Expanding ideologies

I can see where you are coming from to a degree, I don't agree that pragmatism isn't an ideology but that aside.

The  Ideology trees already have branches they could just extend that idea to create sub ideologies fairly easily that would fulfil the sort of thing you are looking for with your two axis system.

On the hole the Ideology system is pretty simple and basic but that's  because it reflects the morality system in previous GalCivs and that has always had a cartoonish symplicity.

I did not say that pragmatic is not an ideology. What I wanted to say about pragmatism is that how it is now it seems like a middle point between two opposites; benevolence and malevolence and that is just a recook of the evil/neutral/good vision (not that is wrong). Pragmatism, in a really simplified way, is to do what it seems that could yield the best results without being worried it is right or wrong, they just focus in the results. In that regard, a "pragmatic" player is going to choose what it seems the best for its civilization without  worrying about if that is benevolent or malevolent. They are going to align with the civilization or faction that is going to be the winner no matter of that civilization ideology preferences. If you get ride of the pragmatism as it is right now and create a system with a middle ground that is determined on a balance between benevolence and malevolence you have a, gamewise, neutral ground where pragmatics are more likely to be (if the benefits of being malevolent and benevolent are, some how, balanced).

About complexity:

If you take the system that we have right now (that is, where you have a x% of being benevolent and y% of being malevolent), and expand into a 2 axis (not 4 as I said before) where your position is determined accordingly your ratio of benevolence, malevolence, activeness and passiveness you can have a much wider options of flavours without making it more complex. For example, instead of having to chose 3 options you choose 4 options, one for each side of the axis. Instead of reading 3 trees you read 4 trees. And if those trees are a simplified version of what we have right now you are not going to read a full new tree. And about AI or play styles, they are not going to be so stressed to be on only three sides or to see that is too restrictive: malevolence and benevolence are related but they are not related to passiveness and activeness, and vice versa.

You can be the malevolent dictator that thread all wars behind a curtain (malevolent - passive) or a pragmatic merchant that is going where he seems it is best (the same amount of benevolence, malevolence, activeness and passiveness).

agreed more and more ideologies...

I agree...for some of this Pragmatism=Neutrality which is part of Sovereignty. It's a very distinct ideology, and I live by it actually. (As best a human can.)

https://forums.galciv3.com/452800/page/1/#3457187

I wrote something similar here and I briefly expressed what I think ideologies and AIs should do in the game. And look at the Dictionary definition of Benevolence Pragmatism and Malevolence. The Ai should enact on the definition. IMHO.

(Its the next to last post I made. I won't post links to this any more. And check out the vault if you haven't already. )

DARCA.

Maybe ideologies could be declined by two ethical axis, the axis of good and evil, and the axis of order and chaos.

Like some sort of ethical alignments, if you will.

Although I said activeness and passiveness as ideologies (there should be much better names for those, by the way) It does not mean that it should stick into those. The only thing is, chaos and order are quite complicated to fit in a civilization. To make an example with two races that I used: Arceans and Altarians. Both are benevolent races and both are aligned to the "order" side, but their philosophy are quite different regarding their approach to a problem (warriors vs pacifist, muscle vs brain). Also, as the philosophy is now (Benevolent and malevolent) you can say that an evil race can be "benevolent" (to the extend of its own philosophy). For example, the Drengin Empire is an evil civilization because of its philosophy (war-lovers, slaves, little concern to other lives) but at the same time can be benevolent within its own race: delivering medicines, entertainment, more slaves, food and more worlds to live in with better technologies (I even feel bad when the Drengin Empire surrender to me because I can protect its people). 

Activeness and passiveness are easier to implement because you can be passive or proactive to solve a problem and they don't interfere with the actual philosophies as they are now (although chaos and order does not interfere with benevolence and malevolence per se, they are more prone to be with one side than the other). The ideal and less complex solution that would satisfy most people could be a 3 axis (3D) with, for example, good - evil, chaos-order and active - passive ideologies. But that would make the game too complex in an unnecessary way mainly because this game is not a complex RPG in a sandbox environment, but a 4x game with a touch of other things. 

Good, Evil, Order and Chaos as to axis sounds a bit too D&D to me.

Personally I would like to see more complex realistic ideologies represented but I don't think that's in keeping with the slightly tongue in cheek nature of GalCiv. So as far as I'm concerned the main thing they need to do is stop you persuing all three trees at once which really doesn't feel right to me.

Yea, I know. 

Read the OP, in that regard you "create" your ideology as a result of a position in a 2 axis Cartesian plane. Instead of being 40% malevolent 50% benevolent you are 90% pragmatic because you give a damn about if it is good or it is bad a specific action, you only wish the best results (neutral if you wish to say that, although I don't like to call that neutrality per se).

Who comes? Every single person in the world has, in less or more degree, double moral. We know that our planet is suffering from climatic problems derived from pollution and not even the radicals stop using things that pollute the environment. I don't see why is wrong to pursue two or three trees as it is right now. Altarians are "pacifist" that have big cannons . 

  I would go so far to say that a nation's morals are usually quite different then the basic morals of it's peoples.  There needs to be some sort of benchmark to base all this evil and good on.

As Ash says:  "Good, Bad, I'm the guy with the gun."

The Altarians are crusaders, who quickly go to war with you, if there is even the slightest possibility, that you might be evil.

Well, yeah, I haven't had a single declaration of war from them or them to other civilization in many games, so I labelled as pacifist. Most time they're the the one being assaulted.

But most of use support the ideology that we should try and preserve the environment, even if in practice we put other things first. There is a difference between not living up to your own ideals and holding contradictory ideals.

Of course blending ideologies would not be an issue if they where a bit less polar and cartoonish, but frankly building some of the improvements from the extreme ideolgies on the same planet looks really odd if you look at there descriptions and what they both do given that planet has a unified government and social ideology anyway.

There is also the good of the game view, allowing a race to persue only one tree at once means that you won't get the issue that in one hudge game a player maxes out all three ideology trees and then there is no replayability in the ideology system because they've seen done and built it all.

Space Weapons is categorised as Point Defense in the Altarian tech tree. This means, that, unless somebody uses Missile Weapons, they won't research any weapons. The result of this is, that the Altarians usually don't have much of an army. If they have one at all.

The Altarians will quickly show their true colour, however, once that bug is fixed. They try to make alliances with the other Good races, and go against any of the Evil ones. Should no Evil races be around anymore, then the Altarians will go against the Neutral ones too. The Evil races, however, are always the primary target. The Altarians have no tolerance for them at all.

I've observed this behaviour a lot in both regular playthroughs, and while working on my mod.

I agree with you that ideologies does not need to be that polar opposite with a warm and cosy middle ground that gives me the creeps (yes, I hate how pragmatism is being considered as the middle ground at this moment). But, the idea of having polar opposite as strong as malevolence is that, game wise, is easier to draw the line and say this is not benevolence, this is not malevolence, this is a middle ground. With more blurry ends the things become complicated and harder to tell which one is good: I kicked a dog (that's bad) but it was biting my brother (good) but my brother was scaring the dog (yeah, bad) but he wanted to throw the dog out of his yard because it was destroying the flowers... at the end, the first action (kicking the dog) is bad or is good? The same thing happens with fuzzy end ideologies.

I agree but not that much. If a tree defines the re-playability of this game things are going to be sad for it.

Oh, I did not know. Good to know 

I fully agree that replayability should not just be a result of idologies but it will be one of the factors and I just feel they could get more out of the ideology system this way.

I also think that pragmatism is actually potentially the most agressive ideology of all if portrayed properly and that it shouldn't jsut be a middle ground at all.

What I'd actually like to see is the ability to switch ideology through the way you play e.g. you can only have points in one ideology at once if you make a decision aligned with another ideology the points buy you back down you current ideology tree e.g. subtract from points earned. When you reach zero you again start to earn points in another ideology.

Any improvements and bonuses get lost as you descend back down a tree. What do I think this system adds to the game.

1) if you make an out of character for your race and their current ideology moral decision to get a quick benefit it costs you (you loose ideology points) at present you benefit by just gaining points in another tree.

2) It makes more sense not to follow multiple ideologies at once to me at least especially when they are so polar.

3) It simulates that changing the ideological basis of your society takes time and the more commited you are the more time it takes to change.

4) I feel it adds to replayability making it more of a decision and stops you maxing all three trees with one race on a single play through which on a big galaxy would seem to me the logical thing to try and do as it stands.

The Pragrmatism I seems a bit overpowered to me. Some strategies depend on attacking early on and this completely bypasses it.

I won't do this if I lost all my "hard work" and I would hate to rebuild all those structures that were destroyed because of that. specially in a big and ugly galaxy with a lot of planets.

This is a little hard to tell. Do you think that Drengins giving medicine and better food to its slaves to prolong its usefulness are good/benevolent/out of character/malevolent/pragmatic?

Although I know what are you saying and why are you with this I don't agree: "I, as civilization, for the most part am benevolent. I am one of those nice civilization that hold one of the biggest cannons in the galaxy and I'll obliterate you if you mess with me or if I simply hate you", "Too nice but not that nice, I do care for my and your people but I can dish punishment as I seem fit" That is a great deal of Benevolence with a little touch of malevolence and pragmatism. I can make decision regarding a specific event that is by any mean benevolent just because it fit me the most or is a bad thing to do for the right reason. In that aspect, I can develop a philosophy that being just "nice" doesn't end well and that I need to be a little malevolent to ensure my success in the this cruel and cold galaxy.

As they are right now, the bonuses and planed bonuses are unbalanced and they haven't seen how they are going to work in the long run. If you wish to see a little analysis I did to that regard you can read it in this post.  https://forums.galciv3.com/453353/page/1/#3457737

But this would not happen by magic or without you direct input would it? You would be choosing to make an out of character decision for short term gain waying benefit and consequence adding more depth to the game.

I don't think any of your examples are going to persuade me it makes sense since when actually playing advancing in all trees at once just felt odd and reading the flavor text on the unlocks just had me thinking of them as incompatable.

Even if they don't limit you to advancing in one tree I think I will play as if they had since that's the only way that makes much sense to me.

Some of you are over thinking this. We could babble for days about ideologies, and still not realize this isn't real. Real ideologies are as complex as the relations between the worlds super powers. In the game it's supposed to be fun and not have paradox situations that don't really contribute to game flow.

Also it's not a problem to have finished all the ideology trees. If someone did, then good for them. Maybe have it as a victory condition, but it should be a players choice.

DARCA.

I do not try to persuade you, it does not make any sense trying to persuade you in that regard because the decision does not lies in me or you at the end. Is more that I don't see the conflict of pursuing more than one ideology. Right now it feels odd because the way you obtain those points is or by events or by buildings and I think is the last one is what makes you feel unpleasant. I feel odd also to have a building that give me idealogical points, I rather prefer  to obtain such points by actions like helping allies, being a diplomatic jerk or having diplomatics envoys to express my dislike to your civilization or attending to a conferences on "how being nice to your slaves doubles their production" than being provided by a building. 

At the end of the day, if you play as a Paladin than does not think twice to help a soul just because of pure benevolence or as an opportunistic mercenary that can be nice if the have to or can be cruel if they must is up to the player. 

At the end of the day your right it won't be us who decides how the system is implemented and I figure I've extensivley made my point here as have you, so I think I'll move on from this topic and wait and see how it turns out.

I love to over-think things, that is why I work where I do . At the end of the game, as like it is in history, it is going to be written by the winners, they are always the heroes and everyone else the villains.