[GS] Analysis of GS victory conditions

I must be one extremely unlucky person then if on average you get 20 tourists per band (1600*20 = 32000 tourism total) given that you have a 26-50 pct chance of dying with only 1000-2000 generated on your first concert..

1000 base tourism translates to roughly 2000 adjusted tourism (route, borders, social media) assuming 7 civs, it is 14k tourism passive per turn, or the equivalent of one five star concert per turn.

And for 200 tourists, it is not 45 turns, but 1600*200/14000 = 23 turns with passive pressure.

I have serious doubts that you do not already win with 1k tourism at t100 outright without any concerts, unless you are talking about online speed? The most runaway Rome I know is never going to have 800cpt at t100, deity or not. And if the game goes to that point, why on earth do you not have 2k tourism or more? (easily done all with self founded cities)

50 pct? What promotion are you choosing? Where do you play? You must be playing in a place opposes your chosen promotion.

Yes, the guide in my signature recommends this.

Yes and yes

You only play at the civ with the highest domestic tourists, playing anywhere else halves your power. They may not have many wonders and sometimes now they place units on their wonders that do not move

No, you start at a 44.9% chance of failure unless you waited for the Hallyu civic to choose, which is waiting too long. You said you play at wonders only so you have a 44.9% chance unless you chose album cover art which provides you with a 34.5% chance of loss because they changed this in the l;ast patch from +2 levels to +1. The range used for these decisions is 3 x 6 sided dice.

I remember the 26% chance, maybe I'm getting it wrong.
However there's really not too much to do with your local tourism. A museum gives as much as 18, with computer and near-future governance it is 27?( If you have near-future governance then Hallyu is very close) Suppose you have 20 turns (in fact less than 20) to spread your tourism, that yields 27*1.5*20=800, 800*7/1600=3.5 tourists I guess, but a museum definitely costs more than a rock band. Even if you use monumentality to buy the archeologist that cost you 800 faith.

The most efficient way is still to focus on faith and use rock bands. Spare productions and gold? Yes you can build museums to further accelerate your victory, that does not contradict with rock bands.

But my point is, you shall focus mainly on Rock Bands, while using local tourism as a support, instead of vice versa.

More precisely, buying museums and archeologist with faith using Jesuit or Monumentality, is not as efficient as using rock bands. Nor do you try to improve your gold or production than improve your faith output.
 
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50 pct? What promotion are you choosing? Where do you play? You must be playing in a place opposes your chosen promotion.



I remember the 26% chance, maybe I'm getting it wrong.
However there's really not too much to do with your local tourism. A museum gives as much as 18, with computer and near-future governance it is 27?( If you have near-future governance then Hallyu is very close) Suppose you have 20 turns (in fact less than 20) to spread your tourism, that yields 27*1.5*20=800, 800*7/1600=3.5 tourists I guess, but a museum definitely costs more than a rock band. Even if you use monumentality to buy the archeologist that cost you 800 faith.

The most efficient way is still to focus on faith and use rock bands. Spare productions and gold? Yes you can build museums to further accelerate your victory, that does not contradict with rock bands.

But my point is, you shall focus mainly on Rock Bands, while using local tourism as a support, instead of vice versa.

More precisely, buying museums and archeologist with faith using Jesuit or Monumentality, is not as efficient as using rock bands. Nor do you try to improve your gold or production than improve your faith output.

I would buy museums and archaeologists with gold rather than faith for the most part... I do agree that per faith cost these aren't worth spending faith on. What I had in mind regarding self-yield tourism is rather tile-based improvements (so you will build builders). A 6-charge builder for example, costs probably 1/2 to 1/3 of a museum + archaeologist combo, if you would build 6 ski resorts with Eiffel, you get 6x6 = 36 tourism base; amplified by environmentalism and computers this is 54 tourism. You can get even more if you build a clump of Moai next to water instead; you get somewhat less if you get colossal heads + plant woods. (even if we compare using monumentality to faith-buy builders--although I would rather produce them or gold-buy them, the math becomes quite close considering a rock band is easily worth 3-4 builders and that you still have remaining room for improvements in your empire).

Anyhow on your first concert with a level 1 band, your chances of disbanding are 50%, 37% and 26%, depending on whether the promotion gives you 0, 1 or 2 extra levels respectively. With the recent album cover art nerf, if you would take that promotion the best we can do is 37% chance to die... (and in my experience only 1 out of 10+ rock bands make it to lvl 4, so the odds are quite stacked against us if our faith output is not gigantic).

