One of the biggest changes added in Civilization 6’s Gathering Storm expansion is an overhaul of the diplomacy system. Warmongering has been replaced by grievances, a diplomatic victory option has been added, and the World Congress is back, supported by diplomatic favor. Our Civ 6 Diplomacy guide will run down each of these features and help you understand it.
Grievances
Grievances have replaced the warmonger system. They are a way of penalizing players for acting in ways that are not good for world peace. These include denouncing another civilization, declaring a war (surprise or otherwise), and capturing another city.
Taking out a city-state will give all civilizations (at least those that have met them) grievance against you. Ignoring a civilization’s request, such as not settling near them again, will also give them a few grievances to work with.
Possessing another civilization’s city generates a small number of grievances each turn. When in a period of peace, the number of grievances will slowly trend toward zero. You can’t hold a war from the Ancient era over another civilization more than a thousand years later. Decay happens faster earlier in the game and slows down as the game comes to a close.
- Declare War of Reconquest: 0 Grievances
- Declare Protectorate War: 0 Grievances
- Denounce: 25 Grievances
- Declare Golden Age War: 25 Grievances
- Declare War of Retribution: 50 Grievances
- City-State Conquered: 50 Grievances
- Declare Formal War: 100 Grievances
- Declare Surprise War: 150 Grievances
The AI will use grievances to decide how friendly it acts with each civilization in the game.
When a civilization has a large number of grievances against you, cities founded by them will be harder to keep loyal.
Even Alliances factor into the system. If you anger America and America is allied with England, England will get some portion of those grievances as well.
Diplomatic Favor
Diplomatic Favor is used in the World Congress to win resolutions and the Diplomatic Victory condition.
You get favor through positive interactions with the global community and taking actions that will benefit everyone as a whole.
These actions generate favor over time:
- Automatic generation each turn. One per government tier.
- One favor each turn per City State you are Suzerain of.
- Holding active alliances. Increases as the alliance level goes up.
These actions generate large sums of favor:
- Liberating a City State.
- Liberating a city and returning it to the original civilization.
- Liberating a civilization’s capital and returning them to the game after they’ve been eliminated.
- Completing emergencies and scored competitions after reaching the score threshold.
If you spend Diplomatic Favor and do not win the measure, your favor points are completely refunded. This is also true for promise requests.
If the measure passes, but on a different target than your vote, half of your favor will be refunded.
World Congress
The World Congress comes into existence once the game enters the Medieval Era. After that point regular World Congress sessions will automatically be held every 30 turns (on Standard speed). Special sessions can be requested by any player that has been affected by an Emergency. In those situations, only players that are invited to weigh in may vote.
Resolutions
Each normally scheduled World Congress session always proposes two resolutions to the globe. These can change the rules of the game. Some will promote certain districts or completely forbid them. Others can outright ban certain luxury items, removing them from benefiting the civilizations which have them.
For each resolution, you’ll have to choose a target after choosing between one of the two options. Do you double city-state yields when sending trade routes? Or do you temporarily remove the benefits from these city-state types? Once you choose between one of the options, you’ll have to decide whether that should be trade, culture, military, or any of the other city-state types.
The winning option is binding to all players regardless of how they voted.
Emergencies
First introduced in Rise & Fall, all emergencies are now controlled by the World Congress. Each of them needs to be requested and reviewed in special sessions.
Gathering Storm comes with a new type of emergency: aid requests. Any civilization that has been affected by a natural disaster may now request help from the world. A civilization can also request aid if a religion’s holy city has been converted away from its main religion.
When an emergency passes, each player will then compete to do the best and earn rewards. An aid request rewards those who contribute gold. A military emergency rewards those who contribute troops, win battles, and even win the city back.
Scored Competitions
Scored competitions function similarly to emergencies, but they aren’t activated by negative forces. Instead, they’re usually brought up by the world as a whole or one civilization to reward good behavior. This includes the World’s Fair and any climate accords that may arise later in the game. Having Sweden in the game adds the Nobel Prize awards in the Industrial era, with three unique competitions.
Anyone who votes in favor of the competition will have a chance to compete.
Diplomatic Victory
Once you progress far enough into a Civilization game, the Diplomatic Victory Resolution will start to appear for voting. In it, anyone will be able to vote to either award or remove victory points from a specific civilization. In essence, you’ll need to earn more diplomatic favor than your opponents are able to remove using their own. They, of course, won’t be able to increase their own while they spend it to remove yours.
A civilization simply has to reach the Diplomatic Victory Point threshold to win the game.
A team wins a Diplomatic Victory when any one of its players have enough victory points to win the game — teams do not combine victory points. They can, of course, opt to all vote for a single member of the group to win.
That’s it for our Civ 6 Diplomacy guide! Have questions about other new Gathering Storm features? Head on over to our Disasters guide, Power guide, or Leaders guide!
