Allied City States not voting for me during UN vote?

[Juche]

I was playing as Siam in my last game and despite the fact that the game said I had secured 11 votes for the diplo victory when the time came to vote I only had 6 as 5 of the 10 city states I was allied with voted for Korea instead. I've bought votes from city states at the last minute to win against Arabia not too long ago but this time it didn't work. Did they change this in a recent patch or something? (city states voting for their long time ally as opposed to one who currently has them bought) I even pledged to protect but didn't work.

After the vote I was still allied with them so it was just kinda weird. added some screens so you can see what i'm talking about.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Generally speaking, if you bought their vote on the very last turn then it won't count. You have to do it two or three turns before the vote. Frankly, I wish you couldn't buy the votes at ALL, which is why my own mods change it to where the bribes are about half as effective, gifted units add more Influence, and city-states offer missions much more often (and not the "please kill that other city-state" one). I also substantially increased the vote thresholds. (Instead of 50% needed on small maps and 35% on huge, it's 67% on small and 50% on huge. It's very easily possible, then, for a diplo win to be entirely impossible if the AI civs have conquered too many city-states.)

Even if you like the idea of bribery and the low vote threshlds, it shouldn't be so absolute; history should count for a lot, and no alliance should be 100% certain. I'm going to be overhauling that whole thing in the near future, where possible. One of the things I'm looking at will be a sort of "specialization" thing, where allying with a Maritime civ might make another Maritime civ more or less likely to accept your bribes. (Depending on the Irrational/Aggressive/etc. flags.) Regardless, the point is that the current system is just entirely too easily manipulated; once you get on a roll with buying allegiances, you KNOW you'll win, whereas the other victory conditions give your weaker opponents a chance right up until the end. (Even if you have a huge military advantage, all one other civ has to do is capture your capital to get a Domination win.) So some overhaul is necessary, IMO.

 

[TedToaster22]

Generally speaking, if you bought their vote on the very last turn then it won't count. You have to do it two or three turns before the vote. Frankly, I wish you couldn't buy the votes at ALL, which is why my own mods change it to where the bribes are about half as effective, gifted units add more Influence, and city-states offer missions much more often (and not the "please kill that other city-state" one). I also substantially increased the vote thresholds. (Instead of 50% needed on small maps and 35% on huge, it's 67% on small and 50% on huge. It's very easily possible, then, for a diplo win to be entirely impossible if the AI civs have conquered too many city-states.)

Even if you like the idea of bribery and the low vote threshlds, it shouldn't be so absolute; history should count for a lot, and no alliance should be 100% certain. I'm going to be overhauling that whole thing in the near future, where possible. One of the things I'm looking at will be a sort of "specialization" thing, where allying with a Maritime civ might make another Maritime civ more or less likely to accept your bribes. (Depending on the Irrational/Aggressive/etc. flags.) Regardless, the point is that the current system is just entirely too easily manipulated; once you get on a roll with buying allegiances, you KNOW you'll win, whereas the other victory conditions give your weaker opponents a chance right up until the end. (Even if you have a huge military advantage, all one other civ has to do is capture your capital to get a Domination win.) So some overhaul is necessary, IMO.

*whistles* Sounds like you've been busy my friend.

 

[Spatzimaus]

*whistles* Sounds like you've been busy my friend.

You'd better believe it.
Later tonight (*crosses fingers*) I'm posting the first Alpha version of my Mythology mod (in the directory linked in my .sig), which adds (at last count) 139 new units, 86 buildings (not counting a few "behind-the-scenes" ones), a few dozen Lua-dependent custom unit abilities, 14 new techs, an entire new Yield to manage (Favor, generated through battles, monuments, and Happiness-generating Priest specialists depending on which pantheon you select)... and that's all squeezed into the first three Eras of the game.
I've just got to fix the window where you actually choose a deity to follow. Kinda important, but once that's fixed it'll be ready for playtesting.
Okay, granted you'll only be able to produce maybe 20-30 of those units yourself, since there are 7 pantheons to choose from and you'll never unlock every god in your pantheon, but I still had to make the stupid things. (Okay, fine, 57 of the units are "hero" units like Achilles, Odysseus, etc., with pretty normal stats other than a custom promotion giving them a bonus against mythological monsters, so you probably shouldn't count those. Each pantheon gets 8, and there's one generic Hero for when the mechanism breaks. That still leaves 61 mythological units that depend on what specific gods you follow, and another 3 for each pantheon that you'll get regardless of deities, so 82.)

Basically, I'm making a trilogy of content mods linked by a single mechanics-enabling Base mod. The first content mod to be completed (more or less; it still needs some 3D unit model work done) was my future-era one, inspired by Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (three new eras, 48 techs, 10 new "super-finisher" policies, and lots of custom logic like converting the space race to a mid-game thing everyone wants to take part in). A lot of the city-state stuff I mentioned was put in simply because I needed to make it much harder to end the game as soon as you complete the U.N. in the Modern Era; otherwise, what's the point of adding any future content if no one ever sees it? The second part of the trilogy to be mostly completed (overhauling the beginning eras) is the Mythology mod, and once that's done, I'm shifting to a mid-era (Renaissance-Industrial) mod focusing on diplomacy and espionage; the only reason that one's going to be finished last is that it'll probably require DLL access to do the key bits right, since one of the things we CAN'T adjust right now are empire-on-empire relationships.

So when I say that I'm going to make these sorts of changes to the voting system, I'm serious. Tt's not going to happen right away, because I'm learning as I go, but I'll get to it.

 

[Juche]

Thanks for the feedback. I still have autosaves from before the UN countdown even started so I'm gonna try and buy them off a bit earlier and see how it goes.

I do agree the system is pretty easily cheesed, I think something that takes past history in account would be a big improvement. I'm kind of interested in your mod now too!

 

[Juche]

alright well I went back to an autosave 5 turns before the vote, bought everybody off, bribed off a couple again at 2 turns before the vote that Korea had bribed away from me and those couple of turns before the vote were enough to get everybody to vote for me when the time came.

so, all in all, still very cheesable.

 

[wcbarney]

alright well I went back to an autosave 5 turns before the vote, bought everybody off, bribed off a couple again at 2 turns before the vote that Korea had bribed away from me and those couple of turns before the vote were enough to get everybody to vote for me when the time came.

so, all in all, still very cheesable.

Based on a lot of folks' hard-won experience, you should also declare war on any AI with enough in his/her treasury to bribe any of your CS allies. That makes your allies unbribable by that civ (supposedly -- although I had one game where even that happened).

 

[CultureManiac]

Based on a lot of folks' hard-won experience, you should also declare war on any AI with enough in his/her treasury to bribe any of your CS allies. That makes your allies unbribable by that civ (supposedly -- although I had one game where even that happened).

Ah, yes, this happened to me, but the other way around. Was going for a diplo win with Arabia, and Babylon declared war on me. His allied civs all became "peace blocked" so there was no way to buy them off. So I pounded him into submission, and after he begged for a peace treaty, I signed up his former allies. (Note: with the social policy giving you a minimum of 20 points with each CS, they immediately jump after a war from very angry to plus-20)

 

[HappyBuilder]

Yeah, not a fan of the Peace Blocked. City-states, mercenary in nature, should be open to bribes to switch sides.

HB