Public opinion

Can someone explain this to me like I am five? I read quite few different articles and still don't get it. Some say it's tourism vs tourism, the civ with bigger tourism output influences the civ with lesser tourism output, if their ideologies differ. Others say culture output (or maybe accumulated amount?) is important too. Or is it civ1 tourism minus civ2 culture vs civ2 tourism minus civ1 culture?

I also do not understand where the huge swings come from, one turn I have something like 12 unhappiness due to public opinion, and the next turn it's suddenly 24. It happens the other way too, I once dropped from like 18 unhappiness to mere 3 in one turn. Why? No idea. One of the civs declared on me that same turn, can dow help with public opinion somehow?

Last but not least, some practical questions. How are you supposed to pick ideology if you happen to be the first or the second one to have that opportunity? How do you guestimate what ideologies AIs are going to choose? It seems to me guessing wrong can lead to a disaster. Also, when you are already at a disaster with -36, is there a way to fix it? I was trying closing all borders, improving my tourism and culture as much as I can, didn't seem to help. Probably it was too little too late

If i understand this correctly (and that remains to be seen as only recently have i managed to deal with this properly), you get influenced depending on the difference of level knowledge from your culture agains another civ.

Levels are :
Unknown (Tourism < 10% Culture)
Exotic (Tourism &#8805; 10% Culture)
Familiar (Tourism &#8805; 30% Culture)
Popular (Tourism &#8805; 60% Culture)
Influential (Tourism &#8805; 100% Culture)
Dominant (Tourism &#8805; 200% Culture)


So, say all tourism of all civs makes it that everyone's culture is "unknown" to any other civ. Then, no one will suffer any impact from ideologies.

Now, if one civilization that has a different ideology than yours has its culture being "exotic" with you (so his overall tourism reached 10% of your overall culture), and your culture is still "unknown" to that civilization. Then you'll get 1 level of influence on your civilization which is symbolized by an icon from the ideology (hammer\sword\torch thingies) when you put your mouse over the public opinion status in the tourism\culture overall screen.

If it's two civilization from the same ideology that are exotic when you're still unknow to both of them. You get 2 levels of influence.

Then depending on how much level of influence you're under from the different ideologies different than yours, you suffer penalties as follow :

Dissidents - 1 Level Influence difference total. Suffer Unhappiness equal to the greater of 1 per City or 1 per 10 Population.

Civil Resistance - 3 Levels Influence difference total. Suffer Unhappiness equal to the greater of 2 per City or 1 per 5 Population.

Revolutionary Wave - 5+ Levels influence difference total. Suffer Unhappiness equal to the greater of 4 per city or 1 per 3 Population.

So it's all about the difference in levels of consideration of your culture\tourism in AIs civs vs level of consideration of AIs culture in yours.
World ideology from the world congress seems to act as a "free virtual level" of culture popularity for all civs with that ideology. So an unknow culture with World Ideology will act as an exotic one. An exotic one as a familiar.etc..


I take all this mostly from my most recent games. And i think they make a good example. Especially the one i did with Arabia on DCL 24. Here's how it went as an example

I had produced enough tourism to be exotic with 6 of eight AIs. 3 had took order with only germany being exotic over me being unknown to them. France took autocracy and was exotic over me being unknown to them.

So i'm at : 1 Level of influence from Order (germany) and 1 from Autocracy (France) = 2 levels of influence from other Ideologies = Dissidents

I picked liberty and suffered 2 level 1 penalty which made happiness an issue but still allowing me to keep it over 7/8. I immediatly started to switch my tourism toward France and Germany (trade routes, paying 4/5 GPT to buy their open borders, even used a diplomat with France as i was buying votes for World Religion).

I managed to get exotic with germany quite fast (wasnt far from the 10% mark) which made all unhappiness from order go away. (as all order AIs were exotic to me or lower and none were more than exotic to me)

So i'm at : Level 1 of influence from Autocracy (France) = Still dissidents

Then, World Religion passed, with World Ideology for Order as well. The blow was brutal (got a 2 "hammer" symbol in the unhappiness culture screen from order) as germany and the other AI (america i think) that were exotic to me started acting like they were familiar. So 2 level 1 penalty make it a lvl 2 penalty. I'm at -4 happinness from something like 10/15.

I'm at : 2 levels of influence from Order (germany + america) and 1 level of influence from Autocracy (France) = 3 levels of influence = civil resistance

I instantly decided to abrogate World ideology for Order (cost me a LOT of money and hate) and decided to focus my tourism even more on France (as trying to reach familiar toward germany and america would took too long). I bulbed 2 musicians in France borders, and world ideology boosted my cap tourism output. I managed to reach exotic toward him and took off the level 1 penalty from autocracy.

I'm at : 2 levels of influence from Order (germany + america) = back to dissidents

Finally, i managed to get the abrogation of World Ideology for Order. Which made all penalty disappeared as America and Germany culture got back to act as exotic only.

I'm at : 0 level of influence from other civ = satisfied = No penaly at all.



EDIT : as people mentionned in the next posts. The level of influence from civs who share the same ideology as you will act as a defense.

