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

[The Civs 6]

I've sort of come to terms with a lot of the Civ 6 flaws. But there is one that just gets to me -

No matter what victory condition I am pursuing, or even if I am pursuing one at all, I seem to be winning diplomatic victories in every one of my games. Certainly before a cultural or a military victory. Usually over science victory as well.

Yes, I can turn it off. But the diplomatic victory is part of the game. There are civs built around winning one. And yes, I don't have to build statute of liberty. But guess what? I have to deny build it so I don't lose. I suppose on the plus side, diplo victory is one of the few pathways the AI actually has to success.

This can't happen in Civ 7. In my most recent game, I sat down to enjoy the third act of the game, and then bam the game is literally over. It was a fairly competitive game in all other respects, too.

There are too many competitions too early, unless winning one is given reduced victory points or no victory points. Competitions shouldn't just be production and money. the AI should more heavily prioritize competitions, or rather, they should realize that you have to optimize between all in commitment and not wasting any resources. I don't know how but I feel like I win too many diplomatic proposal votes. The AI is pretty predictable (double speed production of city center, almost every time). But also, for some reason, they don't seem to commit their diplomatic points for anything (except random ones like no amenities from a luxury).

I'm not going to complain about diplo victories big picture. I'm just tired of the vast majority of my games ending this way! No more UDV's

 

[Noble Zarkon]

There are too many competitions too early

Are you running Apocalypse mode? I don't see more than 1 or 2 competitions until very late on.

The AI is pretty predictable (double speed production of city center, almost every time)

This used to be the case but since one of the recent patches the AI seems to have much more variety in what they choose, are you using any Mods??

 

[kaspergm]

I can't say this happens a lot for me, but I usually play on small maps (6 civs in total) at disaster level 2, so I can go entire games without a single emergency happening. What map size do you play on?

I do agree there are some problems with how diplomatic victory works, most notably:

• Lack of scaling with map size/number of civs.
• Predictability of how civs vote (but if this is changed, we need a more transparent UI so we don't just guess blindly - and I agree with Noble Zarkon, this is much more varied now than it used to be, although AI will still tend to only put one vote on certain resolutions).
• Statue of Liberty is probably a bit OP in terms of granting you diplomatic victory.

I do, however, think changing this is walking a thin line. As it is, the option for winning a DV is kind of a closing window. Once game progresses to the stage where the vote for DV points come up, you'll be very likely to be targeted by the -2 points vote each time if you are closing in on DV (16+ points or so), and because of the way that vote cost grows (one of my pet peeves), this may effectively block you from ever win a DV without save-scumming if you're not able to predict how AI will vote.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I just turn everything but score off, and when my score >= The next two civs combined I declare victory

This avoids both cheesy bs, broken modes and late game tedium

 

[Linklite]

DipV does need a serious rework, I really dislike how it works, both mechanically and conceptually. However...

I'm not sure how you're winning one accidentally. Yes, it is easy to game the system but, accidently?

• I rarely get emergencies and competitions only occur later on every other WC, with only 1 DVP as a prize.
• While the AI votes reasonably predictably, it does vote stupidly, but almost always to spite itself. Unless you're piling on the diplo, this shouldn't be accumulating DVPs all that fast. I generally win 1 DVP per WC, which is 1 DVP per 30 turns - if that were the sole source of DVPs, it would take over 600 turns to win.
• In the endgame, they constantly vote against you to remove 2 of your DVPs. Unless you intentionally game the system or you are absolutely killing the diplo game, then this can at best be neutralised by winning the debates, the only way forward at this point, other than gaming the system by voting yourself to lose points, is by Wonders and 1 DPV per 60 turns for competitions. If you already built the Wonders, this section alone can take 240 turns.
• Why are you building the Statue of Liberty if you don't want a DipV? The loyalty aspect is rather unuseful, if loyalty is an issue, you won't be able to build the SoL anyway, so why build it?

Which is all to say, I'm not sure how you're accidentally winning a DipV. There are a lot of criticisms to be made, but that one?

 

[Linklite]

Once game progresses to the stage where the vote for DV points come up, you'll be very likely to be targeted by the -2 points vote each time if you are closing in on DV (16+ points or so), and because of the way that vote cost grows (one of my pet peeves), this may effectively block you from ever win a DV without save-scumming if you're not able to predict how AI will vote.

