Help with Diplomatic Vic

[Goblin_Fury]

Hello,

I've been playing Civ5 on and off since it came out, and never really played too heavily. I'm pretty horrid at the game myself, and for a while I just played on Chieftain and Warlord to get the guaranteed wins. Recently I've been getting more into it though, and I am trying to play on King at the moment. I'm very comfortable playing on Prince, but I've never gone for diplomatic win before, so I feel like I need some advice.

I have started a fair few games as Greece. I usually go for Great Library and Oracle, get 2-3 cities by turn 100 and have enough units to survive/discourage attackers. I am trying to go for Diplomatic win, so policies usually include Liberty/Patronage/Commerce. However, I feel like I am lost once I get into Medievel age or so. I don't fully understand the voting mechanics for the UN (I was told it is different from vanilla now, and apparently just buying out all the CSs doesnt work). Subsequently I don't really know which tech routes/wonders/playstyle I should try to go for when trying to get diplo win.

If someone can explain how the voting system works and what wonders/# of cities/military presence is optimal that would be great. I'm looking for general tips, as I have started 6 games, and I don't think I'm playing correctly for diplo in any of them.

 

[Browd]

Allying as many CSs as possible is still key to a diplo victory (CSs have equal weighted votes with the full civs, and they usually far outnumber the AI civs). The mechanics that have changed are the CS quest mechanics (far more numerous and varied CS quests), changes to influence obtained from gold gifts, and most importantly espionage and coups. The latter can drive you nuts, particularly as you come down to the wire for the UN vote.

The way the UN vote works is, after the UN is built, there is a projected vote given based on current alliances and friendships--take that with a bushel of salt, but it will tell you the number of required votes at that time. 10 turns later the actual vote occurs--each civ and CS gets one vote, you can't vote for yourself, but the builder of the UN gets one additional vote (for itself). During those 10 turns, you will usually see more CS activity than you have all game. One AI civ attacks another and liberates La Venta, assuring it of La Venta's vote. Coups happen in 3 other CSs, resulting in new alliances, and on the next turn two of those CSs are couped back the other way. 2 other AI civs go to war, blocking each other from making peace with their respective CS allies (although you and other non-combatants remain free to meddle with their CS alliances). You connect spices and uranium to your trading network to satisfy some CS quests, and then you drop some gold on a few to cement your alliances. On turn 10, you win ... or not.

Give the current Game of the Month (TSG 50) a try. It's King diplo with Austria. After you play the game, read the after-action reports to see what strategies others used and how they turned out. There have been some earlier diplo GOTMs (Mayans were one game, and I forget the others), so you can read those reports for tips as well. There are also some other "need help with diplo" threads in these forums.

 

[Buccaneer]

Browd is correct, allying with 12-16 city-states with Patronage would be key to get there faster and building up enough influence to keep them and/or get them back easily towards the end when the AI finally recognize what you are doing. It is essential, in all of this, to have a great gold economy going (15-20 luxuries you can sell and lots of golden ages).

 

[Slag]

Yeah, lots and lots of gold helps. In the first game I won DV, France (who was the strongest in the game) starting buying up my CS allies. On my last turn before the UN vote, I bought up as many CS as I could that they didn't have since they had insane influence over them. It also helps you to stay friendly with as many AI civs as possible. Keep your military strong, so that they don't try to backstab you, forgive them for spying, DoF as much as possible, give them help when they ask or just bribe them.

Also, if you're going for DV, don't waste your time trying to ally the cultural states. The AIs that are going for CV will constantly be competing for them and you will need like >120 influence to surpass your opponent's influence.

 

[Buccaneer]

Yeah, lots and lots of gold helps. In the first game I won DV, France (who was the strongest in the game) starting buying up my CS allies. On my last turn before the UN vote, I bought up as many CS as I could that they didn't have since they had insane influence over them. It also helps you to stay friendly with as many AI civs as possible. Keep your military strong, so that they don't try to backstab you, forgive them for spying, DoF as much as possible, give them help when they ask or just bribe them.

Also, if you're going for DV, don't waste your time trying to ally the cultural states. The AIs that are going for CV will constantly be competing for them and you will need like >120 influence to surpass your opponent's influence.

Cultural CS are tougher to keep but easily worth the effort to get through Rationalism faster. The ones that I routinely ignore are the Mercantile CS. The AI loves those and I see little benefit in spending gold on them except if they are in a geo-political desireable location.

 

[Slag]

Perhaps I should have said to ignore the cultural states late in the game.

I agree that the Culturals are nice to have and you can keep them for a while, but at some point later in the game, they become quite coveted for allies and your money is better spent elsewhere.

I found that being allied with the Militaristic states for most of the game was great. They supplied no less than half of my military letting me focus on science to get Globalization and advanced military techs faster. Maritime are not as sought after from what I've experienced and make great last minute acquisitions in the turns leading up to the UN vote.

 

[Syntax Error]

The DV should really be renamed into Economic Victory as it currently stands, since it only considers the allies at the turn of the vote, you can keep a lot of gold, buy allies one turn before the vote and secure a victory. Or you can go one further and declare war on everybody else so they can't swoop in and change CS allegiances.

 

[Buccaneer]

The DV should really be renamed into Economic Victory as it currently stands, since it only considers the allies at the turn of the vote, you can keep a lot of gold, buy allies one turn before the vote and secure a victory. Or you can go one further and declare war on everybody else so they can't swoop in and change CS allegiances.

