How does Public Opinion Influence Work for Ideologies?

Trying to figure out how this is calculated.

This has been plaguing in my science victory attempts -- once tourism becomes available, suddenly competing ideologies press down immense unhappniess because of "public opinion." (I ignore Great Artists in the early eras, which looks to be no longer viable -- are they on the same GP cd as Great Scientists?)

The culture overview pages says:

"If the Influence Pressure for other Ideologies exceeds the pressure for the current ideology, Public Opinion will drift away from Content and create Unhappiness."

How is this Public Opinion calculation done?

Here's a bunch of screenshots from the end of my most recent game that show what I don't understand -- why am I being influenced?

Some screenshots of the Culture from the end of the game (ended up winning Diplo when I was trying to get Science):

Culture Overview - You can see I'm in Revolutionary Wave

Hovering over Revolutionary Wave - And it shows everyone influencing me.

India
The Maya
Poland
The Ottomans


Except for the Ottomans, I have more Culture/Turn than they have Tourism/Turn. And also more Culture in total as defensive bulwark than they have Tourism in total. Thus my confusion.

Did someone pass a competing ideology as the world's ideology in the World Congress?

Yes you can see it in the screenshot. World Congress passed World Ideology AUTOCRACY. That is 20 Unhappiness right there for Public Opinion. Also they generating stronger Tourism than you.
Your 'Polish' culture is Exotic to their Civilization... while their Culture is Familiar to your Polish Population.

Ottoman are generating +348 Tourism...

EDIT: it doesn't work how many Tourism per turn vs Culture per Turn.

From what I can see in the screenshots, some else passed World Ideology: Autocracy in the World Congress. This causes there to be two additional "units" of pressure to be placed on every civ for Autocracy. Further, your influence (i.e., your tourism) is much lower than that of the Autocracy civ, so you get an additional unit of pressure on your civ. Additionally, the other civs are producing one unit of pressure each for Order. This does not contribute towards your civ picking Autocracy, but it does cause your civ to become even more unstable. In total, you have 5 units of pressure (the "max") causing instability (i.e., Revolutionary Wave). Since three of those five units are for Autocracy, your civ wants to switch to that.

Regular culture only protects against a cultural victory. It does nothing against the influences of Ideologies.

Autocracy is passed as world ideology, and thats huge. (In my game, I passed my freedom as world ideology and I saw revolutionary wave while my influence was only exotic.)
Also ottomans has familiar level on your culture, this affects too.

Thank you Ogrelord, that provided enlightenment. Difference in influence is what's going on here.

Let's see if we can reverse-engineer the math and build out a theory. I'll need to do some more testing or poke around in the XML files (if they're available).

The Public Opinion Ladder

Looks like there are 4? 5? stages of Public Opinion, i.e. the Public Opinion Ladder:

• Content, which has no effect
• Dissents, which is ceiling(1 per city, 1 per ? pop)
• Civil Resistance, which is ceiling(2 per city, 1 per ? pop)
• ?, which is ceiling (3 per city, 1 per ? pop) (Not sure this level exists)
• Revolutionary Wave, which is ceiling(4 per city, 1 per 3 pop)

Ideology Influence Tokens

Next, consider "Ideology Influence Tokens" -- this is what shows as hammers or swords in this screenshot.

You see I have 5 Ideology Influence Tokens -- 2 from the World Ideology and 1 each from the Ottomans, India, and the Mayan. Since three of the five tokens are Autocracy, that is the favored Ideology.

If each Ideology Influence Token sends me down a rung of the Public Opinion Ladder, then 5 will put me in Revolutionary Wave, at the very bottom.

India and Maya, in contrast, are only influenced by 2 Ideology Influence Tokens -- those from the World Ideology. That knocks them down 2 steps on the Public Opinion Ladder, which puts them in Civil Resistance.

Where do Ideology Influence Tokens come from?

Apart from the two that come from "World Ideology," I'd reckon that they come from the difference in levels of influence. Let's see if this checks out.

The Influence Ladder

First, what I mean by levels of influence:

• Exotic (at least 10% Tourism to Culture)
• Familiar (at least 30% Tourism to Culture)
• Popular (at least 60% Tourism to Culture)
• Influential (at least 100% Tourism to Culture)
• Dominant (at least 200% Tourism to Culture)

This also forms a ladder. Tokens come from the differences on the ladder.

Let's see if this checks out.

India is Familiar to Poland and Maya, but only Exotic to Ottomans.
Maya is Familiar to India and Poland, but only Exotic to Ottomans.
Poland is Exotic to everyone.
Ottomans are Familiar to everyone.

Let's look at the differentials:

India is one step ahead of Poland on the ladder (Familiar v. Exotic). So we'd expect one Ideology Influence Token from India to Poland. We see that. Same deal with Maya and Ottomans. Poland receives an Ideology Influence Token from each.

Ottomans should be exerting one Ideology Influence of Token on everyone -- so India, Maya, and Poland should each get one. Poland does, so that makes sense, but India and Maya don't -- they only show as getting tokens from the World Ideology.

Not sure why the token is showing for Poland but not for India/Ottomans.

I think this theory is essentially correct, but we need more testing to pin down the specifics.

..

To summarize:

If you are Exotic on them and they are Familiar on you, they will exert a unit of Ideology Pressure on you. This will put you down a step on the Public Opinion ladder (Content, Dissents, Civil Disobedience, Revolutionary Wave).

Solution: Increase your tourism and your culture (most importantly your tourism, as you need to close the gap and ascend to their level -- it'll get worse if they're stronger). Culture alone won't protect you as it is a comparison of the relative strength of (your tourism vs. their culture) vs. (their culture vs. your tourism) in a stepwise ladder.

The UI for this could be a lot better because right now it obfuscates what's going on and hides the important parts in tooltips (the hammer or sword icons).

Ya on immortal level I got -11 as soon as I entered freedom, but I grabbed literally every wonder after that. After universal sufferage it went down to like -34 at its worst, but was was almost completely gone by the time I reached the CN tower and I had like 50 happiness for the remainder of the game, my population growth couldn't keep up : D

alcaras said:

Trying to figure out how this is calculated.

This has been plaguing in my science victory attempts -- once tourism becomes available, suddenly competing ideologies press down immense unhappniess because of "public opinion." (I ignore Great Artists in the early eras, which looks to be no longer viable -- are they on the same GP cd as Great Scientists?)

Click to expand...

You really shouldn't, and no they are not. Culture is your defense against Tourism, neglecting that leaves you open to other ideologies. And IIRC, all the Great Persons are on their own timers.

BluegrassGeek said:

And IIRC, all the Great Persons are on their own timers.

Click to expand...

They're not. Great Writer, Artist, Musician each have their own "timer" - spawning a Great Writer only increases the cost of future Great Writers etc. Great Engineers, Merchants and Scientists are on the same "timer", spawning one increases the price of all three. The cost only increases when earning the GP by gaining enough great people points though.

VainoValkea said:

They're not. Great Writer, Artist, Musician each have their own "timer" - spawning a Great Writer only increases the cost of future Great Writers etc. Great Engineers, Merchants and Scientists are on the same "timer", spawning one increases the price of all three. The cost only increases when earning the GP by gaining enough great people points though.

Click to expand...

Ah, gotcha. So "art" GPs are on a separate timer from "science" GPs.

Yeah, and each artist type is on its own timer. So the only GPs that increase each others' spawn costs are Merchants, Scientists and Engineers.