Why are there so few ideologies?

[xavdang]

I am aware that sub-ideologies exist but they basically have no noticeable impact on diplomacy and/or politics. Having only 4 ideologies was fine the game came out, but as more and more alternate history scenarios and the game was oriented towards an overall more "sandbox" approach, I think it has changed enough that these 4 ideologies now seem limiting and abstracted, if not sometimes meaningless.
One option could be to bring back the 10 ideologies from HOI3 or HOI4 Kaiserreich, but I also had my own ideas from scratch for new ideologies that would benefit the already existing scenarios of vanilla HOI4
I will propose a few ideology splits that I envisioned:

- Split Non-Aligned into Monarchist, Authoritarian and Anarchist: this one is the most obvious since La Résistance came out, as people have had frequent problems with Anarchy and other Non-Aligned encouraging each other's ideologies because the game treats them as the same thing. Separate Monarchism from Authoritarian is also useful, a lot of major/secondary nations have option to fall back under a monarchy (Germany with its Civil War, the UK with Edward, France and Spain with the Bourbons, Japan with the Shogunate, China when annexed by independent Manchukuo, Portugal and Brazil, and I'm pretty confident we will have a path for Italy too and the possibility to recreate Tsarist Russia when the USSR gets crushed when these 2 nations get finally uploaded) and some even start as one (Etthiopia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Irak, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan), and it would be fitting to make these feel more special and make more sense overall. For Anarchism to be more interesting, we could also have some new Anarchists paths beside Spain. Note that I don't encourage giving most nations (or most majors) an Anarchist path at all, but the few that end up getting one would benefit from this. I think they would first call themselves "[nation-related adjective] Federation" and when they grow a bit more they would get the decision to form the Global Defense Coucil and all Anarchist territories would unite into this tag. Finally, Authoritarian would model what Non-Aligned is supposed to represent: a dictatorship/military Junta that certainly isn't democratic but could hardly be classified as fascist. This could represent a large number of nations such as: Poland, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Turkey, Siam, Liberia, British Raj and Dutch East Indies (and other autonomous colonial administration if the Devs want to add more like Belgian Congo or French Indochina) and pretty much most of Latin America.

- Splitting Communist can also be considered a no-brainer if the other ideologies get updated. Explanation: it would be weird having only 5 ideologies but with 2 variants of communism, so I think the only reason it hasn't already been done is that there need to be more (in number and variety) total ideologies. The rather obvious split is between Trotsky's visions and Stalin's. Other authoritarian communist ideologies (like Titoism and Maoism) would only be fully defined after the game's scope. Having communsim split into Trotskyism and Stalinism would be definitely enough to cover most paths the game can take in this direction: Trotskyism would of course model very well the extent Stalin's opposition in the USSR communist party (instead of stability only), and could be used to measure the probablity and the threat of a real Trotskyite Coup, but Trotskyite popularity in the Ussr could in returned be influenced by certains new events, focuses or decisions (giving even more material for a Soviet rework). There also less obvious cases where representing Trotskyism as an alternative Communist path would be quite useful (as only modeling the Soviet political sphere would maybe not justify a whole new ideology): a lot countries who already have a Communist path where you have the option to oppose the USSR (The first one that comes to my mind is definitely France with its old "Humanité unie" focus) and in the current situation, this not considered viable because it basically excludes you from joining the Comintern and adds nothing else, but with the option of creating a new Trotskyite-only faction (instead of every newly Communist nation joining the Comintern except the player), this option could be worth the effort. If you are not afraid to stretch the meaning of Trotskyism, you could also use it to represent the POUM during the SCW (which as also a path that already exists but feels like the worst of both worlds for now).

