Victory types in the current meta

[Abaxial]

It used to be the case that if you decided on a science victory, you might often end up winning a culture victory first, just by accident. In the current state of the game, it seems that Diplomaric Victory, which I used to think was one of the hardest to get, is now the easiest.

1) Make sure you get a religion.
2) Take tithes as one of your first picks (this gives you financial security).
3) Take Pagodas as your third pick, along with either Scripture or Itinerant Preachers.
4) Get as many envoys as possible and try to get suzerain of as many city states as you can.
5) Try and build wonders that give you diplomatic points, like Statue of Liberty.
6) By the modern era you should have so much diplomatic favour that you can just ram through votes on giving yourself another two diplomatic points each time.

Also, whenever a "send aid" emergency comes up, with your huge gold reserves you can buy victory.

Pagodas are great!

 

[Lily_Lancer]

In the current patch the easiest and most quickly is SV, as we have Nalanda.

The second easiest is Domination Victory, as we have the peace deal bug.

Then comes for Religious and Cultural.

Having to achieve Diplomatic Victory until modern era is already a very big disadvantage. Normally for other victory types people finish in Renaissance or Industrial, if not using bugs.

 

[KingPiggyXXI]

Diplomatic Victory is definitely one of the easiest ones to win, but it also happens to take the longest. Unlike the other victories, where the only limit on how fast you can win is how many units/science/faith/tourism you can squeeze out of your cities, Diplomatic Victory is far more limited.
You can build the three wonders to speed it up, yes, but that's about everything that's within your control for the Diplomatic Victory. World Congress only happens every 30 turns, and you have no control over when Aid Requests come up. It's the easiest victory, but it's definitely not the fastest. Once you reach a certain point of Diplomatic Favor and Gold, it's impossible to make the victory come any sooner. At that point, the only thing limiting the victory is time.

That said, Diplomatic Victory definitely has very few moving parts and is quite simple. For the most part, you just need Gold and Diplomatic Favor, both of which are sort of optional.
That's why Diplomatic Victory is a great backup victory. It's extremely easy to accomplish - you just need a solid gold income, a few alliances, and several Suzerains and you should be able to eventually win, so long as you've been playing somewhat diplomatically in the prior eras.

 

[Abaxial]

Quickest doesn't bother me so much - I'm not in a rush. I'm discounting the peace deal bug, as surely that will be fixed soon.