If you're doing well, the predicting of votes becomes redundant. When I last did one, I won the two resolutions with merely the spare change diplo that I couldn't pile onto the DPV resolution. The vote cost gets so high that even the diplo that you can't spend is enough to win both resolutions. My beef is that because of vote scaling and the (understandable in game theory) way that the AI gangs up on you, it's virtually impossible to win and that wipes out your progress in that WC. I was suzerain of all 12 CSs plus a full Diplo Quarter and every means of generating diplo, generating 10x as much as everyone else put together, and I still only won 1 in 4 (I think I did, I won the game that round so I couldn't see what happened). Seems silly that I could be so diplomatically dominant and still be making virtually zero progress.

 

[maltravois]

Once they start voting you down, start voting with them. Put one vote into -2 DV for yourself and then the rest of your points into winning the other ones. Then, you only lose 1 point for the -2 and still get points for the rest.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Unless you're playing on high disaster settings or very small maps, there is something very wrong with your game if you're winning diplo first. Most likely, you're poorly focusing on win conditions. The strength of DV is that it doesn't really require commitment, but the disadvantage is that you're gated by votes taking 30 turns.

If anything I think votes should take less turns.

 

[bengalryan9]

To be honest, I wouldn't consider most "unintentional" DVs to be all that unintentional. If you put any effort forth to win competitions or emergencies... that's intentional effort. If you build Statue of Liberty, that's intentional. If you choose to vote the right way as you approach the 20 required DV points (ie, you start voting against yourself to keep from losing points), that's intentional. If you played peacefully and built up a bunch of favor, you most likely intentionally chose to avoid war.

Maybe it's a nitpick, but that's not an unintentional victory. You're just reaping some rewards for intentional choices you made, and that can open up a victory pathway for you. There have been times where I've found myself closer to a DV than I might've realized, but it's always been because of choices I made... I've never had one completely sneak up on me and catch me by surprise.

EDIT: ...which isn't to say DV is perfect by any stretch. I definitely want to see it improved in future games.

 

[bbbt]

I've never had an unintended Diplo victory. It's usually the opposite - I have to try and avoid an unintended cultural victory in order to get a diplo victory.

 

[Disgustipated]

Never an issue for me. I never spend gold or production for civs who get hit by natural disasters.

I have lost due to an AI diplomatic victory, however. I do have to keep an eye on them.

 

[Linklite]

I've never had an unintended Diplo victory. It's usually the opposite - I have to try and avoid an unintended cultural victory in order to get a diplo victory.

Samw. No matter what happens, I usually end up with cities with little to do so I just start building Wonders (because, why not?) and then at some point I just start getting messages that I'm becoming culturally dominant. It definitely feels like the other Victories require a more specific and intentional approach.

 

[The Civs 6]

To be honest, I wouldn't consider most "unintentional" DVs to be all that unintentional. If you put any effort forth to win competitions or emergencies... that's intentional effort. If you build Statue of Liberty, that's intentional. If you choose to vote the right way as you approach the 20 required DV points (ie, you start voting against yourself to keep from losing points), that's intentional. If you played peacefully and built up a bunch of favor, you most likely intentionally chose to avoid war.

Maybe it's a nitpick, but that's not an unintentional victory. You're just reaping some rewards for intentional choices you made, and that can open up a victory pathway for you. There have been times where I've found myself closer to a DV than I might've realized, but it's always been because of choices I made... I've never had one completely sneak up on me and catch me by surprise.

EDIT: ...which isn't to say DV is perfect by any stretch. I definitely want to see it improved in future games.

Unless you're playing on high disaster settings or very small maps, there is something very wrong with your game if you're winning diplo first. Most likely, you're poorly focusing on win conditions. The strength of DV is that it doesn't really require commitment, but the disadvantage is that you're gated by votes taking 30 turns.

If anything I think votes should take less turns.

