Ideological Pressure and Influence Balance Discussion

[Txurce]

A lot of the complaints recently seem to follow the form of "this mechanic made me lose so it should be removed" when the better solution, imo, is to simply play better and improve.

I don't think CrazyG said he lost so he hates it.

Examples where, for a variety of reasons, the breakdown remains balanced, don't cause problems for anyone. People are complaining due to the frequency with which this isn't the case. That it may not happen in your game does not alter the consensus (which is a lot older than this thread).

The point you're missing is that you can be generating tourism at an adequate rate — ie, not deserving to be punished — but if the tourism monster converts enough civs around you, then you are likely to become unhappy anyway, and maybe even forced to throw away carefully chosen tenets, at a critical point in the game.

I already explained why I prefer unhappiness to be toned down. But after more thought, I agree with CrazyG that the fun of ideologies is the seriously heightened tensions, realignments, and victory approaches of the various civs. Now I'd rather drop the unhappiness factor altogether.

 

[Rekk]

Let me ask this...why do we want to force a player to generate tourism...sacrificing yields they want for one they don’t, just so they can avoid a happiness bomb later in the game.

Forget balance for a moment....how is that fun?

This seems like a matter of providing better incentives for those pursuing other victory conditions.

Otherwise, the fact that we ignore ignore science at our own peril, ignore military at our own peril, ignore city-state alliances at our own peril, ignore religion at our own peril, ignore culture at our own peril, ignore happiness at our own peril, ignore production at our own peril... ignore tourism and ... who cares?

 

[Txurce]

This seems like a matter of providing better incentives for those pursuing other victory conditions.

Otherwise, the fact that we ignore ignore science at our own peril, ignore military at our own peril, pursuing city-state alliances at our own peril, ignore religion at our own peril... ignore tourism and ... who cares?

Well, ignore military, culture/tourism or science and you'll flat-out lose the game. That doesn't need a whole lot more incentive. Religion and CS are more at your own peril.

 

[CrazyG]

A lot of the complaints recently seem to follow the form of "this mechanic made me lose so it should be removed" when the better solution, imo, is to simply play better and improve. If ideology unhappiness is a problem then stop ignoring tourism in your games. If unhappiness is a problem in general then stop over growing/settling. I'm afraid that if some if the squeakiest wheels get their oil then the game will find itself devoid a meaningful choices/consequences.

My complain would be that I win because of it. Close games becomes a lot less interesting when everyone has the same ideology. Everyone of a certain ideology teaming up is one way to actually a runaway.

I have never lost as a result of it, nor have I ever factored ideological pressure when I made a decision.

 

[Stalker0]

What makes you say you are forced to generate tourism?

In BNW, you are definitely forced but Vox Populi buildings come naturally with some tourism yields like Arena and Zoo. If you are focusing very hard on culture, you are bound to hit culture buildings with tourism yields.

In which case the mechanic never comes up. So why have it?

 

[crdvis16]

The unhappiness generated from tourism of a differing ideology is the only way a tourism-centric civ "exerts its will" on the rest of the world.

Military civs exert their will pretty directly via conquering. Diplomatic civs exert their will via WC resolutions. Tourism civs exert their will via pushing unhappiness on opposing ideologies and forcing them to deal.

Science civs don't really exert their will on others with any additional mechanics which makes science victory less interactive and fun, imo. It's sort of the de facto time victory.

If you take away the unhappiness pressure from high tourism from opposing ideologies then you make a tourism victory less interactive. If anything I think we should be adding more interactive elements (science victory could use something imo...).

It seems like people's hate for unhappiness spirals is causing them to attack parts of the game that are otherwise adding value. Maybe after the happiness changes that are in the works it won't be seen as a problem.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

My complain would be that I win because of it. Close games becomes a lot less interesting when everyone has the same ideology. Everyone of a certain ideology teaming up is one way to actually a runaway.

I have never lost as a result of it, nor have I ever factored ideological pressure when I made a decision.

Then the problem isn't exactly ideological pressure, the problem is a lack of diversity in ideology choice in certain games.

Spoiler About the soviet union... :

Honestly I'd be okay with just totally removing this feature, it adds nothing interesting to gameplay. The idea of the Soviet Union collapsing to foreign influence and pressure is already represented well enough by the tourism victory condition.

You're seeing history in a idealistic way, not in the materialist way, the Soviet Union collapsed not by foreign influence, but after a long process of degeneration followed by the execution of the old bolsheviks by Stalin in the Moscow trials, the bureaucracy was using the planned economy to assign some properties for them, instead of assigning the properties equally. Since it was something bad to do in a semi-socialist state, they decided to legalize those properties by converting into a new ruling class, destroying the planned economy and allowing a free market system (the russian oligarchs).

