Going for Gold: Ideologies

Is this item in a reasonable state of balance?


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I don't know about messing with the diplomat tourism power. The traded votes concept is interesting, would be curious to hear people's thoughts on the AI with that.
Right now, Diplomats do the following:
  • Grant vision of the city
  • Give 15%:tourism: Tourism
  • Can pay civs to vote yay or nay on a certain declaration (can trade for more delegates per level)
  • levels up spy quickly
  • Gives +1 delegate in the WC at Globalization
Giving a tourism boost seems fair, since it's the only tourism modifier that isn't augmented by an existing policy (open borders, trade routes, shared religion)
I would want something more interesting than just a copy of the +1 Delegate per Diplomat that the Globalization tech gives.
A Diplomat could give vision of ALL cities in an empire. You can't have a diplomat with a civ you are at war with, so this would give you a huge information edge, without feeling unfair as a war tool.
The other possibility is to give diplomats some brand new ability, like siphoning yields from the target capital.
The other other possibility is to allow diplomats to perform certain spy actions
 
Right now, Diplomats do the following:
  • Grant vision of the city
  • Give 15%:tourism: Tourism
  • Can pay civs to vote yay or nay on a certain declaration (can trade for more delegates per level)
  • levels up spy quickly
  • Gives +1 delegate in the WC at Globalization
Giving a tourism boost seems fair, since it's the only tourism modifier that isn't augmented by an existing policy (open borders, trade routes, shared religion)
I would want something more interesting than just a copy of the +1 Delegate per Diplomat that the Globalization tech gives.
A Diplomat could give vision of ALL cities in an empire. You can't have a diplomat with a civ you are at war with, so this would give you a huge information edge, without feeling unfair as a war tool.
The other possibility is to give diplomats some brand new ability, like siphoning yields from the target capital.
The other other possibility is to allow diplomats to perform certain spy actions

I like the idea of giving all city vision, that's a pretty solid benefit. I also like the idea that diplomats also act as spies.
 
Ehh... you cant kill diplomats tho, so I'm not a big fan of giving them spy/thief abilities becsause there is no counterplay except warring.
 
Agreed, I don't know why these two aren't just combined. Urbanization is a "fair" tenet and Civil society is a "bad" tenet. If Urbanization gave both powers it would still be merely "good" as a tenet choice.

I'm up for that merge, as food lose much of its importance by the time ideologies are up.

I think Freedom needs another science tenet instead of more cultural boosts. Freedom only has one science oriented tenet, same as Autocracy, despite being one of the two ideologies that are dedicated towards SV.

Another point that I think deserves mention is that Freedom's Transnationalism seems to be the weakest of the three corporation tenets. The +25% maximum franchise count doesn't compare favorably with the effective doubled franchise capability of the other ideologies. I think this tenet deserves a revision.
 
Universal healthcare is a science tenet (hospitals are mainly science buildings). I take your point though. I think Diplomats need some love, but space procurement does an awful lot of lifting for the civ.
 
Ehh... you cant kill diplomats tho, so I'm not a big fan of giving them spy/thief abilities becsause there is no counterplay except warring.

well police stations basically shut down spying cold. It’s not like spying is that effective anyway, it’s more the thief abilities that can be useful
 
Universal healthcare is a science tenet (hospitals are mainly science buildings). I take your point though. I think Diplomats need some love, but space procurement does an awful lot of lifting for the civ.

Universal healthcare only makes them free, nothing prevents civs with other ideologies from straight up building hospitals. Or a Freedom civ from picking other tier 2 tenets instead and building them anyway. And in any of those cases, the civ ends producing the same amount of science. Overall, universal healthcare is closer to being an economic tenet than a scientific one.

About diplomats, the complaint about them is general, I don't think a buff should be from an ideology, or at least locked behind a tenet. If you want ideology-specific buffs to diplomats, I suggest ideology-specific national wonders to give diplomats an extra benefit based on the NW's condition for extra votes. Freedom's case would be if the diplomat is in the capital of a civ you have a declaration of friendship, Order's would be in a civ you have a defensive pact, and Autocracy's would be in a civ you conquered the capital of.
 
Had a different idea:
What if The last tenet gave an immediate bonus and a permanent retroactive bonus for each city you Liberate (minor or major CiV)? Could call it “Self-Determination”

Some ideas for bonuses for liberating a city
Immediate:
  • Trigger an Historic Event
  • Trigger a :c5goldenage:Golden Age
  • Big :c5gold:Yield bonus
Permanent/retroactive:
  • Increase resting :c5influence:influence with that CS by +40
  • :c5happy:Happiness
  • % of liberated cities' :c5science: and :c5gold:Yields added to your own (A little marshall plan/Operation Blacklist flavor)
  • +1 WC Vote per Liberated City
 
Last edited:
Had a different idea:
What if The last tenet gave an immediate bonus and a permanent retroactive bonus for each city you Liberate (minor or major CiV)? Could call it “Self-Determination”

Some ideas for bonuses for liberating a city
Immediate:
  • Trigger an Historic Event
  • Trigger a :c5goldenage:Golden Age
  • Big :c5gold:Yield bonus
Permanent/retroactive:
  • Increase resting :c5influence:influence with that CS by +40
  • :c5happy:Happiness
  • % of liberated cities' :c5science: and :c5gold:Yields added to your own (A little marshall plan/Operation Blacklist flavor)
  • +1 WC Vote per Liberated City
It’s a neat name. For cs you could just go with a full sphere of influence, which makes liberation very enticing.

