[Tuning] Ideologies: Tier 3

Well I understand keeping the yields low but what I'd like to see is something that provides more interesting mechanics that help differentiate the late game ideology eras.

For example, air supremacy is a great example of what a tier 3 tenet should be. It changes the dynamic of war and helps you fight war on multiple fronts. It doesn't create a "who will get to tier 3 first" situation because yield wise, airports don't really do much on their own.

Tier 3 freedom tenets just don't have any interesting mechanics and it doesn't feel like you are playing any differently from pre-ideology eras.

War-related stuff will always feel more potent because Civ is a war-game with everything else tacked onto that.
 
Cult of personality seemed really weak to me too, basically amounting to a free GP. Who goes Autocracy if they want to win via culture anyway?

I'd rather have it be called 'Targeted Propaganda' and give +50% tourism to civs you're at war with.

That suits the Autocracy branch much better imo, and fixes it's main problems:
-Cult of personality requires the AI to go to war, something that you can't really arrange. Going to war with someone is much easier by comparison, while still not being permanent or drawback free.
-Killing someone in the face is the easiest way to win a tourism victory. Even if you only take a few cities, you'll still kneecap their culture output and give yourself the egde. This enhances that strategy.
-It also goes along with the main point of tourism for a warring civ, damaging the cities you take out less.

50% is probably too low given that you'll be missing out on the Open Borders and Trade Route modifiers, instant yields from Trade Routes, and of course can't pop GMs. Actually, because of that, I don't really like the idea of it just being a bonus while you're at war, though I do like the idea of it being related towards war/aggressive behavior and around strong-arming in general because that's Autocracy. Things like extra Tourism upon getting a favorable peace deal, making a demand, stealing territory with a GG, etc. Or if possible to implement, the ability to use GG/GA as a GM for Tourism boost would be interesting, I think I saw a custom civ that did something like that. Tourism based on number of monopolies is an interesting idea too for either Autocracy or Order.

And while I basically never go Autocracy myself (it's based around conquest first and foremost and I pretty much never go for full domination), it is supposed to have Culture as a valid victory path. imo ideally all three ideologies should be relatively valid for Cultural victory in their own way, but in practice I've never used anything except Freedom.

Most of the tier 3 ideological tenets aren't that great. I've deliberated about this, and tier 3s should be mediocre/middling because, otherwise, the late game becomes one of 'who will get to the tier 3 first,' rather than emphasizing other elements of gameplay.

I don't think most of these would be hugely overpowered aside from maybe the 100% extra influence, not significantly more than things like a single existing tier 2 tenant or another tier 3 tenant.

I still think a lot of existing Tier 3 tenants are pretty unbalanced compared to each other (biggest offender is Media Culture just being much better than Cult of Personality or D of the P because the latter two almost never work effectively) or are boring and could use revamps (Treaty Organization has the same effect as a Statecraft policy except stronger, and is something that you don't see much effect from) but Ideologies are still significantly improved from Vanilla.
 
50% is probably too low given that you'll be missing out on the Open Borders and Trade Route modifiers, instant yields from Trade Routes, and of course can't pop GMs. Actually, because of that, I don't really like the idea of it just being a bonus while you're at war, though I do like the idea of it being related towards war/aggressive behavior and around strong-arming in general because that's Autocracy. Things like extra Tourism upon getting a favorable peace deal, making a demand, stealing territory with a GG, etc. Or if possible to implement, the ability to use GG/GA as a GM for Tourism boost would be interesting, I think I saw a custom civ that did something like that. Tourism based on number of monopolies is an interesting idea too for either Autocracy or Order.

And while I basically never go Autocracy myself (it's based around conquest first and foremost and I pretty much never go for full domination), it is supposed to have Culture as a valid victory path. imo ideally all three ideologies should be relatively valid for Cultural victory in their own way, but in practice I've never used anything except Freedom.

It's not about making being at war the best way to influence people with your culture, but rather the fact that if you're a warmonger you're going to be at war regardless, and thus 50% is better than none. Maybe 50% to those you're at war with could be made 100% to offset the likely differing ideologys, no open boarders, no trade routes, no diplomats and other problems, but the fact is that it's more to offset than benefit you.

Your idea is cool too, I just wanted to explain mine better.
 
Spaceship Procurements: Can buy spaceship parts with gold. Build spaceship factories in half the time.

(A)
We could add: when one of your spies sabotages a spaceship part gain that much gold.

I like your idea about spy sabotage. Late game, civs that have statecraft or built the national intelligence agency (which gives a free spy iirc) often have a ton of spies to use. What about something that would increase (+50%? ) the amount of yields stolen from other civs (probably without actually taking those away from your target but just increasing what you get) while also making your spies harder to catch (-10% catch rate? ). Maybe even throw in a bonus spy to make it easier to use.

