Autocracy Either Needs Buff or Remake

[Arachnofiend]

I'm trying out a strategy for a wide culture victory as the Maya. The idea is to get as many great people post-futurism as possible; the best way to do this is obviously through faith, which the Maya are quite good at pumping out in bucket loads. Take left side of Liberty, full Piety, full Aesthetics, get into Autocracy for Futurism and Industrial Espionage, then use the rest of your culture to finish off Liberty. Buy as many Great Musicians as you can possibly get and concert tour your way to victory.

I'm not doing as well as I hoped but I think it's mainly due to faults in my own game (I've been playing science very badly since BNW came out) than faults in the strategy. Figured I'd post it here, see if a better player is interested in the idea or something.

 

[leadtothehead]

I agree with most here the level 1 tenets are weakest of the 3 ideologies, but level 2 might be the best of the three, yes due to the structure of the system autocracy is at abit of a disadvantage but I don't think as serious as some make it.

 

[notyourtypical]

Lightning Warfare: I'm not a fan of this cause I dislike armor units. It's not bad, but the alternatives are better.

You should give it a go.

I've felt the same way about armor; why invest in tanks when bombers are plain better? But after playing around with Lightning Warfare, its hella fun. Probably not as efficient, but mass bombers laying waste and one or two tanks to capture cities always feels a bit cheesy. Armor's biggest limitation always ZoC: driving past an infantry or AA gun costing extra movement never feels right. But with 5 move landships or 6 move tanks you can run in, hit the weak guys in the back and get out. Or surround and kill. Works great with Discipline from Honor. It makes end game warfare more fun I think. Plus, managing stacks of aircraft is a PITA.

And Autocracy as a whole seems weak; then you use it and it's not.

 

[Anarchist]

For a tennet 1, 25% combat strength on wounded units its a good bonus, if you've got a ton of units (which are bound to get hit), you're dealing a lot of "free" damage.

Cripes!

ALL my units are damaged once I get going. This one is a must if you want to fight

 

[Vidszhite]

I'm playing an autocracy game on immortal with Attila, and I gotta say its nowhere near as bad as people say. If the tier ones were any better I'd call the rest of the tree overpowered. Militarism is solo good. Happiness from exp buildings let's you get real happy real fast, and with the +15xp tenet, it's like having a Brandenburg gate in EVERY city. Despite being strong militarily, I have the strongest culture, just hosted the world games, and because Austria is DoWing everyone, I am pumping out a whopping 1477 tourism per turn to the others from Cult of Personality, and even though the AI is all strong culturally, I am 30 turns from influential from most of them. Because of gunboat diplomacy, I am grabbing free CS allies left and right, just liberated Mongolia, so now he votes for me for world leader. Even if my culture victory doesn't take, I can win diplomatically. Portugal's lead is rapidly eroding. I just need one more CS ally to win.

Oh, and because of lightning warfare, I have like 30 super elite repairing tanks that surround and demolish EVERYthing, then run away before anyone can hit back. Who needs bombers? I barely even need artillery! Besides, if they have AA guns, bombers can't scratch anything in the area anyway.

Autocracy rocks on high difficulties. I may have won my first BNW game as Freedom Arabia, but autocracy Huns has been by far the most fun, and will be my first Immortal win in BNW.

 

[Vidszhite]

I feel I should point out that people saying warmongers won't have culture are stuck in old civ's mindset and are completely forgetting antiquity sites. The more land you own, the more sites are rightwise yours, and the more battles you fight and cities you raze, the more sites you spawn.

Through archaeology, you can reap the fruits of your prior conquest and eclipse a wonder spammer in no time at all by filling your museums with war relics. This is not only a good reason to annex (to build museums), it gives warmongers the opportunity to get in on the culture game even if they were late to the party. That is the brand of culture game autocracy lends itself to.

 

[Vohbo]

Usually when people say something is bad, they haven't understood how to use it. It's the same in a lot of MMO's etcetera.