In any case, what inevitably happens if you do have a cultural runaway (like your 800 cpt Rome) is that the AI nowadays will whip out the "music censorship" policy card once they reach the civic and they see your rock band in their lands... and now you must take "goes to 11" instead of "album cover art" and then perform close to their borders.
 
To be honest, do not bother with tourism at all, the only thing that counts is culture to get to Cold War as fast as possible and faith which you can get lots of through pillage. Do not bother waiting to be able to choose promotions. At the stage of the game you get to Cold War is is fairly easy to win.
If you know how to push culture you can win just with rock bands. I tested this with the Maori when rock bands came out. They are superb at this strategy and can also do it while being friendly.
 
To be honest, do not bother with tourism at all, the only thing that counts is culture to get to Cold War as fast as possible and faith which you can get lots of through pillage. Do not bother waiting to be able to choose promotions. At the stage of the game you get to Cold War is is fairly easy to win.
If you know how to push culture you can win just with rock bands. I tested this with the Maori when rock bands came out. They are superb at this strategy and can also do it while being friendly.

Have you done it post Marae nerf? I find the faith output being halved is a bit too much for me to be able to make enough rock bands for that.
 
To be honest, do not bother with tourism at all, the only thing that counts is culture to get to Cold War as fast as possible and faith which you can get lots of through pillage. Do not bother waiting to be able to choose promotions. At the stage of the game you get to Cold War is is fairly easy to win.
If you know how to push culture you can win just with rock bands. I tested this with the Maori when rock bands came out. They are superb at this strategy and can also do it while being friendly.

Just a little more stuff.

Wiping out a Civ, or someone else wipes out another Civ, or you leave the Civ a city but the city rebels to independent city, etc.
All the above cost large penalty on your local tourism.

However they do not influence the power of Rock Bands.
With Rock Bands you can easily eliminate the Civ who has most local tourists, and that accelerates your victory if you rely on Rock Bands, instead of giving you reduced tourist number if you rely on local tourism.

I would buy museums and archaeologists with gold rather than faith for the most part... I do agree that per faith cost these aren't worth spending faith on. What I had in mind regarding self-yield tourism is rather tile-based improvements (so you will build builders). A 6-charge builder for example, costs probably 1/2 to 1/3 of a museum + archaeologist combo, if you would build 6 ski resorts with Eiffel, you get 6x6 = 36 tourism base; amplified by environmentalism and computers this is 54 tourism. You can get even more if you build a clump of Moai next to water instead; you get somewhat less if you get colossal heads + plant woods. (even if we compare using monumentality to faith-buy builders--although I would rather produce them or gold-buy them, the math becomes quite close considering a rock band is easily worth 3-4 builders and that you still have remaining room for improvements in your empire).

Anyhow on your first concert with a level 1 band, your chances of disbanding are 50%, 37% and 26%, depending on whether the promotion gives you 0, 1 or 2 extra levels respectively. With the recent album cover art nerf, if you would take that promotion the best we can do is 37% chance to die... (and in my experience only 1 out of 10+ rock bands make it to lvl 4, so the odds are quite stacked against us if our faith output is not gigantic).

In any case, what inevitably happens if you do have a cultural runaway (like your 800 cpt Rome) is that the AI nowadays will whip out the "music censorship" policy card once they reach the civic and they see your rock band in their lands... and now you must take "goes to 11" instead of "album cover art" and then perform close to their borders.

Hey, you have Eiffel and still expect builders to have 1/2 to 1/3 of a museum?
At that time my builders usually cost as much as a museum , if not more.

In my most recent game I finally get 311 prod builders on online speed, where a museum cost 145.

Also, Ski Resort cannot be placed everywhere. I usually place them until I have nowhere to place.
 
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If you don't have any aid requests you need are 4 points to victory, if I'm calculating it correctly. On your T219 game there are 2 aid requests and you get 20 points, so without those aid requests you shall be 16 points before the modern Congress, right?

Let me tell you what things will be like if there're no aid requests for you. You shall guess the 1st one and the second resolution correctly, but even if you guess them correctly you first move up to 19 then move down to 16.

Yes you can win the world fair and move on to 17, and still win 30 turns later. But that's 30 turns. 30-turn is not a small number, isn't it?


