How to deal with Ideology "pressure"?

[Exterminas]

So, I have been playing a pangea, huge, domination game as the Zulu. Things have been running smoothly so far, I have been able to take out about half of the other civs on the continent and I have turned their realms into puppets.

My religion and the garrisoned, maintenance-free unit allow me to keep this huge amount of puppet cities, without falling into unhappiness too often.
In short, things were going dandy! I even was the first one to pick an ideology, so I went with Autocracy.

A few turns later, Korea picked Order and my empire plummeted into -20 Happiness... which I have no way to fix.

The odd thing is that Korea doesn't have any major influence over my country, tourism-wise, they are only exotic to me. Yet that somehow warrants slapping me with a total of -28 happiness.

I appreciate that they wanted to make culture gameplay more interesting in BNW, which they didn't, by the way, it still amounts to pumping out great people and pressing end-turn until you win. But screwing over Warmongers like that seems like a Curveball to me.

Or is there some way to avoid this kind of thing, that I am missing?

 

[Gucumatz]

You pretty much need a dedicated culture city if you want to avoid this completely - but there is enough happy in game to avoid culture if you want anyhow. If you can't be bothered with that, switch to order as soon as possible to negate all that unhappy or simply enact a world ideology to remove that unhappy and shift it to Korea instead

 

[Wuddel]

check if other also have influence on you. It is cumulative. You neglected culture in the game and are boned.

You either make great writers to pump out some defensive culute, or a great artist and golden age it. Or take happiness tenants. OR kill people. you completely remove their influence with a complete kill. OR switch to order and kill korea before they culture win.

 

[Exterminas]

Okay. Here are two Screenshots.
The first one serves to illustrate that Korea (The only Order-Ideology on the Map) has a very low influence on me.

The second one serves to illustrate that I have not been neglecting Culture. I have had enough culture to buy plenty of policies, in fact, so many that there are not really anymore left that would make sense for my empire. (Leaving aside Patronage and Piety, which would be useful but very little bang for the buck).

So, again: Where did I go wrong? All cities that are not puppets have culture buildings and I have been producing great writers and artists as soon as they became available (I actually have a flood-plains-city that does nothing but produce culture)... and I have been spending the Writers for Culture.

I may be biased in this, since I am really pissed to have my game wrecked by this, but I don't think this is working as intended, as a single Civ deciding to go Order utterly wrecks my Civ even though there is no basis for that.

 

[_invy_]

You need to build lots of culture and some tourism also helps, the more the better. Completely neglect it like in your case is bad.

Now you can close borders with everyone to reduce outside influence - you can still buy their open borders if you need. In your case, buy any extra happines you can get, and you should plan to quickly kill all your neighbours that don't have same ideology.

edit: Looking at those shots this shouldn't really be happening, you have ok culturem, and -28 is a lot. Not sure, not enough info there, recheck your happiness and see what can you improve.

 

[Wuddel]

You are missing something here I guess. Go to "culture victory" and mouse over your status for a detail influence breakdown.

 

[Exterminas]

Uhm. Why does everyone keep saying that I neglected culture? I didn't. Korea is only at the second influence level. How on earth could I possibly prevent them from reaching that when playing domination on a huge map, where it takes it's due time to conquer everyone?

And as I said, I have not been neglecting culture. Look at the screenshots. How could I have produced more culture as a warmonger? There are no more landmarks around to plant, I have built all the normal buildings and even conquered several wonders. I have made use of the Great Writers. So what did I neglect?

PS: Didn't have open borders with anyone the entire game. They all hate me anyway.

 

[Dragonmaster83]

Who else is order. The pressure is cumulative AND 2 extra points are given if there is a world ideology. With only 16 tourism, your prob either unknown with everyone or maybe exotic. If there are order civs that are above exotic on you, they are also gonna pressure you and lower your happiness.

Will be nice if you show a Screenshot of the culture victory pane (the one with dissidants and happiness for all the civs and mouse over the text (either content, dissidants, civ. Resistance) for your civ so we can see the pressure being exerted.

Its more you neglected tourism as you should at least be exotic with everyone else to help against pressure. If you neglected tourism completely then your gonna get pressured.

Culture is the defense to it but it can't stop pressure completely. 60 tourism is easily enough to reach exotic with a civ generating 600 culture and exert 1 pressure on it (if they have 0 tourism). Tourism is mostly offensive for ideological pressure though it does provide defense at each of the influence break points (0%,10%, 30%, 60%, 100% and 200%).

 

[JtW]

Could you show us the screenshot for "Influence by Player" with the tooltip hovering over your civ? That way we will be able to see if it's only Korea who's exerting the pressure. It seems unlikely.

 

[Ramanag]

The bigger your civ is, the more ideological tension hurts you. If you shift over to the Culture Victory tab in the culture overview, you'll see exactly what level of unrest you're at, and, if memory serves, by hovering over it, you can see what it's costing you unhappiness-wise. If memory serves, the lowest level of unrest hits you for 1 unhappiness for every city OR every 10 pop, whichever is greater. Culture wouldn't have saved you here, because exotic is enough to make that tick. You need happiness, or to switch to order, or to kill korea. That's the only way out of this mess.

