[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.