- Democracy in HOI4 is quite silly. Every 4 years or so, every person in a Democratic country goes voting and... Surprise! Most of them voted for the "Democratic Party", which in practice has the only consequence that they will hold another elections 4 years later. For a so-called Democratic ideology, elections sure sound a bit lame and pointless...
A basic but still coherent split for the Democratic ideology would be between Socialist (or another leftist reformist ideology), Liberalism, and Conservatism. The internal politics of most Democratic countries are poorly represented (as I joked about earlier) with the main offenders being France and the US:
- In the US, FDR is currently the sole leader of an united Democratic faction which 99% of Americans adhere to. His opposition (basically the Alf Landon path) is modeled as a half Non-Aligned half Fascist movement and they have basically no chance to win without alt-historical IA or player intervention (the latter being more realistic, sadly for them, but they still could use a little help). If you split Democratic, on the other hand, there you have it: 2 strong American political parties dominating the scene (the Republicans being the liberal/progressive ones and the Democratic being the more conservative one in 1936, even though it can be argued the whole New Deal was close to become state-regulated capitalism), and a handful of smaller parties (socialists, communists and fascists mainly) also in the competition but with very little actual chance of winning the Congress or the Presidency.
- In the 1930's, France was hit late but hard by the Great Depression, as the country was still quite rural when compared with the UK or Germany. The French people were also becoming more and more divided politically, which made the country very hard to govern until the war, and was then politically divided again after the destructions of the war, until 1958, when De Gaulle was asked to take over a second time. Between 1936 and the armistice with Germany, France had known 5 different Presidents of the Council (Laval, Blum with the Popular Front, Chautemps, Daladier and Reynauld). The game can't represent this political instability properly: before La Résistance came out, Daladier led France throughout the entire game, and now the new tree basically has to "force" France to change leaders every so often, because they are all somehow leading the same "Parti Radical".

- Fascism is definitely the tricky one. Not splitting Fascism at all would still largely work, even after the other changes, and splitting Fascism in a satisfiying but not too detailed way is quite difficult. If you split Nazism from Fascism (like it was the case in HOI3 if I remember corectly), which the most basic and obvious split in my opinion, as it was hard to consider Germany and Italy as "friends" before the Steel Pact in 1939, and they were something akin to rivals before the Anschluss (Italy was part of the Stresa Front, which targeted Germany). Like for Communism, this would add some welcomed variety for all nations with a Fascist path in their focus tree, as they would have to choose who they want to be closer with (No more getting cucked by Bulgaria for Germany when trying "Italy First!"). But dividing Fascism like this brings up a new problem: Japan. Japan does not fit quite well in either of those categories, and it would be weird having Italy or Germany politically closer to Japan than to the other. You could create a new ideology spefically for Japan and its puppet, which be something like a extremely nationalist and corporatist type of military dictatorship (and that is without taking into account the role of the emperor). I haven't really thought of a name for this ideology, but the most fitting would something like "Militaristic Imperialist". But the headache doesn't there: you now have as many Fascist branches as Democratic ones, which is even weirder and oddly-specific, and since you have one ideology for each major Axis Power, you can't choose which one to discard...

Thank you for reading my suggestion! Please hit "Agree" if you think something like this should be implemented, explain why you disagree if you do, and of course letting me know if something I proposed is not clear enough or if you have new ideologies propostions of your own! Have a good day(or night)!

 

[Niko92]

The reason for four ideologies is because of how the world was divided. The world essentially was made of three blocks: the Comintern, Allies and Axis (and non-aligned). The ideologies in the game aren't ideologies in the sense most people would use that word, but ideologies in the sense of world view or alignment. The ideology system in HoI4 is just a pie chart version of the alignment triangle from HoI3.

If you were to add more ideologies, you would essentially have to rewrite large portions of how diplomacy and politics works in the game. In gameplay and AI terms, your ideology essentially only dictates whose side you are on. Other than that it has no impact. This is why a lot of mods that add more ideologies end up writing off the diplo AI or end up with messy AI behaviour.

 

[MobiusTwo]

I think that certainly, splitting Non-Aligned is a must. The devs already made a big mistake by not making Anarchism its own ideology, albeit one unique to the Spanish anarchists. Anarchist nations should not be allowed to puppet countries, and should certainly not be looked upon favorably by traditional European monarchies.

With that out of the picture, you have the rest of Non-Aligned countries. Countries such as Nationalist China, Mexico Hungary, Austria, and Turkey had governments with republican ideals, and there is no reason why they would naturally align with a revived German Empire, absolutist Great Britain, or Bulgaria. The memes about Greece and Bulgaria joining the Chinese United Front need to come to an end. I think that Monarchism should be split off from the truly "Non-Aligned" countries. Even then though, there are complications. Would and Islamic monarchy like Saudi Arabia really be on the same page as a Christian monarchy like the German Empire? I suppose the answer is yes if circumstances allow for it. And then you have figures such as Franco in Spain, who would still be "Non-Aligned" according to my new setup, but had monarchist sentiments. If I conquered most of Europe as the German Empire, there is no reason why Franco would not peacefully comply with my new world order.
Also, what about Greece? It had a monarchy during the game's timeframe, and Ioannis Metaxas only took power as Prime Minister in April of 1936. Would the country start out as Monarchist under George II, and have events switch it to "Non-Aligned" under Metaxas, or what? Not helping matters is that I'm sure that some would consider the "4th of August" regime to be straight-up Fascist. Questions to consider...