After the destruction of the planned economy, thousands of jobs were lost, poverty increased by a lot, and the new ruling class (the new oligarchs with properties plundered from the semi-socialist state) used mass represion (the dictatorship after the collapse of the soviet union) to sustain themselves in power, just like they did when they were in the bureaucracy.

Soviet Union collapse began in the Moscow trials, and it was a catastrophe for the humanity

Massive wars for resources in the middle east, massive plunder of Africa by industrialized countries, massive social inequality in industrialized countries, massive destruction of the social environment thanks to the capitalist way of production (overproduction of merchancies), preparations for war in all major powers (USA, China, Russia), massive labor explotation in India, China and low-wage countries; subordination of the healthcare and education system to the market system (expensive medicines, private healthcare, private education with students being forced to take all-life loans to study), subordination of the industries to profit, instead of meeting social needs (high military budget, the military-industrial complex) all of that is thanks to capitalism. And unless a revolt happen against, the humanity have no future.

 

[crdvis16]

My complain would be that I win because of it. Close games becomes a lot less interesting when everyone has the same ideology. Everyone of a certain ideology teaming up is one way to actually a runaway.

I have never lost as a result of it, nor have I ever factored ideological pressure when I made a decision.

The situation where you are so dominant in tourism/culture that everyone falls in line behind you is a situation where you were going to win regardless. The situation where the top 3 or so civs are reasonably competitive usually lead to differing ideologies among those 3 with the rest of the field being forced to align based on their tourism deficits.

I think you specifically likely never lose a game due to ideology unhappiness because you would recognize well in advance of that happening that your game is already lost. I also haven't had a game in a long while where I suffered meaningful ideology pressure because I don't ignore tourism.

People that do find themselves suffering ideology unhappiness should recognize that it's the game's way of saying "you messed up now deal with it". If you can't deal with it then you were likely going to lose anyway or you played way too greedy ignoring tourism.

For those asking why one should be forced to bother with tourism: that sounds a lot like complaining that you have to bother with a military even if you aren't pursuing a domination victory.

 

[Enginseer]

Spoiler About the soviet union... :

You're seeing history in a idealistic way, not in the materialist way, the Soviet Union collapsed not by foreign influence, but after a long process of degeneration followed by the execution of the old bolsheviks by Stalin in the Moscow trials, the bureaucracy was using the planned economy to assign some properties for them, instead of assigning the properties equally. Since it was something bad to do in a semi-socialist state, they decided to legalize those properties by converting into a new ruling class, destroying the planned economy and allowing a free market system (the russian oligarchs).

After the destruction of the planned economy, thousands of jobs were lost, poverty increased by a lot, and the new ruling class (the new oligarchs with properties plundered from the semi-socialist state) used mass represion (the dictatorship after the collapse of the soviet union) to sustain themselves in power, just like they did when they were in the bureaucracy.

Soviet Union collapse began in the Moscow trials, and it was a catastrophe for the humanity

Massive wars for resources in the middle east, massive plunder of Africa by industrialized countries, massive social inequality in industrialized countries, massive destruction of the social environment thanks to the capitalist way of production (overproduction of merchancies), preparations for war in all major powers (USA, China, Russia), massive labor explotation in India, China and low-wage countries; subordination of the healthcare and education system to the market system (expensive medicines, private healthcare, private education with students being forced to take all-life loans to study), subordination of the industries to profit, instead of meeting social needs (high military budget, the military-industrial complex) all of that is thanks to capitalism. And unless a revolt happen against, the humanity have no future.

none of these are the reasons why the USSR fell.

the downfall of the USSR was caused by a Gorbachev brainlet.

"you know how everybody drinks vodka and vodka revenue is the highest revenue aside from oil?"
"Well oil prices are dropping at the same time but hear me out lets ban vodka"

They ran out of money.

 

[Txurce]

The unhappiness generated from tourism of a differing ideology is the only way a tourism-centric civ "exerts its will" on the rest of the world.\

If you take away the unhappiness pressure from high tourism from opposing ideologies then you make a tourism victory less interactive. If anything I think we should be adding more interactive elements (science victory could use something imo...).

I almost always play for Science victories, which involves fighting, diplomacy, and fending off culture. I would never say my VC has no interactivity, and would say the same thing for a CV. That aside...

How much exertion of the will is there when every civ follows the tourism leader, accepts their ideology, and no longer has happiness problems? Because that's what happens more often than not. If you forced a switch, you cost them a couple of tenets. Thats' something... but then interaction is over.

