King Phaedron
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2017
- Messages
- 164
Autocracy is the Superior Ideology for Domination and Score victories, as well as equally competitive, if not superior for Culture, Science, and World Leadership victories. Below is a breakdown of how it is superior. It generally has the most to offer, especially in the area of Happiness. and will help you into a Golden Age.
1) Superior Happiness: (Happiness is important for large population, not just capturing cities.)
Fortified Borders: +1 Happiness per Castle, Arsenal, and Military Base. That's +3 happiness for city. It is superior to the Freedom eqivalent Tenent, which provides +1 happiness per Mint, Bank, and Stock Echange, and likewise the order version, +1 happiness per workshop factory, and powerplant. Most cities are not going to have a Mint or a Hydro plant, though you can eventually get a Solar or Nuclear plant it isn't until late in the game.
This also makes more sense, since a well protected population is happy and secure. How do Factories make us happy? Working in one sure doesn't. Adding Happiness to Castles, Arsenals, etc, makes sense and gives you a reason to build these no maintenance cost buildings and your cities will be tough as nails because of it. Then go and build Nasuchwanstein and you'll have enough Happiness to capture every city on the map.
Militarism: +2 local happiness per Barracks, Armory, and Military Academy. For the 1 maintenance cost these are better then building Stadiums, which you can hold off on building until much later in the game. It also gives you a good reason to build them. Again, the citizens whose country has a strong military are happy and secure. If someone does invade your lands, Autocracy makes it easy to buy well trained units on the spot, with the 33% gold discount.
Militarism is much better then the Order Equivalent, that provides +1 happiness per Observatory, Public School, and Research Lab. Most of your cities are not going to have an Observatory. It is also better then Freedoms eqivalent tenet, that provides +1 happiness per Water Mill, Hospital, and Medical Lab. Aside from these being +1 instead of +2, most of your cities are not going to have a Water Mill. (Order does also give you +2 happiness for every monument, another building every city is always going to have.) I picked up on this raw deal right away and immediately began to hate Order and Freedom.
(Freedom) Universal Suffrage: Unhappiness from Specialists is halved. Golden Ages last 50% longer. (A-) Not bad. Its hard to know how much happiness this will actually give you, but the extended golden age is useful, especially if you also have Chichen Itza, and are playing as Persia. It is somewhat less useful since you get ideologies kind of late in the game, though. Don't expect to see too many more golden ages.
Total Happiness value of Autocracy: 9 per city (+3 if Police State, +tons more from Prora resort)
Total Happiness value of Free-Dumb: 4 per city (+ more per mints, water mills, and specialists)
Total Happiness value of Order: 7 per city. (+1 a few more per observatories.)
2) Gold Production and Economic Strength
Mobilization: Gold cost of purchasing units reduced by 33%. (A+) This applies to all units (except faith based) including Settlers, Workers, and Work Boats. Unless your production is very high, its always better to buy Settlers so that you're cities don't stop producing food.
United Front: Militaristic City-States gift units twice as often when fighting a common foe. (C+) Always be at war with someone and keep your allies happy. The gifted units are usually better for defense (unless it's a siege cannon.) and defense is necessary. Never make peace with anyone unless it is to your advantage.
Nationalism: Unit Maintenance cost reduced by 33%. (A+) This is the backbone of Autocracy strategies. Having an army in the field is well worth it if you put it to good use. Maintain war with your enemies (unless they give you money or cities in a peace negotiation.) Have units everywhere, often with a partner nearby to pick off enemy units and control of map. Learn the routes of Cargo Ships and Caravans. You get 200 gold every time you plunder them. Plunder enemy lands and fishing boats. Competition is always a factor. Create economic problems for your rivals to set them back while your own economy grows.
Gunboat Diplomacy: Gain 6 more influence per turn with City-States you could demand tribute from. Military units are 50% more effective at demanding tribute. (A-) It goes along with having an army in the field, that you often do those quests they will make to demand tribute from their rivals. Later in the game, this will help you get and maintain city state allies when going for World Leader. Actually using your military has numerous advantages. Capture great persons, settlers, destroy automated workers and units crossing the oceans.
Industrial Espionage: Spies steal technologies twice as fast. (C+) While it sounds like a pretty cool tenet, I often wind up being ahead of the technology race, but if you don't want to spend time building science buildings and are content with just keeping up, this tenet can save you on gold and production.
(Freedom) Economic Union: +3 gold from each trade route with other freedom civilizations. (D+) I tend not to build many of those, their almost always plundered by barbarians and other civs. It becomes easy to guess where caravans are going. A lousy tenet on a map with raging barbarians or players who know their doing. It also limits your choices. For Caravans, always choose the most gold or the closest locations (except where religious influence or tourism issues would be troublesome.)