I think that Fascism is portrayed well enough in the game. If you want to avoid Italy or Germany screwing the other over with the "wooing Bulgaria" focuses, just give a modifier to Bulgaria where they lean towards the country that got to them first.

Democracy is absolutely a mess in the current state of the game. You have incorrectly-named parties that don't correlate with the historical leaders. I think splitting Democracy between Liberalism, Conservatism, and Democratic Socialism would probably be a good bet. There would need to be modifiers in place for these countries to cooperate with each other, however.

As far as Communism goes, pretty much every Communist country in HOI4 is apparently supposed to be Stalinist, which doesn't really make sense. You could split that in two, but then you have things like Maoism, which muddy clean designations.

I think whatever happens, there need to be clear gameplay distinctions between the new ideologies. Give the players a real reason to go Conservative rather than Liberal, and vice-versa. What can Stalinism do that Trotskyism can't? People gush over the Kaiserreich ideologies, but the only distinctions between them are flavor.

If you were to add more ideologies, you would essentially have to rewrite large portions of how diplomacy and politics works in the game. In gameplay and AI terms, your ideology essentially only dictates whose side you are on. Other than that it has no impact. This is why a lot of mods that add more ideologies end up writing off the diplo AI or end up with messy AI behaviour.

The AI is already very messy as far as ideology is concerned in the vanilla game. Go off of historical and watch Manchukuo join the Allies, monarchist nations join the Comintern, and all sorts of other crazy things.

 

[Longshanks51]

I think some of the ideologies you've mentioned such as the different types of Democracy and Communism wouldn't need to be added I think it would over complicate diplomacy, and these sub types wouldn't make much difference to how wars are fought. Since Hoi is more focused on the military aspect of history rather than government.

Although I agree that monarchist should have its own ideology now that more countries have monarchist paths and their government has a leader that is a hereditary position, which is different to authoritarian or anarchist which non-aligned includes.
Although not relevent to gameplay if monarchist was to get an ideology then the colour should be purple or gold.

Anarchist having their own ideology I'm not sure on, you would have to rewrite a lot of countries to include anarchist paths.
Authoritarian government including military dictatorships should stay non-aligned since they don't fully lean to one ideology and can have a mix of fascist and liberal ideas.

 

[Telenil]

The devs have considered adding Monarchism as a fourth ideology, but nothing is decided yet. That would make sense, given that most European nations have a monarchist branch, and monarchies have little in common with some of the other non-aligned.

 

[Secret Master]

HOI3 had many ideologies, but they didn't add anything to the game.

I figure at some point the game needs more, but only when enough mechanics and NF trees support it.

 

[General Von Trapp]

It’s on the roadmap

• More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms

I’m not expecting too much though. I think it’s aimed more at the alternate history than anything and as this is not so much a diplomatic game... it will probably come towards the end of support.

I’m flabagasted on how they are going to do it also because I mean, are they going to change focus trees again for it?

I highly doubt it so that kind of answers how deep they can go anyway... probably a minor update.

 

[xavdang]

The reason for four ideologies is because of how the world was divided. The world essentially was made of three blocks: the Comintern, Allies and Axis (and non-aligned). The ideologies in the game aren't ideologies in the sense most people would use that word, but ideologies in the sense of world view or alignment. The ideology system in HoI4 is just a pie chart version of the alignment triangle from HoI3.

This is true, the world was divided in mainly 3 different blocks with each its ideology and a whole bunch of neutral powers, and this why I begun by saying that this state was fine when the game launched. However, a lot of alternate history paths have been added and 4 ideologies look like a gross oversimplification of what the game could become. In fact most HOI4 mods have already felt the need to have more ideologies, and as the main game tries more and more to be like a sandbox, I thought it could give more options and a better representation.

Also, what about Greece? It had a monarchy during the game's timeframe, and Ioannis Metaxas only took power as Prime Minister in April of 1936. Would the country start out as Monarchist under George II, and have events switch it to "Non-Aligned" under Metaxas, or what? Not helping matters is that I'm sure that some would consider the "4th of August" regime to be straight-up Fascist. Questions to consider...

