Odd Victory...

[stratozyck]

I was playing on Standard Continents, as Frederick on Monarch. I got incredibly lucky early on with a great location that had stone and marble. I built about 80% of the early wonders, and have really come to appreciate the value of Pyramids for early representation when going for GP. Anyway, founded every religion from Judaism on up (converted to Judaism).

Quickly got Russia out - weak area only good for population so easy to take. Got the Mongols next.. anyway dominated the continent in no time. Had Great people pouring out my cities.

Nevertheless, this is monarch. I was still far behind the other continent. They had Mech Inf when I was getting my first regular infantry. I had plenty of time so knew in the end a final showdown would go in my favor as all the great people were added to cities (mostly engineers and prophets) to give me tons of production. I wasn't looking forward to the upcoming invasion, but it would be necessary. The other continent was allied together and had combined a force of about 3x mine (plus more advanced).

Then Ramses built the United Nations. I didn't even have Mass Media yet on the horizon. He barely won the first election, but lost the second. I said, why not try for diplomatic victory. I got it, in 1896. I was completely shocked. I was mentally ready for war and... Ramses was nice enough to hand me the win?

 

[Collier20]

I didnt win, but i gave the AI the game. It was in a OCC and I built the UN and it went downhill from there. Being just one city doesnt give you many votes and my best ally was pretty weak as well. As I conquered most of the world, a third civ (who I was neutral with) benefitted the most. His civ was much bigger than my ally and soon his population was over 50% of the total. As soon as he passed universal sufferage, I was doomed. My science tanked. When I lost bureaucracy the game was over. Nuking his population out of exsistance would have been the way to go, but the UN banned that too. Building the UN f'ed me.

 

[KMadCandy]

Then Ramses built the United Nations. I didn't even have Mass Media yet on the horizon. He barely won the first election, but lost the second. I said, why not try for diplomatic victory. I got it, in 1896. I was completely shocked. I was mentally ready for war and... Ramses was nice enough to hand me the win?

that's awesome! did you meet the other continent only after dominating your own? i love doing that, avoids diplomatic penalties. Ramses clearly hasn't been following the recent threads about how to break the wonder habit has he?

but ouch collier20, that must hurt! i've never tried diplo as OCC, i'm certain i wouldn't finesse everything correctly. i did get a win recently where i influenced as much as possible who i'd be running against, and it turned out beautifully...everyone but my hand-picked competitor voted for me. first time i remember that happening, i was proud of that. but i sure wasn't only one city, i had about two-thirds of the votes i needed by myself, so i just needed one or two folks to vote for me.

 

[stratozyck]

Yeah, I didn't meet the rest of the continent until dominating the first. It was a dream game... I started out and hit the ground running. I actually got the wonder bug myself... I couldn't help it, had marble and stone really close and was Frederick so I knew those great people would come streaming in. The great thing was my first neighbor was weak so I easily overran him. By that point, the great prophets were being used to give my lesser cities higher production so they began pouring out units.

I took the entire continent pretty quickly, India was the last one left and they surrended after the first city fell. I went easy on them and let them capitulate as I was now getting messages of liberalism discovered elsewhere.

I cant emphasize how behind I was... I was paranoid about an invasion right up until I won. I was so sure that two of the allied nations on the other continent with much, much better militaries would land units at my extremity and take a big bite out of my empire. But nope! When I saw that I had won the vote, I laughed because I was about to quit the game.

 

[Orion071]

I had the perfect storm last week to attempt my first diplomatic victory on Monarch as Vicky. I was playing on a large Pangea. Saladin discovered Buddhism and it quickly spread to the whole world, except Hatty, who was Hindu. Since Hatty was everyone's worst enemy, I never traded with her and never got any diplomatic penalties with anyone. I ended up taking Hatty out with Redcoats and I was the land and population leader. Louis XIV was second and the runaway tech leader. He had discovered Theology and eventually switched to Christianity which made the Buddhist world upset with him. Meanwhile, I had 3 other civs at Friendly status and we caught Louis in tech. Just before I started to build the UN, I got the whole world to go to war with Louis so I could get the extra "mutual struggle" bonus. I had Saladin up to +21 in relations. That's when I made the big error. I forgot to end the war. Just before the first election, Saladin took over 2 big cities of Louis and became the 2nd place population. So the election was between me and Saladin instead of me and Louis. I no longer had the votes to win and I was darn lucky that Saladin didn't win the diplo victory instead. I had to end up launching another boring spaceship.

 

[Stylesrj]

I thought with the treaty in, you can't build any more nukes... Does the treaty now stop you from launching them or something? That does not seem fair. You can say "Hey, get rid of your nukes" all you want, but you can't stop them from using them.

If the treaty is meant to get rid of nuclear weapons, why can't you launch them? Getting rid of them over your enemy's territory is a great way to follow the treaty.

 

[dazman92]

the treaty prevents you from building new ones, but you can still launch old ones.

 

[Dan Quale]

WoW the first time ive ever seen the Un do something good, In my last game as persia playing monarch difficulty, I had conquered my continent which was 2x the size of the one the other 3 were on 63 % landmass 49% pop, still using a stack of calvary and crap at 1700 and had no ships except 2 galleys. I was too lazy to build ships so I figured id tech to united nations. After the last war had ended with huyana I had my economy raging, with state property, courtesy of my dear budy gahndis one city capitulation agreement, and everything appeared to be going well (90% with only -17 per turn) Around 1800 i hear the dreaded sound of the apollo program +about 2-3 casings from tiny frederic on his little crappy sliver of the lesser continent. I wasnt worried diplomatic victory would soon be mine. The first election came, somehow Frederic won,(385 to my 367) all his little friends voted for him, so i figure they would enjoy nukes, so I built about 15, and turned shaka and washington into parking lots, not before 2 elections passed, couldnt build anymore nukes, and had to use free market. Great..... 4 nukes left Frederick has more tech and money than bill gates, and im at -249/70% per turn. So i decided to build a spaceship, since my calvary woulnt do much to Louis'mechs. Long story short I ended up getting all my nukes except one shot down in a move of desperation trying to nuke a 36 population paris and losing the space race by a whole 2 turns. I ended up with a normalized score of over 9500 but still lost the game. At least that goofy wigged Fairy got a taste of radiation and 20 population killed out of one city instantly also sort of avenged me. The point here is stick with the strategy you began with, not having a set goal can only lead to failure.

