Unhappiness: Public Opinion

[erobinso]

Civ 5, New World, move 288, went from +2 Happiness to -28 Unhappiness in one move. Reason: "Public Opinion (desire for new ideology)" This is a cripplier! Is it a bug, or has it happened to others? Only thought is to return to the turn I last choose a Rationality option and choose an Ideology option instead. Make sense? Any other solution?
Thanks.
Ted

[Matthew]

It is one of those game mechanics that isn't explained very well so the only practical way to know about it is to experience it first-hand. Pretty sure most of us have been in that exact scenario.

The shortened version is basically this: Having low culture will mean you get a certain amount of unhappiness due to high tourism Civs with differing ideologies. To combat it you have three choices: 1. Have a ton of culture and tourism so you are the one pushing unhappines on others; 2. Pick happiness tenets to counter the unhappiness hit. You are forced to use a portion of your tenets to absorb the blow, which means less tenets for other bonuses or being able to use that happiness on population growth; 3. Switch to another Ideology. You lose any policies picked, but you no longer get the happiness hit.

All 3 options are viable, there is no "required" direction. Min/maxer types will obviously go for the first option, but many of my games I will just go for the second option if I don't want to play the culture/tourism game. You get a ton of happiness from Ideologies and generally get a few freebies (e.g., winning World's Fair), so countering the happiness hit isn't that difficult.

The 4th option would be completely killing off that Civ which is pushing the Ideology pressure on you. I purposely left it out, because I feel that if you are in a position where you can easily remove any Civ off the map, then you've probably already won anyway.

[LSD]

I'm not certain, but i think Public Opinion is decided by your culture (or maybe your tourism) output vs another civ's tourism output on a turn by turn basis (rather than being cumulative).
So if a civ with a different ideology suddenly had their tourism boosted higher than your per turn output of culture (like by building an airport or something), they'd start causing unrest.

Seems pretty silly. I always assumed it was to do with the "exotic", "familiar", "influential" modifiers, but the last game i played proved otherwise.

[frapp3_lake_]

Public Opinion is a feature in the game, which is essentially how Tourism is weaponized.
To get rid of influence, make your ideology the world ideology, increase your tourism and culture output, get Protectionism from Commerce, the happiness tenets in the ideology, and that one in Patronage that gives extra happiness for gifted luxury to offset the unhappiness.
Alternatively, kill off the influencing civ.

[arhat]

If my happiness level is struggling to keep above zero I'll hold of the ideoogy selection as long as possible and continue with selections from other policy branches, like commerce where the protectionism happiness bonus is appreciable. Some games I notice a big drop and others none at all. Adopting the ideology as such without adding tenets I don't think triggers unhappiness but if you adopt early and take early qualifier tenets you'll likely be hit and similarly if you adopt tier two tenets with only a couple of tier ones done you tend to trigger a drop. Its seems to me a trade off - you want to get through the ideology tenets ASAP be prepared fro unhappiness.

[m.d.nealy]

Autocracy is such a great happiness tool. Between the gunboat , special wonder, and another one or two talants you can crank that happiness up. I've found it is easier to win by diplomocy using gunboat than anything else. Keep a navy presence in the far away city states and everybody turns blue.

Usually it is pretty safe in that there are other civs that will pick it as well. On Paper Order is better but autocracy is a very solid pick. I actually prefer it in most cicumstances.

[SamBC]

Originally posted by LSD:

I'm not certain, but i think Public Opinion is decided by your culture (or maybe your tourism) output vs another civ's tourism output on a turn by turn basis (rather than being cumulative).
So if a civ with a different ideology suddenly had their tourism boosted higher than your per turn output of culture (like by building an airport or something), they'd start causing unrest.

Seems pretty silly. I always assumed it was to do with the "exotic", "familiar", "influential" modifiers, but the last game i played proved otherwise.

No, it's cumulative. All that culture you have (or haven't) been building all game becomes relevant.

[erobinso]

Thanks for all the great comments and suggestions! I changed my Ideology, and in addition to going through a brief period of total revolt, my unhappiness actually increased! Bummer!

[Rascar]

Sorry to be thick, but can someone confirm exactly how foreign influence on Public Opinion is calculated- Is it the same way as influence is worked out for the culture victory? or your culture+tourism vs their culture + tourism? culture vs tourism? tourism vs tourism?
Thanks

[Damsteri]

Originally posted by Rascar:

Sorry to be thick, but can someone confirm exactly how foreign influence on Public Opinion is calculated- Is it the same way as influence is worked out for the culture victory? or your culture+tourism vs their culture + tourism? culture vs tourism? tourism vs tourism?
Thanks

Only things used to calculation are influence levels, not culture or tourism outputs. First, tourism is used against other civ's culture to gain influence levels, then those influence levels are compered to get the public opinion.

I'm not that good to explain how it's calculated, so I give you a link to civfanatics forum thread where it's explained: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=500715

[Rascar]

Thanks. It's actually slightly less complicated than I thought.
The Civilopedia is good in some ways, though for things like this it seems to be intentionally vague and goes out of it's way to avoid any sort of technical explanation so as not to intimidate casual gamers.

[Matthew]

Yep. But there will always be one or two factions which try and get that tourism, stacking Parthenon and whatever else. Outside of allying every culture city-state ASAP, chances are if one of those factions pick a different ideology, you will suffer.

I actually really like the cultural gameplay mechanic in that it is unique where it gives incentive to race towards culture as a preventitive measure. It is like how some warmongers will try and get Great Wall, just so they don't have to deal with someone else building it and trying to invade them with it.

Part of the reason why I nearly always go for Eiffel Tower. I'm usually caught up to cheat Civs by then, and it is a double shot: Some happiness to help counter any ideology hits, and to prevent another Civ from grabbing that tourism.

[pauloneil]

I was recently playing using Freedom and had a negative rating for over 20 turns. To offset I did choose some of the happiness tenents and attacked the oder civilizations to lower their influence. (I was playing Assyria at the time.) Finally I had enough votes in world congress to make freedom the world policy. That ended my peoples disatisfaction.