The thing i hate about diplo victory

[jasper]

Is there is nothing to do.

The game doesnt include diplomatic victory very well into the standard game mechanics.

Diplo victory i never have short term goals for techs, policy cards, culture things, districts etc. I rarely make desicions with a diplo victory in mind, like how can i come closer to my diplo victory. I make decisions based on balancing my ps and qs, general game problems, instead of with a diplo victory in mind.

Diplo has, what, 3 things to look out for all game? Mahbodi, statue of lib and pototo palace. No buildings or districts even further a diplo vic.

It feels like im playing a score victory.

 

[tiamats4esgares]

Well if you play the way I play, then that means your goal the entire game is to build the Statue of Liberty ASAP...because you win when you do. So, get as much culture as possible.

(Well, I guess your first goal is the Mahabodhi Temple, which is kinda hard to get on Deity.)

One rule of thumb I learn is you need Construction on the Science tree before you realize it, and it also helps to have 7 different districts.

After Construction, the Science tree is admittedly mostly useless. Just try to get them 7 districts I guess.

 

[Finvola]

I almost always have Diplo victory turned off. I think it's a poorly designed feature and I often forget it's there when talking about victories. It's just not an enjoyable victory path for me and I wish I could disable the voting entirely.

 

[The Civs 6]

It's so funny that OP started this topic. I had a game as Germany where I was going science victory, and it was really just this ideal situation where there a bunch of rivers, mountains and a weak but aggressive neighbor. And it was on emperor - so I understand not the hardest game, but the other AI were pretty competent so it felt like decent to start cruising.

At some point my ally grabbed the green lady, and he was starting to edge near a diplo victory. This basically forced me to win a diplomatic victory. It was easy to do it because a) I had a lot of military power but wasn't aggressive, so I had a lot of allies; b) I was owls of minerva, so I was suzerain of everyone; and c) I had so many hammers and gold that I could win any diplo competition handily.

I didn't want to go a diplo victory, and it was just sort of random chance that I was getting close. Unlike every other victory condition (including cultural, which is actually kind of hard in 6), diplo is the only one I repeatedly come close to winning without trying or even wanting to. And I'm not going to flip my whole game over just because I don't want that victory.

the path to diplo victory sucks. I mean, even in an ideal world, what is the path to it? Building a few specific wonders, getting a religion with pagodas, having hammers or gold to win competitions, not being pugilistic or a polluter, and guessing what a crazy irrational AI is going to vote? The whole thing feels like an afterthought. And frankly, the very concept of a diplo victory is just gross. At least 5 had the kind of silly but kind of funny idea that you had to buy friends to win the game. the path in 6 is just lame, lame, lame. Change my mind.

 

[The Highwayman]

I agree completely.

I just completed my first diplo victory with Pericles at around T231. I want to like it but it has holes. I got unlucky with 2 ban luxury votes and wound up with 19/20 at T213. Had to go through the motions for another twenty turns to finish the one and only emergency in the game that triggered around T200 (disaster 3....no disaster emergencies before then....unlucky). I don't mind it being the slowest victory, but I wish I had a little more control over victory points. I built all the wonders, won all the resolutions except the 2 ban ones (perhaps one other), could have won a culture victory 75 turns faster and a science victory 50 turns faster at least as I was pumping 3,000+ cpt and 2,000 spt. I had suzerain over all 12 city states and everything. Maybe that's why it felt icky...had one of my best games and could do whatever I wanted but had to "next turn" it awaiting the one and only emergency and world congress. I set my cities to send aid and outscored everyone at least 35 to 1 in the emergency points. I love peaceful games and simming....it's just missing a another ingredient to give better control to the player.

 

[leandrombraz]

I disagree, but before I say anything, let me point out that Diplo Victory main flaw is the Aid Request mechanic. It's random, there isn't a good balance between the AI investing too much to win it, which hurts them, and not investing enough to beat the player, and how many of those you will get vary based on the disaster level that you chose. It can either frustrate a player, if he doesn't get any aid request, or make it feel like you got a cheap win, when you get too many of those early. It's a victory that people often get by accident (I'm talking about casual players here, before the <200 turns win crowd shows up), feeling more like an obstacle to other victories than something you actually want to pursue.

