[Civ V] Rise to Power - (Gameplay) Great Philosophers

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Requires Rise to Power - (Core) Utilities
Requires Rise to Power (UI) Social Policy Screen
Requires the Community Patch

Great Philosophers are a new type of Great Person that can be expended for unique Social Policies (or for a free one). These unique Policies are organized into one of six Philosophies (Art, Ethics, Knowledge, Politics, Reality, and Rhetoric), and only one Policy per Philosophy can be active at a time. When you expend a Great Philosopher for a Policy belonging to an already-filled Philosophy, the old Policy is replaced.

Great Philosophers are earned everytime you complete a Social Policy Tree or when you adopt a Lv. 3 Ideological Tenet. They can also be chosen whenever a free Great Person choice becomes available.

There are six possible slots to fill with Philosophy Policies, one for each of the major schools of philosophy

Additional Changes

The Oracle World Wonder now provides 1 free Great Philosopher.

Further Information

The mod includes a total of 108 Great Philosophers. Great Philosophers you get are era-specific (you will get one of 12 from a list that is specific to your current Era); therefore, they are mostly designed to be swapped out as needed.

Background Information 

The Civ series has always had a tendency to overlook the social sciences; ironic considering a large portion of its target audience range from armchair to amateur to hobby to professional historians. I myself lean heavily into the social sciences, - politics, religion, and media - so its egregiously conspicuous that civ so often overlooks those great minds that contributed to the study of the human condition on a sociological and existential level. So I've always desired to carve out a spot for those thinkers that not only influenced me in my studies but serve as the very basis for how I think today - those like Foucault and Hobbes especially.

Short of anything that naturalizes the social sciences into Civ V, this brings us to Great Philosophers. Great Philosophers as an idea has often been brought up now and again - its an intuitive way to pay homage to those many great thinkers that civ has tended to omit (or has instead just lumped into other categories) without tying them to any one particular discipline. But of course, a blanket list of names is overly bland for a range of figures that have greater personal significance to me than the average Great Person list - after all, I've always considered myself strongly affiliated with the constructivist schools; to say nothing of my well-known monarchistic political philosophy. So, with Great Philosophers coming with their own unique abilities (ala Civ VI), I've been able to play around with different philosophical ideas and their representation in civ with a greater degree of detail - and this alone has been a hugely rewarding experience besides the modding that has come out of it. I hope the exposure to philosophy as a historical process will be as rewarding to people that play this mod (as if there were anyone left playing modded Civ V :larfingtibs:) as it has been to me making it.

Perhaps one day Civ will acknowledge those who were great for their thoughts rather than for their material consequences. But at least I've found a way to put them in for now.

[Civ V] Rise to Power - (Gameplay) Spirit Ideology

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Requires Rise to Power - (Core) Utilities
Requires Rise to Power (UI) Social Policy Screen
Some features require the Community Patch
Spirit is a new Ideology.

It can only be chosen after you have already adopted one of the three main Ideologies. With Spirit, you are able to retain any Ideological Tenets you had previously taken whilst also unlocking a set of new Ideological Tenets.* The more Tenets you have from your previous Ideology, however, the less space you have for Spirit-based Tenets.

You can adopt Spirit through the 'Reform Ideology' button in the Ideological Tenets panel in the Social Policy Screen.

*This is only true when using the Community Patch. Otherwise, you will receive one free Ideological Tenet for every one that you had before reforming to Spirit.

With the Community Patch, those adopting Spirit are able to retain their original Ideological Tenets

Additional Changes

With Ideological Values, Spirit is renamed to Nationalism.

Further Information

This mod will not function correctly with mods that add new Ideologies or Ideological Tenets. This does not apply to mods that belong to the 'Rise to Power' family of mods, but does include mods created by me that do not belong to that family.

Background Information 

The 'end of history' is basically the phrase that signifies everything I disdain about modernism - the conviction that history is an accumulative process and that we, now, are uniquely positioned in that history such that its natural laws no longer apply. Specifically, the 'end of history' refers to the apparent triumph of liberal democracy at the end of the Cold War over its greatest foe: communism, and supposedly with this triumph the consolidation of all human ideology into a universal consensus that liberal democracy is the only ideology worth adhering to. It shows a shocking lack of nuance and a lack of appreciation for the complexity of socio-political reality and history (whether you see it as progressive or not). And as should come to no surprise, its the phrase that Civ follows almost to the letter through its Ideology and Cultural Victory system.

But history did not end and historical change has not swept across the earth in the manner of a nourishing liberal rain. Nationalism, in particular, has been bubbling beneath the surface of the great ideological clashes for over a century; it was a part of communist and fascist ideology just as much as it is a part of liberal ideology, and, now more than ever, the apparenthood that nationalism continues to pervade human history is revealing itself more and more.