I feel like this especially is a good way of making the late game feel interesting and different without disrupting balance because:
a) you still want spies in City States so you can't get that much value
b) it takes a while to establish spies unless you have high tourism
c) doesn't create a "first to tier 3 wins" situation

This is probably unfeasible at this point but it would be cool if you could spend a very large amount of gold (that increases exponentially) to level up your spies! I like the idea of playing a very wealthy civ that can use its influence from the shadows >:)

Treaty Organization: Gain 4 CS inf per turn with a CS you are trading with.

(C)

I would like this one to change to: gain +1 influence per turn in each city-state you have a franchise in, for each corporation office in your empire.

It's crazy to me that Freedom has no tier 3 tenets that affect corporations. I really like this idea of making corporations have diplomatic influence (like they do in reality). I would say, +1 per office may be a little high especially since franchises can't be pillaged like trade routes can. Maybe cap it at +3 influence per turn? Or make it so that franchises only give +1 influence per turn in city states you are not at war with and keep the +4 influence per turn with trade routes.
What about +1 vote in WC for every 5 or 6 franchises in foreign cities you have? Also cap that to give no more than 2 votes. That would make spreading your corporation more rewarding but would take a long time to come online and would only give a small bonus.

Dictatorship of the Proleitariant: +34% tourism to civs with less happiness. +1 happiness form factories.

Add: Civilizations not following Order have 10% higher poverty threshold.
or: Civilizations not following Order have 1% higher poverty threshold for each of your cities.

Not really a fan of this. There are no other maluses you can inflict on other civs and Order seems like the last that would do that. If this was gonna get any kind of buff, I'd say keep it simple like + 1 happiness from National Wonders to help keep high happiness for the tourism bonus. Also pretty thematic for Order.

Spaceflight Pioneers: Can build spaceship parts with Great Engineers. Gain an immediate GE and GS.

When you completing a spaceship part becomes a historical event with double tourism output.

You don't really need tourism when you're about to win a science victory... Again, I'd just keep it simple, maybe +1% of your science output as Golden Age Points to synergise with the science victory a bit. Late game Golden age points required are pretty high so at best this might net you one less turn before a GA so it won't really have an overwhelming impact. Might even bump it up to +2%.


Cult of Personality: +50% tourism to civilization fighting a common enemy. Free GP of your choice.

Add: Reset your war weariness every time a GP is born.

Seems like you could abuse this with faith purchased GP. The whole point of tourism for warmongers is to reduce resistance so instead of trying to figure out specific percentages for tourism, why not just add -1 turns of resistance when you capture a city. Or maybe only limit it to capitals and have -2 turns of resistance when you capture a capital.

Gunboat Diplomacy: Gain 6 inf with CS you could demand tribute from. Your military forces are 50% more effective at intimidating CS.

Add: When demanding tribute from a CS, gain +25 influence with all other CS of that type.

I like this idea! I would suggest lowering it to +10 influence boost and maybe raise the influence resting point for all CS by 5. Simple, engaging, and not overwhelming.
 
Most of the tier 3 ideological tenets aren't that great. I've deliberated about this, and tier 3s should be mediocre/middling because, otherwise, the late game becomes one of 'who will get to the tier 3 first,' rather than emphasizing other elements of gameplay.
I like your idea about spy sabotage. Late game, civs that have statecraft or built the national intelligence agency (which gives a free spy iirc) often have a ton of spies to use. What about something that would increase (+50%? ) the amount of yields stolen from other civs (probably without actually taking those away from your target but just increasing what you get) while also making your spies harder to catch (-10% catch rate? ). Maybe even throw in a bonus spy to make it easier to use.

I feel like this especially is a good way of making the late game feel interesting and different without disrupting balance because:
a) you still want spies in City States so you can't get that much value
b) it takes a while to establish spies unless you have high tourism
c) doesn't create a "first to tier 3 wins" situation

This is probably unfeasible at this point but it would be cool if you could spend a very large amount of gold (that increases exponentially) to level up your spies! I like the idea of playing a very wealthy civ that can use its influence from the shadows >:)

Indeed the way spies are implemented in CiV and VP does not take into account the cost of mentaining an intelligence and diplomatic service, but that is a minor concern. I just was hoping to add an element of different playstyle to some of the level 3 tenet that is interesting without being overpowering, to prevent the "rush to tier 3" situation:

Most of the tier 3 ideological tenets aren't that great. I've deliberated about this, and tier 3s should be mediocre/middling because, otherwise, the late game becomes one of 'who will get to the tier 3 first,' rather than emphasizing other elements of gameplay.

