What Should I Think About When Choosing an Ideology?

[InkAxis]

I'm fairly new to VP, and I was wondering what the strategy was for ideologies. I'm currently playing a Siam diplomatic victory game and am having some troubles with happiness (staying just above 50%). I'm probably going to go freedom but might go Order, but I wanted to make this thread to see what people think about when they make an Ideology choice.

What are the strengths of each tree (this ideology helps with happiness, etc.)? What are the weaknesses? What VC is each one good for?

 

[crdvis16]

I think ideologies roughly follow the same pattern as ancient era policy trees. Tradition and Freedom lean toward tall, Progress and Order lean toward wide, and Authority and Autocracy lean toward war. However, there is enough policy variance in each ideology such that any play style can pick any ideology and still benefit pretty well.

If you're focused on a given victory condition the easiest way to evaluate the ideologies might be to look at their tier 3 policies and see which ones are most attractive for your given situation.

Also, be sure to consider your tourism/culture status relative to other civs. If there is a tourism monster that has much higher influence levels on you then you might need to just follow their ideology in order to avoid large happiness hits.

 

[Cokolwiek]

However, there is enough policy variance in each ideology such that any play style can pick any ideology and still benefit pretty well.

While it is theoretically true, it shows only you are on a clear path to victory anyway. If you are on higher difficulties, still not in a lead, or there are some real competitors, who are ahead or can get ahead of you it would be very risky. I definetely agree they follow ancient tree policies or industrial ones, so they are really more specialized than general.
For a serious play:
Freedom = cultural, no other ideology comes close to it with boosts to food, GP generation, tourism and culture boost, so it no-brainer for tall cultural, horrible for war
Order = scientific, no other ideology gives so much direct free science from buildings and free technologies, great city development, good enough for war, horrible culturally
Autocracy = diplomatic or domination, as it gives mostly boosts to units, production, delegate count from conquered capitals, diplomatic also indirectly benefits from flexible military and needed interventions, obviously it favors wide and gives some unhappiness reduction and development to cities, but not to the more-peaceful order levels, it is also designed to cultural, but it is not good at it, and gives bonus yields in different forms than peaceful wonder and great works amassing, come to think of it, I will next time try deity, authority, imperalism, autocracy, maybe without artistry, photojournal, but I think any cultural victory will come more from dragging your enemies down, than your own development

Though they may see like it they are not that all rounders really, freedom gives you nothing in war department compared to autocracy, order gives nothing in tourism and culture compared to both freedom and autocracy, and autocracy scientific would be longer and riskier than conquering all the capitals or talling enough votes for hegemony

 

[Stalker0]

All of the trees have something to fight unhappiness. Personally I think Freedom is the simplest tree for DV. Its tier 3 just straight up gives you extra votes. Order is the weakest diplomatic tree.

 

[InkAxis]

Yeah, that's kinda why I was conflicted when choosing because on one hand I'm going wide, an need happiness, which would probably mean Order, but on the other hand Order doesn't help my victory much.

 

[Cokolwiek]

All of the trees have something to fight unhappiness. Personally I think Freedom is the simplest tree for DV. Its tier 3 just straight up gives you extra votes. Order is the weakest diplomatic tree.

No, freedom gives only boredom which already is of least concern for tall tradition, so its basically doesn't have unhappiness reduction. Autocracy gives distress reduction which is the most powerful in any late game. Order gives both poverty and illiteracy which, with 30+ annexed cities equals going from 50% happiness to 100% for the rest of the game. Autocracy also have Prora which is around ten free happiness. Freedom cannot stand to it.
Freedom gives little to diplomatic victory compared with autocracy. Two (or was it one?) delegates from every conquered capital easile means 10 or 5, compared with 4 from freedom. Autocracy gives you better army to protect or capture city-states and eliminate someone if you have to. And tyranny is very powerful, you can sphere of influence all distant city-states and send army, becauce you will just bully nearby.
Order is the weakest in diplomacy and it's good because it is probably best all-around and verstile in general. When all fails, you can always win scientifically with it.

