Favorite ideology builds and worthless tenets

[VainoValkea]

ITT: Post ideology builds you find potent and tenets you find useless.

My favorite six-tenet build so far is this one:

First tier:
Avant Garde (+25pp GP generation)
Civil Society (specialists consume half food)
either Creative Expression (+1 culture per great work)
OR Economic Union (+3 gold for each trade route with other Freedom civs)
(depending on how many Freedom friends you have and how much trade you want to devote to City-States)

Second tier:
Arsenal of Democracy (+25pp production when buliding military units, +20 influence from military unit gifts to City-States)
Universal Suffrage (Specialists create only half of the normal unhappiness)

Third tier:
Treaty Organization (+4 influence per turn with city states you have a trade route with)


Rockin' CS and culture heavy games with these. Treaty Organization is a bit overkill when spamming lots of units for AoD so it could be replaced with Media Culture (+34pp tourism from Broadcast Towers) for more tourism punch.


As for worthless tenets, I'd say...
Capitalism (+1 happiness from mints, banks and stock exchanges) as now most of my cities don't have or need those buildings
Covert Action (doubles the chance of successful election rigging) because election rigging fails rarely and isn't powerful anyway.


Haven't put much thought into other ideologies yet but Autocracy seems particularly weak now for culture even though it's a recommended VC for it. The AI is very docile so it's hard to get that third tier Cult of Personality bonus (+50pp tourism against civs at war with a common enemy) and their other tourism ability Futurism (+100 tourism whenever a GWAM is born) seems pretty negligible.

 

[Bagi]

Does anyone actually know the tenets by name? Better if you just write down the effects...

Unless some civ wiki already has them somewhere.

 

[VainoValkea]

They can be found in the Civilopedia, either online or offline. I personally remember all the key ones by name (because many of them are descriptive or same as in G&K). But good point, I'll write them down in the OP.

 

[Cymsdale]

I don't think Capitalism is worthless at all. A lot of these tenants are going to be dependent on the current game situation.

 

[VainoValkea]

With the current gold situation most cities will be generating only a little gold while the big trade ports yield the big profits, so there's no point in building banks everywhere. That's why I consider it worthless. Well, not completely, but not worth the tenet slot either.

 

[lb1785]

Right now I'm playing Venice (Emperor, Small, Continents) and I picked Autocracy , so let me give my 2 cents on these Autocracy tenets...

1st Tier (setting Futurism and Universal Healthcare aside because they are less worthwhile imho):
- United Front: receive twice as many units from militaristic CS when at war with a common foe. It might prove useful, especially with Venice that can buy to ally all the CS it wants. But it's not a first choice...
- Mobilization: -33% Military Unit Gold cost. It's a winner, especially when your strategy is focused on maxing out gold surplus and buying the units.
- Fortified Borders: +2 Local Happiness per Walls, Castle, Arsenal and Military Base. The puppeted cities do construct them (at least Walls & Castle) so it can't do any harm.
- Industrial Espionage: Spies steal technologies twice as fast. Obviously situation-dependent, but I'd say it's good because it allows you to keep up on the civil side of the tech tree with your spies, while you beeline to the heavy military technologies.
- Elite Forces: Wounded Military Units inflict 25% more damage than normal. Good when combined with Lightning Warfare (see below) to conduct a little Blitzkrieg !

2nd Tier:
- Lightning Warfare: Great Generals receive +3 Movement. Armored units receive +1 Movement and +15% attack bonus, and ignore enemy ZOC. Sir, yes, Sir !
- Police State: +3 Local Happiness per Courthouse. Build Courthouses in half the usual time. Well, for Venice it's useless since you don't annex cities, but anyway I usually only annex the biggest cities, so I don't know if I would use it under different circumstances...
- Third Alternative: Strategic Resources provide double quantity. +5 Food and Science in Capital. Only mildly useful to me (I rarely bump into resource constraint so....)
- Total War: +25% Production towards Military Units. New Units receive +15 XP. Gets you Triple promotions without any actual combat experience, that's great ! A no brainer.
- Militarism: +2 Local Happiness per Barracks, Armory and Military Academy. Depends on whether your unit production is concentrated on a few cities or not. For Venice, it's not so useful...
- Nationalism: -33% Unit Maintenance cost. All right if you need if you need the cash; in my case, Venice swims in gold so upkeep is not so important (not when you hover around +500gpt as you should expect in modern age from the double trade routes)

3rd Tier: this is where I am personally a bit disappointed.
- Cult of Personality: +50% Tourism to Civilizations fighting a common enemy. Well, when you go for Autocracy you're not really looking for improved Tourism, are you ?
- Gunboat Diplomacy: +6 Influence per turn with City-States you could demand tribute from. I see how it can be useful, yet I'd rather buy me allies than bully them into friendship
- Clausewitz's Legacy: Receive a +25% attack bonus to all Military Units for the first 50 turns after this tenet is added. This one I like !!!