(Freedom) Volunteer Army: 6 Units are maintenance free. Receive 6 foreign legion units immediately. (C+) I'm sorry but this is simply inferior compared to Nationalism. Grab it if you are Freedom, and able to adopt a social policy at just the right time when I'm invading your capital
It does save you some production cost.
New Deal: Landmarks and Great Person Improvements provide +4 of the appropriate yield. (B-) While it is good to build a few of these early in the game, I usually find that great persons are better when expended for an instant boost of science, money, culture, golden ages, etc. Don't count on being lucky with landmarks, unless your map is mostly land. I'm playing Polynesia with 28 cities on Oceania and only one of them has an antiquity site. Not super useful, but here is a nice little trick if you get this. Hunt down and Kidnap Great Prophets from Civs that are not your friends. If they are fresh, put them to work building Holy Sites.
(Order) Skyscrapers: Gold cost of buildings reduced by 33%. (A-) This is the equal and opposite of Autocracy, where you produce buildings and buy units. It is especially good for buying science buildings, or walls and castles on the spot when enemies are approaching. But I find it is slightly less useful. Producing buildings is the normal thing to do, it tends to be more helpful to buy units on the spot rather then buildings. You could, with Autocracy, always produce buildings and always buy units to get the most out of it. On the flip side, if you always producing units, and always buy buildings you will wind up broke pretty quickly.
(Order) Iron Curtain: Free Courthouse when capturing a city. +50% food or production from internal trade routes. (D+) Except when building wonders like the Neuschwanstein, (when you want to build it and need to make a city next to a mountain on the spot) or when supplying food to a city in a very bad location, internal trade routes are not worth bothering with. The free courthouse does save you some money and production cost, but I do not recommend annexing a city until it is threatened, or you to personally buy units, fishing boats, walls, etc. At the very least, do not annex a city until after it's 12 or so turns of resistance is over, depending on population. This tenet could actually cost you more then it's worth since you will be paying the expensive 3 gold per turn maintenance cost of the courthouse before you can even use. I COULD BE WRONG, if the Courthouse is maintenance free like the free aquaduct and monument in Tradition. Still, it is a very situational and lackluster Level 3 Tenent.
(Order) Party Leadership: +1 Gold, food, production, culture, and science per city. (A-) This a decent level 2 tenent for a large empire.
(Order) Five Year Plan: +2 production per city. +1 production per Mine and Quarry. (A+) pretty good, especially if you have a lot of mines and quarries, to make the most out of it.
Overall, Order is the winner when it comes to raw production, and can produce an army quickly. Autocracy is superior for economic strength when you intend to keep an army in the field and put them to good use. This requires more effort then simply building things, and not surpisingly, reaps the greatest rewards.
3) Tourism Generation and Cultural Victory
(I tend to avoid this. Going for culture victory means making great works with most of your writers and artists, having an amphitheatre in every city, so that you can build an opera house, and having opera houses so that can build museums. Archaeologists take quite a while to produce. Going for a possible culture victory will set you back, whereas deciding early on not to will save you a lot of maintenance cost and production time. On the harder levels I wonder how this is even possible. I find that I must commit everything to tangible growth whereas tourism doesn't help you do anything other then win the end game via culture.)
(Plus I hate the message they give you for it: Our people are wearing your blue jeans and listening to your music. I worry that the world will succumb to your culture. Yeah, way to be obvious. What do blue jeans and the orchestra scene have in common? Nothing, as they tend to wear dress suits. Maybe I would actually bother making Musicians, if during the modern age, I could generate Classic Rock, Heavy Metal, or great Rappers. At least throw in a few Jazz Musicians. Not a big fan of classical orchestra. Whoever wrote this gutter trash was obviously playing America on a map full of Arabs and Indians. What friggin country doesn't have blue jeans? I suffer from Stomach issues, and wear comfortable Nylon pants. I hate blue jeans!)
Futurism: +250 Tourism to all known Civs when a great Writer, Artist, or Musician is born. (A-) This is equal to 125 turns of the usual +2 Tourism. It's probably more useful on Standard pace or quick games. Along with the wonders, buildings, and social policies that enhance great person generation, its a decent level 1 tenent, especially if you buy or build your three factories and rush into industrialization asap.
Cult of Personality: +50% Tourism to Civilizations fighting a common enemy. (C-) Not very good as a level 3. Get this when you decide to do culture victory as Autocracy, and your friends are Culturally strong Civs such as Polynesia. Then always declare war and fight whoever they fight when they go to war.
The Real strategy for winning the culture war with Autocracy is to capture enemy capitals and other cities that produce a lot of tourism. This will be far more useful then being Order or Freedom and "Not" capturing cities. Sometimes you need to do this to avoid your people from becoming too influenced by other cultures that unhappiness is being produced due to your Civ having a different ideology.
