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.

On Britain

In 3000 BC, Britain begins as a Neolithic bunch of obscure folk, chilling in the isles and making ditches and stuff for future archaeologists to find. Agriculture came to Britain from the continent two thousand years ago, but in places the hunter-gatherers still remain.

The government type map looks like this:

Connoisseurs of British neolithic history, feel free to shout at me about how wrong I am in the comments section.

 Where brown is tribal (the new tribal, not chiefdoms), and yellow is hunter-gathers. Ignore the France in the bottom right corner. The method to decide on these was simple: I looked at the maximum number of baronies in each province, and if it was three or less, I made them hunter-gathers. The exception is Orkney, since they are the home of the grooved ware culture and are therefore more advanced than their primitive British counterparts.

Orkney is technically part of Scandinavia according to the de jure map, and hence not British, but whatever. It's ours now, go team Britain.

Britain of the third millenium BC will all have an as-yet unnamed religion (anyone know any pre-Beaker neopagan restorationist groups?), representing the native religion of the pre-Beaker British peoples, with its five holy sites located around the islands. The map of holy sites will look as such:

These are, for posterity, the counties of Gwynedd, Kildare, Dublin, Orkney, and Wiltshire

This corresponds to a few holy, or at least suspected or theorised to be holy, sites that actually existed in Neolithic britain:

• Bryn Celli Ddu
• Hill of Tara
• Newgrange
• Ring of Brodgar (I know this was built in 2500 BC, 500 years too late. I don't care. I'm an Orkney nationalist now.)
• Stonehenge

Top-Notch Bantu and a Cheeky Sultando's

Top bantu, lads.

I recently learned about these chaps, the wonderful east African city-states and later sultanates (pictured: the Kilwa sultanate). Speakers of the Bantu languages (sounding awfully like banter), and sadly neglected in stock CK2, these will be there in Cu&Si and ready to play.

A major choice with these city states will be to stay with the local Bantu mythology (which will be in the East African Pagan religion group, which is geographical rather than cultural but still better than CKII's Pagan religion group and the single West African religion), or to switch to the Islamic religion of the north and enjoy the benefits of trade with the Caliphate.

Historically, these Swahili states converted to Islam, but it would be an interesting challenge for the player to remain pagan and even spread north and west and gain the wealth of Egypt and Mali.