So you definitely need the +2 to pass, making you gain 5 points from the modern congress.

1: Eliminating all but one is not difficult.

You're arguing against yourself. You said that "In 99% situations you need the first post-modern Congress to get +2 victory point". So you're either wrong then or wrong now... or wrong on both since you're also contradicting your original thread:

Points:
Mohabodhi 2, Potala 1, Statue of Liberty 4, make sure you have all of these.

Future tech 1, future Civic 1

That sums up to be 9.

You still need 11 more. A pre-modern congress gives you 2, a post-modern one can give you 5, +1 when the world fair being completed.

Number of pre-modern congresses: Online: T50,70,90 . 3 chances.
Standard: T90,120,150,180. 4 chances

9+4*2=17<20

So first you said you can get 17 points before the modern congress, then you changed to 18 and for the sake of argument I based my explanation on that, now you're saying it's 16. Which one is it?

I actually went to my game and checked. These are the turns I got the congress.

1º congress - 94
2º congress - 124
3º congress - 154
4º congress - 184
5º congress - 214
I would get a 6º congress on the turn 244 if I kept playing

and these are the turns each era started (I won on the industrial era):

Classical 53
Medieval 93
Renaissance 145
Industrial 194
Modern 234 - 254

It's important to note that I'm playing on Emperor, because:

That is not deity, so the time of world enters modern is delayed, so as the victory time.

So on Emperor, you actually get 10, potentially 12 points in the congress before the modern era, if your 6º congress triggers before modern, to a total of 19 or 22 points. Unless you can reliably manipulate the length of each era, there's nothing you can do about that. Without Aid request, you gonna wait into your 6º congress to win.

What matter for you is Deity and based on your own estimative, you would get 4 congresses before modern, which means that on a situation where you get no Aid requests, you can win earlier on Deity than on Emperor. On Emperor my 5º congress is pre-modern, so I can get only two points. On Deity it's post-modern, so I can get 3 points without winning the Diplo vote. 9+8+3=20.


2: This +2 giantly makes you more robust to your Diplo victory, if you get this +2 you can even make some incorrect guesses on previous congresses.

For example, can you ensure that you always guess the right luxury to be banned?

If you get the +2 then you don't even need to worry about this. You have 2 more chances to make incorrect guesses!

You got a good example. This resolution isn't as straightforward as the AI always voting to boost trade with Trade CS, but you can get pretty close of certainty then ensure with your own favors that you will win, if you feel like that is even necessary. The AI always vote to ban, so which Luxury? The luxury that have the highest amount of extra copies if you add all extra copies of all leaders that own it. It's not that simple though since leaders that own the luxury won't ban their own luxury. So you need to see who owns it and how much favors they have. They will vote on the second luxury with highest amount of extra copies. Based on that, you can calculate which one have more potential for votes and vote on it. If one luxury doesn't have enough advantage over the other to make you confortable, you can invest some favors to guarantee the luxury you picked will win.

Of course you get more confortable if you eliminate other Civs, assuming you don't end up losing points in the process because of grievances, that's the reason I wrote this:

You should consider taking out other Civs if things aren't going your way. It will make things easier since it's one less Civ voting, but it's not the strategy to go for from the get go, it's a plan B like in any other victory that you're trying to achieve peacefully: You can give up at any time and go full Gandhi on everyone. Keep in mind that you can get a penalty as high as -10 favors for grievances, so be careful not to shoot yourself on the foot, mostly in early game. Be sure that you can either control your grievances or have enough favors to counter the penalty. If you take a Civ down but lose more favor than it's worth in the process, you might find yourself in a worse situation. This is another flaw in the Diplo domination strategy, if grievances gets out of control when you still don't have a strong favors income, you might start losing Diplo points because you can't outvote the AI that you didn't eliminate.

So you can eliminate other Civs if things aren't going your way. What I'm arguing against is taking this strategy from the get go and seeing Diplomatic as a matter of domination, to the point of even seeing warmonger Civs as more suited for Diplomatic. That isn't true and is even less true in lower difficulties since you get more points before the modern era. If you lose some points and aren't in a position to win in the first modern congress without winning the diplo vote nor you're willing to rely on Aid requests to win, then go for it, kill everyone without mercy. Taking this as Plan A, as the main strategy is unnecessary, in the same way you can go out and kill the Civ with highest culture if a cultural isn't going your way but you don't start with that.
 
