Ideology: Autocracy (BNW)

Introduction

Autocracy is one of three ideologies in the game. Each ideology includes 16 tenets, divided into three levels, that operate in the same manner as social policies and generally are acquired with culture, as with social policies. Two tenets of a given level must be adopted before a tenet from the next highest level can be adopted.

The array of available tenets can support one or more victory conditions, but Autocracy's Level 3 tenets are specifically designed to help with Culture, Diplomatic and Domination Victories.

The Autocracy Tenets

• Level 1 Tenets
• Level 2 Tenets
• Level 3 Tenets

Unique World Wonder

General Autocracy Strategies

The Autocracy Tenets

Level 1 Tenets

• Elite Forces - Wounded Military Units inflict 25% more damage than normal.
  
  This is a very useful tenet for the campaign trail. Note that it does not increase the combat strength of the wounded unit and does not reduce the damage experienced by wounded units, so it does not directly enhance the survivability of your units. Instead, this tenet adjusts the damage formula to increase the damage experienced by enemy units.
  
  This tenet also does not affect the rate at which units accumulate experience for promotion purposes. For that you need to look to the Honor policy Military Tradition. In fact, several Honor policies complement Autocracy tenets quite well.
  
  
• Fortified Borders - +1 Local Happiness from every Castle, Arsenal and Military Base.
  
  With BNW, this bonus was relocated from Honor to Autocracy. It is one of the more useful happiness policies for several reasons. First, although an aggressive civ might not otherwise choose to invest in defensive buildings, those buildings have no maintenance cost and, with this tenet, provide much needed happiness. Second, you should have lots of puppets, and puppets will prioritize defensive buildings (due to the absence of maintenance cost), so they are a more reliable source of puppet happiness than traditional happiness buildings (like Colosseums) that puppets will likely only build if your entire empire is unhappy. Finally, this tenet is particularly attractive if you build Neuschwanstein, which isn't too challenging since it is in an unpopular location on the tech tree.
  
  
• Futurism - +250 Tourism with all known civilizations when a Great Writer, Artist or Musician is born.
  
  Although 250 Tourism per GWAM is not overwhelming, it is useful. First, the tourism from several GWAMs (which can purchased with faith if you have also completed the Aesthetics policy tree or have taken the To the Glory of God reformation belief) may be enough tourism to help you rise one (or more) influence levels with many civs, potentially avoiding city flipping to enemies or your having to change ideologies. Second, various levels of influence over other civs translate into specific advantages for aggressive players:
  
  
  • For civs you are Familiar (30%) with, unrest and population loss through conquest of the influenced civ's cities is reduced 25% and it takes just 1 turn to establish surveillance in the influenced civ's cities.
  • For civs you are Popular (60%) with, unrest and population loss through conquest of the influenced civ's cities is reduced 50%, it takes just 1 turn to establish surveillance in the influenced civ's cities, and spies operate at an effective rank 1 level higher than their actual rank in the influenced civ's allied City-States.
  • For civs you are Influential (100%) with, unrest and population loss through conquest of the influenced civ's cities is reduced 75%, it takes just 1 turn to establish surveillance in the influenced civ's cities, and spies operate at an effective rank 1 level higher than their actual rank in the influenced civ's cities and allied City-States.
  • For civs you are Dominant (200%) with, unrest and population loss through conquest of the influenced civ's cities is eliminated, it takes just 1 turn to establish surveillance in the influenced civ's cities, and spies operate at an effective rank 2 levels higher than their actual rank in the influenced civ's cities and allied City-States.
  
  
• Industrial Espionage - Spies steal technologies at twice the normal rate.
  
  In many Autocracy games, you will be the technology laggard deep into the game, placing a premium on stealing techs from more advanced civilizations as quickly as possible. This tenet lets you focus on the bottom of the tech tree, while stealing other techs from civs that are beelining things like Globalization or Internet. The speed increase lets you place a spy in a secondary city and steal as fast as a normal spy in the capitol without the risk of having a counterspy in the city.
  
  As spies steal technologies, they'll go up in level, which can counter anti-spy buildings (constabularies and police stations) or simply speed up the rate they steal. A level 2 spy will steals techs 25% faster, and a Level 3 spy will steal tech 50% faster. This Tenet will give a Spy +100% to its steal rate, which stacks additively with steal boosts from the spy's level promotions (i.e., it will allow a Level 3 spy to steal techs 150% faster than normal).
  
  
• Mobilization - Gold cost of purchasing units reduced by 33%.
  
