Choosing an ideology

Last game i was doing very well concquering the world; got a pretty nice empire when it came to choose an ideology. Only 1 civ already had one, order. I really wanted to go autocracy, i knew i might have some civil resistance issues but since it is the ideology giving the most happiness, I thought i could counter it.

clearly it was a mistake. 50 turns later, i was able to get all the happiness tenets from autocracy.
while i was at war with the 2 major civs and having hard times keeping it going, i managed to build all the happiness buildings in all my cities, including castle/arsenal, and even military base in a few
since i had concquered most of my cities through wars, they were even enjoying +3 happiness from courthouse

still i could barely get above -10, having a few barbarians popping once in a while. i tried to continue my way to domination victory, first city i concquer i get from -10 to -30 happiness. from that point i knew it was over (desired ideology: Freedom, while i wanted a domination victory xd)


not to mention, after trying everything possible i reload an old save, do all the way back to choosing an ideology, taking order this time; 2 other civs choose autocracy right away and put me again in civil resistance. WTF seriously.

how do you guys choose your ideology? do you wait for other civs to choose one to play it safer? are you ready to take a shi*** ideology (like freedom when going domination victory) just because most of the other civs took it?

on this particular game i did not even rush ideology, i just unlocked factory and build them in all my cities.
i would have had to delay all my factories on purpose for maybe 50 turns just to be able to choose my ideology on the right time xd

1. I always want first dibs on ideology, this means 2 free tenets for any one that I choose. Most of the time if you're teching the usual ST+electricity+radio route you'd be first.

2. autocracy does provide the most happiness, but that should not be the only thing driving you to autocracy. Even freedom is good for domination if you can stomp a bunch of people with foreign legions.

3. You can look at the sources of unhappiness and try to reduce it. maybe you have too many cities and should raze some. maybe you have too many citizens. maybe it's ideological pressure, so you need to pump out tourism. etc.

Pick whichever ideology suits the victory you're going for, don't worry about what other civs are doing. The trick is not to neglect tourism which will help you defend against ideological pressure.

Also, if you found an ideology early enough and happen to have a decent amount of world congress votes you can push through a resolution to make it the World Ideology quite easily. If a civ hasn't chosen an ideology yet they won't vote on it. If you have more votes than every other civ with an ideology different than yours you can simply bulldoze it through, if you don't just send a spy as a diplomat to as many civs as possible. As soon as the diplomat is done setting up shop make a trade deal to get the civ to vote yes on your ideology. As soon as you make a deal, send the diplomat to another civ, rinse & repeat until you've secured enough votes to guarantee your ideology will pass.

Sounds to me you have other problems: lacking in luxury (poor trade due to warmongering), maybe you gave open borders to an ai with a different ideology, maybe you didn't build enough of the comon happiness buildings.

nah i be carreful to never trade open borders
i have 15 cities which is quite a lot. but after reloading and try to do it better i managed to annex all my cities/build courthouse/build almost all happiness building in all my cities before ideological pressure becomes too high
and yea i might be lacking some luxury resources, only have 12 for my 15 cities; but without ideological pressure i could be +30 happiness

but when you start having revolutionary waves you get "-12 happiness per city or -3 for each 4 citizens, whichever is greater", this is absolutly impossible to handle
even more with a wide empire, many cities still dont have 12 citizens and get -12 happiness on top of their own local unhappiness

i dont know how i could counter ennemy tourism, my power is my number of cities, not my culture
i build monument in all of them of course but thats far from being enough; as im going for warmongering and domination victory i dont build amphitheater/opera... i have plenty of others stuff way more important to build
last solution would be cultural city state but my economy is also in a critical state. im in a pangea map right in the middle of everyone, they are all looking for declaring war on me and im already having hard times bribing a few of them and managing a big army to scare the others while making war to the top civs

looking at my army, its not 6 free units from a freedom tenets that will change the course of my wars
i wanted to do this strategy where i enter modern era with like 20 cities ready to pump units permanently, actually the only tenets from freedom that i would be looking for is +15% prod to units (but the autocracy one gives you +25% and +15xp to all units, twice better xd)
also happiness tenets are quite important to keep all my cities below their local happiness cap; however the freedom happiness tenets are on buildings that i'll never build! like hospital/medical labs. or -50% happiness on specialist, in my big and wide empire im only working the minimum specialists slots

anyway i replayed it a few times and it seems going for autocracy is absolutly impossible, order seems to be the second choice but even then AI starts choosing other ideology and put me in difficulties (not as much but still, i have to stop my wars and focus on balancing my empire)
thats why i was wondering if best choice would be waiting for AI to choose their ideology and follow
i would be annoyed to have to pick freedom

Well yes, you kept too many cities. 15 cities with 12 luxuries sounds to me you kept some cities which should have been razed due to their poor location.

Ignoring culture is a bad way to play unless it's a Pangea where you can win by turn 200 or faster with just your land army. On Continents or anything similar ignoring culutre means there'll be a Siam breathing down your neck and cranking up that ideological pressure.

Also, try looting great works. See who the biggest offender is for culture, get a fleet and grab his capitol etc.

