Civ 6 Gathering Storm: How to Win a Diplomatic Victory

How Win a Diplomatic Victory in Civ 6 Gathering Storm

Civilization 6‘s second expansion added an entirely new win condition, the Diplomatic Victory. Let’s go over how to win a Diplomatic Victory in Civ 6 Gathering Storm.

Let’s start by explaining what it is, and what play-styles and civilizations have the best chance of pulling this win off.

The Diplomatic Victory win condition presents itself in the late game of Gathering Storm. Every 30 turns, starting with the Medieval era, world leaders get together to vote on resolutions through a new world congress.

You can check out our guide on the World Congress if you need help navigating that.

The important part, though, is later on in the Modern Era. A new “Diplomatic Victory Resolution” will appear, and this gives all the remaining world leaders a chance to use their favor to award Diplomatic Victory Points to a specific civilization to become world leader.

Thus, they’re electing that Civ (and their team if applicable) the winners of the game. You need 10 Diplomatic Victory Points in order to win this way.

You can accumulate Diplomatic Victory Points throughout Civilization 6 Gathering Storm by participating in some Scored Competitions, and contributing the most Aid when other countries request it.

And as we mentioned before, when the resolution comes up, you can collect more points by accumulating Diplomatic Favor to spend on yourself, or use your favor to take away points from someone else that is close to winning if that’s not the win condition you’re going for, and you want to buy yourself some more time.

You’ll be able to purchase Diplomatic Victory points two at a time, meaning if you come away with the most votes five times after the Modern Era begins, you can win the game.

So in essence, the key to win a Diplomatic Victory is to be a cooperative world leader. You want to do things to gain as much Diplomatic Favor as you can.

You can check out our guide on how to gain more favor, but in short, form alliances, help other civilizations when they ask, establish favorable trade deals that include favor and become a Suzerain of city-states.

That way, when the resolution comes up, not only have you hopefully gained some points already through your actions, you’ll have plenty of favor saved up to gain more points and win the game.

The best Civs getting and winning a Diplomatic Victory in Civilization 6 Gathering Storm are ones that either A: promote cooperation instead of war, and B: either stockpile Gold or other resources that are valuable in a trade so they can use it to trade for more favor.

One of the new Civs, Canada, is a great choice, as they gain extra favor when they win Aid Requests and Scored Competitions.

Another alternative Civ that also has a backdoor Culture win chance is Pericles (Greece). Pericles’ bonus encourages you to work with city-states, and being the Suzerain of a city-state, generates more favor for you.

That’s all you need to know for how to win a Diplomatic Victory in Civ 6 Gathering Storm. You can check out our full review of the expansion for more on our thoughts on how everything played out.