Sell your vote

[CultureManiac]

Once the game progresses to the later eras, a number of AI may have diplomats in your capital. This opens up the World Congress option in your trading screen. If there is a resolution that you plan to vote for anyway, or if you don't care either way, you can negotiate with the AI and sell your vote to the highest bidder. It's effectively free gold.

 

[FeiLing]

Only had them put a diplomat in my city once... doubt it happens all too often unless you are terrible behind and they can't steal from you^^

 

[Tabarnak]

Worth almost a full lux sell last times i sold them. Not extraordinary, but helful.

Does someone experimented better?

 

[CultureManiac]

Last game I sold my vote to Persia for 10 gpt. He wanted world religion, and had already converted almost all of my cities, so I would get the benefit too It's situational, but can give a little assistance.

 

[voek]

I think it's very situational (diplomat in place & vote preference is aligned), but I try to make it a routine to do a full trade check right before WC to see if you sell your already planned vote. Most of the time I do this anyway just to check position of the leaders. Might as well get some gold out of it.

 

[EK834]

Only had them put a diplomat in my city once... doubt it happens all too often unless you are terrible behind and they can't steal from you^^

That depends how you define "terribly behind" - and perhaps you just don't happen to trade when the option to sell your vote is enabled (the AI move its spies around quite a bit).

I'm on my first Emperor game in BNW after playing King since the expansion, somewhat struggling to adjust, and currently 4th in science (but only 4 techs from the leader and 2 behind the 2 others, and all three have 1 or 2 techs they could steal from me as I'm going at the top and their lead is with bottom techs), in Industrial.

6 out 14 AI currently have the option to buy my vote enabled.

It's not that rare.

 

[comatosedragon]

Only had them put a diplomat in my city once... doubt it happens all too often unless you are terrible behind and they can't steal from you^^

This. I have actually NEVER had it happen. How do you know? Is there an icon?

 

[FeiLing]

The option will just no longer be greyed out when you trade with them.

 

[Aaron90495]

I do this very often; I'm starting to believe that they don't need a diplomat in your capital, only that ONE of the civ's has a diplomat in the other. If you have a diplomat in their capital, I believe you can sell your votes, even if they don't have one in your capital.

 

[EK834]

I'm starting to believe that they don't need a diplomat in your capital, only that ONE of the civ's has a diplomat in the other. If you have a diplomat in their capital,

No, it doesn't work bilaterally. Diplomats only allow to buy delegates, so each side needs one.

I've double-checked before posting. I'm in the process of buying votes, and I have two diplomats in place. I can sell my vote to the Shoshone as well as buy theirs, because we both have diplomats in place. I can buy the vote of Nobunaga as I have a diplomat in Kyoto, but he can't buy my delegates, and hovering over my own WC option clearly says "They need a spy as a diplomat in our capital to trade".

Like I said earlier, it's much more frequent that the AI has a diplomat in the human's capital from time to time than some believe (when they are building Wonders, notably), that's why the option to sell your delegate appears when you thought it was because of your diplomat it worked.

It's just easy to miss the option to sell your vote is enabled if you're not opening the Ai interaction screen with making that deal in mind.

What's rarer is that the AI initiate such deals, but I've seen it happen more usually when I don't have much left to offer them then when they truly want the vote, it appears. But the AI can pack the vote too. I never saw it before (I played on King where I was overpowered, I moved to Emperor and I'm still adapting, let's say) and I usually could buy all the votes I wanted unhindered, but in my current game I got beat to it by one of the AI, probably Rome. I was making the rounds to buy votes for WI before too many AI had one, only to find that 4 AI already sold their delegates to someone else to vote against it.

 

[Novalia]

sold a vote for 16gpt yesterday.. standard settings.. immortal.. their diplomat in my capital.. i initiated the trade.
i was tech leader.

 

[Aaron90495]

Huh, interesting. I figured it was bilateral for the sole reason that I can sell my votes very frequently - more than half the time I want to, I can. But yes, it seems like the AI uses diplomats a lot.

 

[sendos]

I've only noticed in about 2 games when I had an AI diplomat in my capitol. Does anyone have an idea of the various prices for selling votes?

 

[sanabas]

It works very well when it's the world leader vote coming up. I wasn't aiming for a diplo win, the AI didn't have anywhere near enough votes himself, so in return for me commiting to vote for him as world leader, the AI went and declared war on somebody else for me.

 

[RaidandTrade]

One thing I'm trying is to put a proposal forward that is against a civ's interests and then sell my nay votes to them. First attempt was with someone who was already guarded so they apparently couldn't pay me enough to be a fair trade (?) so next attempt (next game) will be with a neutral civ.

Anyone else tried this with success?

 

[HeraldtheGreat]

To add on to this, you can vote for another Civ as World Congress host if you don't have enough votes to win yourself i order to increase your odds at winning next time. For example, In my last game as England, I was short a vote for becoming host. So, I gave my votes to the Civ with the least amount of votes (Mongolia). In doing this I ensured:

1. To keep my arch-nemesis, William, from getting extra votes being Host in order to give him more power

2. Give myself a better chance at becoming Host next time, since Mongolia won't have a chance at being a continuous Host without my votes

So, what do you think?

 

[RaidandTrade]

To add on to this, you can vote for another Civ as World Congress host if you don't have enough votes to win yourself i order to increase your odds at winning next time. For example, In my last game as England, I was short a vote for becoming host. So, I gave my votes to the Civ with the least amount of votes (Mongolia). In doing this I ensured:

1. To keep my arch-nemesis, William, from getting extra votes being Host in order to give him more power

2. Give myself a better chance at becoming Host next time, since Mongolia won't have a chance at being a continuous Host without my votes

So, what do you think?

I've used this mainly to make sure my enemy didn't get in. You get a little thank you afterwards but no other obvious diplo benefit BUT you do get to mess with your enemy without penalty as well. You don't get ratted for putting someone else in the chair.

 

[Deau]

I've had diplomats in my cities when I'm #1 in tech even on deity. I believe they do it for ideology pressure(25% tourism) but I haven't fully grasped why often I have non-CV oriented AIs do the same.

There's probably some issue with aesthetics implementation making AIs consider CV as a VC alternative and thus increasing the likeliness that they will use diplomats.

 

[EK834]

One thing I'm trying is to put a proposal forward that is against a civ's interests and then sell my nay votes to them. First attempt was with someone who was already guarded so they apparently couldn't pay me enough to be a fair trade (?) so next attempt (next game) will be with a neutral civ.

Anyone else tried this with success?

Yes, it works.

An hilarious variant is to gift to an AI that proposed a ban the resource they're trying to ban, and watch them throw all their delegates into defeating their own proposal.

My best use of that one was while I attempting to get Freedom passed as WI. I was very proud of myself when I figured out how I could divert Autocratic Alexander's 12 delegates on his own proposal to ban salt.... I bought his core delegates to vote "Yea" to ban salt, then I gifted him salt and watch him throw all but one of his FP and CS delegates into "Nay" on the ban. But the best is that not only Ideology passed but also the ban, and the lost of the happiness from salt pushed him to -23 unhappiness and into Revolution. I was very smug.

 

[RaidandTrade]

EK834, you have my respect. That must have been so sweet!