Deity - dealing with Ideology hate/public opinion unhappiness

[EmilyMoby]

One of my least favorite things about Civ V is the extent to which ideology choice affects both happiness and diplomacy. I play on Deity (although Deity is challenging for me), and the only way I've found to mitigate the massive unhappiness and diplomatic penalty to wait to be forced to choose one (e.g. grabbing Radio/factories) until the culture leaders have chosen, and then picking the one they already have picked. This loses me any free policies I'd get from getting one earlier, but saves me the huge penalties and worldwide DOW when I go Freedom and the other seven civs go Order.

I've seen people referencing grabbing Radio early, and picking up one of the first ideologies. I was just playing as Babylon and I did that, grabbing Freedom, and I ended up with 18 unhappiness from the desire for a new ideology after 3 other civs had picked different ideologies (2 autocracy, 1 order). I was doing okay otherwise, should I have just gone full production into happiness buildings until I made that -18 up? (I was -15 total at that point after the -18 hit)

Is there a way to mitigate this somehow? I suppose going for great works like there's no tomorrow would put me in the position to be influencing their ideologies, but that's not always the plan in the games I'm playing.

Also, if anyone can recommend a good video Let's Play of someone doing a culture victory on Deity on standard speed, preferably somewhat recently (at least since the Tradition policy tree was reworked), I would appreciate it greatly.

 

[Sclb]

First you need to understand what is causing the ideology pressure. It is calculated based on AI tourism vs your own culture, so the best way to counter it is to generate as much culture you can to delay their effects. The most efficient way to do so is to ally most if not all culture CS as soon as you can. The other efficient way is to win world's fair and time a golden age immediately after winning it and start bulbing great writers 8 turns afterwards. If these isn't enough you need to also get archaeologists and create landmarks that are within 3 tiles of your cities. You will find that once you focus on culture generation, it is rare that you will drop below the 1st or 2nd level of ideology unhappiness, and the extra culture you get will allow you to get into the ideology SP quickly and get the relevant happiness policies. I never care about which ideology AI chooses, and always have no issue dealing with it. Later on in the game when you have the gold to ally enough CS, you can try to pass world ideology and it should fix the problem permanently.

The wrong way to fix it is to try increasing your tourism by going for great works. As you might already know in order to reverse it you have to produce a massive amount of tourism to try to counter it that way, but it is much more difficult to produce tourism than to increase your culture due to the AI having insane advantages on deity. It is almost impossible to generate enough tourism without getting hotels/airports/internet/International Games. And the only way you can do so is if you are actually planning on culture victory. There is a reason why peaceful culture victory on deity is one of the most difficult way to win.

 

[Acken]

On top of defending against it, -18 shouldn't be a problem if you pick the happiness tenets. Especially if you're first to it and got 2 for free.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

On Deity I almost always save all GA's and GWr's, so pop one to get more hammers for WF, and pop 2 consecutively, if possible, after winning for the culture bonuses Sclb mentioned. With a Tradition start, or Glory To God Reformation, I burn a faith GE on Eiffel for the tourism and happy bonus, then usually hard-build Broadway when I can. The AI takes a long time to get to Radio, but there are so many things to build, as you then have to back track for Factories, maybe Archaeology, etc... Often the AI passes culture for wonders, so this will actually help your culture defense some as well. Faith buildings create culture as well, so having one or more in your religion, or from neighbors, will build up over time.

 

[esgo]

Video about how ideologial pressure works


Link to video.

 

[vra379971]

The straight forward approach is make sure you're living high on the culture hog by that time.

Build Sistine however you can, create your own works or have taken others. =)

 

[Sclb]

Sistine is usually not too difficult to build on deity, but usually there are better wonders to build such as LToP though. When you play for peaceful CV, you often want to build Sistine to deny the AI from building it. It is sometimes worth it to choose GE from LToP and GE Sistine.

 

[beetle]

One of my least favorite things about Civ V is the extent to which ideology choice affects both happiness and diplomacy.

I also find Deity quite challenging, but the late-game impact of ideologies is one of most favorite things about the Civ V!

This loses me any free policies I'd get from getting one earlier, but saves me the huge penalties and worldwide DOW when I go Freedom and the other seven civs go Order.

