Autocracy Either Needs Buff or Remake

Bad tenets:
Level 1:
- Industrial Espionage (double tech steal rate): Horrible. Completely useless with the way tech stealing is designed.

Why is this horrible? Especially if you are playing deity domination and need to catch up in science?
 
I don't agree that Autocracy is bad, I'm doing a Domination Assyria, and Autocracy is pretty amazing. Sure, there are some bad policies, but I think the majority are fine. Here is my opinion on them.

Good tenets:
Level 1:
- Elite Forces (25 % extra damage from wounded units): Not great, but ok for a level 1 tenet.
- Fortified Borders (+1 Happiness from defensive buildings): Not great, but ok for a level 1 tenet. Defensive buildings don't cost upkeep, so essentially you get some free happiness here.
- United Front (extra military units from CS): Very situational, but in a game with many militaristic city-states, it's ok. Good to couple with Gunboat Diplomacy.
- Mobilization: Decent, although I feel with all the production bonuses I normally don't need to rush buy units, but depending on your situation, this might not be the case.
Level 2:
- Militarism (+2 Happiness from military buildings): Amazing! Happiness galore. Spam those Barracks!
- Nationalism (-33 % unit upkeep): Great! Saves you A LOT of Gold.
- Total War (+15 % production, 15 XP): Very good. Extra production is nice, the free XP is cool. Let's your units start at level 3 with all Military buildings, which you want for the +6 Happiness.
- Lightning Warfare (+1 mov, ignore ZoC, +3 mov to generals): Looks great. Haven't reached Combustion in my game yet, so don't know for sure.
- Police State (+3 Happiness from Courthouse, build in half time): Decent. I don't use this very much, I normally just puppet. But could see this one work if you have made early war and annexed.
- Third alternative (+100 % strategic resources, +5 food, +5 science in capital): Looks situational but good, can probably save you some trouble if you find yourself running short on Aluminum, Oil or Uranium.
Level 3:
- Gunship Diplomacy (+6 influence per turn with CS you can bully): Amazing! Spam units and just part them all over the map and watch all City States become your allies. Great synergy with several other policies.
- Clauswitz Legacy (+25 % attack for 50 turns): Good. Take this if and when you're facing a tough opponent. You might not need it, but extra attack can't hurt. 50 turns is plenty of time in late game!

Bad tenets:
Level 1:
- Industrial Espionage (double tech steal rate): Horrible. Completely useless with the way tech stealing is designed.
- Universal Healthcare (+1 happiness from national wonders): Decent at best. Comes short compared to many other happiness tennets in this tree. I guess if you're really desperate for happiness?
- Futurism (+100 tourism when a GArt/GWri/GMu spawns): Hmm ... seems too little so late in the game.
Level 2:
None!
Level 3:
- Cult of Personality (+50 % tourism towards a civ who's in a joint war with you): Horrible. Just seems WAY too situational to ever be of any major importance.


Overall, I feel Autocracy is actually a very solid tree. A lot of the level 1 tenets are a bit average, though, and all the level 2 tenets are great, so there could perhaps be done some tweaking there. I feel the whole Autocracy + Diplomatic victory feels very forced and like something that's not going to work in reality.

Agreed with most except few.

Industrial espionage is useful if you are severely lagging in tech or have a runaway AI in game. Kind of situational since I am the tech leader most of the time (on King) but I won't say it is horrible.

I don't like united front. Firstly other good policies already focus on XP, XP buildings, military production etc so it is just better to produce your own units rather than a random unit from CS. Secondly the unit granted by CS has to be moved all along to the warzone where you are fighting war which will waste some time. Thirdly it only applies to one type of CS out of 5.

I haven't tried Cult of Personality but IIRC Maddjin said that it is a solid boost. Just jump in sombody's war & BOOM.
 