As far as Communism goes, pretty much every Communist country in HOI4 is apparently supposed to be Stalinist, which doesn't really make sense. You could split that in two, but then you have things like Maoism, which muddy clean designations.

I think whatever happens, there need to be clear gameplay distinctions between the new ideologies. Give the players a real reason to go Conservative rather than Liberal, and vice-versa. What can Stalinism do that Trotskyism can't? People gush over the Kaiserreich ideologies, but the only distinctions between them are flavor.

The line between Authoritarian and Fascist sure is a little difficult to draw sometimes. At first, I was surprised that the Devs chose to have Salazar considered Non-Aligned and Franco Fascist. I assume their reasoning was that, they wanted to make sure the Axis helps Franco out and Portugal is more enclined to stay neutral and now I respect this logic. What I mean is, by this logic, Greece was not Fascist in game terms, as the regime was not really affiliated with the Axis in any way.
Mao starting as Stalinist is fine by me, the things that truly defined Maoism as a separate Communist thought were the emergence of the People's republic of China and the death of Stalin, which lead to a schism between China and the USSR. (and both of these happen too late to be relevant here).
For the ideologies playing differently, I didn't really think of a solution so what I will propose can sound a bit lame, but I thought the main difference could be modifiers: some ideologies could give free weekly stab (or take it away like Anarchism), war support, better opinion toward foreign countries, research speed, construction speed, war justification time reduction, and so on...
Trotskyism already has a special treatment: Trosky's modifiers as a leader already make coups and subsversive actions easier to represent "Permanent Revolution", so why not apply that to a whole ideology, meanwhile, Stalinism, which favours "Socialism in one State", could make it easier to crack down on foreign spies and resistance forces.

The devs have considered adding Monarchism as a fourth ideology, but nothing is decided yet. That would make sense, given that most European nations have a monarchist branch, and monarchies have little in common with some of the other non-aligned.

I never heard about this. Are they still thinking about it, or did they only debate about it when developping MtG?

Although I agree that monarchist should have its own ideology now that more countries have monarchist paths and their government has a leader that is a hereditary position, which is different to authoritarian or anarchist which non-aligned includes.
Although not relevent to gameplay if monarchist was to get an ideology then the colour should be purple or gold.

Anarchist having their own ideology I'm not sure on, you would have to rewrite a lot of countries to include anarchist paths.
Authoritarian government including military dictatorships should stay non-aligned since they don't fully lean to one ideology and can have a mix of fascist and liberal ideas.

I did bring up the colors I wanted but now that talk about it, it would be:
monarchist=purple, authoritarian=grey, anarchist=black or dark green, socialist=pink, conservative=blue, liberal=yellow/golden, fascist=dark blue or black if it's not taken, national-socialist=brown, "militaristic imperialist"=white or Japan's color
I said I thought only a couple of nations besides Spain should get an Anarchist path, as it should feel special to be able to form the GDC. Authoritarian can of course keep the name "Non-Aligned", I was just using it as an alternative to not confuse the 2 or sound repetitive.

I think some of the ideologies you've mentioned such as the different types of Democracy and Communism wouldn't need to be added I think it would over complicate diplomacy, and these sub types wouldn't make much difference to how wars are fought. Since Hoi is more focused on the military aspect of history rather than government.

HOI3 had many ideologies, but they didn't add anything to the game.

I figure at some point the game needs more, but only when enough mechanics and NF trees support it.

It all depends on HOI4 being seen more of a WW2 simulator, or a 1936-1945 focused historical simulation or at the very least a testing field for experiments (like a sandbox). I think HOI4 actually tries to be both at once to satisfy everyone and this why it can fall short on both visions: the politics are simplified, sure, but their are also war-related parts of the game that feel a bit lacking: Italy still only has like 5 or so generals at the start, the AI can't D-Day, no Continuation War, Vichy's status in the war was only "fixed" in the last expansion, but still results in a lot of weird scenarios where Free France can't annex Vichy at the end of the war, or that Vichy can't gradually lose its overseas territories like in OTL.
The main problem I see with my own proposition is that it would require an absurd amount of work, not to just split the ideologies, but also add portraits for most of them, and basically every Focus Tree would become obsolete and would need to be rewriten, only to add what could just be considered "flavour" and "immersion" by some, and on top of that, you could still play the game perfectly fine and ignore all of these additions. It's up to you to debate and decide: Is all of this worth the effort?