That is one way to play things of course, but it is not very satisfying!

If I get to Freedom early enough for the two free picks, then I only need one more to pick up the very powerful happy policy. Are you consistently getting that ASAP?

Then I beeline to complete SoL and get the six foreign legion units. Then I just how I am doing diplomacy and happiness wise, and if I have to switch it is no big loss.

That said, it seems like I am switching less now than when I first started playing at Deity. As Sclb wrote, you want to be paying attention more to culture than tourism.

Also, if I am first to Ideologies, sometimes now I pick Order. It works pretty well, and I almost never have to switch out of it. (And if I do, it has always been after I picked up Kremlin. And I like the other two Ideologies more than Order anyway!)

Also, if anyone can recommend a good video Let's Play of someone doing a culture victory on Deity on standard speed, preferably somewhat recently (at least since the Tradition policy tree was reworked), I would appreciate it greatly.

I don’t see how the reworked Tradition tree would have changed CV. But maybe there are other results of the patches? In any case, playing for peaceful CV is very different than defending against Ideology pressure. (Except that allied cultural CS are always good!)

Sistine is usually not too difficult to build on deity, but usually there are better wonders to build such as LToP though. When you play for peaceful CV, you often want to build Sistine to deny the AI from building it. It is sometimes worth it to choose GE from LToP and GE Sistine.

I can only ever rarely get LToP. I wish I understood why so many players find it accessible!

 

[Acken]

They probably just reach Printing Press faster. Wonder access is just a function of speed.

Doesn't mean you'll get it 100% of the time on deity though. Sometimes I miss it.

 

[EmilyMoby]

Thanks guys. I tend to use GWs early for great works for the +2 culture per turn. It didn't occur to me to save them for the World's Fair bonus.

 

[Redaxe]

How many cities do you have may I ask?

If you are -18 you might have too many cities too make Freedom Viable - an ideology unhappiness hits you really hard if you have a lot of cities. The Freedom policies are generally the hardest to get happiness on. You need a lot of buildings that are generally not that easy to get or are plain bad (i.e. watermills, hospitals, medical labs, mints & stock exchanges...).

You also need a lot of specialists to overcome that -18 hit (that would 36 specialists in total I think). I suspect one of the culture runaways probably has Sacred Sites (at this point you are probably better switching ideology), unless you think you can build a lot of happiness buildings quickly. If you haven't built colosseums and zoo's you might have a shot at fixing things - but its going to slow your game down considerably.
You're best bet might be to try and ally some mercentile citysates - you can get +10 happiness from one citystate alliance.

If you rushed Radio and the Eiffel Tower is still available you might be able to grab that with an engineer and pump out great musicians to try and get to 10% tourism over your neighbors...

 

[claudiupb]

You need to make some great works too. 1-2 great works of writing are also useful for the +2 culture over the game, but more importantly the tourism.

One thing worth mentioning is that if someone has reached a level of influence over you, that level of influence never drops regardless of how much culture/tourism is produced afterwards. So if you save all your great writers to bulb them during the WF, but some AIs have already reached familiar state with their influence, even if you bulb all those great writers and make a lot of culture the influence will not drop and you will still have a lot of pressure.

The idea to keep in mind is that your target is to reach exotic state with the majority of the AI, because you really can't prevent AI form reaching exotic state with you. You realistically can't expect the AI to never influence you at all, you should be producing ten times more culture than he can produce tourism, so it can be quite hard. You can however prevent them from being familiar in most cases by maximizing your culture output.

To reach exotic state with them you need some tourism, so get open borders form them (and don't let them have open borders with you), create some great works (great musicians are ideal if you have the time to build opera houses), get the Eiffel Tower, etc. Because you only need 10% of their culture it is fairly doable without great effort.

 

[Sclb]

One thing worth mentioning is that if someone has reached a level of influence over you, that level of influence never drops regardless of how much culture/tourism is produced afterwards.

I don't think that is true, you can gain culture faster than their tourism by bulbing aggressively during WF. If it was true then I'll never reduce ideology pressure since I never make great works in every non culture games.

 

[claudiupb]

I don't think that is true, you can gain culture faster than their tourism by bulbing aggressively during WF. If it was true then I'll never reduce ideology pressure since I never make great works in every non culture games.

