How to counter public opinion for a new ideology ?

[Crixus]

I just quit a game because the ai was changing ideology every few turns and I was producing nothing because of it.

I chose freedom, 3 turns later an ai chose autocracy so I had to switch to that. A few turns after that 2 ai chose order so I had to then switch to that. A few turns after that autocracy because the most popular so again I had to switch. Then a few turns later back to freedom -.-

I was told the defence was having high culture ? But I built all culture buildings up to the broadcast tower and had wonders that gave culture too.

[just.nuke.em]

Why are you switching to the AI's ideology? You don't have to do that unless their influence is causing your civ to be unhappy.

[Velvet Waltz]

look at the cultural victory screen. a cultural victory is won by achieving a 100% influence level (i.e. generating more indiviual tourism points for every civ than said civ generated culture).
however, there are more uses to that: first of all, there are several influence levels:
1. 0% - no effects
2. 10% - no effects (I believe)
3. 30% - +1 science/trade route, shorter anarchy period and less population loss when conquering a city, 1 "influence token" (dunno how it's called. let's leave it at that)
4. 50% - +2 science/trade route,even shorter anarchy period and less population loss when conquering a city, 2 influence token
5. 100% - +3 science/trade route, almost no anarchy and population loss upon conquering
6. 200% - +4 science/trade route, NO anarchy, NO population loss upon conquering, 4 influence tokens

so what is that influence token quabble about? this is what gives you these annoying 30 happiness penalties when other civs choose ideologies. Every civs influence on you is evaluated; if there's more "hostile" ideological pressure (via influence tokens), public unrest starts. as an example:
there are 8 civs in this game: You have freedom. There are 3 other civs with the freedom ideology, and one of them is 100% influential with you. You have also passed the "world ideology: freedom" via the world congress which applies 2 freedom influence to every civ.
Thus, you end up with 5 "defensive" tokens. Let's look at the other civs: let's say one civ as autocracy and is 50% influential with you. thus, you are threatened by 2 autocracy tokens, which won't result in problems for you because, well, your defense outnumbers that pressure. HOWEVER: the remaining 3 civs all have order. if every one of these is at least 50% influential with you, you end up with 6 order tokens, resulting in a demand for a new ideology. THIS is what you want to avoid.

what's the solution to this? because of the nature of culture, there are no quick fixes for that. it's hard to get rid of cultural influence because that usually means another civ generates a lot of tourism while you don't generate enough culture. so you'll have to focus on culture a little. it might turn out to be a good idea to save the writers guild until later so you can churn out great writers at a higher pace, maybe combined with the worlds fair. just try to get a culture burst if you are in this situation.

well, let's move on from the hindsight and focus on what you can do to prevent this: first of all, let's look at how BNW is designed: the ideologies are supposed to create cold war-style blocs of civs: this is showcased by the tourism modifiers:
+25/40% trade routes
+25/40% open borders
+25/40% same religion
-34% different ideology
+25% diplomatic spy in capital and different ideology
most civs will start generating the bigger chunks of culture around the time ideologies come around; the -34% modifier is really harsh, and the best way of shielding yourself against cultural influence is thus creating a shutdown-zone around your ideology zone: cancel trade routes to enemy ideologies, shut the borders, maybe declare war and try to take out some cities that apply too much pressure on you (or declare war to prevent them from setting up trade routes). instead, trade with your ideological partners (especially freedom has a tenet that rewards exactly this.

if you are getting this heavily influenced that the enemy can force your hand.. you might already be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ but I don't know any specifics of your game and your OP wasn't quite informative either.

[Crixus]

Originally posted by qq:

look at the cultural victory screen. a cultural victory is won by achieving a 100% influence level (i.e. generating more indiviual tourism points for every civ than said civ generated culture).
however, there are more uses to that: first of all, there are several influence levels:
1. 0% - no effects
2. 10% - no effects (I believe)
3. 30% - +1 science/trade route, shorter anarchy period and less population loss when conquering a city, 1 "influence token" (dunno how it's called. let's leave it at that)
4. 50% - +2 science/trade route,even shorter anarchy period and less population loss when conquering a city, 2 influence token
5. 100% - +3 science/trade route, almost no anarchy and population loss upon conquering
6. 200% - +4 science/trade route, NO anarchy, NO population loss upon conquering, 4 influence tokens

so what is that influence token quabble about? this is what gives you these annoying 30 happiness penalties when other civs choose ideologies. Every civs influence on you is evaluated; if there's more "hostile" ideological pressure (via influence tokens), public unrest starts. as an example:
there are 8 civs in this game: You have freedom. There are 3 other civs with the freedom ideology, and one of them is 100% influential with you. You have also passed the "world ideology: freedom" via the world congress which applies 2 freedom influence to every civ.
Thus, you end up with 5 "defensive" tokens. Let's look at the other civs: let's say one civ as autocracy and is 50% influential with you. thus, you are threatened by 2 autocracy tokens, which won't result in problems for you because, well, your defense outnumbers that pressure. HOWEVER: the remaining 3 civs all have order. if every one of these is at least 50% influential with you, you end up with 6 order tokens, resulting in a demand for a new ideology. THIS is what you want to avoid.