With that said, there's a lot to do in a diplo victory, if you play it assuming you won't get any aid requests and assuming you won't savescum the congress. You want as many favors as you can get before a congress, with the first congress being critical, since it's the one where it's more likely that you won't be able to figure out what the AI will vote for. That means early exploration is important in a diplo victory (you want to find every CS and every Civ ASAP) and there's a special focus on getting envoys, so you should try to complete as many CS quests as you can before the end of an era. You also don't want to lose any CS to the AI, so you need to go out and liberate as many conquered CSs as you can. That alone already give quite a lot to do in a Diplo game, both from a builder perspective and a military perspective. Emergencies are also a good source of favors, so fighting in as many of those is another thing you can do. You want a strong culture, mainly, but without neglecting your science, to go for the tech/civic tree points and to unlock late game sources of favor. It's a victory that requires you to reach a good balance between each aspect of the game.

There are also some strategic decisions that, personally, I find compelling. You want alliances and you want to keep the peace, but you need to be careful who you ally with, so you don't end up with an ally that is conquering city-states left and right, and you want to be able to declare wars if necessary, so declaring friendship isn't recommended, which means you need to nurture your relationships, if you want to keep everyone friendly. I'm using a strategy where you build the Statue of Liberty into there's one turn left to complete, then you wait to complete it in the same turn as the first post-modern congress, so the AI don't vote against you in the diplo vote. That leads to an interesting dynamic in late game, where I've to prevent the AI from building the Statue before the congress.

So, yeah, I enjoy the diplo victory, but Aid Requests kinda ruins it.

 

[tiamats4esgares]

To be honest the whole diplo victory is crap and they need to fix it.

 

[Myomoto]

To be honest the whole diplo victory is crap and they need to fix it.

I feel it's only bad because of the lottery nature of the World Congress. If the WC had a host that could propose two resolutions for each session, with some few turns for players to make requests for those resolutions, and again with a few turns to plan votes amongst different players for the resolutions, then the system would actually feel like real diplomacy.

 

[DeutschDachs]

Yeah it's kind of silly also because the AI tends to vote the same way for a lot of the resolutions every game. So even just by throwing one vote into things like -50% production for ranged units, which I've never seen them not vote for, I'll be threatening a diplomatic victory almost absent mindedly.

I will admit I do like how it lets me finish some games early when I've gotten bored of hitting next turn for culture/science wins. But yeah it's not very exciting

 

[Josephias]

I would agree the first thing needed is the World Congress needs to be reviewed, and second, we have to tweak again the numbers of the Diplo Victory. They changed it as in the initial implementation it was too complicated to achieve victory when you were near it, as it was quite easy for other civs to "block" you, and looked too cheesy due to nevertheless of the diplomatic stance they would all vote against you.

Now, with points being received by being on the winning side of any resolution, is either a lottery or too exploitable (if you know already the usual outcomes), and again, a faulty implementation, with the added malus that by turn 400 (yeah, it's difficult to reach it without winning before, but sometimes you just want to try a score victory), you may have already 3-4 contenders nearing victory, so it is win diplomatically or lose.

There is two solutions I see for this:
- My greedy self would like to see a much more complex World Congres, in which you may fight for several "office" positions (the likes of WHO, IMF, UNESCO, ....). Each office will allow you to propose different resolutions based on its kind, and topping all positions would be the diplomatic victory. You should also have some rules you could not vote against an ally, or not vote against someone helding an office with a resolution you voted in favour of / is benefiting you... that would lead to a more complicated diplomatic gameplay wich might or might not be interesting.
- My keep-it-simple self thinks each time more about "unifying" all peaceful victories in a single one (call it "Favour" victory if you want to copy humankind). So, wining in diplomatic votes would give points towards Favour, culture/tourism will give points towards favour, and planetary exploration will give points towards favour. You could have a "fixed" victory line or, even better, a "tennis-like" goal were you would need to be over a certain limit, but also have a certain advantage over the second challenger (this would provide a proper defense against any type of "peaceful" victory as you -or the willing-to-be-winner AI- would actually need to outperform you to actually win. Not reach the last 5 points just the turn before another civ would have reached it.

