This is the second installment of my OCC strategy guide, and this time I'll be covering diplomatic victory. Sounds impossible? Just read on. Oh, as a bonus there's no reason why this strategy won't work in regular games too.
The settings I generally play on are:
Warlords - if you play old 1.61, just substitute Saladin for Gandhi
Emperor - pick your comfort level here
Standard Pangaea - I find continents much too random as too much diplomatic activity goes on that you can't influence
6 random opponent civs
Permanent Alliance not enabled - you aren't really playing OCC if you have this on.
1. An overview of the diplomatic system
(Skip this section if you are already familiar with the game mechanics behind diplomatic victory in general.)
Secretary General elections are held between the UN builder and the highest population civ. You can check who has the highest population by looking at the Victory condition screen under F8. Diplomatic Victory elections are then held between the Secretary General and the highest population civ. As the OCC player you will generally always be the lowest population civ unless you are playing for Conquest (which is another guide.) Therefore you have to build the UN yourself. Fortunately, the computer does not prioritize Mass Media and it is an easy wonder to get.
To actually win the game you need two thirds of the votes, which are based on population. Since your election opponent will be voting for themselves, that means you need four of the remaining five civs to vote for you, and if the fifth civ votes against or abstains, it needs to be small. A civ will vote for you if the diplomatic relations score is high enough which is generally about +8, you may need a little more or less depending on the leader personality. Don't forget that you must have better relations with the voter civ than your rival.
Some AIs will switch to Free Religion in the late game resulting in large swings in relationships. Religion usually dictates the alliances in the early to midgame, but be prepared for large attitude swings when Free Religion is adopted by a few civs. The most likely civs to adopt free religion are those with many cities having two or more religions in them. Largely monotheistic civs or those who favour a Religious civic have less incentive to.
2. Setting up the diplomatic framework
The overall strategy I usually take in an OCC diplomatic game is this:
- Identify the one or two civs most likely to be diplomatic opponents, which will be referred to as Rivals
- Create a coalition war involving both myself and my intended Allies against an unpopular civ in the midgame, which will be referred to as Heathens, and try to ensure it drags out as long as possible. This will give me military struggle bonuses with the minor civs which ideally my Rivals don't have and give me an advantage in the voting.
- Switch to favoured AI civics of the voter civs when feasible in order to get the bonuses. I'll generally leave representation and bureaucracy in place until late though as it takes a long time to research up to mass media. If you do adopt a favoured civic for a while, the AI will remember that history even if you temporarily switch out to another civic and back and you get to keep the bonus.
The most reliable way I have found to set this up is to grab enough of the first few religions that the spread is restricted. If you only have one serious religion competing in the wild, it is much easier to establish your religion as the dominant one. The less religions are out there, the smaller the chance of your prospective Allies deciding to become each others' worst enemies early and pushing you into a lose-lose situation when they demand you cancel deals with each other.
3. The build and research order
Gandhi has the perfect trait combination for this strategy: Philosophical to get quick prophets for the religion rush and Spiritual to switch civics and religions at will. Mysticism and Mining are also exactly the two techs you want when trying to grab the early religions as barring some hut fluke, you cannot be beaten to Monotheism.
Start by researching Meditation (switch to Polytheism immediately if the AI gets it first) then Polytheism. If you are beaten to BOTH these religions, I recommend abandoning the religious track entirely, switching to the Pyramids game as outlined in the Space guide and hoping a useful religion spreads to you. If you manage to get one or both, go ahead and grab Monotheism. Try to stay with no state religion for a while if possible, as all religions provide culture when you haven't selected one. Multiple holy city culture will get your cultural borders out to 4 radius to bust fog and keep the barbarians and unwanted AI settlements at bay very quickly.
Scout with your warrior as much as you can. It's good to have a rough knowledge of the layout of the land and where the other civs are. I usually build a worker if he can do something useful, then Stonehenge and Oracle for early prophet points taking Code of Laws from the oracle. I'll sneak a worker tech in somewhere if I can. I also try for Pyramids if I have stone (starting it when Masonry is discovered and interrupting it to build the Oracle when priesthood arrives.)
The first prophet arrives around the time Oracle finishes, and I use him to build the shrine of whichever religion has a head start on spreading to help it along. If none have spread I'll convert someone to Confucianism with the free missionary and use that. A second prophet will arrive which can be used for Theology. If there is a religious nut AI in game that already founded their own religion such as Isabella, they often get Christianity so it can be tempting to just settle the second prophet in that case. However, lightbulbing Theology does open the way for the third prophet to get most of Civil Service which will be a long research at this point in the game as this opening doesn't develop much early commerce. I usually do grab Christianity. Free missionaries of the religions I am not using can be used as extra scouts to help evaluate which of the AIs has the best terrain and is most likely to be the Rival.
