How difficult are diplomatic wins on Immortal?

[JohnnyKing]

I always thought Diplomatic victories are a thing of patience and clever use of Diplomacy and alliances. I have happened to entered a game and through Spying and GM I became ally of all city-states and suddenly I had more delegates in World Congress to vote for World Leader even thought I was going for smashing the AI. This was done on Deity and I regret nothing.

 

[Gary King]

Okay, so currently I'm playing on Immortal as Babylon, and I was near the bottom of the pack until I built an army with mostly Artillery and took Rome's capital, which has the most Wonders in the world by far. This slingshotted me to the top of the Score list, and now I'm allied with about 75% of the CS, and I also am second in tech.

So, at the moment my Immortal experience is going well. Even though Austria is in the game with me, getting CS allies hasn't been too hard. Getting into the tech race, even as Babylon, has been a bit hard though, even with using my spies as best as I can. So I'm thinking maybe I'll start as Greece next to get an early CS boost, because there are some nice bonuses there.

 

[adwcta]

In a recent game, me reviving the second city state caused the count needed to win to go up by one. (Still net positive for me since you get 2 votes for an ally)
So either the count still goes down every other time someone kills a city state, or they left in code to add things back.

What were the settings and what was the count before it went up by one? I tested under standard settings and removing one CS via conquest did not cause requirements to go down (same with AI removing a CS). I haven't paid much attention to liberating.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[joncnunn]

What were the settings and what was the count before it went up by one? I tested under standard settings and removing one CS via conquest did not cause requirements to go down (same with AI removing a CS). I haven't paid much attention to liberating.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

AIs had taken over a grand total of 3 city states; but I liberated one of those before I entered the Information era and so we were only down 2 city states when I started tracking.

Liberating the next one gave me 2 votes from ally without changing the count, but when I liberated the last one bringing us up to a full count the victory count needed went up by 1.

Note that I never play with the standard 2 : 1 city state ratio, so given that it appeared to every other one, it can occur at a different spot with that ratio.

This probably makes no difference but I was playing England as well (extra spy) on top of having built NIA (another extra spy), had built FP, but was never in control of the WC (on purpose as I was seeking Dark Horse achievement) and was running Autocracy (as I was seeking Axis Powered achievement) I succeed in getting the diplomatic win and the achievements.

 

[DWilson]

Sweden is also a good choice.
Arsenal of Democracy and Mercenary army/Mercantilism help a lot too.

I also think Siam is definitely worth mention. They don't get an initial boost in getting the allies, but putting in the effort to get the city state yields higher rewards, and the culture boost from some of the city states helps finish patronage quicker, making keeping the alliances easier, and even more rewarding.