Tear Down this Wall! - How?

I managed to get this as Shoshone in my 2nd BNW game on King difficulty. You need strong diplomatic links and then pass world ideology: freedom.

This is getting just plain stupid:



The AI NEVER switches no matter what I try! I've probably spent over 100 hours on this achievement now with nothing to show for it. It seems like every single leader is content to just let his/her people sit at absurdly negative happiness forever... I've done nearly everything there is to do in this expansion, but I have yet to see any ideology flip... Ever.

Over 100 hours... Wow, consider playing this game as it is supposed to be, I've already seen Autocracy civs switching to Freedom under my Tourism influence, and one case of Order switching to my favorite ideology. Yes, I have the achievement.

I've never seen it happen in the course of regular gameplay either, hence all of my attempts at creating games where it's more likely to happen. The only thing I haven't tried yet is sucking on purpose. Perhaps if I allow myself to get beaten to all the wonders and not culturally influence the other players until the end of the game it will work out better?

I have a theory and this was discussed before in this thread. Certain civs are less likely to change. Like I said in my post, Zulu were not at all likely it seemed to switch, no matter how unhappy they were. Siam and Morocco on the other hand, switched the same turn they went negative.

Why do you have 4 Germanys against you? Germany may be one of the civs that doesn't like to switch. You should be using a wide variety of civs, not multiples of the same one. Just playing a heavy freedom culture game normally and not trying to do weird setups will net you the achievement eventually. I also find those numbers in unhappiness you have as crazy...can't even imagine how that came to pass, but that's neither here nor there.

Maybe you need more civs in your game.

maybe the Ai knows you're trying to get the achievement and refuses to switch just to beat you xD

They might be drowning in rebels and misery of unhappiness but they perverse because they get to see you be miserable after all, misery loves company.

Try playing a bigger game with different civs.

I'm sorry but that latest screenshot is really funny to see XD

I also feel it is because you are milking the current game. It seems apparent from the screenshot that the game is already over so the AI probably has no incentive anymore to switch. No one can win anymore. Try doing a new game and getting it before the game is long over and use all different civs, not all the same opponent.

Yzman said:

I also feel it is because you are milking the current game. It seems apparent from the screenshot that the game is already over so the AI probably has no incentive anymore to switch. No one can win anymore. Try doing a new game and getting it before the game is long over and use all different civs, not all the same opponent.

Click to expand...

Domination victory condition was set, but I digress... Today's efforts were in a completely vanilla game. I didn't even go to the advanced options screen:

• Civilization: Shoshone
• Difficulty: Prince
• Map: Continents
• Size: Huge
• Pace: Quick
• Custom Settings: None

Cultural victory screenshot:


I played a very slow and normal culture game without any wars. I stuck to my starting city and let the AI do their thing until the late game. I finally started influencing them around the time they started picking ideologies. Only 2 picked order (this is why I prefer starting in information era since you don't have to play through the entire game to find out): Montezuma and Wu Zetian. One of Montezuma's cities flipped and I gave it back so he'd stay unhappy. Wu Zetian was fine on unhappiness despite the effects of "Revolutionary Wave". Eventually Monty got his unhappiness stable around -15. I was going to try banning luxaries through world congress next to knock him back down below -20, but by then I'd influenced the last civ and won.

I guess I could go do all that again and hope it ends in an ideology switch, but I have a strong suspicion all I'm ever going to see are more cities flipping... It's always just the cities flipping... Switching isn't even a thing. This is all a conspiracy!

Welp, dunno.
I had a cultural game on king the other day where I pretty much got most of the slot wonders and got an ideology in the early 19th century way before the other civs. Skip ahead to the early 20th century and good old Hiathawa with his half a continent worth of cities switches from order to freedom and now makes an average of negative 1000 gold per turn.

But generally, I don't think the first ideology adopters are going to switch ideologies. The AI can be pretty stubborn, depending on how many tenants they adopted.

get a game with civs that usually go for order: Germany often goes order. The world ideology freedom helped me convert them to freedom from order. Got the achievement.

I find it really strange that people are finding this a problem. In my last game, I had Shaka switch ideologies FOUR times. First from order, to autocracy, to freedom, and back to order! Korea and Shoshone both switched to order too. Of course, it was from freedom/autocracy to order, so maybe it's harder to switch to freedom. I'm also playing on Immortal difficulty, if that makes a difference.

Also, there was one really weird thing with the Zulus, he actually switched to autocracy when he was content, he just was a city spamming monster and had about -50 happiness. Once that put him at -100 happiness and his cities started flipping, he switched to freedom thanks to the dominant Dutch culture until my tourism over took that and he switched back to order.