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Just a little more stuff.

Wiping out a Civ, or someone else wipes out another Civ, or you leave the Civ a city but the city rebels to independent city, etc.
All the above cost large penalty on your local tourism.

However they do not influence the power of Rock Bands.
With Rock Bands you can easily eliminate the Civ who has most local tourists, and that accelerates your victory if you rely on Rock Bands, instead of giving you reduced tourist number if you rely on local tourism.



Hey, you have Eiffel and still expect builders to have 1/2 to 1/3 of a museum?
At that time my builders usually cost as much as a museum , if not more.

In my most recent game I finally get 311 prod builders on online speed, where a museum cost 145.

Also, Ski Resort cannot be placed everywhere. I usually place them until I have nowhere to place.


No, what I said was 1 builder is 1/2 to 1/3 of a museum + archaeologist (1250 + 1600 gold), builders typically come at around 800+ gold that time (although remind me... I believe it is chop value that goes up per tech, but builder cost is dependant on how many builders you have built so far rather than tech, no?). I believe if you go by production instead, it shall still be a similar ratio still.

I see now what you mean, kill everyone (including the culture leader) except for 1, and then rock bomb the remaining one... yes that obviously works. You can basically say to heck with passive tourism then since with only 1 other civ it becomes utterly meaningless.

Well, that is one way to win... but in that case this is similar to the "domination in disguise" religious and diplomatic victories where you just simply delay your own win time in order to win by the specified condition... so play every game like domination.
 
Culture begets science. Of course you need science but lily is talking only about low turns to win.
you crazy, culture is the key to unlocking disgusting amounts of science. Someone not using culture in this way will show 500-1000 science per turn while those that do will show 2000-2500
Culture is the key to unlocking moar science.

There are many science threads that discuss this in more detail. Beelining rocketry to launch the moon landing as soon as possible. The moon landing gives you a huge amount of culture if done right which the pushes you up to those high end culture thing that provide high science. The royal society allows you to complete projects with workers rather than production but naturally if you can chop in a space project it is even faster than workers.

This thread by lily seems primarily at trying to highlight how a different thing is required for these victory types which provides a thread of symmetry, sort of a written piece of art. It stretches some boundaries a bit and linguistically is a bit rough but still, I like it for what seems to be its intent to me. It also is quite vocal for lily which is great.

With respect, this thread seems to miss two points. The first is that the primary condition for a particular victory is, in most cases, not complicated... for example, Science is the most important factor for a Science victory, bar none. The second works in tandem with the first but basically is that other factors at play can all bolster your primary factor to varying degrees, and it's rarely as simple as 'focus on Culture to improve Science'.

Translated: There is no question that Culture helps your Science output, but if you don't have strong Science to begin with, the Culture isn't likely to help much. If, however, you seem to have maxed out on primary Science and are wondering how you can improve, then look to Culture as a provider of additive and multiplicative factors.

We all inherently know this already in the general premise that "Domination helps everything".
 
With respect, this thread seems to miss two points. The first is that the primary condition for a particular victory is, in most cases, not complicated... for example, Science is the most important factor for a Science victory, bar none. The second works in tandem with the first but basically is that other factors at play can all bolster your primary factor to varying degrees, and it's rarely as simple as 'focus on Culture to improve Science'.

Translated: There is no question that Culture helps your Science output, but if you don't have strong Science to begin with, the Culture isn't likely to help much. If, however, you seem to have maxed out on primary Science and are wondering how you can improve, then look to Culture as a provider of additive and multiplicative factors.

We all inherently know this already in the general premise that "Domination helps everything".

For science sure, though I think the implication is to focus on culture first and backfill science as you are racing for the +5% science per suzerainship card at globalization

For culture: you could win with faith as you your primary over culture, because rock bands have inherent tourism. If they changed rock band's tourism to be based on your tourism output - i.e. like how the Civ 5 Great Musicians functioned, then it would be culture/tourism primary, faith second.
 
I'm trying to understand the pacing of the DV and when the points can be accrued. Could someone please clarify?