 

[Stalker0]

No, freedom gives only boredom which already is of least concern for tall tradition, so its basically doesn't have unhappiness reduction. Autocracy gives distress reduction which is the most powerful in any late game. Order gives both poverty and illiteracy which, with 30+ annexed cities equals going from 50% happiness to 100% for the rest of the game. Autocracy also have Prora which is around ten free happiness. Freedom cannot stand to it.
Freedom gives little to diplomatic victory compared with autocracy. Two (or was it one?) delegates from every conquered capital easile means 10 or 5, compared with 4 from freedom. Autocracy gives you better army to protect or capture city-states and eliminate someone if you have to. And tyranny is very powerful, you can sphere of influence all distant city-states and send army, becauce you will just bully nearby.
Order is the weakest in diplomacy and it's good because it is probably best all-around and verstile in general. When all fails, you can always win scientifically with it.

Capitalism and Universal Suffrage both provide direct happiness benefits. Media Culture does as well, though in this case since the OP would want Treaty Organization as their Tier 3 they may not get another.

Your advice is based on a very warmonger focused strategy. Yes if your going total war and snagging up capitals, Autocracy's Hall of Honor provides a lot of votes. But I noted before, I didn't say Freedom was necessarily the strongest tree for DV...just the simplest. Its fire and forget, where with Autocracy you have to do a lot of warring to make its benefits work.

 

[Legen]

The overall picture on the diplo front is that:

• Freedom lets you gain votes and city-state alliances with almost no demands on your economy and production, and with little care about geographic constraints. It favors civilizations focused on trade, espionage and great people generation.
• Order has no tenets focused on city-states and the World Congress.
• Autocracy directs its military production and deployment to secure city-state alliances and extract more benefits from such alliances. It naturally favors militaristic civilizations.

Freedom's Treaty Organization (tier 3 tenet) scales with the original number of city-states; in a standard map size, the tenet gives 8 votes immediately. The other part of the tenet is a doubled version of Statecraft's Trade Confederacy, letting you have up to +10 influence per turn on each city-state you have a trade route with, which makes Freedom a solid diplo choice for trade-based civs, like Carthage and Venice. Freedom also has two extra trade routes with Economic Union (tier 1 tenet) that lets you get more from Treaty Organization.

The other two diplo tenets on Freedom are Covert Action (tier 1 tenet) and Arsenal of Democracy (tier 2 tenet). The former makes your spies highly likely to succeed on coup attempts, often at 60% - 80% - 100%. It also gives you extra spies based on the number of original city-states. The latter gives you some diplo to every city-state upon spending a great person.

Order has no tenet that directly affects city-states and the World Congress. At best, you use Order's production and infrastructure to spam as many diplomats as possible.

Autocracy's United Front (tier 1 tenet) boosts the influence from gifting units to 40, halt influence decay during wars and triples the frequency that militaristic CS gift you units. Tyranny (tier 3 tenet) lets you demand tributes from friendly city-states to gain what is essentially a great diplomat effect on them. Iron Fist (tier 1 tenet) increases yields from friendly city-states by 25% and ensures your vassals can't rebel or be liberated.

Note that there are three national wonders that require a specific ideology and grant votes based on your diplomacy with other major civs. Freedom's one grants votes from declarations of friendship, Order's one grants votes from defensive pacts and Autocracy's one grants votes from conquered capitals.

On the happiness front:

• Freedom has plenty of happiness sources and is the most resilient against boredom. Reasonably resilient against distress and poverty as well due to its boosts to food and golden ages.
• Order has good amounts of yields, especially production, leading to addressing city needs in a relatively balanced manner.
• Autocracy has less city yields than other ideologies, but has plenty of happiness from conquests and modifier against distress.

Freedom has direct happiness sources on every city from Universal Suffrage (tier 2 tenet), Capitalism (tier 2 tenet) and Media Culture (tier 3 tenet), with Capitalism being particularly strong due to also reducing urbanization by 2 in every city and turning it into 2 happiness instead. Freedom also has plenty of food from Urbanization (tier 1 tenet), culture from Creative Expression (tier 1 tenet) and Media Culture (tier 3 tenet) and gold from Capitalism and Economic Union (tier 1 tenet). Freedom also has frequent golden ages due to Universal Suffrage and Creative Expression, which do wonders to address non-illiteracy needs. The main weakness is addressing illiteracy.

Order has plenty of production, free buildings and has need reduction modifiers for non-boredom needs. It also gets happiness in every city with People's Army (tier 1 tenet) and Dictatorship of the Proletariat (tier 2 tenet). Heavily focused on food, production and science, it's main weakness is boredom, followed by poverty, as the ideology is relatively light on culture and gold generation.

Autocracy has the lowest amount of city yields and only has need reduction modifier to distress. It's main source of happiness comes from Police State (tier 2 tenet), which gives +3 happiness on courthouses. Expect it to suffer from city needs the most, but get a major happiness source on tier 2 if you conquered a large number of cities.

