Mixing ideology trees in Civ V

David Stark / Zarkonnen
8 Jun 2015, 2:43 p.m.

A quick idea I've just had about ideology trees in Civ V: So in the late-ish game, you pick between one of three ideologies, Freedom, Order and Autocracy. You then get a bunch of policies you can unlock in your chosen ideology, but you're locked out of the others unless you switch ideology entirely, which is pretty painful.

So a vaguely fun thing could be that each ideology has two mid-level policies that lets you branch out into one of the other trees.

They're mutually exclusive, so you're never going to get all three trees, and the policy's only effect is to unlock the other tree, which means it's pretty expensive. Basically, this creates a bunch of blended ideologies, where the core ideals are modified / contaminated by something else. It also positions you partway towards that ideology in terms of influence mechanics, which means that sometimes you might want to hybridize your ideology as a nod towards the dominant one in a bid to reduce unhappiness caused by the desire for a new ideology.

Proposed names for these policies:

  • Freedom -> Order: Socialism
  • Freedom -> Autocracy: Authoritarianism
  • Order -> Freedom: Popular Movement
  • Order -> Autocracy: Leader Cult
  • Autocracy -> Freedom: National Democracy
  • Autocracy -> Order: Fascism

Of course all of those ideology names are simplistic, but so were the original ones. Thoughts? Might be a fun mod, but probably hard to make. And it might mess up balance, as there might be policy combos from different trees that are too powerful.