My understanding is that each world era, starting from Medieval will start with a World Congress. If you guess those correctly you can get 2 DVP per era before the Modern era. The eras are:
1. Ancient
2. Classical
3. Medieval
4. Renaissance
5. Industrial
6. Modern
7. Atomic
8. Information
9. Future

This first time that the Diplomatic Victory Vote appears in a session is in the Modern Era. Since this discussion revolves around winning at that session, let's focus on what happens before the modern era:
1. From Medieval through Industrial is 3 eras for a total possible of 6 DVP.
2. Other non-chance sources of points are
  • wonders: Mahabodhi Temple +2, Potala Palace +1, Statue of Liberty +4; total of 7 DVP.
  • techs/civics: Seasteads (Future Era tech) +1, and Global Warming Mitigation (Future Era civic); total of +2 DVP
Sum total of the above two is: 6 (from Regular Session votes) + 7 (from wonders) + 2 (from future tech/civic) = 15.

I haven't kept a close eye on what era the world is at when I unlock certain techs/civics, and I'm also not a fast player, so my question is, is it common to unlock all techs and all civics before the world even reaches the modern era? If yes, then excellent and I have a lot of improving to do. More importantly for this discussion, if the answer here is yes, unlocking these future tech and civic is achievable before the world enters Modern Era, then without chance-based events like military/disaster aid, the only way to win upon Modern Era is to win the diplomatic victory vote and the other 2 random resolutions for a total of 5 points getting you to 20. I don't know how much the AI invests against the winner at 15 points but if it's impossible to outvote them then conquering all other civs as @Lily_Lancer is suggesting is the only way to guarantee winning the vote and winning this fast (assuming no points from chance-based events).

If you will allow for some chance (and I don't think it's unreasonable to do so), then from what I've understood, winning either a Military Aid Request or a natural disaster Aid request also gets you 2 points and you can reach 17 points with the future tech/civic. In this case, you can still win at the Modern Era congress by voting against yourself and winning the other two resolutions for a total of 3 points that count to 20 before you are deducted -2 points for the dvp vote against you.

From my understanding, if you play the DV game correctly (ie. you are a clever diplomat) then you know how to use diplomacy to your favor such that you are almost guaranteed to participate in at least one aid request before the modern era. You can do this by avoiding friendship requests for example so you're never excluded from a military aid request due to friendship with the aggressor. This to me, is the style of play that was intended towards the DV, being a clever diplomat to get more points in a shorter amount of time. The other way (@Lily_Lancer's domination method) is really the way of a Dictator, like democratic voting for leaders who are actually dictators forcing the population to vote for them. Both are valid, but I think also, that it's possible to win DV in the same amount of time from either method.

Am I wrong? Have I missed any other potential sources of DVP? Also please let me know your answer to the question about reaching future tech/civic before the world reaches modern era, it seems that is the key to resolving this debate.

EDIT: According to @Lily_Lancer and @leandrombraz, in comments below, it is actually possible to get more regular sessions than the number of eras since they happen every 30 turns, while eras can go 40 turns. In that case it is possible to reach Modern Era with 17 points, even without an aid request. Meaning it is possible to win in the same amount of time peacefully, as it is with the dictator strategy without any chance-based events, though it isn't guaranteed.
 
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I'm trying to understand the pacing of the DV and when the points can be accrued. Could someone please clarify?

My understanding is that each world era, starting from Classical will start with a World Congress. If you guess those correctly you can get 2 DVP per era before the Modern era. The eras are:
.

World Congress start at the beginning of Medieval era.
 
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With respect, this thread seems to miss two points. The first is that the primary condition for a particular victory is, in most cases, not complicated... for example, Science is the most important factor for a Science victory, bar none. The second works in tandem with the first but basically is that other factors at play can all bolster your primary factor to varying degrees, and it's rarely as simple as 'focus on Culture to improve Science'.

Translated: There is no question that Culture helps your Science output, but if you don't have strong Science to begin with, the Culture isn't likely to help much. If, however, you seem to have maxed out on primary Science and are wondering how you can improve, then look to Culture as a provider of additive and multiplicative factors.

We all inherently know this already in the general premise that "Domination helps everything".
I disagree, and agree with OP. If I go for a SV, my culture is pushed above my science for a large part of the game. To rush higher level government who will in turn give me more science. So culture is primary and science secondary until culture reached its purpose.
 
I'm trying to understand the pacing of the DV and when the points can be accrued. Could someone please clarify?