 

[SophieX]

......
The main problem I see with my own proposition is that it would require an absurd amount of work, not to just split the ideologies, but also add portraits for most of them, and basically every Focus Tree would become obsolete and would need to be rewriten, only to add what could just be considered "flavour" and "immersion" by some, and on top of that, you could still play the game perfectly fine and ignore all of these additions.

I fully agree with that statement. "Splitting the ideologies" as the OP proposes is a detail which is not really needed in my opinion. HOI4 is strategic war game; where the "politic" plays only a "supporting" role; main focus is the battle and is outcome.
I think OP's proposal will be excellent for game, where politic and diplomacy have a major function. Sorry, but I didn't see that for HOI4.

 

[MobiusTwo]

I did bring up the colors I wanted but now that talk about it, it would be:
monarchist=purple, authoritarian=grey, anarchist=black or dark green, socialist=pink, conservative=blue, liberal=yellow/golden, fascist=dark blue or black if it's not taken, national-socialist=brown, "militaristic imperialist"=white or Japan's color
I said I thought only a couple of nations besides Spain should get an Anarchist path, as it should feel special to be able to form the GDC. Authoritarian can of course keep the name "Non-Aligned", I was just using it as an alternative to not confuse the 2 or sound repetitive.

Looks good, but Anarchism should be black and Fascist should be dark gray to be consistent with Victoria II.

It all depends on HOI4 being seen more of a WW2 simulator, or a 1936-1945 focused historical simulation or at the very least a testing field for experiments (like a sandbox). I think HOI4 actually tries to be both at once to satisfy everyone and this why it can fall short on both visions: the politics are simplified, sure, but their are also war-related parts of the game that feel a bit lacking: Italy still only has like 5 or so generals at the start, the AI can't D-Day, no Continuation War, Vichy's status in the war was only "fixed" in the last expansion, but still results in a lot of weird scenarios where Free France can't annex Vichy at the end of the war, or that Vichy can't gradually lose its overseas territories like in OTL.
The main problem I see with my own proposition is that it would require an absurd amount of work, not to just split the ideologies, but also add portraits for most of them, and basically every Focus Tree would become obsolete and would need to be rewriten, only to add what could just be considered "flavour" and "immersion" by some, and on top of that, you could still play the game perfectly fine and ignore all of these additions. It's up to you to debate and decide: Is all of this worth the effort?

I see the meat of the game as being the 1936-1939 portion. That's the part that has the most flavor, and past 1942, it usually just turns into a slog.

You are correct in saying that throwing in all these extra ideologies would be a lot of work, but if you made Anarchism exclusive to Spain and whatever other countries had anarchist movements, and restrict those nations from puppeting anyone, that takes one new ideology off the table. Splitting Monarchism from Non-Aligned would take a lot of work, but there's already a wealth of Victoria II flags they can recycle, and they can just give a lot of countries without monarchist movements generic leaders once you puppet them or whatever, much like how the game is now when a Non-Aligned country puppets a country without royal tradition.

 

[Dlin369]

Idk, having a ton of ideologies work for mods like Kaiserreich because country devs can spend a lot of time on each one and write up scenarios/railroads for occupation and puppets.

For vanilla by 1936 a lot of ideologies are fairly set for each nation in terms of plausibility, and they often stretch it a lot in order for there to be alternative history paths for countries. Creating another few leaders for each ideology for each tag would be a challenge, as would creating paths for them for each expansion.

 

[Col.Klink]

I think that the system is as complicated as it needs to be without getting into the weeds too much. Like someone mentioned an anarchist society but that wouldn't work in game because that means there is no government. No leadership no army and this is a war game so.... and you obviously can't make any decisions in a society with no leaders just exists, sort of like just free territory nobody has claimed. So that should stay out of the game...

The differences between the communists really generally aren't enough to warrant writing full on different ideologies. The only schism I can really find is stalinism gave up on the dream of ending society ushering in the post scarcity classless utopia (meaning total anarchy. Not even any rules) Mao's cultural revolution that took place way after the games events appears to be his mad attempt to achieve that end goal. "Students against teachers, wives against husbands" and so on, introducing conflict into every conceivable identity group (ie "classes" ) so as to render them meaningless with a large enough schism. All he accomplished in the end was weakening the ccp enough that the peasants started holding markets again and the communists couldn't stop it.... but before 1960 really does this difference need to be examined in game? And as far as communist states go it's the outlier in actually being batshit crazy enough to actually try to dissolve society itself so.....

