Screenshot of the Week, Ideology - GalCiv IV

....  so now we get political...   

Shouldn't the pie slices be rotated 45 degrees?  if you were going all in pure authoritarian for example you wouldn't be mixing collectivist and individualist to do it...

Four ideologies instead of three. Helps get away from the good vs. evil alignment system of two. 
two problems in f the ideology system of three. 
first benevolent, and malevolent mean good, and evil. It’s hard not to see alignments year. I don’t know maybe survival of the fittest. Religious. Monotheism vs polytheism. All things are equal. Relativism. What’s in it for me. 
the second problem what is chosen should be decided by my choices, not all three. To do this I would add all your points together, and take the average choice of your selections. 
Im still a fan of civilizatiion four civics. What is the difference between ideologies, and civics. Ideologies are choices you make. Civics are a collection of variables based on how you play. I think in civilization four all 25 choices were found by research. Maybe you can add options from the choices you make, and how you play. I would admit this would require 25 instead of three tech paths. This looks good I hope this isn’t the only way you increased techs in the new game. One of the problems the three tech tree was that two had a bigger difference than three on different techs for different species. I hope four techs are more different than two. I also missed specialized hubs. Both from resources, and from different species. It needed balanced not done away with. 

I would label them more by an x than a t. The reason why is it is less confusing if the type is under the techs. I how you avoid the problem from where they stacked the choices where evil was the strongest choice. 

You do realize this looks a lot like endless space tech tree. 

I like this approach. I'm also intrigued by the fact that we will need to deal with citizens who have different ideologies.

Quoting Taslios, reply 1

....  so now we get political...   

Shouldn't the pie slices be rotated 45 degrees?  if you were going all in pure authoritarian for example you wouldn't be mixing collectivist and individualist to do it...

It's already been mentioned that the above system is already slated for an overhaul, so you may get your pure-Authoritarian dreams after all..  We'll see!

Agree, I think the differing ideologies amongst your government functionaries should be interesting..

I'm looking forward to seeing what Stardock's vision is for this aspect of the game and I hope that we the community can help shape that vision into something that's fun. tid242 mentioned above that the current system is slated for an overhaul, so I'll write some general thoughts but mention something specific about the civilization ideology 'disc' that's in the OP first.

The upgrade that's highlighted is called 'Opportunity' and the description states that:

'Equality drags the least valuable forward while holding the most exceptional back. We should celebrate our leaders, not restrain them.'

I think there's a chance that the player may misunderstand this description. It would be clearer if the description read:

'Equality of outcome drags the least valuable forward while holding the most exceptional back. We should celebrate our leaders, not restrain them.'

Speaking more generally now, I mentioned The Political Machine, another Stardock game in a different thread and wondered how it might influence this aspect of GalCiv 4. There's potential to create a really deep and interesting political, diplomatic and espionage system here. For example, if the player wanted to take the authoritarian path then there would be a number of choices that they'd have to make and challenges that they would need to overcome. If they wanted to take the consent of the governed path then they would need to make different choices and have to overcome different challenges. Depending on the path the player chose this would involve elections and/or espionage and/or bribes and/or assassination etc.

Also, I enjoyed the civics options in Civ 4 that admiralWillyWilber mentioned. Perhaps we could iterate on that system?

I realise however that all of this might be too much for the base game. Maybe a possibility as an expansion?  

There's potential to create some interesting and fun asymmetrical gameplay here. There could be a non humanoid species that's governed by a hive mind and thus internal politics is not an issue for it. It has drones that carry out its will and these drones have no will of their own. However, this hive mind could still have an ideology, and it's 'ideology tree' would be one that's only shared with other hive mind species.

Maybe there could be a species that's incapable of being ideological? Different options could be available to them that aren't available to other species?

Have to agree - there's a huge difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.

Yes. Real life is not all unicorns and rainbows. Real life is a mixture of beliefs and actions and often not fair and balanced..

This is why I like there B5 approach.