Example :

You : Order \ Unknown culture to all civs
America : Order \ Familiar culture toward you.
Egypt : Liberty \ Exotic culture toward you
Mongols : Liberty (lol) \ Exotic culture toward you
Siam : Autocracy (lol again) \ Exotic culture toward you
Poland : Autocracy \ unknown toward you (lol, but that happens right)

So, with that setup, you have 3 negative level of influence from Liberty (2) and Autocracy (1).
=> That should put you in "civil resistance" status

But, America is familiar with you, so that equals to 2 level of influence "against" you. But in a positive way as it is the same ideology you picked.
=> That negates 2 of the other ideologies level of influences. So you're left with just one negative level of influence

Poland is unknow toward you, and you toward them so that does nothing.

Bottom line: you only have 1 level of negative influence left. So you're "just" in Dissidents status.

I hope that helped, and i hope people will correct parts where i'm wrong (there must be some no doubt). And if you want more information, check out that video :

pGalu said:

Marbozir has what in my opinion is a very clear explanation here.

Click to expand...

^^ Correct i think but that's not all... If there are other civs that have the same ideology you have, they protect you to some extent from unhappiness. But the formula for that is non intuitive and hard to remember, i have looked it up a few times but i always forget.

IIRC In some cases it's better to have less influence because you're only protected by your ideology buddy if your buddy has more influence over you than you over him.

Yeah I'm a bit hazy over the details of this too but I think your pretty spot on.

As Dirk notes that other civs of your ideology help protect your public opinion. You get give this a boost by giving that civ open borders to you and sending them a trade route. This will help to get a civ more tourism over you if you want to try to offset the harm that someone elses ideology tourism is doing to you.

Marbozir has what in my opinion is a very clear explanation here.

Civs that have the same ideology as you, will also influence you the same way civs with other ideologies do. This acts as defense and reduces the level of influence for other ideologies.
And I think that the World Ideology just adds a flat +2 (hammer\sword\torch) for all civs, instead of making the civs that follow that ideology act as having a higher tourism level.

Hmmm, yeah completely forgot to mention that aspect.

So i guess a level of influence from a civ sharing your ideology will negate one level of influence from a different ideology ? I'll add an example.

Edited my post and added "friendly ideology" part and marbozir's vid

CornPlanter said:

I also do not understand where the huge swings come from, one turn I have something like 12 unhappiness due to public opinion, and the next turn it's suddenly 24. It happens the other way too, I once dropped from like 18 unhappiness to mere 3 in one turn. Why? No idea.

Click to expand...

I am very grateful to cazaderonus for his explanation -- since the swings are so dramatic that I had assumed that there was random aspect to things. It sure plays out that way, as up to now I have just focused on happiness and waiting things out. So long as I am not loosing cities, I try to hold out for a while.

One thing mentioned elsewhere is that getting exotic (from tourism) is easier than buffing your culture enough to make a level difference.

Last but not least, some practical questions. How are you supposed to pick ideology if you happen to be the first or the second one to have that opportunity? How do you guestimate what ideologies AIs are going to choose? It seems to me guessing wrong can lead to a disaster.

Click to expand...

Here is what I do: Pick Order, as the generally AIs prefer it (but they like free tenets more). Then I get the 2nd level tenet for double-speed factories and build them ASAP. Simultaneously, I beeline Railroad and build Kremlin. Once I have Kremlin and the factories, I don&#8217;t mind switching Ideologies. And if I get to stay in Order, that is good too. Really, Order is my third choice, so this feels like win/win.

Also, when you are already at a disaster with -36, is there a way to fix it? I was trying closing all borders, improving my tourism and culture as much as I can, didn't seem to help. Probably it was too little too late.

Click to expand...

The only thing you can quickly is sell a city -- and I have done that -- but not with a city I founded. Sell it not for the highest price, but to civ that you think will raze it because they are also having happiness problems.

pGalu said:

Marbozir has what in my opinion is a very clear explanation here.

Click to expand...

Quoted for emphasis. That video convinced me to use writers and artists for works rather than bulbing most of the time regardless of victory intent.

Dushku said:

Quoted for emphasis. That video convinced me to use writers and artists for works rather than bulbing most of the time regardless of victory intent.

Click to expand...

That's probably a smart idea. Especially early writers are probably better used to create great works, since their treatises aren't worth a lot and may not be well timed if you're waiting for rationalism, and oxford gives a theming bonus for great works of writing - and of course early tourism is accumulated over time. Not sure about artists, although I guess small empires will build hermitage anyway, so having three works of art by that time might be a good idea. Since early great works > late great works (due to accumulation), while late 'bombs' > early bombs, probably making great works from all early great people is a good heuristic. It's a shame (but probably intended) that it's difficult to get slots and especially theming bonus for the mostly useless great musician (if you're not going for CV)

Then again, 5 great works plus 5 theming = 15 tourism, but is that enough to get 10% with the culture player? If a modern big culture civ has 20k culture (ex from the video), that requires 2k/15 = 133 turns, so you probably need more that 5 great works. Open borders and trading will help, of course, but will also help the other guy get influential with you.

Does anybody know how exactly "friendly pressure" (ie from same ideology) works? Does it help reduce pressure, or only if they're the most influential (ie preferred ideology)?

Thank you guys a lot for your explanations and links, sorry I couldn't reply sooner