Whatever else happens... we need to talk about unintentional diplomatic victory (UDV)

[Noble Zarkon]

I think what's really happening is that people are playing the game, including the diplomatic side of things, and their playstyle suits diplomacy, and so they're winning at that, even if they're shooting for a different Victory. That's not accidental, though. That's your playstyle shining through and dominating your game than anything else.

I was thinking that over the weekend, well put!

EDIT: It's maybe as well they're not shooting for a specific victory type, my style is to spend the first 100/150 turns building up my Empire then start to think about winning.

 

[bengalryan9]

I actually just tried my first diplo victory and had the opposite problem. I messed it up and missed two opportunities to vote for myself for +2 victory points because I thought the AI was all going to team up on me and I ended up accidentally winning a culture victory while shift+entering waiting for the last world congress.

Does anyone know how many diplo victory points the player needs to have for the AI to start voting against them? 17 or 18 maybe?

I think it was 13 for a little while. May have changed with a patch, though.

 

[MrRadar]

This really depends on map size. It's a lot easier to win an acidental diplo victory on standard and smaller. It's practically impossible (without an extraodinary game) on huge maps.

I have finally brought myself to test this and play a game on a Huge map and Marathon speed, Continents&Islands, Deity, no modes, Disasters 2.
And, of course, it was a Diplo victory again, one of the easiest ones, and I wouldn't say that I had an extraordinary game. I missed a couple of votes in the Congress sessions, but the amount of land gave a lot of space for natural disasters, and there were 3 or 4 Aid Emergencies. The end of the last one coincided with the completion of SoL. Votes for awarding DV points haven't even started yet.

Spoiler :

 

[Alaindor]

To me it's worse since the last April patch, the AI seems to do zero towards diplomatic victory now (zero contribution in aid requests - no project, no gold).

 

[kaspergm]

To me it's worse since the last April patch, the AI seems to do zero towards diplomatic victory now (zero contribution in aid requests - no project, no gold).

I agree with this, that has also been my impression.

 

[Socrates99]

I have finally brought myself to test this and play a game on a Huge map and Marathon speed, Continents&Islands, Deity, no modes, Disasters 2.
And, of course, it was a Diplo victory again, one of the easiest ones, and I wouldn't say that I had an extraordinary game. I missed a couple of votes in the Congress sessions, but the amount of land gave a lot of space for natural disasters, and there were 3 or 4 Aid Emergencies. The end of the last one coincided with the completion of SoL. Votes for awarding DV points haven't even started yet.

Spoiler :

I'm not a fan of either diplo or religious victory. They're both kind of silly imo. People kept asking for em so we have em. The point is if you win a diplo it's never actually unintentional like the OP states. It just isnt. If you're going for another VC any money or cogs you dump into competitions is better spent on the actual VC you're chasing. Any favor spent trying to get DPs instead of a self serving vote is wasted.

I think a lot of attention was spent on how easy SV was in V and that's why SV is such a long drawn out process in VI. Now other VCs are easier in comparison.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I have finally brought myself to test this and play a game on a Huge map and Marathon speed, Continents&Islands, Deity, no modes, Disasters 2.
And, of course, it was a Diplo victory again, one of the easiest ones, and I wouldn't say that I had an extraordinary game. I missed a couple of votes in the Congress sessions, but the amount of land gave a lot of space for natural disasters, and there were 3 or 4 Aid Emergencies. The end of the last one coincided with the completion of SoL. Votes for awarding DV points haven't even started yet.

Spoiler :

That's a good job. However, it's kinda hard to say that building SoL and having 3500 favor is some kind of accident. You're outplaying the AI period and only making the AI being able to pressure you will change things.

I'm sure if you sold all your favor, you could be pursuing something else.

I guess we could nerf SoL because the AI can't prepare for that, but that would make things too boring in many cases.

