of the vote margin (e.g. my UN, 8 CS allies, and 10 votes needed to win) and would just randomly vote for other civs when it came up because I wanted to prolong the game for one reason or another.

@atteSmythe: Remember, you only need to declare war on enough CSes to get under the win threshold; I know on the low difficulties your allies don't care too much about you beating up on other CSes so you might get to keep a few of the more useful ones if it's the same for you.

 

[atteSmythe]

@atteSmythe: Remember, you only need to declare war on enough CSes to get under the win threshold; I know on the low difficulties your allies don't care too much about you beating up on other CSes so you might get to keep a few of the more useful ones if it's the same for you.

It's actually worse than that, though - I think I can come through this OK, but I came really close to forcing myself into a diplomatic victory. I started to play one more turn last night (game crashed, so I quit afterward), and discovered something I really hadn't considered.

Over the course of the game, I'd liberated 7 city states from AI. They'll vote for me even after I declare war on them! Onoes! I only need 12 votes total, and I think you have to vote for yourself these days, so I'm just 3 city-states away from having locked in my victory (I don't think I could get enough forces to take over enough CSs in two turns to eliminate them from the voting).

In retrospect, it makes sense. They're always supposed to vote for you if you liberate them, and that happens even if you're at war because it's possible that another civ would ally with them after you liberate. If they didn't vote for you while at war, the other civ would just have to declare war on you before the vote, and steal the votes of their CS allies away.

On the plus side, declaring war on ten or so CSs didn't cause any others to break alliance and start aligning against me. So it looks like I'll be able to declare war on each one, see if it affects the vote count, and then negotiate peace with them if they're an eternal ally.

 

[atteSmythe]

EDIT: 115940 Culture for your last policy? Thats a little ridiculous. You have a ton of cities. Look at all those dots on that minimap. How long is the Utopia Project going to take to actually build?

Good question! I've never done this before...civilopedia5.com says it's only 1500, so I can probably get that belted out in 7-8 turns.

And yeah, the cities are ridiculous, but as long as I was still getting a new policy every 8-10 turns...settle away!

 

[elthrasher]

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.