Disappearing Ideology Choices

Not a bug, from the changelog:

• Ideology cost goes up equally in all categories to encourage players to pick an ideology and stick to it.

So your choice disappears if you don't use it instantly?

luceo non uro

No, its cost increases if you unlock a trait from a different group.

It does disappear Rhonin - as if it was never there. Essentially, if you save a choice to use at a strategic moment and take advantage of a new choice in a different ideology - poof! Your previous choice disappears as if it were never there.

luceo non uro

I use the Pragmatic choice for 50 turns of peace.  I lost it when I chose another Pragmatic perk and spent my Pragmatic Ideology points.  It happened by my own clumsy misclick, and I was upset with myself.  I had to switch to military development when I had not planned to.

No mis clicks on this. Try it. When you colonize your first few planets and are awarded an ideology choice, let's say Benevolent. Save it - don't pick one right away - save it.  Continue colonization with different ideologies until you have another choice in - say Pragmatic. Go take your Pragmatic pick. Vola! Your Benevolent perk that you didn't instantly utilize has simply disappeared.   

In other words - use them or lose them.

So, if you want to use the Pragmatic trait for 50 turns of peace, apparently, you've got to leave planets open with colony ships parked nearby to colonize and gain your Pragmatic ability at the last possible moment.

Didn't use to be this way - you could score the ability to gain 50 turns of peace and save it , i.e., not choose it until your diplomacy screens showed your neighbors were ready to declare war AND enjoy other ideology perk choices with 'one in the bank' so to speak. 

luceo non uro

This is the confusion. You are not awarded anything. You have sufficient pointage to unlock an ideological choice at its current price, hence it is lighted up. If you choose instead to buy something else with your ideological currency, then the price increases on everything else you didn't buy. So you need more points to pay for it and it is no longer lit up.

No confusion on this end. If you score enough points on say Pragmatic to pick up an ideology trait/perk/advancement - and you don't. You wait a bit.  The ideology tab indicates you have one available. Not longer after, say you are able to pick up a Malevolent trait/perk/advancement - your ideology tab indicates you have 2 available. When you pick one - doesn't matter which - the other disappears, i.e., your ideology tab shows zero available where just seconds before - it showed two and you only picked up one...

luceo non uro

No Bug here, Courtneyme109 is just simply not happy with the change that points increase in EVERY tree as  you take Traits, you know like the Dev said to him in his post. Yet continues to argue the fact.

If you have 30 Pragmatic points, and the next Pragmatic ideology costs 30 .. and you don't take it but wait and get a Benevolent choice in the interim, the Pragmatic choice goes up to 40 point cost.  You still only have 30 Pragmatic points, so it is no longer available.

It is very logical and easy to follow, in my opinion.

yep and it has been like this for a long time(way before crusade)

the only change is that now the price goes up by 10 for every ideology,

instead of going up by 10 for the ideology you choose and 5 for the other two

I like it the way it is now.   Back before the across-the-board increase,  you were actually encouraged to grab multiple ideologies due to the cost scaling.   This was very weird and immersion-breaking to me.

The Ideology Tree is for me, the single most unrealistic and immersion-breaking feature of GalCiv3.

The central issue is less that you can get the 3 constructors from Pragmatic and then get the warship from Malevolent (ie merrily go back and forth between the 3 trees) but that you can do that at no real disadvantage. Races that aren't your ideology will hate you anyhow. The UP don't get that upset about if, if they ever meet.

Ideology should be something you choose and then the game forces you to stick to. Break your idealogical leaning enough and bang goes the next election and your colonies are suddenly easier to culture flip, the UP pass resolutions against you, place embargoes on you and heck, even the Drengin think you're disgusting, evil and untrustworthy...

I disagree regarding the game forcing people to pick 1 ideology. That by its very nature limits freedom of choice. Not only that, but different players value the choices and their placements differently based on how they play. I typically will pull from all 3 trees because I only find about 1/3 of each tree applies to what I am trying to accomplish in my games. Heck, even in the User Manual it recommends mixing and matching ideological choices to make your own style. Granted, that was back when the point system scaled differently, but the emphasis was on choice, not dogma. Even the new government system (from what I can tell, I haven't been in the Beta) allows for you to swap around as you need to fit your current (and expected) situations.

TL;DR: Your first pick shouldn't determine what you have to keep for the whole game, in my opinion.

Ideology is an interesting problem. Arguably your actions should dictate what Ideology you are unlocking (somewhat, as it does now), but it gets quite odd, quite quickly, and your ability to cherry pick is too strong in my opinion. If I could, I would have modded the system as such:

Ability Chain A )

Choice 1/2/3 (Corresponding to ideology)

Ability Chain B )

Choice 1/2/3

Etc.

When you have X many ideology points in Benevolent, you can choose to unlock Choice 1 in either Chain A or B. Doing so though, is mutually exclusive with Choices 2 and 3 of that chain. 

So for example:

Ability A) Colonial Policies

Choice 1) Freedom to Explore! Colonists are happier (being purely volunteers), but grow slower.

Choice 2) Incentive based Colonialism! Colonies grow faster, but have a small fiscal penalty when not pop-capped.

Choice 3) Forced Migrations! Colonies grow much faster, but happiness takes a big hit until pop-capped.

I'm sure you can guess how these are laid out. The point is, you can be "Malevolent" regarding your Colonial Policies, but perhaps you choose "Benevolent in another category. You cannot be Malevolent AND Benevolent in your Colonial Policies. You have to make a choice and sacrifice some opportunity. This also has the bonus of allowing the B,P,M mixture of ideologies to produce combinations that might actually seem realistic.

Communism might be a "Malevolent" force in population matters, but fairly Benevolent in economic matters, and down the middle in terms of military aggression... the Soviet Union having forced many populations to relocate, but in theory having the people's interests at heart, and again, in theory, being a "peace-loving" nation. 

The Capitalists of the era wouldn't have been much different, perhaps a bit benevolent in some areas, pragmatic in others, and such.

With this system the "Ideology" of the player is rarely ALL B-P-M, (you'd have to be purposely choosing one line only) its the unique combinations of their actual policies. Those combinations are INFORMED but not entirely DICTATED by your choices in colonial events and such.

Good points all.   Perhaps the cost scaling should be in reverse?   That is, selecting a Malevolent trait will up the cost of all Malevolent traits by 10,  and the others by .. more (15?).   This would discourage cherry picking,  but it still doesn't give any other consequences.  It would be kinda cool to get diplomatic penalties not based on "Good vs Evil" but based more on the relative distance of your total alignment choices from another race's.   A 100% Malevolent empire should really be more inclined to hate a 40% Ben/60% Mal empire,  instead of just saying "Well you're dominent trait is evil so we'll treat you the same as a 100% Malevolent for purposes of ideological modifiers". 

Ah,  it's early and I'm rambling.   But I think there's more room for subtlety here.

Yup that's fair too. An effective discount for being "purer" to your leading ideological element. 

Or you could halve the gatherd ideology points in area A and B if you choose C.