Industrial Espionage is actually a lot better than it sounds, due to how the mechanic is calculated in that is. Say normal espionage rate is 100% but with the -50% from Constable and Police Station you are now only at 50%, which isn't uncommon for that juicy tech capital city you are spying in, with Industrial Espionage you wont get back up to 100% but to 150% actually (it isn't multiplied by 2 but rather 100% is added), so in effect you are at 3 times the speed! Not bad, not bad at all.
 
The Domination focus is a problem
My suggestion:
Revamps
United Front: perhaps city-states give a bonus % gift influence when at war with a common foe (so it becomes a diplomacy tool)
Elite Forces- scrap and replace...(overlaps with Bushido)...perhaps a culture+ tourism bonus for capturing cities or Wonders/Great Works

That would give necessary culture/ diplo victory boosts
(Other than level 3)
 
I have found Autocracy and Order to be the two strong ones.
Have yet to play a game where Freedom seemed to be worth it.

Autocracy is still great if you play for domination - but is also effective if you're playing for cultural and you are competing with an AI for it, since you can force the "different ideology" penalty, and at the same time maybe get a boost to your army to take out some of his cultural keystones.
 
My last two games I used autocracy to win diplomatic and cultural.

besides the gunboats nothing really helps with Diplomatic, and the cultural bonusses seem to small to help. In fact the first game I tried to go cultural but ending up get gunboats and going diplo because cultural wasnt going to happen.
Autocracy however does have some great happiness bonus in Militarism and fortified borders. Late game barracks build in 1-2 turns. Tha's a steal for 2 :)
Nationalism has great synergy with the gunboats aswell, having a army worldwide around city states gets expensive.
Finally since people dont go autocracy often you're bound to get 2 bonus policies and that juicy Prora all for yourself. And Prora is a very good wonder.

All in all autocracy is good for Conquest, handy for Diplo, but not so great for cultural.
It does however gets you a lot of:) for little investement and a strong standing army wich ofc doesnt have to be used for conquest. AI's aren't as likely to attack someone with a big standing army.
 
Why is this horrible? Especially if you are playing deity domination and need to catch up in science?
Arguably, everything has to be valued in some context. I've only played King so far in BnW, used to play Emperor in GnK. My experience with tech stealing was that this feature was extremely badly designed, because after 1 or 2 techs, you'd have to wait usually 40+ times to steal a tech, and more often than not you would out-tech the target before actually reaching that limit, at which point you had wasted all your time.

Now a +100 % bonus to Tech Stealing is a fine bonus, and the tenet is fine if you play in a context where Tech Stealing makes sense. That might be the case on Diety. It's not really the case on King/Emperor, and for that reason, I find the ability quite horrible. But I think the great thing about the new tenet system is that it lets you chose which ones work for you in your given situation, and as such this tenet might be fine as it is - it'll probably not get a lot of visits from me, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be changed.

I haven't tried Cult of Personality but IIRC Maddjin said that it is a solid boost. Just jump in sombody's war & BOOM.
I might well be wrong, but the whole Autocracy + Cultural just seems a bit contrived to me. If you go heavy cultural, I would assume you'd favour Freedom. If you do a conquest cultural, it sounds more or less like a de-facto conquest. The cases where I see myself going Autocracy is when I'm the one making the wars, but I guess as time goes by we might change our views, as we get more games under the belt. And of course we also have to keep in mind the odd cases where you plan for cultural-Freedom but then gets forced into picking Autocracy in order to avoid ideological unhappiness problems. In that case, I guess you might use to simply DoW someone who's in war with a third party just to get the Tourism bonus over the third party.
 
Industrial Espionage is actually a lot better than it sounds, due to how the mechanic is calculated in that is. Say normal espionage rate is 100% but with the -50% from Constable and Police Station you are now only at 50%, which isn't uncommon for that juicy tech capital city you are spying in, with Industrial Espionage you wont get back up to 100% but to 150% actually (it isn't multiplied by 2 but rather 100% is added), so in effect you are at 3 times the speed! Not bad, not bad at all.

