Civ 5 & Socialism

[Pro2A]

I've pretty well finished my first full game of BNW. I adopted Freedom as my ideology early on and it seemed to be going splendid until the modern era. Suddenly my people demanded Order.

I thought to myself... WTH? Why would my people basically want Socialism over Freedom? I changed it to avoid a revolt, but still, that makes absolutely no rational sense.

What gives?

 

[budweiser]

Your culture was WEAK. They saw the rich culture of socialism and wanted a piece of the pie. Next time invest more in aesthetics and great works and all the nations will flock to your side.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

The in-game explanation was given by buweiser's post.

If you think that people wanting socialism over freedom is immersion-breaking, then I recommend you to read some history books and watch some news, preferably from non-American media. Really, most people outside of the US know that 'murrican freedom is no utopia. It makes perfect sense for people to want socialism, as much as it makes sense for people to want freedom. There are even right-wing people in the real world still wanting autocracy/fascism, even with autocracy/fascism being universally recognized as evil today. To give a very simple explanation: if too many people are way too poor, people won't give a crap about the "freedom" to get rich by working hard (or being lucky). They will want the government to give everyone an equal share of the country's food production so that no one starve to death, even if that means giving up on other rights.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: Please keep this to a discussion of the in-game reasons. If you'd like to discuss politics, please do so in our Off-Topic forum, rather than the Civ5 forum.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

Sorry, didn't know about this rule. But shouldn't the entire thread be moved then? OP's question was obviously political to me.

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Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Pro2A]

Your culture was WEAK. They saw the rich culture of socialism and wanted a piece of the pie. Next time invest more in aesthetics and great works and all the nations will flock to your side.

Just how many great works are we talking? I probably have about a dozen or so currently. I generally focus on religion and culture. So unless I am doing something way off the wall I'm not sure how to produce more culture.

By aesthetics do you mean policy choices or having pretty things like wonders and such?

 

[Blitz Spearman]

Just how many great works are we talking? I probably have about a dozen or so currently. I generally focus on religion and culture. So unless I am doing something way off the wall I'm not sure how to produce more culture.

By aesthetics do you mean policy choices or having pretty things like wonders and such?

Pretty sure he meant the social policy tree, altough wonders also give lots of culture and they have great work theming bonus. If you are investing in culture but don't have many wonders, I am assuming you are making Amphiteathers everywere. The building culture was nerfed in BNW, now the main sources of culture are the great works and the specialists from the guilds. You should aim to build the guilds as soon as possible. Also don't neglect your science too much, or you won't get the guild/wonder techs soon enough. City-State allies are also a good source of culture.
Finally, if you see another civ getting dangerously dominant with tourism, there is always the option to wage war against them. If you win, you get to capture their great works, further pushing you towards cultural victory.

 

[the_jeff]

Basically, without getting into the maths, tourism creates ideological pressure, culture defends against that pressure. More pressure=more unhappiness. Too much unhappiness=revolt. The reason your people were unhappy is because the other civs who had chosen Order had more tourism than you had culture. Probably a lot more, since you were close to revolt.

Your citizens were travelling to other countries and saying "Look at all those Borobodurs over there! We want what they have! Here, take a picture of me next to this Hermitage!"

 

[joncnunn]

From where OP is: Just take advantage of all the happiness bonuses that are available within Freedom and also the next time a Great Writer spawns, use as a culture boost. (This normally isn't the best use of a Great Writer, but when you need culture fast ... )

And in future games, just build the darn guilds and run them in addition to scientists everywhere and then as you need spots to place the resulting great works place the cultural buildings and this will provide plenty of culture to avoid ideological pressure. To get the food for this, just found your cities on the coast so you can run 3 food cargo ships to your capital.

 

[budweiser]

What the others are saying may be good enough to ward off the pressure, but to make them convert, get your guilds going early with the NE and gardens and put points in the tree. Except for the early adapters of order/autocracy, all the others should join your side and eventually force the other two to convert. Of course, it may also lead to war.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Just another thing to add. If it's an order civ that's getting too much influence with you just getting your happiness up is pretty important. Dictatorship to the Proletariat gives them 34% vs anyone with less happiness. That policy combined with the abundance of happiness in the order tree makes it really easy for the AI to use. Freedom and autocracy both require more effort to take advantage of their culture finishers.

 

[joncnunn]

Just another thing to add. If it's an order civ that's getting too much influence with you just getting your happiness up is pretty important. Dictatorship to the Proletariat gives them 34% vs anyone with less happiness. That policy combined with the abundance of happiness in the order tree makes it really easy for the AI to use. Freedom and autocracy both require more effort to take advantage of their culture finishers.

There's an abundance of happiness in freedom tree as well (probably the autocracy too but I haven't chosen that one), but the AI is still suprizenly bad at happiness. The AIs with low happiness flavors ignore sources of happiness. But it is the case that many of the AIs whose flavors make them among the best AIs for culture victory have high happiness flavors so if you are under pressure, you should indeed select the happiness policies within your chosen autocracy to bring you not only above zero, but above that of the highest AI that has gone Order.

 

[budweiser]

I just won a 3 city cultural victory on immortal with the Huns. No salt or even marble.