The civs that chose the same ideology from the start? Interaction non-existent.

When there are two or three roughly equal tourism-centric civs, and they choose different ideologies? Forcing unhappiness in this scenario is going to be limited to geography, if there's any at all.

I don't see a lot of your interpretation of interaction overall.

Then the problem isn't exactly ideological pressure, the problem is a lack of diversity in ideology choice in certain games.

My guess regarding the AI's motivational mechanics regarding ideology choice is that the fear of ideological pressure makes them choose the tourism leader's ideology, once they can't be the first in on one.

 

[crdvis16]

Then the problem isn't exactly ideological pressure, the problem is a lack of diversity in ideology choice in certsin games

If people consistently see a lack of ideology diversity (anecdotally my games tend to be diverse) then perhaps the incentives to choose differing ideologies should be enhanced. I believe there is already a modifier to help civs that stand alone with an ideology and the first adopters used to get extra policies (not sure if they still do).

Maybe something more could be added where the first civ to adopt one of the 3 ideologies gets a large tourism bomb? This would encourage the first 3 adopters to diversify further.

 

[Stalker0]

The unhappiness generated from tourism of a differing ideology is the only way a tourism-centric civ "exerts its will" on the rest of the world...
If you take away the unhappiness pressure from high tourism from opposing ideologies then you make a tourism victory less interactive. If anything I think we should be adding more interactive elements (science victory could use something imo...).

I would argue Tourism is one of the most interactive WCs. When I play tourism, I have to be super diplomatic. I'm trying to keep my trade routes active, maintain open borders, avoid wars as best I can. I'm doing everything I can to keep the AIs around me happy, or warring with each other and leaving me alone.

In fact I've argued Tourism is too interactive, it is too easy for an AI to declare war on you and spoil your victory. That was why G made a few recent changes to the WC to help with that.

We have to remember that its not Tourism Victory...its Culture Victory. You have to a lot of policies to win CV, that means you have lots of policies that do lots of things. They are ways to "exert your will".

 

[Stalker0]

If people consistently see a lack of ideology diversity (anecdotally my games tend to be diverse) then perhaps the incentives to choose differing ideologies should be enhanced.

Agreed, lets start by turning off the mechanic that punishes them for diversity

 

[crdvis16]

I would argue Tourism is one of the most interactive WCs. When I play tourism, I have to be super diplomatic. I'm trying to keep my trade routes active, maintain open borders, avoid wars as best I can. I'm doing everything I can to keep the AIs around me happy, or warring with each other and leaving me alone.

In fact I've argued Tourism is too interactive, it is too easy for an AI to declare war on you and spoil your victory. That was why G made a few recent changes to the WC to help with that.

We have to remember that its not Tourism Victory...its Culture Victory. You have to a lot of policies to win CV, that means you have lots of policies that do lots of things. They are ways to "exert your will".

Point taken that tourism is highly interactive. Maintaining trade routes, open borders, achieving shared religion, etc are highly interactive. I think those, along with the ideology pressure, make tourism feel like a highly interactive VC which is ideal imo.

I think ideology pressure is the only thing keeping non-tourism civs from ignoring tourism completely, though. It seems like a common thread in civ/VP is "ignore a mechanic at your peril" and you might lose that for tourism somewhat if you drop ideology pressure.

 

[crdvis16]

I almost always play for Science victories, which involves fighting, diplomacy, and fending off culture. I would never say my VC has no interactivity, and would say the same thing for a CV. That aside...

My science victory games are definitely the least interactive. You can pretty easily just turtle up if you want and churn out science. Once you get a tech lead you can often keep your army an upgrade ahead of any enemies which makes fighting defensive wars that much easier.

You can ignore the world congress if you want because there aren't really any proposals that can hurt you all that badly. There are very punishing proposals to hurt rival diplomatic victors or culture victors but not much to hurt science. Even getting sanctioned isn't much of a big deal if you're the science leader anyway- it just keeps others from leaching your science via trade routes.

What 'fending off culture' do you need to do when pursuing a science victory? What could that be other than dealing with ideology pressure unhappiness?

Comparing science victory to diplo/tourism/domination is a bad contrast for science in terms of interactivity, imo. I really think science could use something that makes ignoring other aspects of the game more risky. Some stronger WC proposals might help or some way to make the science leader more despised by the world if they get too far ahead would be nice too. A long time ago I advocated for some sort of hyper aggression toward the science leader as they build spaceship parts, such that they are increasingly DoW'd by the world with each part built. It would lead to a more suspenseful rush on the last few parts as the world closes in on you...

