Going for Gold: Ideologies

Is this item in a reasonable state of balance?


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Stalker0

Baller Magnus
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Going for Gold: These threads are designed to lock down elements of the mod for the gold release. In other words, if approved, no further changes are expected for this item.

This thread will debate the 3 Ideologies

The question is: Is this item in a reasonable state of balance?

Important Notes:

1) There is no such thing as perfect balance.
2) The key is that each element is strong enough to have a niche, even if that niche is for very specific playstyles.
3) If you vote no in the poll, please comment on the elements you think are in an unreasonable state of balance.
4) If you vote yes, there is really no need to comment. The poll is the key note.
 
I tried freedom a couple of times, wasn't overly impressed. I've never seen the benefit of autocracy. The free research labs from order win me over every time. Why should I choose anything but order?
 
I tried freedom a couple of times, wasn't overly impressed. I've never seen the benefit of autocracy. The free research labs from order win me over every time. Why should I choose anything but order?

Because you already have a RL in all your cities by the time that tenet is available?
 
I tried freedom a couple of times, wasn't overly impressed. I've never seen the benefit of autocracy. The free research labs from order win me over every time. Why should I choose anything but order?
The exact same argument could be made for hospitals and airports...

The reason I usually go Order is because I have found late game to be incredibly difficult for managing happiness, and Order has the most wide, constant yield boosts. The happiness thing is getting more under control, but I am still finding that, unless I am willing to move heaven and earth for a very obvious synergy with my current civ (autocracy for Persia, Freedom for Austria, etc.), that I will go Order just for the reprieve from unhappiness
 
I think the trees are well balanced. I'll make the arguement for Autocracy because it went from being my favorite tree to being reworked into my ultra favorite tree.

It grants a good amount of yields, great military boosts and most importantly isn't one-dimensional. The powerful interactions with Diplomacy are massively useful in both avoiding your competitor's attempts to crush you in the WC and crushing them in turn. Control of the WC is a huge deal, and autocracy is a wonderful help. Especially Tyranny's ability to just break those annoying escalating wars over a CS.
 
I don't like the balance here. There's still inferior tenets, I think it's a "no" for me. Autocracy's by far the closest to being in a good spot, but it has a problem where I often put a lot of emphasis on tier 1 tenets because t2 can be worse like one with meh yields that doesn't help for any victory condition as opposed to a t1 that is great for diplomacy/cultural - that t2 is just worse despite the T1 not feeling OP at all. I'd prefer if tier 1's were around industrial (renaissance) era policies, tier 2s slightly better, tier 3 outclassing them, as it is it feels a bit random. There's must takes, there's just don'ts, generally every ideology tree has enough of each to make a decent choosing, so it's not a super "no", but I feel like it needs touches.
 
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My main complain on ideologies is Freedom's military tenents: volunteer army and arsenal of democracy, in my opinion, do very little to help Freedom's defensive needs. The 15% supply increase does very little for tall as well, the 33% city strength is fine though.
 
My main complain on ideologies is Freedom's military tenents: volunteer army and arsenal of democracy, in my opinion, do very little to help Freedom's defensive needs. The 15% supply increase does very little for tall as well, the 33% city strength is fine though.

Volunteer army is a panic button...one I’ve used to good effect. 6 free units can be a godsend to a TALL civ where every hammer is precious. I’ve gotten into wars where the units were a much needed relief...or I was able to use the strong foreign legion unit to start up and offensive war with my own UU...as the legion unit is quite strong when it first can come out.

It’s a niche ideology...but a decent one
 
Volunteer army is a panic button...one I’ve used to good effect. 6 free units can be a godsend to a TALL civ where every hammer is precious. I’ve gotten into wars where the units were a much needed relief...or I was able to use the strong foreign legion unit to start up and offensive war with my own UU...as the legion unit is quite strong when it first can come out.

