Proposal: Diplomatic Victories

[Naismith]

I'm not especially fond of the diplomatic victory condition. I think a diplomatic victory should require getting the votes of a majority of Civ's, rather than having votes be weighted according to each Civ's population.

I think a diplo victory should follow these principals:

1) A majority of Civs should have to vote for you.
2) A Civ's diplo rating should be augmented by some new modifiers to make it more possible to gain positive modifiers that only pertain to U.N. voting.
2) Whoever builds the U.N. should have an advantage in the voting.
3) Whoever is leader of the U.N. should have an advantage in the voting.
4) Whoever is the leader in score should have an advantage in the voting. (I can hear the howls already. )
5) Everytime a resolution proposed by the U.N. leader gets passed, the U.N. leader should get an advantage in the voting.
6) It should also be possible to bribe Civs more directly to get their vote. Perhaps a "Please accept this gift in consideration of your U.N. support" which could be rejected, but if accepted would give you their vote one time only.

An example: When you build the U.N., you get an automatic +2 diplo modifier with all Civs, which only affects how they vote in the U.N. If you are elected leader of the U.N., you get an automatic +2 diplo modifier in the voting. Being the leader in score nets a +2 rating. Each resolution passed nets the U.N. leader a +1 for each Civ that voted for the resolution. I'm not sure the amount of the diplo modifiers above are appropriate. I think it would have to be tuned.

My basic purpose here is to make a diplomatic victory less dependent on military conquest. The days of voting yourself in would be gone.

What do you think?

 

[Powerslave]

Sounds like yet another feature from SMAC that should have been implemented in Civ IV. I just tell people to play SMAC, if they want a well-designed game, most of the time. In terms of gameplay, Civ IV is good, but SMAC is lightyears better.

We need more mods for Civ IV before it overtakes SMAC.

 

[BeefontheBone]

SMAC's AI couldn't hold a candle to Civ 4's, though. Besides, that's not exactly relevant here.

If the majority of civs have to vote for you, you're actually encouraging more warmongering - those who will never vote for you must be eliminated completely.

 

[Naismith]

If the majority of civs have to vote for you, you're actually encouraging more warmongering - those who will never vote for you must be eliminated completely.

I see your point, but I still doubt it would encourage more warmongering. It's true there would still be a motive to wipe out other Civs. (Although they would not have to be eliminated completely if you vassalized them.) However, in the current situation, you not only eliminate their vote against you, you get their population and all their voting power. That's one of the reasons why the basis of almost every diplomatic win is owning a fairly large percentage of the world's population.

Let me give an example: Let's say you're playing with 10 Civs total. You can figure the average Civ owns 10% of the population. Currently, you probably need to own 40% of the total population before you can even think of winning a diplomatic victory, which means you have to take over 3 entire Civs (or vassalize them). That's a lot of warring, and it may not be enough. That's assuming you can get 3 of the remaining 6 other Civs to vote for you.

Under the system I propose, you could take over 1 Civ, become the leader in score, and if you manage to build the U.N. and pass some resolutions, you would most like win the diplo victory. In fact, it would be quite possible to win a diplo victory without warring at all.

 

[witten]

I'm not especially fond of the diplomatic victory condition. I think a diplomatic victory should require getting the votes of a majority of Civ's, rather than having votes be weighted according to each Civ's population.

Totally agreed with this at least. IRL China and India don't have a multiple votes. Well veto rights could be granted to UN builder and the most powerful nation, though this would render UN resolutions powerless and make no fun.

BTW the resolution feature should be more refined. Every member should be able to choose their own fate! You observe the resolution or risk diplomatic penalties. For example bad relations, bad reputation, or sanctions. One could propose global trade embargo against a bad guy. How about even more compulsive measures like joint military campaign? Reasons include boycotting NPT, excessive war, violation of human rights(caste, slavery civics, razing too many cities, etc.) Even more, one might just choose not to join UN and get by onself.

 

[Naismith]

Well veto rights could be granted to UN builder and the most powerful nation, though this would render UN resolutions powerless and make no fun.

I agree.

BTW the resolution feature should be more refined. Every member should be able to choose their own fate! You observe the resolution or risk diplomatic penalties. For example bad relations, bad reputation, or sanctions. One could propose global trade embargo against a bad guy. How about even more compulsive measures like joint military campaign? Reasons include boycotting NPT, excessive war, violation of human rights(caste, slavery civics, razing too many cities, etc.) Even more, one might just choose not to join UN and get by onself.