I can vouch for this, as every time I've picked this tenet, it takes my tech stealing speed go from 40+ turns down to 10-15. If you are not the tech leader, Industrial Espionage will put you back on the map, and you will not be the tech leader on Immortal/Deity.

Same thing with Futurism. It sounds bad, but when you're on Immortal and higher, an art+wonder rush is necessary just to keep up with the average AI, and forget wonder spamming, as even if you do spam all the wonders, your nearest neighbor will DOW you into the stone age for not having an army, and even if that doesn't happen, guess what, the AI is still somehow besting your culture. I've seriously rushed the GL on Immortal, picked Philosophy as my free tech, got the Parthenon right afterward, Oracle, then used the Liberty finisher to get a Great Artist, and my Culture was still only average compared to AIs that don't even have any great works or wonders! My tourism was only 1/3 of that of the nearest piety AI. A THIRD.

Everyone saying Autocracy is bad is looking at it the wrong way. If you are already comfortable or ahead at your chosen VC, of course Autocracy is bad and Freedom/Order are superior, they are designed to cement a lead you already have, or give you the boost you need to go from competitive to leader. At the highest two difficulties, though, the AI who is going after your chosen victory condition is ALWAYS going to be better at it than you. Brilliant plays that would put you forever ahead on Emperor will merely keep you in the game on Immortal.

Autocracy shines in come-from-behind situations, and the reason it has things like Futurism, Fortified Borders, and Industrial Espionage as starting tenets. None of them are any good if you're already sitting pretty, but they are astoundingly effective if the AI is making you sweat. Once that happens, the only cure is an invasion. To invade, you need tech; to get tech, you need spies. To prevent other AIs from making your people unhappy, you not only need culture, but Tourism. Better, you don't even need to make great works to get tourism out of Futurism, you can use the musicians to go on tour and use the writers for Political Writs and still get 50 turns' worth of a great work out of each deal. Both of these functions are ESSENTIAL if you have fallen behind in the culture game, since you'll be well past the point where idly waiting is even going to work anymore. That's the name of the game with Autocracy.

Every Autocracy game is about giving your military more leverage in everything your civ does. Even if you're not going for Domination, Autocracy is perfect for enabling your military to even the odds in your favor for any VC, and really, you can't peace-monger your way to victory on high difficulties anyway. If there's a runaway AI, it's very likely that the other AIs don't like them either. This is where Cult of Personality comes into play, since the AIs will all start coming to you with an offer of joint wars. When you get into a joint war, it legitimizes your war and makes the other AIs less likely to denounce, and best of all, it increases the tourism you put out towards them without increasing the tourism they put out towards you -- all the other output boosting factors are always mutual, and Cult of Personality is worth two of them. It's a MUCH better Culture Tier 3 than Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In this manner, you wipe out your biggest competitor while pounding your influence into the other AIs who are friendly with you. Autocracy is definitely still about using your army, but if it wasn't, it wouldn't be Autocracy.

As an aside, Universal Healthcare is a tenet shared by EVERY ideology, so it can't be knocked too much for being there. Besides, there are a LOT of national wonders now, and you will probably already have at least 80% of them by the time you even get to ideologies:

Heroic Epic
National Epic
Circus Maximus
National College
East India Company
Oxford University
Writers' Guild
Artists' Guild
Musicians' Guild
Ironworks
Hermitage
Grand Temple

So if you have them all, that's a whopping +12 happiness, and these are all buildings you want anyway. Not bad for a tier 1.
 
When people say Autocracy is weak or bad, that's more a reflection on that player than Autocracy.

Let me help you all to understand the way a lot of folks approach their evaluation of social policies, ideology tenets, civilization uniques, religious beliefs, and pretty much any other benefit in the game.

To put it succinctly:

If they don't see a bonus to :c5happy: or :c5science: or :c5production: or :c5faith: or :c5gold: or :c5culture:, then it's crap.

So, a tenet that gives +25% combat strength to wounded units? Crap.

But a tenet providing +2 :c5happy: for monuments? Wow, that's amazing!

