Needed: Buildings to reduce Unhappiness from Ideologies?

[Aristos]

That is true, except when there isn't a way to counter it. In the game I'm currently playing, 19 of 22 civs all chose Order. I was one who didn't. As the second to choose an ideology, I initially chose Freedom, but when everyone started going Order, well, of course I too had to fall in line. At a certain point, when faced with 40 unhappiness, there's just no way to avoid having to fall in line.

.......

Gotta love pretentious ho-hums. I know how to "deal" with ideologies.

"Contradictions do not exist. One of the assumptions must be wrong."
Francisco D'Arconia - Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

 

[redwings1340]

I'm going to have to go with the majority of commenters here and say there are already number of ways to reduce ideological unhappiness that you can do if you want to go against the world.

1) the simplest way is to get a lot of tourism and do everything you can to reduce the influence of other civs. Religious benefits to tourism, great works, and spamming archeologists to get in the lead or near the lead in influence on everyone.

2) You can pass your ideology as the world ideology in the world congress. If you can do it before anyone else gets an ideology (which I managed to do recently as Poland on deity difficulty!), you can even do it without diplomatic penalties, and, even better, get people to follow your own ideology. In that game I had 0 tourism until I built the Eiffel tower, and still managed to be completely satisfied with my freedom.

3) You can live with the ideological unhappiness, and choose a bunch of happiness boosting policies in ideology. If you're a wide civ or have a ton of population, this might be a bit more difficult to accomplish, but if you're going tall and already have a decent amount of happiness stored up, you can do this. If it gets you two free ideological social policies that you wouldn't get if you switched, it might even be worth doing in specific situations.

4) If all else fails, joining the world ideology is the point of the entire system. If 19 civs choose order and you're free, it's going to be very hard to not become a communist state.

Now, at the moment, the computers do seem to pick order way more often than they should. I would like it if the civs were more well balanced through choosing the ideologies, as if I don't care about which ideology I go for and I'm first, I'm going to choose order right now to avoid problems down the road. This predictability is a little annoying, and maybe the ideology wars would last a little longer if computers were naturally inclined to pick different ideologies at first.

 

[Resipsa]

Why do you want to kill off a specific tactic?

On diety unless you've neglected culture and tourism you'll be influenced by one or two civs at most when ideologies come into play; use a musician to get back on kilter.

Like others have said there shouldn't be an easy way to avoid ideolgic pressure

 

[Moriarte]

Not at all. And that certainly is not how I play the game. But, my experience is that when you're playing on immortal, or deity especially, the AI starts out with such a head start that you've got to make some difficult choices throughout the early to mid-game.

Since culture and tourism effects are cumulative, I've found that, even though I may be near the top in culture and tourism, I usually don't get there until late in the game. And not from total neglect, or any neglect at all. I play a balanced game and try not to neglect anything.

All I'm saying is that, if I want to be the N. Korea of the world, then there should be some tools available that would allow me to do so....even if it means that I have to build some national wonders to make it happen.

But, I do understand the point. If you are able to accumulate your culture and tourism early enough, and remain the leader, then there's not much to worry about. But, I guess I'm just not a good enough player to be in that position consistently when playing on immortal or deity.

Or the setup is just wrong for going freedom solo and still be content. I've played few deity games, one of them ended in a culture win. So, being that confident, started another one with freedom and CV in mind (from the start) and ended up forced into autocracy with Egypt and Assyria having 30+ tourism by turn 150 with sacred sites and stuff. So, i merely dominated the world in that game, even though i wanted CV so much.

This extreme case aside, i can usually stay content on deity though. Early guilds with a food caravan/cargo ship (to work many specialists) is good help on deity.

I don't oppose your idea, it sounds interesting. I think, religion, naturally, can also be tweaked to serve as the tool to counter ideological unhappiness. One of the reformation beliefs, perhaps. Or founder/follower beliefs. Like: "followers of the one true god" - no ideology unhappiness from citizens in cities with major religion X.

