Are the three ideologies a little too simplistic?

[Aristos]

The ideology system is OK (and a first in the series), but if we want to speculate on how to make it better, we can draw from previous/different experiences. HOI3 has a nice "triangular" system where the vertices are the three "opposing" ideologies; each country moves inside the triangle according to some diplomatic actions and decisions/sliders, until it is clearly identified with one of the vertices (not necessarily on top, but close enough). Once it's there, it can be part of the "Big Alliance" that corresponds to the ideology.

Second, GalCiv2 has a very interesting approach, again with three "moral" stances (very similar to ideologies in effect), represented by a line, where the extremes are "Good" or "Evil" and the center part is Neutral. Each civilization moves on the line according to diplomatic actions and decisions to events in game, and when a specific technology is researched, the civ has to "take a stance" and decide which of the three it will be; interestingly enough, it can choose any of the three, but the cost to adopt the choice will be proportional to how far it moved from the actions/decisions.

A mix of those two could be interesting to see in civ5. Key element: actions and diplomatic decisions "move" the civ closer to one of the ideologies; not a one-time choice anymore, but depending on in game actions. Could also be similar to GalCiv2, where the civ can choose any of the three, but the cost in culture would depend on how far the civ moved from the chosen ideology.

 

[Azradun]

A mix of those two could be interesting to see in civ5. Key element: actions and diplomatic decisions "move" the civ closer to one of the ideologies; not a one-time choice anymore, but depending on in game actions. Could also be similar to GalCiv2, where the civ can choose any of the three, but the cost in culture would depend on how far the civ moved from the chosen ideology.

Something like starting a war vs defending, razing cities and general warmongering? Neutral and Evil would be easy to implement, but what would the Good choices amount to? Liberating cities? Giving gifts? The latter is rather an outright bribery than true Good act now (especially in case of City States).

 

[Aristos]

Something like starting a war vs defending, razing cities and general warmongering? Neutral and Evil would be easy to implement, but what would the Good choices amount to? Liberating cities? Giving gifts? The latter is rather an outright bribery than true Good act now (especially in case of City States).

I did not mean to take it literally from the other games... I cited them as showcases of what could be done. Again: key element in those two models is that "stances" are not a one-time decision, but constructed during game-play from a series of actions/decisions/overtures.

HOW to create it is another story. Obviously, it should be tightly related to the civ5 systems and environment. For example, a civ that is conquering other civ's cities will clearly move away from Freedom, etcetc.

I also started the post saying that I think the Ideology system is find, but if there is need to improve it, this might be the way.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

Something like starting a war vs defending, razing cities and general warmongering? Neutral and Evil would be easy to implement, but what would the Good choices amount to? Liberating cities? Giving gifts? The latter is rather an outright bribery than true Good act now (especially in case of City States).

It's just labels from another game, they can be called War/Commerce/Production or whatever really.

The gist of the idea that Aristos mentioned is really cool because it adds this second layer effect based on your actions, and the "progression" of your status feels more analog than digital (still digital of course, just that you have lot of smaller choices to make rather than one big "Communism , Capitalism or Fascism"). An analogy I would make is, imagine RPG where you build your character through hundreds of dialogue and action choices rather than one where you just pick your stats out of the blue.

But I have my doubts as to whether something like that will be implemented into Civ game just because this game's multi-era aspect favors more gamey approach to these ideas so that it all fits easier together into a game.

Still really cool though.

 

[Wodan]

Religion is one example, how u make up your own religion goes against everything what a religion stand for.

The religion system we have now is ideal (barring any minor game balancing). Pre-defined religions have huge issues. Homogenous (ref. Civ 4) is boring and didn't make anybody happy. Different ones will have everybody complaining that the devs didn't do their religion justice.

 

[whiplash27]

It would be neat if they included economic ideologies as well, but that would just be a little too much.