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

I think part of the failings of Diplo Victory is how accommodating it has to be. Diplo victory could never have been as fleshed out as other victory types- even if they reworked 50% of the roster to have strengths relating to this entirely new victory condition, it still would be a lesser victory than others, due to the fact the game simply wasn't designed with it in mind.

Diplomatic Victory falls flat out of necessity. Since the devs can't un-design the game so that Diplo victory better fits (I mean full-on foundational changes to the way the game works), they have to either A.) squeeze it into existing mechanics, or B.) loosely connect it to things that already exist. Essentially, rather than making a new victory type from scratch, they instead have to create a victory type mainly from scavenging existing ideas, which may have contributed to it feeling so tacked-on.

Additionally, since Diplo victory was introduced long after the majority of civs had been created, no civ at the time had been created with Diplo vic in mind. Heck, even after GS's release they can't design NFP civs with a Diplo-vic priority because its tied to an expansion that some people may not have. This forced the developers to make it so every civ in the game had a chance at Diplo victory, which means that in an attempt to make it super accommodating, it feels very passive and shallow.

All in all, I feel the worst thing about Diplo vic is that you don't have to try very hard to earn it. When you're playing Domination, you HAVE to make a military and be aggressive. When you're playing Science, you HAVE to beeline your important techs and focus on Science production. Culture has numerous priorities, and its all about making very intentional decisions to scrape together tourism. And heck, Religion is impossible to win if you don't participate in the Great Prophet race!

But Diplo vic? It's so passive... stock up Diplo favor, build a couple wonders, pretend to participate in emergencies and competitions, and vote up +2 Diplo points aimed toward yourself. Diplo is the only victory I can win unintentionally- I don't have to focus on winning a Diplo victory from the start. Most of the time, when I win Diplo, it's on accident.

 

[The Civs 6]

Good points made in defense of diplo victory. I have a few comments:

• There is definitely an issue with how the AI addresses competitions. Maybe they aren't tuned to realize that lackluster competition efforts can be potentially game losing, regardless of the immediate consequences?
• Probably 1 point for voting in a favorable direction is too much, or the # of points to win is too low. This leads to my next point which is...
• The defense of diplo victory is well and good, and I definitely agree that it demands a certain play style. My issue is that the play style isn't strenuous or something that you wouldn't do normally. Maybe I am an outlier here, but peaceful play focused around liberating city states and being a good neighbor isn't exclusively a diplo victory thing. When I am going culture/science victory, and I have managed to carve out a sufficiently large kingdom, that's how I play without going for diplo victory.

But to be honest, there are some games where I can cruise to diplo victory - to the extent that I accidentally get one without intending, and there are other games, even those where I am not a warmonger, where it feels basically impossible to do so. So YMMV with my criticism of it.

 

[Time Tested]

I play with DV turned off because it breaks immersion:

• Congress is held before all civs know each other
• The proposals don't really come from anywhere
• There is no diplomatic/relationship impact to how I vote (i.e. no bonus modifier for voting the same as same, and no malus/grievances for disagreeing)
• There is no diplomatic/relationship impact to voting to have a player be impacted by a resolution (i.e. no bonus for voting to have a player's religion get extra combat strength or penalty for voting to embargo a specific player)
• While the other victories have a nice in-game description/story, there is nothing to describe what a "diplomatic victory point" is within a real-world scenario

My keep-it-simple self thinks each time more about "unifying" all peaceful victories in a single one (call it "Favour" victory if you want to copy humankind). So, wining in diplomatic votes would give points towards Favour, culture/tourism will give points towards favour, and planetary exploration will give points towards favour. You could have a "fixed" victory line or, even better, a "tennis-like" goal were you would need to be over a certain limit, but also have a certain advantage over the second challenger (this would provide a proper defense against any type of "peaceful" victory as you -or the willing-to-be-winner AI- would actually need to outperform you to actually win. Not reach the last 5 points just the turn before another civ would have reached it.

