Policy - unhappiness/revolt

[Jollyjumper02]

First post. Previously learned a lot of tips from this forum. Playing on Emperor Level. What is the best way of foreseeing what policy will generat the least amount of unhappiness? To me it seems random. I mainly prefer Order and freedom, but every time this generates a lot of unhappiness. When I rerun and choose another Policy, it alos generates unhappiness. Will the policy generate unhappiness for all policies on higher Levels? Appreciate a feed-back. To some of you this is maybe obvoius...

 

[Browd]

Before selecting an ideology, spend time exploring the last two tabs of the Culture Overview screen, most importantly the last tab, where you can get reciprocal views of each civ's tourism/culture vs. every other civ. The tooltips are most important, as is the detail about which level of influence each civ with an ideology has over every other civ.

 

[beetle]

I have not been playing BNW long, but my observation is that picking an ideology early leads to happiness problems!

This is because your neighbors pick ideologies primarily because they have free tenants available. This means you cannot pick what they will pick, because your pick changes their pick!

It is kind of an interesting catch-22 because early ideology comes with those free tenants, which is also a nice perk.

What I do is get to ideologies as quick as I can anyway, and the pick the one I want. Then I focus on all the happiness boosting SP. Hopefully that, and culture and tourism, will carry me through to end of the game. But this only works for me half the time, so I end up switching.

So here is the other thing I do: If I open Freedom, I get 6 foreign legionaries ASAP. If I open Order, I get the half-price factories ASAP. This way, if I end up switching, I have a nice consolation prize.

I have not found a tenant in Autocracy with a similar benefit that is not lost upon switching.

 

[Jollyjumper02]

Thanks, very helpful !

 

[Mahasona]

I like to grab my ideology as early as possible, even bulbing a scientist or Oxford if necessary, and get it adopted in the next World Congress. If you do it before anyone else has an ideology it should pass easily.

Building Forbidden Palace will give you a couple of votes towards it as well, along with a nice happiness boost.

 

[Illianor123]

Check their tourism levels on you. But quite importantly, build the guilds and staff them to get culture and to get some tourism so that you get exotic on them (reducing the ideological pressure they place on you).

 

[reddishrecue]

If you pick your ideology early, you have chances that your unhappiness can drop or rise depending on the influence other civilizations have on your civilization. Starting out late can let you choose an ideology that influences your civilization more and prevent further unhappiness. The more tpt you have the better.

 

[beetle]

Does anyone advocate purposely delaying unlocking ideologies in order to see what your neighbors do? It seems to me like that could work well for players struggling with the tourism mechanic. The opportunity cost of passing on free SP is pretty high though. And I actually enjoy the ideology conflict, as even when I end up losing, it adds a new and interesting dimension to the game. Plus, switching is a pretty minimal penalty. I was pretty panicked the first game it happened, and I fought against the inevitable longer than I should have.

 

[reddishrecue]

If you're last and don't care, you don't have to worry about losing half of your social policies in the ideology section from revolution since you're less likely to have the free 1 or 2 ideologies from being first to ideology.

 

[Illianor123]

More cpt and more tpt. But enough cpt and tpt becomes irrelevant.

Just take a happiness policy with one of the tenants and you will generally wind up getting more from that the pressure on you cause unhappiness.

 

[tetley]

You can pick Order and be happy as a bird. Especially on emperor, ideology pressure will not be much of a threat to you.

 

[phillipwyllie]

Ideologies don't contribute to unhappiness, only ideological pressure does that. If you are feeling ideological pressure then your culture isn't up to scratch and that means you neglected it early on. Winning an early World's Fair will usually mean you won't feel any ideological pressure at all, unless another ideology got passed.

Early Ideologies
It is my opinion that this is a must, and on every game you try to beat your current record. There are only benefits from picking an ideology, especially an early one. Having Radio early means you can propose your ideology before the world picks theirs, you can even have it passed before the world picks theirs.

 

[LoneRebel]

As said, having the first ideology does not necessarily guarantee you will be free from unhappiness problems. An AI that gets its ideology later, but has high tourism output, can still pick a different ideology and pressure you later on. And they will pick a different ideology, because it seems the AI values the free tenets over anything else, even their civ's ideology preference, if there is one.

Even passing your ideology as the world ideology before anyone else even has ideologies does not guarantee that other civs will pick that ideology. I do this all the time, and civs still choose the other two ideologies. And because of the AI's extra happiness, they can still stick it out with 50 happiness even in a Revolutionary Wave.

 

[beetle]

Is “Revolutionary Wave” for a certain number of turns or is more just a label for having lots of unhappiness from competing ideologies?

 

[phillipwyllie]

As said, having the first ideology does not necessarily guarantee you will be free from unhappiness problems.....

Culture primarily and tourism second are the defenses against ideological pressure. Even on Deity you can ignore tourism if you win the world's fair early.

...but has high tourism output...

In my experience the AI can't play this game especially at a CV. If by some rare chance one AI civ manages to build all the Renaissance cultural wonders you know they will be a "nuisance" and appropriate action can be taken.

...Even passing your ideology as the world ideology before anyone else even has ideologies does not guarantee that other civs will pick that ideology....

Indeed but it puts pressure on all other civs who choose a different ideology, which can be the difference between them revolting early or them sticking it out.

Is “Revolutionary Wave” for a certain number of turns or is more just a label for having lots of unhappiness from competing ideologies?

It's just a label that means that civs is experiencing the highest level of ideological unhappiness. In other words they can't get any unhappier from ideological pressure(assuming they don't settle any more cities etc).