You are correct, I just tested it with IGE. I don't know why I had the impression that the level will never go down.

 

[Sclb]

You are correct, I just tested it with IGE. I don't know why I had the impression that the level will never go down.

Now I thought of something, I've also seen AI go from being influential drop to popular just because they bulbed a writer. I'm not sure if it can delay culture victory. Not sure if culture victory requires all AI be influential simultaneously or it is enough to have influential at some point in the past.

 

[fimbul]

Best defense against ideology unhappiness when going for science victory is culture CS and world's fair. At industrial+, culture CS allies give 26 culture a turn! World's fair is also 1000 hammers and since it should be your first proposal at the WC, will pop normally after you have entered industrial and/or oxford radio. Having 2+ Culture CS allies (maybe 2k gc?) and 1000 hammers for WF results in insane CPT - pop a GA if you dont already get a free golden age from the fair. After 8 turns, bulb a couple of GW, say good bye to your ideology troubles. Aiming to get exotic with the culture/tourism leader is too much effort for a SV on deity - even if you get 1 level of unhappiness im sure there is enough happiness in either freedom/order to cover it until spaceship is done. I dont make GW since it gives up 8 turns of WF culture or a free golden age for +2 culture and tourism.....

If you are going for CV, just wait for your tourism to catch up if the culture leader gets exotic on you. After you fill in the museums the pressure should go away.

 

[Chum]

Now I thought of something, I've also seen AI go from being influential drop to popular just because they bulbed a writer. I'm not sure if it can delay culture victory. Not sure if culture victory requires all AI be influential simultaneously or it is enough to have influential at some point in the past.

I have had to reacquire influential status with an AI before I could win before.

 

[Plumfairy]

You need to make some great works too. 1-2 great works of writing are also useful for the +2 culture over the game, but more importantly the tourism.


The idea to keep in mind is that your target is to reach exotic state with the majority of the AI, because you really can't prevent AI form reaching exotic state with you.

When I played Immortal, I always tried to get some tourism (~8-10) for this very reason. But on Deity, I've found that some tourism does no good at all; the only civs that it works on are those that are pretty much hollowed-out shells. (e.g. a civ that lost its heartland and only has one city left way up in the Arctic)

Instead, I now just focus on pure culture, and that seems to work better on deity; I often *do* succeed in prevent AI civs from reaching Exotic with me, with the exception of the couple civs that are producing massive amounts of tourism. (Usually the civs chasing after a cultural victory, but sometimes runaway civs accumulate lots of tourism even when they're chasing other victory types.) Since I know that there will be an influence differential for 2 or 3 civs, when I hit industrial I accumulate 15-20 extra happiness as an ideology happiness cushion. This approach seems to work pretty well. Usually.

 

[Trackmaster]

Usually what I do is assume that I'm going to lose the ideology culture war unless I'm going for culture win, and if I get first pick at ideology, go for Autocracy first if I'm going to Domination and hold on and take the happiness hit (it's just way too perfect for Domination, and go Freedom first otherwise. I'll do Freedom and wait for the happiness to fall, and jump on the popular ideology later. Freedom is the only one with a tenant that gives you a one time boost that can't be taken away (the Legions), so I actually come out ahead (2 free policies, free legions, -2 policies for switching), and grab the Statue of Liberty before switching.

 

[beetle]

Freedom is the only one with a tenant that gives you a one time boost that can't be taken away (the Legions), so I actually come out ahead (2 free policies, free legions, -2 policies for switching), and grab the Statue of Liberty before switching.

I agree that Freedom is the most obvious in this regard, but you do loose part of the tenet, namely no maintenance on six units. The other Ideologies have tenets with permanent gains too. Early tourism, tech stealing, and extra XP are keepers from Autocracy. The faster factories with Order are yours if you get them done. Also the free GS and GE in the 3rd tier if you hold out that long.

If I am first to Ideologies, more than half the time I pick order and beeline the factories and Kremlin. Kremlin is weak, but I can get it sooner than SoL or Prora, and the free SP is nice. If I open Freedom or Autocracy, then I resent switching. If I open Order and have to switch, that is win/win!