Being Forced To Commit To Ideology?

Maybe there can be a game play setting that we can disable ideology, tech, and unit updates so we can end the turn. That way you wouldn't be forced to do actions you wish to delay. I would like this option.

DARCA.

So far, it doesn't seem to do any harm if you choose items from multiple ideologies.  I'm waiting to see where the developers go with this.

Agreed there needs to be penalties for pursuing multiple ideologies at once. Otherwise your people will be getting very mixed messages from their leader. 

My suggestion would be once you have points in one ideology points earnt in other instead remove points in that one re locking benefits until you hit zero points.  Then you can gain points in another.

That way you can only follow one ideology at once put can change althoughthe cost of changing is higher the more ccommitted you are.

It also means if your high up one tree making some out of character decisions for a quick benefit has some real cost.

I hate penalties, and people using that as a easy way to fix problems for the devs. There are more creativity solutions available.

DARCA.

I don't think that they will have a mixed message from their leader, you know, people (and maybe aliens) are a mixed bag of good, evil and neutral things and you cope with that every day without having a mixed feelings (most of the time, of course) because you let it go (is not the big deal, anyway). One thing you can do with that mixture of ideologies is gaining titles in the same way as Dungeon Siege 1,e.g., 70% in benevolent and Malice (don't remember the actual name) category you can have the "extreme politician" title. 

True but if you go from a society espousing personal freedom and openess to one building slave vivisection centres society has to accommodate the sudden ethical shift.

The system I suggested isn't a penalty,  it's more about the fact that as a bigship gathers momentum it becomes harder to turn.

In a sense, pragmatism, benevolence and malice is in the eye of the beholder. You can have a bunch of slaves because of your race policy and you can do benevolent things like giving slaves better food and medicine so they can last longer. In that regard your people see you as a benevolent ruler because you improved the production from slaves in a "benevolent" way, although the end is not "benevolent" in the eyes of some other civilizations. The thing in galciv2 (and maybe 3) is that the good/evil label was given by other civilizations. In that regard it would be really confusion letting other civilization label you as a "benevolent". Just for the sake of an example, a slave driven civilization is malevolent in the eyes of a non-salve driven civilization. But, on contrary, for a slave driven civilization making your people work is idiotic and malevolent (you have slaves for that, don't you?). So? Who is going to label your ideology? You can follow your path of benevolence and having slaves or you can make your own people work and being labeled malevolent by other civilization that uses slaves...

Like in real life.

It's fine to earn points in different trees. It's fine to "waste" points in different trees at the same time. If someone wants to be a jack of all trades about it, he should be allowed as long as he finds the means for it.

My first time playing, I got really high into benevolence to the point that I had locked myself into it, not being able to earn enough points in the other idelogies to be able to unlock the first rank. Galaxy size and number of available planets aside (and random ideology events), I found that ok. I also found ok to be a "cheating bastard" and unlock the three trees (rank 1) before I commited to one. I don't see some of the actual/current options to be exluding. I could see a benevolent society using some of the ranks in malevolence, for example.

I like the mixing up of different ideologies and its a really neat mechanic. However I'm mainly concerned if its developer intent that you are 'forced' to spend points in a specific tree. You may be a malevolent warlord and suddenly get a random event/anomaly that gives you benevolence  points and you end up being forced to unlock it.

I moved on from my initial thought that it should be penalty and decided instead points in another ideology should by you back down the tree you are currently on before you can go up the new one. 

The issue is the things the trees give you sound like they should be mutually incompatible in many cases.  Yes in real life ideologies are more complex things.  But in galciv they are rather more extreme moral stances a bit like the old dnd  alignment system.  Also I think making the player commit but never totally e.g. They can change the ideology of their society but at  increasing cost would make the moral decisions in the game much more meaningful.

THANK GOD!!!!! even though I still dislike your idea, but seeing you open a post like that warms my heart.

 I want to do parts of each ideology besides pragmatic, but that should affect how I am viewed since I am mostly one ideology. If I research all ideologies it should be a accomplishment not a penalty. If you are advanced enough to be everything then all races should respect that. Maybe make it a victory condition: finish all ideology trees. How about that!

DARCA.

I just have one question, how does SD see pragmatism? Do they see it as a middle point between malevolence and benevolence, or how? Because, well, if they see it as a middle point advancing between benevolence ( B ) and malevolence (M) in more or less the same proportion, does not it mean that you are more or less pragmatic (P)? In that case, advancing between B and M should give you P, instead of B and M, at least in some proportion, or reducing the cost of P and increasing the cost in B and M.

Edited because of a Smile (B)...

What concerns me right now is the system doesn't scale well. It would appear that you can hit the highest tiers pretty easily. And that's only going to get worse when we have larger and larger galaxies and more planets pumping out ideology points

Civ5 had a mechanic by which larger empires were penalized for the next culture "tier" for each new city. Though I'm not sure if that mechanic makes sense here.

The cost already increases for each ideology unlocked. That increase factor could be map size dependant (if it's not already).

I don't know how they view it but I give my opinion on it here https://forums.galciv3.com/452800/page/1/#3456915 its the last post i made on the forum. (not many people saw this because it was late when I posted it. I my understanding of the in game definition of all ideologies.

DARCA.

The problem I see there is that there's what i see as a fundamental design flaw currently

The only way to bootstrap Ideology is entirely 'random'

You can only get them if you get Anomalies or via Planet Events. Anomalies are plentiful now because of the alpha, but will be toned back for beta. That means that your ability to bootstrap your Ideology is effectively limited. If you scale the ideology cost too high, you cant even begin a single tree effectively locking you out of the entire feature. If you amke it too loose, you can effectively mine all ideologies.

The other issue I see is that with only 3 ideologies, you efectivley are forced into one tree from the beginning.

Initially yes, but once you hit the first tier you can pursue ideology through the buildings they unlock which grant flat and/or per turn ideology points.

What I would say is I'm not worried about rate of progression through ideologies at this stage.  At the moment you progress quickly because the same event pops up on every world toy colonise.  This is to give you an easy way to test the various levels of the trees. 

Speed of progress and balance are likley to be addressed in the betas, once the game is pretty much feature complete. 

But again this is a problem if we are

1) Saying that bootstrapping is goign to be random

2) Extremely large galaxy sizes would appear to allow for 'infinite' production of all 3 ideologies

If the solution to #2 is to scale up the points required, then you run into the problem of the randomness not allowing you to even get to teh boostrapping processes because you missed out on anomalies or some specific planet event. The only functional way scaling with galaxy sizes would work would be if all ideology buildings were available 'by default'. Then it makes sense to be able to scale upwards.

Point 2 is another reason I think my system of forcing you to only follow one tree at a time would be good.  You'd still be able to change but it would be costly and take time and you could never have more than one tree at once let alone max them all in a big galaxy. 

That adds a lot to replay values imo. 

By taking action into the galaxy, we get the chance to commit ourselves to the ideologies. Until then, it makes no sense to develop any building that allows to pursue ideology points (imho). No matter the galaxy size, planet distribution/presence and anomalies distribution/presence, we are going to get many chances along the game to earn some ideology points. And while in smaller maps the ideology won't go very far, in larger maps we can expect to develop it quite a lot.

As it works right now, you only get one ideology choice in each tree at rank 1. And all of them unlock an ideology building to get more points. Those buidlings are your non random (non interactive) way to commit your civilization into one ideology. Although at this point and alpha build, you can cheat and farm points to unlock all the rank 1 ideologies and get access to all the ideology buildings. Then farm the points of the idelogy you need (one ideology at a time).

The cost of each ideology rank may vary with time but I suppose that we are supposed to focus on one idelogy but we are given the chance to spread if we want to do so... just that it shouldn't be easy, specially the longer you wait for it. Not sure if that's the idea or if it'll change with time.

And I don't think you can miss the very first rank 1 of your first ideology. Events may be random, planets (that give you the event) are not. I must assume that the very first rank will be cheap enough that you can unlock it easily (maybe even the second unlock?). certainly, there is a lot to test/check about this topic. Poor developers.