Leveraging diplomacy

[DanF5771]

Yamps - good research! It all appears to be congruent with my findings from looking at the code.

It gets a bit tricky again when it comes to membership status - as you mentioned already, the player who owns the AP does not necessarily have to be a full member (i.e. if he is without or in a different religion other than the AP religion), however his team will have (forced) full membership status due to owning the AP . This team membership status is relevant for the validity of the stop- and force war resolutions. (That's why you could call for the holy war as the AP owner despite having lost full membership as a player.)
The Civilopedia definitely lies, holy wars are not possible against voting members (the canDoResolution check of this specific player fails, since he cannot declare war on himself!). So yes, this resolution requires at least 1 full member team currently at war with a non-member plus at least another 1 full member team not at war (yet) with this infidel, also all teams allowed to vote must have met the infidel and the universal requirement of the number of voters (>=3) must be fulfilled.

Also (apart from the AP owner team member rule) only loyal members (no defied resolution yet or loyalty status regained after endorsed resolution) can be full members.
Actually everybody who can vote is a voting member in the code (including full members), and full members are loyal voting members with SR = AP religion.

Edit-followup: The AIs make their decisions on how to vote on the holy war resolution in the following way:
YES: they are the AP Resident and have proposed the resolution OR they are already at war with the target OR they can currently be bribed into a dogpile war by the AP Resident (the target's name in the "Declare War" section in their diplo screen isn't redded out) AND their team attitude towards the target < CAUTIOUS.
NO: otherwise (they don't abstain or defy)

 

[Solo4114]

So pretty much the holy war is useless unless you have really good diplo relations with everyone else sufficient that they'd already go after the target.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I've had a holy war declared on me and I've been presented the option before. The only problem is that it was like 2 times out of a dozen games where the option should have been present. I just wasn't given anything to vote on for so long that the war was over by the time the next vote came up.

 

[Yamps]

Heh, when you can't read code there is always good old systematic testing!

I think I'll try a game with AP holy war theme in the near future to see this in action. When I did this tests, it was really funny to see how voting members go after poor infidels when pushed by full members...Say you have 2 large different religious blocks with you in charge of one block and AP in your command. You spread your religion to some of the civs in the other block. Then you declare war on the poor non-member, just before the next AP resolution and you call for holy war. His buddies will vote no, but your religious block will dominate and push his friends against him....he, he!

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

just before the next AP resolution

If you can predict when that is. I've gone 15+ turns without seeing a resolution screen. Even when being AP resident and being at war with an "infidel".

 

[Yamps]

Well, DanF5771 mentioned the unofficial patch that solved that and some other annoying issues: BTS 3.17 Unofficial Patch 0.21

Hopefully, BOTM games will incorporate this soon as well...

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Do you have to have the 3.17 patch to use Unofficial Patch 0.21?

 

[Yamps]

Simply judging by the size of the 3.17 patch (~168 MB) and the unofficial (~2MB), yes, you do need the official one.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Thnx man. I'll get the official patch, and then utilize the 0.21.

 

[DanF5771]

Heh, when you can't read code there is always good old systematic testing!

I think I'll try a game with AP holy war theme in the near future to see this in action. When I did this tests, it was really funny to see how voting members go after poor infidels when pushed by full members...Say you have 2 large different religious blocks with you in charge of one block and AP in your command. You spread your religion to some of the civs in the other block. Then you declare war on the poor non-member, just before the next AP resolution and you call for holy war. His buddies will vote no, but your religious block will dominate and push his friends against him....he, he!

Yup, the AP is one dangerous and mighty thing, it just needs a little work to shape the religious and diplomatic situation of the game to unleash its powers. Imagine the number of techs and the coffers of gold you would need to bribe everybody into a war with your favorite target. With the resolution you get it for free and since no-one can defy you only need the votes from a couple of your friends.

 

[Yamps]

True, but the main issue with the AP palace IMO is too simple winning mechanism with the minority religion approach. If I have the control of the palace already and just one friend to support me, then I'll simply spread the religion to other civs and win and won't bother with holy wars at all. Even Theocracy doesn't prevent missionary gifting...Btw, did that get patched in the recent unofficial patch as well? I'm really looking forward to try it, I've been delaying that since it would cause problems with ongoing GOTM games.

 

[DanF5771]

Even Theocracy doesn't prevent missionary gifting...Btw, did that get patched in the recent unofficial patch as well? I'm really looking forward to try it, I've been delaying that since it would cause problems with ongoing GOTM games.

I remember there was quite some discussion about it (when Solver was still in charge) but unfortunately it still works...
Personally I always disable the AP diplo victory condition "mentally".

 

[r_rolo1]

Solver decided to not implement anything because there was a very fierce discussion if the gifted missionary issue should be resolved through a hard block or by a smarter AI. This is not trivial and it looks that same discussion happened inside of Firaxis somewhere between the release of BtS and the release of patch 3.17, with unconclusive results.

 

[obsolete]

The Civilopedia definitely lies--

Unbloody believable!!!

Small sidenote: Every time I've captured this AP thing, I've never had a vote thing come up until I've switched to the same religion. I guess this is due to the hibernation bug.