Ideologies and Culture

[Leugi]

Perhaps one of the most interesting tidbits of Brave New World is the whole "Ideology" System... Autocracy, Liberty and Order will now be Ideologies, making it a cultural warfare issue... Another point is all the changes to culture, the Great Musicians, and Great Literates... And the Archaeology system, on old battle places...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/15/introducing-civilization-v-brave-new-world

So, how exactly do you think the "Ideology" system work? What are your hopes and fears?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

What I understand is this:

Order/Freedom/Autocracy are still social policies, but now they have more policies and branches within them. Each one has branches tailored to your victory condition. And once again there are diplomatic implications for picking certain ones.

And it seems that your choice is the flavor of your culture output. You can infulence the populations of cities in other civs so that they want your Ideology rather than their own. Maybe this makes them Unhappy with their leader's Ideology and enough pressure can force a Ideology change.

 

[HeraldtheGreat]

I'm confused on how that works... will it be a UI, or will it work off of the three old social policy branches?

Assuming it's all-new, I hope that it's not just some unnavoidable nuisance. Then again, I like to play culturally, so it may not nessescarily be a problem for me. They said it will have five new branche... any thoughts on what those might be?

 

[Pizzaspy]

The main thing I am wondering is: Will ideology be split off from social policies as a separate system? If so, will there be new social policy trees added?

I kind of hope so, as you should be able to specialize into and develop an ideology regardless of how much culture factors into your strategy.

 

[Ikael]

This seems to me like another entirely different layer putted in the late era civics, but I could be wrong.

 

[Kimuyama]

Do you think civs will be biased towards a certain Ideology?

Like America and France going for Liberty more often than not, Russia, China and Inca going for Order, and Germany, Byzanthium and Rome going for Autocracy?

 

[Scarpa]

Rockpapershotgun has a good interview with Dennis and Ed.

In that they seem to be saying the old Cultural VC (been away 4 months and don't even remember what it's called, that's how lame it was ) has been replaced with this Ideology concept. I need to re-read it to really get it but that sounds pretty cool and also sounds like this new mechanic makes it feasible to switch to Cultural VC later in the game. Also sounds like Great Artists have been replaced with a much richer mechanic.

The archaeology concepts sound pretty awesome as well. They are talking about being able to have archaeologists (Units or just a screen a la spies was not specified) go to 'dig sites' and recover relics to bring back. Relics help with Tourism, as do the new outputs from your GAs and they even talked about a 'theme' mechanic where if you are a good curator of your cultural artifacts you can gain additional boosts. The themes will not be documented but I'm sure forum posts will pop up immediately enumerating them.

I've been on vacation in Pandora lately, but this announcement has me fired up to play a few games in preparation for the new expansion.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Ideology sounds removed from culture now. It does seem to be similar to social policies in that there are tiers that have to be unlocked, but I'm also getting a civics vibe if I'm not reading too much into it. It also sounds like you can pool culture (or whatever unlocks it) with ideological allies.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

According to the interviews you can make a neighbour's citizens unhappy if you have a lot of external culture against him and he has a different ideology, encouraging to switch to your ideology (or maybe just provoking war). The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Arab Spring were named as examples.
If that's the case and ideologies can be changed, I hope they don't work like policies where you've just wasted the policy points you have invested in Piety when you decide to adopt Rationalism later.

 

[Avatan]

According to the interviews you can make a neighbour's citizens unhappy if you have a lot of external culture against him and he has a different ideology, encouraging to switch to your ideology (or maybe just provoking war). The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Arab Spring were named as examples.
If that's the case and ideologies can be changed, I hope they don't work like policies where you've just wasted the policy points you have invested in Piety when you decide to adopt Rationalism later.

Yep, I can see this mechanism being incredibly annoying at high difficulty.
It's strange because it does not sound like ciV for which all things that happened where good and everything was about opportunity costs.

 

[iconocast]

sounds like they ahve completly re hauled the social policy system into the ideology system

 

[Louis XXIV]

I wouldn't say completely. It's more accurate to say that it was partially modified to have both a social policy and ideology system.

 

[Buccaneer]

With the ability to spread culture to foreign cities and have that affect a cultural victory, I would assume that spreading religion would now be more beneficial - like increasing culture.

