Is there any way to prevent diplomatic victory?

[Dis]

Well I found out even apost. palace can give diplo. victory. It's amazing you can lose so early in the game. Kind of frustrating, so I reloaded... a couple of times. . I can't accept defeat.

It's frustrating when you think you are winning- by score, power etc. then end up losing this way. The obvious solution would be to do custom games and take the option off, but I dislike custom games. And feel more options makes the game better (I had my first diplo victory the game before that one actually). More options gives me more reason to think strategically.

So in lines of thinking strategically I am seeking help (I didn't come up with answers apparently). My final solution (which worked- I ended up with space ship victory before 1940) was to take over Paris which had built the apost. palace and raze it. I tried taking it over and controlling it. But I still lost the diplo victory vote to the rival civ. The original situation I voted for the French (they had more pop than me at the time). Despite 2 of the largest civs voting for France, the other civ managed to pull of a diplo. victory! How did that happen? This was on the Earth2 map. So there were alot of civs all on one continent.

It seems like nothing I could do would sway my neighbors. As I said, I had to destroy it. On lower diff. levels I can maintain friends fairly easy. But not on the medium ones. They all hate me. In no case did I ever attack them. By that point I had attacked and completely conquered the mongols and the egyptians, but never attacked the people who voted against me. They just hated me because I was such a large, well advanced civ. But I find the only way to win is to be larger than the rest. Even then I'm astonished that such smaller civs can seem to keep up with me somewhat in research.

So what's the best way to avoid defeat in this way? Do as I did and simply raze the apost. palace? Being nice and never going to war would help, but I simply can't win the game never going to war.

[Lord Avalon]

As far as the AP goes, I'm not good enough to share an early major religion and have people like me and vote for me. My experience has been getting outvoted by, say 2 other civs (e.g., found Buddhism, spread it, build AP, eventually other civs combined Buddhist pop exceeds mine).

So taking another path, if you're first to Theocracy, build the AP, switch to Christianity before it's done (you can switch back to another religion later), spread Christianity to all your cities, but only to one city in other civs - and the lowest pop/worst producing city they have. That will ensure you have the most votes.

[TriMiro]

As far as the AP goes, I'm not good enough to share an early major religion and have people like me and vote for me. My experience has been getting outvoted by, say 2 other civs (e.g., found Buddhism, spread it, build AP, eventually other civs combined Buddhist pop exceeds mine).

So taking another path, if you're first to Theocracy, build the AP, switch to Christianity before it's done (you can switch back to another religion later), spread Christianity to all your cities, but only to one city in other civs - and the lowest pop/worst producing city they have. That will ensure you have the most votes.

Which basically proves that the current AP dynamics are badly broken. I think a requirement for AP victory should be for the AP religion to be spread to at least 50% (or make that 66%).

[Dis]

which shows I have no clue how the AP vote goes lol. I don't understand any of that.

In either case I'm rarely the first to christianity, I almost never build the AP. On warlord is the only difficulty I can manage to get that built. I'm always doing another tech line (usually going for liberalism). So my question is how to prevent the other civs from achieving enough votes to win the game.

[Lord Avalon]

Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!

If you're not building the AP, I suppose you can always go raze it. Or you'll have to conquer enough of the AP religious bloc, so you always have the most votes.

Or you'll have to become the best buddies of the AP religious bloc, or at least enough of it that you don't get outvoted. And that probably means plenty of gifting and giving in to many requests/demands.

[Diadem]

Another option is make sure your civilization is not 'tainted' with foreign religions. Then whoever builds the AP can not get a diplomatic victory. Every civ in the world needs to have the religion of the AP before the vote appears.

[Sir Og]

In my experience I can always hijack the AP religion if it is not my state religion to begin with. Or at least I can spread the religion quickly enough in my cities to gain enough votes to have a de facto veto power.
This is 100% true in scenerios similar to the OP. If you are the main power and some looser makes the AP you can spend some time to quickly spread the religion through your cities, and even switch to that religion and become the AP leader. You just need to pay attention (e.g. which civ founds Christianity first, and what is their main religion) otherwise it is very frustrating.
Once you know how to deal with the AP it no longer feels unbalanced or unfair.

[slnz]

You should always strive to spread the AP religion to all your cities if you have it at all; not only does this give you more votes but it gives the option to get +4 free hammers from building the appropriate temple&monastery. Usually at the AP state of the game this gives a huge overall production boost.

