Diplomatic Victory too easy

[DerCivMeister]

Does anyone else think that Diplomatic Victory is WAY too easy now? I usually play on a Large Random Map Epic Emperor. I've won 2 Diplomatic victories so far. Once was as Venice, in which I basically did a OCC and every single city state was my ally for about 100 turns before I won a diplomatic victory. I was about 700 points behind the score of the two better civilizations. One was my ally and one hated my guts. They both had military that could stomp me, better (although close) research, and almost as much GPT (which surprised me). And yet, they never once attempted to take a city state away from me, and basically just let me walk unopposed into a Diplomatic Victory (which doesn't make much conceptual sense when the highest rated civ controlled one of the two continents in the world).

Basically, the AI just has zero ability to handle the World Congress. It's cool when it starts out, because it's hard to corner it early, but after a few sessions, it's horribly unbalanced.

Maybe I'll try a standard size map, see how that goes.

Might I ask what difficulty you're playing on? No doubt, I know first hand, Venice's bonuses can be absolutely absurd when going for a diplomatic victory. It is absolutely possible to simply buy your way to a diplomatic victory. But from my experience the AI's did not just sit idly back and allow me to do that. In fact, I got quadruple DoWed the instant the world leader proposal was made (two of said civs were the Huns and the Zulus!)

 

[meowschwitz]

I started a thread with ideas to fix this last night; here's what I came up with

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.

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.

I'd also like to add:

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.

 

[Aaron90495]

I started a thread with ideas to fix this last night; here's what I came up with

I'd also like to add:

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.

With regards to #2, I actually asked this of Dennis Shirk and Ed Beach on the PolyCast livestream today. They said that, with you putting in the effort to accumulate delegates, not being to vote for yourself would lessen the desire to get delegates. Not saying whether I still think it's a good or bad idea, but it does make sense.

 

[meowschwitz]

With regards to #2, I actually asked this of Dennis Shirk and Ed Beach on the PolyCast livestream today. They said that, with you putting in the effort to accumulate delegates, not being to vote for yourself would lessen the desire to get delegates. Not saying whether I still think it's a good or bad idea, but it does make sense.

You'd still be able to vote for yourselves, just not with your base delegates. Basically those extra delegates are your allies voting for you and your base delegates have to be used on your allies. A good supreme ruler should not want to be one.... George Washington said something like that

 

[PhilBowles]

Does anyone else think that Diplomatic Victory is WAY too easy now? I usually play on a Large Random Map Epic Emperor. I've won 2 Diplomatic victories so far. Once was as Venice, in which I basically did a OCC and every single city state was my ally for about 100 turns before I won a diplomatic victory. I was about 700 points behind the score of the two better civilizations. One was my ally and one hated my guts. They both had military that could stomp me, better (although close) research, and almost as much GPT (which surprised me). And yet, they never once attempted to take a city state away from me, and basically just let me walk unopposed into a Diplomatic Victory (which doesn't make much conceptual sense when the highest rated civ controlled one of the two continents in the world).

Basically, the AI just has zero ability to handle the World Congress. It's cool when it starts out, because it's hard to corner it early, but after a few sessions, it's horribly unbalanced.

Maybe I'll try a standard size map, see how that goes.

Well, since I just lost a diplo victory on a huge map (also Emperor) when Egypt somehow took Samarkand's allegiance (not sure how, as Egypt had no money). The AI was as obsessive as usual, if not moreso, about shelling out on city-state allegiance - for most CSes I was friends at 130+ influence and unable to secure alliances; only my game-long allies were loyal (plus I temporarily lost one of those).

It's also going to be a lot harder to reduce the competition - on a huge map, I found, the votes needed go down by 1 per two captured city-states, and destroying civs appears to have no effect at all.

On top of which, it's very hard to get a civ to vote for you for world leader, and I've never managed to have more than one voting for me per session. It seems they can see who else is supporting you, so won't add their votes if it will give you enough to win no matter what.

