"Tear Down This Wall!"?

snigaru

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 27, 2014
Messages
16
Location
Coral Gables, FL
How do I get this achievement?
I must have tried 25 or 30 games to force an Order AI to switch to Freedom, but with no luck.
I've set up the games on any of the difficulties settler-prince (theoretically, it shouldn't matter), I've tried duel me and them, and huge 12 or 18 players. I've started between the ancient era and the industrial era (starting modern, every AI civ just follows me choosing Freedom).
Each game, I dominate them with tourism, have the max trade routes with them, use the world congress to make Freedom the world ideology, embargo city states (so they have to use their trade routes to connect to me or other freedom civs), and ban any luxuries the Ordered civ has access to. I make sure every other civilization except them is Freedom (usually by simply wiping out the autocratic and other ordered civs). Sometimes I'll go as far as taking all but one or two of their cities, or gifting them crap cities in the arctic. Each game, the target Ordered civ has a max -20 happiness from the influence of Freedom, however, the lowest I've ever gotten their overall happiness is -5, not close to the point at which the would switch. (I was playing a game in which there were 9 Freedom AIs, Ordered Byzantium, a handful of CS (all allied to me), and the conditions set above. They were completely alienated from every other civ (they were non-stop at war with at least four at a time).
Has anyone had success flipping a civ's ideology?
Thanks.
 
Happens to me all the time (on emperor) and I cant say I do much differently then you described. I rarely embargo city states but if I can I make sure Freedom (my usual ideology) is passed as the world congress I do it. What is your happiness? I dont know if it matters but I usually have very few cities and really high happiness. Could perhaps make a difference.
 
Ouch, that is 3 times as much as my happiness usually is.

Strange, you should have forced several civs to flip sides by now.
 
It typically is easier if you get a large warmonger civ to overextend themselves on a continents map. Their base happiness will be low already and as soon as you pressure them they will start flipping cities and eventually switch ideologies.
 
I (accidentally) managed to flip a civ last night.

It was Shaka and I flipped him from Autocracy to Order. I was deliberately playing a culture-heavy game since I've noticed I'm culture-light in my standard play. I was playing on Prince for the practice.

You seem to be doing most of the things I would recommend, but a couple of observations.

(1) Trade routes don't stack - once you have one you have one. Sending more is wasted.

(2) I think taking cities from the target civ is probably hindering you. I'd be more inclined to go in a pillage his luxuries then get out. Or, perhaps, not even go to war at all. Wide civs have happiness problems, not tall ones! You get a tourism bonus for open borders...

(3) Just checking, you're doing all the theming bonuses properly on your great works?
 
Just had a third thought..

Are you playing your civ optimally?

To flip a civ you want to maximise your ideological pressure on them and minimise their pressure on you. I'm fairly sure your happiness doesn't come into it.

Ideological pressure is based on your Tourism compared to their Culture. It is also expressed net of their ideological pressure on you (i.e. their tourism vs your culture). So minimise their tourism (hard to do) and maximise your culture (easy to do).

If you have 150 happiness I think you must be deliberately playing a small civ (perhaps even one city?). That's not the optimal way to do this. You are not trying to get happiness, you are trying to maximise tourism and culture.

You'd do better playing a four-city Tradition and going for culture rather than happiness. The extra cities mean you can spread your guilds a little and run more specialist artists. Arts Funding helps with this too since you'll end up with more great works.

The perfect target civ is (as mentioned above) a slightly over-stretched warmonger. Shaka was my unintentional victim and he had taken a few cities from other players.



Edit: And you're using Diplomats for the boost from them too?
 
When I've played games with this achievement as the sole intention from the start, I typically set the difficulty to settler (just to make it a very quick game). I've tried playing as France for the double theming bonus in the capital, and grabbed up every wonder out there (except the kremlin of course). I make sure all of the wonders are themed properly (from this table: http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Theming_bonus_(Civ5)), and I always make sure to grab up the entire aestetics policy tree. I typically have 3 cities, and yes, I do follow the tradition track after aesthetics.
Thanks for the trade route tip. Generally I do keep peace and open borders, I just experimented with pillaging then capturing, then returning once or twice.
Would you suggest I go wider, having more cities on a larger map? Do you think a late-era start may be hindering me?
In the 8:17 post, did you mean "So minimise their culture (hard to do) and maximise your Tourism (easy to do)."?
 
I typically have 3 cities, and yes, I do follow the tradition track after aesthetics.

OK - I think this may be part of the problem. 3 cities isn't too bad, but 4 is probably better. And Aesthetics should be the second set of policies selected, not the first. You need to have a lot of people (Tradition) before they start being all cultured (Aesthetics).

Tradition first will get you more culture in the end thanks to the larger number of people.


When I've played games with this achievement as the sole intention from the start, I typically set the difficulty to settler (just to make it a very quick game).

Quick games won't necessarily help either. I'm not sure about the Ideology flip, but I do know the city flip mechanism has a random element. So you need more turns to give the randomness time to work. The late era start probably is hindering a little. If you do this properly you'll be collecting tourism from much earlier than your start point. The cumulative impact of that small early tourism can be quite important.

