Ideology Religions

Thinking about government types, I've come to realise something: both theocracies and dictatorships have what is called in Xenology a "sociocultural" government, meaning that rulers are selected based on their ideological leanings above anything else. Their religion for theocracies, their politics for dictatorships.

This leads to a natural conclusions: ideologies are religions. It would certainly make a welcome addition to the later stages of the game, where religion starts mattering less and less, and extreme ideologies matter more. Similarly, religions and ideologies converge - Islamism and Zionism are as much stances a political party can take as a person.

So, for the modern age, there will be a few more "religions", shamelessly cribbed from Vic2's ideology list:

• Liberal
• Anarcho-Liberal
• Conservative
• Reactionary
• Socialist
• Communist
• Nationalist
• Fascist

Which will be treated as the character's religion. Various forms of these "religions" can be "heresies" - the Communist heresy of Socialism, for example. Existing mechanics, such as holy wars, forced conversion, and piety, all fit well with the ideologies-as-religions system, and it saves having every character in the late game having the same "secular" religion.

These will be introduced to the game first through a randomly generated courtier - the Marx or Locke of your timeline. After they appear, rulers (especially cynical ones, who already don't buy into the old religions) will get options to convert to these new ideologies.