Note that there are three world wonders that require a specific ideology, and they can further help with happiness. Freedom's wonder gives +1 production on every specialist, Order's one negates tourism tech modifiers from other civilizations (less issues with dissidents) and Autocracy's one gives +1 happiness for every 2 policies you unlocked.

 

[crdvis16]

While it is theoretically true, it shows only you are on a clear path to victory anyway. If you are on higher difficulties, still not in a lead, or there are some real competitors, who are ahead or can get ahead of you it would be very risky. I definetely agree they follow ancient tree policies or industrial ones, so they are really more specialized than general.
For a serious play:
Freedom = cultural, no other ideology comes close to it with boosts to food, GP generation, tourism and culture boost, so it no-brainer for tall cultural, horrible for war
Order = scientific, no other ideology gives so much direct free science from buildings and free technologies, great city development, good enough for war, horrible culturally
Autocracy = diplomatic or domination, as it gives mostly boosts to units, production, delegate count from conquered capitals, diplomatic also indirectly benefits from flexible military and needed interventions, obviously it favors wide and gives some unhappiness reduction and development to cities, but not to the more-peaceful order levels, it is also designed to cultural, but it is not good at it, and gives bonus yields in different forms than peaceful wonder and great works amassing, come to think of it, I will next time try deity, authority, imperalism, autocracy, maybe without artistry, photojournal, but I think any cultural victory will come more from dragging your enemies down, than your own development

Though they may see like it they are not that all rounders really, freedom gives you nothing in war department compared to autocracy, order gives nothing in tourism and culture compared to both freedom and autocracy, and autocracy scientific would be longer and riskier than conquering all the capitals or talling enough votes for hegemony

In general a lot of this is true but there are exceptions. Wide tourism does great with Order (Polynesia can go this route well), for instance.

 

[InkAxis]

Wide tourism does great with Order (Polynesia can go this route well)

Can you elaborate on this strategy?

 

[crdvis16]

Can you elaborate on this strategy?

Sure! It's actually one of my favorite civs/strategies to play and is centered around Maori.

You go wide with Polynesia settling as many good Maori cities as you can (coastal/peninsula/medium islands). The strong culture tiles you work keep you competitive with policies and then turn into large tourism bonuses later with Hotels/Airports.

Most tourism strategies are better suited to staying small/tall because having extra cities penalizes your tourism output and your tourism sources are largely limited to just wonders/great works so more cities don't help. But Polynesia can settle as many good Maori cities as it wants and end up ahead in tourism. You still grab cultural wonders and focus on producing great works but you aren't nearly as dependent on them.

Order likely ends up being the best option for your ideology as it is strong for wide play and has some good tourism policies.

One could possibly do a similar strategy with any civ that has a strong, spammable culture UI. Morocco and France come to mind for a watered down version.

 

[tothePAIN]

My ideology thought process - how am I going to win? What ideology is going to get me there?

If I go autocracy - I'll need to go to war, take vassals, and generally win through conquering. My actual win condition may vary though, but it will come about because I've crushed all my enemies. I've won while autocracy as domination, diplomatic, cultural, and (rarely) even scientific. When I have the tier 3 tenet that gives airports in every city, I have unparalleled mobility and warmaking capabilities.

If I go Freedom - I'm still all in on culture, diplomacy, great people, and golden ages. I can win cultural, diplomatic, or scientific victories. When I get all the policies lined up, I have the best specialists around. My culture will be really strong and I might be able to actually fill out 6 more policies after the 6 in Freedom.

If I go order - I'm all in on going wide and using that power to succeed scientifically. If I'm super wide, the nationalization tenet with order will be very useful. Probably going for a scientific victory as order.

Other considerations come into play too. I'm currently playing a game where the runaway civilization is 12 techs ahead and has gone order. I've gone autocracy because the only way I'm going to get back in the game is to take out the runaway.

 

[cammcken]

Can you elaborate on this strategy?

The Polynesia strategy sounds interesting, but specific to Polynesia. (To me) The wide cultural victory refers more to using one-shot bursts of tourism — historical events and trade route completions with harbors/custom houses — which scale based on your empire's passive culture output in addition to tourism. Since a wide empire suffer penalties to tourism per turn but not to culture per turn, this is the path they must take. You should listen to the other veterans here as to how effective that strategy actually is.