Apart from that, I agree with most of what OP said about Freedom tenets, and I haven't tried Order yet.

 

[pilot00]

I don't think Capitalism is worthless at all. A lot of these tenants are going to be dependent on the current game situation.

Neither do I, in fact it makes those flipping puppets viable to maintain as such and not raze them due to unhappiness and everyone uses those buildings

 

[Ulthwithian]

Capitalism could IMO use a slight buff by including Markets.

Having said that, I believe it's also the only Tier I Happiness tenet for Freedom, and so I hesitate to call it worthless.

 

[Seabastian Civ]

I totally mismanaged my first playthrough with Order... I Messed up and used it like the old order (happiness factory). The tenet that lets you build space ship parts with great engineers requires such discipline that it is hard to utilize. I spent my early engineers on wonders and used much of my specialization on scientists in order to GET to space ship parts. In retrospect, this tenet could have been powerful for me, I just wasted it :/
Order seems much better now for a high happiness, tourism victory.

 

[MadDjinn]

Venice + Tradition + Universal Health Care is *not* worthless. It's worth 2x pop/national wonder in Venice (more if you kick in Aristocracy bonuses).

Militarism is very useful, even for Venice as you can BUY the barracks/etc in puppets. It also gives you 6 more local happiness per city to soak in puppet growth (or more likely that 45 pop Capital you just ate).

340g for a Barracks (after Commerce/Big Ben) for 2 happiness is far better than a Stadium.

edit:

Capitalism could IMO use a slight buff by including Markets.

Having said that, I believe it's also the only Tier I Happiness tenet for Freedom, and so I hesitate to call it worthless.

nope to the market. It's a spam building and if you look at the happiness tenets across the 3 Ideologies, the spam ones have been left out (mainly).

What makes this tenet nice is that you get happiness along with a building that produces gold, rather than lose gold for 2 happiness. If you're going a pure commercial dominance plan, this is a very easy tenet to take. Plus any source of happiness is good by the late game (given the limited other sources).

 

[pilot00]

My belief is, that if you are going Science with order (I still believe that a specialist-Rationalism heavy freedom is still the best but if you sprawl, its another story), you must have chosen either tradition or piety (IMHO both) so you can generate GE precisely for that.

 

[MadDjinn]

My belief is, that if you are going Science with order (I still believe that a specialist-Rationalism heavy freedom is still the best but if you sprawl, its another story), you must have chosen either tradition or piety (IMHO both) so you can generate GE precisely for that.

I don't see much benefit in it. I'd rather settle those GEs earlier and mass pump everything before parts.

It's not like you can find them under rocks or anything (unlike the gold purchase plan for Freedom).

 

[pilot00]

I don't see much benefit in it. I'd rather settle those GEs earlier and mass pump everything before parts.

It's not like you can find them under rocks or anything (unlike the gold purchase plan for Freedom).

Depends on overall production tiles (in preference to plant them) and overall faith generation). In my first game in BNW (immortal) I spread my religion everywhere and was generating enough faith (DF and the wonder one) to spawn engineers and have every single wonder after the medieval, so I can say its pretty doable.

 

[Tyrvos]

\
Capitalism (+1 happiness from mints, banks and stock exchanges) as now most of my cities don't have or need those buildings

I can't think of a civ that doesn't need these buildings...

 

[Martinus]

My belief is, that if you are going Science with order (I still believe that a specialist-Rationalism heavy freedom is still the best but if you sprawl, its another story), you must have chosen either tradition or piety (IMHO both) so you can generate GE precisely for that.

I think Order offers some nice buffs to a Science victory even if you do not use GEs to buy space ship parts - especially the one that gives science bonuses from factories and makes you build factories faster for example.

Frankly speaking, the tier 3 pro-Science-victory tenets in both Order and Freedom are not something that will benefit you all the time - I mean, neither of them really helps you in achieving the Science Victory the "normal" way (i.e. just building the space ship parts) - they just offer you an extra edge - but I don't think they are meant to be used to get ALL space ship parts you need, but maybe one or two to rush you a bit.