Swapping out religion for politics may be a viable option for modern age scenerios... it seems to be tougher to come up with age-spanning political ideologies... but we can try!


I may get the game next week or next month depending on reviews of the game and whether or not it will run on my laptop (and as a last resort whether or not it will run on my ATI desktop).

But while reading Sulla's great(!) walk through - I was thinking that the spread of politics could play just as well as the spread of religion.

Please feel free to use this thread to discuss if you think it would be possible to do and/or what types of political "faiths" would be cool adds to the game.

edited with suggestions from the thread...


A number of political mod ideas come to mind:
1a. American Modern Civil War scenerio (includes mexico, canada, and edge of european union on map)
Libertarian
Democratic
Republican
Green
European Socialists (or whatever the most popular party is)
Party of the Democratic Revolution (or one of the main parties of Mexico)
New Democratic Party (or another major party of Canada)


1b. Modern World War scenerios

War in the 80's

Capitalism (USA, Japan, and the usual suspects)
Communism (USSR and China)
NATO (USA, UK, France, etc)
Warsaw Pact (USSR group)
Theocratic (Select Middle-eastern countries, along with some overlap to Cap/NATO and Pact)


or maybe War in 2005 and Beyond!!!


Capitalism (USA, Japan, and the usual suspects)
Communism (China)
NATO (USA, UK, France, etc)
European Socialists (European Union)
Islamofascist (Select Middle-eastern countries, along with some overlap to Cap/NATO)



2. Generic Political Faction Mod (for regular full game):

Noble Class (early-game)
Democrate(early-game)
Theocrate (early-game)
Republican (mid-game)
Nationalist (mid-game)
Conservative (late-game)
Liberal (late-game)

or maybe... (though this seems more of a type of govt list)

Imperialism (early-game)
Autocratic (early-game)
Democratic (early-game)
Socialism (mid-game)
Nationalism (mid-game)
Communism(late-game)
Conservatism (late-game)

or maybe...

Royal Class (early-game)
Dictatoral (early-game)
Theocratic (early-game)
Socialism (mid-game)
Nationalism (mid-game)
Conservative Right (late-game)
Liberal Left (late-game)


There need to be at least two early game factions so that there will be conflict setup.

So what do you think? A good idea? Feel free to add alternative political parties to add or replace in the list.



Political buildings would probably have to substitute similar religious buildings: perhaps Political Party HQ, Political Action Commitee, etc...

Great Religous Leaders would give way to Great Politicians

For earth maps the politics could be tied to resources to place the correct starting locations...

For the Generic mod - I would probably suggest having two or three early political faiths: Democratic, Monarchy, and maybe Conservatism? Then have the remaining faiths added much later...

yeah, it would be cool, but there would be loads, and they would all need to effect the gameplay somewhow.

new ones:

conservative
nationalist

I would rather go with:

1. Fasicm (maybe "Nationalism" has a better name)
2. Communism.
3. Social-Democrat
3. Paternal Autocrat.
4. Liberal
5. Conservative.
6. Populists.

At least drop Republican as it doesn`t really make sense for a "full game".

Hmm, i´m sceptic, wouldn´t it be better to add those to the civic-choices?

Thus, you could use choices like "liberal", "conservative", "right-wing" etc.

remembered just in time:

"dalek imperialism"

Communism can't work in a game like this, since the goal of communism is the abolishment of the central government and people living in small communes. Stalinism would be a better choice, a hard-balled socialistic oppressor dictatorship.

Sounds like a nice alternative! Sure religion is fun and all but I'd be willing to give this mod a try to see how it gets implemented.

Radical political ideologies could work as religions, especially in the modern age. Imagine a whole bunch of swastikas showing up on your neighbor's cities as the "Nazi" religion takes off with the discovery of fascism. Then his little "missionaries" start in on your border. Gives me a whole new reason to wage war!

Communism can't work in a game like this, since the goal of communism is the abolishment of the central government and people living in small communes. Stalinism would be a better choice, a hard-balled socialistic oppressor dictatorship.

Communism (or any other political faction) would represent a political group in the game that are like minded and willing to work together (or at least more likely not to attack each other).

Great suggestions guys keep them coming...

I think that it’s partly inaccurate, only “extremists” like communism and such spread in a similar way to religion.

New idea: Why not add communism as a religion? It could easily be defined as such in the game, since it would spread similarly and in a way is like a religion, just without a god.

I think that it’s partly inaccurate, only “extremists” like communism and such spread in a similar way to religion.

New idea: Why not add communism as a religion? It could easily be defined as such in the game, since it would spread similarly and in a way is like a religion, just without a god.

yeah. Yo have to look at the history books. Marxism is a lot different to what actauly happened to countrys who became communist. And seeing as civ4 is an american game, communisim will always be rubbish.

I think that it’s partly inaccurate, only “extremists” like communism and such spread in a similar way to religion.

New idea: Why not add communism as a religion? It could easily be defined as such in the game, since it would spread similarly and in a way is like a religion, just without a god.

I think the same argument could be made for democracy or any other modern government type... The idea is that it seems as if it would be a viable option to religion (the idea needs to be fleshed out - and has the same potential for offense - just a different sort).

One of the ideas in my original post seemed to geared toward government types as opposed to types of political slant... I threw up another example... let me know what you think...

I think political parties don't necessarily spread like religion, but perhaps political ideaolgy does (if that makes any sense).

All comment and ideas welcome...

To interject some of my own ideas into this conversation, as far as I can tell, politics is simply religion for those who don't claim to be religious, or a hyperreligion for those who do. So, I think that the religion system could be easily converted into a politics system, although it should be combined into the civics system to make der ubersystem. Although, unlike religions, each political system should offer different advantages and disadvantages to the practicing cities. While the interpretation and practice of a given religion is usually so wildly varied between social and ethnic groups (look at the Coptic Christians versus the Protestant Christians, for example) that you can't really assign any specific traits to a religion, politics is another matter entirely. If you need a programmer, I'm more than willing to help you! :D

I'd play it as a nice alternative! Although I'd have no clue on how it could be implimented. Perhaps foreign policies as the US seems pretty aggressive and Europe seems pretty passive but passive and aggressive are only two.

Just got this idea while I was at my boring college student tech support job (almost-minimum wage to surf the Internet and do homework rocks!) The politics/culture system could start to appear in the Renaissance and become dominiant in the modern age. It would be the religion system of sorts during those time period for (classically) liberal government. Sure, you avoid the turmoil asssociated with religious strife, but you'd have to contend more with terrorism and revolutions associated with competing political views. Any suggestions? I really am thinking about putting this into a mod.

I really want to see a Cold War scenario where you just have a straight-up two "religion" system - democracy/capitalism and communism.

Would be cool to mod the spies to give them the religion spreading abilities of the missionaries.

I really want to see a Cold War scenario where you just have a straight-up two "religion" system - democracy/capitalism and communism.

Would be cool to mod the spies to give them the religion spreading abilities of the missionaries.

Great stuff guys - I think we have a good conversation here...

Perhaps NATO and Warsaw Pact could be political factions in a modern war map... Islamofascist in the middle-east (with partial representation by the american and russian political factions)... remember that you can be the founder of two "religions"

In that type of scenerio, America could be founder of Capitalist and NATO faction... the scenerio map could be pre-seeded with britain as part of the Capitalist and NATO faction, where perhaps Japan, Austrailia, India, etc. are only part of the Capitalist faction...

In addition to spies, political operatives/ambassidors could be missionaries...

I actually already had this idea before I saw this thread! I'm currently in the planning stage of a scenario, and I thought religion doesn't play that big a part in it so it would be easier to use political ideologies:

Democracy: USA, Britain, Free French etc
Communism: USSR, PLA (China) etc
Facism: Germany, Spain, Italy etc
Imperialism: Japan, The Race etc

With the other factions open to the adoption of these principles as well. It would mean blocs could form realistically.

I'm not so keen on the idea outside of scenarios though, unless maybe it could be done in tandem with religion changing into politics as the game goes on, like TheNino85 said.

Indeed, alot of politcal theories spread like religion, and could be added as well al religions...

Communism wants to free people from the exploitive upper class...
Democracy wants to free people from dictatorships...
Nazism wants to free people from 'impures'...
Monarchy wants to give the power to those sacnitonned by god...
(so on...)

So on, theese are all philosophies, and could easely be treated like religions... exept they would probably come MUCH later.

I think that it’s partly inaccurate, only “extremists” like communism and such spread in a similar way to religion.

New idea: Why not add communism as a religion? It could easily be defined as such in the game, since it would spread similarly and in a way is like a religion, just without a god.

Do you consider Liberal-Democracy to be "extremist"? Because the USA is certainly bent on spreading democracy as if it were a religion. By force in Iraq and through "missionaries" in places like China. China suffered "unhappiness" at Tiananmen for not adopting Democracy as the state government, after US missionaries spread Democracy there.

Many political movements often function as secular religions. This was particularly true of communism, which did not tolerate any other religions. As such communism outlawed competing religions as if it were a secular theocracy.

Possibilities:

1) National Socialism
2) Communism or Marxism
3) Liberal-Democracy
4) Feminism
5) Environmentalism

It would be quite realistic to see the USA telling China or the USSR to abandon communism or telling Germany to abandon National Socialism in favor of Democrayc. Global wars were fought over these things, just as wars were previously fought over theistic religions.

Religion is too central to history to ignore...but I'd modify the game to include some generic made-up religions that have actual impacts on society and city stats, and perhaps even unit stats.