Ideologies are good for 3/4 Victory Types

AriochIV said:

The Order and Autocracy combos seem backwards. Nazi Germany had gangbuster science but wasn't known for its diplomacy. Soviet Russia, space race notwithstanding (which was their Germans vs. our Germans) was technologically quite backward, but was all about playing diplomatic games in the international community.

Click to expand...

I think everybody can think of reasons why the "missing" victory condition could apply to that ideology.

Nazi Germany used threat of force to encourage a broad coalition to invade the Soviet Union - Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, etc. all fought with the Nazis inside Russia. I think that's what Gunboat Diplomacy is essentially representing and why Autocracy has some advantages for diplomacy.

That being said, COMINTERN and United Front are both good ideas for diplomatic advantages for Order. Maybe someone will come up with a mod that gives all of them advantages for each condition. It'll be more boring but feel more realistic, I suppose.

FWIW, although they call it a Science victory, it is essentially a Space Race victory, so I wouldn't say "space race notwithstanding."

Remember, the Nazis had Wernher Von Braun, the father of rocket science, working on terror weapons. The US put him to work on the space race. That's why Autocracy doesn't focus on science. They don't have the science end-game on their to-do list.

I guess the reason not all ideologies serve all victories is more gameplay in nature, not wanting to overstuff the tenet trees and not finding suitable effects for all three ideologies. Take Diplo Victory and possible effects:

1) more votes from city states
2) better resistance against coups
3) better influence through investment x (i.e. or military units next door)
4) double quest rewards
5) indirectly: better yields given by city states
6) ?

Not sure the best way is too divide those up on 3 trees or just concentrate them a bit in 2 trees. For example, Order can still have the #5 that doesn't help towards Diplo victory, but does help you get more out of city states. Just as Freedom does have a tenet that helps you militarily as well.

So, it's really pointless to argue about what deserves and what doesn't, it was a gameplay decision

wigwam said:

"Autocracy," or fascism, or Nazism, is a reactionary, backward-thinking, myth-obsessed, thoroughly anti-scientific ideology. This is one thing Firaxis definitely got right.

Click to expand...

I very much agree with your points: talking about the pure ideologies of the states, rather than perhaps how history panned out, I'd say the way Firaxis have it fits.

Tsar NicholasII said:

The Soviets were known worldwide for their hard sciences. They managed to dramatically increase Russia's literacy rate.

Click to expand...

The Soviets frequently trumpeted their statistically superior school and hospital systems, but those schools don't seem to have generated much innovation -- after the early post-war heyday, nearly every Soviet technology was copied wholesale from the West.

wigwam said:

That is absolute nonsense. In 1917, Russia was a feudal backwater stuck in the 17th century in Western European terms (as in not just pre-industrial but pre-Enlightenment); thirty years later they had nuclear weapons and ten years after that, they put the first artificial satellite and then the first man in space.

Click to expand...

And yet, Soviet Russia did not develop those nuclear weapons; the techology was stolen from the United States. It's certainly true that in the early postwar period when the West was resting from the war and making babies, the Soviets were pouring resources into R&D, and shocked the West with MiG-15's and Sputniks. But once the West was Red Scared out of complacency, they did the same and left the communists in the dust. After that point the Soviets did a lot more stealing and copying than they did innovating.

I'm speaking in broad generalizations, of course. But distilling history into game terms does require some abstraction.

GoodSarmatian said:

Well, Germany was already a scientific powerhouse before those guys took over, The Nazis were very much into technology, but their ideology wasn't really conducive to science.

Click to expand...

Granted as true for the first part, but I'm not sure the Soviet system was any more conducive to innovation than the Fascist system. No kind of totalitarian system is ideal for innovation, but at least under Fascism, entrepreneurs could profit from their inventions.

Cotton said:

As far as why a hypothetical "Autocracy" empire can't win a science victory but can win a culture victory, I've got nothing, except that the culture VC is the most changed of the two changed VCs, so Firaxis had an incentive to give it to everybody so players could try it out more.

Click to expand...

I think it boils down to "Order gets Science because of the Soviet space program, so what's left for Autocracy? Uh, Diplomatic, I guess."

I still think the focus should have been 3 ways for Diplomatic but ah well...........

I want to go for a wide cultural civilization so I'm happy they gave cultural tenets to order.

Eagle Pursuit said:

Remember, the Nazis had Otto Von Braun, the father of rocket science, working on terror weapons. The US put him to work on the space race. That's why Autocracy doesn't focus on science. They don't have the science end-game on their to-do list.

Click to expand...

Otto Braun != Wernher von Braun

AriochIV said:

The Soviets frequently trumpeted their statistically superior school and hospital systems, but those schools don't seem to have generated much innovation -- after the early post-war heyday, nearly every Soviet technology was copied wholesale from the West.

Click to expand...

This discussion is irrelevant if they just get an advantage building spaceship parts, which is what the science victory (i.e., the space race victory) is all about.

I think it boils down to "Order gets Science because of the Soviet space program, so what's left for Autocracy? Uh, Diplomatic, I guess."

Click to expand...

See my argument above or look at Operation Barbarossa. They aren't getting diplomatic victory through superior diplomacy, they get diplomatic victory through scaring City-States into submission. Sweden is another on the list of places that cooperated with Nazi Germany out of self-interest.

AriochIV said:

Otto Braun != Wernher von Braun

Click to expand...

Oops. Wrong von Braun.