However I often find myself be uninterested in getting these, to the point where have four tier 1 and three tier 2 tenents, and still would prefer a fifth tier one to some of those. I believe that removing the excitement might make the game more balanced at the highest tiers of play, but for people that play at Emperor and below, a bit of excitement to get to the end of the tree would not hurt. Especially if it made me care about new things.

It's crazy to me that Freedom has no tier 3 tenets that affect corporations. I really like this idea of making corporations have diplomatic influence (like they do in reality). I would say, +1 per office may be a little high especially since franchises can't be pillaged like trade routes can. Maybe cap it at +3 influence per turn? Or make it so that franchises only give +1 influence per turn in city states you are not at war with and keep the +4 influence per turn with trade routes.
What about +1 vote in WC for every 5 or 6 franchises in foreign cities you have? Also cap that to give no more than 2 votes. That would make spreading your corporation more rewarding but would take a long time to come online and would only give a small bonus.

I think that it is an area woth exploring a bit. Getting franchises takes time and requires you not to have your trade route plundered and to plan to which cities youa re going to send those thrade routes carefully. The WC votes for every 4 franchises in city states could be another path to take.

Not really a fan of this. There are no other maluses you can inflict on other civs and Order seems like the last that would do that. If this was gonna get any kind of buff, I'd say keep it simple like + 1 happiness from National Wonders to help keep high happiness for the tourism bonus. Also pretty thematic for Order.

I was aiming for a thematic thing of the proletariat sees the redistribution of wealth in your state and wants in on it, but I can see your point, too. The recent changes to broadcast towers and zoos might make Order a better tourism contender than it was.

You don't really need tourism when you're about to win a science victory... Again, I'd just keep it simple, maybe +1% of your science output as Golden Age Points to synergise with the science victory a bit. Late game Golden age points required are pretty high so at best this might net you one less turn before a GA so it won't really have an overwhelming impact. Might even bump it up to +2%.

Tourism ALWAYS seems useful, at least to me. The extra gold and science from the trade routes, the better spies to protect your projects from being delayed... Again the +1% golden age points might be a bit strong, but it is a potential alternative.

Seems like you could abuse this with faith purchased GP. The whole point of tourism for warmongers is to reduce resistance so instead of trying to figure out specific percentages for tourism, why not just add -1 turns of resistance when you capture a city. Or maybe only limit it to capitals and have -2 turns of resistance when you capture a capital.

There is a timer between faith purchasing nowadays, so it is not too abusable. If too abusable we can limmit it to the birth of great generals and admirals. Again you seem to undervaluate Tourism.

I like this idea! I would suggest lowering it to +10 influence boost and maybe raise the influence resting point for all CS by 5. Simple, engaging, and not overwhelming.

Perhaps it should indeed be lower, but I do not think that increasing the resting point is a good idea.
 
Most of the tier 3 ideological tenets aren't that great. I've deliberated about this, and tier 3s should be mediocre/middling because, otherwise, the late game becomes one of 'who will get to the tier 3 first,' rather than emphasizing other elements of gameplay.
I don't think anyone is asking for them to be some super game ending OP thing, but literally worse than T2 or even T1 tenets seems a little much.
 
I don't think anyone is asking for them to be some super game ending OP thing, but literally worse than T2 or even T1 tenets seems a little much.

That's a debatable point. I personally think they're fine. Most have a niche and are comparable to other tenets.
 
That's a debatable point. I personally think they're fine. Most have a niche and are comparable to other tenets.
Here's the thing. Treaty Organization is a total of 40 influence in 10 turns, at the cost of you wasting TR with city states. Why not just buy a diplo unit with the extra money you get from a real trade route and get 70 influence? (Because I never have games where TR with even my vassals are worth less than 10 GPT more than city-states at that point.) It basically saves you a tiny bit money and the effort of moving a diplo unit at the cost of the large tourism boost you can target a civ with. (Even with statecraft I generally find it's worth more money and I get more tourism just targeting the toughest nut to crack.)

It's not terrible, but it's underpowered for sure.

All of orders are situationally good and useful. No changes proposed.

Gunboat diplomacy at best raises you influence decay threshold to 150, but late game everyone's got over 400 influence with city states. It's pretty much useless unless you're crushing so hard it doesn't matter that you choose.

Cult of personality is too hard to trigger with people you want to trigger it at. I've advocated for the bonus to be with civs you're at war with to negate some of the downsides, and I will again. No one tries to win a culture victory with authority, let the warmongers use their tourism for it's intended purpose: Making cities they take less broken.
 