A good point is brought up that there should be more than one democratic faction. Liberal representing a political faction interested in new ideas and conservative representing skepticism of new ideas should be sufficient. "Democratic" socialist is another opportunity for us to wind up in the weeds.

The ussr stood for soviet aka "democratic workers councils" socialist republics. It claimed to be "democratic socialism." It seems even when you vote these factions in power, once they consolidate enough a you get a Chavez/Maduro presiding over a massive prison. Every person able to has already fled and all that's left are the starving and the military acting as their jailers who eventually resort to things like drug running or piracy to keep themselves fed.

With the historical record being what it is, you can excuse me when I snort at the idea of "democratic" socialism. That's born out of the idea that socialism is intended to help the poor and the downtrodden. Socialism exists to dupe morons and grant a man like Stalin absolute power. The promises of bread, prosperity or absolute freedom ( anarchy ) are just said to trick people into enslaving themselves under their very own version of Stalin.

You see? We wound up in the weeds again. And in game "liberal" is sufficient, it can be argued to describe even a push for socialism. I mean after all the idea that you'd grant one individual or an entire elected legislature absolute tyrranical power over your entire life, life chances all of it is a pretty new idea it seems to me...

 

[Áurum]

I am aware that sub-ideologies exist but they basically have no noticeable impact on diplomacy and/or politics. Having only 4 ideologies was fine the game came out, but as more and more alternate history scenarios and the game was oriented towards an overall more "sandbox" approach, I think it has changed enough that these 4 ideologies now seem limiting and abstracted, if not sometimes meaningless.
One option could be to bring back the 10 ideologies from HOI3 or HOI4 Kaiserreich, but I also had my own ideas from scratch for new ideologies that would benefit the already existing scenarios of vanilla HOI4
I will propose a few ideology splits that I envisioned:

- Split Non-Aligned into Monarchist, Authoritarian and Anarchist: this one is the most obvious since La Résistance came out, as people have had frequent problems with Anarchy and other Non-Aligned encouraging each other's ideologies because the game treats them as the same thing. Separate Monarchism from Authoritarian is also useful, a lot of major/secondary nations have option to fall back under a monarchy (Germany with its Civil War, the UK with Edward, France and Spain with the Bourbons, Japan with the Shogunate, China when annexed by independent Manchukuo, Portugal and Brazil, and I'm pretty confident we will have a path for Italy too and the possibility to recreate Tsarist Russia when the USSR gets crushed when these 2 nations get finally uploaded) and some even start as one (Etthiopia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Irak, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan), and it would be fitting to make these feel more special and make more sense overall. For Anarchism to be more interesting, we could also have some new Anarchists paths beside Spain. Note that I don't encourage giving most nations (or most majors) an Anarchist path at all, but the few that end up getting one would benefit from this. I think they would first call themselves "[nation-related adjective] Federation" and when they grow a bit more they would get the decision to form the Global Defense Coucil and all Anarchist territories would unite into this tag. Finally, Authoritarian would model what Non-Aligned is supposed to represent: a dictatorship/military Junta that certainly isn't democratic but could hardly be classified as fascist. This could represent a large number of nations such as: Poland, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Turkey, Siam, Liberia, British Raj and Dutch East Indies (and other autonomous colonial administration if the Devs want to add more like Belgian Congo or French Indochina) and pretty much most of Latin America.

- Splitting Communist can also be considered a no-brainer if the other ideologies get updated. Explanation: it would be weird having only 5 ideologies but with 2 variants of communism, so I think the only reason it hasn't already been done is that there need to be more (in number and variety) total ideologies. The rather obvious split is between Trotsky's visions and Stalin's. Other authoritarian communist ideologies (like Titoism and Maoism) would only be fully defined after the game's scope. Having communsim split into Trotskyism and Stalinism would be definitely enough to cover most paths the game can take in this direction: Trotskyism would of course model very well the extent Stalin's opposition in the USSR communist party (instead of stability only), and could be used to measure the probablity and the threat of a real Trotskyite Coup, but Trotskyite popularity in the Ussr could in returned be influenced by certains new events, focuses or decisions (giving even more material for a Soviet rework). There also less obvious cases where representing Trotskyism as an alternative Communist path would be quite useful (as only modeling the Soviet political sphere would maybe not justify a whole new ideology): a lot countries who already have a Communist path where you have the option to oppose the USSR (The first one that comes to my mind is definitely France with its old "Humanité unie" focus) and in the current situation, this not considered viable because it basically excludes you from joining the Comintern and adds nothing else, but with the option of creating a new Trotskyite-only faction (instead of every newly Communist nation joining the Comintern except the player), this option could be worth the effort. If you are not afraid to stretch the meaning of Trotskyism, you could also use it to represent the POUM during the SCW (which as also a path that already exists but feels like the worst of both worlds for now).