 

[sherbz]

I dont know about you guys but my choice of ideology is rarely dictated by what i actually would rather go for. Before i pick, i look at the culture screen and see who has the most tourism and pick the one they have chosen. If they have not picked yet, you can sometimes guess what they will go for, or failing that you can pick whichever tree will give you the most happiness off the bat (usually order or autocracy). Then if you run into problems a bit later down the line, you can always DOW on the tourism hungry AI, which you should be able to do to your advantage if you were the one who beat them to choosing an ideology. Failing that you can always change, which i have had to do. i think its about right the way it is. The only thing I could say they might want to do is to stagger the unhappiness, because it can be a bit severe in going from +5 happiness to -20 in the space of 1 turn. Maybe better to spread that -25 happiness hit over 25 turns.

I think freedom is best for culture victories. So if you pick that tree that is probably what VC you are going for. If this is the case then you should have a sufficient culture defense which nullifies the unhappiness from opposing AI's and at the same time your tourism should dish out an equally bruising amount to the rest.

All ideology trees have decent parts to them and policies worth picking in whatever situation. If you are that worried about the adverse effects of ideology later on down the line, dont pick from the ideology tree for your new social policies, pick from other social policy trees instead so that switching later on down the line isnt so painful.

 

[dexters]

Quick rule of thumb with regards to countering ideology unhappiness
1) You need to generate culture (your defense)
2) You need to generate tourism (your offense)

If you get hit with unhappiness, mousever the icons and it will tell you which Civ is causing it.

If your culture is 'unknown' to them and theirs is 'exotic' to yours, it will cause unhappiness from ideology

What you need to do is to generate more culture to keep their culture at exotic (so the problem doesn't get any worse) and bump up your tourism output to catch up.

The unhappiness will disappear once your culture becomes exotic to them

The way it works is, if both cultures are on the same level with each other, then there is no unhappiness. Unhappiness occurs when one culture from one ideology is far more influential than your culture in their civ.


P.S. with all these complaints, I'm kind of worried the ideology system is going to get dumb down in the balance patch. I really hope that doesn't happen. Its so easy to defend again it >.<

 

[Strategist83]

@ Atwork: Shame about the responses you got here. Hope the sheeple didn't scare you away entirely.

While I believe ideology should always play a role, I've also pondered the concept of making 'rogue states' viable. Whether it happened through national- or world wonders, policies or tenets is less important, as is what detriments having turned one's back on the world would carry: The concept itself is interesting.

There does seem to be a problem with the AI generally favoring Order - there can certainly be democratic and autocratic worlds, but Order gets the larger share of the cake. More annoyingly, the AI doesn't seem to adapt to what ideology is chosen; it's the usual simplistic Firaxis solution to AI decisions where an ideology is picked more or less at random with no actual impact on AI decision-making. I'd be interested to see things like autocracy AIs gain a greater appetite for conquest and Freedoms start chasing city-state alliances. The current system where Ramkhamhaeng will occasionally go dictator yet still 'hate' warmongers and pursue a strategy no different from before makes little sense.

 

[dexters]

^ Ad homenims and calling people sheeple doesn't really help.

If you have an idea, post in ideas and suggestions; this is not a place to go off on a tangent about your idea that they haven't thought of yet.

Also the AI will choose based on their situation. While order is often most popular, they also choose Freedom and Autocracy regularly.

 

[Resipsa]

@ Atwork: Shame about the responses you got here. Hope the sheeple didn't scare you away entirely.

While I believe ideology should always play a role, I've also pondered the concept of making 'rogue states' viable. Whether it happened through national- or world wonders, policies or tenets is less important, as is what detriments having turned one's back on the world would carry is less important: The concept itself is interesting.

There does seem to be a problem with the AI generally favoring Order - there can certainly be democratic and autocratic worlds, but Order gets the larger share of the cake. More annoyingly, the AI doesn't seem to adapt to what ideology is chosen; it's the usual simplistic Firaxis solution to AI decisions where an ideology is picked more or less at random with no actual impact on AI decision-making. I'd be interested to see things like autocracy AIs gain a greater appetite for conquest and Freedoms start chasing city-state alliances. The current system where Ramkhamhaeng will occasionally go dictator yet still 'hate' warmongers and pursue a strategy no different from before makes little sense.

