Diplomatic Victory Question(s)

[Shark Diver]

(Prelude: I recently switched to BNW because of these forums. The discussions here made me want to change from my old hack-and-slash ways and try new ways to play this ridiculously addictive game (frequent posters please take a bow as I'm attempting to show appreciation for your contributions). I prefer playing Immortal over Deity, simply because for many civs, the early game disadvantage in Deity seems to take away many natural advantages/features. I've managed cultural and scientific victories, and I usually quit once the domination victory seems assured. I have NOT managed a diplomatic victory yet).

Here's the scenario:

Morocco - Immortal - random Huge map (apparently continents) - Standard Speed - 20 CS's - 12 rival civs - random personalities - good desert start - 4 desert cities (1 w/adjacent mountain) - with 2 coastal cities added mid-game (only 1 needed a valuable food cargo ship). I'm in the Southeast corner of my continent.

My adjacent neighbors are a friendly Poland and a$$hole Assyria (who I bribed away from attacking me once and bribed China to attack another time). The rest of the continent had a very aggressive China, my BFF a strong Spain, an average Mongolia, and a weak Inca (who died around 1400).

I managed to grab Dessert Folklore (and didn't really work at spreading my religion (named, of course, Shark Diving) and purchase units w/ faith. Early wonders were great as I got lucky with an early hut that gave me Writing so I dropped everything and built GL by turn 35, grabbed HG with the free tech, beelined to Petra, and got lucky enough to build CI and Forbidden Palace.

I grabbed the Tradition opener, completed Liberty and Patronage, am halfway through Commerce, grabbed the Rationalism opener (for PT wonder) and am at level 2 of Freedom.

The whole world loved me until I proposed and passed World Religion and proposed World Ideology (only Spain and I had Freedom… vote is coming up and I should get that passed). Now several Civs have declared war on me. I am 4th in tech, so can easily defend my territory, but the AI smartly decided to take out 3 of my allied CS's. I'm at turn 300. There are no runaway leaders and only Egypt seems in danger of extinction, although I think Poland is vulnerable given their warmonger neighbors.

Here are my questions:

1. With 11 Civs still alive, and only 16 CS's, can I still mathematically win the diplomatic victory? I'm unclear on the math here.

2. On the Cultural Victory screen, the Public Opinion section shows my citizens as being "Discontent" due to the fact that almost everyone else has a different ideology. My happiness is at around 60 . What exactly does this mean? Will the game force me to change ideologies?

3. Lastly, can this game still be won, perhaps in another way? I'm 3rd in both tourism and culture, 4th in science, 9th in population, and 6th in military strength.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

1. Yes, because more votes are added for the top two people who had the most votes for each World Leader vote. So eventually there will be enough for one person to win.

2. Game never forces you to switch ideologies, but you can choose to. With 60 you shouldn't worry too much, but know that your happiness might start to drop because of the ideological pressure.

3. Sadly, someone else take over since I barely play on Prince xD

 

[corranhorn01]

I've only just started Immortal (and I've racked up less than 200 hrs), but I've just managed to win a diplo victory with 2 cities there (no religion or world ideology and a I was stuck between Russia and Isouits - something like that).

I'm not sure about the first point.

Second point, the game doesn't make you switch, but it can make you so unhappy that you need to. To the best of my knowledge, this is based off culture/tourism buffers.

As to 3, I don't see why you couldn't win another way. I'd probably say Dom would be your best bet as everyone had DoWed you and with you happiness level...

But not 100% as I just play Diplo and stayed at 100% approval for most of the game . Not sure you'd be able to SV, just due to your pop, unless you manage to DoF and keep constant RAs with a few civs.

You could probably also go for a CV, but not sure either (start saving the faith for the GMs).

What are your SPs looking like? bpt? cpt? I think this is all relevant to another possible win con.

EDIT: Just found something that should help point 2 from another thread.

The unhappiness is generated if the other civ with another ideology is more influential than you. for example, you're exotic culturally with them, but their culture is familiar to you. The greater the difference between influential level, the greater the unhappiness generated.

 

[JimBobV]

Diplo or domination like your best bet. You really have to strive to win a culture on immortal, and your to far behind on science at fourth.

 

[RatesAnalyst]

I play at Emperor, but there's no reason it can't be done on immortal too (that I know of). And definitely no mathematical reasons.

The reduced number of city states is unfortunate, but not a total roadblock.

I recently won a Diplo victory as Venice in a game with Genghis. That had far fewer city states at the end than at the start, for obvious reasons.

If I were you, I'd be hoping for one of the weaker civs to be wiped out - so you can liberate them. My last Diplo victory I won by getting a few extra votes by buying a really tiny city from a strong player - then liberating it and recalling Washington to life. He then voted for me as world leader.

If I were you I'd be encouraging one of the warlike neighbours to wipe out Poland - then either DoW and take one city, or just buy it from him. Then you can liberate the city and you're home free.

Edit: Just noticed that one civ has already been wiped out. Definitely try to liberate them if you can.

 

[Shark Diver]

SP's are very strong. I think I'm getting 200% generation in Capital. Beakers were at about 600, CPT was in the low 300's.

Thanks for the other thoughts. Good insight.

 

[Shark Diver]

I play at Emperor, but there's no reason it can't be done on immortal too (that I know of). And definitely no mathematical reasons.

The reduced number of city states is unfortunate, but not a total roadblock.

I recently won a Diplo victory as Venice in a game with Genghis. That had far fewer city states at the end than at the start, for obvious reasons.

If I were you, I'd be hoping for one of the weaker civs to be wiped out - so you can liberate them. My last Diplo victory I won by getting a few extra votes by buying a really tiny city from a strong player - then liberating it and recalling Washington to life. He then voted for me as world leader.