- Democracy in HOI4 is quite silly. Every 4 years or so, every person in a Democratic country goes voting and... Surprise! Most of them voted for the "Democratic Party", which in practice has the only consequence that they will hold another elections 4 years later. For a so-called Democratic ideology, elections sure sound a bit lame and pointless...
A basic but still coherent split for the Democratic ideology would be between Socialist (or another leftist reformist ideology), Liberalism, and Conservatism. The internal politics of most Democratic countries are poorly represented (as I joked about earlier) with the main offenders being France and the US:
- In the US, FDR is currently the sole leader of an united Democratic faction which 99% of Americans adhere to. His opposition (basically the Alf Landon path) is modeled as a half Non-Aligned half Fascist movement and they have basically no chance to win without alt-historical IA or player intervention (the latter being more realistic, sadly for them, but they still could use a little help). If you split Democratic, on the other hand, there you have it: 2 strong American political parties dominating the scene (the Republicans being the liberal/progressive ones and the Democratic being the more conservative one in 1936, even though it can be argued the whole New Deal was close to become state-regulated capitalism), and a handful of smaller parties (socialists, communists and fascists mainly) also in the competition but with very little actual chance of winning the Congress or the Presidency.
- In the 1930's, France was hit late but hard by the Great Depression, as the country was still quite rural when compared with the UK or Germany. The French people were also becoming more and more divided politically, which made the country very hard to govern until the war, and was then politically divided again after the destructions of the war, until 1958, when De Gaulle was asked to take over a second time. Between 1936 and the armistice with Germany, France had known 5 different Presidents of the Council (Laval, Blum with the Popular Front, Chautemps, Daladier and Reynauld). The game can't represent this political instability properly: before La Résistance came out, Daladier led France throughout the entire game, and now the new tree basically has to "force" France to change leaders every so often, because they are all somehow leading the same "Parti Radical".

- Fascism is definitely the tricky one. Not splitting Fascism at all would still largely work, even after the other changes, and splitting Fascism in a satisfiying but not too detailed way is quite difficult. If you split Nazism from Fascism (like it was the case in HOI3 if I remember corectly), which the most basic and obvious split in my opinion, as it was hard to consider Germany and Italy as "friends" before the Steel Pact in 1939, and they were something akin to rivals before the Anschluss (Italy was part of the Stresa Front, which targeted Germany). Like for Communism, this would add some welcomed variety for all nations with a Fascist path in their focus tree, as they would have to choose who they want to be closer with (No more getting cucked by Bulgaria for Germany when trying "Italy First!"). But dividing Fascism like this brings up a new problem: Japan. Japan does not fit quite well in either of those categories, and it would be weird having Italy or Germany politically closer to Japan than to the other. You could create a new ideology spefically for Japan and its puppet, which be something like a extremely nationalist and corporatist type of military dictatorship (and that is without taking into account the role of the emperor). I haven't really thought of a name for this ideology, but the most fitting would something like "Militaristic Imperialist". But the headache doesn't there: you now have as many Fascist branches as Democratic ones, which is even weirder and oddly-specific, and since you have one ideology for each major Axis Power, you can't choose which one to discard...

Thank you for reading my suggestion! Please hit "Agree" if you think something like this should be implemented, explain why you disagree if you do, and of course letting me know if something I proposed is not clear enough or if you have new ideologies propostions of your own! Have a good day(or night)!

• Fascism
• Paternal Autocracy
• Authoritarian Democracy
• Social Conservatism
• Market Liberalism
• Social Liberalism
• Social Democracy
• Radical Socialism
• Communism
• Anarchism

Splitting fascism would be tricky because many groups were a combination of both and nazism is more like the German version of fascism.

 

[Telenil]

I never heard about this. Are they still thinking about it, or did they only debate about it when developping MtG?