Mistakes I made: neglecting Great Merchants and my army. I went with Autocracy, but didn't have the army to take advantage of Gunship Diplomacy very often.

wasn't a diplomatic victory about as easy in G&K? you just ally all the city states, right? (sorry if this is wrong. i'm not sure i ever did a diplo victory in G&K.)

This is harder than it sounds when the AI's bidding for them as well. Diplo victory usually had three components in G&K - getting CS alliance, getting civs to vote for you (usually by manipulating them into hating/going to war with everyone else, or by liberating dead civs), and destroying CSes and civs to reduce the number of votes needed.

The AI still fights hard for 1. 2 and 3 are harder in BNW - you can't, it seems, get more than one civ to vote for you as world leader at a time no matter what. And as I noted you need to do more conquering to reduce votes.

For example maybe tweaking a "diplomatic victory" to where not only yourself but civs you are allied with team up together to vote themselves (As a group) as world leader to win the game. This way you can have several "alliances" of civs voting themselves or negatively voting others for "world leader" that way it would be more about your friendships throughout the game.

As things stand in BNW, this would probably be easier than the current victory condition, since alliances form readily and ideology is far more important than any other diplomatic factor by the late game - just ally with everyone of the same ideology and away you go.

Culture is the easiest victory in the game currently.

I haven't found this at all. Even pushing culture early with an early religion and quick Pagodas, and the highest tourism pressure for most of the game, I only became influential with two civs, both of which were destroyed. And late in the game it shuts down altogether because you run out of Great Artist etc. names, all accessible archaeological sites are mined out, and the unnamed ones can't create Great Works. Unless you have a way of spamming Musicians en masse I'm not sure how you deal with that. If you succeed in getting all the Wonders you're probably good, but that's not going to happen above Emperor (and didn't happen on Emperor in my game).

 

[kingofsealand]

There are a number of ways to focus on culture victory but i still found it wasnt "fast". The key to it however is a combination of robust tourism AND military might. You can easily win this once you get the 100% bonus from the olympics project IF you had first taken out any 'roadblock civs' these are civs which may also be focusing on a culture victory, or who simply generate lots of culture naturally. If you dont wipe them out surpassing them will require researching the internet which can take forever with a large empire. If a certain Civ is beating you to all the culture wonders or has more policies than you, kill it! That being said, having an amazing faith here will help as once you top out the aesthetics tree i believe you can purchase great artists/writers/musicians with faith giving you a boost to great works(could be wrong about this i just remember i was spending my faith on these guys left and right. and b/c they are three diff. great people their faith costs increment separately, meaning buying nine of them in a short span for under 10k faith is completely realistic but again i am unsure of what unlocked the ability to buy them with faith). And besides that this actually gives you something to buy with all that faith besides prophets/ great people you might not need. Additionally if you head straight for the exploration branch once its available you will find the hidden antiquity sites long before anyone else which DO create great works and landmarks. As for other people going for tourism, if your culture is too high they cannot surpass you no matter how many concerts their musicians do in your land. And really the concerts dont seem like the best way there either, having multiple bonuses for like kind artifacts combined with the 100% tourism increase output from either the games or the internet WILL push your civ above almost any others culture. The trick with the olympics is proposing and finishing it at the right time, do it too soon and 100% of your current tourism wont be enough to surpass your competitors in 20 turns. Do it too late and their culture might be so high that you arent getting past them without destroying them anyways. It is an exciting new way to win and i love it. As for the diplomatic victory thats my fallback to avoid losing if things go poorly but i never start a game of Civ with the intention of "lets see how fast I can finish this" so diplomatic victory is rarely my choice of victory condition. And for people complaining its too easy against the PC just dont win that way? you can easily stop them from winning that way by buying up all CS's as allies/acquiring them all for your own through other means. and in the multiplayer setting i doubt anyone is going to let you waltz away with the diplo win. In single player if you control all the delegates, simply vote for yourself enough that you know you will not win but at the same time neither will anyone else if you're holding all those unused votes. I.E. lets say 30 votes are required for the win, so only vote yourself up 20 and make sure no one has the needed number. Bam, diplo victory is now impossible unless you want it.

