Daphne Preston-KendalOkay, beginning my third attempt to win a science victory without accidentally turning it into a diplomatic victory
Trying Kristina of Sweden … again
Bad start as other civs grab all the nearby villages and meet all the other nearby citystates before me. Tempted to restart already but I’ll press on for now
Thank fuck Stonehenge gives you 5 era score, and first religion gives you even more … narrowly dodged my first era being a dark age, which would probably have meant I gave up
Declaring a city-state war was a mistake
Yeah I think I’ve pretty thoroughly lost this game :-(
Entering the renaissance period, no nitre anywhere near my territory. Hope I don’t get caught up in another war? 😬
Loaded up this save again, looked at the situation, noped right out of there. Let’s try again
I WON A FUCKING DIPLOMATIC VICTORY AGAIN
Conclusion: Science victory is impossible in this game
Fourth try! (Fifth, if you count the failed attempt playing Sweden.)
Trying with Seondeok of Korea. Dunno why I didn’t try this one earlier, as it seems most optimized for science of all
Korea run is going well. But I’ve also been thinking about why the diplo victory seems to be so OP (as the kids say)
It was added in an expansion pack and is exactly the kind of game balance-ruining stuff that comes along in expansion pack features
You win a diplo victory by accumulating diplomatic victory points. You mostly get these by successfully passing resolutions at the World Congress (which is like the Apostolic Palace and UN from Civ IV but less useless)
The World Congress, though, proposes rule changes that can advantage or disadvantage you according to which way the vote goes. So it’s natural to want to invest a lot into getting resolutions passed, even if you’re not explicitly aiming for a diplo victory
Votes at the World Congress are weighted by how much diplomatic influence you spend on them, a currency which is gained by playing well with city states
But it’s also natural to want to play the city state game, because city states – of any kind – also bring other advantages that can help with some other victory or (more crucially) help to fend off the possibility of some other civ winning another victory while you’re still aiming for a specific win condition
So it’s easy to end up with a lot of diplomatic influence points by accident because you like having the patronage of city states. When you have a lot of diplomatic influence points, it’s easy to win votes at the World Congress, which is also natural to want because they can help you with your intended win strategy. But when you do that, you accumulate diplomatic victory points which lead to a too easy diplo win no matter how you actually intended to win the game
If you’re aiming for the science victory, it’s actually even worse because you also get diplomatic victory points for just researching certain late-game technologies which you need for a science win. So it’s no wonder my attempts to get a science win – the only victory I have still never got in the game apart from domination – have led to accidental diplo victories. Actually what happened last time was that I researched one of these late-game technologies which pushed me over the edge
Diplo victory makes the game too easy to win, and specifically too easy to win in a boring way, at least on standard difficulty
Oops, -6 starting loyalty per turn might be too little for a new city D: