Civilization 5 Autocracy Ideology Guide
Strategies and Tips for Choosing Autocracy Tenets
| Autocracy | Freedom | Order |
Autocracy and Victory Conditions
The Autocracy Ideology is best-suited for those playing a Civ seeking a Domination, Cultural, or Diplomatic Victory in Civilization 5: Brave New World. This Guide will highlight the benefits of choosing to follow this Ideology and strategies you can use to help get the most of its Tenets. Look to the main Ideology page to learn some of the drawbacks of having a different Ideology than other in-game Civs, along with a summary of the perks your Civ will get when following it.
Autocracy's benefits for Domination are very clear, given there is a 50-turn boost to combat strength of all your military forces and big boosts to producing Military units along with more Experience for those new units. Your units will be cheaper to buy and that will be easier to do with less overall upkeep when you have a massive Military. The doubling of Strategic Resources will help you support many more of the powerful late-game units, as well. You will also be able to maintain positive Happiness in order to allow City Growth throughout your Empire when capturing more of your opponents' Cities. What isn't so obvious is how following this Ideology can help you win Diplomatically or Culturally.
For Diplomatic Victories, you will use your Military might and the Gunboat Diplomacy Tenet to effectively bully City-States into Allying with your Civ. Through fear of your global power, and positioning of your units to raise the nearby unit metric, you may gain Influence per turn with each City-State in the game. This means you park some units and use your overall military power to ensure you would be able to Demand Tribute from a City-State. For distant City-States, a land or naval Military presence will allow you to do this easily. Click a City-State's screen to see if you can demand tribute, and if not how much more power you need nearby. Proximity of Units counts more than the global power you have. Then, use your other forces to protect your lands and Gold to purchase the Alliance of those you cannot. The Globalization Technology will give you extra votes in the World Congress for positioning Spies as Diplomats in other Civs' Capital Cities, which will help you pull off a victory if you don't have all CS Allied. Check the World Congress screen to see how many votes are required for you to win the game this way, which varies based on map size.
Cultural Victory relies on you conquering a portion of the World and essentially ignoring Great Artists, Writers, and Musicians throughout your game and not utilizing those associated Specialists in your City with Guilds until you have adopted Futurism. The +250 Tourism makes up for a lot of early-game turns, while this is also amplified by Open Borders, Shared Religion, and having a Trade Route with each Civ. This will serve to make up for Theming Bonuses Civs that focus on Culture will have from building early-game Cultural Wonders you may have missed or failed to capture. It is effectively a late-game Tourism push that will quickly raise your output. Hotels, Airports, and World Congress Proposals that benefit you (Culture from Wonders/Landmarks/Natural Wonders or Arts Funding) should also be used so that you can get the Tourism benefits of those. As your Tourism per turn ramps up, you will want to use Great Musicians for Culture Bombs in other Civs' Territory, even when you are at war.
It is very helpful to get Cultural Civs to go to war with you, so that you can overcome their accumulated Culture with your Tourism through Cult of Personality. This works best when you have conquered your entire Continent early in the game and other Civilizations are not aware of what you've done to build up Warmonger Hatred. You may also need to bribe other Civilizations to go to war through the Trade Screen or simply declare War on whomever you see them fighting against to get the bonus and amplify your Tourism to them. This will be harder to achieve the higher the difficulty level, given Civs on Immortal/Deity would have a lot more Culture and you would need more Tourism generated in the past.
Autocracy Tenets List
Level 1 Tenets
Elite Forces
Wounded Units inflict +25% more damage than normal. Not quite Japan's boost, but you are going to do much better with a severely damaged unit than you would otherwise. It is very helpful for Aircraft given they are generally running damaged when doing repeat bombing runs.
Mobilization
Gold cost of purchasing Units reduced by 33%. Combine this with Honor Policies which reduce cost of upgrading, and you can easily purchase and upgrade your units much cheaper than usual. This is especially helpful with a large navy, as those are the most expensive Units to Upgrade.
United Front
Militaristic City-States grant units twice as often when you are at war with a common foe. This doesn't necessarily have to be your Ally, for they could be fighting against the target Civ for another. It is incredibly potent when you have multiple Militaristic City State Alliances and are able to force them into War.