It is sometimes possible to get Taoism and Islam too for the legendary seven headed hydra and I have done it (yes it really is possible on Emperor albeit with some luck), but although it looks very cool it isn't generally necessary. These upstart religions come late enough to be effectively suppressed by spreading the True Faith aggressively in the cities of their founders - or to declare a crusade against whoever founded and converted to Taoism if everyone else looks like good allies.
The next step after oracle should be alphabet, obviously. Since you will be getting some AIs to friendly relatively quickly, you can trade more freely than usual since becoming Friendly gets rid of the "too advanced" trading limit (although I still avoid trading for things like hunting and fishing.) In order to get an academy up in the face of 3 prophet sources, the Great Library is very important even though you will not hesitate to obsolete it. Try and get as many missionaries out as possible before literature arrives though. Hanging Gardens are definitely useful if health is clearly going to be a problem or there is stone, but have to be balanced out against a possible need to build more missionaries.
As usual I like to delay globe theatre as long as possible to avoid getting great artists, unless there are serious culture fights over resources in which case getting a couple of artists is tolerable. If you have 5 temples you probably don't need it anyway. It's quite reasonable to win with just national epic and Oxford and not even need to use the OCC setting's one advantage.
There aren't really difficult tech choices to make; unless you choose to pursue the late religions, CS-paper-education-philosophy-liberalism (take whichever of astronomy or printing press you can get) and trading your heart out, then beelining right for mass media and the UN ignoring everything else is usually the way to go, as you should have good Friendly trading partners to trade for everything else. The real variety in OCC diplo games comes on the diplomatic front and no two games are ever quite the same.
4. Diplomacy in practice
Check the diplomatic relations screen often. It is important to know who is enemies with whom. Also check the trading screen often, you're researching advanced techs one at a time and want to get the most out of them when you do trade.
There's nothing like a war to cement an alliance. Look for opportunities to start a war with the Heathen civ and get the minor civs involved. Normally techs from Civil Service/Philosophy onwards are needed to bribe the AIs into war. Being able to set up the right diplomatic conditions for this war is one of the main advantage of a heavy religious strategy. The mutual military struggle combined with shared religion bonuses should ensure that your allies get along well with each other. Don't invite your Rivals to join the war, as you don't want your allies to have shared military struggle bonuses with them too.
You don't actually want to fight in the war, just finance it. Once they get too weak they will Vassalize to someone and you will stop accumulating military struggle bonuses. Fortunately the medieval techs that make bribery to war feasible arrive at about the right time.
This is the best case scenario. A lot of things go wrong. You don't want to allow any AI civs to grow too strong, it's necessary to play balance of power if they do. Don't invite the leading civs to join your crusade against the heathens; you don't want them to have the shared military bonus with your Allies too.
You might get attacked. Be careful when buying other civs in as you may be setting up Worst Enemy relationships that might cause trouble in future.
Build Broadway and send out hit musicals to everyone except the Heathen civ once it's done, it will help gain you bonuses for favourable trade relations in time for...
5. Election day
As you're building the UN check the diplomatic relations for both you and your rival to see whether you are likely to have enough votes. Unless you have done really badly diplomatically, you should easily be elected Secretary General. If everything has gone well, you will get the diplomatic victory. Congratulations! However, things often go wrong and there are some typical reasons you might fall short on the final vote:
- Someone unexpectedly dropped into free religion costing you a vote you needed. With +4 favourable trade bonus and the other bonuses like shared civics, the two free +1s for open borders and peace, years of supplying them with resources it is possible to get above the +8 you need anyway. The problem arises when you have -4 for trading with their worst enemies as this penalty takes a long time to go away. This is why I like to try and create a common worst enemy amongst my allies in the midgame, and to make sure I'm not relying entirely on religion to get my votes.
- One of your allies voted for your rival because they like them more. Carefully look at the diplomatic modifiers and see if there is anything you can do to change them. It is possible to knock people out of shared favourite civics, for example, by paying them to switch civics or passing an UN resolution.
- Your rival isn't the civ you thought it originally would be because one of your allies overtook the top spot. If it's a close thing sometimes getting Communism and using spies to sabotage resources (be careful here, you still want their vote once they've been knocked off the top spot) will get the right civ back on top of the population chart. Maybe you have decent relations with the original rival civ too that you can fix.
