Sick and tired of the cultural civs picking the opposite of my ideology!

[danaphanous]

So I posted on a complaining fellow fan's note that I've never experienced civil disorder levels from ideologies a couple of days ago. I even bragged a little that the reason was culture was the main defense and I usually had plenty of that to combat runaway cultural civ influence. Consider me humbled today.

My latest Immortal/Epic game has been both the most fun and most frustrating play-through I have attempted yet. I tried a new, unfamiliar civ, the Celts seeing their nice free early source of Faith and liking religion. I also was excited to try out the Pictish Warriors to accelerate my religion and the use their opera-house extra 3 happiness to expand wide. I set up all of this successfully and even grabbed Pagodas and Tithes and 4 other happiness-generators per city from my faith. I was all set to expand tall-wide early due to my happiness advantages.

Then, as some of you fellow readers might remember, I found that the Ottomans aren't the best neighbor and spent 150 turns nerfed by war with them, neglecting my culture growth. As luck would have it there were some amazing cultural powerhouses over on the other continent. I knew they would cause problems during ideologies but no matter what I pick: Order or Freedom (their 2 preferred) they go the other way immediately plunging me into Revolutionary Wave with -45 happiness. I can keep barely in the green going Order bc it has a lot of happiness boosters, however, this seems an imperfect fix. And after playing the game out for another 100 turns as Order I've found I can't ever seem to recover the lost ground. Even with 220 cpt, world fair win, even though all other cultures only have average tourism of 70 per turn and the leader only has 134. The leader just added another torch to me too despite the fact that I've average 100 greater in culture than his tourism output for the past 50 turns. I should have caught up ages ago but nothing has changed and I've had he -45 penalty nerfing me this whole time. I can win, but for future reference, why can I not seem to recover what I've lost? Does influence not ever go backwards or is tourism points weighted more heavily than culture? I guess the take-away is, if you suck at culture, don't pick ideologies before the lines are drawn, and invest in culture early bc it never seems to go in reverse nearly as quickly. I've seen 1 person lose a torch on me but he is one of the weakest and it seems small consolation after the loads of work I've put into ramping up my culture output. In fact, ramping my culture has hurt me as I seem to overcome my Order allies positive influence before the Freedom influences. I didn't even know this could happen. I thought order friends always gave me a point but apparently not...

 

[Calouste]

The take away is: don't suck at culture. The reason for that is that there are three ideologies, so there will always be two that have a negative influence on you, and only one that has a positive influence. So if you don't have a decent amount of culture/tourism, you will be in trouble.

Sucking at culture can lose you the game, the same way that sucking at military or sucking at science or sucking at diplomacy loses you the game.

It's pretty hard to claw things back at the end of the game because Tourism gets some large multipliers, which Culture does not. Make sure that you generate Tourism as well, because the net influence a civ has over you is their influence level over you compared to your influence level over them, and it's fairly easy to get at least 1 influence level.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

So I posted on a complaining fellow fan's note that I've never experienced civil disorder levels from ideologies a couple of days ago. I even bragged a little that the reason was culture was the main defense and I usually had plenty of that to combat runaway cultural civ influence. Consider me humbled today.

My latest Immortal/Epic game has been both the most fun and most frustrating play-through I have attempted yet. I tried a new, unfamiliar civ, the Celts seeing their nice free early source of Faith and liking religion. I also was excited to try out the Pictish Warriors to accelerate my religion and the use their opera-house extra 3 happiness to expand wide. I set up all of this successfully and even grabbed Pagodas and Tithes and 4 other happiness-generators per city from my faith. I was all set to expand tall-wide early due to my happiness advantages.

