No they don't. The first player to have an alliance with everyone wins. Granted it's possible that you're allied with everyone, and the only AI you're not allied with is allied with everyone, if you two make an alliance you both win...

"Diplomatic Victory" isn't a unique victory condition - it's been in games for ages - it's merely a new name for "ALLIED VICTORY". When you ally with everyone, you no longer have any enemies, and you win the Allied Victory - which is why you can kill someone and win the Allied Victory.

If you're allied with two other races, but they're not allied with each other, how exactly do THEY win?

Yes, I see what you mean. I think it is quite serious, still, but perhaps not a 'bug' per se.

Also, I've always thought of 'victory' in this game and games like Civilization 4 as 'domination'. For instance, when you conquer the galaxy you have quite obviously dominated it. When your influence is supreme then the culture of the galaxy is set by you: domination. Tech victory, in TA, means that your weapons are enough for you to want one person to explode and they instantly do, or you press a button and a planet evaporates. Talk about domination. Ascension means that you are all-powerful dominating beings.

Diplomatic Victory means that you are allied with everyone. You have extremely powerful political power in their governments. They don't have that. They might just be allied with you!

I think the reasons for not giving the AI diplomatic victory are as follows:

When a human player wins in a Diplomatic Victory I think story-wise it's still presumed that the universe continues after the game is finished with all the civilizations going about their merry way and living in harmony with each other. So conversely even if the AI "wins" a diplomatic victory everyone else including the human player should have the freedom to keep going about their business without the universe ending.

In the end the AI is supposed to act like a real galactic civilization rather than a person playing a game. The only one that can really win or lose the game is the human player, the AIs are there just to try and be a successful civilization and it's up to the player to decide how they interact with those civilizations to win the game. Giving the AI the ability to "win" the game is essentially redundant because that's not their goal.

I think that the question of "Why can't the AI win an alliance victory?" has been mostly answered, but pieces of the answers are in various replies.

By definition, an alliance victory is one in which all the remaining players in the game are allied.  In order for this to occur, you have to be eliminated.  This results in a Military loss for you.  It would technically be an Allied win for the AI players, but since the game is single player, the end game conditions are geared towards you, the human player.  Therefore, a win for the AI is a loss for you.  If they beat you by culture or technology, it still shows up as a loss for you, not a win for the AI. 

 

Thanks, CariElf. I have heard many strange opinions on this thread. The major point is that it IS NOT CLEAR that the current design should be called a bug. There is much to consider, many varied opinons, and many ways of looking at this issue. However, a decision needed to be made, and I for one think the final choices of how to implement the victory conditions for Diplomatic Victory made sense for a single player game.

"...they can't?


WHY?

that sounds like a pretty serious bug, still... if it's purposeful, I'd like to know why."

Think about it...it's not just you winning when a diplomatic victory is achieved, it's EVERYONE winning.

I think you need to do the thinking.

Here's a visual aid.

Here's a diplomatic victory:



The diplomatic victory condition states:



This means that the MOMENT you (or any player) has an alliance with every player in the current game, they win the diplomatic victory. Eradicating those that aren't part of your alliance eliminates their race, so that you can fulfill the requirement to be allied with everyone easier. If I'm allied with everyone but the Drath, and kill the Drath, I win a Diplomatic Victory.

The Victory Condition explicitly states that in order to win, you must have the alliance with everyone. It is not a team victory. Except in extremely rare cases, ONLY one person wins. Suggesting that everyone in the alliance wins would require the 'final victory' condition to look like this:



Yes, in this case, everyone won, because everyone fulfilled the victory requirement.

However, since only ONE person needs to ally with everyon, the following is *NOT* a diplomatic victory condition for anyone. Even though everyone has a rather significant number of allies and everyone will more or less be at peace, nobody has filled the condition yet.



If the Korx and the Yor made the magenta-colored alliance, then they would BOTH win the Diplomatic victory condition, as they both fulfilled the goal (personally I'd think whoever MADE the alliance would win, but that's minor).



Likewise if the Drengin and the Drath made the magenta alliance, the Drengin would win the Diplomatic victory, but not the Drath.



It's stupid to say 'Everyone wins' because no, not everyone wins. I really don't see why the AI should be exempted from this victory condition.

As Uranium said, not everyone needs to be allied. The winner needs to be allied with everyone. What happened in my game: 3 players, including me.
I am allied with the Terran Federation. I am not allied with the Korx.
The TF are allied with the Korx. Should they not win? Or, rather, should I not lose?