[Freeciv-Dev] Fascism patch (again)

[Reed Meyer <rdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all,
     I'm posting again a message sent two days ago because it appears it
didn't make it into the archives (probably because I botched the subject
line).  I sincerely apologize if you have already seen it.

     It's in response to Patrick Schmid's long discussion (29 Jul 2000)
regarding the Fascism patch, fascism, Nazis, et al.  I've deleted my
response to section (3) of his post, since it was regarding the use of
Nazi symbols (the swastika flag) and the result of that sub-discussion is
pretty much clear by now (it was moved to [Freeciv-Data] anyway).

=========================================================================

(First, I'd like to say that I agree with everything in Steve Hodge's
reply to Patrick's post.)

>2. Fascism in general
>
> I don't mind fascism in general being
>added to freeciv. It is a form of state we had in history and with we
>should never forget.
>Perhaps it can be combined with a more restrictive perspective, so as too
>make it not too attractive. It would be good, in terms of getting a
>message to the players, that it is perhaps impossible for a democratic
>nation to be allied witha fascist nation or to restrict some effects on
>wonders, when you
>have a fascist government. I know, that this hasn't happenend this way in
>real history (just look at Spain and its NATO membership during a fascist
>government). But it could be a way to deal with this delicate situation.

I disagree about the NEED of "getting a message to the players".  (See my
emails regarding the separation of reality and the game-world ... it is my
strong belief that the people who would play Freeciv are mature enough,
emotionally as well as intellectually, to realize that they are only
playing a GAME, a world-conquest simulation -- and a rather poor 
simulation, at that.  Let their parents and teachers, and society in
general, teach them why evil is wrong, and give them examples of evil; it
is not a GAME's place to proffer judgments on various entities in real
life.)  However, having said that, I wanted to add a couple of things to
the freeciv definition of fascism which implicitly DO provide a bit of a
"message", so to speak.  These take the form of restrictions and are not
unlike what you suggested above, especially since they deal with
Reputation and the general aspect of how other nations deal with the
fascist nation (alliances, etc.).  I should first point out that Juan
Cortes and I developed the fascism patch for freeciv version 1.10, when
there was absolutely no provision for Reputation or treaties and their
various aspects, and at that time it wasn't clear that reputation/treaties
would be added anytime soon.  In 1.11 these now appear, but having taken
only the BRIEFEST look at the source code (only enough to upgrade the
Blitzkrieg Wonder to 1.11), it appears that reputation/treaties aren't
fully implemented yet.  In this case, it probably doesn't make sense yet
to talk about the penalties I envisioned for fascism (i.e., do we have to
wait until 1.12 or later for these penalties to actually work?), but here
they are anyway:

   1)  A Reputation penalty, approximately 25% of the maximum possible
       value of Reputation.  The way to calculate the penalty is
       undetermined; either multiplying the maximum value by 75% and THEN
       adding other Reputation modifiers to get the final player's
       Reputation, or taking the player's Reputation + other modifiers and
       THEN multiplying by 75% to get the final Reputation value.  BTW,
       I'm not fixed on the number at this point (doesn't have to be 25%).

   2)  Other nations receive a drastically reduced penalty to their OWN
       Reputation if they declare war / cancel an alliance / etc. with a
       fascist nation.  This is similar to (1) above, since (1) above
       implies that other nations will be more likely to declare war on
       you (with less penalty to themselves), but (2) makes this more
       distinct and obvious.  For example, a nation that might get
       a Reputation penalty of 25% for canceling an alliance in general
       might only get just a 10% penalty if that alliance was with a
       fascist nation.  For example, we could see the AI players suddenly
       cancelling alliances en masse as soon as a human player turns
       fascist. :)

We could also do something like what you suggested above, where fascist
nations are only allowed to ally with certain other government types (such
as other fascist nations, or maybe fascist+fundamentalist+communist+despot
nations).  I didn't originally envision this, but it makes sense.
      BTW, I *WANT* these restrictions (eventually) because I think the
freeciv fascist government, as Juan and I conceived it, is a bit TOO
powerful, and needing of one or two moderate restrictions to make it
approximately equal to democracy and communism in power.  (We want it to
be equal to the other main government goals, because if too powerful,
EVERY nation becomes fascist at first opportunity, but if too weak, it's a
useless addition to the ruleset.)

