A Case for Freedom?

[Colocolo]

Forgive me if there already is a comprehensive ideology thread or guide. I have always been an Order man, it makes me want to shout Viva Allende and dance to the Marseillaise as I gobble my fascist foes to feed my metropolis leviathan. But the thought occurred to me that since I puppet everything, maybe I should go for Freedom. My rationale is that I am usually on the brink of unhappiness if not outright rebellion throughout most of the game, especially after breaking an empire or two. Since economic buildings mysteriously seem to make the better of the 66% chance of buildings to survive conquest (or is it just that the AI builds more of them?), and since puppeting puts those cities on a permanent gold focus (which I assume pushes them to build anything that makes money), I am now wondering if Freedom's happiness boost to gold buildings isn't a better deal overall than the happiness boost for monuments, production, and higher-level science buildings that Order gives. Thoughts?

 

[bonafide11]

Regardless of playstyle, freedom is the best ideology, hands down, in my opinion.

 

[Arachnofiend]

The main draw for Order is Worker's Faculties and your puppets will never build Factories, so yeah, I can see the appeal of Freedom if you're going wide with puppets. Wouldn't you be better off with Autocracy though?

 

[katfish]

Forgive me if there already is a comprehensive ideology thread or guide. I have always been an Order man, it makes me want to shout Viva Allende and dance to the Marseillaise as I gobble my fascist foes to feed my metropolis leviathan. But the thought occurred to me that since I puppet everything, maybe I should go for Freedom. My rationale is that I am usually on the brink of unhappiness if not outright rebellion throughout most of the game, especially after breaking an empire or two. Since economic buildings mysteriously seem to make the better of the 66% chance of buildings to survive conquest (or is it just that the AI builds more of them?), and since puppeting puts those cities on a permanent gold focus (which I assume pushes them to build anything that makes money), I am now wondering if Freedom's happiness boost to gold buildings isn't a better deal overall than the happiness boost for monuments, production, and higher-level science buildings that Order gives. Thoughts?

Order is for wide peaceful civs and when you war with it you either raze everything or use iron curtain.

 

[civ54lyfe]

i've been Freedom for a while when i warmongered a much much less than i do these days. figured Freedom was a no-brainer for anything for Happiness or Diplo or Culture. then tried Order one game, never went back. it just gives you everything you want to win in any way you want it.

 

[Yzman]

Freedom is great for diplo by using trade routes to rapidly gain influence or to be able to buy spaceship parts for science win. Anything else I would go with order probably.

 

[joncnunn]

Freedom is much better for both Diplomatic & Space race victory.

In one game I managed to buy all but one space ship part (without slowing down) since my income was that good. I didn't bother building any spaceship factories. (Other than building Hubble which came with one.)

And if in late game you are willing to send all external trade routes to city states; Freedom has a policy that will make you free allies with all of them (unless an AI does all three of these: runs freedom as well, picks the same policy, and runs a trade route to the same city.) This will make diplomatic victory very easy if you are going for it. Even if not, this is going to give you significant boosts in food, culture, and happiness.

It does appear that for Cultural victory that Order has an edge. But freedom is quite close since you only need to build a Broadcast Tower in the capital to get close to the max bonuses from that policy. (Most culture & tourism will be in the capital)

As to happiness, there is a massive amount of happiness available under both Order & Freedom. With freedom, this is running specialists; which works extremely well because there's another policy that reduces food needed from specialists.

It's only if you've made no effort towards culture and tourism that you'd be subjected to significant ideology unhappiness pressure and actually care which ideology between them gives more happiness.

It's Autocracy though that appears quite weak. Don't most war monglers find they've already effectively won before the Industrial era even starts?

 

[ChrisTheMean]

Freedom is quite good IMO, and surprisingly, makes late game conquering quite easy. I think Order is a stronger tree if you have more small pop cites focusing on working tiles, but if you are build tall Freedom is superior. If you are at the stage of the game when cities you take have buildings with specialist slots, and you have taken universal suffrage (I think that's the one, less unhappy from specialists), your puppets will hardly give you a hit at all. Now, I don't pick freedom with conquering in mind, but have found that out from experience. Also, Arsenal of Democracy is awesome. Not only does if give your whole empire an awesome boost to unit production, but it makes it much easier to keep far-flung CS allies with you and safe.
I played a Shoshone game last week (Immortal) where I used Arsenal, and whenever my cities had nothing really pressing to do I just cranked out Comanche and Privateers for my CS allies. Its pretty funny if you end up declaring/being declared on by someone surrounded by your CSs as they get swarmed pretty badly.

