Let's Talk Ideologies

beetle said:

I agree that Ideologies are a compelling and well-balanced part of the game. At Deity, my play is too weak to win with anything but full Tradition plus full Rationalism. But I have used all three Ideologies to good effect -- including SV with Autocracy and diplo with Order. I actually think Freedom is the most balanced, but also the weakest. Yes, slightly less happiness, and most of the Level 1 tenants are weak. Freedom has three decent tenants for war mongering, just nothing courthouse-wise.

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maybe try tradition + aesthetics, you can pick up secularism, but I don't think other things are that critical towards CV. freedom isn't weak imo, even in the early tenets.
avant garde is equal to hero of the people, and food from specialists is around +5 food for each city. The main thing I think is great about freedom is that you can pick tenets that synergize with SoL so well.

Sessy said:

avant garde is equal to hero of the people

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Yes, that is one decent pick, but it is only at parity. Don't all three Ideologies have the +25% GP (under different names)?

and food from specialists is around +5 food for each city.

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That is the one and only Level 1 tenant that is above average. All the others (4 or 5?) are below average IMHO. It doesn't really make up.

The main thing I think is great about freedom is that you can pick tenets that synergize with SoL so well.

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That is true, but even then SoL is still not as nice as Prora. (But it beats Kremlin for sure.)

beetle said:

Yes, that is one decent pick, but it is only at parity. Don't all three Ideologies have the +25% GP (under different names)?



That is the one and only Level 1 tenant that is above average. All the others (4 or 5?) are below average IMHO. It doesn't really make up.



That is true, but even then SoL is still not as nice as Prora. (But it beats Kremlin for sure.)

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1. only order and freedom have the 25% GP boost
2. if you compare with order, the only level one tenet that I think is better than the food from specialists is socialist realism (+2 happiness from monuments). I don't see how the other tenets are better than the other tenets of freedom. the best thing in order is in the level 2 factory science, its level 1 tenets aren't spectacular.
3. Prora gives around 10 happiness in total, assuming you have 16 policies. In comparison SoL can give +10 production in capital and around +5 production elsewhere. It depends on what exactly you're looking for, hard to justify it being much better than SoL.

I like order for the troll tourism tenets: get to dictatorship of the proletariat, get happy, push everyone else into revolutionary wave, then wait for everyone to switch to order to trigger cultural revolution. it's so fun to screw with the AI.

I usually choose Order myself as I'm usually unsure whether I only play games with space, culture, and domination victory, and Order helps with all of those, unlike the others. But that's just because I think diplo and time victories are awful and stupid.

Sessy said:

if you compare with order, the only level one tenet that I think is better than the food from specialists is socialist realism (+2 happiness from monuments). I don't see how the other tenets are better than the other tenets of freedom. the best thing in order is in the level 2 factory science, its level 1 tenets aren't spectacular.

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That one Level 1 Freedom tenant is very good, the 25% GP is okay, and the rest I don’t value at all.

This contrasts to Order and Autocracy where I like the Level 1 all so much that I find it hard to figure out which one to skip (since you cannot get them all).

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Ideology_(Civ5)

The 2 happiness add up per city and besides they get built up quicker too. If you have a lot of cities, these monuments eventually add up because your cultural level can be a lot more when you get more cities with cultural buildings such as amphitheaters and museums or world wonders even.

My $0.02
The best Order policies are certainly the Factory bonus and the Five year plan (extra hammers from cities & mines/quarries)

Honestly I think they messed up a bit with placing the policies in Order.
You don't need 3 happiness policies in the first Tier. Resettlement and Party Leadership should be placed in the 1st tier with Double Agents/Skyscrapers and Young Pioneers moved to the 2nd Tier...

Freedom is a bit more flexible but is harder to take full advantage of - ideally you need large cities to get good use of the specialist bonuses and the happiness policies are harder to get full use of - i.e. Banks, Stock Exchanges, Hospitals and Medical Labs are unlikely to be priorities for all your cities unless you are well and truly on top of your game and watermills & Mints are not always that readily available.
But the real advantage with Universal Suffrage and this possibly makes it the best policy in the game - is that you have so much control over your level of happiness. For instance if you find yourself under intense ideological pressure and your happiness is negative you can simply move population to become specialists until you fix your happiness issues.

Freedom is also essential if you play Venice - the benefit to Great People, Landmarks & GP Improvements and Trade Routes and Specialists are essential.
Also because Venice can only puppet other cities you have no control over what they do. Essentially your puppet cities will prefer to work Trading Posts and Specialists which means you will have difficulty growing your puppet cities. Civil Society and Universal Suffrage are perfect here.

Anyone who hates freedom is a god damn commie scum.

Moderator Action: Please make your point without name calling those who don't like one of the tenets in the game.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

When I used to choose order, I remember that I used to choose worker's faculty which increased the production in cities by increasing factory building and taking the science increase that came from the factories since factories increase science by 25%. Iron curtain was also a third tier ideology that I used to find useful. Unlike the third tier ideologies in autocracy that are almost useless except for elite forces, iron curtain increases food and production from internal trade routes. Not only that but you also get a free courthouse in puppets. This I had found useful because courthouses usually took long to build and mixed up with socialist realm, your new annexed cities would get +6 food per turn.