Culture and ideology when not playing culturally?

I just made it through my first deity-level victory on BNW (tech with Korea) and I had a really big happiness problem because of differing ideologies.

I had to stop growing 50 turns before the end and solely focus on happiness policies and buildings 90% of the end game. Still the last 20 turns I was running 8 to 15 unhappiness because 3 of my strongest opponents were of different ideology and focusing strongly on tourism. In the end I was still able to build the space ship in time even though I only had a quarter of population compared to my strongest tech opponent.

I wanted a different ideology for boosting my victory progress and slowing down the enemy's tourism on me.

Of course, different ideology meant also the opponents were more likely to hate me and boy, they sure did - no luxuries from oppos to me, more happiness hit. Sometimes I couldn't
even buy their extra luxuries for 25 GPT.

My question is, can you actually get to choose the ideology you like on immortal/deity unless you build a heavy tourism yourself?

I wouldn't imagine I could build heavy tourism while going for tech victory on deity, since I'd have to focus on the tech side with policies and buildings.

It seems that I always get into trouble if I don't just simply copy the ideology of the strongest cultural opponent. Unless of course I play culturally and try to win by tourism all along.

Any ideas? I feel I cannot use the ideology bonuses I would like because the AI will force me to choose what they have. And if I actually get the first or second pick in choosing my ideology, then I'm in big trouble anyway since I can bet the AI will always choose other ideologies than I do...

Hi Turbo. I'm not quite at the Diety level of play against the AI, but something that often works for me against human players with Ideology is getting the ideology I want early, go to Radio asap, and focus on CSs to get votes in Congress to make mine the world ideology. Is that what the AI is doing to you, or is it just that others are choosing different ideologies which hurts your public opinion?

My strategy can detract from other important techs at that moment, but it's helped win more than one game for me - The other Civs' unhappiness can be significant due to world ideology, and they often don't expect that. It's also a moral blow on top of everything else when you have to switch ideologies.

If you go by the standard guides Trad>Rat then you are going to have very thin cultural defense and are putting yourself at risk if you dont follow along with the pack. Don't help the situation by allowing open borders.

If you put some time and effort into the Aesthetics tree and making great works, then you have a much greater chance of keeping the ideology you want. You will even convert some weak minded AIs to your side if you target them. I think this is also a case for the use of an early concert musician and diplomats after ideology.

Honestly, this is the reason why Cultural has become my go-to victory type. First, no need to tech the entire tree like you do with Science. Half the time, you can win before you even get to Internet. Secondly, if you don't focus on Culture, you can get utterly screwed by the culture of other peaceful civs. Obviously you always need to watch out for wars, but the progress towards a cultural victory of any Civ, even your best friend, can have a large impedance on your own victory. This causes major problems if you're not focusing on Culture, so I find it best to just do so. And in the process of doing so, you can normally win without too much effort, and far quicker than Science on most civs.

Things is what happened in BNW, which is one of the great improvements in the game, is that culture and diplomacy are no longer tacked on winning conditions like they were in early versions of civ. You'd always had to have military and science, but in BNW you can no longer neglect culture and diplomacy, because there are ways for the other players to negatively impact you if you do. So you have to play a bit more balanced and instead of focusing everything on your preferred winning condition, you have to make decisions about spending some more resources on other things will actually make it more likely that you will win. Spending a little amount in culture/tourism is often better than squeezing that last bit in science.

I had the same issue when I first started BNW on higher levels.

What worked for me:

1) Try really hard to get a Religion and then choose Religious Art as your follower belief (even on Deity this is nearly always available unlike the Religious buildings); then just buy an Inquisitor for your cap and you can forget about Religion; you will get 5 Tourism (from Hermitage) early that goes a long way since the pressure difference is calculated over time

2) Keep buying Open Borders from all Civs for as long as it just costs 2GPT (but never sell or trade your borders); this goes a long way as it has the effect to amplify any tourism you have (from Hermitage/Religious Art or other) and thus contributing at building that wall of protection before Ideologies come into play

3) Try to be first to pick an Ideology, by building Oxford as you finish Electricity and picking Radio; then you propose World Ideology; by doing this you will have maybe one or two Civs of a different ideology by the time of the next WC vote (even on Deity) so it's not hard to get passed

4) One turn before finishing Electricity/Oxford you should buy a Great Engineer with faith (assuming you took Tradition; otherwise just get a GE from LTP or Liberty finisher); use the GE to rush Eiffel Tower for another flat +12 Tourism as well as some extra Happiness

5) Place Diplomats (not Spies) in Capital cities that follow a different ideology. This will further amplify your influence over them and protect you from pressure.