 

[Infantry#14]

I didnt win, but i gave the AI the game. It was in a OCC and I built the UN and it went downhill from there. Being just one city doesnt give you many votes and my best ally was pretty weak as well. As I conquered most of the world, a third civ (who I was neutral with) benefitted the most. His civ was much bigger than my ally and soon his population was over 50% of the total. As soon as he passed universal sufferage, I was doomed. My science tanked. When I lost bureaucracy the game was over. Nuking his population out of exsistance would have been the way to go, but the UN banned that too. Building the UN f'ed me.

I actually won dipo victory on OCC once, but the difficuly was at warlords. The key is find a civ willing enough to sign a Permanent Alliance. Of course, this means war, war and more war. we eventually win dipo because our combine pop gave us enough vote for victory. I was mad because i probably could have won a domination game.

 

[Napalm102]

I accidently won the "diplomatic" victory a few days ago also. I was going for the domination win, my population was like 60ish % of world pop (basically more then anough too fullfill that criteria) and my land size was 63.5% or so (I was gonna win with the next border expansion of my two newly captured Roman cities).

So I stopped the war with Caesar and got him to capitulate to me, so I now had 2 vassals and Isabella was viped out long ago, Brenus, also on my continet, had only one city left. Same turn I get too choose what to vote for in UN and pick the diplo option (I thought why not, I just didn't want to pick non-nuclear treaty cause I was gonna nuke Korea, since they were on different continent and he was really far along the space race path), Shaka was in no position to challenge anyone anyway...... and well next turn I win diplomatic victory by 2 votes!! My first ever diplo victory *sniff* - and here I thought that no one liked me after I was either fighting them since ancient times or bribing them to fight each other, haha.

 

[KMadCandy]

I actually won dipo victory on OCC once, but the difficuly was at warlords. The key is find a civ willing enough to sign a Permanent Alliance. Of course, this means war, war and more war. we eventually win dipo because our combine pop gave us enough vote for victory. I was mad because i probably could have won a domination game.

i tried aiming for diplo at OCC on deity level. note that i don't ever play at deity for real, this was for a gauntlet game. my strategy was to go peace 100%, no PAs enabled, and hope they liked me enough to vote for me since i'd certainly need their votes *giggle*.

i was beaten to building the UN almost every time (grrrrrrrrrr, means of course that i'd never a candidate, i can't even take over the city that has the UN if i capture it in a war...auto-raze). i ended up taking gandhi and mansa out of the mix, they beeline to MM--well sort of, but they tech so much faster that their beeline-with-sidetracking ends up faster than my streamed beelining (<3 VoUs write-ups for that). those two really like to build the UN themselves, they steal my plan the meanies, once by ONE turn and i wasn't in universal sufferage to buy it, even with an engineer to headstart it. i was likely too poor that time anyway!

the one time i built it, many civs had defensive pacts which i noticed too late. the order i signed my own messed me up, i got too many negatives with hatty to get her to sign. that was the biggest thing that ended up not giving me enough votes, there were so many DPs, and i waited so long to sign my own that i didn't take time to build up positives. i did show higher visible numbers with some leaders that didn't vote for me victory-wise. i did end up secretary, so i was able to pass the civics i wanted yay!!, it was mostly the invisble modifiers /sigh. i didn't lose to diplo, the biggest pop guy didn't had enough for diplo victory either, but i did eventually lose to space race after a few attempts at the victory vote. didn't have time to build up enough DP points to overcome the invisible +s. well i never did get a "you have been defeated message", and i didn't rank as dan quayle, so that made me feel semi-okay.

man it's a scary feeling hearing those spaceship parts roll off the assembly line every turn, knowing that i'm not anywhere close to rocketry and am in no position to go to war. i didn't even communism(?) to build spies.

i hand-picked my opponents to stack the deck, peaceful ones with fairly high trade limits and favorite civics i'd want to be running at the end (except hatty) and for no warring throughout. that of course meant that they'd like each other too, i hoped to overcome that. twice somebody did get into a mood and declared war on me; those games i quit.

it is possible to win at deity the peaceful route, quite a few people did win their games, most with OCC, altho the earliest date was a huayna/go to war early game, not OCC. key is hand-picking civs and map (inland seas works best IMO) and regen'g for a great start. if/when i try it again, or any level monarch or above actually, i'll again not enable PAs; but i'm sure you probably checked that box since you planned on warring from the start.

it was fun, and it got me rather addicted to OCC for a while there. i learned a lot about diplo relationships (some by mistakes, admittedly) and about advantageous resource trading (in OCC, trade your happy resources for health even pre-globe theatre, or your only rice for corn, because if you don't check the resource trade screen every turn and grab it while you can, they'll trade it to someone else and you likely won't ever have the chance again. trading for anything can get you +modifiers for years you have supplied us resources).

i even tried some warring games (globe theatre for your entire empire rocks hardcore!!), NOT at diety level and not aiming for diplo. i won *giggle*. i ought to try the peaceful diplo way again at a lower level.