Universal Ideology

In my game, Germany (a medium power) was the first to choose an ideology, they chose Order.

Me, Assyria (top tier power) was the second to choose an ideology. I chose Freedom.

The next 8 civs (ranging mostly weak to medium, with 1 or 2 stronger powers) all chose Order, including friends of mine with whom I had open borders, shared religion, defense pact, trade relations, fought wars with, shared intrigue, etc.

My happiness plummeted from +14 to +4 to -11 as I struggled to stay on top of my happiness. Despite being #2 in culture production and despite being #3 in tourism (and within a reasonable deviation from the leaders), the effect of the pressure from the 9 other civs was too much.

When my happiness went to -24, I gave up and chose Order. Every civ since has also selected Order, with the exception of one or two medium powered Autocratic civs, who are now faced with barbarians and city-flipping. Who knows why they haven't joined the Order club.

I'm just entering the modern era, the second civ to do so.

I can't imagine this was how the ideology system was meant to be implemented....where basically the entire world ends up following a single ideology. Not much diversity of political/economic philosophies in this world I'm playing. Has anyone else experienced this?

And, yes, I know by starting this thread I'll be accused of ignoring culture, ignoring tourism, not paying attention, warmongering, not maintaining good foreign relations, blah blah. None of these assumptions are valid in the game I'm playing.

In my game, I have emphasized culture from the beginning, nearly all my great works slots are filled, I have a solid amount of tourism, I have built most culture buildings in most of my cities, I've built all culture buildings in my core cities, I have great wonders for culture, I've stacked the culture magnifiers in my capital to maximize culture production there, I have landmarks being worked for extra culture, I have 3 friends that I've cultivated throughout the game and usually one or two other friends at various times, I'm not a warmongerer according to most civs, and I try to maintain open borders and trade relations with as many civs as will allow it.

So...is the lack of ideology diversity a problem that others are experiencing, or is this game I'm playing unique? Just curious.

In my experience, the ideology game will go one of two ways. Either you'll get a nice even mix of all 3 ideologies among the AI, or 90% of them will go Order.

Read this thread.

It goes over how ideological pressure is exerted. But to put it simply, even if you are #1 in tourism you can still get ideological pressure if your opponents have become more than 'unknown' with you, culturally. Only your influence with other civs matters in the ideological war, but this can be effected by culture and/or tourism. If you had set the trend by picking an ideology first you may have been able to convert the world to freedom.

Read this thread.

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Thanks, that is helpful. Even after reading it though, I still feel myself thinking that this ideology system needs to be implemented differently. I have some rough ideas floating around in my head, so maybe I'll try fleshing them out at some point soon.

Any good threads you guys know of for ideas on how to improve the ideology system?

I don't think it's that bad the way it is, honestly.

The way to prevent it is to isolate yourself (no trade routes, no open borders) but then you lose out on gold and tourism of your own. And all of the options are pretty stable, IMO, so if you don't get your precious freedom tenets then it's not the end of the world.

To answer your question, your game is actually pretty unique, although not unheard of. Part of your experience may have to do with the raw number of civs you have in your game. Once an ideology starts gaining ground, it'll snowball when civs with good tourism start joining the same ideology.

Ideology isn't made for having 3 equal parties every game that stay equal throughout the game. If you're playing your cards right, you're usually trying to leverage your own ideology at the expense of others, and the AI is doing the same. It sounds like Order won the ideology war in your game. It happens.

While you've said that you didn't play a poor culture/tourism game, I'm going to present the possibility that you actually may not have done it as well as you think you did. If you have the #3 tourism and #2 culture, there shouldn't be 9 civs influencing you, even if they all went Order. Another civ will only affect your ideological happiness if they are more influential on you than you are on them. If your happiness dipped 3 times, you're in a revolutionary wave, meaning you have 4 points of ideology against you. If you've been keeping up in culture/tourism and made sure World Ideology didn't pass against you, that simply doesn't happen.

I say this because I don't think the ideology system is broken or flawed at all. I think it worked exactly like it should, and that just didn't turn out well for you.

When will people learn not to pick Freedom over Order? Freedom tenants only look better, Order's subtle AI diplo benefits will help you more in the long run, whether it's to a science, culture, or domination victory. And, it will ALWAYS help you stay secure.

Anyway, the AIs pick ideologies not just based on whether they like YOU, but based on who they like MORE. So, Germany, as a medium power, is actually probably much much much better position than you, the dominant power, in having good diplo.... This means when the AI wants someone to follow, they're following Germany, not you. Also, the vast majority of the AIs have a natural preference for Order due to their behavior pattern aligning them more with Order's buildings that give bonuses and victory conditions.

Lesson: If you're not dominating tourism (relative to others) and/or diplo (relative to others), play it safe and go Order. If someone nice has already gone Order, that's a ridiculously huge red flag that you should also go Order. There's only a very narrow set of circumstances where if an overall liked-AI goes Order before I pick an ideology that I would not pick Order also. Rule of thumb: Pick Order.

Cite: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503164

Why follow the AI? Unless I am sucking at tourism then I should go with the one that will benefit me most. I go whatever I feel like in the game and I've never had issues. The AI will pretty much always pick an unpicked ideo first since they get the free tenets.

Don't lock yourself out of those.

adwcta said:

Lesson: If you're not dominating tourism... put off choosing an ideology

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Fixed

Magma_Dragoon said:

Fixed

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Exactly. Best to play it safe and figure out how the world will shape out before you possibly take a huge risk by picking an Ideology before everyone.

I don't agree with intentionally delaying ideology to wait and see what the AI picks. If you can get there first and pick up 2 free tenets, do it. In the best case, you keep 2 free tenets. In the worst case, the AI doesn't cooperate with your choice, so you have a revolution and lose the 2 tenets that you got for free.

Yzman said:

The AI will pretty much always pick an unpicked ideo first since they get the free tenets.

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This is not actually true. Free tenets increase the AI's scoring of an ideology slightly, but it's not the biggest factor.

From looking through the code, here's a rough guide to how the AI scores each ideology:

• Add a number representing our interest in each of the victory conditions supported by the ideology. These numbers can be in the hundreds.
• If we are much more interested in one victory condition than the others, completely rule out the ideology that is not designed to support that victory condition. Heavily Domination focused civs will not pick Freedom, Diplomacy focused civs will not pick Order, and Science focused civs will not pick Autocracy.
• Add 4 for each free tenet available from the ideology.
• Add 6 for each civ we are Friendly towards who is following the ideology. If a civ we are Hostile, Afraid, or Guarded towards is running this ideology, add 4, 3, or 2 respectively to the scores of the other ideologies.
• Add a number proportional to the amount of happiness the ideology could add to our buildings.
• Subtract the amount of public opinion unhappiness we would suffer from adopting the ideology.
• Add a random number between 1 and 10