* When there is a player playing Polynesia on an islands map, just forget about culture victory and producing tourism. It will NEVER happen. Try your best not to go mad while being stuck on a small island, and never finding more then a couple ancient ruins.
Avant Garde / Hero of the People: +25% great person generation. Level 1. (C+) We see this bonus a lot and they do stack. The problem is that great persons cost more points every time you make one. The real net effect of all this great person generation bonus is only going to amount to a few extra in the course of a game, but it will probably shine more during an epic or marathon game.
(Freedom) Creative Expression: +1 culture from each great work (C+) More useful if you always make great works. This feels like it would be better served as a level 1 Asthetics policy. If you want to generate mad amounts of culture, spend you policy on adopting honor instead, and then go camp barbarian camps. (Camp, meaning put a unit next to them and kill barbarians whenever they emerge, instead of clearing the camp.)
(Freedom) Civil Society: Specialists consume only half the normal amount of food. (A+) The lack of food is a huge setback when using specialists to generate great persons. Coming from where I only played Civ1 and 2, I despise their consuming food at all. Isn't it already enough that a specialist means not working the land?
(Freedom) Media Culture: +34% Tourism generated by cities with a broadcast tower. (A-) Pretty good, since every city can get one, but unless not every city is going to produce tourism. Unlike Writers and Musicians, you can do tons of Archaeology work, but you must have am amphitheater and opera house to make a museum. You are going to wind up way more works of music then writing, and way more works of art or artifacts then either of them. Thankfully, you can sell the useless amphitheaters afterwards, but you still have to waste time building them.
(Order) Cultural Revolution: +34% Tourism to other Order Civilizations. (F+) Pure garbage unless you intend to eliminate everyone following a different ideology, or the map has nothing but order civs. You need to become the dominant influence with EVERY Civ in the game. Favoring one type over another doesn't help you one bit, unless the Order civs happen to be culturally stronger then everyone else.
(Order) Dictatorship of the Proletariat: +34% Tourism to Civilizations with less happiness. (D+) Not very useful for reasons mentioned above. You can make this work, but to do means having more happiness then everyone else, but the happiness generated by an order civ is inferior compared to Autocracy. Seriously, I have 28 cities with Polynesia on king and I have 90 happiness. About a third of them are conquered, but I don't even use police state. (I did happen to build Notre Dame, Neuschwanstein, and Prora though.) The Prora resort gives you a buttload of happiness, but only Autocracy can build it.
Overall, Freedom makes it easier to generate great persons and gives you a solid boost to Tourism, but this does not compare to the +250 tourism you get with Autocracy, which has better tenents for going to war, generating happiness, and maintaining a large empire full of captured cities. Freedom Civs do have the highest combat strength for cities in the game, but it's nothing that 1 or 2 rocket artillery won't overcome. Culture minded Civs prioritize tourism and therefore forego solid improvements which may lead to their becoming weak, their many cities full of great works getting captured, and their tourism used against them.
4) World Leader and Diplomatic Victory
When you are powerful and have a lot of gold, as you will with Autocracy, it becomes easy to spent 1000 gold and buy as many city state allies as you need when you want to win world leader or boost your number of delegates. On the flipside, demanding tribute is less useful since it improves relations with one CS in favor of another, but it is useful to do so when the cities you demand tribute from are allied with your enemies. Add to this Gunboat Diplomacy for the extra 6 influence per turn, or 50% more likely to be able to demand tribute.
(Freedom) Covert Action: Spies have double the chance to rig city state elections (F+) Playing on Normal and King I have yet to fail when trying to rig an election. Maybe failure is possible on harder levels though, but for the most part, this tenet is a waste of culture.
(Freedom) Arsenal of Democracy: +15% Production building military units. Gain 15 influence from each unit given to City-States. (A) This makes it quite useful to gift all of your obsolete units instead of upgrade, as well as produce the cheapest ones and keep giving those. It's pretty effective since you wont have tons of gold.
(Freedom) Treaty Organization: Get 4 more influence per turn with City-States you have a trade route to. (C-) Im sorry, but compared to Gunboat Diplomacy this is lackluster. How often are you trading with City-States? A lot of times they want you to make a trade route. But Autocracy can have a cheap army in the area, and keep getting the +6 influence without demanding tribute, while on the watch for other opportunities.
5) Scientific Advancement and Spaceship Victory
Build a strong economy with Autocracy through war and careful conservation of maintenance costs. Then buy science buildings when they become available for your high science cities. Autocracy has nothing that helps you work on spaceship parts, but it is easier to get through the technology tree quickly when you have a lot of gold, a lot of cities, and your enemies have been severely crippled from war after they backstab you.
(Freedom) Space Procurements: May buy Spaceship Parts with Gold (A+) definitely a very strong tenent since by the time you are building spaceship parts you should be raking in the gold, but other players are not going to sit around and let you do it! Keep some gold ready to buy units on the spot when the invasions start.