 

[Alaindor]

I have finally brought myself to test this and play a game on a Huge map and Marathon speed, Continents&Islands, Deity, no modes, Disasters 2.
And, of course, it was a Diplo victory again, one of the easiest ones, and I wouldn't say that I had an extraordinary game. I missed a couple of votes in the Congress sessions, but the amount of land gave a lot of space for natural disasters, and there were 3 or 4 Aid Emergencies. The end of the last one coincided with the completion of SoL. Votes for awarding DV points haven't even started yet.

Spoiler :

How is building SoL and paying / building projects for aid emergencies to win diplo points, exactly an "accidental" win?
Sure it might be an easy win, but not exactly "unintentional"... if you don't want this to happen on your settings, just do like I did and ignore aid emergencies, for instance.

 

[Wolffleet]

I have finally brought myself to test this and play a game on a Huge map and Marathon speed, Continents&Islands, Deity, no modes, Disasters 2.
And, of course, it was a Diplo victory again, one of the easiest ones, and I wouldn't say that I had an extraordinary game. I missed a couple of votes in the Congress sessions, but the amount of land gave a lot of space for natural disasters, and there were 3 or 4 Aid Emergencies. The end of the last one coincided with the completion of SoL. Votes for awarding DV points haven't even started yet.

Spoiler :

If you play on PC. You can download mods to manually set the diplo point required to win. I have been setting mine to 30. Prevents accidental wins.

 

[kaspergm]

How is building SoL and paying / building projects for aid emergencies to win diplo points, exactly an "accidental" win?
Sure it might be an easy win, but not exactly "unintentional"... if you don't want this to happen on your settings, just do like I did and ignore aid emergencies, for instance.

Meh, personally I think if you need to "ignore" a game feature in order to not get an easy win, there's something wrong with game balance.

Cal it unintentional or not, but the point stands that there are situations - maybe not frequent, but not that rare either - where you'll find yourself suddenly having a DV within grasp without having planned for it, and with very little effort needed to claim it. I think that speaks of bad balance.

 

[Alaindor]

Meh, personally I think if you need to "ignore" a game feature in order to not get an easy win, there's something wrong with game balance.

Cal it unintentional or not, but the point stands that there are situations - maybe not frequent, but not that rare either - where you'll find yourself suddenly having a DV within grasp without having planned for it, and with very little effort needed to claim it. I think that speaks of bad balance.

I'll agree to that... I think aid emergencies are the culprit, gold donations should be banned, progress of other Civs should be masked, or diplo points should not be awarded for winning those (just favors)

 

[kaspergm]

... progress of other Civs should be masked...

Yeah, it's super lame that you can see exactly how much the others have donated and just make your donation on the last turn to outbid them. This seems to be a general issue with many aspects of Civ6. It's the same gimmick that hits the ages system where you have the fixed target to aim for, and then you'll start to do all sorts of silly and gamey things to avoid overshooting too much and save the points for next era, which really kills immersion.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Don't have a screenshot, but two civs just voted to go to war against me (emergency) AND to aid me (I got hit by a flood) in the same vote. They don't know what they're doing

 

[MrRadar]

it's kinda hard to say that building SoL and having 3500 favor is some kind of accident. You're outplaying the AI period and only making the AI being able to pressure you will change things.

No it's not entirely an accident, but not some clever strategy neither. I was just fooling around: I sat on two cities until I had a religion and a GP with AH and only then expanded. Apart from some campuses to catch up on science, I was mostly building harbours, as the continent was thin and long. And then walls. Of wonders I've built only Petra and then SoL to finish off. A game of coasting along and picking a victory on the way.

How is building SoL and paying / building projects for aid emergencies to win diplo points, exactly an "accidental" win?
Sure it might be an easy win, but not exactly "unintentional"... if you don't want this to happen on your settings, just do like I did and ignore aid emergencies, for instance.

@kaspergm argued very well, I will not repeat.

If you play on PC. You can download mods to manually set the diplo point required to win. I have been setting mine to 30. Prevents accidental wins.

