Civilization's Preferred Ideology?

[InsertName]

Yay first post!

Hope this hasn't been posted before, but do civs have a preferred ideology? Such as America going Freedom or Russia going Order.

It would make sense, though I'm not sure if they do.

 

[steveg700]

It's been asked many times before. Follow up your first post with your first forum search.

They don't seem to prefer any ideology, although you'll see tons of folks posting purely anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Collectively, however, everyone's anecdotal evidence conflicts, which tends to indicate the opposite.

The AI likes to pick ideologies that have the most free tenets available (as I suspect many players do).Where they go from there is still kind of a mystery. I've seen the AI pick an ideology, then after loading a save from the previous turn, watch it pick a completely different one. This suggest there's a randomizer.

They don't necessarily pick ideologies that exert the most pressure, which often puts them in quite a fix.

Anyways, welcome.

 

[Securion]

Devs answer was "No.".
So... /thread.

 

[ilikepie333]

I don't think they're supposed to...

 

[Tachii]

The first few civs seem to take the other 2 ideology since they do get 2 free tenets, so uh... yeah.

 

[SnowKomodo]

No favorites. The AI chooses based on how the game is going for them

 

[InsertName]

Well that answers that.

Thanks for the speedy response!

 

[mikeville]

The last game I played, I was the first civ to pick an idealogy. I chose Order. Every other single civ, when they chose, also chose order, except for the last one to pick, he chose Freedom for some reason.

Just commenting. Thought it was odd.

 

[adwcta]

Hold on here. I made a poll about this like 3 weeks back.

90%+ of people who responded (and a ton of people responded) said Order was the preferred ideology for the AI.
10% said AI picks evenly.
Almost no one said Autocracy/Freedom.

So, that's a LOT of combine anecdotal deviance, that pretty much passes for statistical reality by this point.

 

[VainoValkea]

adwcta, three weeks back the expansion pack was still very new. People had little experience. Confirmation bias could've distorted things. Choices favored by players (the overpowered Freedom ideology, for example) could've distorted things.

Also, the question was about whether specific civs go for specific ideologies, not whether AI prefers one ideology over another in general.

 

[Chiatroll]

No. Sort of.

Some of the scripting was posted for it a while back in another thread that I am not going to look for. It's got a random element and some preferences.

There are conditions that help them make the decision based on what they feel will be best for them and the civs play difference so some civs are more likely to run into the conditions to want to play a certain ideology more then other ideologies.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

There was a game when I got Order with the sole purpose of not suffering in the hands of Russia's huge tourism in the future. Just to seem them getting Autocracy a few turns later

 

[njmfff]

The last game I played, I was the first civ to pick an idealogy. I chose Order. Every other single civ, when they chose, also chose order, except for the last one to pick, he chose Freedom for some reason.

Just commenting. Thought it was odd.

That civ probably had lot of culture so it wasn't influenced by other civs?

altho I always find amusing when England picks up Autocracy when she's surrounded by 4-5 other civs that have huge influence over her and went Freedom\Order... and she gets -30+ unhappiness instantly.

 

[Arachnofiend]

They don't seem to prefer any ideology, although you'll see tons of folks posting purely anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Collectively, however, everyone's anecdotal evidence conflicts, which tends to indicate the opposite.

Well they sort of do, but it's based on their leader flavors so there's no guarantee that it'll be historically accurate. For example, Washington tends towards a wide-settling domination game so he just loves to paint his nation red once he industrializes.

Not always so easy to predict though. Nebby went Autocracy in my last game as Brazil. He had not conquered a single city during the course of the game and he's a freaking science civ in the first place. It didn't help that America had strong enough tourism going on that Babs was being pressured into Order from turn one. AI decisions are just bizarre sometimes, I guess.

 

[dexters]

I've seen Order show up a lot in my games. Freedom is a close 2nd.

Autocracy seems rarer. Only plausible explanation for me is Order gives the most terms of happiness from the building mix a Civ has (monuments; production buildings * national wonders) vs (cash buildings [excld. markets]& national wonder from Freedom) and (defensive buildings + national wonders for Autocracy)

so the leading AI civs which unlock ideologies first, almost always are the pop. leaders, relatively larger empires, and could always use more happiness, and probably makes the most use out of the culture/production buildings mix.

Once you get that domino going, It most invariably affects how the rest chooses. I've chosen order just to smooth relations and it's not a big difference for me over my vanity preference of freedom.

Freedom probably would be just as popular if they shifted the requirement to markets + banks instead of the harder to achieve banks + stock exchanges from Capitalism.

Not always so easy to predict though. Nebby went Autocracy in my last game as Brazil. He had not conquered a single city during the course of the game and he's a freaking science civ in the first place. It didn't help that America had strong enough tourism going on that Babs was being pressured into Order from turn one. AI decisions are just bizarre sometimes, I guess.

He probably had walls UB and defensive buildings up to wazoo and if he was first to hit ideologies happiness bonus would have been immense and huge.

Also possible he was making a play to attack someone or is expecting military action; hard to say not knowing you game, but I think having walls UB for them probably tilted calculation somewhere along the lines in that case.

 

[MattZed]

It may not be that a given Civ is coded to prefer an ideology. Rather, it may be, and would seem to be the case from Polycast 178, that ideologies are chosen based on how the civilization is developing at the stage in the game where they select ideologies. If you have a militaristic civ, then perhaps they're more likely to be in the "Autocracy is the best choice for me at this moment" scenario. It's not so much that their civ prefers it as much as it is that their strategies prefer it.

 

[dexters]

It may not be that a given Civ is coded to prefer an ideology. Rather, it may be, and would seem to be the case from Polycast 178, that ideologies are chosen based on how the civilization is developing at the stage in the game where they select ideologies. If you have a militaristic civ, then perhaps they're more likely to be in the "Autocracy is the best choice for me at this moment" scenario. It's not so much that their civ prefers it as much as it is that their strategies prefer it.

I don't think there's an argument in that direction? My posts specifically is hashing out their rationale for preferring order and to a lesser extent freedom.

 

[Arachnofiend]

He probably had walls UB and defensive buildings up to wazoo and if he was first to hit ideologies happiness bonus would have been immense and huge.

Also possible he was making a play to attack someone or is expecting military action; hard to say not knowing you game, but I think having walls UB for them probably tilted calculation somewhere along the lines in that case.

That actually makes sense yeah, I can see why WoB might tilt him towards Autocracy. I don't remember him ever declaring war; the big world leaders were Washington, Catherine, and myself with the "if not for you meddling kids" also rans being the Shoshone (who were being a fantastic freedom buddy until they got near wiped by America) and Rome ( who wiped Persia early but then made the mistake of declaring war on me and trying to trudge through my jungles in a Vietnam-level blunder ).

It was a pretty fun game really, all of the big players were packed into the eastern half of the map so things really went to hell when ideologies starting getting picked.