Tear Down this Wall! - How?

In case you haven't seen it, this is for the BNW Steam Achievement: "Tear Down this Wall!" which requires you to "Force an AI player with the Order Ideology to switch to Freedom."

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I've spent a couple of days now trying to get this achievement, and it's driving me crazy! Here's how it generally goes:

1. Game starts. Kick butt and generate tourism!
2. Upon entering the modern era, pick the freedom ideology and if you're lucky one of the enemy civs will pick the order ideology.
3. Culturally dominate the civ with the order ideology.
4. The enemy civ will get a lot of unhappiness upon reaching the "Revolutionary Wave" state of public opinion (based on pressure from freedom).
5. Barbarian uprisings will begin spawning near one of the enemy civ's cities.
6. The city will revolt and become yours.
7. Because the enemy civ's public opinion happiness modifier is based on population, less unhappiness will be generated from ideological pressure.
8. The enemy civ's unhappiness will climb back up above -20 and will no longer be eligible for revolt.
9. Gift the city back to the enemy civ, causing them to become unhappy again.
10. Repeat flip-flopping, but they'll never actually change ideologies.

Another thing I've tried:

1. Build a dozen really terrible cities (on tundra or desert).
2. Gift them to the sucker civilization in an attempt to generate unhappiness.
3. Watch the enemy civilization burn them all to the ground in order to break even.
4. Accomplish nothing.

In my most recent attempt, I managed to do this instead:

1. Conquer all but two remaining civs (one of which has chosen the order ideology).
2. Take the capital of the order civ and leave it with one crappy city. Leave the capital of the other civ as their last city.
3. Buff up the capital of the order civ by annexing it, burning down surrounding cities for space, expanding its borders, building farms, and feeding it food from caravans.
4. Ban all luxury goods via world congress.
5. Make peace with the order civ, and give them back their capital.
6. Conquer the other civ (they don't need to hold their capital any more to prevent a domination win because the order civ now has their capital back).
7. Watch the order civ self-destruct from unhappiness generated by extremely large population in the capital.
8. The order civ will wimp out and you'll get their former last city from revolt (if you didn't already conquer it after giving them back their capital).
9. If you're lucky, there will still be enough unhappiness generated in their buffed up capital to maintain -20 total happiness or lower (and they can't give it away).
10. The capital of the order civ will sit there indefinitely generating hordes of barbarians.
11. The enemy civ still won't switch ideologies, even after 100 turns or so.
12. Eventually the barbarians will pillage the farms, or the civ will do stupid things like building trading posts, and their capital population will dwindle. They'll also get all the happiness policies after a while and bring themselves back up above -20 unhappiness despite your best efforts.
13. Get super frustrated and make a post about it.

Here's a screenshot of my latest attempt (started in information era on quick to speed things up):


So what now? How am I supposed to make this happen? Has anybody else done it? What'd you do?

Argh!
-xwn

Update: I see on Steam that 0.2% of players have earned this achievement, which must mean it's possible, but how!? Has anybody seen an AI civ switch ideologies at all?

It takes a while. I had three of the Zulu's cities flip to me before they finally had the sense to switch ideologies, and give me my birthright/first-city-founding-right, my achievement. Just be patient and it will happen eventually.

@OP: I believe, also, that some Civs are much more likely to 'cave' under the pressure and switch quickly, and others will tough it out with their chosen Ideology.

I did this one a couple of days ago.

Try to vote through a world ideology (freedom) in the world congress to generate more pressure. Also try to be patient though because it can take a while (around 100 turns for me on epic) before they finally flip. Finally you need to have a decent tourism generation. Having trade, open borders and a diplomat in their capital helps as well (could be wrong here though).

If everything fails I can provide you with a save to get it done the wrong way

good luck

In my attempt for a culture win (my second game) the world congress was the kicker to make them switch. I had gained cities from the people following Order and they were still unhappy. Once the World Ideology became Freedom two people flipped to freedom within 5 turns for me. So it does happen and I did get the achievement for it.

I agree that some civs are more likely to cave.

I got the achievement 2 games ago and I wasn't doing a particularly strong culture freedom game. Myself and another small civ were freedom while Siam ( the huge warmonger of the game who conquered 3 civs) went with Autocracy. Morocco went with Order. Siam was doing fine with Autocracy and was also a cultural powerhouse, causing dissent in all other civs. However I forced World Ideology through for freedom and then they fell apart. Siam converted to freedom as soon as their happiness went below -20, first turn. Now with all of the freedom pressure Morocco was starting to feel it.