Futurism
+250 Tourism with all known Civs when a Great Writer, Artist, or Musician is born. This will be amplfiied by any arrangements you have (Open Borders, Trade Route or Shared Religion). Saving these births for later can make a big difference late-game, even leading to Cultural Victory. At the very least it may offset Public Opinion against your Ideology.
Industrial Espionage
Spies steal technologies at twice the normal rate. Helpful when you've been warlike and neglected your Science in the past. If you're ahead of all other Civs in tech (+10% Literacy or more), don't bother with this for it will be quickly rendered useless. When you can use it to its full potential, it can help you keep up in technology. This also effectively negates the Great Firewall and will allow a Spy to steal effectively even with other Spy defense buildings in a City (Constabulatory, Police Station). Thank you to a user on reddit.com/r/civ for pointing this out.
Fortified Borders
+1 Local Happiness from every Castle, Arsenal, and Military base. Your Cities will be very hard to capture and you'll offset the Unhappiness for each City. These buildings do not require Maintenance. Works very well with Neuschwanstein.
Universal Healthcare
+1 Local Happiness from every National Wonder. Gauge whether this is better than Fortified Borders and choose whichever gives you the largest boost to Happiness first. Fortified Borders will be better in Wide Empires - puppets do build defenses.
Level 2 Tenets
Militarism
+2 Local Happiness from every Barracks, Armory, and Military Base. So long as the City is tall enough, it will contribute Happiness. Cities cannot generate more Happiness than their Population total, so in small Cities it will be ineffective. However, it will allow them to grow without impacting your Global Happiness. With Honor policies, you can also build these buildings faster.
Lightning Warfare
+3 Movement for Great Generals. Armor Units gain +15% attack, +1 Movement and ignore enemy ZOC. This means Zone of Control, allowing your Tanks to drive around other Units without a movement penalty. Try it with Germany's Panzer.
Police State
+3 Local Happiness from every Courthouse and build those in half the usual time. This will allow you to Annex all your Cities without a hit to Happiness outside that of any normal City, as soon as the Courthouse is up. Keep in mind that Annexing Cities does raise Social Policy costs by 10% each.
Nationalism
Reduces Unit Gold Maintenance costs by 33%. With a large Military, this may be your single biggest money sink - that or Building maintenance. Either way, you will likely save a ton of Gold Per Turn with this.
Third Alternative
Quantity of Strategic Resources produced is increased by 100%. +5 Food and Science in the Capital. This works very well with the above, particularly in allowing you to support more armor/air/naval Units, the best of which require Strategic Resources.
Total War
+25% Production when building Military Units. New Military Units start with +15 Experience. This will let you gain 3 levels straight out of Production without Brandenburg Gate.
Level 3 Tenets
Cult of Personality
+50% Tourism to Civs fighting a common enemy. Declare War and jump in against another Civ to influence their opponent or Bribe a Civ to war and gain a huge boost to Tourism. This is an excellent Tenet when combined with the +250 Tourism on Artsy Great Person Birth and allows Cultural Victory with Autocracy.
Gunboat Diplomacy
Gain 6 Influence per turn with City-States you could demand tribute from. Your Military Forces are 50% more effective at intimidating City-States. Park a unit or two nearby and have a strong global Military and you will gain Influence enough to ally within 10 turns a CS that doesn't have an Ally. You can eventually surpass other Civs this way. Gunboat Diplomacy allows for an easy Diplomatic Win in the late game if you are tired of warring.
Clausewitz's Legacy
Receive a +25% attack bonus to all Military Units for the first 50 Turns after this Policy is adopted. Time this one properly to allow you to attack the strongest Civ. You can hover over Culture Per Turn at the top to see how many turns are remaining for the next Policy selection to help you plan for best use. 50 Turns is a long time - 10% of a game's max length, so it will get great use and help you capture other Civs' Capitals.
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This should help players better understand the overall goals and use of Tenets in the Autocracy Ideology. Share your own gameplay tips using the Comments form below to enlighten us of strategies that work with specific Civs and other things you may find helpful to your fellow players.
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Base is only for fortified borders.