There are a few problems with the Order tree.
First off, its benefits are greatest when you have a large empire. Yet large empires have the hardest time accumulating policies. If you've gone wide and haven't bothered to waste hammers on Opera Houses and the Hermitage, it will take an eternity to finish the tree.
Second, Great Engineers start to lose their luster at around this point, so buying them with Faith is a less useful ability. I can see immediately blowing some stockpiled Faith to snag the Brandenburg Gate, Eiffel Tower, or Statue of Liberty, but the one must-have wonder for a Space Race victory (the victory condition Order best supports with its focus on high Science and a wide manufacturing base) is the Hubble, and given the large number of Factories in your civilization, you'll likely spawn at least one Great Engineer naturally between the Industrial and Information eras, whom any non-idiot would save for the Hubble. Therefore, the Faith-bought engineers would naturally be spent on other, less-useful wonders. CN Tower comes too late, Eiffel gives less Happiness to you than to a Piety+Freedom player due to your lower overall Policy count, the Pentagon is hilariously terrible, Sydney Opera House and Cristo Redentor are only good because your playstyle has already handicapped you in that area and you may need to cockblock Ethiopia or India, and several smaller cities means you can't focus the full power of the Statue of Liberty in one place for Wonderspam, though it is still one of the stronger Wonders and is tied with Brandenburg for your one (or two if your religion doesn't encourage evangelism and has no unique buildings) Faith-buy.
Another problem is the strength of the central policies compared to the utter 'meh' of the left and right policies.
Nationalism is alright, actually, since defending a wide empire is harder than defending a tall one, but United Front is extremely situational, and the units you receive will not benefit from the Armory, Military Academy, and Heroic Epic you've built in your unit-producing city. Occasionally, a Military City-State may not have even built a Barracks yet.
So, how to fix it? A few simple tweaks come to mind:
* Adopting Order also reduces the social policy cost increase from cities by 33% and adds +2 Culture per city. (Stacks with Representation).
* Planned Economy adds +5 Production to Manufactories.
*Replace United Front with something else. A couple ideas:
Collectivism: In cities with a Granary, 10% of food is carried over after a new citizen is born (stacks with Aqueduct and Medical Lab). Aqueducts, Granaries, Hospitals, and Medical Labs can be built in half the usual time.
Technocracy: Each city adds +1% Great Engineer and +1% Great Scientist production in the capital, to a maximum of +25%. +1 Science from each Workshop, Factory, Windmill, Solar Plant, Hydro Plant, Nuclear Plant, Recycling Center, and Spaceship Factory.
Classless Society: +1 Happiness from each Workshop, Factory, and Windmill. -5% Unhappiness from populations in unoccupied cities (stacks with Meritocracy and Forbidden Palace).
First off, its benefits are greatest when you have a large empire. Yet large empires have the hardest time accumulating policies. If you've gone wide and haven't bothered to waste hammers on Opera Houses and the Hermitage, it will take an eternity to finish the tree.
Second, Great Engineers start to lose their luster at around this point, so buying them with Faith is a less useful ability. I can see immediately blowing some stockpiled Faith to snag the Brandenburg Gate, Eiffel Tower, or Statue of Liberty, but the one must-have wonder for a Space Race victory (the victory condition Order best supports with its focus on high Science and a wide manufacturing base) is the Hubble, and given the large number of Factories in your civilization, you'll likely spawn at least one Great Engineer naturally between the Industrial and Information eras, whom any non-idiot would save for the Hubble. Therefore, the Faith-bought engineers would naturally be spent on other, less-useful wonders. CN Tower comes too late, Eiffel gives less Happiness to you than to a Piety+Freedom player due to your lower overall Policy count, the Pentagon is hilariously terrible, Sydney Opera House and Cristo Redentor are only good because your playstyle has already handicapped you in that area and you may need to cockblock Ethiopia or India, and several smaller cities means you can't focus the full power of the Statue of Liberty in one place for Wonderspam, though it is still one of the stronger Wonders and is tied with Brandenburg for your one (or two if your religion doesn't encourage evangelism and has no unique buildings) Faith-buy.
Another problem is the strength of the central policies compared to the utter 'meh' of the left and right policies.
Nationalism is alright, actually, since defending a wide empire is harder than defending a tall one, but United Front is extremely situational, and the units you receive will not benefit from the Armory, Military Academy, and Heroic Epic you've built in your unit-producing city. Occasionally, a Military City-State may not have even built a Barracks yet.
So, how to fix it? A few simple tweaks come to mind:
* Adopting Order also reduces the social policy cost increase from cities by 33% and adds +2 Culture per city. (Stacks with Representation).
* Planned Economy adds +5 Production to Manufactories.
*Replace United Front with something else. A couple ideas:
Collectivism: In cities with a Granary, 10% of food is carried over after a new citizen is born (stacks with Aqueduct and Medical Lab). Aqueducts, Granaries, Hospitals, and Medical Labs can be built in half the usual time.
Technocracy: Each city adds +1% Great Engineer and +1% Great Scientist production in the capital, to a maximum of +25%. +1 Science from each Workshop, Factory, Windmill, Solar Plant, Hydro Plant, Nuclear Plant, Recycling Center, and Spaceship Factory.
Classless Society: +1 Happiness from each Workshop, Factory, and Windmill. -5% Unhappiness from populations in unoccupied cities (stacks with Meritocracy and Forbidden Palace).
Accumulating the culture isn't that hard, just build all the culture buildings and invest in cultural CS to speed up the process. The polices are already powerful enough (ok the military CS one is a bit so-so) but the production and factory bonuses are huge, and the finisher is also extremely powerful for ICS.
