trigger · has_ideology

Hands-On Usage

has_ideology is commonly used in character-related events or national focuses to determine whether a specific character holds a particular sub-ideology, thereby triggering different story branches. For example, checking if a leader is a Stalinist to decide whether to allow a certain focus path. It's also frequently seen in the available or event trigger blocks of advisors and generals, where it restricts certain characters to appear only when their ideology matches.

# Example: Checking current character ideology in a focus' available block
available = {
    FROM = {          # FROM points to the relevant CHARACTER scope
        has_ideology = stalinism
    }
}

Synergy

• [is_country_leader](/wiki/trigger/is_country_leader): Typically check whether a character holds the position of country leader first, then use has_ideology to verify their sub-ideology, avoiding meaningless checks on non-leader characters.
• [has_ideology_group](/wiki/trigger/has_ideology_group): Both are complementary — the former checks broad ideology groups (e.g., communism), while the latter pinpoints sub-ideologies; they are often combined together to form a "broad-to-narrow" two-layer filter.
• [add_country_leader_trait](/wiki/effect/add_country_leader_trait): After confirming ideology match, immediately add corresponding traits to the leader; this is the most common combination pattern in events and focus scripts.
• [remove_country_leader_role](/wiki/effect/remove_country_leader_role) / [add_country_leader_role](/wiki/effect/add_country_leader_role): Use has_ideology as a conditional gate to decide whether to replace a leader character, implementing leader succession logic when ideology shifts.

Common Pitfalls

1. Incorrect Scope: has_ideology can only be used under CHARACTER scope. Writing it directly in a country scope (such as in the root trigger block of country_event) will silently fail or error out. You must first enter character scope using ROOT/FROM/specific character tags.
2. Sub-ideology Name Mismatch: The value provided must be a sub-ideology token defined in the game's ideologies.txt file (e.g., stalinism, fascism_ideology). Case and underscore errors won't produce obvious error messages, but the condition will always evaluate to false—a common mistake for newcomers.