[sorinache]

Another option is make sure your civilization is not 'tainted' with foreign religions. Then whoever builds the AP can not get a diplomatic victory. Every civ in the world needs to have the religion of the AP before the vote appears.

You mean that in order for the "Diplomatic Victory" vote to appear in AP, every civ in the world needs to have the AP religion in at least one city ? Good to know - I built or have the AP built for me in almost all my (recent) games, yet I've never seen a single "Diplo Victory" vote happening. Usually the votes are about "stop trading with that guy" or "declare war on infidels". This probably has to do with almost always having a civ that's a Theocracy fan in my game (for whatever reason, Zara Yacub was in 3 out of my last 4 games)

[sorinache]

You should always strive to spread the AP religion to all your cities if you have it at all; not only does this give you more votes but it gives the option to get +4 free hammers from building the appropriate temple&monastery. Usually at the AP state of the game this gives a huge overall production boost.

I'd go even further Adjust your research path so as to have monotheism and writing one turn before you finish building Oracle. Then choose Theology and found Christianity. After that, you can choose to either build the AP yourself (very expensive ...) or to have it built for you by a small friendly civ that has adopted your state religion (be it Buddhism, hinduism, judaism). You DID spread your state religion to your neighbors' capital early on, right ? Then go see them - they should like you, because "they care for their brothers and sisters in the faith". Offer to exchange Theology for some techs that you missed because you were pursuing the religions. You'll get a decent deal, especially since the possibility to build AP is seen as a prize by the AI. On normal speed, Theology is worth 840 beakers (give or take). On emperor, you can get 650 - 700 beakers worth of other techs per exchange. You share it with 2 neighbors and then watch them set out to build the AP for you. Sit back and enjoy

[Theben]

I'd go even further Adjust your research path so as to have monotheism and writing one turn before you finish building Oracle. Then choose Theology and found Christianity.

Or make sure you have both poly- and mono- theism, mediation, and priesthood... and then burn a Great Priest to get Theology, freeing any Oracle tech for something better.

[sorinache]

Or make sure you have both poly- and mono- theism, mediation, and priesthood... and then burn a Great Priest to get Theology, freeing any Oracle tech for something better.

Hmm, in theory it should work as well. But how do you get the Great Priest in the first place ? Maybe you built Stonehenge, but that alone is not enough, on emperor (and I suppose above) you do not enjoy a 50 turns interval after Stonehenge to finish Oracle - if you take that long, the AI will beat it to it. You need temples and priests - but in the very beginning (before Oracle i.e. before 1000 BC), building a temple is quite expensive and then affording to not work a tile does not happen often. It's been a looong while since I last started near flood plains, I most often than not have to make do with a corn or rice that I cannot irrigate till Civil Service ...

But yes, if you can afford to create a G Priest from a temple + a priest, then you can use Oracle for CoL for instance, which puts you in a great bargaining position

[rah]

Another option is make sure your civilization is not 'tainted' with foreign religions. Then whoever builds the AP can not get a diplomatic victory. Every civ in the world needs to have the religion of the AP before the vote appears.

While you can prevent religions from spreading to you, it limits your options if you can't conquer and keep cities that have foreign religions. By the time I really get rolling, almost every city has a religion.

[sorinache]

While you can prevent religions from spreading to you, it limits your options if you can't conquer and keep cities that have foreign religions. By the time I really get rolling, almost every city has a religion.

You warmongering guys ! I've just won an emperor game without fighting a single war ! Mentioned it earlier : playing Huyana of the Inca, I discovered I had a fairly big island / continent all to myself. I was isolated from all the other civs until the americans, the turks, the persians, the chinese arrived with caravels after discovering optics. I fully occupied all available space on my island so that noone can come and pop a city on it and built enough military units to not be considered an easy prey. That turned out to be an average of 3.75 - 3.8 reasonably up-to-date mil units per city. I was nice to everybody that mattered. They kept fighting each other but noone ever declared on me. As I'm not particularly fond of war, I didn't bother either, I just kept at improving my cities. I then won space race. Very tidy game, entirely satisfying (to my tastes)

[rah]

Easy if you're isolated on a big island. I usually play custom pag maps (thanks snoopy), with agressive AI checked. You can't play that game without an AI declaring on you at some point regardless of how high your diplo score is with them. Somebody will eventually come for you. Most of my games I don't declare on anybody. I usually eliminate them after they declare on me.