* With Freedom's strong focus on great person generation you will likely end up with a few extra scientists to get you ahead of the game.
(Order) Workers' Facultires: +25% Science output from Cities with a factory. Build factories in half the usual time. (B+) Pretty good, but be sure to procure the coal you need to support every city having a Factory.
(Order) Spaceflight Prioneers: May finish spaceship parts with Great Engineer. A great engineer and scientist appear near the capital. (B-) Not too bad, the free great persons is already a good deal, but its kind of hard to make good use of this. Try to save up your faith for engineers, and adjust your great person generation so that some will be ready when you can build the parts. You could also save your engineers, but doing so will incur unnecessary maintenance costs.
Overall, Freedom and Order have an advantage in the area of science, production, and spaceship parts, but an Autocracy, at least a player controlled one, who is behind in science is going to go on the warpath. An Autocracy is probably not trying to win via Science, but sometimes late in the game, when entering the Information Age, when the United Nations is born and there is a worldwide desire for lasting peace, you may decide it's time to lay down the war gauntlets and do just that.
6) Military Strength and Domination Victory
Elite Forces: Wounded Military Units inflict 25% more damage then normal. (C+) Either Useless for Japan, or it causes their units to inflict more damage when wounded then at full strength. I'm not sure which. This is less useful then Mobilization and Fortified Borders, but more useful then the rest of level 1 Autocracy.
Lightning Warfare: +3 movement for Generals. +1 Move, 15% damage, and ignore enemy ZOC for Armor units. (C+) Useful on a map with a lot of land and continents. Is the Giant Death Robot considered Armor? I think it is because it is the final upgrade for armor, but I don't remember if it get the bonus or not. I prefer Helicopters, Rocket Artiller, Xcom, Paratroopers, Naval units, and GDRs rather then Tanks. But, this tenet is only worth considering after you already have Militarism and Nationalism.
Third Alternate: Strategic resources doubled. +5 food and Science in the Capital (C-) It may shine on maps with scarce resources, but it is more to your advantage to build and capture cities when you want more resources of any kind. The food and science is kind of nice, but this is a third or fourth place level 2.
Total War: +25% production of Military units. New Units get +15 Exp. (B-) This is solid and the XP bonus stacks with Barracks, brandenburg gate, etc. Decent third or fourth place level 2 tenent.
Clausewitz Legacy: +25% attack bonus to all Military for the next 50 turns after getting this. (A+) This is the best level 3 tenent, unless you are very focused on culture or world leader. Get this and rip the world apart!
(Freedom) Their Finest Hour: Combat Strength of Cities increased by 33% (C-) This is not going to be your first or second pick in the level 2 Freedom Tenents, but combine it with all of the Walls, Castles, etc, and you will have the toughest cities in the game. In all likelihood you wont get a lot of use out of this. It is very situational and for 90+% of the game isn't going to help you one bit.
(Freedom) Arsenal of Democracy is not as good as Total War. Volunteer Army is not as good as Nationalism.
(Order) Patriotic War: +15% attack bonus when fighting in friendly territory (C+) decent for when the invasions start, or vs Barbarians, and as a level 1 it is affordable, but nowhere near as important as Skyscrapers and Socialist Realism, which for Order should be your first picks.
(Order) Five year plan. Strong Production is the backbone for Order based strategy. You can likely produce a strong army quickly with less waiting time when planning to capture cities, and then give away your units to city states once the war is over.
Overall, Autocracy has the most to offer in the area of war, and on offense, but Freedom has some defensive tenents and Order gets you the most out of production. However, too much war is problematic due to inferior happiness from Order and Freedom. If you do get their Happiness Tenents, you are getting a raw deal
7) Other Tenents and Policies
Universal Healthcare: +1 Happiness for every national wonder. (D+) Mediocre Happiness boost that every tree has available. You might pick it up later down the line, but this should never be your first choice. Save your faith or reserve an engineer instead, and then beat the competition on a good happiness wonder.
(Order) Double Agents: Spies have double the chance to capture an enemy spy attempting to steal technologies. (C+) At least it's a level 1, you won't get a lot of use out of this, but it's worth getting. more useful against AI controlled Civs then players. You are going to have several cities with high science output, especially as an Order Civ. Once you build the great firewall, AI will target all sorts of different cities, otherwise they only target your capital. You may want to put all of your spies on defense. Keep in mind, if they can't steal advancements from you they will steal them from someone else.
(Order) Resettlement: New Cities start with an extra 3 population. (C-) This is actually a level 2, but its barely worth getting even as a level 1. But I can see the logic of giving this to Order Civs who favor production above all else. Get this and go make a bunch of cities where there is no food and a bunch of hills, so you can make nothing but mines and quarries. Then go and feed them with an internal trade route from a city that produces a lot of food. If you don't want to make big cities, then don't produce many buildings. Use extra cities like these to mass produce units.