Enter the Spirit Ideology, which, contrary to what people seem to regularly mistake for a religious ideology, represents the outgrowth of nationalism as a concerted rejection of universalizing and globalizing ideologies - particularly liberalism - and a re-focus inward toward one's more immediate sense of identity; what can be religious or secular, conservative or liberal. This adds something of the next phase that we are seeing unfold today (emphasis on the 'seeing'), and continues Civ's historical mimicry past the end of the Cold War and into the 21st century.

[Civ V] Rise to Power - (UI) Social Policy Screen

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Requires Rise to Power - (Core) Utilities

The Social Policy Screen replacement mod needed for some Rise to Power gameplay mods. It does nothing on its own.

Further Information

This mod replaces the following files and should not be used with other mods that do the same:

• SocialPolicyScreen.lua
• SocialPolicyScreen.xml 

Patchnotes
26.1.2020

• Updated for Conservation and Industry support.
• Added new Philosophy Branch splash when using Great Philosophers.

[Civ V] Rise to Power - (Core) Utilities

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The core utility mod needed for all Rise to Power gameplay mods. It does nothing on its own.

Further Information

This mod replaces the following files and should not be used with other mods that do the same:

• CivilopediaScreen.lua
• CivilopediaScreen.xml 
• NotificationPanel.lua
• NotificationPanel.xml 
• TurnProcessing.lua
• TurnProcessing.xml
• WhosWinningPopup.lua
• WhosWinningPopup.xml

Patchnotes
24.2.2020

• Updated for Sovereignty support.

20.8.2019

• Initial release.

[Civ V] Rise to Power f.a.q.

My modding for Civ V includes new Civilizations, Rise to Power, Cultural Diversity, and a number of extended scenarios. I also maintain the most up-to-date version of Gedemon's Yet (not) Another Earth Map Pack. 

My modding practices have changed over the years and the availability of certain mods is in an ambiguous state, so in an attempt to clarify some things I have created a quick f.a.q. below.

1. What happened to Rise to Power et. al.?

Rise to Power, Cities in Development, and Exploration Continued were my three chief gameplay mods, each consisting of a single mod subdivided into different 'components' (like Piety, Sovereignty, etc.). Due to frequent compatibility issues between them, I opted to package them all together into one mod; what became JFDLC. The original, stand-alone versions of those mods, therefore, were long ago considered obsolete. 

2. What is JFDLC?

JFDLC was an informal term used to refer to the whole collection of my three chief gameplay mods: Rise to Power (RtP), Cities in Development (CiD), and Exploration Continued (ExCE). When I sought to package these three mods into one, I adapted the informal name JFDLC to refer to this packaged mod, but formally (i.e. in-game) that mod was known as Rise to Power. Since this packaged approach became unsustainable and I opted to abandon it in favour of a more eclectic approach to gameplay modding (see below), I use JFDLC now to refer to that specific package. In simplest terms, JFDLC is therefore the term for the obsolete collection of RtP, CiD, and ExCE.

3. What actually happened to JFDLC/Rise to Power?

After JFDLC's first (and only) public release, I continued to work on an update for over a year, in which I obssessively sought to improve its performance and stability. But this proved too difficult to manage; it was too large in scope with too many interconnected parts, and had too much grand ambition in its creation. It basically became difficult to do something without being bogged down by considerations on how that thing might affect the whole, or how it might impact on any other thing. Moreover, as time went on, my own knowledge about the concepts and themes that I sought to depict evolved and became more nuanced, so some of what I had previously implemented became obsolete or disingenuous. Coupled with the technical difficulty in continuing to work on it, it became a question of sticking to what I had created against my better judgement, or uprooting bits and pieces in order to conform to my newer ideas. Needless to say, the former led to extended periods of procrastination, whilst the latter inevitably caused other parts of the mod to become undone around me; both caused a great deal of misery and stress, and it made modding in generally incredible unfun.

Eventually, after a period of denial that this project had become unsustainable, I decided a more free-form, eclectic approach to my modding would be more productive (and engaging). And this is where we're at now. Although JFDLC is still available to be played, it is no longer supported by me.

4. What are JFD's Gameplay and Content mods?

My gameplay and content mods were my two collections of standalone mods that I released over the course of early 2019 in response to my decision to drop JFDLC. They were intended to be used standalone (and often without dependency on Gazebo's Community Patch, unlike JFDLC), but could be used together. The key difference here was an emphasis on eclectism and a lack of interconnectivity; they were the product of whatever idea I had at any given time rather than a part of some grand and complete vision for my gameplay modding; a chance for me to explore new ideas without being bogged down by extraneous considerations like I had been with JFDLC.