 

[joshua43214]

I have been working out strategies for OCC, and recently tried freedom with Korea. I worked quite nicely, and with OCC I think it might often be better. In OCC, the gain from workers facilities is about the same as the gain from working every specialist slot +planted GP's, and getting Statue of Liberty with that means spaceship part in 3 turns. Also with Order you have to choose between buying GE's or GS's if you finished rationalism. With Freedom, you can faith buy the GS's and gold buy the SS parts. And as noted, Freedom gives a lot of happiness, but Autocracy seems better to me. Playing a dom game now, will have a look at it when it comes up

 

[Arachnofiend]

It's Autocracy though that appears quite weak. Don't most war monglers find they've already effectively won before the Industrial era even starts?

Not really? With the early game the way it is I usually don't take a capital before Machinery, if even that. Besides, Autocracy is for when you're struggling for some reason, not when you're rolling towards a victory. By far the best ideology for when you're behind in tech.

 

[Shimmler]

If you are gong wide than nothing is better than Order.

 

[EEE_BOY]

And if in late game you are willing to send all external trade routes to city states; Freedom has a policy that will make you free allies with all of them (unless an AI does all three of these: runs freedom as well, picks the same policy, and runs a trade route to the same city.) This will make diplomatic victory very easy if you are going for it. Even if not, this is going to give you significant boosts in food, culture, and

which ideology tenent you are talking about?

 

[MarshalN]

which ideology tenent you are talking about?

Treaty organization

 

[Matthew.]

It's Autocracy though that appears quite weak. Don't most war monglers find they've already effectively won before the Industrial era even starts?

I suppose I could just set up a duel map and win within 30 turns or so, yes.

Time to up the difficulty or play larger maps if you are winning domination games that quickly.

And really, it is no different than saying "Oh look, got a tech lead already at Renaissance, Rationalism is therefore quite weak."

 

[Vidszhite]

It's Autocracy though that appears quite weak. Don't most war monglers find they've already effectively won before the Industrial era even starts?

That used to be the case, but I've found it to be much more viable to start warmongering late in BNW. Late game wars are very easy and quick, especially when you have the warmongering might of Autocracy.

On that note, though, Autocracy isn't just for warmongers, and in fact, if you find yourself in a large lead late game, it enables you to leverage that huge army in other ways. It also allows you to catch up from a tech deficit far more easily than the others, if you find yourself behind. It basically makes your closest CS allies impenetrable to outside influence, as well as giving you a massive, stackable boost to influence in Cult of Personality.

Freedom's culture T3 is arguably the weakest, because even though it is the most versatile, Freedom has no big "everything" modifier to really slam it out against differing ideologies. Order's Culture T3 is potentially the strongest, but only on a narrow band. Differing ideologies once again give it trouble, but not nearly as much as Freedom, since both of its boosters are "everything" modifiers. Autocracy's is without a doubt the strongest, though it requires an active approach. It can't be used passively at all, but it gets a BIG +50% "everything" modifier that can stack with itself when at war with two common enemies, leading to staggeringly easy Influential status. Freedom can more easily target diplomatic bonuses with its Diplo T3, but it is once again weaker than the Autocratic alternative, and is completely useless during wartime, since enemies can sink its trade ships, and even without a war, freedom's Gold income must suffer to use it. Freedom can more easily purchase spaceship parts, but it gets no direct bonuses to science, while Order gets several, which means you need to stay small and really leverage your specialists in order to win the space race -- if you get too big, or if you get too many puppets, that science penalty will rear its ugly head, and buying spaceship parts won't matter, since Order can get the science first.

