Tips for diplomatic victory

[SAHorowitz]

Been trying to get a diplomatic victory -- just cause I never have before. Obviously I thought it was easier than it really is.

Basically kept nice with everyone except the one civ (Napoleon) that was on my continent and I wasted him early.

I avoided wars (even when civs asked for help) to keep out of the make someone happy at someone elses expense. But shared techs (where it made sense), gave occasional gifts, etc.

Basically everyone is Pleased with me (more pluses than minuses), but most of them are abstaining their votes.

What is the right strategy here?

I saw one thread in the strategy guide section on this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=145012

The advise is: "find someone that lots of people hate, and make them a mutual enemy. people love it when you hate their enemy. "+4 our mutual struggle brings us together!""

Is that the trick? I don't just want to bribe them by giving them cities at the end.

Thanks.

 

[predacon]

If your relationship with a AI is better than the relationship between him and your competiter and the AI is friendly towards you, the AI is likely to vote for you.
You need to make some civ your friends ( friendly toward you), not just pleased toward you.
If the AIs fight each other, choosing one side is usually better than just stand neutrally. If they do not fight, just try to get them fight each other

 

[predacon]

If your relationship with a AI is better than the relationship between him and your competiter and the AI is friendly towards you, the AI is likely to vote for you.
You need to make some civ your friends ( friendly toward you), not just pleased toward you.
If the AIs fight each other, choosing one side is usually better than just stand neutrally. If they do not fight, just try to get them fight each other

 

[jeremiahrounds]

Ive won two back to back diplos on prince. Its a pretty fun victory type.
Im not sure if its as simple as your points. I find the "you did not help us" can be tough with some of the AI leaders.

Diplomatic is not a peaceful win unless you get lucky. Your going to need to finess some wars. Your number one strat is to find someone weak that isnt voting for you and get someone AIs to declare war on them. [the idea is to either destroy their votes or conquer their votes]

Note you DO NOT take a you declared war on our friend if you egg some other AI into attacking another AI to weaken it and get votes either removed or pushed over to yourside.


If you can find a civ you got a hardcore tech advantage on that you can declare war that is bonus. Also note if someone is abstaining but is alot of positive a mutual war kicked em over into my pocket twice now. There might be some extra weight with mutual war for voting purposes. So if nothing else is working pay an abstaining but positive AI to make war with someone weak and stupid. Then declare war on the same person. Twice now ive found that gave me the positive abstainers vote.

I think there is usually a way but if you want to be fast about it put away the idea that a diplomatic victory means no war. If that works fine. But im finding you need to break some eggs to make your diplomatic omelet =)

If you post a game where you have UN but are at a point where you think you cant get the votes ill see if i can put my money where my mouth is.

I find the idea of finessing UN victories to be a fun scenario.

 

[Joh]

Diplomatic victories are my favourite, though I would hardly call them diplomatic victories.

I usually conquer enough civs to vote myself world leader - has a very Dr. Evil "The world is mine!" feel to it.

 

[SAHorowitz]

Thanks for all the feedback.

jeremiahrounds -- it sounds like you figure out who to "go after" after you have the UN and find out who is voting against you.. Is that correct?

I will attach a save file when I turn on that computer. Would love to know what you do in my current situation. Look for it later today or tonight.

I woud have thought you need to figure that out long before you (or someone else) buids the UN so that the votes are all lined up and maybe you need a slight tweak with a sledgehammer.

predacon -- how do you decide whose side to choose? Is it simply based on civ "score" or is there some different info you use? Like how much they like you before they ask, etc. How many points do you get for helping in a war?

Thanks.

 

[Holbek]

how do you decide whose side to choose? QUOTE]

Diplomacy screen.
Study it thoroughly, most of the times there are 2 'sides'.
One a little stronger than the other, sometimes due to uneven numbers.
You normally take the spot of the AI that naturally would have been on the weaker side, evening out the strengths of the two sides.

That is, in my experience, the standard scenario.
Now - You've got to pick one of the sides, making better relations to them, and stop trading with the other.
If you pick the strong side, theres a chance that the strongest AI from that side, will be the other candidate in the diplomatic victory - and you will never get his votes, and most of his friends will rather vote for him, than you, thus reducing your chances of winning by diplomacy.
If you pick the weak side.. well.. you can guess most of the disadvantages yourself!

The most efficient way to win a diplomatic victory is by force. Normally you can easily have enough votes of your own, the same round you build the UN, by taking land and cities.

 

[SAHorowitz]

Holbek -- thanks for the feedback. I actually wouldn't have thought that way. But now that you mentioned it, I can see you are right.

 

[Verbal79]

I just ran into major diplomatic frustration in two straight games, and I think I need to rethink my strategies for implementing it based on the posts in this thread. My last game was sort of odd. I was on a large continent with 4 other civs. I founded several religions early on, and managed to get the entire continent converted to Judaisim as their state religions. Thus, the whole lot of us were a happy, friendly bunch with no wars whatsoever. The 5 of us were all extremelly tight in the point standings, and everyone was basically in a dead heat for techs.
I figured since it was such a balanced happy crowd, it would be a good time to try for a diplo. victory (rather than risk attacking someone and them bringing in multiple allies against me.) So, long story short, I build the UN and for hundreds of years or so of build up, I make sure I have a good standing with the other civs. I've posted a screen shot of how people felt towards me right before the vote for diplo victory:

So, as you can see including myself - the 4 top civs were 'pleased' with me. Is 'pleased' not good enough? Everyone abstained or voted for freaking Tokugowa... way down at the bottom of the points list. Yeah I was at war with him at the time, but I only went to war because Saladin asked me to go to war, and I figured it would definately get him on my side for the vote if I helped him out. And then Saladin abstained when the vote came about. ARGH. Next time I play I'm just going to romp my neighbors, this was too frustrating.