It’s a niche ideology...but a decent one

yeah I don't have an issue with that part of the tenent, is the 15% cap which I found lackluster, more than anything. The ideology itself is very strong for cultural and diplo victory (less so in the science one, but that's my limited experience speaking)
 
I like the overall balance of the Ideologies (maybe only small tweaks to yields/percentages here or there), but I'm going to second that the biggest part of Universal Healthcare, People's Army, Academy of Sciences, and Air Supremacy is that I always get access to these Tenants before I unlock the associated building tech. So not only do I not have to waste the hammers producing these buildings, but I get them in all my cities without even having to research the appropriate tech.

But as a sidenote to that, I have also always played on Epic speed, and up until the most recent patch Epic speed's tech costs were bugged so that techs came a lot slower than Standard or Marathon. Before the tech cost fix it was common to unlock Ideologies in the late Renaissance Era with culture-heavy Civs like China, Brazil, or Poland. Getting free Hospitals or Military Academies in every city before you even reach Industrial Era was insanely good. Going Autocracy I could usually time Air Supremacy with unlocking Flight, essentially going from 0 to 150% in the air combat metagame. But now that the tech cost is fixed in Epic the free buildings are not as much of a boon.
 
I've been wondering about Freedom's balance lately. Namely, in two points: tier 2 tenets and lack of science-related benefits until tier 3.

The only tier 2 tenet from Freedom that has been powerful at this level is Arsenal of Democracy, all the others have been underwhelming, even when running a domestic strategy that would seem tailored for them. That has been especially glaring when comparing with tier 2 tenets from Order and Autocracy, who received some rework in this tier in the past.

- New Deal: requires 4 landmarks/GPTI per city to equal Party Leadership in yields, which wasn't reasonable even with Austria (counting Capital) and is conditional relative to the other. I've thought of using this one, but the expected gains didn't justify picking it. That Knowledge through Devotion provides 8 yields on these tiles and can be reached many eras earlier makes New Deal even harder to appreciate. It doesn't help that, in the lategame, you are prone to bulb your great people due to how little turns a GPTI has available to benefit you.

- Capitalism and Civil Society received nerfs to roughly halve their benefits, but they now feel incomplete. Civil Society actually feels weaker than Rationalism's Empiricism, which provides spy protection and the tree's scaler. Capitalism is about 2 :c5happy: per city, which would be ok in Order or Autocracy, but happiness is rarely an issue for Tall empires at this point, the ones most likely to choose Freedom. It also has an overlap in function with Universal Suffrage. I often think that these two tenets could be merged for the specialist theme, leaving the other open for a science tenet.

- Universal Suffrage: like with Capitalism, happiness isn't much of an issue for tall empires, and the golden age duration hasn't proved to be relevant at his point due to how powerful great artists are once you have enough theming bonuses from building Broadcast Towers and Museums. I've tried this one in my last photojournal, and think now that it was a mistake; golden ages from great artists simply last enough at this point to cover the endgame without it, and tall empires are likely to have the themes and artists for it. I think this tenet needs a rework to address something a Tall empire needs more.

- Their Finest Hour: this one is fine in my opinion, it does help protecting your cities and bringing a sense of security against a potential invasion. People have noticed, however, that the change from Crime to Distress was an indirect nerf to this tenet, so it's worth looking at it.

About science, I often end writing in my photojournal notes that this ideology lacks science-related benefits, despite being meant to support a SV. For the most part, science is restricted to the tier 3 Space Procurements, with at best Universal Healthcare providing Hospitals to convert food into science. It is way behind Order, with Great Leap Forward, Academy of Sciences and Worker's Faculties. I expect this much difference between Order and Autocracy, as the latter doesn't try to support a SV, but not between Order and Freedom. It's my thought that this lack of science tenets before tier 3 also weakens the other victories, due to how important it is to reach Telecommunications to unlock them under your terms.

Has anyone else had the same experience with Freedom?
 
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Freedom is weird. The free hospital tenet is clearly the best tier 1. 50 culture every time a city grows is absurd.
The 6 foreign legions is gimmicky in my experience, because you can get this tenet well before you unlock foreign legions.

Arsenal of Democracy is the best tier 2 by a big margin. The extra food on farms is strong too. Finest hour is cool. It was brought up before that it should give a free bomber, or have bonus production towards air units. I can't even remember what the other tenets do and I was looking at them like 10 minutes ago.