About the tanks: yeah I know it's good fun, but when are you really beelining for tanks ? I'd much rather take Total War and line up bombers that start with Air Repair and are surrounded by Medic 2's, and just take cities with good old Cavalry, almost always.

 

[RealHuhn]

Usually when people say something is bad, they haven't understood how to use it. It's the same in a lot of MMO's etcetera.

About the tanks: yeah I know it's good fun, but when are you really beelining for tanks ? I'd much rather take Total War and line up bombers that start with Air Repair and are surrounded by Medic 2's, and just take cities with good old Cavalry, almost always.

Many people underestimate the tank's best promotion "+33% strength against wounded units".
+33% strength against wounded, potentially +25% from being wounded, +15% attack from lightning warfare and high flanking bonuses without ZOC. Tanks are the ultimate unit killers. They can also pillage and heal very effectively.

So when you already fought a war with artillery, beelining to landships is a pretty good strategy.

And with Autocracy you can definately delay research labs and the top of the tech tree (except for Biology/Oil). Just steal techs in half the amount of time with Industrial Espionage and rushbuy a nice tank army.

You still wanna get Flight for Prora though. That wonder is pretty awesome.

 

[Babri]

Many people underestimate the tank's best promotion "+33% strength against wounded units".
+33% strength against wounded, potentially +25% from being wounded, +15% attack from lightning warfare and high flanking bonuses without ZOC. Tanks are the ultimate unit killers. They can also pillage and heal very effectively.

So when you already fought a war with artillery, beelining to landships is a pretty good strategy.

And with Autocracy you can definately delay research labs and the top of the tech tree (except for Biology/Oil). Just steal techs in half the amount of time with Industrial Espionage and rushbuy a nice tank army.

You still wanna get Flight for Prora though. That wonder is pretty awesome.

A non-Japanese wounded unit will always perform less than a fully healed one regardless of the elite forces tenet. And yes tanks can be pretty powerful & render infantry almost useless when going on offensive battles & conquering stuff. The only issue is that Landships are a bit difficult to acquire quickly unlike other units (in my experience).

 

[eldiablonoche]

I like Autocracy; I was under constant war from 2 civs in a recent game and went Autocracy since they were Order and I had a ton of Tourism/Culture. Helped being Poland cause I could run through tenets like candy but I made my opponents unhappy, jacked my happiness up with both xp and defense buildings tenets and even the 50 turn combat bonus was handy when a seaborne invasion was en route. Maybe it needs a buff but it is hardly terrible.

 

[tac2i]

I chose Autocracy in my first game (Prince/Marathon/Romans) and after much war and conquest won a diplomatic victory in 2042. I controlled 32 delegates and needed 31 for victory. Initially I wondered if BNW was a worthy expansion as, not completely understanding some new things, it was a rocky situation at different points in the game. Now on my second game (Prince/Marathon/Atilla). We'll see how it goes. I'm loving the changes BNW has brought to the Civ5.

 

[Magean]

I don't think Autocracy is terrible but I do think it's not on par with the others.

As it has already been said one million of times, Autocracy is essentially good at one thing : domination. Well, OK, gunboat diplomacy is good for diplomatic victory.

Order and Freedom are even strong for the victories they are not supposed to be good at : the Foreign Legions policy combined with Arsenal of Democracy make Freedom suitable for warfare, and Order, as I said, gives you a strong economy - that's gold for CS.

Autocracy is very good for domination, suitable for Diplomacy, and lame for culture. Futurism needs a huge buff.

Then, even for domination victory, there are not enough really interesting tenets. When I look at Order, I think "I wish I could take them all!" (well, not all, but lots of them). But for Autocracy... too many tenets are uninteresting. Some are very good, but many aren't.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The over focus on military is a bit much.. more military helps (like the econ boosters of Freedom and order).. but it leads to a domination victory

Ones to buff/change
United Front:..easy to make this help Diplomatic Victory: common war increases influence from gifts AND missions by 20%

Elite Troops: overlaps with Bushido .. either elite troops should get the full Bushido, (and Japan gets something else) OR * my preferred* elite Troops is replaced with a tourism (or culture) bonus for city/Great Work/World Wonder capture or from unit kills (say 20-50% strength for tourism)

Futurism could be buffed... perhaps if it also gave culture?