1) Superior Happiness: (Happiness is important for large population, not just capturing cities.)
Fortified Borders: +1 Happiness per Castle, Arsenal, and Military Base. That's +3 happiness for city. It is superior to the Freedom eqivalent Tenent, which provides +1 happiness per Mint, Bank, and Stock Echange, and likewise the order version, +1 happiness per workshop factory, and powerplant. Most cities are not going to have a Mint or a Hydro plant, though you can eventually get a Solar or Nuclear plant it isn't until late in the game.
This also makes more sense, since a well protected population is happy and secure. How do Factories make us happy? Working in one sure doesn't. Adding Happiness to Castles, Arsenals, etc, makes sense and gives you a reason to build these no maintenance cost buildings and your cities will be tough as nails because of it. Then go and build Nasuchwanstein and you'll have enough Happiness to capture every city on the map.
Militarism: +2 local happiness per Barracks, Armory, and Military Academy. For the 1 maintenance cost these are better then building Stadiums, which you can hold off on building until much later in the game. It also gives you a good reason to build them. Again, the citizens whose country has a strong military are happy and secure. If someone does invade your lands, Autocracy makes it easy to buy well trained units on the spot, with the 33% gold discount.
Militarism is much better then the Order Equivalent, that provides +1 happiness per Observatory, Public School, and Research Lab. Most of your cities are not going to have an Observatory. It is also better then Freedoms eqivalent tenet, that provides +1 happiness per Water Mill, Hospital, and Medical Lab. Aside from these being +1 instead of +2, most of your cities are not going to have a Water Mill. (Order does also give you +2 happiness for every monument, another building every city is always going to have.) I picked up on this raw deal right away and immediately began to hate Order and Freedom.
(Freedom) Universal Suffrage: Unhappiness from Specialists is halved. Golden Ages last 50% longer. (A-) Not bad. Its hard to know how much happiness this will actually give you, but the extended golden age is useful, especially if you also have Chichen Itza, and are playing as Persia. It is somewhat less useful since you get ideologies kind of late in the game, though. Don't expect to see too many more golden ages.
Total Happiness value of Autocracy: 9 per city (+3 if Police State, +tons more from Prora resort)
Total Happiness value of Free-Dumb: 4 per city (+ more per mints, water mills, and specialists)
Total Happiness value of Order: 7 per city. (+1 a few more per observatories.)
2) Gold Production and Economic Strength
Mobilization: Gold cost of purchasing units reduced by 33%. (A+) This applies to all units (except faith based) including Settlers, Workers, and Work Boats. Unless your production is very high, its always better to buy Settlers so that you're cities don't stop producing food.
United Front: Militaristic City-States gift units twice as often when fighting a common foe. (C+) Always be at war with someone and keep your allies happy. The gifted units are usually better for defense (unless it's a siege cannon.) and defense is necessary. Never make peace with anyone unless it is to your advantage.
Nationalism: Unit Maintenance cost reduced by 33%. (A+) This is the backbone of Autocracy strategies. Having an army in the field is well worth it if you put it to good use. Maintain war with your enemies (unless they give you money or cities in a peace negotiation.) Have units everywhere, often with a partner nearby to pick off enemy units and control of map. Learn the routes of Cargo Ships and Caravans. You get 200 gold every time you plunder them. Plunder enemy lands and fishing boats. Competition is always a factor. Create economic problems for your rivals to set them back while your own economy grows.
Gunboat Diplomacy: Gain 6 more influence per turn with City-States you could demand tribute from. Military units are 50% more effective at demanding tribute. (A-) It goes along with having an army in the field, that you often do those quests they will make to demand tribute from their rivals. Later in the game, this will help you get and maintain city state allies when going for World Leader. Actually using your military has numerous advantages. Capture great persons, settlers, destroy automated workers and units crossing the oceans.
Industrial Espionage: Spies steal technologies twice as fast. (C+) While it sounds like a pretty cool tenet, I often wind up being ahead of the technology race, but if you don't want to spend time building science buildings and are content with just keeping up, this tenet can save you on gold and production.
(Freedom) Economic Union: +3 gold from each trade route with other freedom civilizations. (D+) I tend not to build many of those, their almost always plundered by barbarians and other civs. It becomes easy to guess where caravans are going. A lousy tenet on a map with raging barbarians or players who know their doing. It also limits your choices. For Caravans, always choose the most gold or the closest locations (except where religious influence or tourism issues would be troublesome.)