Likewise, what civ's are the ones we hear people complaining about all the time? Germany, Japan, America. And what's the solution? Replace one of the UU's with a UB that gratns some extra clture, faith, science, and so on.
 
So I want to destroy the world. How does autocracy tier one help me?

To quote Joseph Goebels: When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.

I choose autocracy for Nationalism, Total War, Lightning War, Militarism, and Third Alternative. Notice all tier 2.

So the game basically makes me waste 1 pick on a tier 1 to then expand into tier 2, then waste a pick, then go tier 2. repeat. This is why it sucks.
 
You might've picked better examples. +2 happiness per Monument is definitely very strong; one of the weak Autocracy tenets people have been complaining about is Fortified Borders (which is also just a straight +happiness buff).
 
I might well be wrong, but the whole Autocracy + Cultural just seems a bit contrived to me. If you go heavy cultural, I would assume you'd favour Freedom. If you do a conquest cultural, it sounds more or less like a de-facto conquest. The cases where I see myself going Autocracy is when I'm the one making the wars, but I guess as time goes by we might change our views, as we get more games under the belt. And of course we also have to keep in mind the odd cases where you plan for cultural-Freedom but then gets forced into picking Autocracy in order to avoid ideological unhappiness problems. In that case, I guess you might use to simply DoW someone who's in war with a third party just to get the Tourism bonus over the third party.
There are two benefits of tourism even if you are not going for cultural.

First one is that if you are a tech leader, you can make sure that the upcoming civs would eventually choose Autocracy due to your tourism pressure => HUGE diplo bonus with those civs.

2nd reason is to annoy your opponents & give them huge unhappiness. And when they'll be leaving their previous ideology they'll waste their previous investment.

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For a tennet 1, 25% combat strength on wounded units its a good bonus, if you've got a ton of units (which are bound to get hit), you're dealing a lot of "free" damage.
 
You might've picked better examples. +2 happiness per Monument is definitely very strong; one of the weak Autocracy tenets people have been complaining about is Fortified Borders (which is also just a straight +happiness buff).

Building Mughal Forts is epic when you go for Autocracy, choose fortified borders & build that late game castle boosting wonder. :goodjob:

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For a tennet 1, 25% combat strength on wounded units its a good bonus, if you've got a ton of units (which are bound to get hit), you're dealing a lot of "free" damage.

It is much less powerful than what it sounds. In reality it is a weaker version bushido which is a meh UA since G&K.

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Isn't the idea behind Cult of Personality that Autocracy should pursue a hybrid cultural/military victory? Use military force to crush your Freedom/Order rivals' ability to resist your culture; use Cult of Personality to awe and dominate your Autocratic allies.

Yeah that's my sense of it as well. The conquest based civs like Shaka and the Romans usually end up as the runaways and tend to have a lot of culture that can make it hard to gain influential status. I haven't dabbled much in autocracy yet but it seems like the intent is for you to buddy up to those other runaway warmongers and wage wars against the others. The 50% bonus will help out a lot with those runaway civs and everyone should be so heavily weakened that they won't ever be able to get enough culture to defend against your tourism.
 
I might well be wrong, but the whole Autocracy + Cultural just seems a bit contrived to me. If you go heavy cultural, I would assume you'd favour Freedom. If you do a conquest cultural, it sounds more or less like a de-facto conquest.

Not necessarily. You might only want to use your army to eliminate your top competitors, then go Cultural/Diplo the rest of the game either because none of the other AIs are of any consequence and conquering them would take too long, or because your happiness can't handle it, or because you like them and they do good by you.

All of Autocracy's victory paths are conquest victories in disguise, sure, but what else would you expect from Autocracy? Of course all of its Culture/Diplo tenets synergize with war and having an army, that's the point of Autocracy. With how many of its level 2 tenets are purely war-based, wouldn't it be a waste if its Culture/Diplo Tenets didn't also synergize with war?