There's also the fact that AI seems to really love CS Sanctions for some reason, so most of the time I can't even use Treaty Organization without spending a WC proposal to repeal it and getting the AIs mad at me in the process.

Simpler fix: move Arsenal of Democracy to tier 3 and Treaty Organization to tier 2. Arsenal of Democracy is almost too good for a tier 2 policy anyways, it's pretty much always the first I go for even if I'm not gunning for a diplomatic victory.

Cult of personality is too hard to trigger with people you want to trigger it at. I've advocated for the bonus to be with civs you're at war with to negate some of the downsides, and I will again. No one tries to win a culture victory with authority, let the warmongers use their tourism for it's intended purpose: Making cities they take less broken.

I like it the more I think about it. Maybe combined with an instant tourism boost ala a historic event with all civs every time you conquer a city so that you can sort of go for a complete culture victory if you want to.
 
There's also the fact that AI seems to really love CS Sanctions for some reason, so most of the time I can't even use Treaty Organization without spending a WC proposal to repeal it and getting the AIs mad at me in the process.

Simpler fix: move Arsenal of Democracy to tier 3 and Treaty Organization to tier 2. Arsenal of Democracy is almost too good for a tier 2 policy anyways, it's pretty much always the first I go for even if I'm not gunning for a diplomatic victory.



I like it the more I think about it. Maybe combined with an instant tourism boost ala a historic event with all civs every time you conquer a city so that you can sort of go for a complete culture victory if you want to.
I'd rather an instant tourism boost for capturing cities only be with who you capture them from if we were going to do that. Don't want it to be too powerful.
 
I'd rather an instant tourism boost for capturing cities only be with who you capture them from if we were going to do that. Don't want it to be too powerful.

It doesn't need to be a huge number, probably just the equivalent of a couple turns worth of Tourism (optionally scaling with the size of the city), or it could just change conquering a city into a historical event maybe? War Weariness will make it difficult to go too crazy with wars late game but I think it'd be a neat way to let you go for a cultural victory while warmongering by rewarding conquest with Tourism, which is appropriate for Autocracy and perfect for Japan or France. It makes sense from a logical perspective too, ie "Did you hear? Glorious Leader conquered another city recently." "Wow, his empire must be pretty great." and so on.
 
like the idea of adding historical event for city captures instead of the tourism boost for civs you go to war with. also works well with the tier 1 booster for historical events in autocracy
 
Its a little too easy to abuse, though (city capture).
What if it's "the first time you capture a city?" or "The first time you capture a city every X turns" or even "When you capture a city for the first time, your capital gains Double Tourism for the next 5 turns. Capturing more cities resets the duration to 5 turns." so capturing a bunch in a turn can't give you ******ed tourism? I personally like the implementation of the last one, although capital versus nationwide and the numbers are 100% open for debate.

Then again the "The first time you capture a city every X turns" getting a historical event is more synergistic with the earlier policy as noted.
 
Assyria and France both have abilities that trigger on city capture (I'm pretty sure they only trigger the first time you capture a city), as do some other things like Hero Worship and policies in Authority so there's precedent for it, how would you say that it's abuseable?

I like the idea of Historical Event from it but if that's too strong, I think making it instant Tourism based on city population (maybe around 10% of Tourism/turn or so per pop as instant Tourism) would be reasonable, but a Tourism multiplier for several turns after capturing a city would work too.
 
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maybe putting a population threshold on the city that has to be captured so you can't just grab some of the late game spam cities that the AI puts on random island/tundra tiles and just raze them?
 
Too complex and easy exploited by humans v. the AI. This is why I went for 'win a war' as the historic event condition.

Still, changing the condition from fighting with to at war with on Cult of Personality would make it better IMO. I've never had a case where Cult of Personality is anything more than a free GP, period. When I go autocracy I'm generally the one at war with everyone, so the only people who get more tourism are my vassals who I already dominate in influence for obvious reasons.

Actually I just realized that since no one goes autocracy for a cultural victory, maybe it would make sense to improve the benefits of tourism, rather than help you get more of it? Like making people lose less buildings, getting a healing bonus in foreign lands or increasing damage to cities based on your influence of their civ? People are less likely to resist or might even help invaders if their culture is appealing after all.
 
As someone who usually goes for Freedom, the Tier 3 policy of extra gold for TR with other Freedom civs + 1 extra route is very underwhelming, both in comparison to the other two T3 Freedom policies and to Order/Authority T3 policies. It offers little extra gold and in a time where gold is usually not a problem for a civ that goes for Freedom.
 
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