5. What is the current status of this gameplay modding?

Confusing as it may be, I've opted to reclaim the Rise to Power name in order to refer once again to my collective gameplay mods, in the same way that Rule with Faith now refers to my collection of gameplay mods for Civ VI (where before Gathering Storm it had been a singularly packaged mod). However, I am still opting for the eclectic, only-loosely connected approach that defined the immediate post-JFDLC period of my modding. 

Besides a mere nominal rebranding, I'm also using this as an opportunity to rethink and reorganize the structure of the utility mods on which my gameplay mods necessarily depend. With the 'Gameplay and Content' mods, there was a singular 'Conflict Resolution Patch' upon which most of them depended for shared utilities and core user interface replacements. However, this has since proven to cause more problems that it resolves simply because of how many core files I have had to replace. With the new Rise to Power collection, dependencies will be far less centralized; with major replacements being in their own mod and thus not necessary in all cases.

[Civ V] How to Install Civilization V Mods

This is a general guide for installing my mods, if you need it.

[Civ V] Rise to Power - (Gameplay) Ideological Values

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Requires Rise to Power - (Core) Utilities
Requires Rise to Power (UI) Social Policy Screen
DOES NOT Require the Community Patch

Ideological Values now determine the kinds of Ideological Tenets that you can adopt.

Each Social Policy is associated with one of three Ideological Values: Authority, Liberty, or Equality. Your proportion of these Values determines the kinds of Tenets you can adopt when you have an Ideology. Depending on the Tenet's Level, the Tenet may require you to have 25%, 50%, or 75% of one of these Ideological Values before it is able to be adopted.

Each Ideology is also associated with one of the three Ideological Values. Tenets that require that Ideological Value can be adopted into the associated Ideology regardless of your Social Policy choices.

Tenets are now accessible if your Social Policy choices were similar to their innate values

Additional Changes

This mod renames Autocracy, Freedom, and Order to Fascism, Liberalism, and Communism, respectively.

This mod also changes the existing duplicate Universal Healthcare policies to Private Healthcare and National Healthcare, which increase the Gold and the Food generated by National Wonders, respectively.

Further Information

This mod should not be used with other mods that change the Social Policy Screen nor with other mods that make Social Policy additions (changing existing Policies is fine). This mod will not function correctly with mods that add new Ideologies or Ideological Tenets. This does not apply to mods that belong to the 'Rise to Power' family of mods, but does include mods created by me that do not belong to that family.

This mod also replaces the following files and should not be used with other mods that do the same:

• ChooseIdeologyPopup.lua
• ChooseIdeologyPopup.xml

Background Information

The idea behind this mod was to create a more organic progression from the player's Social Policy choices to their Ideology choice without being overly constraining. Hence, the player will be guided toward building an Ideology that is thematically conducive to their Social Policy choices without preventing them from radically altering the value systems of their civilization if they so choose.

I also sought to address that ever-present determinism in civ's conceptualization of history and politico-historical concepts - allowing players to mix and match different Tenets according to their needs and interests; what is more conducive to a broad understanding of what Ideological value systems are about rather than the historically determinate conception that Firaxis gave us.

On this latter point, this may seem at odds with my decision to confirm what heretofore had only been implicit: the naming of Autocracy, Freedom, and Order as Fascism, Liberalism, and Communism; what contrariwise seems only to compound the issue of historical determinism. And it does in a way, but I believe only superficially - since whilst the names have become more determinate (though if I could allow the player to rename them ala Religions I would), their contents have become much more dynamic and reactive. In addition, there are very important gameplay considerations that ultimately led to this decision, which is to say that renaming the three Ideologies as such adds to that level of organic progression from SPs to Ideologies. As it stood, Freedom, Order, and Autocracy continued the naming scheme of SPs in denoting certain specific values (except Autocracy, which merely describes a certain structure of government...) rather than the more sophisticated value systems (that is, complex sets of values rather than a singular one) that I've sought to elicit with Fascism, Liberalism, and Communism. To me, that always felt a little lacklusture - as if confirming that Ideologies were nothing more than glorified Social Policies. Elevating the naming status and denotative meaning of the Ideologies seems to me an intuitive way to evolve the Social-Policies-as-singular-values system, and is what ultimately led me to concede to this decision - even if, at a nominal level, the originals were less deterministic. Moreoever, the addition of the three broader, singular values of Liberty, Authority, and Equality that now pervade all Social Policies and Ideologies meant that there was even more need to distinguish the Ideologies on an intuitive level.