Diplomatic victory is kinda broken

[chazzycat]

i don't get why people always complain about this.

if you have that much gold sitting around you've likely won the game already.

and if you feel like it's "cheap" then just don't do it.

what's the big deal?

 

[stickyfingers]

to me, it's that it doesn't make any sense. not so much that it's cheap. it would be like the real UN being controlled by luxembourg and monaco instead of the US and other globally powerful/important countries. but i guess that goes back to the whole civ 5 concept of city states, which im not a big fan of. i think it would have been better if city states would assimilate into civs (or it wouldn't be so bad to conquer them) over time. that's what happened mostly in history.

 

[ditchhook]

I would suggest modeling it after the actual UN: you need a majority vote in the "general assembly" (as the game rules stand now) but also a majority vote of the "security council" which in this game would be the starting civilizations sans the city-states. One could also make membership in the security council be limited to civilizations which have obtained a certain level of technology (like atomic weapons).

 

[GoStu]

Holy necropost, man. This thread is nearly a year old. I'll still forgive you for resurrecting it though, as there was a really neat idea earlier: votes based on population rather than just membership and city-states.

It would tie in pretty well with a domination victory, even if you disallowed votes from puppeted/occupied cities. Warmongers could use a break; this could be it.

Another (simpler) idea would be increase the number of votes required to win by a good margin. This would pretty much require another civ or two to vote for the winner, or that the winner pass one hell of a lot of resolutions in their favor first (world ideology, world religion, have the Forbidden Palace, etc).

 

[Ginger_Beer]

Funny, I was just lurking on the forum (haven't posted here years, never was a big poster either) having just bought the humble bundle (even though I have the Civ Chronicles). So I've been reading to pick up some tips as I never was that great at the previous games. I just had my first go on Civ 5 on King (and 3rd ever Civ5 game) - randomly selected Napoleon so by mid game I had settled on culture. I nearly got wiped out a couple of times and then made a few mistakes so figured a cultural win wasn't going to work, and it was a bit late to go for space race. So I felt like it was a bit of a 'cheap' win to go for diplomatic but it was probably my best bet to salvage a win. I didn't wait until late to throw heaps of money at the city states, and definitely didn't use a DoW to secure their vote, but something about it felt a little hollow. Still having never been that great at previous Civ games, I was glad to win my first King game. There are some great tips on these forums. Now to hone my cultural victory tactics.

 

[Feurisson]

I agree that's what the devs decided. I do not agree that it is a good approach for a diplo VC. If they wanted to do this, they should have simply left it as an economic victory and ditched the diplo VC altogether. As it stands, they need to tweak the modifiers so that diplomacy really exists and works. Right now, it's all about war.

Well, I've won diplomatically a lot of times (including Deity), but I never have used spies in city states or declared war on anyone. In a way my diplomacy victories were actually achieved by "true" diplomacy, that is staying friends with everyone (or at least trying to). So I don't think it's completely broken, just easily exploitable and because of that ironically achievable even if you're the biggest warmonger. Therefore I would like some changes to that, too, like the mentioned diplomacy with city-states even when at war.
Peaceful diplomatic victory still isn't something I'd call a "cheap" victory, and not even necessarily an easy victory condition.

 

[DemonMaster]

I have only won two Diplo-Win (I don't go for that much). One with Sweden and one with Rome. The one with Sweden, I used a lot of my GP to be allied to a lot of CS. That felt a little bit too easy, but it is Sweden's ability so what can you say. The time with Rome was more interesting since I was warmongering and then ended up persuaded two of my neighbours to vote for me (true diplo-win).

Sure I can have money so I can bribe a CS or two if they are near allied, but not more than. Pretty useless if you don't have high influence in the first place. But that's perhaps just my playing style.

 

[Fluffball]

In theory i have no real issue with the mechanics of a diplomatic victory it shouldn't be called a diplomatic victory as it has very little to do with diplomacy.
I was very much hoping when they said they were changing the way it worked and having more reliance on CS quests etc it was going to at least actually need to involve more than simply buying CS where as all they meant was there is now more scope for gaining influence by other means but the back bone of the system is still paying vast sums of gold.
They at least needed to add more abilities like gunboat diplomacy that you could rely on solely for influence if needs be or would have been even better having to use multiple ways to gain enough influence.

 

[Arrowstorm]

Diplomacy Victory can never be about "real" diplomacy, because it's a game and nobody will want to vote for you or help you win the game.

 

[bison21]

I disagree with the suggestion that diplomacy should be something determined by peace. I agree as a raging warmonger you are not exactly setting yourself up as a Kofi Annan, but war can happen without any actual conquering. I think it should be about number of turns of CS allies, number of turns of diplomats (i.e. a disincentive for spies), no tech stealing and ofc no backstabbing.

The "they caught one of your spies attempting to steal technology" debuff lasts for fricking ever. The only way to get rid of it is to annihilate the civ and bring it back to life.

 

[Feurisson]

Diplomacy Victory can never be about "real" diplomacy, because it's a game and nobody will want to vote for you or help you win the game.

Not completely true, I had a game once where three out of five civilizations voted for me. The whole game I managed to stay at peace with everyone, and never bribed anyone to go to war. It certainly did feel at least a bit diplomatic.