Ideology revolt kills my game.

Won a previous King Level game(first time) and I do not remember this problem occurring. On my next King game I am struggling in an isolated position(Fractual Map). Got to modern era, around 4 civs already there. I do not quite understand how this works. You are forced to take an ideology, and no matter which one I select I go into revolt mode, lose a city and game is over.

Any way I can avoid this?

I would suggest improving your science output from the get-go. This can be done quite easily by growing your cities faster (focus on food production) and not delaying libraries/universities.

The ideological revolts are a function of Tourism and Culture. If you are in revolt it's because civs with a different ideology are producing more Tourism than you have produced of culture. So, to fix it, you need to generate a lot more culture. You may need to go to a previous save from many eras previous and start building culture buildings earlier.

Tony.Uk said:

Won a previous King Level game(first time) and I do not remember this problem occurring. On my next King game I am struggling in an isolated position(Fractual Map). Got to modern era, around 4 civs already there. I do not quite understand how this works. You are forced to take an ideology, and no matter which one I select I go into revolt mode, lose a city and game is over.

Any way I can avoid this?

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Two ways, both involving the tourism screen.

You'll be forced to adopt an ideology after reaching the modern age or building your third factory--whatever comes first. Before you do, check the tourism screen. There are two things that you're looking out for: First, which civilizations have a cultural influence over you? Second, what ideology are they following? If, say, Russia is following Order, and they are at Familiar or Influential status with you, then they could begin exerted ideological pressure on your populace if you decide to go Autocracy or Freedom. That pressure will make your citizens unhappy, which can eventually lead to revolt.

If ALL of the ideologies are making your citizens unhappy, then there are multiple rival civs that have achieved cultural influence over you, and they've also taken different ideologies, which means that there won't really be a "right" choice. At that point in the game, there may not be a way to salvage things, but to prevent cultural takeovers from happening in the first place, it might be a good idea to generate as much culture as you can to prevent being swamped in another player's tourism.

Another thing to note: if you're being so heavily influenced that you're being thrown into revolt no matter what ideology you choose, you have probably been neglecting your culture for too long. Getting an early culture/tourism foundation will allow you to both defend against and counter the influence of other ideologies once you reach industrial/modern.

If you hover over the "discontent" or "content" marker in the UI of the tourism tab, it breaks down who is exerting other ideological influences on you. Each of these marks comes from the opposing civ having more tourism influence on you than you have on them (so, if they are familiar to you, but you are only exotic to them, they will exhibit +1 marker).

Each additional marker you get layered on you (from any of the two other ideologies) adds to your "content/discontent" level. Depending on which level you're at, that gives an unhappiness modifier (in term of X and Y) to your base (which is the higher of X unhappiness per city or 1 unhappiness per Y citizens). This is your total unhappiness modifier caused by ideology. You also get two markers, going in either direction from World Ideology. Note that pressure from civs of the SAME ideology work in reverse, thus potentially blocking the effects of other ideologies.

Note that the unhappiness penalties scale up, so the difference between 5 pressures on you and 6 pressures on you could be something like 20 unhappiness, whereas going from 0 to 1 pressure would be only 6 unhappiness.

Practically speaking, you can keep in the black by either 1) stacking tourism or culture earlier, it takes a ton of tourism to go from popular to influential, but very little to go from unknown to exotic, and the effect is the same, while not granting civs of other ideologies open borders to influence you; or 2) if you are following, pick the ideology of the civ-combo that's exerting the most tourism on you and then help them get even more influential over you, by trade routes, open borders, etc.

It's very dangerous to have low culture and then pick an ideology that's not followed by tourism/influence leaders. That's why if you plan to be first to an ideology, you want to be sure to either already have influence on others (so they follow you, and even if they don't you won't have a happiness penalty), or to have a very solid cultural defense base. This means great writers are KEY for low-tourism victories, so you want to keep pumping them out at all costs (and after great working the first few, to start bulbing them for the culture, since your tourism will be too low to matter by mid-late game). Great artists' golden ages are all around useful, but you can skip great musicians since your tourism will be bad.

Hinterlander said:

I would suggest improving your science output from the get-go. This can be done quite easily by growing your cities faster (focus on food production) and not delaying libraries/universities.