  This is a strong tenet on its own, but conflicts thematically with tenets providing production bonuses. Its purchase cost discount stacks multiplicatively with Big Ben (-15% purchase cost) and the Commerce policy Mercantilism (-25% purchase cost), which are additive. The gold purchase discount formula is Base Gold Cost * (1 - (sum of Big Ben + Mercantilism discounts) * (1 - Mobilization discount), or Base Gold Cost * 0.396 (rounded down to the nearest 5 gold). For a unit with a base 1,000 gold cost, this translates to a discounted purchase price of 395 gold.
  
  
• United Front - Militaristic City-States grant units twice as often when you are at war with a common foe.
  
  This is a relatively weak tenet for any strategy pursued by an Autocracy civilization. For the most part, you will build and reinforce your army with gold, rather than gifts from militaristic City-States.
  
  
• Universal Healthcare - +1 Local Happiness from every National Wonder.
  
  This happiness tenet is usually more useful for civilizations that have a smaller number of cities, since they are more likely to build a larger number of National Wonders. Accordingly, this is a situationally useful tenet for an Autocracy civ.

Level 2 Tenets

• Lightning Warfare - +3 Movement for Great Generals. Armor units gain +15% attack, +1 Movement and ignore enemy ZOC.
  
  This is one of the best tenets in the tree. With the Kremlin (which can be captured from an Order civ during your domination path) and this tenet, an Autocracy civ can make much better use of armored units than other civs. Your armored units will be nearly impossible to slow down as they wreak havoc behind enemy lines.
  
  
• Militarism - +2 Local Happiness from every Barracks, Armory and Military Academy.
  
  What's not to like? 6 happiness per city from 3 gold maintenance, synergizes with the 15XP from Total War and the building discount from Honor. This policy is what makes Autocracy work. This tenet makes it worthwhile to construct these experience buildings in all cities, which, when combined with Total War (see below), will allow you to churn out promoted units from any city, as needed. Build Barracks, Armories, and Military Academies before building Coliseums, Zoos and Stadiums -- they are cheaper to maintain, faster to build with Honor, and provide the same amounts of happiness, even before considering the XP benefits.
  
  
• Nationalism - Reduces Unit Gold Maintenance costs by 33%.
  
  Since you will have a large military, this is a must-have tenet for an Autocracy civ. It will save you tons of gold.
  
  
• Police State - +3 Local Happiness from every Courthouse. Build Courthouses in half the usual time.
  
  If you have a war chest of gold, this tenet is better than Order's "Iron Curtain" free courthouses. This is a must-have policy for rabid warmongers, particularly in light of the recent changes to the puppet/annex mechanics.
  
  
• Third Alternative - Quantity of Strategic Resources produced is increased by 100%. +5 Food and +5 Science in Capital.
  
  This tenet is only marginally useful. The food and science bonuses come too late to make much of an impact, and, since you took Autocracy, you should be conquering cities that have the strategic resources you need. That said, if your current level of strategic resources is bottlenecking your ability to conquer (e.g., you only have 3 oil in your empire and need more air units), this tenet can be useful.
  
  
• Total War - +25% Production when building Military Units and new Military Units start with +15 Experience.
  
  This tenet will allow you spam highly promoted units. This lets you slow build super units in your Heroic Epic city and churn out level 3 cannon fodder everywhere via hammers or gold. With this tenet, air units in cities with all XP buildings will start with Air Repair. 'Nuff said.

Level 3 Tenets

• Clausewitz's Legacy - Receive a 25% attack bonus to all Military Units for the first 50 turns after this policy is adopted.
  
  This boost is terrific while it lasts, but it is best timed for your final push to a Domination Victory or to keep someone else from winning by some other method. After the temporary boost, this tenet leaves you with nothing if you haven't won yet.
  
  
• Cult of Personality - +50% Tourism to civilizations fighting a common enemy.
  
  When this tenet applies, it's the best tourism bonus in the game. Unfortunately, it won't always be applicable, and so it is in practice the third-best of the Culture Victory Level 3 tents.
  
  
• Gunboat Diplomacy - Gain 6 more Influence (at Standard speed) per turn with City-States you could demand tribute from. Your military forces are 50% more effective at intimidating City-States.
  
  This tenet is quite effective in helping you obtain, and maintain, alliances with City-States. It really helps when you need to stop another civ from winning a Diplomatic Victory. With some effort and well-clustered City-States, you can gain control of the World Congress and force through your religion or ideology. After a certain point, all City-States will be afraid of you, especially if a few of your stronger units are camped in the immediate area. This may be somewhat more difficult to exploit on higher difficulty levels due to AI production bonuses.
  