My understanding is that each world era, starting from Classical will start with a World Congress. If you guess those correctly you can get 2 DVP per era before the Modern era. The eras are:
1. Ancient
2. Classical
3. Medieval
4. Renaissance
5. Industrial
6. Modern
7. Atomic
8. Information
9. Future

This first time that the Diplomatic Victory Vote appears in a session is in the Modern Era. Since this discussion revolves around winning at that session, let's focus on what happens before the modern era:
1. From Classical through Industrial is 4 eras for a total possible of 8 DVP.
2. Other non-chance sources of points are
  • wonders: Mahabodhi Temple +2, Potala Palace +1, Statue of Liberty +4; total of 7 DVP.
  • techs/civics: Seasteads (Future Era tech) +1, and Global Warming Mitigation (Future Era civic); total of +2 DVP
Sum total of the above two is: 8 (from Regular Session votes) + 7 (from wonders) + 2 (from future tech/civic) = 17.

I haven't kept a close eye on what era the world is at when I unlock certain techs/civics, and I'm also not a fast player, so my question is, is it common to unlock all techs and all civics before the world even reaches the modern era? If yes, then excellent and I have a lot of improving to do. More importantly for this discussion, if the answer here is yes, unlocking these future tech and civic is achievable before the world enters Modern Era, then doesn't that mean you can in fact win by voting against yourself in the Modern Era congress, just like @leandrombraz has been saying? On the other hand, conquering all other civs as @Lily_Lancer is suggesting simply makes it possible to actually win the Diplomatic Victory Vote thus guaranteeing victory.

If no, (I have a lot of improving to do regardless), but that would mean 15 points by modern era unless you also gain some points through special, chance-based, sessions no? Excluding points from special sessions for now, if you reach Modern Era with only 15 points, then the only way to win at that session is to win all 3 votes of the Modern Era session: the 2 random resolutions + the Diplomatic Victory Vote for a total of 5 points. In this case, probably the only realistic way to win is indeed what @Lily_Lancer is saying, which is to have only 1 other civ remaining so that you can brute force the votes in your favor, otherwise they will all vote against you and will outvote you.

So, if we're leaving chance out of it, I think the crucial question (to me, because of my ignorance) that makes a lot of difference is: How likely is it that you can unlock both Global Warming mitigation and Seasteads before the world enters the Modern Era?

If you will allow for some chance (and I don't think it's unreasonable to do so), then from what I've understood, winning either a Military Aid Request or a natural disaster Aid request also gets you 2 points and you can reach 17 points without the future tech/civic (or 19 points with them). From my understanding, if you play the DV game correctly (ie. you are a clever diplomat) then you know how to use diplomacy to your favor such that you are almost guaranteed to participate in at least one aid request before the modern era. You can do this by avoiding friendship requests for example so you're never excluded from a military aid request due to friendship with the aggressor. This to me, is the style of play that was intended towards the DV, being a clever diplomat to get more points in a shorter amount of time. The other way (@Lily_Lancer's domination method) is really the way of a Dictator, like democratic voting for leaders who are actually dictators forcing the population to vote for them. Both are valid, but I think also, that it's possible to win DV in the same amount of time from either method.

Am I wrong? Also please let me know your answer to the question about reaching future tech/civic before the world reaches modern era, it seems that is the key to resolving this debate.


The first congress happens at the end of the classical era, then you get one every 30 turns regardless of era. You can have 2 congresses in the same era if the era end up being long.

You can research all techs before modern and playing Diplomatic actually help you achieve that, because you gonna focus on getting as much City-States as you can. City-States not only give you a lot of yields and powerful bonuses, but it also boost by a ridiculous amount your culture and science once you unlock the International Space Agency and the Collective Activism policies. Just like on a scientific, you can focus on culture to unlock this policies and boost your science/culture. By then, you will be researching one tech/civic every turn.

If you don't unlock the tech/civic trees points in time, you will win later without winning the diplo vote or an aid request, as late as it takes for you to unlock both tree points, plus the time into the next congress, but you will win. You can zero out the post-modern congress winning 3 points then losing 3, so it won't affect you. Losing resolutions in the congress would be more damaging than delaying your science/culture progress, because you're guaranteed to get the tech/civic tree points eventually, while a lost resolution point is lost forever, forcing you to get it from another source.
 
World Congress start at the beginning of Medieval era.
Yes, "at end of classical era", my bad. I have corrected and updated my previous post. Thank you.