Let's actually talk about how Freedom seems kinda overpowered. It isn't even supposed to be good at war, it's for Diplo/Culture/Science, and yet it gets more direct war boosting tenets than Order, when Order is supposed to be Culture/Science/Domination. Finest Hour increases defense of cities considerably, Volunteer Army gives you 6 upkeep-free units that are weaker than average UNLESS they are outside your borders, and Arsenal of Democracy increases military production (you're "supposed" to gift these units to CS, but...). Meanwhile, Order's only military boosts are +15% attack in friendly territory (only good for defense), and a free Courthouse on city capture (useless unless you annex, which increases costs of great people and social policies). Why does Freedom get 6 free units with an attack boost, while Order doesn't even GET an attack boost? It doesn't seem fair that Freedom's military power is at least equal to Order, and yet it is WAY better at Diplo and Culture, and just as good at Science (its tenets lead to tall cities, which generate tons of science while minimizing the science penalty).

Although, I guess since Order is for Wide empires, it would make sense that Order's military boost comes from the fact that it has more cities to build things in, so I guess it would even out in the end. Still, it does kinda seem like Freedom is pretty good at all 4, since Arsenal of Democracy doesn't *have* to be used for Diplomacy at all, and it still gives a boost to military production.
 
So, a tenet that gives +25% combat strength to wounded units? Crap.

To be fair, this one actually isn't good. The reason is that it doesn't give you +25%, it mitigates the loss in combat due to damage up to 25%. If the unit is so weak that it needs the complete 25%, it probably shouldn't be fighting anyway and should heal.
 
When people say Autocracy is weak or bad, that's more a reflection on that player than Autocracy.

Let me help you all to understand the way a lot of folks approach their evaluation of social policies, ideology tenets, civilization uniques, religious beliefs, and pretty much any other benefit in the game.

To put it succinctly:

If they don't see a bonus to :c5happy: or :c5science: or :c5production: or :c5faith: or :c5gold: or :c5culture:, then it's crap.

So, a tenet that gives +25% combat strength to wounded units? Crap.

But a tenet providing +2 :c5happy: for monuments? Wow, that's amazing!

Likewise, what civ's are the ones we hear people complaining about all the time? Germany, Japan, America. And what's the solution? Replace one of the UU's with a UB that gratns some extra clture, faith, science, and so on.

America's UA is FAR from useless. In fact, I think it's the best early-game GL Rush UA on higher difficulties. Now, you think, it can't be better than Egypt, but because you have +1 sight, you can find all the ruins and CS before the AI, and because of cheap tile buying, you can buy all the forests, which makes them worth full hammers when chopped. Scout > Monument > Worker > Granary before/right around when Writing finishes, go Liberty and pop free worker, micro the city for hammers, buy all the forest tiles, and use both workers to chop them down. Tech order Pottery > Mining > Writing > Animal Husbandry > Calendar (so your free tech can be Philosophy). If you get lucky with a culture ruin, you can either pop the free worker early and start building mines, or you can get +1 hammer per city before your free worker.

Having cheap tile buying is actually very powerful if used correctly. It's not normally something people think about, but as America, it's something you can actually do a lot of. Having +1 sight is also useful for keeping tabs on neighbors, so you can see what their units are doing if you park a scout on top of a hill nearby. You'll see the backstab coming a mile away, giving you time to position your units. America's upgrades may not be direct, but they are no less effective.
 
America's UA is FAR from useless.
I agree. It's quite a good civ. But, tragically, it doesn't offer bonus yields, and is thus resigned to the "sux" bin.

To be fair, this one actually isn't good. The reason is that it doesn't give you +25%, it mitigates the loss in combat due to damage up to 25%. If the unit is so weak that it needs the complete 25%, it probably shouldn't be fighting anyway and should heal.
That's fine when you're the defender and have the luxury of swapping someone into a city garrison or pulling them into the back ranks where they can heal behind the city. However, when you're commited aggressor, however, you may well need to do-or-die (or do-and-die if need be).
 
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