I would not go so far as a religious victory because spreading religion, if that's your thing, seems pretty easy and does not require anything beyond building several religious units.

 

[Necrotaur]

Sounds like they've drawn some inspiration from Civ IV's culture flipping... definitely a good thing, that was always my favorite mechanic.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I usually hated culture flipping (in Civ3 it was bad because it would be a better method of conquest than war, in Civ4 it was usually just irritating). However, combined with ideologies, it's much better because it's only targeted at enemies, not friends.

 

[Helmling]

Sounds like they've drawn some inspiration from Civ IV's culture flipping... definitely a good thing, that was always my favorite mechanic.

But they've one-upped it by making it somewhat historically accurate. There's zero precedence for "culture flipping" in history (as far as I know), yet it happened constantly in CIV. The idea that powerful cultures can influence the ideologies of their neighbors, as the interview notes, does have some relevance in history.

 

[Necrotaur]

But they've one-upped it by making it somewhat historically accurate. There's zero precedence for "culture flipping" in history (as far as I know), yet it happened constantly in CIV. The idea that powerful cultures can influence the ideologies of their neighbors, as the interview notes, does have some relevance in history.

Actually there are multiple examples throughout history, where one culture/city/territory has been assimilated into a neighboring culture. One of the more recent examples is Northern Ireland, who chose to split with the Republic of Ireland in 1922. You could make a comparison to the border disputes of India and Pakistan too.

 

[Helmling]

Actually there are multiple examples throughout history, where one culture/city/territory has been assimilated into a neighboring culture. One of the more recent examples is Northern Ireland, who chose to split with the Republic of Ireland in 1922. You could make a comparison to the border disputes of India and Pakistan too.

I would disagree. I don't think any of those examples really parallel what happens in the game. Ireland's split, for example, was the product of aggressive English policies and religious galvanization. India and Pakistan were essentially artificial entities created by the British empire that were, again, divided along religious lines. Neither was a case of a huge swath of territory rising up and aligning themselves with a completely foreign power spontaneously.

Now, if the culture flip was more closely tied to religion in CIV or if we think of it as representing some kind of migrations, then maybe...either way, I like the sound of the new mechanics.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Yep, I can see this mechanism being incredibly annoying at high difficulty.
It's strange because it does not sound like ciV for which all things that happened where good and everything was about opportunity costs.

Well, Shirk said in the RockPaperShotgun interview that it is going to wok this way and you really won't want to change your ideology. Well, I guess you'll choose wisely according to your neighbours or keep culture and happiness up.

Actually there are multiple examples throughout history, where one culture/city/territory has been assimilated into a neighboring culture. One of the more recent examples is Northern Ireland, who chose to split with the Republic of Ireland in 1922. You could make a comparison to the border disputes of India and Pakistan too.

Or if you see the European Union as some kind of empire you can use the recent expansions as an example when it gobbled up the western part of the former Eastern Bloc.


So, next matter of speculation: ideologies and victory conditions. There will be three branches for every ideology, each tailored for a specific victory, and there are four victory conditios meaning every ideology will have one victory that they won't be able to efficiently pursue.
I can't really see an Autocracy civilization pursue a cultural or a diplomatic victory. A cultural victory would probably make a bit more sense than a diplomatic one. Conquerors often loot subdued countries for works of art and build monuments in their capitals, but we know from the interview that Freedom and Order both have culture centric branches and aesthetics would dictate that the excluded victory condition is different for each ideology. I also can't really think of any ideology that would exclude a science vitory, except maybe Autocracy again, after all the Nazis did do a fine job of driving many of their scientists into their enemies' arms, and I don't know what victory type could be excluded for Order civs except culture, but it's been stated that
Order will ahve a culture branch.

 

[Necrotaur]

I would disagree. I don't think any of those examples really parallel what happens in the game. Ireland's split, for example, was the product of aggressive English policies and religious galvanization. India and Pakistan were essentially artificial entities created by the British empire that were, again, divided along religious lines.

Exactly! And religion is an aspect of culture, though what we are presented with in the Civ series is an extreme simplification of what is going on. My point was that Northern Ireland more closely identified with British Protestantism than Irish Catholicism, leading to them ultimately joining the UK. Pakistan and India is still very much in progress, though both sides claim the territories for a variety of reasons, including religious and cultural ones.