(Freedom) Volunteer Army: 6 Units are maintenance free. Receive 6 foreign legion units immediately. (C+) I'm sorry but this is simply inferior compared to Nationalism. Grab it if you are Freedom, and able to adopt a social policy at just the right time when I'm invading your capital
It does save you some production cost.New Deal: Landmarks and Great Person Improvements provide +4 of the appropriate yield. (B-) While it is good to build a few of these early in the game, I usually find that great persons are better when expended for an instant boost of science, money, culture, golden ages, etc. Don't count on being lucky with landmarks, unless your map is mostly land. I'm playing Polynesia with 28 cities on Oceania and only one of them has an antiquity site. Not super useful, but here is a nice little trick if you get this. Hunt down and Kidnap Great Prophets from Civs that are not your friends. If they are fresh, put them to work building Holy Sites.
(Order) Skyscrapers: Gold cost of buildings reduced by 33%. (A-) This is the equal and opposite of Autocracy, where you produce buildings and buy units. It is especially good for buying science buildings, or walls and castles on the spot when enemies are approaching. But I find it is slightly less useful. Producing buildings is the normal thing to do, it tends to be more helpful to buy units on the spot rather then buildings. You could, with Autocracy, always produce buildings and always buy units to get the most out of it. On the flip side, if you always producing units, and always buy buildings you will wind up broke pretty quickly.
(Order) Iron Curtain: Free Courthouse when capturing a city. +50% food or production from internal trade routes. (D+) Except when building wonders like the Neuschwanstein, (when you want to build it and need to make a city next to a mountain on the spot) or when supplying food to a city in a very bad location, internal trade routes are not worth bothering with. The free courthouse does save you some money and production cost, but I do not recommend annexing a city until it is threatened, or you to personally buy units, fishing boats, walls, etc. At the very least, do not annex a city until after it's 12 or so turns of resistance is over, depending on population. This tenet could actually cost you more then it's worth since you will be paying the expensive 3 gold per turn maintenance cost of the courthouse before you can even use. I COULD BE WRONG, if the Courthouse is maintenance free like the free aquaduct and monument in Tradition. Still, it is a very situational and lackluster Level 3 Tenent.
(Order) Party Leadership: +1 Gold, food, production, culture, and science per city. (A-) This a decent level 2 tenent for a large empire.
(Order) Five Year Plan: +2 production per city. +1 production per Mine and Quarry. (A+) pretty good, especially if you have a lot of mines and quarries, to make the most out of it.
Overall, Order is the winner when it comes to raw production, and can produce an army quickly. Autocracy is superior for economic strength when you intend to keep an army in the field and put them to good use. This requires more effort then simply building things, and not surpisingly, reaps the greatest rewards.
3) Tourism Generation and Cultural Victory
(I tend to avoid this. Going for culture victory means making great works with most of your writers and artists, having an amphitheatre in every city, so that you can build an opera house, and having opera houses so that can build museums. Archaeologists take quite a while to produce. Going for a possible culture victory will set you back, whereas deciding early on not to will save you a lot of maintenance cost and production time. On the harder levels I wonder how this is even possible. I find that I must commit everything to tangible growth whereas tourism doesn't help you do anything other then win the end game via culture.)
(Plus I hate the message they give you for it: Our people are wearing your blue jeans and listening to your music. I worry that the world will succumb to your culture. Yeah, way to be obvious. What do blue jeans and the orchestra scene have in common? Nothing, as they tend to wear dress suits. Maybe I would actually bother making Musicians, if during the modern age, I could generate Classic Rock, Heavy Metal, or great Rappers. At least throw in a few Jazz Musicians. Not a big fan of classical orchestra. Whoever wrote this gutter trash was obviously playing America on a map full of Arabs and Indians. What friggin country doesn't have blue jeans? I suffer from Stomach issues, and wear comfortable Nylon pants. I hate blue jeans!)
Futurism: +250 Tourism to all known Civs when a great Writer, Artist, or Musician is born. (A-) This is equal to 125 turns of the usual +2 Tourism. It's probably more useful on Standard pace or quick games. Along with the wonders, buildings, and social policies that enhance great person generation, its a decent level 1 tenent, especially if you buy or build your three factories and rush into industrialization asap.
Cult of Personality: +50% Tourism to Civilizations fighting a common enemy. (C-) Not very good as a level 3. Get this when you decide to do culture victory as Autocracy, and your friends are Culturally strong Civs such as Polynesia. Then always declare war and fight whoever they fight when they go to war.
The Real strategy for winning the culture war with Autocracy is to capture enemy capitals and other cities that produce a lot of tourism. This will be far more useful then being Order or Freedom and "Not" capturing cities. Sometimes you need to do this to avoid your people from becoming too influenced by other cultures that unhappiness is being produced due to your Civ having a different ideology.
* When there is a player playing Polynesia on an islands map, just forget about culture victory and producing tourism. It will NEVER happen. Try your best not to go mad while being stuck on a small island, and never finding more then a couple ancient ruins.