 

[Yzman]

I find them really easy... Some civs that I have good relations with will always vote for me, and the one civ that I need I will usually get by making them hate the other civ with a war.

 

[SAHorowitz]

jeremiahrounds -- Here is the save game. Let me know what you would do in this situation.

Thanks.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

I managed to get the egyptian to vote for me but that leaves me short by 60. That was mutual war and religion.

Realizing i didnt have time to carve 60 more votes out of this I started over and went after egyptian and greek vote but failed.

I can say all the times ive won by diplomacy i built UN really early (1650-1850).



BTW you have a ton of permanent negative indicators which really ties your hands when your going for a diplomatic victory. Thats why i choose the egyptian vote cause she was the only one with only a -1. I think a rule of thumb is dont get involved in turf wars if your going for a war by diplomacy. Did most of those permanent negative marks have something to do with that contested island? Wasnt worth it if it was.

So anyway i failed! I would be impressed if someone came up with a recipe to turn that one around.

 

[Joh]

I just won a diplomatic victory. First I conquered about 50% of the world's population, then found someone who I hadn't pissed off along the way by doing this.

I then built her up into a powerful civ by gifting her every single tech I researched as I researched it, as well as about 50 000 gold. Eventually she voted for me...

But the reason I hadn't annoyed her with my constant wars was that she was on a seperate continent with only one other person, so she hadn't been in contact with most others. And the reason she hadn't been in contact with the others is that they were too busy fighting me to set sail and make contact with her, especially since my navy kept sinking their ships

 

[Wodan]

Keep in mind that there are two people eligible in any vote for a Dip win. Presumably you + 1 of the AIs.

Whoever the other is (builder of the UN or the top-score AI), their relations toward you don't matter one bit!

Secondly, keep in mind your goal. Your goal is not to get all the AIs (except the other eligible AI) to have the best relations with you. Your goal is to get each of them to simply have better relations toward you than they have with the eligible AI.

All that is necessary is to have better relations. As long as you haven't pissed them off enough that they abstain altogether, then you'll get your win.

Wodan

 

[Rasplorien]

I was about to lose the game to a civ winning the space race - he was 3 turns away from finishing his final part and I knew the only way to win was diplomatic. I sent spies into his city and kept destroying his production. I set my science down to 0% to continue funding this destruction. Finally, I converted my civics to the civics of the 2 surviving Civs and offered them everything I had for free to get them BOTH friendly with me. Because of this, I was voted for diplomatic victory.

 

[teoks]

you probably want a "friendly" rather than just a "pleased" status to get their votes.

and by the way, sometimes the AI abstains when they feel they've got a chance and winning too, and so no way they are going to give you or the other competitor an ez diplo win

 

[jdotmi]

Pleased won't cut it. Friendly is what you want.

 

[Finite Monkey]

Some good advice offered so far. Here is what I do when I want a diplo victory.

Religion: Spread your religion with missionaries to every civ possible, do not stop until the AI's cities ALL worship your god (or they convert to your religion whichever comes first)

Census: Try to get an idea for how many citizens each other civ has. Typically your rival will be the most populous AI Civ so focus on the others.

Feed the Masses: Are you 20 turns from the vote? Switch all of your production to "growth" focused. This won't always work but if you are down to the wire 10-12 more votes might help. You should also plan your cities to be as large (population wise) as possible.

Gifting: You need to plan ahead on this one. You need a history of positive trading. If you paid attention to the "census" you should also be helping the larger civs in their war on smaller civs. Lots of trading, gifting etc. I find the AI likes to be given small gifts over a long period of time vs. a lump sum towards the end.

Conquest: When all else fails take over as many votes from the civs that will not vote for you as possible. Invite your friends along, do whatever it takes. Focus your attacks on 2-3 large cities vs. the smaller less defended ones.

I find the diplo victories are an after thought for me. If I am going for Space Ship or Culture usually you have been pretty friendly the whole game as it is. So if I want to win early I just polish up my rep for around 10 turns then call the vote to order. I play typically on Prince or Monarch difficulties.

 

[Jantis]

I won an interesting diplomatic victory last week. There was a predominantly pleasant atmosphere to the game, with the top AIs (including me) working together against just a couple of low-tech, ruffian civs. The problem is the support for Freddy and me were about even, thus hard to get the diplo victory. Also, since we were on really good terms (pleasant and above), the option of playing them off against each other would simply backfire.

So, I joined in on a war with Freddy against one of the ruffian civs and after the war raged a few years, I asked him for a permanent alliance. With that, the "split" friendly forces were all together, and the next UN vote we won collectively, which awarded me with a diplo victory.

On another note, this is the worst "end video" for any of the wins. Kind of sad, considering a diplomatic victory isn't as easy as one might think (compared to just annihilating your opponents or sitting back and winning via culture or space race).

 

[Volstag]

I just got my first diplomatic win yesterday, after about 4 or 5 failed attempts. My observations:

1) Being a friend with everyone is impossible, and not recommended. All you need is enough votes to win -- which means you have to concentrate on the AI with the largest populations. What makes this very difficult is when the AI population leaders are at odds with each other.

2) You need to have a large percentage of votes yourself. This generally means you need a large population (relatively speaking). You gain this large population by conquering cities and/or destroying the enemies.

3) It's very difficult, IME, to get more than two, maybe three, AI to reliably vote for you. As such, those AI better have a ton of votes. Courting friendship with numerous smaller civs doesn't seem worth the effort.

In a sense, you need to approach it almost as you would a domination win, but you need to pay particular attention to the AI that are, hopefully, going to emerge as population leaders. Begin building strong ties with them well before the UN is built.