what's the solution to this? because of the nature of culture, there are no quick fixes for that. it's hard to get rid of cultural influence because that usually means another civ generates a lot of tourism while you don't generate enough culture. so you'll have to focus on culture a little. it might turn out to be a good idea to save the writers guild until later so you can churn out great writers at a higher pace, maybe combined with the worlds fair. just try to get a culture burst if you are in this situation.

well, let's move on from the hindsight and focus on what you can do to prevent this: first of all, let's look at how BNW is designed: the ideologies are supposed to create cold war-style blocs of civs: this is showcased by the tourism modifiers:
+25/40% trade routes
+25/40% open borders
+25/40% same religion
-34% different ideology
+25% diplomatic spy in capital and different ideology
most civs will start generating the bigger chunks of culture around the time ideologies come around; the -34% modifier is really harsh, and the best way of shielding yourself against cultural influence is thus creating a shutdown-zone around your ideology zone: cancel trade routes to enemy ideologies, shut the borders, maybe declare war and try to take out some cities that apply too much pressure on you (or declare war to prevent them from setting up trade routes). instead, trade with your ideological partners (especially freedom has a tenet that rewards exactly this.

if you are getting this heavily influenced that the enemy can force your hand.. you might already be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ but I don't know any specifics of your game and your OP wasn't quite informative either.

Wow thank you for the reply, it was very helpful :) There wasn't much else to really say about my game. I guess there was just lots of ai going for a culture victory and was getting much more than me. France and brazil was in the game too.

I never give open borders but I never even thought of not giving them trade routes, I had them everywhere.

I should be able to handle this problem better next time, or hopfully stop it from happening in the first place.

[KalkiKrosah]

There's 3 factors that influence tourism. Open borders, trade routes and religion. Borders gives you a 50% boost, religion gives a 30% boost and trade routes give a 20% boost that goes both ways. I may have the numbers wrong but they all together do give you a 100% boost to the output of your tourism.

You can check this and the rates by clicking on the tourism briefcase icon at the top of the screen. As qq mentioned above you win a culture victory by having a higher tourism sum than everyone else's culture sum. You will get a notification on when you surpass them with tourism by having that leader say that all his people are wearing your blue jeans and listening to your pop music.

But there will be some civilizations who just rack up lots of culture and you will need to take out some of their larger cities to make a dent in their culture defense before the end turn max is reached. I still find culture victories to be the longest and hardest one to obtain.

[Velvet Waltz]

Originally posted by KalkiKrosah:

There's 3 factors that influence tourism. Open borders, trade routes and religion. Borders gives you a 50% boost, religion gives a 30% boost and trade routes give a 20% boost that goes both ways. I may have the numbers wrong but they all together do give you a 100% boost to the output of your tourism.

You can check this and the rates by clicking on the tourism briefcase icon at the top of the screen. As qq mentioned above you win a culture victory by having a higher tourism sum than everyone else's culture sum. You will get a notification on when you surpass them with tourism by having that leader say that all his people are wearing your blue jeans and listening to your pop music.

But there will be some civilizations who just rack up lots of culture and you will need to take out some of their larger cities to make a dent in their culture defense before the end turn max is reached. I still find culture victories to be the longest and hardest one to obtain.

actually, culture is the fastest victory obtainable (at least on larger maps). At least under certain circumstances; I got fed up with the 3-4 city tall metagame, so I switched it up to large maps and playing sacred site games; using this, you can pull off <200 turn (actually as low as 150) cultural victories. really depends on the circumstances though. my fav civs to do this are mayans, egyptians and spain while I didn't have the success I wanted with the celts and byzantines.
and you've got the percentages messed up; correct ones are in my post above. 25% is without the aestetic social policy (left hand side, third one. dunno how it's called) and 40% is with said policy.

[Crixus]

Originally posted by KalkiKrosah:

There's 3 factors that influence tourism. Open borders, trade routes and religion. Borders gives you a 50% boost, religion gives a 30% boost and trade routes give a 20% boost that goes both ways. I may have the numbers wrong but they all together do give you a 100% boost to the output of your tourism.

