Diplomacy Changes Needed Next Patch

[meowschwitz]

I'm playing Emperor and looking to go for a Science Victory. As part of that, something I do every game, I try and ally with many if not all city-states. At this point I haven't gotten Globalization yet I still have 38 delegates, far and beyond enough to win the Diplo Victory. I know that I'll win in 20 turns when the WC election happens because the AI only votes for themselves and not against you or for others. So here's how I think this could be fixed to make a more satisfying diplo victory.

1. If the host has enough votes to pass anything on their own then everyone should vote against proposals that increase their delegates unless paid to do otherwise or Dominanted culturally.

2. Civilizations can't use their base amount of votes to choose themselves for the world leader. This was how it worked before and actually rewarded diplomatic play.

3. Civilizations will always vote for a leader that shares the same idealogy if possible

4. Civilizations will be more likely to vote for a civilization that dominates them culturally or have a Dof

5. Liberated Civilizations will always vote for the Liberator for the World Leader

6. Civilizations can vote against, (instead of voting for someone), a civilization with another Ideology that has declared war against them in the past.

Edit:

7.The World Leader election shouldn't become available until Globalization is reached, to make it so you don't just stumble into a diplo victory but actually have to pursue it. (I also think that Globalization should have one more required tech as right now it's really easy to beeline)

8. When other civs see that you have 75%+ of the total city-states allied they should go on a major city-state offensive and try to wrest control from you.

These would promote more diplomatic play as opposed to economic play. City-State allies would still be vital, but wouldn't be the end all be all.

 

[godman85]

I'm playing Emperor and looking to go for a Science Victory. As part of that, something I do every game, I try and ally with many if not all city-states. At this point I haven't gotten Globalization yet I still have 38 delegates, far and beyond enough to win the Diplo Victory. I know that I'll win in 20 turns when the WC election happens because the AI only votes for themselves and not against you or for others. So here's how I think this could be fixed to make a more satisfying diplo victory.

1. If the host has enough votes to pass anything on their own then everyone should vote against that proposal unless paid to do otherwise or Dominanted culturally.

2. Civilizations can't use their base amount of votes to choose themselves for the world leader. This was how it worked before and actually rewarded diplomatic play.

3. Civilizations will always vote for a leader that shares the same idealogy if possible

4. Civilizations will be more likely to vote for a civilization that dominates them culturally or have a Dof

5. Liberated Civilizations will always vote for the Liberator for the World Leader

6. Civilizations can vote against, (instead of voting for someone), a civilization with another Ideology that has declared war against them in the past.

This would promote more diplomatic play as opposed to economic play. City-State allies would still be vital, but wouldn't be the end all be all.

none of this is important.


They need to focus on getting the early game to work properly again. Early era civs are using late game strats from peaceful civs.

Everyone is scared to take advantage of their UUs. Its simply sad that 0 wars or even denouncements are the norm for anything before the medieval period.


People have played entire games with no more then 2 archers.

 

[meowschwitz]

none of this is important.


They need to focus on getting the early game to work properly again. Early era civs are using late game strats from peaceful civs.

Everyone is scared to take advantage of their UUs. Its simply sad that 0 wars or even denouncements are the norm for anything before the medieval period.


People have played entire games with no more then 2 archers.

I never said that the lack of aggression wasn't important, but the reverting to pre fall patch diplomatic problems is important too. It makes the diplomatic victory far easier than the others and makes something that could be engaging not.

 

[ptoss1]

4. Civilizations will be more likely to vote for a civilization that dominates them culturally or have a Dof

5. Liberated Civilizations will always vote for the Liberator for the World Leader

6. Civilizations can vote against, (instead of voting for someone), a civilization with another Ideology that has declared war against them in the past.

Maybe.

 

[digrosz]

They should at least change it so that noone can vote for themselves. The rest would be kind of nice too, I guess

 

[ptoss1]

They should at least change it so that noone can vote for themselves. The rest would be kind of nice too, I guess

lol

if i can't vote for myself what am i going to do with my bajillion votes

 

[Yzman]

They should at least change it so that noone can vote for themselves. The rest would be kind of nice too, I guess

If I can't vote for myself why bother voting? I want to win the game. I always thought it was silly in the old games when other civs would vote for you to win the game. Its better that your CS and other diplo votes choose who wins.

The diplo victory is basically an economic victory, which is ok.

We have cultural, military, scientific/production and money/diplo.

I think the system works really well.

 

[Morthis]

none of this is important.


They need to focus on getting the early game to work properly again. Early era civs are using late game strats from peaceful civs.

Everyone is scared to take advantage of their UUs. Its simply sad that 0 wars or even denouncements are the norm for anything before the medieval period.


People have played entire games with no more then 2 archers.