- Your allies voted for you but you still don't have enough to win because your rival and the heathen civ are too large and command over a third of the vote between them. Spies might again be helpful here. You can also try direct warfare, but be careful! You don't want your rival to be knocked into #2.
If you just can't get the diplomatic victory to work, it's time for...
6. Plan B from outer space
Your production and science rate won't be as strong with the Stonehenge/Oracle opening as opposed to Pyramids. Partly because of having many great prophets instead of scientists and engineers, and partly because of all the investment in missionaries and bias towards early production over commerce. What you do have is some good diplomatic relations and you should use them to stir up all the inter-AI wars you can. This accomplishes two things. Firstly, it distracts them from building the spaceship. I have launched in 1980 while no one had built anything more than Casings on emperor due to heavy fighting. Secondly, it directs everyone's research down the military path towards Assembly Line, Combustion, Industrialism and Robotics, which allows you to pick these techs up with the Internet which you should rush to to compensate for your less than stellar research rate.
Oh, it is also highly amusing getting the entire world to declare on what was once the top civ that had been pushing everyone around, and watch it get rapidly consigned to the dustbin of history.
It is probably worth leaving robotics to last and passing up the space elevator if you have managed to start a world war, because the Internet might be able to get you the tech, you'll probably be bottlenecked on research rather than production and you'll still have a lead on Fusion/Genetics.
7. Cool spiritual tricks
Run no state religion with two or more religions and you'll get the culture from both holy cities and hit 4 cultural radius quickly. You might as well pick a religion then, 5000 culture is too far out. If one of your minor religions spreads, switch to it for 5 turns to get sight into that city. You can use this to get open borders with that AI too.
If you're lucky after the 5 turns one of the AIs you converted to the True Faith will even ask you to switch back and you can get more free diplomatic points.
Adopt whatever civic the AI asks you to, you get free diplomatic points and can switch back in 5 turns if you don't like the civic.
Switch freely between organized religion when you have large building projects, theocracy when you're building troops and pacifism when you don't
need the other two.
Use caste system to run scientists before you have a library. Build up stored food while building Oxford and run extra scientists on that stored food to try and shave a turn off liberalism. Run pacifism too while you're doing this.
Don't forget Slavery if you get pillaged and need to get rid of a couple of population points you can't support, or Serfdom to rebuild after a war.
Switch to universal suffrage to help rush the UN if you have a lot of cash on hand, which you usually will - and then back to whichever government civic is making other civs happy.
The settings I generally play on are:
Warlords - if you play old 1.61, just substitute Saladin for Gandhi
Emperor - pick your comfort level here
Standard Pangaea - I find continents much too random as too much diplomatic activity goes on that you can't influence
6 random opponent civs
Permanent Alliance not enabled - you aren't really playing OCC if you have this on.
1. An overview of the diplomatic system
(Skip this section if you are already familiar with the game mechanics behind diplomatic victory in general.)
Secretary General elections are held between the UN builder and the highest population civ. You can check who has the highest population by looking at the Victory condition screen under F8. Diplomatic Victory elections are then held between the Secretary General and the highest population civ. As the OCC player you will generally always be the lowest population civ unless you are playing for Conquest (which is another guide.) Therefore you have to build the UN yourself. Fortunately, the computer does not prioritize Mass Media and it is an easy wonder to get.
To actually win the game you need two thirds of the votes, which are based on population. Since your election opponent will be voting for themselves, that means you need four of the remaining five civs to vote for you, and if the fifth civ votes against or abstains, it needs to be small. A civ will vote for you if the diplomatic relations score is high enough which is generally about +8, you may need a little more or less depending on the leader personality. Don't forget that you must have better relations with the voter civ than your rival.
Some AIs will switch to Free Religion in the late game resulting in large swings in relationships. Religion usually dictates the alliances in the early to midgame, but be prepared for large attitude swings when Free Religion is adopted by a few civs. The most likely civs to adopt free religion are those with many cities having two or more religions in them. Largely monotheistic civs or those who favour a Religious civic have less incentive to.
2. Setting up the diplomatic framework
The overall strategy I usually take in an OCC diplomatic game is this:
- Identify the one or two civs most likely to be diplomatic opponents, which will be referred to as Rivals
- Create a coalition war involving both myself and my intended Allies against an unpopular civ in the midgame, which will be referred to as Heathens, and try to ensure it drags out as long as possible. This will give me military struggle bonuses with the minor civs which ideally my Rivals don't have and give me an advantage in the voting.
- Switch to favoured AI civics of the voter civs when feasible in order to get the bonuses. I'll generally leave representation and bureaucracy in place until late though as it takes a long time to research up to mass media. If you do adopt a favoured civic for a while, the AI will remember that history even if you temporarily switch out to another civic and back and you get to keep the bonus.