 

[Giskler]

I haven't found this at all. Even pushing culture early with an early religion and quick Pagodas, and the highest tourism pressure for most of the game, I only became influential with two civs, both of which were destroyed. And late in the game it shuts down altogether because you run out of Great Artist etc. names, all accessible archaeological sites are mined out, and the unnamed ones can't create Great Works. Unless you have a way of spamming Musicians en masse I'm not sure how you deal with that. If you succeed in getting all the Wonders you're probably good, but that's not going to happen above Emperor (and didn't happen on Emperor in my game).

I have never used musicians for tourism boosts and even then I have way more tourism than the AI's. The AI is terrible at tourism and you can easily have ten times the output. Make sure you grab the tourism wonders, policies, tenents and become the top contributor to the international games. Beeline archaeology and grab as many sites as you can, use diplomats, open borders, ideologies and religion to boost your tourism. Once you get to hotels it get ridiculous with 1k+ tourism if you line everything up right, there's no way the AI can compete with it.

And yes, I have done it on Emperor, if you plan ahead for it, it's easily doable. I haven't tried Immortal yet, it will hopefully make grabbing the wonders harder, but I still think it's too easy to get really high tourism. The multipliers are way too strong and need to be toned down.

 

[Thuellai]

It's weird that you guys haven't seen any opposition on City-State fights

I nearly lost to a diplo victory against Portugal, with both of us buying and coup'ing city-states right down to the wire - I had to abolish most of my army and risk invasion to manage a high enough economy to finally clear her out. The AI DEFINITELY devoted itself to diplomatic control - it was host for the entire game and I had to turn basically my entire empire towards producing enough gold to swing things my way

 

[apocalypse105]

The A.I. is designed to let you win in BNW.

Don't be silly just because it doens't rush you on turn 50 means it will let you win.

If you don't play right you lose to a culture or science victory especially culture the Ai is pretty good ad getting theming bonusses and great works.

Every AI know has a desinged victory ahead i've saw poland atack montezuma take his capital make peace and after that take greece capital and make peace just like a player does. After that he declared war on arabia and did the same thing yes the AI actualy did come close to domination victory.

Same for culture it builts wonders and use themeing bonusses to get massive tourisme.

They can use the world congress to get special resolutions like science fundings , international space station... I've seen the AI do it anyoing as hell.

AI is way better and you have to interact with them constantly or you lose the game because of the world congress

 

[The Mad Russian]

I have the most fun when I play with all win conditions off. It puts less pressure on me to win and adds more enjoyment without having to worry about besting a score in my HoF. The AI is still aggressive with CSs and religion as well as tourism and domination. I end it when I feel like it and just go on to a new game. Easy as that.

 

[PhilBowles]

I have never used musicians for tourism boosts and even then I have way more tourism than the AI's. The AI is terrible at tourism and you can easily have ten times the output. Make sure you grab the tourism wonders, policies, tenents and become the top contributor to the international games. Beeline archaeology and grab as many sites as you can, use diplomats, open borders, ideologies and religion to boost your tourism. Once you get to hotels it get ridiculous with 1k+ tourism if you line everything up right, there's no way the AI can compete with it.

And yes, I have done it on Emperor, if you plan ahead for it, it's easily doable. I haven't tried Immortal yet, it will hopefully make grabbing the wonders harder, but I still think it's too easy to get really high tourism. The multipliers are way too strong and need to be toned down.

I think the AI doesn't prioritise tourism until too late in the game, but I've seen it in excess of 400 in the late game when my best is just under 300 (including having captured Amsterdam, host to the Louvre, the Globe and Uffizi, as well as having the full suite of religious tourism effects). But it's not tourism the AI needs to be good at - it can be good enough at culture to resist, it loves to spam archaeologists, and because of the writer/artist/musician generation system, it will usually be creating Great Works in similar quantity to you.

I lost out on most Wonders and the International Games, which undoubtedly hindered me (also on World Fair, which did a lot to boost Celtic resistance). By the end I was Popular with over half the remaining civs, but still Familiar with a few and even Exotic with culture-spamming Hiawatha.

