Volunteer Army is Incredibly Powerful

[KmDubya]

Another useful trick is to take the foreign legion policy, use them as you see fit and then switch your ideology and get to pick another policy in a different tree. Works well with any of the one off perks, you can go autocracy use the tier 3 attack bonus policy for 50 turns and then switch to Order and take a new policy.

You lose out on any early chooser bonus policies, also requires you to be under the cultural influence of another ideology.

 

[qemist]

6 free infantry vs musketmen....

If I had such a massive tech lead I would declare victory and start a new game. This has *never* happened in my games except the ones where I was experimenting with the beaker overflow bug.

Now, just to be clear, the Foreign Legion gains a combat bonus in Foreign Lands, correct? Not Enemy Lands? So the FL gets the bonus in an ally's territory, correct? If so then the purpose of the Foreign Legion/Volunteer Army policy exists as a means to actively defend an ally, as well as a spearhead of sorts to lessen the threat of other rival civilizations.

Yes, they a useful if you like to play the hero.

 

[Gort]

Another useful trick is to take the foreign legion policy, use them as you see fit and then switch your ideology and get to pick another policy in a different tree. Works well with any of the one off perks, you can go autocracy use the tier 3 attack bonus policy for 50 turns and then switch to Order and take a new policy.

You lose out on any early chooser bonus policies, also requires you to be under the cultural influence of another ideology.

Losing two tenets for six free units does not sound like a good tradeoff to me.

Sometimes I wonder if they went a bit far with making Freedom the "do everything" ideology. It's the undisputed king of diplomatic victories, equal best for space, best at Tourism victories, and no slouch for Domination either. The other two ideologies have blind spots in what they can achieve (EG: Autocracy gets little to help with space, while Order gets little to help with diplomacy), but Freedom gets everything.

 

[shaglio]

Losing two tenets for six free units does not sound like a good tradeoff to me.

Not only that, but you also can't just switch Ideologies on a whim. You need to be suffering from severe Ideological pressure from another civ before the option to switch becomes available.

 

[lindsay40k]

You're in Freedom because you want Great Works, bulbs or loyal CSs. If some swine beat you to Leaning Tower when you're closing in on getting Radio with Oxford and will get another Policy shortly afterwards, or you need to bite the bullet and take out Alexander before he becomes world leader, Volunteer Army isn't too bad.

The main issue there is you need a fourth level one tenet to get both Universal Suffrage and New Deal, both of which you want ASAP to maximise their payoff. If you've got a bunch of Manufactories, New Deal will build you more units and get a Stock Exchange online sooner to support them. On the bright side, it does mean you can get Treaty Organization for a handful of loyal allies, and leave Media Culture or Space Procurement until you've filled Aesthetics or Rationalism.

It has also saved my skin in a multiplayer game when my army was on the opposite side of my borders to a backstab. I lost a couple, but they bought time for the ranged units to get into position and win at attrition.

 

[Phalanx300]

Basicly had no army and this idealogy really helped me out. Especially with a aggresive Japan accros the sea destroying my city state allies.

 

[DocRock]

In my current game as Siam on Emperor I got DOWed by four (!) civs in two turns right after I got Freedom ideology. The remaining two Civs went hostile, so I guess it's a matter of time when I have to fight the whole world. Just because I was at war with Dido and I hate it not to wipe out an annoying enemy completely (can't do it... Backstab me and you have to go, I don't mind the consequences). Originally I was planning for a diplomatic victory.

Whatever, what I was going to write down was: I love the foreign legion.

 

[beetle]

Another useful trick is to take the foreign legion policy, use them as you see fit and then switch your ideology and get to pick another policy in a different tree.

I used to be a fan of this, but I think the recent patch changed the game behavior to match the tooltip text. I will only do this now if I am first to an ideology and get two free tenants. It is also worth picking a temporary Ideology if you can build the Wonder associated with it.

Works well with any of the one off perks

The only comparable one-off perk that I can think of is the half price factories in Order -- but of course that means staying in order for five or six more turns. Autocracy has double tech steal speed, but that takes too long if you are planning to switch Ideologies.

you can go autocracy use the tier 3 attack bonus policy for 50 turns and then switch to Order and take a new policy.

Yikes, that is six picks in! If I am forced to switch, it is way earlier than that!

You lose out on any early chooser bonus policies...

I would swear that this is the way it used to work! That is, if you got zero early chooser bonus polices, worked up to three picks and then switched, the player still had three picks in the new ideology. In my most recent game, I was in this exact situation, but I ended up with only one pick in the new ideology.

 

[qemist]

In my most recent game, I was in this exact situation, but I ended up with only one pick in the new ideology.

AFAIK that was always the intended behavior: if you change ideology you lose two picks.

 

[beetle]

Yes, based on-screen prompts and text, losing two picks was the intended consequences of switching ideologies. But in actual game play, it used to be 0-2, depending on how many free picks you got. That changed with the 2014 Halloween patch. Quite fair, but an ugly surprise since I had gotten used to the exploit, and not something I have seen documented.