I got Stone Henge, and then went to Theocracy building Oracle along the way. This finished Tradition around turn 80 and allowed me to open Aesthetics early and fill it until rationalism. I did a fast rationalism because I won the World's fair. Very easy. I had Uffizi and Broadway. The GE from Stonge Henge went to build Pisa.

I went Freedom and pulled three civs with me. By the end, all but one of the others were having happiness issues because of the pressure.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

There's an abundance of happiness in freedom tree as well (probably the autocracy too but I haven't chosen that one), but the AI is still suprizenly bad at happiness.

Ok, why does somebody always have to nitpick?

Let me put it this way. The happiness in order affects monuments, production and science buildings. Things that will be in every city in every game for players or AI. They don't have to be good at happiness in order to have high happiness with order.

Freedom's affects growth/health buildings, money buildings and specialists. The only way to match order is to work a lot of specialist slots and that's only if you're building "money" buildings even in cities that are producing 0gpt (not a great investment). That's stuff a lower happiness flavored AI would not take very good advantage of even if a player can squeeze the same amount of happiness out of the tree.

Autocracy has pretty decent happiness too but you have to really be warmongering and have a lot of annexed cities to even come close to matching the other two trees. I think that might be why they have a wonder that produces a lot of happiness. Kind of balances out.

They all have that national wonder happiness so I left that out of the comparison. Maybe I should have said "an abundance of easily accessible happiness"

 

[lindsay40k]

The main worry you've got is usually something like Paris filling the Louvre with great works and then the Communards taking over. Everyone who goes on holiday to the City of Light comes back humming the Internationale. But there's other things to keep an eye on if you want to avoid losing the battle of ideas with your own people:

- Religion. If Rome founds Catholicism, converts you, AND gets the World Congress to declare Catholicism as the world religion, the Pope's condemnations of greed are causing their ideological pressure on you to almost double. (Even if none of your people are Catholic, the influence of the World Religion on politics will give the Holy City a bonus to influencing you.)

- Trade routes and open borders. Those Chinese trade ships and tourists are dropping off little red books that increase ideological pressure.

- Diplomats. That Russian agent who's in your capital and letting them do extra diplo is also having academics over for tea and increasing their ideological pressure.

- Music tours. That English great musician wasn't singing Love Me Do; it was The Red Flag, giving Comrade Elizabeth a big pile of free ideological pressure.

If you're struggling to keep a sprawling empire happy, then a compact empire packed with luxuries with Dictatorship of the Proletariat is going to get a bonus as your minimum wage workers envy their delicious free lunches.

On a related note, if Brazil gets Futurism, expect autocracy to get really popular as their Carnivals spit out experimental works of art that carry Pedro's fascist message.

So yeah, ideology is about cultural popularity as accounted for by Tourism. It's a good idea to check the cultural landscape every era, and if someone's got a load of great works making them influential, taking them out before they found an ideology and draw half the world and your own disgruntled masses into their sphere of influence. Or just produce so much happiness that your revolutionary wave is too busy partying at Woodstock to organise an effective protest.

 

[Sturmgewher88mm]

I've pretty well finished my first full game of BNW. I adopted Freedom as my ideology early on and it seemed to be going splendid until the modern era. Suddenly my people demanded Order.

I thought to myself... WTH? Why would my people basically want Socialism over Freedom? I changed it to avoid a revolt, but still, that makes absolutely no rational sense.

What gives?

I've noticed that the AI just loves order, and they usually pick it, even when they're stuck in a civil war and losing their cities to revolts over it

 

[Marshall Thomas]

The main worry you've got is usually something like Paris filling the Louvre with great works and then the Communards taking over. Everyone who goes on holiday to the City of Light comes back humming the Internationale. But there's other things to keep an eye on if you want to avoid losing the battle of ideas with your own people:

- Religion. If Rome founds Catholicism, converts you, AND gets the World Congress to declare Catholicism as the world religion, the Pope's condemnations of greed are causing their ideological pressure on you to almost double. (Even if none of your people are Catholic, the influence of the World Religion on politics will give the Holy City a bonus to influencing you.)

- Trade routes and open borders. Those Chinese trade ships and tourists are dropping off little red books that increase ideological pressure.

- Diplomats. That Russian agent who's in your capital and letting them do extra diplo is also having academics over for tea and increasing their ideological pressure.

- Music tours. That English great musician wasn't singing Love Me Do; it was The Red Flag, giving Comrade Elizabeth a big pile of free ideological pressure.

If you're struggling to keep a sprawling empire happy, then a compact empire packed with luxuries with Dictatorship of the Proletariat is going to get a bonus as your minimum wage workers envy their delicious free lunches.

On a related note, if Brazil gets Futurism, expect autocracy to get really popular as their Carnivals spit out experimental works of art that carry Pedro's fascist message.

So yeah, ideology is about cultural popularity as accounted for by Tourism. It's a good idea to check the cultural landscape every era, and if someone's got a load of great works making them influential, taking them out before they found an ideology and draw half the world and your own disgruntled masses into their sphere of influence. Or just produce so much happiness that your revolutionary wave is too busy partying at Woodstock to organise an effective protest.

Funny post! Very informative as well. Thanks!