Yes, you can do all sorts of tricks to avoid a victory, switch it off even, but... why are we reduced to avoiding victories rather than trying our best to win? Things like these aren't very normal. I would rather like to have a well built victory condition.

I'll agree to that... I think aid emergencies are the culprit, gold donations should be banned, progress of other Civs should be masked, or diplo points should not be awarded for winning those (just favors)

As I was suggesting before and in other threads, a more thorough rethinking and rebuilding of DipV would be necessary.

Don't have a screenshot, but two civs just voted to go to war against me (emergency) AND to aid me (I got hit by a flood) in the same vote. They don't know what they're doing

Yes, complete bonkers. They will likely spend nothing on you, but they still join.

 

[Archon_Wing]

A game of coasting along and picking a victory on the way.

I mean I think that's the greater issue than DV being poorly balanced.

Of course the AI seemingly regressing towards it doesn't help.

 

[jasper]

Sounds like its not accidental and more like you pursue it more than you realize.

You lost me at building statue of lib to deny diplo victory. You must be really ahead if you build useless wonders just to deny your opponents. Do you also take over all the capitals to ensure no one else does?

 

[Archon_Wing]

Do you also take over all the capitals to ensure no one else does?

Well, that's the best strategy.

 

[Socrates99]

Meh, personally I think if you need to "ignore" a game feature in order to not get an easy win, there's something wrong with game balance.

Cal it unintentional or not, but the point stands that there are situations - maybe not frequent, but not that rare either - where you'll find yourself suddenly having a DV within grasp without having planned for it, and with very little effort needed to claim it. I think that speaks of bad balance.

I wouldn't call not investing in emergencies or building useless wonders ignoring a game feature. It's just not investing in something unrelated to your VC. I'd assume when someone says they're getting an accidental diplo victory they intended to get a different one.

You could say "I'm shooting for all VCs in my games but I keep getting diplo therefore it's the easiest." But that's definitely not accidental. On top of that I'd respond by pointing out that other VCs do require more focus and if you're all over the place they're going to slow down.

Generally speaking I'd say a good focused culture game or a really aggressive dom game are almost always going to happen before a diplo vic.

 

[ShakaKhan]

OK, let me extend an olive branch towards the argument... I play at normal speed (default of turn 500 is end of game and score victory decided.) I see that your turn counter is X turns out of 1500. Does your world congress still meet every 30 turns like mine? If so, that's the problem. If the world congress meets every 30 turns for normal speed, than your super-slow progressing games should meet every 90 turns (3 times the game length; WC should convene 1/3 as often.)

If not, and WC does convene every 90 turns at your game speed, then I don't know what to tell you other than git gud at the other victory conditions. My domination and religious victory conditions are met after the WC has convened only once IF... AT... ALL. My culture games meet the victory condition after the WC has convened twice, maybe a third time if I'm playing as a civ that has no bonus towards tourism. And my science victories are usually just spiking laser stations around the time of the 3rd WC convention. Even if you win both proposals every time for the first three conventions and you have all 3 wonders and you have the tech and the civic, that's still only 15 out of 20.

In order to create some empathy/understanding of the other person's perspective, let me share an argument that probably sounds similar to you as the UDV argument sounds to me: "Score victory is far too easy. I'm cruising along trying to get this or that victory condition and then WHOOPS! I win a score victory. My cities are always bigger, and I have more wonders, technologies and civics, etc so of course I'm going to win based on score at this point in the game." Obviously, this is an extremely flawed argument. If I unintentionally won a score victory, it's only because I wasn't good enough to meet the criteria of the victory condition I was aiming for. And this is further exacerbated when you say, "Yeah, I got all three wonders, won every one of several aid requests, won every WC proposal, and have the tech and the civic." Of course you won; it's NOT accidental when you actively pursue all the means of triggering the victory.

 

[Alaindor]

On Marathon speeds, WC convenes every 90 turns