I think something like this is a good direction. A diplomatic victory should be focused on unifying the planet through generally peaceful means. I don't think that anything that earns a DV point right now actually represents that idea well, while things that earn you diplomatic favor do. The current method of converting favor to DV points is neither convincing nor effective.

I also think it's possible to make congress more engaging even within the current game systems. Examples:

1. Have my votes impact relationships - both the votes themselves and also based on the targets of votes
2. Allow me to either adhere to a result or defy it. Adhering to a result gives me a DV point, and binds you to the resolution. Defying causes grievances, and extra grievances if you are the target, and possibly a large hit to your favor.

 

[leandrombraz]

The defense of diplo victory is well and good, and I definitely agree that it demands a certain play style. My issue is that the play style isn't strenuous or something that you wouldn't do normally. Maybe I am an outlier here, but peaceful play focused around liberating city states and being a good neighbor isn't exclusively a diplo victory thing. When I am going culture/science victory, and I have managed to carve out a sufficiently large kingdom, that's how I play without going for diplo victory.

It isn't exclusively a diplo thing, but diplo is the only victory where it can be worth going after any and all city-states, regardless of their type or how useful they are. You might do that while going for other victories (I like to do it myself), but it isn't something that directly helps you win.

 

[The Civs 6]

It isn't exclusively a diplo thing, but diplo is the only victory where it can be worth going after any and all city-states, regardless of their type or how useful they are. You might do that while going for other victories (I like to do it myself), but it isn't something that directly helps you win.

Yeah that's a good point. As I am thinking through and posting in this thread, I increasingly think my issue with diplo victory is just that the cap shouldn't be 20, but maybe 25 or 30.

 

[Bojmir]

I have a personal extra goal when I do Diplomatic Victory. I play liberator so I send out troops to liberate any cities (especially City-States) that have been conquered by others. Very very rarely you get to do something cool like brining a defeated leader back into the game. The funniest one I ever did was in a game with Pachacuti, he was being an absolute dick and ultimately got clobbered. An era or two later while I was exploring the ocean I found a free city on a 2 tile island. I liberated it and brought Pachacuti back and left him exiled there. He screamed at me for the rest of the game and it was glorious.

 

[leandrombraz]

Something that holds back the diplo victory and the congress is that Firaxis wants these mechanics to be something that works in MP. They wouldn't, for example, add a spy mission that lets you find out what an AI will vote for in the congress, because that just wouldn't work in MP. These mechanics could be a whole different beast if they really focused on interesting interactions with the AI, to manipulate the votes outcome.

Something that I think would be interesting is if you couldn't trade favors, but instead you could ask your allies and friends to give you favors in exchange for something that directly impacts their own victory. The logic here being that when the AI sell favors to you, they're helping you win directly, so it's only fair that you help them win in exchange, instead of just giving them some gold. That would add an interesting risk/reward dynamic to acquiring favors, and increase the importance of good relationships.

Examples:

• An AI that is pursuing a Scientific victory might ask you to run a project in your cities that gives them a X% production boost to Spaceports and/or Space projects.
• An AI that is pursuing a Cultural Victory might ask you to gift them a collection of themed great works (3 great works of the same type, but different artists, or 3 artifacts from the same era, but different Civs).
• An AI that is pursuing a Religious victory might ask you to convert X cities from major Civs to their religion (one of your cities will be converted to their religion once you accept to do it, in case you don't have one already).
• An AI that is pursuing a Domination victory might ask you to conquer X cities of a specific Civ and gift it to them, or they might ask you to lower a Civ's military strength to a certain value.
• AIs that are also pursuing a Diplo victory won't give you favors under any circumstances.

