Space Victory and UN Votes

[vorlon_mi]

So, here I was, making good progress as the Egyptians on Regent level, random map with lots of water. Going for space victory as I usually do, and I had just successfully invaded the long, stringy island of the Aztecs to get access to needed luxuries. I had built SETI and the Internet, and the other AI were just entering the Modern Age. No problem, I thought.

Then I get a popup, "The Ottoman city of XXX has just finished the United Nations." And another, "Vote for Osman or Cleopatra (me)". No problem, I thought, I've been good friends with Lincoln through the whole game. The Aztecs won't vote for me, but somebody else will. Or AI will abstain, which seems to happen in all my other games.

Nope. EVERYONE else voted for Osman, and "You have suffered an embarrassing diplomatic loss." I've never seen that screen before, and I'm not in a hurry to see it again.

Questions:
- When going for a space victory, how do you handle the possibility of losing a UN vote?
- Do you usually build the UN yourself, and just never call a vote? My first reaction upon losing was, "oh, I should have built the UN myself," but I still would have had the situation where I offended multiple tribes over the course of the game. Even if I had built it myself, I probably would have lost the vote.

 

[justanick]

Building the UN and never holding a vote seems to be the natural cause of action. If someone else build the UN conquer the city it is in. You might even burn it down, that way you guarantee noone is going to win via UN.

If you expect a vote to be hold declare war against your expected opponents and buy everyone else into that war via military alliances.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Building the UN and never holding a vote seems to be the natural cause of action. If someone else build the UN conquer the city it is in. You might even burn it down, that way you guarantee noone is going to win via UN.

If you expect a vote to be hold declare war against your expected opponents and buy everyone else into that war via military alliances.

I understand the latter steps, especially the "Conquer the city it is in." In this particular case, I lost the very first vote they held, literally on the first turn. No time for a war.

Do you usually build it yourself, when going for a space victory? Or do you (nearly) always go for domination or conquest?

 

[justanick]

Do you usually build it yourself, when going for a space victory?

Yes. Production will not be short in the modern age, so why risk that someone else builds it? But it can be annoying having to refuse the option to hold a vote every few turns.

 

[Kirejara]

In this particular case, I lost the very first vote they held, literally on the first turn. No time for a war.

You have to bribe everyone in the turn before you finish (or capture) the UN. In most cases even if they hate you, they will at least abstain from the vote instead of voting for your rival.

Another way could be to declare war on your rival for the vote and take everone else into an alliance against him/her. Again: do this before you have the UN.

This works of course only if you have no made to many enemies.

 

[tjs282]

...which is exactly why I just built the UN in the PTW-game I'm playing at the moment (as the Randomly-selected Germans, on a Randomly-selected 70% Continents-map, I think).

Spoiler :

I got a poor start -- 4 (B)Grass, 10 Desert, 4 Mountains, no freshwater in sight, but lots of Jungle to the east -- on a Continent shared with the Japs to the northwest, and the Vikings, Mongols and Russians to the east/northeast

Initial expansion was therefore very slow (Berlin couldn't even get to Pop12 until I got Rails and Electricity!), and I played most of this game from way behind, finally catching up in tech and land in the late Industrial (Panzer rule!), despite being the last to get into that era. I bumble-beelined to SciMeth (via RepParts), and then used an eCav-generated MGL to rush ToE, grabbing AtomThe and Electronics per usual. AtomThe was used as collateral for tech-swaps up to ~Combustion, while my ToE-triggered GA built Hoovers and Factories (and Hospitals in cities with further growth-room at Pop12, which was most of them), and got me to MotorTrans. The GA ended the turn I reached it, so I DoW'd Ragnar (again), Mobilised to keep the shields flowing, and built Piles o' Panzer.

When I got close to finishing research on Radio (last tech of the Era), I also started Palace- and IntelAg-prebuilds in the hope of getting a Wonder-tech as my freebie: I was lucky enough to draw Fission, just as my Panzer finished liberating all the oppressed Russian and Mongol cities on our Continent from Ragnar's tyranny (and also Ozzie's, who'd DoW'd me instead of withdrawing his boats from my waters; he's since also lost several Battleships, Ironclads, Transports, Tanks, and Sipahi).

The Japs are long-dead (mostly my handiwork, the Russians finished them off), the Russians and Mongols succumbed to Ragnar's Cavs+Zerks in the early Industrial (with only 2 cities left, Temujin suicide-DoW'd Ragnar), and the Indians' last gasp was only a couple of turns ago. The Civs left on the board are the Ottomans (shared a medium-size Continent with the Indians, before pushing them to a small offshore island), the Aztecs (medium, had an island to themselves, colonised a smaller one but lost it, captured the Indians' last 2 towns) and the Scandinavians (long the dominant force on our Continent, now down to a 1-tile island-city just south of Reykjavik).

No-one was likely to vote for me, so I cancelled the election. Now I've just got to race Ozzie to the Space-techs, which shouldn't be difficult, since he'll be wasting his shields on unit-builds, while his people get more and more unhappy...

In your situation, assuming that you weren't able to get to the UN-building city when you got notification of the Ottomans starting it (or did they cascade to it?), the only way you could probably have prevented that loss would have been by well-timed bribery -- because only Polite/ Gracious civs will vote for you, and you need a majority of votes to win.

If you had investigated the UN-building city sometime after getting the 'starting the build' pop-up but before it was completed, and noted the turn when completion was due, then 1T before that date, maxing your TAX%-slider and signing MPPs and RoPs with sufficient opponents to give you an overall majority would have been a 'cheap' (i.e. exploitative) way to buy your supporters' loyalty.

On a map with only 4(?) Civs left, though, you would need 3 out of 4 votes, so you might also have had to forego DoWing Monty; if there were 5 Civs left, you could have bribed the other 2 survivors and still have attacked the Aztecs, provided that they had no MPPs with your Allies. But if you'd then won the vote, you wouldn't have needed the Luxes to keep your citizens happy while they built your Spaceship.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I don't remember getting a popup when they started it, but, I don't remember getting any popups when other AI started their wonders. Is there an option to turn that on, which I should have done? Or is that part of a mod?

Usually, as I'm building a wonder or running a palace pre-build for a wonder, I check F7 to see if anyone has started building that wonder. I was so preoccupied with preparing for the war with Monty that I forgot to notice that Osman had started the UN. No one was building SETI or Internet, which I had my eyes on.

Agreed; if someone else starts building the UN, I have to investigate the city to check on their progress and take countermeasures if I'm not prepared to build it myself, or conquer it. In my current game (as Carthage), I planned for it and built it myself. I've been avoiding the vote, because everyone is either Annoyed or Furious with me. Even when I bribe one into joining my war effort, they only get to Polite.

 

[tjs282]

I don't remember getting a popup when they started it, but, I don't remember getting any popups when other AI started their wonders. Is there an option to turn that on, which I should have done?

I could have sworn that it happens automatically, but no -- you're right, it's on the Game-prefs menu, and may need to be turned (back) on manually (see attached), e.g. if you played an SG where someone had turned it off! Guess I've just always had it switched on...

 

[vorlon_mi]

Thanks! I've got it turned on, now!