You can check this and the rates by clicking on the tourism briefcase icon at the top of the screen. As qq mentioned above you win a culture victory by having a higher tourism sum than everyone else's culture sum. You will get a notification on when you surpass them with tourism by having that leader say that all his people are wearing your blue jeans and listening to your pop music.

But there will be some civilizations who just rack up lots of culture and you will need to take out some of their larger cities to make a dent in their culture defense before the end turn max is reached. I still find culture victories to be the longest and hardest one to obtain.

Good to know thank you :)

[cerberusiv]

Originally posted by Marauder:

I was told the defence was having high culture ? But I built all culture buildings up to the broadcast tower and had wonders that gave culture too.

The buildings don't produce much culture in themselves, the culture comes from having great works in them, preferably themed (if you complete the Aesthetics policy track the culture is doubled as well as the tourism). Also one of the Aesthetics policies boosts culture in cities with a World Wonder by 33%.

The WC/UN can vote a world ideology. If you are using Freedom take Treaty Organisation and run all your trade routes to CS's, you will pick them up as allies and have enough votes to be decisive in WC. Get your ideology voted as World Ideology or at least make sure a different ideology isn't voted in. World ideology gives 2 points of pressure in favour of that ideology.

Polynesia has no cultural advantages. Their strength is on archipelago maps where they can get out and hit lots of ruins early while the other civs are confined to their starting landmass.

[Velvet Waltz]

Originally posted by cerberusiv:

Originally posted by Marauder:

I was told the defence was having high culture ? But I built all culture buildings up to the broadcast tower and had wonders that gave culture too.

The buildings don't produce much culture in themselves, the culture comes from having great works in them, preferably themed (if you complete the Aesthetics policy track the culture is doubled as well as the tourism). Also one of the Aesthetics policies boosts culture in cities with a World Wonder by 33%.

this is wrong. theming bonus affects tourism output ONLY. great works will contribute +2 culture, +1 with the T1 liberty tenet and all xx% modifiers (Sydney Opera, Hermitage, Radio Tower, that aesthetic policy you were talking about) will be applied after. IIRC the MAXIMUM culture from a great work is +12.

Originally posted by cerberusiv:

Polynesia has no cultural advantages. Their strength is on archipelago maps where they can get out and hit lots of ruins early while the other civs are confined to their starting landmass.

when playing wide, Moai statues can contribute to your culture output by a great margin. combine masses of these with beelined hotels and you've got relatively cheap, quick tourism. haven't tried sacred sites with them though.

[cerberusiv]

Originally posted by qq:

Originally posted by cerberusiv:

The buildings don't produce much culture in themselves, the culture comes from having great works in them, preferably themed (if you complete the Aesthetics policy track the culture is doubled as well as the tourism). Also one of the Aesthetics policies boosts culture in cities with a World Wonder by 33%.

this is wrong. theming bonus affects tourism output ONLY. great works will contribute +2 culture, +1 with the T1 liberty tenet and all xx% modifiers (Sydney Opera, Hermitage, Radio Tower, that aesthetic policy you were talking about) will be applied after. IIRC the MAXIMUM culture from a great work is +12.

It is not wrong, it is simply not documented and you (and many others) have not noticed it. Try it - theme a museum or wonder in your capital and note the cultural output, then move one of the works to the palace. If you are right tourism should go down and culture stay the same - but both go down if you break the theming bonus.

Originally posted by qq:

Originally posted by cerberusiv:

Polynesia has no cultural advantages. Their strength is on archipelago maps where they can get out and hit lots of ruins early while the other civs are confined to their starting landmass.

when playing wide, Moai statues can contribute to your culture output by a great margin. combine masses of these with beelined hotels and you've got relatively cheap, quick tourism. haven't tried sacred sites with them though.

True, I had forgotten Moai statues. However it does really require building them on adjacent tiles and that you don't need those tiles for something else.

[Velvet Waltz]

Originally posted by cerberusiv:

Originally posted by qq:

this is wrong. theming bonus affects tourism output ONLY. great works will contribute +2 culture, +1 with the T1 liberty tenet and all xx% modifiers (Sydney Opera, Hermitage, Radio Tower, that aesthetic policy you were talking about) will be applied after. IIRC the MAXIMUM culture from a great work is +12.

It is not wrong, it is simply not documented and you (and many others) have not noticed it. Try it - theme a museum or wonder in your capital and note the cultural output, then move one of the works to the palace. If you are right tourism should go down and culture stay the same - but both go down if you break the theming bonus.

huh. odd.

[cerberusiv]

Here are a couple of screenshots from my current game that show this.

Here Globe Theatre is themed.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=821436054

Here I have moved one of the great works to the ampitheatre in the same city. Nothing else has changed.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=821436031

The city cultural output is reduced without the theming bonus.