Completing ideology achievements

Lately I've been trying to complete the GalCiv3 steam achievements when I have nothing better to do. There are three that are causing me trouble:

"We care for the least of us"

"Results outweigh ideals"

"Means to an end"

All of them require you to unlock all of the ideology traits for Benevolence, Pragmatism, and Malevolence, respectively. Apparently all traits must be unlocked in a single game, because I tried unlocking them all over multiple games and didn't get the achievement. Because unlocking one increases the cost of unlocking the next, you are required to obtain 2010 ideology points in one game, assuming you stick strictly to one ideology. I know of a few ways to earn ideology points:

+10: Colonization

+20: Galactic events

+1/turn: Player-unique major ideology-specific building (Temple of Enrichment, Arbitration Center, Death Furnaces)

+0.2/turn: Player-unique intermediate ideology-specific building (Elevation Foundation, (nothing), Citadel of Revenue)

+0.1/turn: Colony-unique ideology-specific building (Missionary Center, Preparedness Center, Intimidation Center)

Okay let's run some numbers. Assume an Excessive or Immense-sized galaxy where you are able to colonize 50 additional planets. Selecting only the one ideology gets you 500 points. Assuming you unlock the ideology buildings and you place all of them, you get an additional 6.2 ideology points per turn (1 + 0.2 + 0.1 * 50). Let's say you start counting that from turn 80, which is perhaps a best-case scenario for colonizing 50 planets on a typical map. Let's say every 30 turns you get an ideology choice for a galactic event and choose your ideology. That averages to about 0.67 per turn, bringing you up to about 6.87 ideology points per turn in an ideal case. To make up the remaining 1510 ideology points will take 220 additional turns. So we're looking at a 300-turn game in an ideal case with a strict focus on one particular ideology.

Is there a better way?

 

 

16,876 views 6 replies
Reply #1 Top

I don't see another way to do it. Unless new planets crop up because of a mega-event and give you extra points. Only about 3-4% of players have got this achievement so far. I tend to play on smaller maps so I found not way yet to get these. I usually manage to finish two rows if I'm lucky and then the game is pretty much over.

Reply #2 Top

The Zealots faction trait is supposed to award you 15 points in your primary ideology per planet conquered. If that works (I've never tried it, though I don't recall seeing any bug reports about it), then that could help. You might even be able to abuse the ability a bit by conquering a planet, allowing it to fall to someone else, conquering it again, and so on, as the Zealots ability has a trigger of OnConquerPlanet instead of OnConquerPlanetFirstTime (which is used by the Malevolent perk that grants +1 morale per planet conquered).

You could also turn up the event frequency, if you haven't already. Or you could increase the habitable planet frequency and reduce the number of players, which means that you should usually have a greater number of worlds to colonize if you keep the same map size (there may also be some effects on the number of colonizable planets by map type, though I am not certain).


Let's say you start counting that from turn 80, which is perhaps a best-case scenario for colonizing 50 planets on a typical map

If you really want the full benefit of the ideological buildings, you really ought to unlock and build them as early as possible. Let's say that I can build the repeatable ideology buildings starting at turn 10 and that I can colonize 1 world every 5 turns starting at turn 20. If I rush the ideology point improvement out first thing (e.g. with the Colonizers faction trait so I don't need to waste income), then I will have 69*0.1*2 + 59*0.1 + 54*0.1 + ... + 4*0.1 = 51.6 ideology points from improvements by turn 80 just with 13 colonies and the homeworld. If you assume a higher growth rate (e.g. your 50 colonies by turn 80 objective, which could be ~two colonies every three turns starting on turn 15), you could get a lot more than that. Two colonies every 3 turns starting on turn 15, with repeatable ideological buildings unlocked on turn 10 and built as soon as possible on each colony, gets you 156.8 ideology points from improvements by turn 80, which is enough to shave ~30 turns off your estimated game duration.

It may also be worth taking a short dive into Benevolent for the free colony ship and into Pragmatic for the three free construction ships (which you can upgrade to colony ships and then use without costing homeworld population) even on the runs where you're not trying for the Benevolent or Pragmatic achievements.

 

Aside from that, if you were not opposed to modding the game to do this, then it'd be easy enough to increase the rate at which ideology points are gained, or perhaps reduce the cost of ideology tree unlocks. I personally feel that modding a game for the purpose of getting achievements is a form of cheating, however, as in such a case the goal of modding the game isn't to make the game more enjoyable for you or for other players. Unless you're involved in a competition with other players to get the achievements, however, it is not a form of cheating that I would consider to be strictly wrong, as you're simply reducing the amount of tedium you need to sit through in order to achieve something that you could have gotten but in a more boring manner had you not modded the game.

Reply #3 Top

Just destroy all races except one. Leave only their home planet. Then just end your turn over and over. It will be gone in a breeze.

Reply #4 Top

The easiest most cheat y way to the ideology achievements is to simply use the unadorned "unlock" in the console. That will give you all the ideology traits unlocking the achievements for all three ideologies. It will also give you all the technologies available as well. I guess you can always reload after you cheat the achievements though...

Reply #5 Top

I've modded my tech rate to slower than very slow, and I generally get 70-80% through 2 different moralities before ending the game. It should be pretty trivial to finish one per game at vanilla very slow - it's basically inevitable at the settings I use.

 

If you don't want to play a real match, just cheat it or mod in craptons more points as mentioned above. Seems like this is the route you're asking for.

Reply #6 Top

Quoting Nilfiry, reply 3

Just destroy all races except one. Leave only their home planet. Then just end your turn over and over. It will gone be in a breeze.

That's exactly how I got the Means to An End achievement.  Turned off the cultural victory condition and went for an Ascension victory.  Got the last Malevolent trait about 20 turns before the Ascension victory.