 

[BluegrassGeek]

I dunno about you guys, but my first game the AIs kept using the World Congress to screw me over. Very first proposal by AI was to ban Whales as a luxury... and I had just picked up a city with access to four Whales. Second vote killed my proposed "Standing Army Tax," but luckily the third vote had to do with luxuries Russia and Babylon had (both trying to ban each other's luxuries).

Probably should start buying off more city-states.

 

[sffrrrom]

Might I ask what difficulty you're playing on? No doubt, I know first hand, Venice's bonuses can be absolutely absurd when going for a diplomatic victory. It is absolutely possible to simply buy your way to a diplomatic victory. But from my experience the AI's did not just sit idly back and allow me to do that. In fact, I got quadruple DoWed the instant the world leader proposal was made (two of said civs were the Huns and the Zulus!)

I said it a little earlier in the thread, but Emperor Epic Large map, usually. And I can believe that sometimes the AI can compete with you for city states, but I think there may be two problems, the size of the map and AI "types."

Bigger maps mean more city states which in my experience means easier to control a majority of them, since the AI will often focus on only three-four when there are 16-ish total.

The other problem seems to be that certain AI types will ignore city-sate influence in favor of say their giant world conquering army, but that doesn't help them unless they can squash a ton of city-states fast. The problem is that city-states are way too influential in the World congress, allowing an inferior civ to win a Diplo Victory even if this is completely implausible, i.e. there's no way that the evil baby-murdering empire of, in my game, Siam (lol) with the most people, production, and weapons, is just going to shrug and say, well, I guess you win.

 

[Gucumatz]

IN my games I have always had some strong cultural civ on immortal that ran away with a ton of wonders making Cultural pretty much impossible [And as they were on a separate continent I didn't want to take them out navally as that would be too easy with the bad naval AI]

If you have a strong cultural civ in your game, it makes a Cultural Victory kind of hard. Outside of that, other civs don't really try and defend against cultural as much

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Aye, from my experience you will either need a majority of the tourism wonders to have a decent chance of winning a culture victory. That or you have to found at least 6+ cities and grab enough artifacts to get enough theme bonuses.

In addition, tourism has almost no impact before the modern age. Everything you do from the classical era onwards is more or less a setup for the later game, because benefits before ideologies are more or less non-existent. And you really need airports and visitor centers to get some decent pressure against somewhat cultured CIVs. I had a few instances where even the Internet was barely enough to increase my influence on the last CIV.

So if cannot build enough culture wonders AND you fail to get enough artifacts, you might as switch to a another victory.

 

[adwcta]

I'd also like to add:

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.

It's not that it's easier, which it is, it's that it's stupider now that everyone just votes for themselves. The AI can never win a diplo victory, if you have any semibalance of a City State defense (no need for patronage even, beyond the opener, since they got rid of the killer policy that decreases your speed. if an AI looks like he's getting strong on the city state control, dump 2 points into Patronage, and you can 100% prevent it... it'll only be a speed bump on whatever else you were trying to do.)

And the AI DID do this in G&K, hardcore. If you played on Immortal/Deity, between the gold dumps and the coups, the AI did a half decent job giving you a run for your money with the city states once the UN is researched (they'll also DoW some of them, but it takes them more than 10 turns to take out a CS).

In theory, BNW should be better about this, since the AI takes cities a lot faster, and the AI has less of a gold bonus, but there's just so much late game gold, and they've been programmed to go patronage more, that they can definitely wrest control of a couple each from you (and since you need practically all of the city states minus one or two to win, it should be enough). BUT, for whatever reason, the AI's gold priority for City States falls below "buying units during war or period before war", so the AI uses all of its gold on units, since in the late game, they're all usually "plotting against" someone or already engaged in a bitter rivalry with a neighbor that started once ideologies kick in.

So, difficulty-wise, I think the fall patch will easily make it harder (although, right now, culture victory and science victory are equally abusable). But, to make it less dumb and more interesting, the AI really just has to not be allowed to vote for themselves. That actually makes the AI BETTER at the diplomatic victory.

