The Diplomatic Victory needs to be changed.

[DemonMaster]

Arsenal of Democracy is a second-level tenet and is very powerful in itself. So if you are first to unlock Freedom, it's the next policy. Not much commitment needed.

Also, they're "tenets", not "tenants".

Tenets, sorry, just a word for me (not a native English speaker).

But AoD takes commitment because if I am not remembering that one totally wrong, you get extra influence by giving units to them. I rarely have extra units to give away. Some units not worth to upgrade, yes, but otherwise not. Sure I can build some cheap units to give away, but that takes commitment, by building them or you can give them the units that you got from military CS, but that is not so many.
Perhaps we play differently you and I, I rarely have time to build units just for fun, my cities have other things to build. But that's just it, you apparently like to spend that time to build those extra units to give away, you are committed

 

[evilcat]

Suggestion: what if giving CS cash would have a cooldown?
And lenght of cld would depend of amount of gold. Like 5/10/20 Turns.
So nobody could sink in gold your long time ally in one turn, while some "on the edge" CS could switch sides seeing shinnies.

 

[VainoValkea]

Tenets, sorry, just a word for me (not a native English speaker).

I only corrected you because that seems to be a very common mistake, I hope it doesn't catch up in too many!

And what you're saying about AoD is true - although it's not much of a commitment, really, to churn out cheap troops (lancers, privateers etc) compared to the gold gift costs. It pays itself back very well.

 

[DemonMaster]

Suggestion: what if giving CS cash would have a cooldown?
And lenght of cld would depend of amount of gold. Like 5/10/20 Turns.
So nobody could sink in gold your long time ally in one turn, while some "on the edge" CS could switch sides seeing shinnies.

It would even be a step in the right direction if you only could give money once per turn and city state. That way it will be a chance to counter it. If you need 50 for example you can't just click twice and be happy with it, you need to spend a turn in between (perhaps more than one).

Edit: I mean you can only give one unit per three turns, through the CS menu. Why not something similar with all gifts. Edit2: And perhaps if you have a spy in the CS, you are allowed to "bribe" more or the higher "bribes" (500 and 1000) can only be chosen if you have a spy in there.

 

[evilcat]

It would even be a step in the right direction if you only could give money once per turn and city state. That way it will be a chance to counter it. If you need 50 for example you can't just click twice and be happy with it, you need to spend a turn in between (perhaps more than one).

Edit: I mean you can only give one unit per three turns, through the CS menu. Why not something similar with all gifts. Edit2: And perhaps if you have a spy in the CS, you are allowed to "bribe" more or the higher "bribes" (500 and 1000) can only be chosen if you have a spy in there.

Why to stop half way?
I suppose nobody loves clickfest, so having this cooldown of 20T per 1000g would secure that. And bribing back every turn or 3 turns... woudl be annoying. For me the convience of having things more or less set once for 20T is big. (single CS should not take all playtime)

Separate note:
It would be nice if CS would have always active quests coresponding to their type, for example:
Militaristic always apreciate killing your enemies (as long as not at war with you).
Cultured always apreaciate birth of Great Artist (of any time).
Maritime and Mercantine always prise trade routes to them.
Religious always prize birth of great prophet or converting others city to your faith.

Giving a mission will double the bonus.
That would make some good things to immersion if playing as "the conqueror" will automaticly be rewarded by all miitaristic city states. (no matter if from inspiracion or fear)

 

[Polisurgist]

How about we make it so that MULTIPLE leaders of the SAME ideology could win the game, but only up to 2-3? I'm sure there's a way to work somehow, but at the present moment it seems like a good system since it actually encourages meaningful relationships between civs.

I'm a firm believer that - not just in Civ but in any multiplayer game - the ability to have only one winner more or less eliminates any pretense toward diplomacy or deal-making that game has. With only one winner, the probability on any allies you have betraying you is 1. There can be skill in figuring out when exactly that betrayal is coming, but it's never going to be all that hard. In fact, that's the core reason City-States have to play a central role in a diplomatic victory, because they aren't trying to win the game.

I think a better general way for Civ games to work would be to allow all victory conditions, and to award 1st, 2nd and 3rd places to the civs that meet the conditions in that order. You could still go for a "total win" or something by meeting three separate victory conditions before any other civ gets one, but you'd have something to play for if you weren't a runaway and more importantly, you might help another civ take 1st place if they could help you get 3rd instead of 4th.

On the topic of buying influence with City-States, I think doing it a little more like actual nations "buy influence" would be a good idea. Outright cash transfers aren't as common as some people think, but loans and loan forgiveness is a lot more like it. Rather than just giving money for influence, you could loan it to a City-State and get some kind of return on it. There would be some kind of...prime rate based on how much money is out there for City-States to get loaned, and you could forgive some amount of that debt in exchange for influence. But all of this should be tied to the game's economy rather than just being a black hole that diplo spending goes into.

 

[Polisurgist]

Separate note:
It would be nice if CS would have always active quests coresponding to their type, for example:
Militaristic always apreciate killing your enemies (as long as not at war with you).
Cultured always apreaciate birth of Great Artist (of any time).
Maritime and Mercantine always prise trade routes to them.
Religious always prize birth of great prophet or converting others city to your faith.

The problem with this is that it would just centrifuge out all of these resources. High-culture civs would get allied with cultural City-States and thus get more culture, but they'd lose alliances with the militaristic City-States and thus have less troops. You'd just end up with more "clumping" at either end, which is actually one of the weaknesses of the quest system right now.

It would make more sense if the CSes asked you to make up for their shortcomings. The military states need trade routes to fund their city guards, the religious states want culture because they need religious art, the maritime ones need you to donate troops to defend their fleets, &c.

 

[TheBlackHole]

I think if there were only two candidates for World Leader and every civ had to vote for 1 of the two candidates, it'd add a bit more diplomacy to it. For example, only two candidates are in the running for world leader (determined by UN delegates in the normal way, #1 and #2). Then from those two candidates, each civ had to vote for 1 of the 2 candidates... and the number of votes is determined in some way that is not dependent on CS allies. Simplest would be that each civ has 1 vote, or it could be scaled by some other metric (population? I don't know). If you get some large proportion (like 75% or something), you win diplomatic victory. And of course, we could have some wonders or techs or policies that helps win diplo victory (e.g. less percentage needed, more votes in final vote-off, etc.)

It's not the most elegant and there are ways to improve it, but at least it forces you to play nice with the civs. You get in the running from having CS allies (and all the work that entails -- quests, gold, etc.), but after you're in the running, you now depend on the civs themselves to vote for you (so you actually have to be "diplomatic").