I do neither, that would be "cheating". During that last ten turns, it can become a dogfight for city-states but I will only put gold into the ones that I've had long alliances with.

 

[Goblin_Fury]

Well thanks for the advice guys. I just finished a playthrough with the above characteristics (greece/king). I ended up losing, but this was due to a gross miscalculation in social policies. I was more or less allied with 6-7 city states upon building the UN, but I built the UN too late. Ottomans on separate continent had 30+ cities and went science victory 4 turns before UN vote and I lost. In retrospect I should have grabbed Order on the turn before I started UN and used faith to buy great eng + rush UN. I realized that a large weakness in my play was poor management of tiles and science/gold income, but I got up to like +550 bpt with 4 cities after I kindof figured it out. Going to try again, I'll let post here the results.

 

[Anelyn]

I went only once for a DV, and - personally - is the least satisfying victory of them all. It all revolves around CS quests, loads and loads of money and religion / science. You just end up spamming end turn waiting on quests to complete and getting angry neighbours as you can't close a blind eye when they bully / demand tribute from your CS states (at least not when other civs went patronage too).

You need to have a pretty big army as well in order to make sure you won't get DoW and can keep in check the AI's and also defend your CS from attacks, also you may be forced to go to war even if briefly (especially in early-mid part of the game) as some civs are predisposed to steamroll CS and include them in their empires which is bad for you

 

[adwcta]

The UN victory should be the shortest victory.

Since, instead of having to research 7/10 information techs, you only have to do 2/10. And, instead of building 6 spaceship parts and the appollo program, you only have to build 1 building (which you can rush with a great engineer).

While initially building your tall empire, stack some wonders one one side (i like doing the ones that give great engineer points, since the AI does not prioritize those, so you can pull a few off even on higher difficulties). Then, get the national epic and the garden, use your specialists to adjust what you want to output. Somewhere in the renassance, you should start saving up great scientists (also don't waste oxford wonder), and using the great artists for golden ages (should be more or less perpetual by this time). Also, save up some faith for endgame.

Policy-wise, finish tradition, start patronage, but only go two deep on the left side, then go down the rationalism left side two deep to take advantage of the excellent +science bonuses. No need to do more than that. Go back to finish off patronage (should be finished well before UN is built). Then, I like taking the commerce opener for more gold. After that, I would hold off on taking an industrial policy until one of the other civs does, so you can pick the same one for the diplomatic bonus. At this point in the game, none of them will make a huge difference anyway.

The key is to balance science with gold, because you want to reach the UN as quickly as possible to win the game (and to give other civs less time to take out city states/each other), but you only want to get there if you have a reasonable chance of winning, which involves a lot of gold.

Final Jump: I like to jump the last 5 techs (going straight from modern era to the UN) in one turn with great scientists, and a great engineer handy to build the UN. This way, you are not in the "lead" technologically and people won't target you with thier spies, so you free up your spies to monitor the world and make sure everyone's doing what you want them to do (aka: not winning). I usually do this with 2 saved great scientists generated, then faith-buy 2 great scientists, and time it so oxford is complete as soon as I'm done with the later of Electronics/Plastics. You also don't have to complete Patronage (security) and instead do Rationalism all the way down for the two free techs, in which case you don't even have to research Plastics/Electronics and can jump 7 techs. This'll shave 10 turns off your game, but give you a bit less security for getting the actual votes.

Tricks:
- When closing in on the UN victory (within 10 turns of the final push), don't just focus on paying CSs. Also try to pay someone to go to war against another civ to keep them occupied and not hating you and/or taking out city states (in which case you'd have to pay them to stop anyway). This is also a great time to test the waters to see if a city would like to break a previous alliance with another civ. The AI backstabs, so try to pay someone to do it. Generally, if everyone hates everyone, they'll vote for you by default. Since it can be unpredictable and a CS can fall late in the game, it is prudent to try to shore up a few AI votes as well for backup. If you're playing your diplomacy game right, not just your friends, but the civ everyone hates should vote for you too (even if they're not particularly fond of you).
- Use spies to spy on AI's capitals (dont' steal tech!) for info until about 20-30 turns before the final push, then, only keep spies on problematic civs, and move the rest to key battleground city states where AIs keep contesting your alliance. Get those influence to 200+ if you can to secure the alliance. You shouldn't be ahead in tech before the jump so no need to protect anything. After the jump, no one's going to be able to steal from you in 10 turns anyway so no need to defend. Plus, if people like you, they won't spy on your (mostly), so you're ahead of the game there.
- Cheap tactic is to DoW everyone a turn or two before the vote so no one can buy your city states and you lock up your X number of votes since the AI can't take out city states in 1-2 turns. I've never seen the point of doing this though. You should be able to handle anything that comes at your way in 2 turns. If you have friendly relations with almost everyone, at worst, you'll have to sell all your resources and borrow gold to re-buy back your alliances.

 

[Anelyn]

It may be the shortest, but not the easiest since you will go tall and try to be peaceful most of the time, but depending on your neighbours that may not be possible, if you have to defend for a whole era while other civs runaway or super extend, you won't be able to catch up in economic / science power. Imagine Greece or Siam building UN just as you enter informational era ^^