If I were you I'd be encouraging one of the warlike neighbours to wipe out Poland - then either DoW and take one city, or just buy it from him. Then you can liberate the city and you're home free.

Edit: Just noticed that one civ has already been wiped out. Definitely try to liberate them if you can.

The Civ that was wiped out was Inca. They are pretty close by, so that might work. I'm pretty sure Assyria has one of their cities and I'm already at war with that jerk.

As for the Poland idea, that's pretty easy. They are surrounded by 3 warmongers (and me). I think I'll definitely give that a try.

 

[RatesAnalyst]

Perfect - Liberate the Inca and pocket the extra four votes.

Let me know how it goes!!

 

[reddishrecue]

Diplomatic victories require you to have a majority of the city states in the world as your ally and you simply lost a few of them to the enemies. I think that you could still squeeze in a diplomatic victory win since most of these civilizations that captured your city states got their warmonger penalty from other civilzations and denouncements. There could still be hope... if you can get to liberate the captured city states, other civilizations will give you the liberation bonus and you won't be as bad as the warmongering civilizations. You could even bribe other civlizations into attacking the warmongering civilizations if you need help.

 

[Shark Diver]

Perfect - Liberate the Inca and pocket the extra four votes.

Let me know how it goes!!

I finally finished up this game. Poland (my Eastern next-door-neighbor) DoW'd me, but they didn't even try crossing my borders because they were busy fighting some strong opponents on their Western front. I had 2 cities within bomber range of their Northernmost city, so I took that out in 2 turns.

From there I could reach a Chinese-controlled former Incan city which was lightly defended. I took that out in just a few turns, resurrected Inca, and then mostly turtled up and won the Diplo victory.

The timing of the Incan liberation was important, as I wanted it to coincide with an upcoming World Leader vote, since they weren't likely to remain alive for long, and their votes put me over the top. I wasn't sure about the voting math, so I was prepared to try to help keep them alive with bomber strikes from my Polish puppet.

Also, I tried to time my Peace Treaty with Poland so they wouldn't harass me during those crucial turns leading up to the vote.

This was a most satisfying victory and a very fun game. Much better than my old hack-and-slash marathon games.

Thanks for the good advice everyone. I wouldn't have pulled this one out without the help.

 

[joncnunn]

1. With 11 Civs still alive, and only 16 CS's, can I still mathematically win the diplomatic victory? I'm unclear on the math here.

Yes, but another form may be faster from where you are now. I don't know the exact count currently needed to win, but if the WC has advanced to UN, you can see that on the top right.

You can get 32 votes from the CS if you become ally with all of them.
You can get 6 more votes from Diplomats if you build NIA for an extra spy and turn them all into diplomats with Globalism.
You can get 2 more votes if you are the leader.
You can get 2 more votes if you adopt the world ideology.
You can get 2 more votes if you conquer the city that has Forbidden Palace.
You can get 2 more votes if you can actually convince them to adopt your religion as the world religion.

If someone else conquered city states, you can liberate city states to bring them back into the game, each time you do so, you'll gain 2 votes but the count needed to win will increase by 1.

Every time you fail, the two top players will get an extra 2 votes.

2. On the Cultural Victory screen, the Public Opinion section shows my citizens as being "Discontent" due to the fact that almost everyone else has a different ideology. My happiness is at around 60 . What exactly does this mean? Will the game force me to change ideologies?

No. You have the option to do so if your citizens aren't content, but are never forced to. It's UI only saying "the people have risen up".
This does indicate that you may be at some risk of a cultural loss. Be sure that the AI influncing you gain isn't rising too fast on the tourism screens.

3. Lastly, can this game still be won, perhaps in another way? I'm 3rd in both tourism and culture, 4th in science, 9th in population, and 6th in military strength.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

In your next game focus more on science, you should always be #1 in science before the modern era ends on Immortal. The rest of the stats don't really matter.

 

[reddishrecue]

^^no, you don't always have to be one in literacy during pre modern era but you could also eventually end up being 1 in literacy during modern era and right after modern era. Being 1 in literacy in any era could be ok.

 

[RatesAnalyst]

Congratulations - thanks for the update.

 

[JonnasN]

2. On the Cultural Victory screen, the Public Opinion section shows my citizens as being "Discontent" due to the fact that almost everyone else has a different ideology. My happiness is at around 60 . What exactly does this mean? Will the game force me to change ideologies?

3. Lastly, can this game still be won, perhaps in another way? I'm 3rd in both tourism and culture, 4th in science, 9th in population, and 6th in military strength.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

I had a similar game with the Inca (Huge, Immortal, my first time with either option, and shortly after upgrading to BNW). Unlike your game, my allies outnumbered the enemies, but the enemies were my neighbours, anyway, and hated me above the others.

(The main difference, I was playing with less City-States from the beginning. A personal option of mine)

My allies were Order, and I was Freedom. I saved up enough money to buy a Spaceship part (it became obvious I couldn't consistently wrestle certain CSes away from their allies), then switched to Order and got Great Engineers and Scientists to get me the remaining parts. During the game, I was consistently around 3rd or 4th in technology, and two Civs started the space race before me, but I still managed to win in the end.

I was quite successful diplomatically, but I didn't try to force my Religion or Ideology upon the others, either. Not sure if you can save yourself diplomatically at the moment, but it's definitely possible to try another victory route. Just remember to make sure other players don't get there first (who's winning culturally, who's building spaceship parts, etc).

If your army is decent enough, do try to liberate the Inca or the City States you lost.

EDIT: D'oh, I see that you already won, after all Congrats