Then, as some of you fellow readers might remember, I found that the Ottomans aren't the best neighbor and spent 150 turns nerfed by war with them, neglecting my culture growth. As luck would have it there were some amazing cultural powerhouses over on the other continent. I knew they would cause problems during ideologies but no matter what I pick: Order or Freedom (their 2 preferred) they go the other way immediately plunging me into Revolutionary Wave with -45 happiness. I can keep barely in the green going Order bc it has a lot of happiness boosters, however, this seems an imperfect fix. And after playing the game out for another 100 turns as Order I've found I can't ever seem to recover the lost ground. Even with 220 cpt, world fair win, even though all other cultures only have average tourism of 70 per turn and the leader only has 134. The leader just added another torch to me too despite the fact that I've average 100 greater in culture than his tourism output for the past 50 turns. I should have caught up ages ago but nothing has changed and I've had he -45 penalty nerfing me this whole time. I can win, but for future reference, why can I not seem to recover what I've lost? Does influence not ever go backwards or is tourism points weighted more heavily than culture? I guess the take-away is, if you suck at culture, don't pick ideologies before the lines are drawn, and invest in culture early bc it never seems to go in reverse nearly as quickly. I've seen 1 person lose a torch on me but he is one of the weakest and it seems small consolation after the loads of work I've put into ramping up my culture output. In fact, ramping my culture has hurt me as I seem to overcome my Order allies positive influence before the Freedom influences. I didn't even know this could happen. I thought order friends always gave me a point but apparently not...

Simple...
You Need TOURISM to defend against Ideological pressure.

Their Tourism v. Your Culture= Their Influence Level (what helps them win a Cultural victory).. their "Ideological Attack"

YOUR TOURISM v. Their Culture= Your Influence Level... your Ideological Defense

For each level of Influence they have on you MORE than you have on them

They push on your Ideology

So

Poland: Order
Exotic on America (1 level)

India: Order
Familiar on America (2 level)

Germany: Autocracy
Popular on America (3 level)

Russia: Freedom
Popular on America (3 level)

Japan: Freedom
Familiar on America (2 level)


America: Order
Exotic on Everyone (for simplicity)= 1 level

Effects on America
Poland: 1 - 1 = 0 no effect [why Poland doesn't help]
India: 2 - 1 = 1 Hammer
Germany: 3 - 1 = 2 Swords
Russia: 3 - 1 = 2 Torches
Japan: 2 - 1 = 1 Torch

Total
1 Hammer
2 Swords
3 Torches

Total Other Ideologies= 2+3 =5
Your Ideology = 1

5-1 = 4 (enough for Civil Disorder)

If you were unknown (0 levels) to everyone, then you would be in a worse spot (3 civs have different Ideologies, only 2 have the same)

 

[danaphanous]

Ahhh, that makes more sense. Thanks KrikketTwo

So I have great culture now, but a good bit of that is landmarks which generate no tourism, I only thought my tourism counted towards my culture victory, I didn't realize it directly factored into the modifiers on my defense as well. So Even though I've forced all but a quarter other influences down to exotic or unknown with my newly ramped up culture the only way I'll get no unhappiness is if I get exotic on them as well...which I'm not. That's actually a lot easier to fix. I was wondering why I was exotic on my ally but exerted no pressure on him...he must be the same on me. So I have 68 tourism which is the global average but I got started late so maybe that's why I'm not affecting the others, guess I've been focusing on the wrong thing.

Anyway, that still doesn't really explain why the big cultural civs deliberately picked the opposite of whatever ideology I picked. I reloaded and tried it both ways. That was the main problem. I would've had zero happiness from ideologies with no work at all if I could've ended up with them. My guess is they were just going for the ones with the most free tenets so I should've held off on that third factory till I saw which way Morocco went.

Well, I'll see what I can do. I've already been boosting my culture with hotels and airports but there's just not a lot to go around at this point bc they only factor in wonders and landmarks. The one thing I did well on was my happiness base this game so that's why I've stayed happy anyway with -45 from ideologies. Good to know guys, at this point I may be forced just to play it out though and win a bit later as a result.

 

[reddishrecue]

Simple...
You Need TOURISM to defend against Ideological pressure.