Why not sell cities you are not going to keep? Why wait 10 or more turns for them to raze? Just select raze and sell it in the same turn to a civ that does not have it's original capital (preferably he lost it to another AI so you can maybe become friends)

You have to compete in culture and tourism or they will grind you into the dirt.
In my current game i was behind on almost everything but managed to get FReedmo first. Civs with high tourism chose mostly Order, and my happiness went from 60 to 10. All the negative pressure disappeared when my tourism went up by 2 ( with a great work and an archeology site).

I like Order the most. It seems to give the best benefits. I will go for freedom if I want a bunch of foreign legions but order is usually the way to go because of the massive hammer benefit from mines and science benefit from factories.

If you are having trouble with ideology pressures giving you unhappiness then you need to get your culture up or select your ideology as the world ideology in world congress.

I did get Freedom passed as world ideology, but that was not enough.

If you are playing domination you only need enough cities to keep producing military units and to keep up on science (this is usually your early cities). Raze cities that don't provide any long term benefit. Obviously you need to keep AI capitals and these usually have access to all the luxuries in that geographical area. Other cities you capture that don't have any unique luxuries and no decent infrastructure you should just destroy - The mechanics of Civ 5 don't really reward you for having excess cities.

If your ideology is unpopular you may not be producing enough culture. Culture isn't that essential if you're going to do an early-mid game conqest aka Huns or Mongols but if you are still conquering in the late game you will need to ensure you are producing culture from the early game. I would suggest you make sure every city has a monument, you not delay your writer/artist guilds too long, try and get a religion for some culture beliefs.
If you have enough productivity you can win the World Fair and that will also help.

As far as Wonders go the Sistine Chapel boosts culture in cities by 25% and it can certainly help protect your ideology. Notre Dam is another option but it tends to be more popular with the AI than Sistine Chapel but both of these Wonders you can capture to gain their benefit.

For a domination win you should have the Liberty tree, Patronage opener can be good if you can secure the Forbidden Palace (very underrated for Domination Victory - it gives you tonnes of happiness & a bit more control over the WC).
Commerce has a very strong finisher which increases your happiness from luxuries but it does take a lot of policies to get to.

You should try and get access to religious buildings like pagoda's and beliefs like religious centre.

It brings a tear to my eye to see that Civ V has induced Stockholm Syndrome in players to such a degree that they will unabashedly tell people to have as few cities as possible.

This used to be a game about building empires.

Chicoutimi, some of my own observations would be as follows:

1) Saying you don't want to build culture buildings because you're going for domination and have more important stuff to build is kind of like saying it's not important to build any military when you're going for a culture victory. Spending resources on defensive measures is inconvenient, but necessary. Since you don't have them, you're just going to wind up having to build zoos and stadiums.

2) If you're not pumping culture at all (and not building even amphitheaters late in the game would qualify), then you gotta keep on eye on who's dominant in culture, and you may indeed be better off seeing what they go with.

3) Alternatively, just run in and invade them. AI civ's pumping tourism tend to be small for whatever reason (probably a legacy of how culture victories used to work).

4) Rather than go after culture CS's at this point, you might be better off going after the mercantile ones. Pumping culture post-industrial isn't going to help. You're too far in the hole by then.

5) Sounds like order was almost certainly a better fit for you.

6) Also sounds like you might have been overly aggressive about annexing cities.

7) When I'm ignoring culture, I usually compensate with stuff like pantheon and follower beliefs in my religion, or going into Honor and getting +2 culture for the simple act of garrisoning units (oh, and some happiness to boot).

8) Avoid aqueducts in wide empires. I often delete them in cities I annex.

steveg700 said:

8) Avoid aqueducts in wide empires. I often delete them in cities I annex.

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Can you explain this?

He's suggesting that you don't want all your cities to be high population, something you have to pay attention to anyway, unless you're India, and especially if you go wide.

When I go wide, it tends to occur from conquest, and I tend to puppet the good cities, raze the rest. I don't usually have the choice whether or not puppets have/build aqueducts, so I just replace most of the farms with trading posts to stifle their growth. I find puppets to be a good source of revenue, a good supplement to the fatted lamb of trade routes.

Chicoutimi said:

after trying everything possible i reload an old save, do all the way back to choosing an ideology, taking order this time; 2 other civs choose autocracy right away and put me again in civil resistance. WTF seriously.

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The AI civs have ideology preferences, but it's not a strong preferences. They value free tenants more than any one ideology. If free tenants are not available, they are more likely to pick what is popular than their predefined prefernce. So the behavior you observe is to be expected.

Chicoutimi said:

as im going for warmongering and domination victory i dont build amphitheater/opera... i have plenty of others stuff way more important to build

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All the NW are great, and the Hermitage is no exception. So opera houses should be high priority until you get that done. Being able to fight is important to all victory conditions. Science is important to all victory conditions. Culture is important to all victory conditions.

thats why i was wondering if best choice would be waiting for AI to choose their ideology and follow

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I cannot say it better than steveg:

steveg700 said:

If you're not pumping culture at all (and not building even amphitheaters late in the game would qualify), then you gotta keep on eye on who's dominant in culture, and you may indeed be better off seeing what they go with.

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Chicoutimi said:

i would be annoyed to have to pick freedom

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Freedom has a little bit of everything, including warmongering. In addtion to the Foreign Legion troops, there is a policy that buffs military production.