Podcat briefly mentionned it in a PdXCon. I went to 2018 and 2019, can't remember which it was. It was something like "this is a war game, ideologies are more like big blocs. Monarchy could make sense, we added a monarchy path for many countries". As someone mentionned, 'more ideologies' is an item in the dev's long-term wish list.

 

[Louella]

Kaiserreich doesn't really have multiple ideologies.

In HOI4, there are only 4 ideologies. 3 active ones that have particular tendencies to behave in certain ways, and the "Non-Aligned" one that doesn't.

If we look in the ideologies folder, we find that say for "democracy" we have:

ai_democratic = yes # uses the democratic AI behaviour

If we look at the defines, there is this bit:

    FASCISTS_BEFRIEND_FASCISTS = 10,
    FASCISTS_BEFRIEND_DEMOCRACIES = -25,
    FASCISTS_BEFRIEND_COMMUNISTS = -25,
    FASCISTS_ALLY_FASCISTS = 0,
    FASCISTS_ALLY_DEMOCRACIES = -100,
    FASCISTS_ALLY_COMMUNISTS = -100,
    FASCISTS_ANTAGONIZE_FASCISTS = -10,
    FASCISTS_ANTAGONIZE_DEMOCRACIES = 100,
    FASCISTS_ANTAGONIZE_COMMUNISTS = 100,
    DEMOCRACIES_BEFRIEND_FASCISTS = -25,
    DEMOCRACIES_BEFRIEND_DEMOCRACIES = 0,
    DEMOCRACIES_BEFRIEND_COMMUNISTS = -25,
    DEMOCRACIES_ALLY_FASCISTS = -50,
    DEMOCRACIES_ALLY_DEMOCRACIES = 0,
    DEMOCRACIES_ALLY_COMMUNISTS = -50,
    DEMOCRACIES_ANTAGONIZE_FASCISTS = 0,
    DEMOCRACIES_ANTAGONIZE_DEMOCRACIES = -25,
    DEMOCRACIES_ANTAGONIZE_COMMUNISTS = 0,
    COMMUNISTS_BEFRIEND_FASCISTS = -25,
    COMMUNISTS_BEFRIEND_DEMOCRACIES = -25,
    COMMUNISTS_BEFRIEND_COMMUNISTS = 25,
    COMMUNISTS_ALLY_FASCISTS = -100,
    COMMUNISTS_ALLY_DEMOCRACIES = -50,
    COMMUNISTS_ALLY_COMMUNISTS = 0,
    COMMUNISTS_ANTAGONIZE_FASCISTS = 100,
    COMMUNISTS_ANTAGONIZE_DEMOCRACIES = 10,
    COMMUNISTS_ANTAGONIZE_COMMUNISTS = -10,

All the active ideologies tend to behave along certain lines - communists and fascists will generally end up at war with each other, while democracies will be opposed to allying with communists or fascists.

Each of the 3 active ideologies requires a definition of how it acts towards the others, and towards others of the same ideology. 3x3x3 = 27 definitions.

Adding a 4th active ideology, would be 4x4x4=64 definitions for how they react. A 5th would be 5x5x5 = 125 definitions.

And an AI country will have to check the definitions to decide on a diplomatic action. So, it becomes a thing that grows very quickly.


If we look at Kaiserreich, we see that their various ideologies, turn out to use one of the 4 ideology AIs that exist in the base game. (actually, that was in an older version. Currently, they all use the ai_neutral, so it's even more of a cosmeticism rather than a mechanism. As I understand things, ai_neutral countries won't really do anything unless scripted to do so, whereas ai_fascist/ai_democratic/ai_communist countries will do things of their own accord.)

• Radical Socialism
• Communism

In the mods where these were considered different ideologies (previous versions of Kaiserreich for example), they still both used the ai_communist, so would befriend each other, even when that would make no sense in RL.

So, expanding the ideologies so that they react dynamically rather than pure scripting, requires a great deal more code, as I understand it.

 

[xavdang]

Podcat briefly mentionned it in a PdXCon. I went to 2018 and 2019, can't remember which it was. It was something like "this is a war game, ideologies are more like big blocs. Monarchy could make sense, we added a monarchy path for many countries". As someone mentionned, 'more ideologies' is an item in the dev's long-term wish list.

From the feedback I have for now, most of you seem to think that Non-Aligned is the only one worth dividing, so I'm quite happy to hear that it could happen, even if I don't have a clue when it could be added.