Order vs Freedom for cultural victory

If you were running a 4 city tall empire and you were first to choose and ideology.

Which would you favor? Order or Freedom? For a cultural victory?

For a 4 city tall empire I would nearly always go freedom, their tourism tenet is most reliable (its always a third for every city with a radio station). For a bigger empire, I tend to go order. Their boni are potentionally almost double, but can be 0& (a third for other order civs and a third for civs unhappier than you - which can be difficult especially on higher difficulties). The preferences also hold true for a non-cultural victory (of course autocracy aint bad either) -> 3-5 cities pick liberty + order ////6+ cities pick tradition + freedom

For a Tradition tall 4 city empire that's specialist and Great Tile improvement centric I tend to prefer Freedom.
It's not so much the 4 city part though that leads to Freedom but instead the specalist & tile improvement centric part so if you've attached a wide empire to a tall core it's not unreasonable to choose Freedom.

The other thing that Order is good at is if you really, really want to self found a city that late.
(Say you don't have coal and the city states don't have it either [Venice / Austria in the game], no source nearby you can conquer either but there is an unclaimed spot with it), in this case Skyscrapers as a level 1 and resettlement as first level 2 is a must; but watch timing with National wonders.

Another advantage of Freedom Cultural is there are fewer tenets this way than Order Culture.
For Freedom Culture, a single level 3 tenet will max out your benefit.
For Order Culture, you'd really want enough tenets to have the most happiness in the game; which as above poster mentioned would require a lot on the highest difficulty levels. (This is because the AI's happiness bonus at all levels get an additional multiplier bonus when the human is playing at King and above; the higher your level the bigger the AIs bonus.)

Never picked Order before, for cultural victory. But also, never found more than 4 cities when going cultural victory. So, if you have 4 cities, pick Freedom. But, not sure about if you have more than 4 cities.

I just won a cultural game before airports with wide India. The best choice for them was order by far. The happiness benefits were massive and I ended up getting the 33% to all less happy civs for every civ in the game. Also...It was a wide game in general so other ppl were following me to order...maybe partly because my culture was so dominatn worldwide before ideolgies hit. Not many ppl chose differently than me, so I got another 33% for most everyone...then another 33% for open borders...plus 15% on all basic ones from finishing aesthetics...order resulting in at least 108% modification of my tourism on everyone but the lone autocracy guy. He happened to be a neighbor so I was dominant long before this though. Finished much quicker than freedom would've.

The only disappointment with this game was that my empire was really starting to explode in science an production...it was sad to end it so quick...I'm considering continuing to play to see just how high my science/production/military gets once the empire matures, by far my best-looking game. And since it's India with 75 happiness (and I have built only a small fraction of the happiness buildings so far) I can conceivably grow all 16 of my cities to tall status. I also got lucky enough to be able to place 5 observatory cities and 3 of them are in jungle. Only 2 of them are up to speed in population...the others are just starting to get there. Should be fun. I have a dominant religion too...maybe I should become aggressive with that...my faith is currently at about 450/turn and I have the Mosque of Jenne. Maybe I should spam the world with missionaries and start some wars...starting with the lone autocracy freak.

Off topic -I usually go autocracy when attempting a CV, you can almost always manipulate the AI into fighting and then DOWing one or the other OR BOTH to get the 75% Bonus to Tourism you don't have to worry about completing the Aesthetics Tree You can go Tradition +2 Whatever, Rationalism and then spend the rest of your points in Autocracy. Of course you have to be aggressive so it may not be everyone's cup of tea.

I would argue that though autocracy is a strong contender for CV and quite doable...there is no way it is actually easier. The 75% is nice...but you'll never get it with everyone simultaneously like the other 2 ideolgies and when you're at war all open borders/etc. get cut off to your foes so your multiplier fall to nothing with the ppl you're fighting. I guess the idea though is you cripple them so it doesn't matter. That said, I bet it is way more fun to do it that way though. The peaceful way there is a bit too much sitting around for my tastes...I typically only attempt it if I'm bored and it comes up way before the science victory.