I don't like to play this game min max style. Frankly, I don't think it is well designed enough on a strategic level to merit that kind of play. If I wanted that kind of game, I would just play a well designed game like DOTA 2. In other words, I like to take my time and see narratives develop across the world, put myself in the best position to succeed, and let the game play out rather than race for any victory condition. Yes, I think focusing on "how many turns can I win the game with X victory condition" is a waste of the precious gift of human life, more than just messing around with the game.

The problem is that it feels like a DV is what you get by default if you have this playstyle. Like, the way it works, everyone is slowly building up to get a diplo victory. So a diplo victory is basically inevitable unless you are in the very rare situation where you get into that -2 trap (and that is easy to get out of). And that means if you play the way I do, you have to deny build statute of liberty.

On a large map, if you make an effort to discover the other civs, there are plenty of natural disaster competitions that I see occur. I think there were about 7-8 by the time I got to the industrial era. And no apocalypse mode. Emperor difficulty, if that matters.

So basically, tl;dr, I am a filthy casual who just wants to see all the countries fight each other, and doesn't want a diplo victory to be a default path to victory.

 

[The Civs 6]

Never an issue for me. I never spend gold or production for civs who get hit by natural disasters.

I have lost due to an AI diplomatic victory, however. I do have to keep an eye on them.

The problem with this approach is that there always seems to be just 1 AI that ends up winning the competitions, which means you have to seriously considering deny-participating in the competitions to prevent a DV. And to be honest, I accumulate so much gold in my games that I find it very easy to just pay another civ like 5k gold and take the lead.

 

[Socrates99]

Don't think I've ever won one by accident. I ignore the competitions if I'm not going for DV. The prize doesn't justify the investment. Gaming the WC isn't a good move if you're not going for DV. Ram through whatever is most self serving if you have the favor or save up for the next vote.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I don't like to play this game min max style. Frankly, I don't think it is well designed enough on a strategic level to merit that kind of play. If I wanted that kind of game, I would just play a well designed game like DOTA 2. In other words, I like to take my time and see narratives develop across the world, put myself in the best position to succeed, and let the game play out rather than race for any victory condition. Yes, I think focusing on "how many turns can I win the game with X victory condition" is a waste of the precious gift of human life, more than just messing around with the game.

Yet your very metric of evaluating victories is by which one wins faster!

No matter what victory condition I am pursuing, or even if I am pursuing one at all, I seem to be winning diplomatic victories in every one of my games. Certainly before a cultural or a military victory.

I mean, you're free to play however you want, but you have to accept that your gameplay will be skewed by your preferences and they will always trend to one victory or another unless you turn it off. You have many choices; it's not the game's fault that you refuse to pick them, and this has nothing to do with min-maxing.

I'm not sure what to say. If you want a cultural victory, than go for a cultural victory and don't build Diplomatic stuff. If you can't do that because the game is too tight, then pick a lower difficulty setting or improve your game play.

 

[bengalryan9]

I don't like to play this game min max style. Frankly, I don't think it is well designed enough on a strategic level to merit that kind of play. If I wanted that kind of game, I would just play a well designed game like DOTA 2. In other words, I like to take my time and see narratives develop across the world, put myself in the best position to succeed, and let the game play out rather than race for any victory condition. Yes, I think focusing on "how many turns can I win the game with X victory condition" is a waste of the precious gift of human life, more than just messing around with the game.

The problem is that it feels like a DV is what you get by default if you have this playstyle. Like, the way it works, everyone is slowly building up to get a diplo victory. So a diplo victory is basically inevitable unless you are in the very rare situation where you get into that -2 trap (and that is easy to get out of). And that means if you play the way I do, you have to deny build statute of liberty.

On a large map, if you make an effort to discover the other civs, there are plenty of natural disaster competitions that I see occur. I think there were about 7-8 by the time I got to the industrial era. And no apocalypse mode. Emperor difficulty, if that matters.

So basically, tl;dr, I am a filthy casual who just wants to see all the countries fight each other, and doesn't want a diplo victory to be a default path to victory.

I'm no min maxer by any stretch of the imagination. I play pretty casually myself - I don't chop, I don't bother conquering my neighbors, I'm fairly lackadaisical when it comes to deciding which victory condition I want to pursue, etc. Victory speed is pretty much the last thing I care about. Not sure what that little rant was all about, but whatever. I often find myself close to a DV no matter what I do, but unless I intentionally make the decision to actually go after it at some point I'm not actually likely to get there - you're pretty much guaranteed to stop gaining DV points at some point unless you actively make the choice to (counterintuitively) vote for yourself to lose points.