I do like the idea of adding a little war focus for freedom but in a very different way than autocracy
 
It would actively work against a DomV, which I like, since Freedom is supposed to be the ideology that doesn't go for that victory type.

I also like that it raises the stakes on conquering CS, because you better be able to keep them, or else a Freedom player could just liberate them and strengthen their DiploV potential even more.
 
Last edited:
Had a different idea:
What if The last tenet gave an immediate bonus and a permanent retroactive bonus for each city you Liberate (minor or major CiV)? Could call it “Self-Determination”

Some ideas for bonuses for liberating a city
Immediate:
  • Trigger an Historic Event
  • Trigger a :c5goldenage:Golden Age
  • Big :c5gold:Yield bonus
Permanent/retroactive:
  • Increase resting :c5influence:influence with that CS by +40
  • :c5happy:Happiness
  • % of liberated cities' :c5science: and :c5gold:Yields added to your own (A little marshall plan/Operation Blacklist flavor)
  • +1 WC Vote per Liberated City

Definitively interesting. It is rather circumstantial, though, given that not every game has a snowballing warmonger and you won't always be able to face that warmonger straight up. Seems very synergistic with Their Finest Hour, though, as you get an enticing use for those B17.
 
Definitively interesting. It is rather circumstantial, though,

that's the nice thing about ideologies compared to policies, there are enough of them that they can be a bit circumstantial, as long as the circumstance is something that comes up "often enough" and that you can see coming in advance to decide that choosing that tenant will be of use to you.

I can say that with the more aggressive AIs of late, I've had plenty of games where large scale CS conquering was present, so a policy to make it worth my while to go free them would be neat.
 
If the AI is going to consistently gobble up CSs like in the latest few versions, then we may as well have a few reasons to free them.

re: a sphere of influence, that conflicts with the “self-determination” idea. It would be preferable to have some bonus that doesn’t shackle the liberated civ to you.
 
I like the idea, it's less widely applicable than Freedom's current +8 delegates (I don't know why it still says +4 on Standard maps when it was +8 in practice), which is good because quite frankly the current tenet is overpowered for Diplo victory to the point where Freedom is my standard ideology for a diplo victory assuming I don't already have the victory in the bag with a ton of war-obtained vassals.

I don't think it should apply to civilizations cities because those can have huge variance on both the map size and the way the game has unfolded, even moreso than most map dependent tenets/policies. I like the sphere of influence on city states, I think that would be quite accurate to the Freedom Ideology as well.

I still think though that the tenet probably shouldn't be 100% focused on city-state liberation, because that's a pretty specific niche.

I agree with others that Freedom does not need more tourism benefits (I do agree with the Urbanization merge), and that a science or infrastructure benefit would be more suitable. Perhaps even a diplo benefit, it's just a spitball idea but what if a tenet affected diplomacy modifiers with other civs?
 
re: a sphere of influence, that conflicts with the “self-determination” idea. It would be preferable to have some bonus that doesn’t shackle the liberated civ to you.

It’s going to have to be a heck of a bonus, because you are basically giving the ally to a other civ, as in high difficulties the AIs will swarm it with diplo units
 
It’s going to have to be a heck of a bonus, because you are basically giving the ally to a other civ, as in high difficulties the AIs will swarm it with diplo units
You do already start with something like 900 influence when you liberate a CS late game. Which makes increasing resting influence worthless, by the way. If it's on a tenet it's better to give something like 3x starting influence when liberated instead.
 
Could be something like:

Self-Determination

Liberated cities gain a Free Military Base, and X% of liberated cities' :c5science: and :c5gold: are added to your own.

This would still be mostly helpful for CS but also applies to any liberated city. We'd need to decide the percentage and maybe some other things, would probably need a little more oomph currently.
 
Could be something like:

Self-Determination

Liberated cities gain a Free Military Base, and X% of liberated cities' :c5science: and :c5gold: are added to your own.

This would still be mostly helpful for CS but also applies to any liberated city. We'd need to decide the percentage and maybe some other things, would probably need a little more oomph currently.

Another more radical idea. What if the ideology made it where every CS instantly offered a liberation mission. Its a little outside the norm, but the idea of integrating quests with other aspects of the mod is something we haven't explored tooo much.
 
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