Today. on August the 1st, there was a major update, the point of which was to completely eradicate "Elitist/Pluralism" ethical scale.

This update will definetely break up you saved games and Empires. For those, who, for some reason, still prefer to use an older version of the mod - it can be found on the relevant page of my library Ethics and Civics (older version)

I'm back from vacation, feeling fresh and ready to continue my work.

The issue on the agenda today is the legitimacy of "Elitist/Pluralist" ethical scale. This issue has been raised up recently in my "Ideas and Suggestions" thread, and willy-nilly made me reflect on it yet again. The result of this reflection was that I decided to completely get rid of Elitism and Pluralism as Ethics. Here are some of my thoughts on that subject.

One of the general points of introducing Elitism and Pluralism as ethics, was to make it possible to create Empires with complex social ideology, such as Aristocratic or Slaver Democracies, for example. But the possibility of an Elitist Democracy is, in a way, already laid down in vanilla, where Democratic authority does not require a Libertarian ethic, in order to be picked. I believe it's fairly accurate to consider a non-Libertarian democracy as an "Elitist" democracy, with Libertarianism being a measure of citizen's political equality.

I've already modeled everything, and have to admit, that ideas of Elitism and Pluralism are better be expressed in the form of Civics, and as reflection of both Authoritarian/Libertarian and Competitive/Cooperative ideals. It is important to understand, that even with the complete abolotion of "Elitist/Pluralist" ethical scale, the mod won't really lose any content - even the opposite, as it will make the rest of the content look more meaningful.

The update will be released in week or so. I realize, that it may appear quite staggering for a lot of subscribers, who got used to mod in it's current form, so I promise that the older version of the mod will still be available for those, who prefers it, for some reason.

Take care!

Fixed up "Interventionalist" civic a bit. Apparently, subject/vassal buffs were not really relevant for it, so I got rid of them.