Not really sure why not building the Statue of Liberty is such a big loss either - if you don't want a DV to play a role in your game, that seems like a no-brainer to me. That's basically all it's for. If you want to build wonders to kill time, surely there's plenty of others that are just sitting there waiting to be built instead?

I guess I don't really get what you're complaining about - you want the ability to do all the things that go along with winning a diplomatic victory (building the SoL, winning competitions/emergencies), but you don't actually want to win a diplomatic victory because of that nor do you want to click a single checkbox in the game setup that would completely solve your problem.

I'm sure it's easy enough to mod it so that you need 4x as many DV points to win if it's all that important to you... but I'm guessing you're not interested in that either?

 

[Yzman]

Yeah I am a little confused by this topic. Think about it this way, Your DV victory isn't unintentional, you are playing towards it and apparently not playing towards any other. If I am focusing on a win, which I usually pick at start, I build stuff for that so I end up with that victory type before the others, because my focus is on it.

Diplo is the type of victory you get when you do stuff like vote strategically and surezein a lot.

You claim you aren't focusing on getting it...yet are you building spaceports? How about working the great works system? Spreading your religion agressively?

It just seems like your play style naturally delves into a diplo victory, which is fine, but it isn't intentional. You are playing like that.

Imagine if I said I accidentally win science victories. You would be like how? And I said, well I build the space ports and all of the stuff that goes into it. You would probably say...where is the surprise?

My point is this. Yes diplo is one of the more indirect victory conditions as it is a bit of an inevitability in the sense everyone is getting points to it for the most part. But at the same time, it is your specific play style that is making it so, You building the SoL because you can is no different then me building space ports or cultural stuff for the same reason.

If you play the same way, you should expect the same results. This is why I always go for achievements in my game. It gives me a goal and a way to play. So if I want the babylon achievement, I play as Babylon, play however I need to do get it, and then go for the victory type I feel is most associated with it. This forces me to play in different ways otherwise I would get science or diplo victories basically every time.

Others talk about getting cultural victories by accident. I never do unless I am going for it, because I tend to not focus on theater districts much if I am not going for that.

 

[Linklite]

I don't like to play this game min max style.

I've.never played min/max. Couldn't if I tried. I may focus more on a given Victory, but I still play the map and just have fun.

The problem is that it feels like a DV is what you get by default if you have this playstyle. Like, the way it works, everyone is slowly building up to get a diplo victory.
I've never had an accidental diplo. Even gunning for it, it was difficult.

So a diplo victory is basically inevitable unless you are in the very rare situation where you get into that -2 trap (and that is easy to get out of).

Ummm, no? Even when I was gunning for a DipV, I got to the the 2 DVP rounds, several of them. It's easy to get out of if you're gaming the system. If you're not gaming the system (by voting for yourself to lose points), then it limits you to pretty much 1DVP per Congress.

So basically, tl;dr, I am a filthy casual who just wants to see all the countries fight each other, and doesn't want a diplo victory to be a default path to victory.

I honestly don't get where this is coming from. Don't game the system and you can't win, in my experience. You have to win multiple WCs on all three resolutions despite the entire world ganging up on you on at least one, which you can't, not regularly and reliably. When the 2 DVP resolutions, just pick the leader to lose 2 DVPs and you're golden. I have CVs creep up on me far more often than a DipV. In fact, I regularly have to turn CV off if I want a different one.

DipVs only create an issue for me on Doms. Obviously, my diplo gets wiped out by the captured capitals, so I can't direct the votes to stop winners. That creates a time limit for me that I have to race against.

 

[Vargas1]

I don't like to play this game min max style.

When you say you don't like to play min-max style, do you mean that you intentionally prolong your games? How long do they go? I ask because I also play on emperor, and also don't think I play a particularly min-max style, and I have never had to build SOL to deny a diplomatic victory to another civ. But even taking my time, I usually end up finishing games below 300 turns (on standard speed). So if you're waiting until turn 400+, maybe that's a different variable.