Let’s take a look at how Culture and Ideology works together!
Each Ideology is comprised of a tree of linked bonuses, known as Ideological Traits, which can be unlocked by spending Culture Points.
Culture Points are generated each turn with extra points awarded for making ideologically motivated decisions in Events, through various Improvements on Core Worlds, and through many other game systems here and there. Each Ideological Trait purchased with your Culture Points will become progressively more expensive as the game progresses from start to finish.
Furthermore, each Civilization will have a Cultural Awareness score for each Ideology in the Cultural Progression system: this represents a percentage of the Culture Points that will be deducted from the total number of points required to unlock a trait, and is known as the Ideology Discount for that Ideology.
In short, the larger your Ideology Discount, the faster you’ll progress through that particular Ideology. Cultural Awareness (and thus Ideology Discount) points are accumulated in various ways, primarily through your Civilization’s preferred Ideology pick at the start of the game, and then as rewards for making choices that support that Ideology when Events appear throughout the game.
Here’s a list of the available Ideologies and simple summary of what each one represents.
While Ideological Traits have been picked to be consistent with the underlying philosophies that underpin that Ideology, there’s a variety of effects within each one, and those picks aren’t always quite as simplistic as “this is the warfare ideology” and “this ideology deals with economy”.
Sure, you’ll find that focusing on some Ideologies will heavily buff a specific aspect of your game: for example, Pacifism contains many Diplomacy bonuses, but these will usually be accompanied by other, more varied effects that suit the philosophy of pacifism. The one exception is Progressivism, which is almost exclusively hyper-focused on increasing your ability to research.
The Ideological Trait Altruism in the Pacifism tree here grants a very significant +2 Diplomacy bonus, but it also grants you a 10% proportion of all Planetary Inputs from each homeworld of a friendly Civilization to your own homeworld. This is a powerful Ideological Trait if you are intending on maintaining friendly relations with many other factions, and depending on the way your game is going, it could be a life-saver.
Let’s say you started the game in a position where you were beaten to the best colonies by your closer rivals and you’ve been somewhat economically outpaced as a result. You can’t get the military you need to beat them by force, and you haven’t quite got the cultural output you’d need to push their borders back with influence either. At times like this, trading and rushing for Diplomacy boosting Techs and Ideological Traits, like the Pacifism line, can be very effective.
The diplomatic boost you’ll get from stacking those Diplomacy modifiers will keep your larger neighbors from attacking you early, granting you valuable time and space to build your own economy, set up trade routes (remembering that trading with other civilizations also grants you a diplomacy bonus!) construct more defensive stations and fleets, and so on.
Furthermore, your smaller, taller economy will benefit from those extra Planetary Inputs you’re skimming from all the friendlier civilizations in the game. And there’ll be more friends on the map, because you’re now an expert diplomat!
All of the early traits in each Ideology are useful, and you’ll often be torn as to what to pic. This is deliberate, we want you to make tough (but hopefully fun) choices!
If I can, Cultural Awareness permitting or not, I often like to beeline for Moral Relativism in the Nihilism tree: the ability to gain Cultural Awareness in every ideology when you make an event choice is very, very powerful. This allows you to eventually pick choices from whatever Ideology you want, and get a reasonable Ideological Discount on each: very nice if you want to pick and choose the best traits from each tree!
The Culture and Ideology system is designed to work in tandem with the Tech tree too: you may be investing all you have into your military, to face down an incoming threat, and that choice will likely be hampering your research efforts. However, by jumping into the Progressivism line of traits, you can pick up the slack and put those Culture Points you’ve got piling up to some good use!
At the end of each tree, there is a powerful “capstone” trait. I won’t spoil them, but they are very desirable and grabbing one during the course of your game will often enable you to begin to snowball in power in some way. Of course, your enemies have access to these too…
Whether you focus your efforts on just one or two ideologies to make the most of your Cultural Awareness, or you just pick the traits that give you the most useful bonuses for you at that point of the game as you accumulate the Culture Points to grab them, is up to you!