Actually with this correction and updated analysis I think the end result seems pretty balanced. You can potentially win DV in the same amount of time whether you become a dictator conquering all but one civ, or you play peacefully. The difference is that if you manage to pull off the dictator route, you're pretty much guaranteed a win. If you go the "diplomatic" route, you have to actually be a smart diplomat and ensure you win at least one aid request, but you can still win in the same amount of time. There is chance involved, but I think the clever diplomat wouldn't see it as chance, rather skill. Poetic stuff?

Of course this assumes that you manage to get all necessary wonders, reach the end of the civic/tech trees in time, and win congress votes with 100% accuracy (unless you get extra votes). All of these are apparently quite achievable.
 
Yes, "at end of classical era", my bad. I have corrected and updated my previous post. Thank you.

Actually with this correction and updated analysis I think the end result seems pretty balanced. You can potentially win DV in the same amount of time whether you become a dictator conquering all but one civ, or you play peacefully. The difference is that if you manage to pull off the dictator route, you're pretty much guaranteed a win. If you go the "diplomatic" route, you have to actually be a smart diplomat and ensure you win at least one aid request, but you can still win in the same amount of time. There is chance involved, but I think the clever diplomat wouldn't see it as chance, rather skill. Poetic stuff?

Of course this assumes that you manage to get all necessary wonders, reach the end of the civic/tech trees in time, and win congress votes with close to 100% accuracy. All of these are apparently quite achievable.

First you need the aid request. That's really rare if you play standard map and regular disaster level (instead of high disaster level)

Winning congress resolution is also not really guaranteened. For example, can you always guess correctly which luxury is to be banned?

However if you win the +2 you have enough space to miss one or two points but still win Diplo V in the first modern congress, making your victory much more robust.

Finally I really suspect the number of Suzerain you can get if you leave too many Civs alive. There're only 12 CSs on standard map, and everyone else may upgrade his Amani to the double envoy upgrade so that you can hardly match his envoys (you only have 1 Amani)at least in that CS. Also AI love to capture CS without his Amani so there may not be much alive if you don't wipe those CS killers out.

So how many CS will you eventually Suzerain if you don't go dom?(on standard map instead of those imbalanced 20+ CS maps that guy plays on) I'm really doubtful on it.
 
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First you need the aid request. That's really rare if you play standard map and regular disaster level (instead of high disaster level)

Winning congress resolution is also not really guaranteened. For example, can you always guess correctly which luxury is to be banned?

However if you win the +2 you have enough space to miss one or two points but still win Diplo V in the first modern congress, making your victory much more robust.

Finally I really suspect the number of Suzerain you can get if you leave too many Civs alive. There're only 12 CSs on standard map, and everyone else may upgrade his Amani to the double envoy upgrade so that you can hardly match his envoys (you only have 1 Amani)at least in that CS. Also AI love to capture CS without his Amani so there may not be much alive if you don't wipe those CS killers out.

So how many CS will you eventually Suzerain if you don't go dom? I'm really doubtful on it.
I'm glad we agree. Dictator route guarantees the win. Diplomat route is not a guarantee but still possible in the same amount of time. The choice is for the player to make, I think this is beautiful.
 
I'm glad we agree. Dictator route guarantees the win. Diplomat route is not a guarantee but still possible in the same amount of time. The choice is for the player to make, I think this is beautiful.

To make things clear:

The "diplomat route" is still possible in his "huge map with additional CSs".

Not really possible in the same amount of time on the standard deity setting. Too tricky.
If anyone can do that every game by guessing everything correctly instead of Save/Load to pre-look the outcomes, he really shall go to Las Vegas.
 
However if you win the +2 you have enough space to miss one or two points but still win Diplo V in the first modern congress, making your victory much more robust.
Wait, how does this work? You get exactly 15 points if you're not counting chance-based events, which means there is no room for error even if you win the +2. Do you mean there can be room from error due to potential chance-based events? That's fine if you do, but then you can't also at the same time say:
First you need the aid request. That's really rare if you play standard map and regular disaster level (instead of high disaster level)

Winning congress resolution is also not really guaranteened. For example, can you always guess correctly which luxury is to be banned?
You have to be consistent. Either you include chance-based events in all scenarios, or you exclude them in all scenarios.
 
Wait, how does this work? You get exactly 15 points if you're not counting chance-based events, which means there is no room for error even if you win the +2. Do you mean there can be room from error due to potential chance-based events? That's fine if you do, but then you can't also at the same time say:

You have to be consistent. Either you include chance-based events in all scenarios, or you exclude them in all scenarios.