>4. The addition of PA, Texas, Chile
>I would add to this list Bavaria. They always have had their own identity
>and their form of nationalism. Perhaps this is obvious, when you know,
>that Bavaria is the only federal state of Germany, which hasn't ratified
>the German constitution. It sounds unbelievable, but Bavaria has a kind
>of special status in Germany, as it hasn't accepted our constitution
>formally.

AAAAAHHH, thank goodness for once a topic that isn't (I hope!)
inflammatory!  Regarding Bavaria: personally I would be more than happy to
see Bavaria and any other nation or other political entity that anyone
wants to draw up the ruleset and flags/shields for.  My feeling is if
FANTASY nations like Dunedain(?) can be included, why not real ones?
     Also, as was mentioned in a post on another topic, I'm hoping that
eventually the nations in freeciv will be broken down into "groups"
(probably in subdirectories under data/nation).  For example, one group
for European nations, one for Asian, one for ancient nations, one for U.S.
States, etc.  This would help organize the blossoming number of nations
available in freeciv, and help keep the first pop-up screen (where the
player selects the nation he wants) from becoming too big.  The user would
have two mouse clicks: the first one to select a group, the second to
select the particular nation within that group that he wants to rule.
     Texas is probably the most similar U.S. state to Bavaria in that it
is slightly "rebellious".  (And it was also an independent nation, for a
few years.)  You might think that U.S. states are inappropriate
flags/rulesets to add, but what about FANTASY nations?  And GREENLAND???

>5. The "Blitzkrieg" wonder
>Could you please explain, what this wonder offers for benefits?
>Because I'm wondering what you understand with the term "Blitzkrieg".
>I personally don't see a certain military strategy related with this
>term.  To me the military operations, that were titled as "Blitzkrieg"
>(which is an
>invention by the NAZIs btw) don't seem to have a unique military
>strategy.
>It was more a form of unprepardness of the enemy. Germany was highly
>militarized and the military completey mechanized. The opponents in
>Poland
>were riding horses. Sorry, but were is there a military strategy when you
>send horses against tanks?
>Stalin didn't believe Germany would attack. So Russia's military wasn't
>prepared for an attack. If you compare the figures of soldiers lost in
>the
>German attack on Russia, you can see, that Russia only had one thing to
>throw against Germany: people. There's an expression for that kind of
>defense: cannon fodder (this would have been btw, the main task of the
>German Bundeswehr in the case of a Sowjet attack on Germany). The German
>attack could only be stopped as Russia had upgraded his military
>technically
>and with people (plus the winter came).
>If you take France as example of the "Blitzkrieg", then I must disappoint
>you again. There wasn't a real military conflict with France, some
>"special"
>agreements had seen to this before.
>So, for what does the "Blitzkrieg" wonder stands? What are its benefits?

You're reading WAY, WAY too much into the intent of the Blitzkrieg Wonder.
As with the other Wonders (and the game in general), it is only an
imperfect simulation.  In fact, many of the original Civ II Wonders were
chosen, I think, not to mimic the actual THING that the Wonders were based
upon but rather as a convenient name to give some simple BONUS EFFECT that
the game designers wanted to give the player who owned the wonder.  The
Wonders' names were generally chosen since they (very loosely) related to
their real-life namesakes in some way, but some of them make no sense,
such as (as was pointed out in another post) the Pyramids counting as a
granary in each city.
     Our proposed Wonder does make SOME sense but you've got to look at it
with the same point of view.  It only represents a GENERAL tactic which
was NOT exclusive to just Nazi Germany (although they certainly
popularized the term).
     But we (actually, Jeff Mallatt) posted our fascism patch -- why
didn't you take a look at the patch and find out for yourself, rather than
just speculating???  But I'll tell you, so you won't have to go and look.
Blitzkrieg is, in a nutshell, the land-based equivalent of Magellan's
Expedition, and is VERY powerful in practice.  To quote the patch:
"Gives 2 additional movement points to all land units which have a
movement rate of at least 3.  All other land units get 1 bonus movement
point."

Cheers,
---Reed Meyer