Unique World Wonder

Adopting Autocracy allows you to build a unique world wonder, Prora (unlocked with Flight), which provides:

• 2 Happiness
  
  
• 1 additional Happiness for every two social policies (including ideological tenets) you have adopted
  
  
• 1 free social policy

Prora can only be built in a coastal city, so make sure you found or annex at least 1 coastal city before researching Flight. Notwithstanding that limitation, Prora is commonly regarded as the strongest of the ideology-specific world wonders.

General Autocracy Strategies

If going for World domination, definitely choose Autocracy. Practically every tenet encourages warmongering, building military buildings and keeping a large standing army; the only exception is futurism. Order only has Iron Curtain, everything else encourages keeping put and constructing civilian buildings.

Order is great for Happiness due to the +2 Happiness from Monuments (which you should have in every city) and +1 Happiness from Workshops, Factories and Solar, Hydro and Nuclear Plants (which you probably have a fair number of). Add in the obligatory +1 Happiness per University, Observatory, Public School and Research Lab, if you even need it, and you're doing well; combine it with Skyscrapers for rapid purchasing of Happiness buildings, and Worker's Faculties for more Science, and you can essentially keep up with the burden of conquering easily.

Looking at similar policies for Autocracy, you have +1 Happiness from Castles, Arsenals and Military Bases (which you may not have in anything but frontier cities), +3 Happiness from Courthouses (which is not particularly great unless you annex heavily), and the best Happiness policy, +2 Happiness from Barracks, Armories and Military Academies, which essentially allows you to turn your cities into unit producing powerhouses with the side-effect of +6 Happiness, nothing to scoff at, and makes them essentially desirable for just the Happiness boost.

As for the Ideological Wonders, Order gives +50% Production for Armor units (which would include Panzers). Autocracy gives Happiness based on Social Policies, but depending on how many cities you Annex or build, assuming Puppets don't increase Culture requirements, then it can vary significantly; I suppose that you'd probably be close to having two trees filled out, so that's 12 policies (including the openers) and probably half a dozen tenets (arguably less or more depending on how much Culture you can generate).

Finally, in terms of ending policies, Clausewitz's Legacy is generally a nail in the coffin for the rest of the world, and arguably it's not needed if your Warmongering is going well. Gunboat Diplomacy can be good to get partial control of the World Congress and prevent heavily damaging proposals from passing, while assisting you with United Front (two times the unit gifts from Militaristic City-States), since you can stuff a military unit or two there for influence; you don't need too many of them, and it more than pays for itself from the influence gained. Order's Iron Curtain is good if you're running Internal Trade Routes, or if you Annex heavily, but otherwise it falls short.

So yeah, Order is much less focused on conquest, but will provide more instant Happiness, and for Germany it has good synergy with Panzers, assuming you can grab the Kremlin. Autocracy is more focused on conquest, at the cost of lacking Science and no boost to Great People, while the Happiness policies will require you to go slightly out of your way to obtain them, unless you sacrifice other aspects to get Castles and Barracks up in every city; Lightning Warfare is also a good choice for Germany as well, since Panzers will receive a higher combat boost than ordinary tanks (since the bonus is percentage based), and ignoring Zones of Control with superior movement will allow you to take great control of any battlefield.

In short, Order is arguably better if you might not be able to conquer the world and need to fall back on another victory. Autocracy is by far the better late game Warmonger policy, but it can suffer from Happiness issues early on. Order fixes those almost instantly, without the need for more maintenance costs, and the added benefit of faster building construction for some of them. Most players may prefer Order due to how you can shift gears and it has a much stronger early tenet system, which allows you to continue warring, instead of Autocracy, which forces you to either prepare beforehand with maintenance costs and 'useless' buildings, in exchange for a much more powerful late game.

Culture Victory: Use conquest induced cultural victory tactics by choosing Futurism plus Cult of Personality, forming a coalition against the current cultural leader and conquering their core cities to acquire their great works.

Diplomatic Victory: Use your military to revive City-States the AI has conquered and revive major civs that some other player conquered to get their votes. Next acquire cities near City-States by any means necessary to use to intimate them with Gunboat Diplomacy and conquer any civilizations daring to oppose you to reduce the number of votes you need to win.

Domination Victory: Use your military and the general Autocracy strategy above to conquer all major players original capitals. (Note that this is a change from G&K in which you only needed to be the last major player with their original capital.)

Spaceship Victory: While you can win a spaceship victory with Autocracy (if nothing else by conquering both the tech & culture leaders), you are better off picking either Freedom or Order to do so, each of which can rush the last spaceship part needed to win, which is a 4 to 10 turn savings.