Avant Garde / Hero of the People: +25% great person generation. Level 1. (C+) We see this bonus a lot and they do stack. The problem is that great persons cost more points every time you make one. The real net effect of all this great person generation bonus is only going to amount to a few extra in the course of a game, but it will probably shine more during an epic or marathon game.
(Freedom) Creative Expression: +1 culture from each great work (C+) More useful if you always make great works. This feels like it would be better served as a level 1 Asthetics policy. If you want to generate mad amounts of culture, spend you policy on adopting honor instead, and then go camp barbarian camps. (Camp, meaning put a unit next to them and kill barbarians whenever they emerge, instead of clearing the camp.)
(Freedom) Civil Society: Specialists consume only half the normal amount of food. (A+) The lack of food is a huge setback when using specialists to generate great persons. Coming from where I only played Civ1 and 2, I despise their consuming food at all. Isn't it already enough that a specialist means not working the land?
(Freedom) Media Culture: +34% Tourism generated by cities with a broadcast tower. (A-) Pretty good, since every city can get one, but unless not every city is going to produce tourism. Unlike Writers and Musicians, you can do tons of Archaeology work, but you must have am amphitheater and opera house to make a museum. You are going to wind up way more works of music then writing, and way more works of art or artifacts then either of them. Thankfully, you can sell the useless amphitheaters afterwards, but you still have to waste time building them.
(Order) Cultural Revolution: +34% Tourism to other Order Civilizations. (F+) Pure garbage unless you intend to eliminate everyone following a different ideology, or the map has nothing but order civs. You need to become the dominant influence with EVERY Civ in the game. Favoring one type over another doesn't help you one bit, unless the Order civs happen to be culturally stronger then everyone else.
(Order) Dictatorship of the Proletariat: +34% Tourism to Civilizations with less happiness. (D+) Not very useful for reasons mentioned above. You can make this work, but to do means having more happiness then everyone else, but the happiness generated by an order civ is inferior compared to Autocracy. Seriously, I have 28 cities with Polynesia on king and I have 90 happiness. About a third of them are conquered, but I don't even use police state. (I did happen to build Notre Dame, Neuschwanstein, and Prora though.) The Prora resort gives you a buttload of happiness, but only Autocracy can build it.
Overall, Freedom makes it easier to generate great persons and gives you a solid boost to Tourism, but this does not compare to the +250 tourism you get with Autocracy, which has better tenents for going to war, generating happiness, and maintaining a large empire full of captured cities. Freedom Civs do have the highest combat strength for cities in the game, but it's nothing that 1 or 2 rocket artillery won't overcome. Culture minded Civs prioritize tourism and therefore forego solid improvements which may lead to their becoming weak, their many cities full of great works getting captured, and their tourism used against them.
4) World Leader and Diplomatic Victory
When you are powerful and have a lot of gold, as you will with Autocracy, it becomes easy to spent 1000 gold and buy as many city state allies as you need when you want to win world leader or boost your number of delegates. On the flipside, demanding tribute is less useful since it improves relations with one CS in favor of another, but it is useful to do so when the cities you demand tribute from are allied with your enemies. Add to this Gunboat Diplomacy for the extra 6 influence per turn, or 50% more likely to be able to demand tribute.
(Freedom) Covert Action: Spies have double the chance to rig city state elections (F+) Playing on Normal and King I have yet to fail when trying to rig an election. Maybe failure is possible on harder levels though, but for the most part, this tenet is a waste of culture.
(Freedom) Arsenal of Democracy: +15% Production building military units. Gain 15 influence from each unit given to City-States. (A) This makes it quite useful to gift all of your obsolete units instead of upgrade, as well as produce the cheapest ones and keep giving those. It's pretty effective since you wont have tons of gold.
(Freedom) Treaty Organization: Get 4 more influence per turn with City-States you have a trade route to. (C-) Im sorry, but compared to Gunboat Diplomacy this is lackluster. How often are you trading with City-States? A lot of times they want you to make a trade route. But Autocracy can have a cheap army in the area, and keep getting the +6 influence without demanding tribute, while on the watch for other opportunities.
5) Scientific Advancement and Spaceship Victory
Build a strong economy with Autocracy through war and careful conservation of maintenance costs. Then buy science buildings when they become available for your high science cities. Autocracy has nothing that helps you work on spaceship parts, but it is easier to get through the technology tree quickly when you have a lot of gold, a lot of cities, and your enemies have been severely crippled from war after they backstab you.
(Freedom) Space Procurements: May buy Spaceship Parts with Gold (A+) definitely a very strong tenent since by the time you are building spaceship parts you should be raking in the gold, but other players are not going to sit around and let you do it! Keep some gold ready to buy units on the spot when the invasions start.
* With Freedom's strong focus on great person generation you will likely end up with a few extra scientists to get you ahead of the game.
