Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Fundamentalism patch.

[Tony & <stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jan 12, 1999 at 06:54:00PM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> Nicolas BRUNEL (brunel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> > A new type of goverment will be nice. 
> > I never played civ2 but one friend of me told me that temples and
> > cathedrals gives you money instead of costing money !
> 
> That's Fundamentalism.  I believe it's overpowered in Civ2.  Here's what
> the manual says about it:
> 
>   "Attitude: Under Fundamentalism, no citizen is ever unhappy! Improvements
>    that normally convert unhappy citizens to content citizens produce
>    'tithes' (gold) equivalent to the number of people they would normally
>    convert, and require no maintenance.

        Yup.  This is absolutely brutal.
        Managing unhappiness is the major problem of most other
governmental forms, and takes significant resources.

>    Special Conditions: Under Fundamentalism, tax/luxury/science rates cannot
>    be set higher than 80 percent. In addition, the rigidity of mindset and
>    emphasis on doctrine means that all scientific research is HALVED. The
>    diplomatic penalties for 'terrorist acts' (such as bombing city
>    improvements, poisoning wells, and so forth) committed by Diplomats and
>    Spies is reduced, since the world comes to expect no better."
> 
> I cannot figure out how they managed to ship the game with this form of
> government so dramatically more powerful than anything else out there.
> I would at least raise the corruption rate.  Have you ever heard of a
> large pseudo-religious organization that's *not* corrupt? ;-)

        It's a mystery how this got past play-testing.  Restricting
scientific advancement simply doesn't matter.  You get advances when you
take over cities, and there is enough time after the development of
Howitzers that any civilization which was competitive technologically
before that should be able to produce a rolling wave of death over the
world.
        Still, I'm going to advocate following Civ2's rules to the letter.
If we want to define a different game.civstyle number for freeciv-specific
rules, that's fine.  There are things I think could be fixed.  But I want
to do Civ2 as it stands.
-- 
Anthony J. Stuckey                              stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"When I was young, the sky was filled with stars.
 I watched them burn out one by one."  -Warren Zevon