Winning the Diplomatic Victory

[Cabbagemeister]

Playing my first two games as a builder on Warlord, I've had no trouble at all winning a Spaceship victory--usually I launch about the time that the strongest AI civs are researching satellites. But when I reload and try winning these games with a diplomatic victory instead of a space victory, I get stymied. The second leading civ naturally votes for himself, and too many other civs abstain. Boy, was I surprised to find that the easy, "gimme" win from Civ3 was suddenly harder than the spaceship victory!

So I'm wondering, what are the proper diplomatic strategies for winning with the UN? In my games, I've been as friendly as possible with everyone I can, because I don't really want to start any wars when I'm cruising to a victory. So everyone likes me, but because the AI always makes enemies, they all tell me I'm "trading with their worst enemies," and I "refuse to stop." So while they like me, they don't LOVE me. My diplo rating is always weighed down by those "our worst enemy" negatives. Even when I shower people with presents, it only boosts the "our trade relations" modifier, and doesn't get rid of those negatives. The one time I made really good friends with England (diplo rating of like +15), they were the #2 civ, and they always voted for themselves in the election.

I'm wondering if the right way to win is not to be friendly to everyone like I've been doing, but to intentionally split the world into two feuding camps (ideally with the #2 civ on the other side, and with more votes total on your side). Have people succeeded using this tactic, or are there other good ones that I can't think of?

Also, for people who have won a diplo victory, do you have to have a lot of foresight and "set up" the victory a long way (say, 75 turns) in advance, so that your friends have long-term, established relationships with you in order to vote for you? Or is it enough to bribe a few civs to stop trading, start a few religious wars, and shower people with gifts, all starting 10 turns or so before the vote?

[tetrahedron]

On Noble I won via Diplomatic means by having enough cities to generate enough votes to vote myself the winner.... thats the only way I have won via Diplomatic means.

[Quillan]

I won my first game via diplomatic victory. The number of votes you're allotted seems to be based on population ratios, because I had a lot. I also happened to be on friendly terms with the most populous of the other states, and passed the world leader vote as the second resolution.

[Cabbagemeister]

You get the same number of votes as you have pop points in your empire. I figured that out because I got exactly 36 votes in my OCC game with a size 36 city. Note that this is NOT the same as population! I was actually in 1st place in total population in my game (my city had 20 million people; the average of my rivals was 7 million in their empires), but they had many times the votes I did. That's because the pop points system is on a nonlinear scale.

Now here is where ICS can actually help, since 20 size 2 cities will have the same number of votes as one size 40 city, but far less population.