 

[Exterminas]

Here is the screenshot of the culture victory panel. Sadly that doesn't tell me anything new. I understand how that enormous load of Unhappiness is calculated, but now how I could have prevented it.

The tooltip talks about "difference between incoming and outgoing pressure" Does that mean that I would have needed Tourism to defend myself? I thought Culture was the Shield! Doesn't everyone like to use that metaphor?

PS: Killing Korea is not an option at this point in the game. They are too far away and I don't any mechanized units yet that could cover that distance in due time.

Well, I have pretty much settled with the idea of tossing this savegame, since I won't be bullyied into switching to Order (Which has horrible perks, by the way - Who the hell founds cities in the late game?)

My current question is this: Would more Tourism have prevented this from happening?

Edit: I would like to point out that I am only Rank Three in overall Tourism... And that is enough to screw me over like that? As I said, I may be biased, but that hardly seems like working as intended. Especially since I have never seen the AI wrestling with that kind of unhappiness, when we had conflicting ideologies.

 

[Azradun]

You can always manipulate the World Congress into making your ideology the World Ideology, that will help.

 

[Exterminas]

You can always manipulate the World Congress into making your ideology the World Ideology, that will help.

As you can see the election is 20 turns away and I have no way to get rid of that unhappiness. Which means that in 20 turns half my empire will be Korean

 

[Wuddel]

I'd say power through and take all the happiness tenants in Autocracy, there are a bunch of good ones in Tier 2. Also the autocracy Wonder Prora is tailored to get some happiness and that free policy /tenant to get even more. You only need to get over -20 to survive!

 

[_invy_]

Yes, tourism would help you, I saw that in Maddjinn Venice episode. If Korea cultural influence to you is exotic, and you also influence Korea to exotic level then influence should be somewhat negated.

 

[Dragonmaster83]

That tells everything I needed to explain. It seems you are either a very wide empire (28 cities) or a very tall empire (several +30 pop cities). You said that korea just got exotic with you. That one hammer (order icon) means that they are influencing you with 1 pressure point. That tells me your unknown to them (because your tourism isnt past 10% of their culture). Because they are exotic and you are unknown, they get 1 order pressure on you which is enough to put you into dissidants which is 1 unhappy per city or 10 pop (whichever is greater). Get your TOURISM up and get to exotic with korea and the pressure will be even again. But if korea just did that to you with 1 pressure then your gonna have even more issues soon when more civs choose a different ideology then you.

But you've gone very wide which is gonna hurt your happiness from ideological pressure if you dont at least get your tourism up slightly.

 

[simmdg03]

So I'm new to the forums, but what Dragonmaster said is correct.

Tourism accomplishes 2 goals:

1) Builds towards culture victory
2) Determines which civs get pressured from ideology choices.

The difference between your influence level and the other civ's level leads to the pressure score. If they are dominant and you have nothing, then you're in serious trouble. If you are both exotic, there is no pressure. Everything else falls in the spectrum.

Since you've been taking over civ's I'm sure you've stumbled upon a great work or two. Make sure that you use them in the right places to get tourism combo bonuses (build a museum if you have to). Maybe send an archeologist or two out to get some additional works. You don't really have to go that far to go from unknown to exotic.

 

[Babri]

If you so scared about city flipping & unhappiness. Why don't you simply conquer & raze the civ which is exerting most influence on you. In the process you'll also get your hands on a lot of great works & world wonders from that about to be extinct civ.

 

[Elz Majesto]

Korea might be exotic to you, but I am willing to bet that you are "Unknown" to Korea. Korea is producing 32 tourism a turn, double of what you got (16). Unknown to Exotic is still a 1 level difference, and it is going to take a lot of work for you to get up to Korea's 32.
On my games, I try to go for theming bonus and get wonders that pop out great people.

I hate to say this but u might want to reload and pick aesthetic so u can get the +25% boast to great artists, and one in exploration and aim to build the Uffizi and Louvre so that you can have at least 7GWAM in your cities (that equals +14 tourism) and if your able to get the theming bonus for both that is an extra plus 7 tourism for a total of +21 Tourism to you empire, which should bring you from 16 to 37. And if you go for Louvre you will get Museum which have space for 2 GWAM (+2 TOURISM for each work) and +1 or +2 theming bonus dependent on if you fill it with artifacts or art works. Grab Eiffel and Broadway ASAP!

In short, lay off the warmongering for this phase and build up your TOURISM and build up your empire from with in to stabilize your empire and then pivot yourself for complete domination later (grab those awesome Autocracy tenets so that you can wipe the AI off the map in the Atomic Era).

 

[Dai]

Any strategy that involves holding a lot of cities (like a domination strategy where you puppet everything) is in a bit of a tight spot, because it's hard to afford even one or two levels of being behind someone else culturally. That -28 will double as soon as somebody else with a culture advantage over you chooses an ideology that isn't yours.

The "tourism is the offense, culture is the defense" metaphor is extremely poor, and anybody's who's still using it should stop using it. (It's true-ish when you're talking purely about culture victories, but not when you're talking about ideology unhappiness.) What determines unhappiness is the difference between your influence over then and their influence over you, which means that all four of your tourism, your culture, their tourism and their culture matter. It's extremely difficult to keep unhappiness at bay purely with culture, because other civs need only a mere 10% of your culture in tourism to introduce unhappiness.