Fair way to win? (religious victory)

[Leveler]

Early diplomatic victory without a single pleased or friendly civ:

1. Found religion for you, Confucianism and Christianity works fine. Those three firsts ones tends to spread too much and we don't want that to happen.

2. Build the Apostolic Palace.

3. Spread your religion to all your cities. (Or at least biggest ones.)

4. Use missionaries to spread your religion to rivals small cities so that every civilization has one city with your religion.

5. Vote your self to victory.

In this game, I had 23% of world’s population and Confucianism was less than 20% from all religions. This was on Monarch and victory was delayed hundreds of years because continents were really sneaky shaped which delayed 4th step. Final score around 73k.

 

[MrCynical]

It definitely looks like they need to alter the mechanics of this. Maybe they should make it so that your religion has to be present in some major percentage of the world's cities rather than just present to some extent in each civ. It hardly makes sense to be able to win by making yourself leader of a religion that's irrelevant outside a country you rule anyway.

 

[Naismith]

Perhaps they made it this way on purpose. It certainly follows the pattern they established with U.N. diplomatic victories. Instead of having one nation, one vote, you get allocated a voting percentage based on population. Given that, the percentage would almost have to be the population in each country that subscribes to the religion in question.

This is a pretty subjective area, but for me, all the absurdities of both U.N. and Apostolic Palace "diplomatic" victories stem from the decision not to use the one nation, one vote approach. I am NOT saying that there is no skill involved in gaining such diplomatic victories, just that it seems strange to be able to gain diplomatic victories even when the majority of Civs in the world don't like you. A contradiction in terms, no?

As it stands, the most effective and straightforward way to get either the U.N. or A.P. diplomatic victory is through war. Grab more cities (= more pop), vassalize through war/capitulation. If you need a few more votes, you might concentrate on getting one lap dog Civ to vote with you.

Of course, no one is preventing you from trying to get your diplomatic victory the "honest" way - but if you have, say, 10 opponents, and you only have around 10% of the population, getting a diplomatic victory is chancey at best. Just my opinion, but pimping for civics, religion, and war ally points doesn't float my boat. And those are the main tools for getting to Friendly.

As for those of you who like diplomatic victories as they stand - peace, I'm just expressing my opinion.

 

[Chrispy]

I have tried it a few times, but I have found the AI is more likely to run Theocracy now, especially once the AP is built. Once that happens, you need espionage to take them out of Theocracy or war to take over a city, convert it, and then gift it back in a peace treaty or after.

I've also found that when possible, the AI will spin off a colony as well. Colonies can quickly thwart an attempt at an AP victory if you only have one city with the appropriate religion.

 

[Fredricko]

The problem really lies with the equation that is used to calculate how many votes are needed for a victory when you control most of the worlds population. I haven't looked into it a lot, but I think it goes something like this.

If V is the amount of votes needed for victory, P is your population, and W is the world population (when W ~ V):

V = (2/3)*W + (1/2)(W-P)
(two thirds the world population plus half of the votes that aren't your own)

You can vote yourself to victory when your Population is equal to the number of Votes you need (P = V), which happens to always occur at 7/9 of the world population.

To make the diplomatic victories a bit more diplomatic, you could change the equation to something like this.

V = P + (1/2)(W-P)
(your population plus half of everyone else's population)

Again, you can vote yourself to victory when P = V, which happens to be when P = W or, a conquest victory That makes a bit more sense to me. At least it would require you to have one good friend.

 

[Naismith]

It probably doesn't make sense that one main strategy to get an AP diplo win is making sure NOT to spread your religion too much. Your ability to win AP diplo should increase with each missionary that successfully converts a city (whether it is your own city or another Civ's city). Perhaps you should not be able to get an AP diplo win unless a certain minimum percentage of the world follows that religion.

Properly implemented, this could result in a missionary-spamming war among Civs with the religion of the AP. For the owner of the shrine, that would be a real bonanza.

 

[Percy]

On the other hand, spreading as it is allows you to dictate your decisions to more and more people, at the cost of making your voice smaller and smaller.

 

[AlessioCerci]

If Tokugawa is on the map - no diplo win. He never opens his borders.

 

[UncleJJ]

If Tokugawa is on the map - no diplo win. He never opens his borders.

Let me tell you a story

My last game was a diplomatic victory by the AP in about 1920 and that was fine and dandy. But what was really weird was that Toku vassalised to me of his own accord in the middle of the game... a voluntary vassal. I was just about to attack him as I needed his coal for railroads but he was no trouble so I only intended to take the coal and then turn round and sort Monte out. Toku must have seen my forces gathering and since Izzy was bigger and giving him grief decided he liked his chances with me better than getting crushed. He was backward in techs and still using samurai when I had rifles and cavalry. It was a good decision on his part.

Some time earlier Churchill had built the AP for Hinduism and that was already my State Religion, and I had the Hindu Shrine, taken from Charlemagne. I converted Toku to Hinduism and fed him the resources he needed and sold and gave him techs to make him effective. He became incredibly friendly (+21 diplomatically) and traded resources and techs with me and fought well in wars against Monte and later Sitting Bull.

To give me a chance of a diplomatic victory through the AP I spread Hinduism to all the unbeleivers, except Washington (a colony) would not give me open borders ... so he had to go along with his master Sitting Bull. When the final vote came I needed something like 1090 out of 1450 votes and it passed by 4 votes with Toku providing 188 compared to only 50 from Monte. I could have won by domination in another 30 to 50 turns but it was nice to seen how the AP can be leveraged for a win. It is an interesting feature that adds variety to game play.

