(beginner) Ideology decision?

Greetings

The weekend I watched som Civ on twitch and decided to pic it up, so it'S onyl my first match.
But I played imperialism a ton so I understand the gam concepts.

My problem is I'm first to choose the ideology and later I was alone on it and the unhappiness was to strong.
Basicly there is nothing to work lower the factor?
I replayed from savegame to that position and now my main question:
Should I just delay till strong AIs chosen their ideolgy and pick what fits me??
If so do I go with friendly AI's choice or "enemy", how important is the diplomatic effect?


If you care the match more detailed
- poland
-- is 2nd to get it and went order
-- rivals me in people and production and point leader with many early game wonders
-- is freindly, I can make him join war for some leftover goods
- greece
-- is 3rd and chooses autocraty
-- rivels me in army and rules the Congress
-- made autocraty world prefered !
-- declares war at me but should not be able to break defense
- china
-- also choosen order and influences me
-- is not strong and neutral
- Polynesia
-- chooses autocraty
-- allied with greece, but on other continent and no big danger
- 1 more chooses
- rest is weak or almost dead (as in war)

I always choose the ideology that fits me best, regardless of other factors such as the AI. I've never found it worth it except on Immortal/Deity to pick an ideology that does not suit me just to keep a nearby AI friendly. If you find yourself frequently having happiness problems, put a basic focus into tourism and culture. As long as your influence over the AI matches or exceeds their influence over you, you will suffer no penalty. Finally, make it a priority to research Radio and when the World Congress comes up, select "World Ideology". If you're the first to an ideology and no one else adopts one by the time of the vote, it will pass without issue.

zeking said:

My problem is I'm first to choose the ideology and later I was alone on it and the unhappiness was to strong.
Basicly there is nothing to work lower the factor?

Click to expand...

You can change ideologies, to the one your citizens prefer. You get an amount of tenets that can help you "catch up" to roughly where you were previously (the amount you had, minus 2). Also, your cities will produce nothing for a couple of turns.

But there are often good reasons to stay with your ideology, and there are ways to increase happiness or reduce unhappiness within each. Universal Suffrage, for example.

zeking said:

Should I just delay till strong AIs chosen their ideolgy and pick what fits me??

Click to expand...

Always try to pick it first, as you get free tenets for doing so. Changing ideologies to fit the AI, that's something you can still do later on.

zeking said:

If so do I go with friendly AI's choice or "enemy", how important is the diplomatic effect?

Click to expand...

It tends to define factions and alliances. But not necessarily, as I recently played a game where I went Freedom, but still allied with all of the Order civs, as we all had common enemies in Autocracy. However, the only other civ who went Freedom (Shoshone) became everybody's enemy, except with me.

Basically, going Freedom meant I could stay in good terms with Shoshone (a neighbour), keep fighting the Autocrats (other neighbours), and maintain an alliance with the Order guys (since we had no beef whatsoever).

At one point, I switched to Order (for several reasons), and the Shoshone immediately denounced me. Invaded me the next turn. But I think he was already planning a backstab for a while.

Also, not much point in changing to an enemy's ideology just to please them, as it won't be enough, there are other factors as to why they dislike you.

zeking said:

If you care the match more detailed
- poland
-- is 2nd to get it and went order
-- rivals me in people and production and point leader with many early game wonders
-- is freindly, I can make him join war for some leftover goods
- greece
-- is 3rd and chooses autocraty
-- rivels me in army and rules the Congress
-- made autocraty world prefered !
-- declares war at me but should not be able to break defense
- china
-- also choosen order and influences me
-- is not strong and neutral
- Polynesia
-- chooses autocraty
-- allied with greece, but on other continent and no big danger
- 1 more chooses
- rest is weak or almost dead (as in war)

Click to expand...

What kind of victory are you going for? How big is your empire, and who are you playing?

General advice: If you already have an army, you can afford to change to Order and get Patriotic War to defend from Alexander's invasion. Doing so will also solidify an alliance with Poland and maybe China.

That said, I'm not sure if Order is best for your game as I don't know the amount of cities you have, what civ you're playing, what strategy you're going for, etc. It's usually best to change ideologies if it fits your plans.

If there's already a dominant ideology go with that one (by looking at what the powers have chosen). I personally think that switching ideologies is a pain. And you pretty much have to if you aren't the dominant ideology. If there isn't one, or you're the first, go with what works for your victory goal.

Thanks for the answers so far.

JonnasN said:

What kind of victory are you going for? How big is your empire, and who are you playing?

General advice: If you already have an army, you can afford to change to Order and get Patriotic War to defend from Alexander's invasion. Doing so will also solidify an alliance with Poland and maybe China.

That said, I'm not sure if Order is best for your game as I don't know the amount of cities you have, what civ you're playing, what strategy you're going for, etc. It's usually best to change ideologies if it fits your plans.