What pace are you guys playing your games at?

I suspect the quick pace may be what's hurting me since the AIs don't have time to grow their empires. From your stories it always seems to be the large/runaway empires that switch.

I finally got it!



Settings used:

• Civilization: Russia
• Difficulty: Immortal
• Map: Continents
• Size: Huge
• Pace: Standard
• Custom Settings: None

Played a 4 city liberty start. Rolled over Askia early on which pissed off Washington, Sejong, and Harald. They all declared on me at once and I fought a big long war which ended in me taking all of their wonders around the start of the industrial era. I picked freedom and transitioned into a culture game from there. Dido was the only remaining threat with an extremely sprawled out autocracy puppet empire of her own. Montezuma was the first to pick Order, and only AI to have a city flip from unhappiness. Darius and Napoleon picked order later on. Everybody held on pretty well until the 1900s when I got my internet technology, national visitor center wonder, and the 20 turn boost from international games. After buying out all the city-states and getting world ideology: freedom passed (not easy), I finally started to see the AI hit some negative unhappiness numbers... But it wasn't enough, since they cheat like crazy on higher difficulties.

After getting the cultural win without anybody switching (*sigh*), I went ahead and gave all of my cities to Napoleon which drove his happiness down to -38. To my surprise, he switched on the next turn!

With Montezuma not switching despite losing Texcoco, from my experience in previous games, and as others have mentioned, I believe the moral of the story is that the first civs to pick an ideology are stupidly stubborn and will not switch no matter what. As was seen here, the third civ to pick the ideology ended up being the one that finally caved in.

lol congrats nthexwn good to see your long journey finally ended xD

I had Rome flip to it with only one of his cities flipping to me (Madrid- he had taken it from Spain). Automatically every other player bar one denounced me. It was sort of fun. That left Rome with only about 30 cities to my six.

I got this by total accident when doing a freedom diplo run with Venice. It's sad that I don't even remember much about that game. It was easy and painfully boring. Rome was the one who gave it to me.

Just got this achievement. My freedom Poland just forced Indonesia to switch from Order to Freedom! Pretty nice!

Well I tried and tried to get this but wasn't having any luck. I started in the ancient era playing Japan on a standard size map and cultural victory turned off. Eventually, two civs chose Order, Brazil who I was friends with and Spain who basically hated me. I decided to go after Spain. First I passed world ideology to Freedom then I captured their capital and all but 1 of their cities (around 7 or 8). Eventually Spain sued for peace and I accepted. I waited for the cities to go out of revolt which was about 10 turns then gave them all back which was suggested in a previous post. It didn't work.

So I decided to controll every city except for 1 from each civ and tried to culturally pressure them into switching. I left Brazil alone since they were my friend the entire game even though they chose order. It's now 1746 and I own 100 cities. My happiness is 390. I'm pumping out nearly 3000 culture per turn. No cities are in revolt or unhappy. Every other civ has adopted my religion. Still Spain won't flip. So I thought well I read it can take a long time, sometimes 100 turns so I bore myself to death until 1846 and still no flip from Spain. Curiously though even with a happiness of 390 and 3 of the 5 remaining civs following Freedom, my people were unhappy with my ideology and wanted me to change it.

Since Spain only had 1 city left with a population of 12 I thought maybe if I gave them 4 larger cities with a population of 20 or more that would work. I sold off the courthouses and traded them back. It didn't work but what I did notice was that they set every city I gave them to raze except for 1 which by dumb luck on my part happened to be a captured city state. Then it hit me, they couldn't raze a city state.

What I did next was sell every courthouse I had in captured city states (2) and previous capitols from other civs (4) and gave them to Spain. They had no way to minimize unhappiness. Bingo, the very next turn they flipped to Freedom.

Culturally dominating Spain had absolutely no effect on forcing them to change ideology. The only way to make them flip was to force a huge spike in unhappiness that they couldn't minimize. Its been mentioned before that unhappiness spikes will case them to flip but to do that you have to be very specific in limiting their ability to minimize unhappiness and giving them cities they can't raze is the key.

Each civilization has a preferred ideology set by the AI, and you can look these up on the Civ wiki.

The reason why everyone is having an easy time getting Morocco to switch is because Morocco prefers Freedom by default, but for tactical reasons picked Order when it reached the Modern Age. Morocco needs only a slight push to switch to Freedom, such as the World Ideology.

Other nations that prefer Freedom: America, Venice, the Netherlands, Ethiopia, Polynesia, Portugal (there are something like 11 in total). Try playing against mosly these nations and target the ones that pick Order for tactical reasons despite their natural inclinations.