Order is nice for that +science boost on factories. It helps you get to Internet faster and then back track to hit radar.

danaphanous said:

I would argue that though autocracy is a strong contender for CV and quite doable...there is no way it is actually easier. The 75% is nice...but you'll never get it with everyone simultaneously like the other 2 ideolgies and when you're at war all open borders/etc. get cut off to your foes so your multiplier fall to nothing with the ppl you're fighting. I guess the idea though is you cripple them so it doesn't matter. That said, I bet it is way more fun to do it that way though. The peaceful way there is a bit too much sitting around for my tastes...I typically only attempt it if I'm bored and it comes up way before the science victory.

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In most situations you only need the 75% modifier with one or two Civs and you can easily manipulate those into war with a weak Civ and then enter the fray. Plus when you are aggressive you can use your GWAM for uses other than raw culture because you'll be looting the cities you capture.

I think order could be a better bet on this one because order's iron curtain can really increase food or production that's traded between cities. Great people being born will have it easier to be born since production can increase with worker's faculty that allows for more buildings and more space for great works. Having a base with cultural buildings and wonders built can be useful.
Freedom unlocks the statue of Liberty which gives hammers per specialist, so if you take freedom to build the SoL then you switch to order before the other civilizations you could still get the 2 free social policies and take iron curtain if the other civilizations choose order. Cultural revolution could also influence the other cultural civilizations.

depends. Both can be good - order helps with science more, which speeds up victory, and also there are 2 good tourism tenets. However, you can only get the tourism benefits if you have more happiness than your opponent, or if your opponent also chooses order.

If the AI is crushing you in happiness and doesn't take order, freedom wins I think. The science from order is about equal to the tourism bonus from radio towers in freedom...but freedom's wonder is WAYYYY better so it wins the tiebreaker scenario

reddishrecue said:

I think order could be a better bet on this one because order's iron curtain can really increase food or production that's traded between cities. Great people being born will have it easier to be born since production can increase with worker's faculty that allows for more buildings and more space for great works. Having a base with cultural buildings and wonders built can be useful.
Freedom unlocks the statue of Liberty which gives hammers per specialist, so if you take freedom to build the SoL then you switch to order before the other civilizations you could still get the 2 free social policies and take iron curtain.

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You must be suffering from Ideological unhappiness to adopt a new ideology though so it might not work in most situations.

Resipsa said:

You must be suffering from Ideological unhappiness to adopt a new ideology though so it might not work in most situations.

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Yeah, well that's in case freedom fails.

reddishrecue said:

Yeah, well that's in case freedom fails.

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If you are actually under ideological pressure (other than world congress); you are probably in no position to be seeking a cultural victory anyway and should be seeking some other form of victory.

Artifex1 said:

If you were running a 4 city tall empire and you were first to choose and ideology.

Which would you favor? Order or Freedom? For a cultural victory?

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Are you using theming bonus ? On which difficult level ?

It's more my happiness that decide me to take one or another ideology in a cultural victory. On Immortal and below, I don't really care because I'm nearly always first to pick an ideology and have enough tourism per turn to have no hurt to my happiness.
On deity, it's another story. AI are more aggressive for culture and tourism. I'm more a follower on this level.

Can you tell us more about how you play ?

I adopt Order when going Tourism because it has more percentage bonuses. It helps if I have to take someone's capital just because they have too much culture for me to win before they do. Also, happiness is rarely a issue for me for some reason IDK.

jlim201 said:

Also, happiness is rarely a issue for me for some reason IDK.

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This is entirely difficulty level dependent:
If you are playing on Prince or Below : AI's happiness bonuses are roughly equalivent to human playing on Warlord

At King:
AI's happiness bonuses roughly equivalent to human playing on Settler

At Emperor:
AI's happiness bonuses slightly more than human playing on Settler

At Immortal:
AI's happiness bonuses significantly more than human playing on Settler

At Deity:
AI's population happiness bonuses is like a human on Settler playing as India. (But without India's city penalty; in fact AI gets a per city bonus happiness as well)

Well, technically with Order, you can have up to 188% bonus modifier in tourism. THen again, that pretty much only applies to the AI because of the unhealthy love for Order and unfair happiness at higher levels.