On what difficulty though? The AI seems to very strongly consider his military strength vs yours before deciding on war, and on immortal/deity they almost always have a crapload of units. I'm 5/5 so far in terms of getting war decced on immortal+ if I don't have an army. Most of them were from AI's that had a DoF/trade routes/and were friendly. They simply backstab you if you don't build an army because you're too easy to kill.

If someone claims they beat immortal or deity in BNW with only 2 archers I'd love to actually see it, because in my experience so far you wouldn't make it past turn 75.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

lol

if i can't vote for myself what am i going to do with my bajillion votes

Split them to support or hinder somebody else's.

 

[ptoss1]

The problem with CiV is that there are victory conditions at all.
Firaxis has to balance between making CiV a simulation and an actual game.
In Vanilla the civs would actually tell you to stop winning the game when you were nearing it. Everybody hated that so they changed it.

The point is that the developers have to make it so that the player FEELS like he's manipulating the game in a fashion that is organic and similar to what we consider real circumstances. We want the benefits of a game and an immersive story.

I agree with some things you're saying that has to do with AI logic, but at some point I still want to feel like there's a challenge.

 

[Yzman]

Split them to support or hinder somebody else's.

No one would ever win and my votes would be wasted. If I can only use my votes to vote NAY on someone else, then why would anyone ever win?

They wouldn't. Don't think of it as I am voting for myself. Think of it that my 20 allies are voting me in.

 

[meowschwitz]

lol

if i can't vote for myself what am i going to do with my bajillion votes

If I can't vote for myself why bother voting? I want to win the game. I always thought it was silly in the old games when other civs would vote for you to win the game. Its better that your CS and other diplo votes choose who wins.

The diplo victory is basically an economic victory, which is ok.

We have cultural, military, scientific/production and money/diplo.

I think the system works really well.

That's why I said that you shouldn't be able to use your base amount of delegates vote for yourself. That would still reward playing diplomatically by getting things like world religion or ideology passed.

 

[ptoss1]

No one would ever win and my votes would be wasted. If I can only use my votes to vote NAY on someone else, then why would anyone ever win?

They wouldn't. Don't think of it as I am voting for myself. Think of it that my 20 allies are voting me in.

I think it's a problem of presentation. In the UI it seems like I gain vote points, but really in the meta world, it's a bunch of "delegates", which is sort of immersion breaking. Maybe there should be a random element where some votes will go rogue and vote for somebody else.

 

[CaptainUnknown]

The real issue is that Gold late game is to easy to come by so you can buy up any and all city-states before hand. I just had a situation similar to you except I won by science victory 1 turn before the world leader vote. I had around 430 gpt average and I had most city-states as allies since the modern era. However my gold came from the patronage and commerce policy trees so it's hard to just nerf gold.

In the end, if the AI was more reliable at detecting what was going on maybe that could fix it. Gold is also super powerful with the freedom "buy spaceship parts" policy and that was the only reason why I won with science.

For all those saying they have little war, I'd like to at least mention that the past two games I've played, both on king, I have gotten DOWed (by Zulu and Japan) early game. I think it's much more dependent on AI flavor though now.

 

[ptoss1]

The real issue is that Gold late game is to easy to come by so you can buy up any and all city-states before hand. I just had a situation similar to you except I won by science victory 1 turn before the world leader vote. I had around 430 gpt average and I had most city-states as allies since the modern era. However my gold came from the patronage and commerce policy trees so it's hard to just nerf gold.

In the end, if the AI was more reliable at detecting what was going on maybe that could fix it. Gold is also super powerful with the freedom "buy spaceship parts" policy and that was the only reason why I won with science.

For all those saying they have little war, I'd like to at least mention that the past two games I've played, both on king, I have gotten DOWed (by Zulu and Japan) early game. I think it's much more dependent on AI flavor though now.

Every single civ in my last game wanted me to go to war with them against Japan. Sort of weird considering Japan hadn't done anything terribly bad except settling in the middle of a bunch of other civs.

 

[meowschwitz]

The real issue is that Gold late game is to easy to come by so you can buy up any and all city-states before hand. I just had a situation similar to you except I won by science victory 1 turn before the world leader vote. I had around 430 gpt average and I had most city-states as allies since the modern era. However my gold came from the patronage and commerce policy trees so it's hard to just nerf gold.

In the end, if the AI was more reliable at detecting what was going on maybe that could fix it. Gold is also super powerful with the freedom "buy spaceship parts" policy and that was the only reason why I won with science.

For all those saying they have little war, I'd like to at least mention that the past two games I've played, both on king, I have gotten DOWed (by Zulu and Japan) early game. I think it's much more dependent on AI flavor though now.

I was in Patronage up to the science policy and got Machu Pichu but I wasn't in Commerce at all. I also managed to get the Colossus early game so that might be why it was so easy in the late game to buy everything up.

Perhaps lowering quest rewards would help fix the ease of getting CS as that would make it so sending trade routes and just playing the game didn't end up giving you free influence.