So, basically, this is how the three ideologies work:

Freedom has the most versatile, easy-to-use peacetime bonuses, and heavily leverages tall empires, but numerically has the weakest T3 in each of its classes. It plays the best in isolation, but is unlikely to catch up if Order and Autocracy are actively working against it, since having to stop what it's doing to build an army that it actually has to USE prevents it from doing what it wants: to sit there and build. Many of its advantages have a hidden drawback, and while it can certainly build an army, go to war, have puppets, and train its military, it has a much higher opportunity cost for doing so.

Order leverages wide empires with its numerous per-city bonuses, and it benefits when a majority of the other civs pick it. It is also the best at keeping others from meddling in its affairs -- once Order gets a lead, it keeps its lead. Enemy spies get machinegunned to death, its production is huge, its science gets direct injections, and its influence with other Order civs is unmatched, making it unlikely for ideology unhappiness to affect them. Unfortunately, Order has no means of influencing City-States, so it often loses out on alliance bonuses as Freedom and Autocracy gobble them up, and as a result, Order will end up with little influence in the world congress. Order NEEDS to get a lead to take advantage of its tenets, or else it will stagnate. Without a lead, Freedom gets to leverage its money and city-states, Autocracy will steamroll right over them with powerful armies, and other Order civs will use the weaker ones as stepping stones. In fact, if you aren't winning as Order, you'll most likely lose to someone that IS winning as Order.

Autocracy has the largest bonuses in every category it's in, but virtually none of them are passive, aside from the happiness it gets, which are insane. Autocracy requires active commitment and a deliberate plan to take full advantage of its power. It is without a doubt the best ideology for a player who fell behind and needs to catch up, but it does not hold onto a lead well at all, unless it constantly smashes down the others who might try to usurp its mantle. Fortunately, everything it does leverages having a huge army, making that army useful for important things other than conquest, but if you procrastinate or try to get comfortable just sitting there building, you lose.

 

[sendos]

I'm yet to play a game where I choose the Order Ideology. Since AI's get it before me, I just wish to get the bonus 2 SP's to save up on culture costs so I choose Freedom. I've had one game where I've chosen autocracy and that was fun too, especially with gunboat diplomacy, industrial espionage and Klauswitz's legacy. Cult of personality is way too situational for my liking though.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

You get more science from worker's faculties than new deal, even if every tile your cities work were an academy. Freedom is for a culture or diplo win.

 

[apotheoser]

Freedom works for everything. A policy for +25% when building military units? A policy to instantly give you 6 great war infantry that have a special bonus outside your lands, and from then on out 6 units are always maintenance free?

Freedom is amazing for industrial/modern warfare.

 

[apotheoser]

Freedom's culture T3 is arguably the weakest, because even though it is the most versatile, Freedom has no big "everything" modifier to really slam it out against differing ideologies. Order's Culture T3 is potentially the strongest, but only on a narrow band.

Uh, no offense, but are we even playing the same game?

Order's tier 3 bonuses are 100% inferior to Freedom's.

There is a tourism bonus in both; Freedom's is better because it only requires having a broadcast tower as opposed to more happiness than the AI.

There is a spaceship bonus in both; Freedom's is better because it allows the purchase of spaceship parts with gold, whereas Order's requires... expending a great engineer? WTF? And 10 science? I'm getting thousands of science per turn and you want to give me 10 more? Even with % bonuses it's not a significant increase in tech. It might speed my entire tech process up by 1 turn.

Then there's a weirder comparison wherein Order gets free courthouses on city capture whereas Freedom can get free influence with city states for trade routes. Do the gold math on that and see which is better, ie, cost of influence in terms of gold versus cost of a courthouse.

 

[Ayestes]

Science can be debatable between Order and Freedom but Skyscrapers and Worker's Faculties is pretty huge. Honestly I think Order would eek out a Victory just a couple turns faster then Freedom, but Freedom is plenty solid for most cases. Freedom is really only effective in high pop cities with Specialists in this category though while Order is effective in any size cities. Basically Freedom works for only a Tall civ and Order works for Tall or Wide just fine. I like Order better for MP games though in an attempt to kill off spies and keep up the production counts.

Cultural and Diplomacy Victories though seem much easier with Freedom. Broadcast Towers and easy ways to make City-States your friend are a pretty good advantage. Autocracy would still be best for a Domination Victory at this era, but it's not like Freedom and Order contribute nothing to those.