How much exertion of the will is there when every civ follows the tourism leader, accepts their ideology, and no longer has happiness problems? Because that's what happens more often than not. If you forced a switch, you cost them a couple of tenets. Thats' something... but then interaction is over.

You forced the entire world to follow your ideology and you're asking where the exertion of your will is? I agree that once that happens the "fun" is sort of over, but there's often a lot of conflict and struggle to get to that point.

The civs that chose the same ideology from the start? Interaction non-existent.

Again, you made them choose non-optimal ideologies in all likelihood. You also may have denied them extra policies (via other ideology wonders or if there is still a bonus tenent you get when you're the first in). How is that not interaction?

When there are two or three roughly equal tourism-centric civs, and they choose different ideologies? Forcing unhappiness in this scenario is going to be limited to geography, if there's any at all.

I don't see a lot of your interpretation of interaction overall.

The scenario where the top 3 civs each adopt a different ideology is ideal. You then rush to get influential with the other two before they get it with you and hopefully cause them a little unhappiness pain. You also get influential with later adopters ASAP so that they align behind your ideology instead of your competitors. Are we not working with the same definition of 'interaction'?

 

[Txurce]

What 'fending off culture' do you need to do when pursuing a science victory? What could that be other than dealing with ideology pressure unhappiness?

You forced the entire world to follow your ideology and you're asking where the exertion of your will is? I agree that once that happens the "fun" is sort of over, but there's often a lot of conflict and struggle to get to that point.

Again, you made them choose non-optimal ideologies in all likelihood. You also may have denied them extra policies (via other ideology wonders or if there is still a bonus tenent you get when you're the first in). How is that not interaction?

Pursuing science, you fend off culture civs by fighting them and generating enough culture to not be beaten to the late-game wonders you need. Nothing to do with ideology unhappiness. I often just follow the culture leader's ideology choice, since it's rarely Autocracy, and the other two work well enough for a SV. In fact, tourism leaders tend to go with Freedom, and that's perfect for me. I'm not being forced into anything, let alone something sub-optimal.

We disagree as to what's interactive here, or how impactful it is. I prefer an end game with consistently clashing ideologies. You prefer a system where there is often only one left. We've both stated why we do. No point in continuing on my end.

 

[Stalker0]

I think ideology pressure is the only thing keeping non-tourism civs from ignoring tourism completely, though.

But the thing is...its not working. Either:

1) You get enough tourism just doing the things you normally do that you don't get the pressure.
2) You get pressure, and then you switch to a different ideology. So now we have the bland scenario of everyone in the same ideology.

If we increase 1, it won't make people go more tourism. Because tourism isn't really a subtle thing, the difference between a civ "just getting tourism" and "getting a lot of tourism" is not in small decisions. You have to make some big sacrifices (see my post above) to really shift the tourism needle. Further, those decisions take a lot of time to manifest. If I want to build an army, I can do it in 10 turns. Most tourism changes I would make would take 20 turns just to get started...and it will take much longer to "build up my tourism"

If you increase 1, I am not changing my tourism focus. It costs too much too early in the game. I would much rather ignore tourism and play follow the leader at the end game with the ideology leader. I can work with most ideologies to get my win condition.


This is why I keep pushing on the point. If people want to make tourism mean more I'm all for the discussion (I've started several such discussions on tourism before). But this is a bad mechanic to do that. You don't change game behavior, you just make the game less interesting. That's just a bad mechanic. Throw it in a fire. And then if you want to introduce something that makes going tourism more interesting...hey I'm all ears.

 

[crdvis16]

Pursuing science, you fend off culture civs by fighting them and generating enough culture to not be beaten to the late-game wonders you need. Nothing to do with ideology unhappiness. I often just follow the culture leader's ideology choice, since it's rarely Autocracy, and the other two work well enough for a SV. In fact, tourism leaders tend to go with Freedom, and that's perfect for me. I'm not being forced into anything, let alone something sub-optimal.

We disagree as to what's interactive here, or how impactful it is. I prefer an end game with consistently clashing ideologies. You prefer a system where there is often only one left. We've both stated why we do. No point in continuing on my end.

I've stated a few times that my preference is for clashing ideologies where the tourism/culture leaders are using their lead to impact the rest of the field, and in my experience that's usually what occurs. The scenario where everyone falls in line behind a single leader is an outlier that I typically don't see- usually there's a few top civs who pressure everyone else but can't put enough pressure on the other top civs to force hegemony.

It would be interesting to see actual data on this of how often hegemony occurs right away, or is forced over time, or when diversity remains.