The most reliable way I have found to set this up is to grab enough of the first few religions that the spread is restricted. If you only have one serious religion competing in the wild, it is much easier to establish your religion as the dominant one. The less religions are out there, the smaller the chance of your prospective Allies deciding to become each others' worst enemies early and pushing you into a lose-lose situation when they demand you cancel deals with each other.
3. The build and research order
Gandhi has the perfect trait combination for this strategy: Philosophical to get quick prophets for the religion rush and Spiritual to switch civics and religions at will. Mysticism and Mining are also exactly the two techs you want when trying to grab the early religions as barring some hut fluke, you cannot be beaten to Monotheism.
Start by researching Meditation (switch to Polytheism immediately if the AI gets it first) then Polytheism. If you are beaten to BOTH these religions, I recommend abandoning the religious track entirely, switching to the Pyramids game as outlined in the Space guide and hoping a useful religion spreads to you. If you manage to get one or both, go ahead and grab Monotheism. Try to stay with no state religion for a while if possible, as all religions provide culture when you haven't selected one. Multiple holy city culture will get your cultural borders out to 4 radius to bust fog and keep the barbarians and unwanted AI settlements at bay very quickly.
Scout with your warrior as much as you can. It's good to have a rough knowledge of the layout of the land and where the other civs are. I usually build a worker if he can do something useful, then Stonehenge and Oracle for early prophet points taking Code of Laws from the oracle. I'll sneak a worker tech in somewhere if I can. I also try for Pyramids if I have stone (starting it when Masonry is discovered and interrupting it to build the Oracle when priesthood arrives.)
The first prophet arrives around the time Oracle finishes, and I use him to build the shrine of whichever religion has a head start on spreading to help it along. If none have spread I'll convert someone to Confucianism with the free missionary and use that. A second prophet will arrive which can be used for Theology. If there is a religious nut AI in game that already founded their own religion such as Isabella, they often get Christianity so it can be tempting to just settle the second prophet in that case. However, lightbulbing Theology does open the way for the third prophet to get most of Civil Service which will be a long research at this point in the game as this opening doesn't develop much early commerce. I usually do grab Christianity. Free missionaries of the religions I am not using can be used as extra scouts to help evaluate which of the AIs has the best terrain and is most likely to be the Rival.
It is sometimes possible to get Taoism and Islam too for the legendary seven headed hydra and I have done it (yes it really is possible on Emperor albeit with some luck), but although it looks very cool it isn't generally necessary. These upstart religions come late enough to be effectively suppressed by spreading the True Faith aggressively in the cities of their founders - or to declare a crusade against whoever founded and converted to Taoism if everyone else looks like good allies.
The next step after oracle should be alphabet, obviously. Since you will be getting some AIs to friendly relatively quickly, you can trade more freely than usual since becoming Friendly gets rid of the "too advanced" trading limit (although I still avoid trading for things like hunting and fishing.) In order to get an academy up in the face of 3 prophet sources, the Great Library is very important even though you will not hesitate to obsolete it. Try and get as many missionaries out as possible before literature arrives though. Hanging Gardens are definitely useful if health is clearly going to be a problem or there is stone, but have to be balanced out against a possible need to build more missionaries.
As usual I like to delay globe theatre as long as possible to avoid getting great artists, unless there are serious culture fights over resources in which case getting a couple of artists is tolerable. If you have 5 temples you probably don't need it anyway. It's quite reasonable to win with just national epic and Oxford and not even need to use the OCC setting's one advantage.
There aren't really difficult tech choices to make; unless you choose to pursue the late religions, CS-paper-education-philosophy-liberalism (take whichever of astronomy or printing press you can get) and trading your heart out, then beelining right for mass media and the UN ignoring everything else is usually the way to go, as you should have good Friendly trading partners to trade for everything else. The real variety in OCC diplo games comes on the diplomatic front and no two games are ever quite the same.
4. Diplomacy in practice
Check the diplomatic relations screen often. It is important to know who is enemies with whom. Also check the trading screen often, you're researching advanced techs one at a time and want to get the most out of them when you do trade.
There's nothing like a war to cement an alliance. Look for opportunities to start a war with the Heathen civ and get the minor civs involved. Normally techs from Civil Service/Philosophy onwards are needed to bribe the AIs into war. Being able to set up the right diplomatic conditions for this war is one of the main advantage of a heavy religious strategy. The mutual military struggle combined with shared religion bonuses should ensure that your allies get along well with each other. Don't invite your Rivals to join the war, as you don't want your allies to have shared military struggle bonuses with them too.
