Noob stuck in anarchy

[Sallah]

I'm late in my first game. Been warmongering very successfully but apparently am carelessly generating way too many cultural points for a warmongerer. Every other turn, I'm forced to unlock a "new" social policy. I've already unlocked and made progress in seven of them. So I pick one of the unexplored ones--it doesn't seem to matter which one I choose--I go into Anarchy for one turn with no revenue or science. I come out of Anarchy for one turn. Rinse, recycle, repeat.

The manual says I can right-click out of choosing a social policy, but it doesn't seem to work. I see no way to end a turn without inducing revolt. Apart from taking care to not generate so much culture in my next game, is there any way to cut out this ridiculous cycle of anarchy which cuts science and revenue in half in this game?

 

[Oerdin]

I laugh at you as even the Civpedia, as horrible as it is, tells you how to solve your problem.

 

[joyous_gard]

I laugh at you as even the Civpedia, as horrible as it is, tells you how to solve your problem.

I don't know the answer to the OP but this is an awesome reply.

 

[Yzman]

You are forced to unlock a new policy because they changed it in a patch.

Anarchy is started when you try to adopt 2 conflicting policies trees.

You can't have piety and rationalism active at the same time.

You also can't have autocracy active at the same time as liberty or freedom.

Switching into one of these while you have the other active results in anarchy.

 

[Redoubts]

Next game you make, go into advanced settings and allow policy saving. You can then let the excess points lie fallow.

 

[Sallah]

OK, thanks, Yzman and Redoubts, I'll change the setting before my next game to kill the patch.

What I still don't get, though, is that if I were playing for a cultural victory (I'm not), I'd be stuck, unable to get to go for Utopia, and I don't get why. The reason I say I'd be stuck is that I've unlocked all ten policies at least one time. I've discovered all the first level subpolicies for each policy. Now, each couple of turns, I'm forced to once again unlock a policy that conflicts with one of the other policies, but I never make advance through any of second level subpolicies. All of them say another requisite policy (unspecified) is required before that subpolicy can be researched, but I never seem to get there. What would I need to do to move this along towards a cultural victory, if that's what I was playing for?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

OK, thanks, Yzman and Redoubts.

What I still don't get, though, is that if I were playing for a cultural victory (I'm not), I'd be stuck, unable to get to go for Utopia, and I don't get why. The reason I say I'd be stuck is that I've unlocked all ten policies at least one time. I've discovered all the first level subpolicies for each policy. Now, each couple of turns, I'm forced to once again unlock a policy that conflicts with one of the other policies, but I never make any new progress on any of the second level of subpolicies before I have to unlock a different policy. What would I need to do to move this along towards a cultural victory, if that's what I was playing for?

You aren't forced to open a new Policy Branch, you just need to get a new 'subpolicy'
So your strategy should be to select a (sub)policy from

Tradition, Honor, Commerce, Patronage, Order
OR
Rationalism/Piety... only one not the other
OR
Autocracy/Freedom or Liberty

So if you have Rationalism open DO NOT unlock Piety
if you have Piety open DO NOT unlock Rationalism
if you have Liberty open DO NOT unlock Autocracy
if you have Freedom open DO NOT unlock Autocracy
if you have Autocracy open DO NOT unlock Liberty
if you have Autocracy open DO NOT unlock Freedom


And if you are mass warmongering and unlocking a new culture policy every turn, you can probably solve that by annexing cities, instead of just puppeting them.

 

[Sallah]

You aren't forced to open a new Policy Branch, you just need to get a new 'subpolicy'

Ohhhhhhhhhhh... here was my noob interface mistake on this part of it: I hadn't actually acquired ANY subpolicies on the various branches. That's why I couldn't advance to any second-level subpolicies. I thought I had tried clicking on different subpolicies to select one in an open branch and it hadn't worked. I tried again after your post and this time, it did work.

The solution is to left-click directly on a subpolicy that's available in an unlocked branch, and that opens it. And obviously I shouldn't have pursued all ten main policy branches in any event--but I thought I had to because I thought I couldn't end a turn without unlocking a locked main branch. One is not supposed to need more than five main branches if he is going for cultural victory.

And if you are mass warmongering and unlocking a new culture policy every turn, you can probably solve that by annexing cities, instead of just puppeting them.

Yes! That was indeed the other part of how I got into the situation of (unnecessarily, I now realize) being in anarchy every other turn. I was conquering AI civs that were making peace by giving me all their cities other than their new capital, and I was puppetting them all to reduce the happiness hit. As new resources become available, I can annex a few per turn and rush-buy courthouses.

Many thanks, Krikkitone.