 

[crdvis16]

But the thing is...its not working. Either:

1) You get enough tourism just doing the things you normally do that you don't get the pressure.
2) You get pressure, and then you switch to a different ideology. So now we have the bland scenario of everyone in the same ideology.

or 3) there's a few top civs that diversify ideologies because there are incentives for diversity. The rest of the late adopters get pressured by tourism gaps to choose wisely or suffer the consequences. Thus, the civs that focused tourism have imposed their will on those that did not and can use that advantage.

In my experience, 3) is the most common and ideal scenario.

If we increase 1, it won't make people go more tourism. Because tourism isn't really a subtle thing, the difference between a civ "just getting tourism" and "getting a lot of tourism" is not in small decisions. You have to make some big sacrifices (see my post above) to really shift the tourism needle. Further, those decisions take a lot of time to manifest. If I want to build an army, I can do it in 10 turns. Most tourism changes I would make would take 20 turns just to get started...and it will take much longer to "build up my tourism"

Paying attention to tourism does not have to be a false choice between "ignore tourism" and "compete for a tourism victory". There's "don't neglect tourism and maybe make a few decisions based on tourism, and also plan to mitigate ideology unhappiness if necessary". That road does not require huge game play shifts like you're saying. It can be as simple as making the tourism mini-game a consideration in:

-trade routes
-open borders
-spreading/defending a religion
-bumping tourism buildings in priority
-when to bulb GA/GW/GM or not
-keeping a happiness buffer
-not neglecting tourism related techs in favor of reaching too far for other techs

You can do those things in any game while pursuing any victory condition and typically not suffer ideology unhappiness as a result. If you ignore those things to the point that ideology unhappiness is an issue then you've played greedily and, in my opinion, deserve that unhappiness.

If you increase 1, I am not changing my tourism focus. It costs too much too early in the game. I would much rather ignore tourism and play follow the leader at the end game with the ideology leader. I can work with most ideologies to get my win condition.

And of course, this is the other option- surrender your choice of ideology and ideology wonders and follow the leader. This is the penalty for ignoring tourism and if it's tolerable then what's the problem?

This is why I keep pushing on the point. If people want to make tourism mean more I'm all for the discussion (I've started several such discussions on tourism before). But this is a bad mechanic to do that. You don't change game behavior, you just make the game less interesting. That's just a bad mechanic. Throw it in a fire. And then if you want to introduce something that makes going tourism more interesting...hey I'm all ears.

You yourself do change your game behavior- you play follow the tourism leader. If you didn't have to do that you'd choose your ideal ideology. You could also change your game behavior to not neglect tourism so badly that following the leader is necessary.

I do agree that additional mechanics to make tourism more interesting would be great, but I don't agree that this mechanic is bad and needs to be thrown out. I especially don't agree with throwing it out before a new mechanic has been introduced to keep people from ignoring a part of the game without consequence.

 

[tu_79]

And then if you want to introduce something that makes going tourism more interesting...hey I'm all ears.

I didn't want to intervene here, as I'm very busy with the happiness thread, but I guess I could throw some thoughts.

What we don't really like is uniformity. We don't want the whole world choosing one single ideology. That could be the real world case (is it?), but gameplay wise, that's not loved.
What we want is tourism to be relevant and useful, even for civs not going cultural, so they ignore it at their own peril, as you say. There are already a few mechanics doing that, but those are not exactly 'ideological pressure'.

So, ideological pressure should be the ultimate weapon of a cultural civ against its competitors, ideally without forcing an ideological change. Ideological pressure is exerted to influenced civs of different ideologies, so it typically goes against civs that are not pursuing the same victory condition. Those are not civs that you want to fight, but rather to slow down. Or even use them to speed yourself up.
We have to be careful on how to do this, since gaining bonuses from other players or receiving maluses from them may scale on number of players, this is, on map size.

How about this?

1. Consider the influence advantage. If I have 4 levels of influence over a civ that has 3 influence over me, then my influence advantage is 1. If I have 2 influence over a civ that has 4 influence over me, then my influence advantage is -2.

2. Compare influence advantage over civs of different ideologies.

3. For each opposing ideology, gain +5% to gold and production, multiplied by the lesser influence advantage over the other civs.

4. For each opposing ideology, lose -5% to science and culture, multiplied by the bigger influence advantage over the other civs.

This is harder to say than to do. Just compare yourself to the biggest opponent of other idiologies. If you have more influence over them than they have over you, you gain gold and production. If it is the opposite, you lose science and culture.
Gaining gold and production for those civs that have the cultural lead allow them to be able to face the world war that comes. Losing science and culture allow the losers to switch ideology or reply by the arms.