AI's preferred Ideology

[Solutionfinder]

Got the impression that Gandi usually picks Freedom if he is at least the 2nd pioneer. But in general, they seek free tenets first so expect that AI will pick different ideologies than your own if you get there 1st. I also hate the cultural pressure when all the high culture civs pick the same ideology and force you to battle unhappiness for the rest of the game or making you switch ideology and take a policies penalty. It`s like a freaking AI plot. That is unless you are aiming for CV and having fun putting others into unhappiness

 

[Delnar_Ersike]

I thought the only thing the AI cared about when picking ideologies is

1. How much happiness can I get out of this tree
2. How many early adopter tenants can I get out of this

The happiness that the AI evaluates off of freedom is skewed (causing them to never pick it if Order / Autocracy have 2 free tenants) because it's -unhappiness and not +happiness.

That's how it was explained to me. I've had civs that completely and totally hate me end up as the same ideology as me so I don't think it factors diplomacy into the equation.

Does anyone have the source code?

Source code is available through the SDK, and I've spent plenty of time with it.

Basically, three factors go into which ideology the AI chooses: its grand strategy, the amount of free tenets available, and the amount of happiness it could get/lose from the ideology. If the ideology does not have a level 3 tenet that supports the AI's currently active grand strategy, the AI will never choose the ideology. Afterwards, the biggest determiner of which ideology the AI chooses is the amount of happiness it will get from the ideology, calculated using the average happiness they can get per happiness tenet and the unhappiness they would suffer from ideological pressure. There is, however, one key problem with the way happiness tenets are considered: only local happiness from buildings is considered happiness, so the AI effectively ignores Freedom's Universal Suffrage. This is the main reason why Freedom is picked so rarely by AIs that would benefit from it: they completely ignore the main happiness tenet that Freedom has to offer.