Their Tourism v. Your Culture= Their Influence Level (what helps them win a Cultural victory).. their "Ideological Attack"

YOUR TOURISM v. Their Culture= Your Influence Level... your Ideological Defense

For each level of Influence they have on you MORE than you have on them

They push on your Ideology

So

Poland: Order
Exotic on America (1 level)

India: Order
Familiar on America (2 level)

Germany: Autocracy
Popular on America (3 level)

Russia: Freedom
Popular on America (3 level)

Japan: Freedom
Familiar on America (2 level)


America: Order
Exotic on Everyone (for simplicity)= 1 level

Effects on America
Poland: 1 - 1 = 0 no effect [why Poland doesn't help]
India: 2 - 1 = 1 Hammer
Germany: 3 - 1 = 2 Swords
Russia: 3 - 1 = 2 Torches
Japan: 2 - 1 = 1 Torch

Total
1 Hammer
2 Swords
3 Torches

Total Other Ideologies= 2+3 =5
Your Ideology = 1

5-1 = 4 (enough for Civil Disorder)

If you were unknown (0 levels) to everyone, then you would be in a worse spot (3 civs have different Ideologies, only 2 have the same)

That pyramid looks similar to the ideological tenet pyramid. So for example, do you get 2 hammer/torches/swords when your ideology is at the second tenet?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

No relationship between # tenets and amount of pressure

However....
If you choose an Ideology, that ideology no longer has 2 free tenets, so the next civ is less likely to choose it. (One of many factors the ai uses in picking ideology)

 

[phillipwyllie]

To OP: I'm afraid your long story was tldr, and you didn't give your play level so I'll give some hints.

• Ideological pressure is the difference of their pressure level to your pressure level. So if they are dominant and you're dominant then neither will exert ideological pressure.
• Total culture is the main defense to ideological pressure(cancels out tourism somewhat), with total tourism secondary. You should be attempting to generate as much culture as you can, even when at war. The world fair is best voted for when you are at your maximum so you can pump out GW and bulb them for a huge boost.
• You should never give open borders but buy them at all times for the tourism modifier. You can't stop AI's trading with you(both civs get the tourism modifier) but you should send a trade route to the cultural leader(s), and not the tourism leaders(although the tourism leader will usually be the culture leader).
• War ends open borders and any trade routes, I've seen the AI DOW me just to end open borders and any trade routes when I'm about to become influential thus increasing the time I can become influential.
• You don't need all the cultural wonders but you must have all cultural buildings with theming artifacts in all museums. If you plan ahead you can be first to build a cultural wonder thus increasing your chances of getting it.
• Autocracy is the best imo ideology to pick when faced with ideological pressure as there are many tenets that improve happiness. When you unlock gunboat diplomacy then you can rule the WC whilst maintaining a relatively large army(AI will be less likely to DOW you).
• Be first to pick an ideology for the 2 free tenets, you need to beeline Radio or Industrialization and hope you have access to coal. I prefer the Radio option as it's a guaranteed ideology pick and sometimes faster than building 3 factories.

To answer your q, as answered earlier the AI will regard the 2 free tenets more than anything else. Second in my experience is what the dominant ideology is. If you beeline Radio you might get your ideology passed as world ideology before any other civ picks an ideology(other civs will be easier to bribe if they haven't pick one yet).

 

[Syailendra]

if you are behind in tourism and culture that it seems cultural victory is near imposible, sometimes it better to delay getting a ideology and follow the leader instead. One or two free tenets is not worth the fuss of getting a revo wafe.

 

[Wodan]

Don't forget you can always try to get that U.N. vote for your ideology, which dramatically reduces ideological pressure on you (it might even eliminate it altogether, I don't remember). I've even been able to buy off civs of opposing ideologies to vote for it. And you can pad your votes with CS allies of course.

 

[Martin_K]

you can't really lower their influence by pushing your culture. the problem with this approach is-they only need 10% of your lifetime culture worth of tourism to be "exotic" - in other words, to keep them on "unknown", you have to produce 10x as much culture as they produce tourism (less in practice, since they first have to overcome the stockpile of culture you built up while you were not exposed to their tourism yet)

the way to fight back is - as was pointed out - to counter their influence level with your influence level, i.e. fight tourism with tourism.

 

[docbud]

As some others have said--push your ideology through the UN as soon as possible. Many of the AIs will still stubbornly choose a different one, but it puts them in a world of hurt.

 

[joncnunn]

Main source of culture is also the Great Works; that also produce tourism.

