Is Gunboat Diplomacy OP?

[emcarlsen (she/her)]

I've been playing a lot on large island maps, and I'm beginning to think Gunboat Diplomacy is overpowered, especially on nautical maps. I've only recently become good enough at Civ V to think I have a valid opinion on this subject, but even as the cost of maintaining sufficient military force to abuse it rises at higher levels, it still pays off by creating a path to a reasonably early and easy diplomatic victory.

The moral issues of making the fascist ideology into the one best able to win with diplomacy carries its own moral implications about the game designers, I suppose, but as a matter of game mechanics, a peaceful progression to Gunboat Diplomacy with a plan to take all the city states as allies by the time world leader votes starts will rarely fail to result in victory, in my limited civ V experience.

[Sep]

Depends on your opponent....

Gunboat doesn't help much when your opponent is Alexander or Gustav...

[DerEider]

There was a time when gunboat diplomacy was a valid and effective course.
One need not avail oneself of that tactic if it offends one's sensibilities

[kkeday]

It is the primary reason I pick Autocracy.

[Amanoob105]

Dude, it's a game. An interactive work of fiction. A bunch of 1's and 0's. Speaking of 0's, that's the same number of moral issues that exist here.
Also, autocracy and fascism? Not the same thing . Even if they can often be found at the same table.

As to it being a good option to win with diplomacy? The most (in)famous group of fascist's ended up in charge of that country because they were voted into power.
They could be very, persuasive, when they wanted to be (wink, wink).

And all of this is easy to work around if there's parts of the game you don't like the idea of. Namely, it's a work of fiction. You're already rewriting history on multiple levels, so why not rewrite some of the details?
When I do autocracy, I do it differently to how the rest of human history did it and my history books show it was good. How can you tell? Because I won.

[Anvos]

Wouldn't call it any more OP than Freedom letting you lock down the allegiance of 8-9 city states via trade routes.

Order is really the only one that doesn't have an easy way to make lots of city state allies.

...........

Also keep in mind your order/autocracy doesn't have to be Soviet Union or Nation Socialist bad.

[Perception312]

Diplomatic Victory is sometimes quite easy, it's true. But if the AIs decide to conquer a bunch of them, you might need to do more with those military units than just look intimidating. Particularly if Mongolia is in the game -- that guy eats city-states for breakfast.

[Anvos]

A conquered city state, doesn't give any world congress votes, so it isn't that bad, as long as you start with the city states closest to you.

[emcarlsen (she/her)]

Originally posted by Perception312:

Diplomatic Victory is sometimes quite easy, it's true. But if the AIs decide to conquer a bunch of them, you might need to do more with those military units than just look intimidating. Particularly if Mongolia is in the game -- that guy eats city-states for breakfast.

While that's true, it's an unusual game wherein enough city states are captured to push it beyond the 2nd or 3rd leader ballot. I recently played a game where I liberated one captured city when one of the 4 order civs turned on another, creating an opportunity for me to reverse the flow of cultural influence by being on the same side of a war as several of them for a while. None of the other ideologies' tier 3 bonuses mesh quite as well as autocracy's. In the end, the boost in happiness and the two extra votes got me across the finish line on the third ballot.

[emcarlsen (she/her)]

Originally posted by Anvos:

Wouldn't call it any more OP than Freedom letting you lock down the allegiance of 8-9 city states via trade routes.

Order is really the only one that doesn't have an easy way to make lots of city state allies.

...........

Also keep in mind your order/autocracy doesn't have to be Soviet Union or Nation Socialist bad.

Treaty Organization is not nearly as powerful on a per turn basis, and has the limitation of the number of trade routes available. If any opponent is running Gunboat Diplomacy in any significant scale, it will be a difficult path to victory. That said, I have yet to see an AI run Gunboat Diplomacy at sufficient scale to stop the Treaty Organization mechanic from working. You are right that Order lacks a city state controlling mechanic on par with either..

And there is no such thing as benevolent fascism outside of a civ game. In the real world, the combination of state authority, tradition and anti-liberalism always creates a regressive, xenophobic hellhole of a society or a warmongering menace of one. Every time it has been tried.

[cuavas]

But back on topic, all the ideologies are over-powered in one way or another. That’s kind of the point – the late game tended to degenerate into just clicking Next Turn, so they added powerful ideologies to spice it up a bit. The trouble is, the AI isn’t very effective at using any of the game’s powerful mechanics. It doesn’t use tradition with internal trade routes to support a huge capital, it doesn’t abuse Sacred Sites with city spam for cultural victories, it can’t operate an effective submarine picket line. It also doesn’t seem to be capable of identifying what victory type you’re aiming for and attempting to directly counter it.

[emcarlsen (she/her)]

Originally posted by cuavas:

But back on topic, all the ideologies are over-powered in one way or another. That’s kind of the point – the late game tended to degenerate into just clicking Next Turn, so they added powerful ideologies to spice it up a bit. The trouble is, the AI isn’t very effective at using any of the game’s powerful mechanics. It doesn’t use tradition with internal trade routes to support a huge capital, it doesn’t abuse Sacred Sites with city spam for cultural victories, it can’t operate an effective submarine picket line. It also doesn’t seem to be capable of identifying what victory type you’re aiming for and attempting to directly counter it.

To make matters worse, as in civ IV, game designers relied on handicapping players to make difficulties "harder" as you move up. This means when a player "breaks through" the handicapping to field a dominant game mechanic, the game is almost always effectively over, even if it may require a few hours of game play to get there, returning us to the old "press next turn" repetition.

Why an AI running Freedom and Patronage won't eventually start attacking Autocracy forces outside their target city states just baffles me. The AIs seem to be little more than a glorified RNG.

[minniefinnie]

why are we complaining about the ai the devs aint gonna fix it for a 10+ year old game when they have civ 6

[Pat Fenis]

I use gunboat a lot but for tributes, rarely let it build up influence without tributing. I find it most effective to let AI buy up the states influence and flip them with spies, using gunboat to maintain after flips and demand tributes. The gold meshes really well with mobilization, commerce, big ben. Dirt cheap tanks and arties.

[OldMemes.biz]

Originally posted by emcarlsen:

I
The moral issues of making the fascist ideology into the one best able to win with diplomacy carries its own moral implications about the game designers,

Don't think there's a need to read that deeply in to things. Ideologies are just tools, whether we're talking about a game or real life and what matters is what you do with them. Doing good or doing wrong are choices a human makes, not choices an abstract concept makes.

[kkeday]

Originally posted by Pat Fenis:

I use gunboat a lot but for tributes, rarely let it build up influence without tributing. I find it most effective to let AI buy up the states influence and flip them with spies, using gunboat to maintain after flips and demand tributes. The gold meshes really well with mobilization, commerce, big ben. Dirt cheap tanks and arties.

Great Idea. I have 14K hours and never thought of this!