Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Catching up + Some thoughts - comments sought

[Per Mathisen <permath@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Alexandre BERAUD wrote:
> In all Civ games, governments have always been "ideal" governments.

To the contrary, my impression is that they have always been based on
historical governments. So you have Repulic modelled after the early
french and american revolutionary governments, democracy after the modern
western democracy, and communism after USSR. You can see this in
everything from implementation to (trivially) officials pictures and ruler
names.

> Do you really think in the USSR, corruption was reduced to 0 ?

But neither is it in Civ. Corruption is distributed evenly among all
cities, highlighting the western impression that in the USSR, its citizens
were not just supposedly equal but also supposedly uniform.

( Democracy reduces corruption to zero, and I readily admit that this is
not the case in real life. However, if you contrast the corrupt despotism
of the Marcos family on the Philipines with the supposed accountability of
leaders under democratic regimes, I think you get "the point". )

> Are you sure anarchy has ever been used to govern a country ?

Actually, since anarchy means "no government" - no, I don't :)

> I really think Civ and Civ-clones have not been done to copy the Earth's
> history but to re-do history if you had the opportunity to do it.

Well, civ copies the social and technological development of western
society. There is not much space for divergence.

> As Lalo said, russian communism (as quite all comunist governments
> aroung the world) was quite like despotism and if you want Freeciv's
> governments to be realistic, they wouldn't be so different from each
> other.

Of course. It is a game, after all. Fun first, realism second :)

Yours,
Per