On not having science, purchasing spaceship parts is really powerful. I imagine that even if an order civ finished all techs a few turns earlier, you could still finish the spaceship before him.
 
On not having science, purchasing spaceship parts is really powerful. I imagine that even if an order civ finished all techs a few turns earlier, you could still finish the spaceship before him.

Maybe its a bug with the latest version, but I was buying space ship parts...with Autocracy.
 
Freedom is weird. The free hospital tenet is clearly the best tier 1. 50 culture every time a city grows is absurd.
The 6 foreign legions is gimmicky in my experience, because you can get this tenet well before you unlock foreign legions.

Arsenal of Democracy is the best tier 2 by a big margin. The extra food on farms is strong too. Finest hour is cool. It was brought up before that it should give a free bomber, or have bonus production towards air units. I can't even remember what the other tenets do and I was looking at them like 10 minutes ago.

On not having science, purchasing spaceship parts is really powerful. I imagine that even if an order civ finished all techs a few turns earlier, you could still finish the spaceship before him.

Freedom is weird indeed, it has a few very strong tenets in Healthcare, Arsenal and the tier 3 tenets. I think the power of most tier 1 tenets are what you'd expect from there, it's the tier 2 ones that I find lacking.

Purchasing SS parts is strong, but being behind in tech is more concerning. Problem is, if an Order civ can tech faster, they can build Hubble and CERN before a Freedom civ has the chance to do so, further pushing their scientific edge by 3-4 techs. This means an Order civ can reach all techs many turns before, not just a few, leaving no time to research all techs to purchase the remaining parts.
 
Maybe its a bug with the latest version, but I was buying space ship parts...with Autocracy.
Its a bug.
Purchasing SS parts is strong, but being behind in tech is more concerning. Problem is, if an Order civ can tech faster, they can build Hubble and CERN before a Freedom civ has the chance to do so, further pushing their scientific edge by 3-4 techs. This means an Order civ can reach all techs many turns before, not just a few, leaving no time to research all techs to purchase the remaining parts.
Very true. Honestly Great Leap Forward is just a crazy tenet. Order also has a tier 1 that directly outclasses Freedom's Avant Garde, you can use it for a great scientist.
 
I've reported the SS parts buying bug several weeks ago on Github, I hope it'll be fixed soon.

Freedom is, in my opinion, considerably weaker than Order and Autocracy. I'd preferred if Order and Autocracy were nerfed (as opposed to Freedom being buffed).
 
This echos my criticism re: freedom. They are considerably worse than Order for cultural victory as well.

Order can tech faster and has more tourism modifiers. Order was arguably a better choice before the CV required a wonder unlock. Now there is no question. Order can rack in influence at least as fast, and can get to the wonder tech first.

Freedom has some nice tenets, but all their nicest tenets aren't laser-focused on a victory type. Order has the kinds of policies that actually win games
 
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I've reported the SS parts buying bug several weeks ago on Github, I hope it'll be fixed soon.

Freedom is, in my opinion, considerably weaker than Order and Autocracy. I'd preferred if Order and Autocracy were nerfed (as opposed to Freedom being buffed).

Wouldn't nerfing them make cases of picking Industrial Era policies over tenets way more common? These two had their tenets reworked before because there were many that undeperformed. And part of my issue on Freedom is that I may be better off going for an Industrial Era tree (notably, Rationalism, to cover the lack of science tenets) as soon as I get the first tier 3 tenet, or even just after Arsenal of Democracy. I don't think that's how Ideologies should be.

In fact, when analyzing my loss on the Austria photojournal, I think I'd probably won if, instead of focusing on the tier 3 tenet, I had gone for Rationalism's Empiricism as soon as I got Arsenal of Democracy. I had a second tier 2 tenet when that world congress happened and I didn't have Telecommunications; one more tech was all I needed to unlock World Ideology and win before my Order opponent could win with a spaceship, and going Rationalism -> Empiricism would have done that. I don't think it's an isolated case, I've felt this science issue with Freedom in other games as well.
 
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