They also need to increase the variety of things the AI might vote for in the congress. It's such a waste that they made a congress that gives you two opposite options (A and B), but there's a lot of resolutions where it's impossible to get one of those options, because the AI rarely goes for the other option. You will never, for example, get amenities from duplicate luxuries in the Luxury Policy resolution. That option could be removed from the game, you wouldn't notice it, because it just never happens, the AI always goes for B (ban a luxury). Personally, I think Firaxis made a great job adding variety to the congress possible outcomes, them shot themselves on the foot with the AI behavior in the congress, because of how single minded they are. If they rework the AI to stop being so single minded, and actually behave like different leaders with different agendas, that would make wonders to the congress, the diplo victory and the game as a whole.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Yeah that's a good point. As I am thinking through and posting in this thread, I increasingly think my issue with diplo victory is just that the cap shouldn't be 20, but maybe 25 or 30.

Then I'm definitely doing something wrong. I've only attempted it once, I was Harald and this was shortly after they buffed his abilities. It was an island plates map, I built up a solid infrastructure - the UB helps coastal city production (which on this map was every city), buffed by Auckland, and some other nice city state bonuses. I found a religion (as Harald does), and had one city that didn't have anything urgently pressing to build, so I figured I'd save some faith and build Mahabodi there. But there weren't any targets that were convenient, and the opportunity window for longships was closing, and then the opportunity window for frigates was close to closing. With the city-states, I was able to get 2 points on each of the congress meets by voting once for what I knew they would choose, and voting heavily on the second resolution. At this point, I figured I'd switch to diplomatic victory. Someone declared war on my ally, dragging me into it, and I didn't take any of his cities but trolled the heck out of him - killed all his units, took his civilian units, and coastal raided/pillaged every tile that gave a yield - with the cards in place, THIS was a golden age. So then I got the other wonders and the tech and the civic, but I'm waiting for an aid request or "this civ is a problem, should we deal with it" request, but none ever came. So I'm 15 out of 20 points, and just turn-clicking away - no opportunities for additional points. It was closing in on turn 250, I usually win between turn 150 and turn 200, and I could have built a spaceship eons ago. Finally. some of the other civs were getting in range of a space victory, so I just built the ship and finished that way.

 

[The Civs 6]

Then I'm definitely doing something wrong. I've only attempted it once, I was Harald and this was shortly after they buffed his abilities. It was an island plates map, I built up a solid infrastructure - the UB helps coastal city production (which on this map was every city), buffed by Auckland, and some other nice city state bonuses. I found a religion (as Harald does), and had one city that didn't have anything urgently pressing to build, so I figured I'd save some faith and build Mahabodi there. But there weren't any targets that were convenient, and the opportunity window for longships was closing, and then the opportunity window for frigates was close to closing. With the city-states, I was able to get 2 points on each of the congress meets by voting once for what I knew they would choose, and voting heavily on the second resolution. At this point, I figured I'd switch to diplomatic victory. Someone declared war on my ally, dragging me into it, and I didn't take any of his cities but trolled the heck out of him - killed all his units, took his civilian units, and coastal raided/pillaged every tile that gave a yield - with the cards in place, THIS was a golden age. So then I got the other wonders and the tech and the civic, but I'm waiting for an aid request or "this civ is a problem, should we deal with it" request, but none ever came. So I'm 15 out of 20 points, and just turn-clicking away - no opportunities for additional points. It was closing in on turn 250, I usually win between turn 150 and turn 200, and I could have built a spaceship eons ago. Finally. some of the other civs were getting in range of a space victory, so I just built the ship and finished that way.

I get what you are saying, and I have had games like that before. But I think the reality is that some games are just unwinnable by a specific victory condition, and that's okay. Yeah, if there aren't any aid requests or other competitions, it becomes almost impossible to win diplo victory.

So on the one hand, if there is no weather/military drama going on, it becomes almost impossible to win a diplo victory. On the other hand, if there is drama like that going on, it becomes trivially easy to win one.

 

[ShakaKhan]

So on the one hand, if there is no weather/military drama going on, it becomes almost impossible to win a diplo victory. On the other hand, if there is drama like that going on, it becomes trivially easy to win one.

Ways to augment the possibility? Increasing disaster intensity? Manually select Alex to be one of the AI? Wonder selecting the volcanoes? other ideas?