In the 8:17 post, did you mean "So minimise their culture (hard to do) and maximise your Tourism (easy to do)."?

No I did not.

Well, I did, but I wanted to highlight that you need BOTH. Your ideological pressure is Your pressure on them MINUS their pressure on you. If you don't have strong culture and you are succumbing to their pressure too then you won't get anywhere.

To maximise your pressure on them, maximise your Tourism (easy) and minimise their culture (hard - unless you take their capital...)

To minimise their pressure on you maximise your Culture (easy) and minimise their tourism (hard - once again, unless you take the capital).


I'm not sure, but I suspect the perfect target civ may be a wideish warmonger with an exposed capital. Let the target get big - then take their capital ONLY. Coastal might be easiest.... That will leave them with happiness problems, greatly diminished culture and tourism. Only problem is that you may find they won't give you open borders anymore... So perhaps build up a decent bit of tourism them take the capital once you are already at 60%-80% influential.

I'd go with a four-city Tradition then Aesthetics and I would play on a slightly harder difficulty level. You might find its actually quicker because the
target civ will get to ideology faster.
 
Sounds good! I'm setting up a game now with the following settings to try and get this achievement one last time. France, Ancient, Prince, Lakes, Large, Quick, 5 Billion Years (for more food and more people), strategic resource balance. The other players will all be super agro- Ashurbanipal, Askia, Attila, Bismark, Genghis, Montezuma, Odo Nabunaga, Shaka, Suleiman.
Hopefully, this will lead to a game-long world war that will leave one or more of the ordered civs overextended and ready to flip.
Wish me luck!
 
Good luck!

I might be tempted to drop in one or two other culture heavy civs, if only to make sure you don't win a cultural victory too early!! Perhaps disabling the Cultural Victory might be worth it...
 
disable culture victory.

put in a lot of order flavoured civs (more possible flip targets), you probably need to start early so they dont all follow you into Freedom, so probably prince difficulty so they dont lag too far in science, just what ever you can to kill their happiness and gpt (buy it all, ban luxuries)
 
I should have checked back one last time before starting the game. It's mid-late Renaissance, and I'm already well on the way to a culture victory. I have all but a handful of wonders in my capital at this point, and those built by others are not crucial to a cultural victory (Statue of Zeus, Great Wall, Petra, Terracotta Army, Angkor Wat, Machu Picchu, Himeji Castle, Great Lighthouse, Colossus) Note that the last two are nearly worthless on this small lakes style map. My capital dropped in a spot with 4 coppers and 2 stones within 2 tiles, a marble 4 tiles away, on a small lake. It already has 20+ population. I picked up the "Earth Mother" pantheon within the first 50 turns, turning all of those coppers to faith, and got my religion up and running early. It's now influential in about 1/3 of the world, Genghis' religion controls one more city than mine. My other cities are gold factories, allowing me to purchase buildings in my capital while it focuses its production on wonders. I'm currently neck and neck for score with Bismarck and Genghis Khan (Although the three of us are all great friends), however Shaka has already eliminated a civ and a half on this large map. If he continues conquering in the same direction, I'm next. I have my defensive army waiting at a few choke points, so I'm not too worried.
 
I've played many BNW games and haven't witnessed this happen at all. Does the other civ have to be in a revolutionary wave for the flip to occur? I'm thinking about setting up a game in the Information Era, settle a bunch of cities, and gift them to an AI so they swim in unhappiness. I can't figure out any other way to accomplish it. :/


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Does the influence of two civs with the same ideology combine to affect a third civ? When you mouse over the tooltip in the influence culture screen (the one that lists how much unhappiness is being generated for everyone), it shows icons for each of the three ideologies (or possibly fewer, if they aren't influenced by one or more of them). Does this imply that the total influence for an ideology is what counts?

In that case, it might help to add some civs that are more likely to choose Freedom (are there any?) so that you'll have some backup.
 
From my past experience, the biggest obstacle getting them to flip is that the max unhappiness generated by ideology is 20, so when their base happiness is just a few positive, they don't feel the need to flip.
 
The maximum unhappiness from ideology is more than -20...

(And yes Dachannien it does stack, so multiple people can be influencing you at once.)

How many little torch symbols do you see? I think I had 5 in total over Shaka last game, four from me, one from the Americans. He had -37 happiness from ideology (again from memory).
 
The maximum unhappiness from ideology is more than -20...

Indeed, I once saw an AI at -32 ideological happiness. It didn't stay there long as it lost two cities in city revolts in rapid succession.
 
I finally did it! I won a cultural victory in 1898 (big surprise), but stuck around until 1983 for the flip. The zulus, which had conquered maybe 1/3 of the world at this point, chose Order, and flipped to Freedom THE FOLLOWING TURN. I was pleasantly surprised. Rates and Jon, yes, I was wrong about the max 20 unhappiness. I did see higher values in this game.
 
Wow - one turn? Congratulations!

Though you must have been nearing Dominant Culture on nearly every Civ by that point?
 
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