The moral of the story is: Toku can now be a reliable and useful vassal and can be the main reason for an early diplomatic win just as he was in my game.

 

[madscientist]

One additional comment on UN diplomatic victories. I play marathon speed huge maps and some games (warlords or BTS) I war-monger like anyone else. Getting the population for a domination victory is easy but the land is real hard on huge maps and requires ALOT of repetitve work. I view the UN diplo victory as a fast route to what is really a domination victory (60% of population, either your own or vassalled). Of course a "REAL" diplo victory has it's own charm (which I have also gotten) but i have no problems with the war, I vote myself winner approach.

 

[madscientist]

Let me tell you a story

My last game was a diplomatic victory by the AP in about 1920 and that was fine and dandy. But what was really weird was that Toku vassalised to me of his own accord in the middle of the game... a voluntary vassal. I was just about to attack him as I needed his coal for railroads but he was no trouble so I only intended to take the coal and then turn round and sort Monte out. Toku must have seen my forces gathering and since Izzy was bigger and giving him grief decided he liked his chances with me better than getting crushed. He was backward in techs and still using samurai when I had rifles and cavalry. It was a good decision on his part.

Some time earlier Churchill had built the AP for Hinduism and that was already my State Religion, and I had the Hindu Shrine, taken from Charlemagne. I converted Toku to Hinduism and fed him the resources he needed and sold and gave him techs to make him effective. He became incredibly friendly (+21 diplomatically) and traded resources and techs with me and fought well in wars against Monte and later Sitting Bull.

To give me a chance of a diplomatic victory through the AP I spread Hinduism to all the unbeleivers, except Washington (a colony) would not give me open borders ... so he had to go along with his master Sitting Bull. When the final vote came I needed something like 1090 out of 1450 votes and it passed by 4 votes with Toku providing 188 compared to only 50 from Monte. I could have won by domination in another 30 to 50 turns but it was nice to seen how the AP can be leveraged for a win. It is an interesting feature that adds variety to game play.

The moral of the story is: Toku can now be a reliable and useful vassal and can be the main reason for an early diplomatic win just as he was in my game.

A similar thing happened to me once with Tokugawa, so he can be a valuable friend as a vassal. I find the fact that Washington emerged as a colony from Sitting Bull quite funny.

 

[AlessioCerci]

Re: Tokugawa. He opens borders at "pleased" and is one of the few AIs that sign a defensive pact at "pleased" as well (others are Cyrus, Saladin i think) Anyway, having got Toku up to pleased/almost friendly status i opened borders and signed defensive pact. Later on he switched religions and dropped to cautious. Sure enough within a few turns he came to me, cancelling our open border agreement. Ok, but the odd thing was that i still had a defensive pact with him for a few years more before he decided to cancel that as well.

Conclusion: Toku is an idiot.

 

[AlessioCerci]

One additional comment on UN diplomatic victories. I play marathon speed huge maps and some games (warlords or BTS) I war-monger like anyone else. Getting the population for a domination victory is easy but the land is real hard on huge maps and requires ALOT of repetitve work. I view the UN diplo victory as a fast route to what is really a domination victory (60% of population, either your own or vassalled). Of course a "REAL" diplo victory has it's own charm (which I have also gotten) but i have no problems with the war, I vote myself winner approach.

Very true. I do take the diplo option often as a quick domination win.

 

[kniteowl]

I have tried it a few times, but I have found the AI is more likely to run Theocracy now, especially once the AP is built. Once that happens, you need espionage to take them out of Theocracy or war to take over a city, convert it, and then gift it back in a peace treaty or after.

Heard of gifting your missionaries to the AI who is under theocracy? It works just as well and it's doesnt cost 1 EP point, they speard your religion for you lmao!

I Think the AI should be improved, when they see the AP being completed and know which religion it's under they should spam missionaries of that religio and speard them to their core (high pop) cities immediately. That should help and Fredricko's suggestion of changing the equation for Religion Victory.

 

[mice]

Heard of gifting your missionaries to the AI who is under theocracy? It works just as well and it's doesnt cost 1 EP point, they speard your religion for you lmao!

Really !!. wow I was sending spies in to change civics, but this is much better.
Closed borders remains the toughest obstacle then. Good trick, declare war, take a city, convert it, declare peace, give it back t them.

 

[Brutus2]

In my last game I founded Judism and soon after built the Holy Shrine. Naturally I want to spread my religion far and wide to gain lots of gold from the shrine.

Now, I build the AP. Problem is, I have done such a good job spreading my religion that my neighbor and best ally (Pleased) has more votes than me. He keeps voting himself leader and passing all sorts of annoying trading bans.

So by spreading my religion to get the gold boost I actually screwed myself my loosing control of the AP.

Now, since I built it I suppose I could switch to a less popular state religion and then I would have more votes but I fear my neighbor who is pleased with me now mainly because he cares for his "brothers and sisters of the faith" (+8) will turn on me.

Seems like it's better to build a shrine for one of your non state religions and spread that for gold but not spread your state religion too much so you can maintain a majority vote in the AP?? Of course then you will have lots of people unhappy that you have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion.

 

[Percy]

You need to make friends with other civs and spread your religion. They'll vote for you. They did for me when i played all-out religion with Ramesses (in an OCC). The problem is, they almost all switched to Free Religion before i could get myself eleceted, so by the time i proposed the resolution, they didn't like me as much as when they were using the same state religion... I got invaded