Click to expand...

I aim for science win.
Guess that is the only (besides 2050) that is possible as my start was really bad^^
So order should work as well.
My cities are around 3x20, 1x16, 1x13, 1x8, 1x4 level (or inhabitants) if I remember correct.
Did build a lot production and science lately.
I play Germany.
Can easily outproduce Alexander to get back to biggest army but than that would slow the tech tree advancement I guess.
Also I have many rares in multiple fashion to influence the neutral or friendly powers.

Your culture seems to be pretty low if your happiness goes down so fast due to other ideologies. Try getting some culture / tourism to lessen the effect.

I always choose the ideology that fits me best. Just a rough (!) overview:

Autocracy is pretty good if you have a big army (going domination or diplomatic via Gunboats)
Order gives a lot of happy faces, a good science boost via Factories. It's somehow in the middle, neing useful for a lot of things
Freedom boosts your specialists a lot (especially helpful if you have taken Rationalism), a good amount of tourism and a very good wonder. It also has a very good lvl 3 pick for Diplomatic victories.

Personaly I always go for what benefits me best (in my own opinion, it's often the case that people on this site would disagree if the same save file when its time to choose an ideology)

But I also would have enough culture to where there will be little or no external ideology pressure on me and enough votes to block a world ideology that I wouldn't want.

My advice is to protect yourself against Ideology influence by keeping your Culture levels up. Culture is the defense against Influence and its negative effects.

rushing guilds, making early great works, grabbing eiffel, tourism theming bonuses, and buying open borders with influential AI all work to get you to at least exotic on the other AI. This should greatly reduce their influence on you as your influence level on them gets subtracted from their influence level on you. This eventually worked for me on a bad game. Obviously prioritize archaelogists even if you aren't going cultural otherwise this ideological pressure problem happens every time. then just sit a military unit on all nearby sites and take your time getting archaelogists. getting 6-8 artifacts and filling 3-4 museums with theming bonuses should help tremendously.

If you are new to civ, then you should know that there is a culture splash screen that allow tourism micromanagement. Click on the icon for tourism. A screen opens with 4 tabs showing how much tourism everyone has, whethere they are exerting pressure (unhappiness) on you. What your influence is on everyone else, a trading screen, and finally, your tourism screen showing where all your great works and artifacts are and all slots you have available. Mouse over to different buildings. Some provide tourism bonuses if you get certain collections of works/artifacts in them, often doubling your tourism overall for that building. You can complete these by trading works/artifacts with the AI in the tourism trading screen. These are called theming bonuses and can increase your tourism immediately by 1/3 sometimes. Different factors also act as multipliers on influence including shared religion, whether a trade route exists from them to you and you to them, and open borders. Also shared ideologies. All add 25% to your influence. Try to get as many of these as possible on the AI that are giving you problems. Over time your influence over them will grow and cancel theirs over you.

Having high culture also helps as defense as this is what they have to overcome with their tourism to gain influence, but I've found emphasizing culture rarely reverses a problem, it just helps to keep it from happening. Also, the AI only needs to overcome 10% of your culture to get the first influence level and generate unhappiness--usually they can do this even if you have huge culture due to multipliers, open borders, trade routes, etc. So the best way to cancel this is to get 10% influence over them by emphasizing your own tourism which cancels the effect. If you are getting a lot of culture from tiles or wonders getting the tech for hotels and airports massively buffs your tourism too and can help do this. Now, the next influence level they need to generate unhappiness again is 30% of your culture overcome, which is a far larger margin. Most non-cultural games everyone gets level 1 and cancels each other and few get level 2 unless over a very weak AI with crappy culture. You get unhappiness mainly because you have neglected your own tourism and thus are not even influence level 1 with many people. Thus every AI that reaches level 1 with you stacks on more unhappiness to your empire. This is the common way it happens and it easily fixed by doing the same to them with tourism.

I usually go Freedom.

Thanks again people.
I did load a save that is before the declaration of world prefered ideoly and switched to order.
Greece and Polynesia still get still get autocracy to be world prefered with 1 vote lead.
But now I can stand it easily.
Basicly all other nations choose order and run into negetive happiness.
Guess the AI is using a very simple decision mechanic here^^

Related to that; when I have Greece in the game do I have to kill him so he can't rule the congress that hard?

danaphanous said:

If you are new to civ, then you should know that there is a culture splash screen that allow tourism micromanagement. .... Some provide tourism bonuses if you get certain collections of works/artifacts in them, often doubling your tourism overall for that building.

Click to expand...

Yes I have to work me into that screen.
I know it's there but I ignored it mostly so far.
Especially shuffeling artwork around.
I did spread wonders and artwork over 5 cities.
With the multiplicative effects later in the game is it better to focus on having everything in Hometown?