I was getting annoyed because Siam switched but it was Morocco that I wanted to switch. Then I realized that I was trading Morocco quite a bit of resources....

I declared war on Morocco, their happiness went down to -30 something instantly and they switched the very next turn.

On the other hand, I had the Zulu in my game and as soon as they adopted Autocracy they were in resistance at -38 happiness. They never switched. Eventually they lost a city to me and somehow got their unhappiness under control and went back to a reasonable number. They never switched.

TLDR: I think it depends on the civ how likely they are to switch. I'm not sure which factor influences it, but it may be boldness or victory competitiveness.

Revolutionary Wave alone doesn't seem to do anything. You actually must also get their actual happiness (I don't get why the -20 unhappiness from the revolutionary wave has absolutely nothing to do with the real happiness - the latter actually must go down to -20 as well and you most likely will only achieve this if you a) do not take all their cities and b) do take all their luxuries through either pillaging, buying off their CS and putting an embargo on them.

Getting more culture/tourism does nothing at the point they went into revolutionary wave does nothing... you'd think after a while it gets worse for them but if you do not find ways to reduce their happiness they'll never flip, not even after 100 turns with -20 revolutionary wave.

In my achievement savegame I didn't manage to flip Rome at all. It took to long and even with Embargo etc he was still at (-20 revolutionary) but +40 real happiness. Taking cities didn't change that - that probably only helps he has cities with a local happiness deficit and you happen to take the others (Monarchy SP for e.g. seems to be a problem here too). In that save it actually was Germany that eventually flipped (they jumped in with Order very late) even though I was trying to do it to Rome so badly.

So in short: If your empire doesn't get unhappy (due to overgrowth or loss of luxuries you'll probably not lose cities from flipping. With the right tenets, religion and having build most happiness buildings it might be kinda easy to hold out forever in revolutionary wave.

My latest attempt:



From what Talcove said earlier about them losing three cities to revolts before flipping I decided to let the AI expand significantly so they'd have a wide empire with lots of cities and population to make them super angry. I picked a huge map with only 4 AI's, one of which ended up picking order. I got off to a quick cultural lead (victory type disabled), and slowly but surely they expanded (despite constant barbarian uprisings). Frustratingly, they never dipped below -20 happiness, as the expansion was controlled and staggered. At the end, I gave Maria all of my cities to induce a rebellion (as seen in the screenshot). Over the next 100 turns all of these cities revolted back to me and I started off where I began: No closer to getting this darn achievement!

Based on what clint0601, Yzman, and FeiLing stated, I now believe there needs to be a sudden spike of internal unhappiness to make this happen instead of the early leads I'm getting through culture. Perhaps playing all the way through from the ancient era and hoping there's an order civ (ugh), then getting into the cultural pressure later on would be preferable to starting off in the lead position as I am. I could also play more with giving the AI lots of luxuries and then taking them all away at once. I'm also thinking of trying some combination of "no city razing" and "one city challenge" to prevent the AI from burning down cities or losing them to revolts. Any idea if gifting cities back resets the ideology switching process? Also, what difficulty are you guys playing at?

All in all it feels like I'm playing a different game, or you guys are right about certain AI's being stupidly stubborn about their ideologies. I've probably sunk 30-40 hours into this stupid achievement now with nothing to show for it! How does it even tell you when an AI switches ideologies? Is there triumphant music? Do angels cry out from the heavens? Is there a glorious pop-up congratulating you on your monumental accomplishment? I'm so tired of clicking through boring notifications about world congress proposals while waiting indefinitely for it to happen.

Ankh, thanks for the offer. I'm very very tempted to take you up on it, but I've gotten the 262 achievements I have for Civ V without "cheating" like that, and I don't want to start now! ;P

Next up, playing with Germany, Siam, and Morocco to try and replicate your guys' results. Wish me luck!

So, I was screwing around toward the end of an Immortal game where I was guaranteed victory.

Here's how you get this achievement easily (and only sort of cheesy, since I do this normally to incite wars anyway):

1) Vote in your ideology. I had no allies that exerted influence on anyone, this was the only thing I had going for me ideology-wise.

2) Do NOT do international games. +6 happiness for everyone? no thanks.

3) Play a good culture game, as in, don't give open borders to anyone.

4) Go wide, have a good number of cities.

