Culture runaway picked Autocracy again...

Playing a game as Babylon (Deity level), and I'm running into a problem that keeps happening to me over and over. Of course, there is a Wonder-mongering culture runaway (Pachuti) on the other continent that is pushing 60 base Tourism at around T180. Despite Monasteries in every city with about 8-9 Wine/Incense spread around the map, my lax culture production is about 70 per turn. I'm fully prepared to switch to the AI's ideaology when they get there, but I also am not delaying Factories to wait for them (mistake?), and so I've got first pick worldwide. I take Order as part of my standard Domination/Spaceship backup plan, and the first 2 free tenets I pick Socialist Realism (2 happy per monument) and Young Pioneers (1 Happy per Workshop/Factory).

Turns roll by, and Pachuti picks up Autocracy. I expected that, if anything, he would've picked Freedom. But now he's influential with me, I'm getting something like 30 unhappy from him, I'm at -14 total due to a couple captured cities and having luxury trades cut off, and so I contemplate flipping. Problem is, I'm counting 4 Happy in each of 7 cities due to my Order tenets. Autocracy is offering me one level 1 tenet for switching, and the only Happiness tenets available is Universal Healthcare, worth 4-5 to me right now. If I don't switch I'm hosed, but if I do switch I'm still hosed because Autocracy is such a terrible Ideology for Happy. At least Freedom would've eventually given me Urbanization and Universal Suffrage.

I guess I will just switch and hope I can build Prora? Why is Autocracy so bad?

Autocracy is GREAT for happy.

... you are screwed (overexpansion without enough culture and tourism'll do that to you)
but contrary to popular belief, Autocracy by far has the biggest happiest bonuses (I find that it is very hard to put AIs who pick autocracy into the red); however, you're going to be building barracks, armories, military academies and defensive buildings for happiness instead.

For the time being, I suggest selling your conquered cities for luxes... then you can switch your ideology.

Autocracy is nice for certain game plans, like instant domination with bomber-buying or the like.

Regarding your current game situation: How is your own tourism in comparison to the Inca?
If you have a chance of gaining one step i would stay with order and try to compensate until then, for example by selling a city.

Actually Autocracy may have the most happiness of all of the ideologies. With Fortified Borders, you can get +3 happiness per city by building castles, arsenals and military bases -- they cost hammers, but no on-going maintenance -- and your puppets will build them. Even better, you can get +6 happiness per city by building barracks, armories and military academies -- they have maintenance cost, but, e.g., 1 gpt barracks for 2 happiness? Yes, please. And Police State will get you +3 happiness from every courthouse -- if you have any puppets, annex them a build/buy a courthouse.

More indirectly, Gunboat Diplomacy is great with mercantile CSs and getting CS allies generally.

And every ideology has the equivalent of Universal Healthcare -- it's the last one I would pick.

Prora is great, but may go before you can get to it.

My Tourism is ~20, and Pachuti managed to get the Cultural Heritage Sites resolution passed despite everything I could do to stop it. I probably will not get Familiar with him.

Not sure how to get all this Happy out of Autocracy. Militarism and spam Barracks/Armories?

For now, I think my plans will be to finish capturing this next Capital city from Netherlands, which has Notre Dame, then probably flip. I've got enough military to take over the world, so I suppose I will just spam out military buildings and roll with it.

I like your plan. When the worm turns, burn the world.

When I start a new game, I'm always aiming for a victory other than domination/conquest but if I get cornered with no good way out, I turn to military.

In this case, the game is begging for you to lash out.

Browd makes a good point in switching to autocracy with building that will provide happiness without incurring maintenance.

Can you not rise to crush Pachuti and then switch ideology back to Order?

The idea of selling a city to reduce unhappiness is also interesting.

How strong are you diplomatically? If you are a first adopter you can sometimes pass World Ideology if you have enough votes but in your case its probably too late. Usually if I'm going for SV I plan on getting that passed if I don't think I'll have the happiness to chug through the end. Courthouses are huge sources of Happiness in addition to XP buildings if you have a bunch of Annexed cities.

Pachuti built the Forbidden Palace, is allying every CS on the map, and my only friend is Bismark, who has not adopted an Ideology but will probably go Autocracy. Nobody will talk with me, much less trade with me, due to me DoW'ing Inca to get the Diplomat out of my Capital. I mistakenly signed an Open Borders previous to this, so I wanted to get those Aestheics-boosted modifiers down. Diplo suffered horribly as a result of both that and me annihilating Austria after she combo DoW'd me w/ Netherlands. No one will talk to me, much less trade with me, and William actually stole one of my luxes with a Citatel. A veritable perfect storm of unhappy.