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I usually do this with early NC before turn 100, then I get happiness problems which in BNW seem to be harder to get out of. Being small civ does not seem to work either, anything much below 10 cities is a struggle I find. Even so I trail badly in science. I start off with a poor map and one third desert.

Brassnbricks said:

Two ways, both involving the tourism screen.

You'll be forced to adopt an ideology after reaching the modern age or building your third factory--whatever comes first. Before you do, check the tourism screen. There are two things that you're looking out for: First, which civilizations have a cultural influence over you? Second, what ideology are they following? If, say, Russia is following Order, and they are at Familiar or Influential status with you, then they could begin exerted ideological pressure on your populace if you decide to go Autocracy or Freedom. That pressure will make your citizens unhappy, which can eventually lead to revolt.

If ALL of the ideologies are making your citizens unhappy, then there are multiple rival civs that have achieved cultural influence over you, and they've also taken different ideologies, which means that there won't really be a "right" choice. At that point in the game, there may not be a way to salvage things, but to prevent cultural takeovers from happening in the first place, it might be a good idea to generate as much culture as you can to prevent being swamped in another player's tourism.

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I focused on science first, but I wonder whether culture is stronger. Went Tradition then part of honour, then why do I need honour at all when isolated! My error!

Goldstar said:

Another thing to note: if you're being so heavily influenced that you're being thrown into revolt no matter what ideology you choose, you have probably been neglecting your culture for too long. Getting an early culture/tourism foundation will allow you to both defend against and counter the influence of other ideologies once you reach industrial/modern.

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On king the AI take most of the Wonders and they usually get GL first. I had no Wonders, and little in way of culture buildings, put science first - another mistake of mine. I think I will restart and hopefully get a better location.

Tradition? Isolated start? King? Rush to build HG and you have the game won.

Or if you on an isolated start rush colossus. Get a free trade ship and send it back to your capital for +6 food to start and even more later in the game, better than HG

livsbrand said:

Tradition? Isolated start? King? Rush to build HG and you have the game won.

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Thank you for your clarifying help - I'm sure the OP will know how to deal with Ideological pressure now.

Jokes aside, these oneliners don't exactly help many people.

Note that you should not try and up your culture through amphis and opera houses. Staffing Writer's and Artist's guilds takes priority. You don't need the culture buildings unless going for culture victory. Writers and Artists are very useful for their secondary abilities (treatise/golden age) unless going for tourism.

Gucumatz said:

Or if you on an isolated start rush colossus. Get a free trade ship and send it back to your capital for +6 food to start and even more later in the game, better than HG

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Very good point. I haven't even built the new Colossus. Haven't really been paying attention to when it usually goes on Immortal.

If you can propose WC resolutions, make your ideology to be the world ideology. Use your diplomats to buy off votes from everyone else and get enough CS allies to make sure it passes. Once it's passed, that's two extra ideological pressure points on every civ in the game. That should help you out if you're only at dissidents or early civil resistance, but probably too little, too late if you're at revolutionary wave.

I'm sorry that you're struggling with this phase of the game, but once you get a handle on it it can become one of the funnest parts of the game... imo of course.

There are two major ways to deal with ideology pressure

1.Culture/tourism.
Increasing culture will reduce outer Civ's influence on you, and tourism will raise your influence on them.

2.Voting your ideology as the world ideology.


Alternatively, you can smash the Civ that's pressuring you, and building the Great firewall kills opposing Civ's tourism bonus from the internet. And researching the internet yourself doubles your tourism, and globalization gives you a huge diplo bump.

Which means there are culture, diplo, military and science solutions to the problem.

adwcta said:

Note that pressure from civs of the SAME ideology work in reverse, thus potentially blocking the effects of other ideologies.

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Hey this is very interesting, had not heard it before. So it would be a good strategy to let other civs of the same ideology get Exotic/Familiar/more with you (thru open borders & trade), in order to counter the pressure/unhappiness of the opposing ideologies?

e.g. civ A as same ideology as you and is exerting 1 unit of pressure. Civ B has different ideology and is exerting 1 unit of pressure. They cancel out and you are Content?