Ideology

Overview
Ideology is a major system in Axioms designed to help deepen the political aspect of the game. Ideology tracks a population's or character's beliefs about a number of topics including: Each pair of beliefs exists on a spectrum. Entities suffer opinion penalties with those who oppose various aspects of their ideology and bonuses to those who share various aspects.
 * Militarism/Pacifism
 * Collectivism/Individualism
 * Agrarianism/Urbanization
 * Traditionalism/Progressivism
 * Nationalism/Globalism
 * Naturalism/Industrialism
 * Magicalism/Mundanity
 * Technocracy/Naturalism

Opinion Effects
When generating ideological opinion bonuses the magnitude of each belief is added to the same belief of the other entity or added and turned negative with the opposing belief. Having a value other than 0 for militarism means pacifism is at 0 and is therefore not compared. Two entities both at 20 pacifism have a 40 point opinion bonus. If on entity has 20 militarism and another has 20 pacifism they have a 40 point opinion penalty. This specific opinion value may be altered depending on the results of testing.

Entities gain positive or negative opinion bonuses, which slowly decay over time, for actions of other entities that align with their ideology. A king who declares many wars, especially successful ones, gains large opinion bonuses with characters and populations under him that have strong militarism scores. He loses opinion with those who are pacifist.

Diplomatic Effects
Entities are more likely to move against an entity doing something objectionable to entities with very similar ideologies. They are less likely to oppose entities with similar ideologies doing something objectionable to those with opposing ideologies. If a strongly democratic, individualist nation attacks an autocratic collectivist nation other individualist democracies will be less concerned that the aggressor is being expansionist, though not totally unconcerned.

Nations are more likely to form diplomatic agreements with ideologically similar nations although if other factors are sufficiently motivating they may do so anyway.

Propaganda And Ideology
The propaganda system interacts strongly with the ideology system. Propaganda can be used to raise or lower ideological values for various purposes. Propaganda could also be used to shore up action based opinion bonuses or to reduce action based opinion penalties. For instance declaring a war that was unpopular can have its affects ameliorated by propaganda.

Political Effects
Propaganda can be used to support ideological persecution. A nation with a strong anti-magical ideology can be more easily led to support culls or exiles of mages and magical institutions. Even without propaganda it is possible to trade off the opinion of one group dropping through persecution to please other groups who dislike that group.