 

[Simplicity2]

I think Autocracy is pretty dang good actually.

Gunboat diplomacy is a HUGE boost for city states pretty much putting them out of anyone else's reach very quickly.

Fortified borders is downright necessary for the huge conquest empires you can get.

The 25% bonus for 50 turns is enough to wipe out multiple civilizations if you are a military civ.

 

[Chiatroll]

I think autocracy is the best hands down at domination. I think people spend more time questioning how good it is at other things.

When you go for culture I can only assume it wants you to take an offensive role in stealing other people's great works and destroying their culture producing cities.

I assume based on what it has for diplomacy it wants you to attack anyone who is trying to outbid you on CS's while keeping you're own military cost as low as possible so you can buy as many CS's as you want. This is actually what I did with Siam anyway the last time that I was Siam. (G&K though)

It has weird random bad ones though

Cult of Personality is a good example of a bad one because if you are hitting people to steal their culture wonders and great works you will not be liked because of wonky diplomacy rules. The AI won't join you in a war because they don't like you. So it meshes poorly with what I thought autocracy wanted culture to do in the first place.

Futurism sounds nice but 100 tourism is just too tiny of an amount to care and it's amplified by the other two paths having a 25% more great person generation in the first tier while autocracy doesn't boost GPP at all. By the time you get to industrial great people are just too rare for this boost to help your cultural victory game.

I think it's note worthy that it's two worst policies are autocracy's attempt at a culture victory when people mention how inflexible it is.

On the other side though it's not like freedom has bad ones also. Creative Expression and Treaty Organization are both kind of suck. Order has Patriotic War and Iron Curtain which also seem bad.

I wouldn't be opposed to the bad policies like Futurism, Cult of Personality, Creative Expression, Industrial Espionage, Treaty Organization, Patriotic War and Iron Curtain all getting a buff since you have so many choices and some choices are just bad choices right now and that creates boring fake choices.

They all have a weak Universal Healthcare policy for +1 happy per national wonder bonus on tier one. If you have every single national wonder you'll only get +13. Most of the other happiness boosts are per building in in the thee building path which will only be less happiness then Universal Healthcare at 3 or less cities/puppets.

It's not like the other policy trees where you sometimes take a weak one because you have to finish the tree so they should all be comparably as good as each other or should just take what doesn't suck and return to normal social policies.

Also aggressive warlike culture wins and diplo wins just always feel weird.

 

[Callonia]

I hope autocracy never gets foreign legion because that's for freedom and freedom civs tend to be small which can get real use out of them while autocracy if they manage to conquer early and be reasonably tall, will have huge military and those will be just six random units you don't really care about except for the fact they're free maintenance.

Germany's 25% discount + nationalism 33% discount = 58% discount yo sup shaka i heard you brought a large army but I have even bigger army than you do.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Treaty Organization is good (similar to Gunboat Diplomacy.. weaker, but easier)

So is Creative expression (if you are going for cultural victory and have a lot of Great Works it is a nice extra chunk of culture...to get to a higher level tenet sooner)

Industrial Espionage is good if you are behind in tech.

Patriotic War and Iron Curtain are fine (free courthouse is 4 gold saved, and as soon as you take a city it is friendly territory)

Universal Healthcare could defintely be boosted.. unless the devs are trying to make a point, it should probably be +2 per National Wonder.

Cult of Personality is good if you are NOT attacking everyone to steal their great works (which is not the best way to go cultural even as autocracy.) Essentially it is a way to influence your autocratic allies before they turn on you. (also it stacks)
Note: you don't have to bribe the AI into a war, instead you can jump into one side for a war already going on.