Basically your choices are:

1. Build the darn guilds and run them even when not seeking a cultural victory.
(Just doing this will provide enough culture & tourism to negate penalties; unless you build Hotels you won't accidentally win cultural victory)

OR

2. On purpose delay getting an ideology and then select whatever they pick.

 

[nokmirt]

In my last game I chose autocracy and everyone else chose Order, except America who chose freedom. The main reason I chose autocracy was because I was going for dom victory. The other reason was because I wanted to see if I could overcome the cultural/tourism influence of other civs. At the outset my happiness took a -13 hit and it slowly began to get worse. Eventually it went to -23, then it fell fast based on Poland who had an extreme culture/tourism lead which gave me a -54 happiness penalty. Finally my happiness went into the negatives, but I was able to come out of it, even though I took 3 more capitals. I built zoos, stadiums, and any defensive buildings in cities that had none, this seemed to keep my head above water. When I took Warsaw, my happiness boosted right up there again. At the end of the game I was producing 459 culture, without a golden age, and I had 115 tourism. Is 115 tourism decent? I don't really pay much attention to that, some of it is confusing to me. I have one more question, how do you find out how much tourism your rivals produce? I couldn't seem to find it.

Oh yeah I did build hotels, and airports in my cities with high culture and those with great works. I still need to learn more about the culture game. I should have built more archaeologists, I only produced two. To tell you the truth, even though I am a warmonger, I love to concentrate on culture and tourism. It is quite interesting. The game I played was on king. I dominated the game so I feel I am ready for emperor.

 

[nokmirt]

Don't forget you can always try to get that U.N. vote for your ideology, which dramatically reduces ideological pressure on you (it might even eliminate it altogether, I don't remember). I've even been able to buy off civs of opposing ideologies to vote for it. And you can pad your votes with CS allies of course.

This I will keep in mind. I also will start fighting tourism with tourism, instead of squeezing out as much culture as possible. I need to run the guilds.

 

[Moriarte]

There is a way to survive with low tourism, i learned it the hard way in domination games. Sometimes you just can't compete and choose ideology most suitable for a particular game, producing, say, 6-8 tourism by turn 150. At the same time you see opponents, like Egypt doing 30 tourism and rising. In this case you have to delay picking ideologies for as long as you can. Once major tourism players align in their ideological choices you have to pick carefully.

Let's say everyone is unknown in regards to your tourism, but others are pressuring you as follows:

Brazil: Freedom, 1 torch.
Russia: Order, 2 hammers
Babylon: Autocracy, 1 sword
India: Order, 1 hammer
Siam: Autocracy, 2 swords.
Korea: Autocracy, 1 sword.

Total hammers pressuring you: 3
Total swords pressuring you: 4
Total torches pressuring you: 1

Therefore, in this scenario you are forced into autocracy as total 4 pressure on you from autocracy civs will compensate for pressure from freedom and order civs. (4-3-1=0) So, while having virtually no tourism pressure of your own, you are content. Situation is fragile of course. You have to track down progress very carefully from then on, shifting trade routes and buying open borders when needed.

That way you can survive, while dipping into unhappiness briefly for few turns here and there, and, until your own culture and tourism will saturate by means of war. It is not a guaranteed panacea in all 100% of cases, of course, as tourism will be fluctuating, but, with this line of thinking one can at least "plan" in stormy waters.

 

[reddishrecue]

There is a way to survive with low tourism, i learned it the hard way in domination games. Sometimes you just can't compete and choose ideology most suitable for a particular game, producing, say, 6-8 tourism by turn 150. At the same time you see opponents, like Egypt doing 30 tourism and rising. In this case you have to delay picking ideologies for as long as you can. Once major tourism players align in their ideological choices you have to pick carefully.

Let's say everyone is unknown in regards to your tourism, but others are pressuring you as follows:

Brazil: Freedom, 1 torch.
Russia: Order, 2 hammers
Babylon: Autocracy, 1 sword
India: Order, 1 hammer
Siam: Autocracy, 2 swords.
Korea: Autocracy, 1 sword.