(Order) Workers' Facultires: +25% Science output from Cities with a factory. Build factories in half the usual time. (B+) Pretty good, but be sure to procure the coal you need to support every city having a Factory.
(Order) Spaceflight Prioneers: May finish spaceship parts with Great Engineer. A great engineer and scientist appear near the capital. (B-) Not too bad, the free great persons is already a good deal, but its kind of hard to make good use of this. Try to save up your faith for engineers, and adjust your great person generation so that some will be ready when you can build the parts. You could also save your engineers, but doing so will incur unnecessary maintenance costs.
Overall, Freedom and Order have an advantage in the area of science, production, and spaceship parts, but an Autocracy, at least a player controlled one, who is behind in science is going to go on the warpath. An Autocracy is probably not trying to win via Science, but sometimes late in the game, when entering the Information Age, when the United Nations is born and there is a worldwide desire for lasting peace, you may decide it's time to lay down the war gauntlets and do just that.
6) Military Strength and Domination Victory
Elite Forces: Wounded Military Units inflict 25% more damage then normal. (C+) Either Useless for Japan, or it causes their units to inflict more damage when wounded then at full strength. I'm not sure which. This is less useful then Mobilization and Fortified Borders, but more useful then the rest of level 1 Autocracy.
Lightning Warfare: +3 movement for Generals. +1 Move, 15% damage, and ignore enemy ZOC for Armor units. (C+) Useful on a map with a lot of land and continents. Is the Giant Death Robot considered Armor? I think it is because it is the final upgrade for armor, but I don't remember if it get the bonus or not. I prefer Helicopters, Rocket Artiller, Xcom, Paratroopers, Naval units, and GDRs rather then Tanks. But, this tenet is only worth considering after you already have Militarism and Nationalism.
Third Alternate: Strategic resources doubled. +5 food and Science in the Capital (C-) It may shine on maps with scarce resources, but it is more to your advantage to build and capture cities when you want more resources of any kind. The food and science is kind of nice, but this is a third or fourth place level 2.
Total War: +25% production of Military units. New Units get +15 Exp. (B-) This is solid and the XP bonus stacks with Barracks, brandenburg gate, etc. Decent third or fourth place level 2 tenent.
Clausewitz Legacy: +25% attack bonus to all Military for the next 50 turns after getting this. (A+) This is the best level 3 tenent, unless you are very focused on culture or world leader. Get this and rip the world apart!
(Freedom) Their Finest Hour: Combat Strength of Cities increased by 33% (C-) This is not going to be your first or second pick in the level 2 Freedom Tenents, but combine it with all of the Walls, Castles, etc, and you will have the toughest cities in the game. In all likelihood you wont get a lot of use out of this. It is very situational and for 90+% of the game isn't going to help you one bit.
(Freedom) Arsenal of Democracy is not as good as Total War. Volunteer Army is not as good as Nationalism.
(Order) Patriotic War: +15% attack bonus when fighting in friendly territory (C+) decent for when the invasions start, or vs Barbarians, and as a level 1 it is affordable, but nowhere near as important as Skyscrapers and Socialist Realism, which for Order should be your first picks.
(Order) Five year plan. Strong Production is the backbone for Order based strategy. You can likely produce a strong army quickly with less waiting time when planning to capture cities, and then give away your units to city states once the war is over.
Overall, Autocracy has the most to offer in the area of war, and on offense, but Freedom has some defensive tenents and Order gets you the most out of production. However, too much war is problematic due to inferior happiness from Order and Freedom. If you do get their Happiness Tenents, you are getting a raw deal
7) Other Tenents and Policies
Universal Healthcare: +1 Happiness for every national wonder. (D+) Mediocre Happiness boost that every tree has available. You might pick it up later down the line, but this should never be your first choice. Save your faith or reserve an engineer instead, and then beat the competition on a good happiness wonder.
(Order) Double Agents: Spies have double the chance to capture an enemy spy attempting to steal technologies. (C+) At least it's a level 1, you won't get a lot of use out of this, but it's worth getting. more useful against AI controlled Civs then players. You are going to have several cities with high science output, especially as an Order Civ. Once you build the great firewall, AI will target all sorts of different cities, otherwise they only target your capital. You may want to put all of your spies on defense. Keep in mind, if they can't steal advancements from you they will steal them from someone else.
(Order) Resettlement: New Cities start with an extra 3 population. (C-) This is actually a level 2, but its barely worth getting even as a level 1. But I can see the logic of giving this to Order Civs who favor production above all else. Get this and go make a bunch of cities where there is no food and a bunch of hills, so you can make nothing but mines and quarries. Then go and feed them with an internal trade route from a city that produces a lot of food. If you don't want to make big cities, then don't produce many buildings. Use extra cities like these to mass produce units.
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