Ad hominem much? Rogue states are shunned by the world for a reason; the. Comparisons to North Korea are actually laughable let's create a. National wonder that makes your civ immune to unhappiness like citizens of north Korea in addition you could ignore. Decisions of the UN and world congress. To compensate your science would stagnate and new technologies could be learned at 200% cost and trade route range could be reduced by 50%, in addition you no longer produce culture or tourism congrats now you've got a rouge state

 

[Smokeybear]

Happiness is rarely a problem after ideologies kick in unless you've been completely neglecting your culture.

As a relative n00b to BNW, what is the correlation between your civ's culture amount, and the unhappiness you get from opposing ideological pressure? Is it purely a matter of 'low culture total = vulnerability to that pressure, and higher culture total = unaffected by it'? I already understand about building as many happiness buildings as possible and having a good amount of total happiness helping you out as well- I'm just curious how the culture thing fits into the picture.

 

[dexters]

As a relative n00b to BNW, what is the correlation between your civ's culture amount, and the unhappiness you get from opposing ideological pressure? Is it purely a matter of 'low culture total = vulnerability to that pressure, and higher culture total = unaffected by it'? I already understand about building as many happiness buildings as possible and having a good amount of total happiness helping you out as well- I'm just curious how the culture thing fits into the picture.

It's a 1-1 thing; if their culture is exotic to you, but your culture is unknown to them, they will exert pressure
If you get your culture up to exotic to theirs and defend their influence on you by keeping their culture exotic, then the pressure goes away.

So you need culture to defend against their tourism and you need tourism to get your influence up vis-a-vis them.

There are some other things you can do, like denying open borders to slow down their tourism and plant a diplomat in their capital to speed up your tourism bonus, and try to get an open border from them.

See my post above.

 

[redwings1340]

As a relative n00b to BNW, what is the correlation between your civ's culture amount, and the unhappiness you get from opposing ideological pressure? Is it purely a matter of 'low culture total = vulnerability to that pressure, and higher culture total = unaffected by it'? I already understand about building as many happiness buildings as possible and having a good amount of total happiness helping you out as well- I'm just curious how the culture thing fits into the picture.

Each civ has a differing level of influence with other civs. Your tourism is balanced out against their culture, and vice versa. You can go from unknown, exotic, familiar, popular, and dominant depending on how much tourism you have compared to their culture. If you are familiar with them, and they are exotic with you, you get one point of ideological pressure on them. If you are both familiar or both exotic with each other, neither of you get a point of influence on the other. So, if you have a huge amount of culture, and almost no tourism, they may be exotic with you while you are unknown with them, so they still get a point of influence on you. If you have a decent amount of tourism though, and a decent amount of culture, you can generally at least break even with other civs, or gain influence points over other civs, which will make them unhappy if they have different ideologies.

 

[Mesix]

There's only so much you can build it up. At a certain point, it really comes down to how many rivals are amassed against you, in terms of one ideology against another. In a game like I'm playing, when there were 18 Order civs lined up against me and one other Freedom civ, there was nothing to do except change to Order.

What I'm proposing would have possibly allowed me to hold out as a rogue Freedom civ, me against the world. Yeah, I would have had to do things that the other Order civs would not have needed to do, i.e. build up a propaganda ministry and a national news service for example, and yeah I might be hated by the world and be in constant conflict, but that should be something that I can choose to do.

If I wanna be the N. Korea of the world, then BNW should give me the tools to be so, without facing crippling unhappiness, etc. Like the article says in the original post, Dictator Kim Jung-un has a higher favorability rating than President Obama. That could never be the case in BNW.

You also lost the culture/tourism race. If you build up your culture/tourism early and stay ahead of the pack, it won't matter if they all take a different ideology. As soon as they are wearing your blue jeans they will adopt your ideology.

 

[redwings1340]

Another thing I tend to do is manipulate my situation so that I give open borders to civs who share my ideology, and focus my tourism pressure on civs who don't (diplomats and stuff), assuming I'm not going for a cultural victory. Pressure points are not a bad thing if a civ shares your ideology, as giving yourself pressure points of freedom can cancel out other people's pressure points of order if you play it right. You just need to have faith that nobody else will win a culture victory while you're doing this.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Anyway, being able to ignore a mechanic is rather powerful, so I'd prefer that such a building would have to be a World Wonder.

I think the Tower of the Juche Idea would be perfect.