You actually get 17. Since World Congress happens every 30 turns but era changes every 40 turns, leaving space for an additional pre-modern congress. (only on standard speed, on online speed there's no such space.)

If someone guesses everything correctly he may win by "diplomat" way. Some are easy to guess, for example, the +100% production on city center, or -50% production cost on units always pass. Culture bomb is also easy since mostly every one may vote for himself by 1 or 2 and you vote yourself up by 3 you'll win.

However you have to guess 10 times without making a mistake. In fact 12 if we consider the modern congress.

Now please, guess which luxury is to be banned:crazyeye::crazyeye::crazyeye::crazyeye::crazyeye:
 
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Yes, "at end of classical era", my bad. I have corrected and updated my previous post. Thank you.

Actually with this correction and updated analysis I think the end result seems pretty balanced. You can potentially win DV in the same amount of time whether you become a dictator conquering all but one civ, or you play peacefully. The difference is that if you manage to pull off the dictator route, you're pretty much guaranteed a win. If you go the "diplomatic" route, you have to actually be a smart diplomat and ensure you win at least one aid request, but you can still win in the same amount of time. There is chance involved, but I think the clever diplomat wouldn't see it as chance, rather skill. Poetic stuff?

Of course this assumes that you manage to get all necessary wonders, reach the end of the civic/tech trees in time, and win congress votes with 100% accuracy (unless you get extra votes). All of these are apparently quite achievable.

There's a bump on the way that you need to consider. You get up to a -10 penalty for grievances and you will have a hard time making allies, so if you don't time you conquest right, you might find yourself in a position where you have no favors to win a resolution, so I wouldn't say you have a guaranteed win. You're risking losing in the congress early to guarantee that you gonna win later. By going peacefully, I have better chances in the congress than someone who is in the process of eliminating other Civs. Even if you take the dictator route, it still better to play with a Civ that generate more favors, so you can counter this penalty effectively.

First you need the aid request. That's really rare if you play standard map and regular disaster level (instead of high disaster level)

For example, can you always guess correctly which luxury is to be banned?

Am I a joke to you?

You got a good example. This resolution isn't as straightforward as the AI always voting to boost trade with Trade CS, but you can get pretty close of certainty then ensure with your own favors that you will win, if you feel like that is even necessary. The AI always vote to ban, so which Luxury? The luxury that have the highest amount of extra copies if you add all extra copies of all leaders that own it. It's not that simple though since leaders that own the luxury won't ban their own luxury. So you need to see who owns it and how much favors they have. They will vote on the second luxury with highest amount of extra copies. Based on that, you can calculate which one have more potential for votes and vote on it. If one luxury doesn't have enough advantage over the other to make you confortable, you can invest some favors to guarantee the luxury you picked will win.


First you need the aid request. That's really rare if you play standard map and regular disaster level (instead of high disaster level)

Finally I really suspect the number of Suzerain you can get if you leave too many Civs alive. There're only 12 CSs on standard map, and everyone else may upgrade his Amani to the double envoy upgrade so that you can hardly match his envoys (you only have 1 Amani)at least in that CS. Also AI love to capture CS without his Amani so there may not be much alive if you don't wipe those CS killers out.

So how many CS will you eventually Suzerain if you don't go dom?(on standard map instead of those imbalanced 20+ CS maps that guy plays on) I'm really doubtful on it.

Considering that the AI hoard envoys, that it isn't even close as effective compared to a player on completing CS quests, and that you can use policies to boost your envoys and play with a Civ that is good at that? Your chances of getting a lot of Suzerains is pretty good, not to say guaranteed. Liberating city-states is half the fun in playing Diplomatic. Fun fact: You can liberate City states without eliminating whoever conquered it. Going dom will reduce your favor by -10, equivalent to 10 City-States without Országház and prive you from alliances, so you're taking a serious hit while you conquer other Civs.

If you gonna make little of someone who play on huge with 20 CS, can I make little of your Domination victories on standard? Because I'm just as impressed by domination on standard as you're by someone who plays Diplo with 20+ CS.

Edit: not to mention that Standard have less Civs, so it's easier to play peaceful there, despite the decreased amount of CS.

Edit 2: Another fun fact, you can discuss game mechanics without making little of how other people play. You should try it.
 
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