Nothing else is needed actually; you definitely won't need any of the Cultural Wonders and you can completely ignore Archaeological Sites; and by doing this I found pursuing a SV or DV much easier and much less of a pain when Autocracy suddenly becomes the dominant ideology.

As long as you build the darn guilds you can pick whatever ideology you want without fear of ideological pressure. (Your own great works being the best source of culture).

It's only if you skip the guilds entirely that you need to pick whatever ideology those with influence over you pick. You can check this on the tourism screen the turn your promoted for ideology.
If for some reason you beat the world to ideology; Order is normally the most popular one with the AI.

The above post is actually muh more useful if you are going for a cultural victory than defending against an AI.
If that AI has more tourism output than you; you're better off closing the borders so he doesn't get the bonus either.

If you are weak on culture: The last thing you want is to found an ideology before you know who has influence on you is going to pick.

Effiel Tower: Mainly provides tourism / little defensive culture; if you are close to an edge but otherwise neglected guilds it might help on the margins for defense; but the wonder is really intended to win a cultural victory yourself. In fact if you've been running the guilds; it can cause an accidental cultural victory.

Diplomats: Again, main use is when going for cultural victory yourself (and for going diplomatic victory). On defense, it would only help if you are near an edge.

@TurboJ: Make great works with your first two great writers and three great artists. Build Oxford and Hermitage ASAP (should be easy since you're running a Tradition game) for theming bonus. Also run musician guilds when you can and make GWs from them (the first two are really important). Then, be sure to purchase open borders from all the AIs who look like they're culture/tourism heavy, and be sure to NOT sell them your own open borders (I stop selling if they hit 8tpt, the future unhappiness is not worth the 2gpt). Do that and you'll be fine. Also, build/buy hotels/airports in your capital if it has a landmark; hotels on other landmarks are optional, and you usually have better things to do.

@joncnunn: Open borders is not like trade routes. You can have his open borders and influence him, while not giving him your open borders, so he doesn't influence you. It'll cost you 2gpt per civ you do this with though.

@Mereptah: #1 is nowhere near guaranteed. It is extremely helpful obviously if you can get it. #2 only works if you have tourism. so make sure you are making GWs with your first few GWAMs, and to only start purchasing once you have a decent tourism base. #3 works, but you have to be playing a very good science game to pull it off and get lucky with the WC timing on Deity. You will also always have at least 2 civs who hate your GUTS. It's generally not a great place to be, because you can't control which civs those are, so they can be your neighbors (unlike, say, stealing tech, where you can just steal from people very far away from you and not fear military retaliation). Since OP is going through his first science victory on Deity, I think trying to do #3 is a very very bad idea and will get him killed much faster than what he's currently doing. #4 is usually not worth it imo, as Engineers are better saved for spaceship parts or SoL if running Freedom (which is sub-optimal for OP, as Order will net you more ideological allies). you really shouldn't be having that much trouble that you need Eifel if you just GW your first two writers and first 3 artists, and don't completely ignore the artifacts game. Eifel is more of a panic button for me. You could always just build two hotels and save a GE. #5 is a good idea. you should be ahead/even in tech by this point anyway, so spies are only useful for couping city states and tourism. I send my main spy around the 2-4 CS I care about to boost influence and/or coup, my secondary spy to protect by own tech (which is really just a way of getting diplo, I couldn't care less if they steal the tech), and my third/fourth spies (unleveled) to influence tourism/CS as needed.

Thank you for all the replies and ideas - much appreciated!