Yeah, I will probably build Barracks as Colosseums and forget about Order. The courthouse happy will probably come in handy later also. The Worker's Faculties tenet is probably one of my favorites, but at least I will get the Rationalism opener back to replace it.

Fortified borders and Neuschwanstein turn castles into unbelievable buildings, especially for happiness. Works particularly great with puppets.

How many other players are left on map? You cant buy luxes from them? Get those spies into the mercantile city states. At this stage tech steal is too slow anyway.

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Order can conquer it's way out of tourism/pressure. If you've got a wonder-loaded target nearby. If you can get Iron Curtain. If you can get Cultural Heritage sites - which is already passed in your case, this one is great for a conquerer. Just keep eating cities, instant annexing, and they will bloat your raw culture output like crazy. AI cities have pre-built high-level culture buildings and with Order rebuild monument in one turn. But... if you are already unhappy and Iron Curtain is several policies off, that obviously won't work, as your cities will flip.

Yes I would say prompting ideology first when your culture/tourism was weak was a mistake. Delaying factories would have been better. Inca might have picked Order if it was still first pick. Since being culture/tourism leader yourself doesn't happen most games, the safest time to first-pick an Ideology is when you just won / are about to win World Fair - good bye outside influence.

Ghandi just got devoured by Montezuma, who's also Autocracy and has stopped trading with me. I devoured Austria, and am at war with Netherlands and Inca. Venice won't trade to me anymore, and Germany is my only friend on the map, who's already trading me from their small'ish empire.

My next 2 tenets from Order could be Universal Healthcare and Academy of Sciences. It was probably a mistake to take Workers' Faculties instead of Academy of Sciences in the first place. After those two though, I can take Iron Curtain. The question though is whether using all tenets from Order other than WF and IC just to offest happiness is a good deal for the tenets. It's hard to say whether I can balloon a distant city with Iron Curtain as I'm fond of doing, given those Happiness issues. And I'm not sure I need the 25% tech boost to get all the Science I need for what's shaping up as a Domination VC. Pacuti probably wins Culture if it's just a question of beating my Space time.

I don't think I've ever won the World's Fair on Deity. What kind of setup do you need to do that?

Maybe I will wait to take over Amsterdam before I make the final decision on flipping. Overall though, I probably made too many mistakes to win on Deity this time around. Not the first time I've lost one. I'm just not used to being able to still lose after I've got the tech lead and the war machine rolling. Tall Science early game into X-bow rush is surprisingly bad at Culture defense, as I'm finding out.


A couple questions. The UI is telling me that I'm allowed to pick 1 tenet from Autocracy if I flip. A few of the help-me's I've read though say you will lose all tenets. Of the Order tenets I currently have, I've got two from being first and the one natural. Do you just get to keep your natural tenets? That system seems way too flexible.

Justice1337 said:

I don't think I've ever won the World's Fair on Deity. What kind of setup do you need to do that?

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No, I suppose I felt like mentioning Worlds Fair but it doesn't apply to Deity. (This is why I don't know why anyone plays on Deity, you deny yourself half the mechanics of the game that you paid for... oh well...)

You are correct that taking only the happiness tenants in Order wastes the tree. Really without Workers Facilities and 5 Year Plan you might as well not have Order at all - that's the pain of the Order tree, you have to have strong strong culture to put all the pieces together.

And Iron Curtain ideally one would have before they start their late game conquering, which is implausible enough even with Worlds Fair win, pretty much not happening without it...

Order gives +2 happy for monuments.

Autocracy gives +2 happy for barracks AND armories AND military academies.

Autocracy is actually pretty ridiculous in terms of happiness bonuses - easily the best of the three branches - but it'll have you building things that aren't needed for normal city infrastructure.

Justice1337 said:

I don't think I've ever won the World's Fair on Deity. What kind of setup do you need to do that?

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Dont propose, dont vote for it until you are ready. You can also attempt at bribing wars during world's fair to slow them down. If you went liberty wide it will be easier to win. Use your great artist during world's fair.

I can see 3 major mistakes made here:
You have neglected culture(not to be confused with tourism), which you should never do regardless of your chosen path.
You didn't seem to get allies in your war with Austria and the Netherlands. Wiping out civs is usually a good way to get hated, try leaving them with at least 1 city. Sell all useless cities you capture, if the AI doesn't raze them you can liberate those cities.
You've built a huge army and not gone Autocracy. Also the civ with the most votes went Autocracy, it is likely they will try and pass(and succeed) Autocracy as the world ideology.