Still I think actually putting importance on diplomacy could really help the end result for that type of victory. Also Globalization should definitely be required in my eyes to get enough votes.

 

[Morthis]

1. If the host has enough votes to pass anything on their own then everyone should vote against that proposal unless paid to do otherwise or Dominanted culturally.

2. Civilizations can't use their base amount of votes to choose themselves for the world leader. This was how it worked before and actually rewarded diplomatic play.

3. Civilizations will always vote for a leader that shares the same idealogy if possible

4. Civilizations will be more likely to vote for a civilization that dominates them culturally or have a Dof

5. Liberated Civilizations will always vote for the Liberator for the World Leader

6. Civilizations can vote against, (instead of voting for someone), a civilization with another Ideology that has declared war against them in the past.

This would promote more diplomatic play as opposed to economic play. City-State allies would still be vital, but wouldn't be the end all be all.

1) How does this make sense? Let's say I put something up for vote that the AI actually wants to see pass, but because I could potentially determine the outcome by myself if I commit all my delegates to this vote they'll vote against what they want just to be difficult? I don't know how anyone could make the argument that acting like a 5 year old by picking the opposite of what someone else wants every time is better diplomacy than voting for the option you like the most.

2) Your base vote is 1 when world congress first starts. It's largely insignificant when compared to the bonus votes for city states/host/world religion/ideology, etc. If you don't have the latter in terms of bonus votes, you won't win either way. If you do have them, your 1 base vote is extremely unlikely to make the difference.

3) With what? All votes or only the 1 vote? If all votes, how would the AI ever win diplo?

4) Are we even sure this isn't in? Getting an AI to vote for you is like a trade negotiation, which is affected by how much he likes you (which in turn is influenced by ideology and DoF).

5) I guess, they're gonna have almost no votes tho so I'm not sure it would impact much either way.

6) This isn't how voting for a leader works. It's also pointlessly drawing out the game. If someone has every CS to win the diplo victory the first time it comes up, they were already winning anyway. If they don't, it'll already take multiple world leader votes before they have the votes needed to win. Dragging it out forever by making the AI vote against you constantly just means you'll win by another victory condition before diplo is possible.

 

[ptoss1]

I think (haven't tested this), the only way you can get another civ to vote for you is through diplomat diplomacy. At least that's what I've been reading. I'll do tests on this later when I get a good game up.

 

[meowschwitz]

1) How does this make sense? Let's say I put something up for vote that the AI actually wants to see pass, but because I could potentially determine the outcome by myself if I commit all my delegates to this vote they'll vote against what they want just to be difficult? I don't know how anyone could make the argument that acting like a 5 year old by picking the opposite of what someone else wants every time is better diplomacy than voting for the option you like the most.

2) Your base vote is 1 when world congress first starts. It's largely insignificant when compared to the bonus votes for city states/host/world religion/ideology, etc. If you don't have the latter in terms of bonus votes, you won't win either way. If you do have them, your 1 base vote is extremely unlikely to make the difference.

3) With what? All votes or only the 1 vote? If all votes, how would the AI ever win diplo?

4) Are we even sure this isn't in? Getting an AI to vote for you is like a trade negotiation, which is affected by how much he likes you (which in turn is influenced by ideology and DoF).

5) I guess, they're gonna have almost no votes tho so I'm not sure it would impact much either way.

6) This isn't how voting for a leader works. It's also pointlessly drawing out the game. If someone has every CS to win the diplo victory the first time it comes up, they were already winning anyway. If they don't, it'll already take multiple world leader votes before they have the votes needed to win. Dragging it out forever by making the AI vote against you constantly just means you'll win by another victory condition before diplo is possible.

1 I mistyped. I changed it but they shouldn't vote for things that would give you more delegates is what I meant. So world ideology and religion.

2-3) Your Base Vote already grows by 1 for each era the world congress represents. it ends up being 4 by the end game and definitely would have an affect the outcome.

4) Since AI will actually have to vote for someone else that even when they aren't being paid, they'll need a preference and this makes sense from a perspective of actually encouraging better diplomacy

5) They'll still have 4 votes for being a member so it wouldn't be exactly small

6) That's not necessarily true as another culture civ could be competing with you or there still could be some fierce science competition going on. This would also actually put an importance on actually playing the diplomatic game. The AI wouldn't be voting against you as long as you play diplomatically. However this could be changed to withing the last X amount of turns based on game speed so that earlier transgressions aren't such a huge deal especially since we wont know ideological differences so early.

 

[meowschwitz]

I think (haven't tested this), the only way you can get another civ to vote for you is through diplomat diplomacy. At least that's what I've been reading. I'll do tests on this later when I get a good game up.

You can and it takes a substantial investment to have them do so... which is definitely a good thing. It still isn't any different in practice from buying city-states which is just encouraging you to get more gold rather than be diplomatic and have a different and engaging playstyle.