I like all of these ideas. Those kinds of resolutions are reasonable. Many of the resolutions in the current setup don't make much sense to me - basically, all of the "adopt a civic" options. Although I prioritize fun over realism, I think a resolution for all Civs adopting a particular civic is very unrealistic and questionable in terms of fun. Although you can pass a resolution that will reduce positive diplo modifiers between other Civs (e.g. Free Religion), you have no direct way of increasing positive diplo modifiers for yourself with resolutions.

 

[lbhhh]

I like point #6. It should be in the game.

 

[witten]

One more thing I'd like to change - the UN secretary general candidates should be at least three, as was in Civ3. With the only two candidates, each voting is likely to produce the same winner. Once elected, diplomatic victory is also too easy. The winner with over half support already is almost certain to get 60% soon.

 

[Panda]

What do you think?

I think I strongly disliked the Civ3 UN and actually like the Civ4 UN, where population decides your number of votes.

I would welcome a one-time Veto for the builder to block unwanted motions, plus the proposed bribe-for-UN-support.

 

[Wodan]

1) A majority of Civs should have to vote for you.

So, if there are 5 civs, having the two smallest on your side can get you voted in as world leader? One civ has 60% of the world, the second has 20%, the third has 19% and the other two have 0.5% each. So, an alliance of #2, #5, and #6 (total 21% of the world) can vote in #2 as leader? Sorry, I don't buy it.

I can see the arguments in favor, but when you look at the extreme case I think it's worse than the current situation's extreme.

4) Whoever is the leader in score should have an advantage in the voting. (I can hear the howls already. )

Don't like this because score is determined by a combination of things, warfare being one of them. No way a conqueror should get a bonus to get a diplo win.

6) It should also be possible to bribe Civs more directly to get their vote. Perhaps a "Please accept this gift in consideration of your U.N. support" which could be rejected, but if accepted would give you their vote one time only.

Again, something good from SMAC that we lost.

An example: When you build the U.N., you get an automatic +2 diplo modifier with all Civs, which only affects how they vote in the U.N.

Wait a second... I thought we were only talking about voting for the "diplo win" vote. Now, it sounds like you're talking about voting for ALL diplo resolutions?

My basic purpose here is to make a diplomatic victory less dependent on military conquest. The days of voting yourself in would be gone.

See above #4.

Anyway, if this simple statement is your goal here, there are other ways to accomplish this that I think might be better. Such as simply allowing a unanimous vote of no confidence. (That is, if the entire rest of the world is against you, then it's an automatic veto.)

Wodan

 

[Wodan]

By the way, I think there are a LOT worse things broken (screwed up) by the U.N. than being able to vote yourself a win. Such as lack of breadth for civic resolutions, mandatory compliance to resolutions, etc.

Wodan

 

[Naismith]

So, if there are 5 civs, having the two smallest on your side can get you voted in as world leader? One civ has 60% of the world, the second has 20%, the third has 19% and the other two have 0.5% each. So, an alliance of #2, #5, and #6 (total 21% of the world) can vote in #2 as leader? Sorry, I don't buy it.

I can see the arguments in favor, but when you look at the extreme case I think it's worse than the current situation's extreme.

Yeah, it's not exactly perfect, is it? Perhaps a more ideal solution would be to require a majority of Civs to vote for you, representing a certain mimimum percentage (50%?) of the world population.

4) Whoever is the leader in score should have an advantage in the voting. (I can hear the howls already. )

Don't like this because score is determined by a combination of things, warfare being one of them. No way a conqueror should get a bonus to get a diplo win.

I think some kind of bonus should be available if you are dominating the game. I suppose you could use the culture rating, or GNP rating, but neither appeal to me. There is probably no good way to implement the idea.

From my perspective, conquerors are now getting a huge bonus in the current setup (greater voting power). To me, this is the largest flaw in the system.

Wait a second... I thought we were only talking about voting for the "diplo win" vote. Now, it sounds like you're talking about voting for ALL diplo resolutions?

You're right, it should just apply to the diplo win vote.

Anyway, if this simple statement is your goal here, there are other ways to accomplish this that I think might be better. Such as simply allowing a unanimous vote of no confidence. (That is, if the entire rest of the world is against you, then it's an automatic veto.)Wodan

I think requiring a majority of votes representing a majority of the world's population (as stated above) might work pretty well. Do you agree?