5) Find a Order civ currently struggling with happiness (usually one engaged in a war, who tried to go a bit too wide). Single digit happiness or unhappiness will be sufficient.

6) Gift them all your cities besides your core 3-4. Let's be honest, you don't need those extra cities to win. They will accept, and temporarily go into HUGE unhappiness (like -40) for a couple of turns while they try to raze everything you just gave them. Hiawatha has switched to the Freedom ideology!

I got the achievement by using the World Congress. I proposed freedom as the world ideology. It passed on the next round of voting. One AI civ, the only one that had adopted order, protested at first but after several turns switched from order to freedom.

I was able to do this on my first BNW game.

1. Get the UN to make Freedom the world ideology.

2. Push hard towards the new cultural victory.

I achieved it about 10 turns before winning by culture.
(If Babylon had chosen Order rather than Autocracy, I'd have achieved it much, much earlier in the game as the Babylonian people rose up against their Autocracy for my freedom only a few turns after their leader had selected it.)

Try getting tourism but not an early ideology

I've had an order civ switch to freedom twice on me as soon as I got my foreign legions and invaded their sorry commie butts. They immediately beg for peace as soon as they switch. I made them pay the iron price.

I got this achievement by complete accident. It seems that having Freedom as the World ideology helps a lot with pressuring.

If you're mainly trying to get the achievement (and am not trying to "win" or are willing to reload), you should do the following:

- Get World Ideology: Freedom passed

- Trade for every single one of the Order civ's luxuries. (You may need to give him obscene amounts of GPT to do this). Also, trade away all of your available luxuries since you aren't able to trade for something you already have.

- Take away all of the Order civ's city state allies.

- Pay the Order civ to DoW every other civ (may need obscene amounts of GPT to do this). This means no trading luxuries for him. Some civs are less likely to do this. But generally since the Order civ was one of the first to choose an Ideology, they are likely in a strong position and willing to DoW.

All of this is intended to sabotage the Order civ's happiness. If a city revolts, you can give it back. (Or annex it, sell the happiness buildings and wreck the luxury improvements, and then give it back).

Good luck! It's hard but doable to get the achievement!

Hey, I just managed this without actively trying for it, if that means anything.

I mean, I'm going for a culture victory, but, well anyway...

Playing as Portugal, with Austria, Greece, Brazil, England, Denmark, Korea and Egypt as the others around.

Built the forbidden palace and founded the World Congress, because Portugal is amazing. Spammed three factories as soon as I nabbed industrialization to grab the first ideology, which naturally was Freedom for me.

Shortly thereafter, I proposed "World Ideology: Freedom" because it pissed off nobody and I thought it'd be funny to push through when I was the only one with an ideology at all.

During the deliberation period, Austria and Greece (the other two superpowers) reached their ideologies. Austria chose Order. Greece chose Freedom.

And then everybody else chose Freedom.

The resolution passed easily, and while I was the only civ with any real influence on Austria, their happiness went straight to the crapper. As soon as my tourism reached "popular" they flipped to join the rest of the world, and I got the achievement.

King game, standard, tectonics, if you're wondering.

Some civs seem to be willing to switch really early, while others will stick it out no matter what. I've seen the zulus be in a revolutionary wave with something like -1200 gold, a city revolted to me, and something like -100 happiness, but they will go autocracy all the way, and never switch to anything else (surprisingly enough they were my only real friend this game, apparently I was allied with a madman in charge of the empire, which was a good thing too, because I did not want to face them in a war). I've also seen Morocco switch one turn after I got order to be the official world ideology.

Playing as France, I managed to get the Zulu to switch to Freedom from Order. I was aiming for a culture win and was on a different continent. I had DoFs with both Zulu and Brazil for a long time. Poland, Russia and the Huns were the civs that were not popular amongst our clique. I got ideologies first, went Freedom. Brazil followed suit. Zulu had gone Order and once they started buying my blue jeans they had some serious happiness issues. they had a large empire as they had pretty much wiped out Poland. Since their only 2 allies, myself and Brazil, were Freedom followers, they had to join us.
And they did.

Just play this game by Cultural Victory as it is supposed to be, you will surely get this one one day.

Pythakoreas said:

Just play this game by Cultural Victory as it is supposed to be, you will surely get this one one day.

Click to expand...

True that. I've been mostly doing Freedom, going for cult victories and earlier today China crumbled under the pressure and switched. So yeah, I would say just keep playing cultural games, it's bound to happen some day