Futurism can use a boost (because of the rare Great People)
However, both it and Industrial Espionage are useful for coming from behind.
(ie if you don't start making Great People until later in the tech tree, then you will apply it to more of them)... also the alternative +25% isn't a big boost either for the same reason. Futurism (I believe) applies to faith purchased GWAM, so you can readily get some of those later in the game if you are going cultural.

Futurism/Cult of Personality/Industrial Espionage are good because they give you a bonus to something other than Combat.

That's the main problem I have with United Front... it takes your Diplomacy and gives it a combat bonus... it should be doing the opposite (like Gunboat Diplomacy does)

Elite Forces.. a pure combat bonus, and a fairly poor one...if instead it took Combat and gave that a Tourism bonus.. that would work well.

 

[Chiatroll]

I hope autocracy never gets foreign legion because that's for freedom and freedom civs tend to be small which can get real use out of them while autocracy if they manage to conquer early and be reasonably tall, will have huge military and those will be just six random units you don't really care about except for the fact they're free maintenance.

Germany's 25% discount + nationalism 33% discount = 58% discount yo sup shaka i heard you brought a large army but I have even bigger army than you do.

Does it strait stack like other cost reductions? It would seem a bit weird on suleiman's Navy, who I'll admit I never actually played as, who only pays a 1/3 cost for his navy.

 

[SirPepsi]

When considering ideologies, I don't even stop to think about Autocracy. The benefits currently aren't worth the happiness hits + tourism penalties. I've noticed no AI has come close to winning a conquest victory in any of my games - this might explain their hesitancy to pick Autocracy. Why devote your culture to an ideology which specializes in something that has nothing to do with the way you're playing your game?

 

[Chiatroll]

Treaty Organization is good (similar to Gunboat Diplomacy.. weaker, but easier)

So is Creative expression (if you are going for cultural victory and have a lot of Great Works it is a nice extra chunk of culture...to get to a higher level tenet sooner)

If you are going for a culture win and have maybe 25-40 great works slots filled you are probably already making over a thousand culture so why should you care about that +1 culture per great work that doesn't turn into tourism again?

Industrial Espionage is good if you are behind in tech.

Because nothing helps me catch up my tech like watching my spies drop like roaches in a raid commercial. It doesn't improve your chance for success at all.

Patriotic War and Iron Curtain are fine (free courthouse is 4 gold saved, and as soon as you take a city it is friendly territory)

Patriotic War is a 15% only and only for defense. It rarely makes a huge difference. It's not horrible but I think I'd grab anything in order at all whatsoever before I grab it.

Iron curtain feels like too little money saved unless you are trying to annex a TON of cities. (which is a weird thing to do anyway) If I am annexing enough cities to get use out of Iron curtain I probably took autocracy. Again it's not horrible but is has no synergy with the rest of order is it's biggest problem.

Cult of Personality
Note: you don't have to bribe the AI into a war, instead you can jump into one side for a war already going on.

On the other side if you want to take cities you will piss off the AI. If you piss off the AI they will denounce you. Then they will all pat each other on the back and like each other more for denouncing you.

When I go take a few cities I tend to be hated by everyone and the focus of every war while all the AI does is make friends with each other because they are so happy that the other AI guys are denouncing me. Wars have to be these carefully selected and rare things for you to have them without the AI hating you for them.

Diplomacy is just too wonky in how it's scripted for it this policy to be a big boon.

Futurism can use a boost (because of the rare Great People)
However, both it and Industrial Espionage are useful for coming from behind.
(ie if you don't start making Great People until later in the tech tree, then you will apply it to more of them)... also the alternative +25% isn't a big boost either for the same reason. Futurism (I believe) applies to faith purchased GWAM, so you can readily get some of those later in the game if you are going cultural.

If you don't start making great people until later in the game you must not be going for a culture win anyway. If you aren't going for a culture win the 100 tourism from futurism does absolutely nothing. You need to bust those GWAMs out ASAP.