You don't actually want to fight in the war, just finance it. Once they get too weak they will Vassalize to someone and you will stop accumulating military struggle bonuses. Fortunately the medieval techs that make bribery to war feasible arrive at about the right time.
This is the best case scenario. A lot of things go wrong. You don't want to allow any AI civs to grow too strong, it's necessary to play balance of power if they do. Don't invite the leading civs to join your crusade against the heathens; you don't want them to have the shared military bonus with your Allies too.
You might get attacked. Be careful when buying other civs in as you may be setting up Worst Enemy relationships that might cause trouble in future.
Build Broadway and send out hit musicals to everyone except the Heathen civ once it's done, it will help gain you bonuses for favourable trade relations in time for...
5. Election day
As you're building the UN check the diplomatic relations for both you and your rival to see whether you are likely to have enough votes. Unless you have done really badly diplomatically, you should easily be elected Secretary General. If everything has gone well, you will get the diplomatic victory. Congratulations! However, things often go wrong and there are some typical reasons you might fall short on the final vote:
- Someone unexpectedly dropped into free religion costing you a vote you needed. With +4 favourable trade bonus and the other bonuses like shared civics, the two free +1s for open borders and peace, years of supplying them with resources it is possible to get above the +8 you need anyway. The problem arises when you have -4 for trading with their worst enemies as this penalty takes a long time to go away. This is why I like to try and create a common worst enemy amongst my allies in the midgame, and to make sure I'm not relying entirely on religion to get my votes.
- One of your allies voted for your rival because they like them more. Carefully look at the diplomatic modifiers and see if there is anything you can do to change them. It is possible to knock people out of shared favourite civics, for example, by paying them to switch civics or passing an UN resolution.
- Your rival isn't the civ you thought it originally would be because one of your allies overtook the top spot. If it's a close thing sometimes getting Communism and using spies to sabotage resources (be careful here, you still want their vote once they've been knocked off the top spot) will get the right civ back on top of the population chart. Maybe you have decent relations with the original rival civ too that you can fix.
- Your allies voted for you but you still don't have enough to win because your rival and the heathen civ are too large and command over a third of the vote between them. Spies might again be helpful here. You can also try direct warfare, but be careful! You don't want your rival to be knocked into #2.
If you just can't get the diplomatic victory to work, it's time for...
6. Plan B from outer space
Your production and science rate won't be as strong with the Stonehenge/Oracle opening as opposed to Pyramids. Partly because of having many great prophets instead of scientists and engineers, and partly because of all the investment in missionaries and bias towards early production over commerce. What you do have is some good diplomatic relations and you should use them to stir up all the inter-AI wars you can. This accomplishes two things. Firstly, it distracts them from building the spaceship. I have launched in 1980 while no one had built anything more than Casings on emperor due to heavy fighting. Secondly, it directs everyone's research down the military path towards Assembly Line, Combustion, Industrialism and Robotics, which allows you to pick these techs up with the Internet which you should rush to to compensate for your less than stellar research rate.
Oh, it is also highly amusing getting the entire world to declare on what was once the top civ that had been pushing everyone around, and watch it get rapidly consigned to the dustbin of history.
It is probably worth leaving robotics to last and passing up the space elevator if you have managed to start a world war, because the Internet might be able to get you the tech, you'll probably be bottlenecked on research rather than production and you'll still have a lead on Fusion/Genetics.
7. Cool spiritual tricks
Run no state religion with two or more religions and you'll get the culture from both holy cities and hit 4 cultural radius quickly. You might as well pick a religion then, 5000 culture is too far out. If one of your minor religions spreads, switch to it for 5 turns to get sight into that city. You can use this to get open borders with that AI too.
If you're lucky after the 5 turns one of the AIs you converted to the True Faith will even ask you to switch back and you can get more free diplomatic points.
Adopt whatever civic the AI asks you to, you get free diplomatic points and can switch back in 5 turns if you don't like the civic.
Switch freely between organized religion when you have large building projects, theocracy when you're building troops and pacifism when you don't
need the other two.
Use caste system to run scientists before you have a library. Build up stored food while building Oxford and run extra scientists on that stored food to try and shave a turn off liberalism. Run pacifism too while you're doing this.
Don't forget Slavery if you get pillaged and need to get rid of a couple of population points you can't support, or Serfdom to rebuild after a war.
Switch to universal suffrage to help rush the UN if you have a lot of cash on hand, which you usually will - and then back to whichever government civic is making other civs happy.
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