Total hammers pressuring you: 3
Total swords pressuring you: 4
Total torches pressuring you: 1

Therefore, in this scenario you are forced into autocracy as total 4 pressure on you from autocracy civs will compensate for pressure from freedom and order civs. (4-3-1=0) So, while having virtually no tourism pressure of your own, you are content. Situation is fragile of course. You have to track down progress very carefully from then on, shifting trade routes and buying open borders when needed.

That way you can survive, while dipping into unhappiness briefly for few turns here and there, and, until your own culture and tourism will saturate by means of war. It is not a guaranteed panacea in all 100% of cases, of course, as tourism will be fluctuating, but, with this line of thinking one can at least "plan" in stormy waters.

Can you tell the ideological pressure that these civilizations before you get your ideology? Or do you place these ideologies this way, assuming that civilizations get their ideologies before "the civilian"?

 

[Calouste]

In my last game I chose autocracy and everyone else chose Order, except America who chose freedom. The main reason I chose autocracy was because I was going for dom victory. The other reason was because I wanted to see if I could overcome the cultural/tourism influence of other civs. At the outset my happiness took a -13 hit and it slowly began to get worse. Eventually it went to -23, then it fell fast based on Poland who had an extreme culture/tourism lead which gave me a -54 happiness penalty. Finally my happiness went into the negatives, but I was able to come out of it, even though I took 3 more capitals. I built zoos, stadiums, and any defensive buildings in cities that had none, this seemed to keep my head above water. When I took Warsaw, my happiness boosted right up there again. At the end of the game I was producing 459 culture, without a golden age, and I had 115 tourism. Is 115 tourism decent? I don't really pay much attention to that, some of it is confusing to me. I have one more question, how do you find out how much tourism your rivals produce? I couldn't seem to find it.

Oh yeah I did build hotels, and airports in my cities with high culture and those with great works. I still need to learn more about the culture game. I should have built more archaeologists, I only produced two. To tell you the truth, even though I am a warmonger, I love to concentrate on culture and tourism. It is quite interesting. The game I played was on king. I dominated the game so I feel I am ready for emperor.

115 Tourism is decent, not Cultural Victory level, but enough to hold your own if you can win in a different way. By comparison, I had about 650 in my last CV game with the National Visitor Center and Internet.

 

[Moriarte]

Can you tell the ideological pressure that these civilizations before you get your ideology?

Indeed you can tell ideological pressure before you get ideology. Culture overview --> influence by player. If you are one influence level below Babylon (say, he is familiar, you are exotic) then you get pressured by one sword, as per my above example. Not sure if i understood the question correctly.

Or do you place these ideologies this way, assuming that civilizations get their ideologies before "the civilian"?

Before the civilian? As in: before me? Yes, i assume you can create a situation where you would be one of the last civs to adopt ideology.

 

[reddishrecue]

Can you be exotic to yourself? Maybe you meant to a third party member. That's a bit ironic.

 

[nokmirt]

Brazil: Freedom, 1 torch.
Russia: Order, 2 hammers
Babylon: Autocracy, 1 sword
India: Order, 1 hammer
Siam: Autocracy, 2 swords.
Korea: Autocracy, 1 sword.

Total hammers pressuring you: 3
Total swords pressuring you: 4
Total torches pressuring you: 1

Therefore, in this scenario you are forced into autocracy as total 4 pressure on you from autocracy civs will compensate for pressure from freedom and order civs. (4-3-1=0) So, while having virtually no tourism pressure of your own, you are content. Situation is fragile of course. You have to track down progress very carefully from then on, shifting trade routes and buying open borders when needed.

That way you can survive, while dipping into unhappiness briefly for few turns here and there, and, until your own culture and tourism will saturate by means of war. It is not a guaranteed panacea in all 100% of cases, of course, as tourism will be fluctuating, but, with this line of thinking one can at least "plan" in stormy waters.

Interesting thanks for the post.

115 Tourism is decent, not Cultural Victory level, but enough to hold your own if you can win in a different way. By comparison, I had about 650 in my last CV game with the National Visitor Center and Internet.

That's a lot of tourism. I'll try to work on improving that a bit.