Ideology imbalances on larger maps?

[Bagi]

Now I'm not talking the policies themselves, rather how AI picks their ideologies.

In my last or so 10 games on large maps, 12 civs, emperor to immortal difficulty, I've had the same worrying trend happen: the AI gangs up on a single ideology while the other ideologies become extremely weak in comparison. Every time except once it has been order, amusingly enough the other time it was autocracy in a very war-heavy game.

With standard size games (8 civs, usually 7 or 6 once ideologies hit when civs gets wiped out early on) its really not a problem because the AI seems to value the free policies very highly, this usually guarantees at least 2 civs per ideology making for much more balanced games. With 12 civs however its not at all unusual to have 8 of them order, sometimes even 9. I suppose the problem stems mostly from bigger maps having more room, which results in more cities and order policies becoming more powerful.

As a player your options at this point is to try to fight against the grain by going freedom/autocracy and suffering the constant denouncements and DOWs, or just pick order and have an easymode game where you can pick wars if and when you feel like it. Converting the AIs from the order block seems impossible since at least 1 of them is guaranteed to have high culture and especially on immortal their happiness bonuses seem impossible to overcome.

Now you could try to argue that the AI is just playing smart by picking the popular ideology, and that its realistic that one ideology should eventually become the winner. My problem with it is how utterly predictable my games have become. There is no real ideology struggle in my games, there's the order block and the stragglers who either eventually get squashed or converted. This could be really easily avoided by having AI always favor the ideology that is the least popular, even beyond the free policies stage.

Am I just really unlucky to get games like this? Do you guys think its a problem?

 

[BarrenEarth]

It has more to do with the concept that the AI's will tend to pool together in diplomatic resources, outcast one or two other AI players and of course all hate the human for some inane and poorly coded reason

No in all seriousness I bet the half dozen or so that picked the ideology first did so because they were all allies, the other AI's are playing the "I wanna play in the sandbox too!" strategy. I find that AI's that share my religion usually adopt my ideology. But I always play with random personalities so who knows.

 

[bbbt]

Well, order is better for wider empires, so maybe bigger maps simply means the AI usually has more cities on average, making them more likely to choose order.

 

[EK834]

Well, order is better for wider empires, so maybe bigger maps simply means the AI usually has more cities on average, making them more likely to choose order.

I always play on huge maps and it's pretty much what I see. If many civs have built 8+ cities it often turns into an Order dominant game. If some civs have become very large through conquest, they most often seem to pick Autocracy, even though post-patch I've seen a lot of large Autocrats going for a culture/science victory, ending their conquests around Modern.

In games with most of the civs playing Tall (incl. maps like Archipelago that force them to), it more often splits. The warmongers (often at the bottom in such games) pick Autocracy, the rest goes Order or Freedom, often following their DoFs.

But I don't keep stats or anything, so it might be false impressions.

 

[Callonia]

My games have a tendency to become dominated by autocracy.... unless there's an order runaway. When that happens, I squish that runaway then win by diplomatic victory.

If i'm the runaway, a bunch of ais that just want to stand the test of time get behind me and support my autocracy train as we proceed to squish every single freedom/order civ from the world. Not even one city challenges is safe from my autocracy train and after all is said and done, I go for culture victory. I don't have the heart to backstab my autocratic allies even when technically they understand that they're going to be next once all of order and freedoms is gone.

The understanding is right there in the Greetings Emperor message xD
I might do it someday, squish every single civ and city state lol.

 

[CrispyCritter]

Well, order is better for wider empires, so maybe bigger maps simply means the AI usually has more cities on average, making them more likely to choose order.

Yes, but you certainly can't count on it. In the immortal game I just finished, I think I was the only one with Order at the end, being 10 out of 12th in population. The biggest two civs had 36 and 26 cities; I only had 11. My unhappiness penalty was 44 for most of modern times - Order just wasn't liked in this game!

I eked out a science victory; I suspect I beat Arabia to launch by only a couple of turns.

 

[sendos]

Imbalances in ideologies always occur if there is a runaway civ and that runaway civ has lots of tourism (like around 80-100 before hotels). Otherwise, when each civ has a roughly equal number of tourism, ideologies should be evenly spread out.

Order has a better defence against ideological pressure in my opinion, due to the tier 2 tourism bonus with other order civs. That tenet enables you to increase your influence over order civs more quickly. In turn, they will be shielded from some ideological pressure and if their tourism is decent and if they choose the same tenet, they'll return the favour.