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So my (possibly final) question for the n00b phase is:
As I stated, Catherine of Russia was Friendly with me. She was the most +1'ed of all my diplomatic relations. With her I had 12 points of positive and zero points of negative. And yet... she was the only one to vote for the other guy in the elections. From my pre-research, the other guy was also quite late in gaining her support, going from Cautious to Friendly in about 75 turns whereas I had been Friendly with Catherine throughout the game.
How do you 'very quickly' gain bumper points with an AI in the last 20 turns for the Diplomatic Victory - baring in mind both trading and history are already at +4 in most cases - without war being a factor?
Is there a 'Bribe for the Elections' option like there was in Civ 3?
No you cannot bribe for elections directly. Diplomatic victories are harder to achieve the higher the difficultly your game is set at due to the default negative attitude modifiers applied to all the AI towards the human.
Some suggestions to help increase the AI's attitude towards you:
I would suggest (and this is fairly feasible on the lower-mid difficulty ranges, still doable on higher difficulties, just pray no1 built Shwedegon Paya early and switched to Theocracy, or you may need to do some espionage work) creating a monopoly of religion (if you convert Isabella to your faith, she will do half the work for you
).
You would do well to pick a group (approximately 35-65% of the AI players) to do business with. Make sure everyone is friendly with each other (easiest way is through religion). This avoids the "-4 you have traded with our worst enemies blah blah blah who gives a damn fck".
I find that the AIs tend to derp heavily trying to back-fill through the classical/ancient tech trees, so dumping lots of techs on them (requires you to be significantly far ahead though... something not really feasible or advisable to do on higher levels) for the +1-2 "You have shared your tech discoveries with us"
Consider dumping some of your non-essential/surplus resources to the AI to get their "appreciate years of supplying resources" (it's like 50-100 turns of 1 resource to get the first +1, so dumping multiple will speed the process up a bit)>
Also, the AIs will only vote for you during a diplomatic victory if:
a) They cannot vote for themselves
b) They like you (their iAttitudeVal must be +7 [forgot where I saw this, but it's somewhere around this value] or above.... and then all hidden modifiers, so +9-11 ingame is usually a safe threshold to aim for) enough.
c) They like the other candidate less than you.
d) If they like both you and the candidate the same, they will abstain
e) If both candidates are not liked enough, they will abstain
Please note that the length of time the AI likes you vs. liking another leader is
irrelevant for the most part (it matters indirectly since you need it to rack up +1 open borders and whatnots). Only the final attitude counts.
Also note that AIs will vote "yes" for your other resolutions at a much lower attitude threshold (basically, if they voted yes for your single currency, don't expect them to vote for you on a diplo victory).