By the way, I think there are a LOT worse things broken (screwed up) by the U.N. than being able to vote yourself a win. Such as lack of breadth for civic resolutions, mandatory compliance to resolutions, etc.

I agree that all of those things should be addressed.

 

[cairnsy44]

I love the idea of gaining influence through a gift. It bothers me when you have no way of changing another civ's vote. For example, I had built the UN and was very close to a diplo win, but Cyrus, who was pleased with both me and my "opponent," who I was Friendly with, would only vote for my opponent. I gifted him gold, food, movies and musicals and STILL he would not change his vote. He stayed pleased with the other guy the whole time. It was frustrating. I ended up simply going to war and gaining the votes I needed by land gain, which I was trying to avoid.

 

[Naismith]

I love the idea of gaining influence through a gift. It bothers me when you have no way of changing another civ's vote. For example, I had built the UN and was very close to a diplo win, but Cyrus, who was pleased with both me and my "opponent," who I was Friendly with, would only vote for my opponent. I gifted him gold, food, movies and musicals and STILL he would not change his vote. He stayed pleased with the other guy the whole time. It was frustrating. I ended up simply going to war and gaining the votes I needed by land gain, which I was trying to avoid.

When I was trying to get my first couple of diplo wins, I had many experiences like this. Then I figured out that gifts just didn't have that much affect - or at least, not enough affect. You really need common religion, favorite civic, and/or mutual military struggle modifiers to get anywhere.

If you go the common religion route, then you get the negative modifiers with Civs that don't share the religion. Then that advantage can disappear if one or more of the Civs you share a religion with adopts Free Religion.

If you go the favorite Civic route, then you are probably making a long term economic sacrifice. I'm not very keen on adopting Heriditary Rule to get one Civ (if you're lucky, maybe 2 Civs) to like me more, when I'm running a late game cottage economy and need the hammers from Universal Suffrage. Especially if I know I may have to resort to winning by space race or domination.

That leaves mutual military struggle, which means more war. All in all, it just doesn't appeal to me. I'm sure many other people feel differently, this is just my opinion.

 

[Wodan]

From my perspective, conquerors are now getting a huge bonus in the current setup (greater voting power).

Agreed, this is a flaw.

To me, this is the largest flaw in the system.

Don't agree. The largest flaws are disallowing voting in any civic, and disallowing a refusal to enact the UN demands. I'm split over which is worse. The former is "less of a positive" and the latter is "addition of a negative".

I think requiring a majority of votes representing a majority of the world's population (as stated above) might work pretty well. Do you agree?

Something like that would be superior to the current system, yes, I agree.

Wodan

 

[Lockesdonkey]

I don't like how warmongering gets you more votes, but in reality, any system to unite the world under a single government (which is what a Diplo victory is) would be weighted by population.

On the other hand, election for UN Secretary-General should be a one country-one vote system (that's how it is in reality, anyway).

However, I think that there are some things which can be done to avoid the warmongering problem.

First, we can make conquered cities worth less. I would imagine that the best way to do so would be to make it so that split cities (cities where less than 100% of the population identifies with the culture of the owner) don't entirely count towards their owner. For instance, if a city of size 20 is 50% Celtic and 50% Indian, Brennus would get 10 citizens' worth of votes and Asoka would get 10 citizens' worth. If India were completely conquered, Brennus would get 10 citizens' worth, and the remaining 10 would go to nobody.

Second, the order for who can be Secretary-General or Diplo winner can be changed. Right now, the candidates are the person who built the UN plus the largest civ by population (as I recall. If it isn't that's just plain stupid). We can consider the Sec-Gen candidacy as a list: First the UN builder, then the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and so on by population. The top two get to run. We can make it so that a warmonger (definition intentionally vague) can drop down in the list, hopefully leaving those who are not warmongers.

Third, I have this suggestion. While it is in need of serious modification to reflect current Civ, I think it's a good start, no?

 

[Naismith]

Third, I have this suggestion. While it is in need of serious modification to reflect current Civ, I think it's a good start, no?

I read it all - wow. This is a very comprehensive and intricate system, very creative, very cool. It would be a fundamental and far-reaching change to the game. I have one main reservation - how difficult would it be to make the AI capable of dealing with it? Quick, someone find Blake!