You all have good points there. In retrospect, I should clearly just have picked order instead of freedom as nearly all the cultural civs were doing that. I mostly wanted to gold buy the last space ship parts so as to be quick about it and not let anyone else grab the cultural victory before I reached the space ship. But in the end my huge tourism losses prevented me from buying any of the ship parts with money and all of it just went to stadiums and bribing mercantile CSs...
Netherlands was running 280 tourism on me by the time I had 16 (even after I stole their capital to gain their great firewall) and the second best cultural civ was doing 120 tourism.
I don't see how I could have beaten them to the cultural wonders - they were rushing those exact techs and even though I was generally tech leader by those times, they still had the cultural techs while I did not.

Also in retrospect I know I could have delayed my tech buildup for some turns early on and built my guilds earlier. But it was my first deity victory and I didn't know how tough it was going to be tbh. Also, my starting position was very weak food-wise, so I kind of had to build tech buildings and policies hard.

I guess I don't even know 100% how the culture/tourism thing works. On Emperor I used to be able to spam great works and some tourism buildings and wonders so I could get my ideology to become more popular and thus eliminating negative pressure. But on deity (I'm on my second deity run now) it seems you either play culturally or you succumb to the others' ideology.
I don't see how I could play a balanced strategy on deity, since the AIs are doing so well on their chosen VC that I have to catch up for a long time. If I had a perfect starting location and good city spots all round, then maybe yes, but with a weak start like I've been having, it seems I have to pick Order if I don't go for tourism myself.

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Case number two: I'm now playing Germany on Standard Earth, domination (deity). Early on I had no food and no production so I had to play for the mid-end game and just get those Hanse up and running before teching and trooping up. I went liberty - Rome was near so I really wanted the free settler . Research agreements and Patronage helped a little, but once again all but one of my opponents are going cultural - even Rome! I actually got a lucky religion for more food and culture (and the fun attack bonus for enemy cities following my religion). Now with Hanse, workshop, stone works, soon factories, wind mills on my best cities and focusing on city state trade I think I did the right call in delaying tech and tourism till I got the huge production I do now. Plan is to rush railroads for Kremlin and blitzkrieg my continent with a big Panzer surprise.

Now then, year 1150 (standard speed) and already Brazil has gone for order. My guilds are only just starting. I would really like autocracy for this playthrough, but I guess order would also work. This late, what options do I have? I feel I did the best I could given the starting circumstances and now the production bonus is really kicking in. I just know all my cultural enemies are going order again and that's the ideology to fight. I will of course steal a whole lot of great works when I do unleash hell eventually, but while conquering I fear I will not have the happiness to support the war unless I choose whatever ideology my enemies have.
You will tell me of course that I should have built my guilds earlier, but I wasn't going to do that when they took 18 turns each to finish. Now I can build universities in 5 turns so this should work for the later stages of the game...

Your suggestions?

ummm... as long as you don't mind your empire going into anarchy for a couple turns... switching ideology is the easiest way to do it (given that you are not going for CV, any ideology will do... going for CV makes life a LOT harder though); for SV I find that Order will serve you well enough, even in revolutionary wave status (since, you know, everyone goes tall tradition 4-city for SV anyway so at most you'd be looking at around -30 happiness, and Order has that covered pretty easily; keep in mind the bigger your empire, the more ideology pressure hurts, so don't overexpand/conquer)

Nothing else to say really... if CV focus on hammers/culture more than you would an SV throughout the game, get hermitage and ironworks up, and make sure most if not all your cities have good production infrastructure.

About your game, well, guilds at 1100 AD is just asking for it... since you have close to zero tourism, you will never ever reach 10% to become exotic with any AI, which also means that they only need to reach 10% with you to inflict you with one pressure point... (5 such points and you go into revolutionary wave); unless you've allied a ton of culture CS there's really no way to prevent deity AI from becoming exotic with you.

So give it up and either find a happiness buffer, or change your ideology to the most popular one (also you can try world ideology vote if you have control of WC, but bear in mind the diplomatic penalty)