You ALREADY get additional votes for being the host (which you get by having the most CS votes), why compound that?

 

[PhilBowles]

Aye, from my experience you will either need a majority of the tourism wonders to have a decent chance of winning a culture victory. That or you have to found at least 6+ cities and grab enough artifacts to get enough theme bonuses.

In addition, tourism has almost no impact before the modern age. Everything you do from the classical era onwards is more or less a setup for the later game, because benefits before ideologies are more or less non-existent. And you really need airports and visitor centers to get some decent pressure against somewhat cultured CIVs. I had a few instances where even the Internet was barely enough to increase my influence on the last CIV.

So if cannot build enough culture wonders AND you fail to get enough artifacts, you might as switch to a another victory.

Which is what I did, having also prepared for diplomatic victory.

Bringing us neatly full circle to the topic of the thread, since that was the game I lost when I fell two votes short of winning the 2045 World Leader election thanks to Egypt stealing Samarkand.

 

[dexters]

Some AI can still sit on their cash hoard and let you win Diplo as well. That said, the new mechanic does add an extra layer to the cheap nature of UN victory in pretty much every Civ game.

People didn't like the one Civ one vote nature in Civ3, so we got the population weighted mess in Civ4 which turned it into domination-lite, and we're now back to CS + Civ vote weighting.

I have won on diplomatic victory BEFORE globalization was researched too. I'm not sure if victory should be delayed until that tech is researched as it is almost exclusively meant for a UN victory.

That said, winning diplo with Alexander, Siam or one of the CS friendly Civs in the game is more challening as you likely will have to fight for city state influence the entire game. They will need to be crippled.

 

[Jezvin]

I feel like the bigger issue is the instant buying of city state influence. It's kinda the one thing you can just instantly do without much build up, I feel like there should be some kind of unit like a diplomatic envoy that you have to actually move to the city state to buy the influence, kinda like a missionary or a great merchant.

It feels dumb when I have every unit/city on one side of the map and a city state deep in someone else's territory I can just instant ally status them cause I got money. Hell even buying units takes one turn to do and you can't do that from the other side of the map from your cities.

 

[dexters]

I feel like the bigger issue is the instant buying of city state influence. It's kinda the one thing you can just instantly do without much build up, I feel like there should be some kind of unit like a diplomatic envoy that you have to actually move to the city state to buy the influence, kinda like a missionary or a great merchant.

It feels dumb when I have every unit/city on one side of the map and a city state deep in someone else's territory I can just instant ally status them cause I got money. Hell even buying units takes one turn to do and you can't do that from the other side of the map from your cities.

There's an obvious solution which is to lag votes for 1 voting cycle so your vote count is tallied at the end of each congress and those are the votes you have for the next congress/UN; And if you gain additional allies in the next 10/20 turns, those won't count until the next UN proposal phase is over.

Given how people play this game so differently, I am 100% certain you'll have 10 threads the next day complaining how they ruined Civ5.

Also, it's not going to fix the CS buying perse, only delay it.

I think the issue with UN victory at this point is it should require Globalization tech, and rebalance CS strength (keep them at 1 delegate for UN votes?) and provide more wonder/SP based options to gain extra delegates so there's at once more votes per Civ, and fewer votes from the CS.

---As an aside---
I have to say I'm not sure people understand what they are asking for when they say the 'AI shouldn't vote for themselves'. The AI usually outnumber the human player by a wide margin on most map types.

It only takes 1 or 2 AI to vote against the human player to either make it an insta diplo-loss or an unwinnable stalement that requires conquest /war which brings us back to domination-lite mess I didn't like in Civ4.

On even if there's a perfectly rational algorithm for determining how AI votes, you're going to get people complaining that the entire AI is playing against them and it's not 1-1 fight.

The mechanic of AI voting for UN in this case needs to be clear and simple.

Right now, the only known way they will vote for you is through Liberation. And I think that's fine as it is. Expanding it more in that direction means we go back to domination-lite territory; But I would be interested in the option of buying votes or the AI splitting their votes if you're culture is influential & share their ideology.