[Freeciv-Dev] Re: About Fascism and compromises

[Reed Meyer <rdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>As several people said, I do not think it makes sense to have a Nazi
>nation in the first place. Someone mentioned an inconsistency about
>Italians & Romans, and Germans & Bavarians - at least first pair
>clearly existed/exists and are certainly not the same, and the same is at
>least partially true for the second. In any case, Bavarians were a sort
>of
>nation (ethnical group) while Nazis were not - they were a political
>movement. I guess proper way of saying would be to call Nazis only
>the members of National Socialist Party of Germany. Please correct me if
>I
>am wrong, but I think that was the way the word was used in Germany at
>that time anyway.

This should have been obvious and in any case made clear in other posts,
but apparently it hasn't been.  The proposed Nazi nation represents NAZI
GERMANY, *NOT* any kind of political party or ***ANYTHING*** other than
Germany during the years 1933-1945.  The name "Nazi" was chosen because it
was short, and has a simple adjectival form (the same word).  Juan and I
tried to come up with other names (such as "The Third Reich", "Dritter
Reich", etc.) but nothing was short and could make a good adjective (i.e.,
what is the best adjectival form of "The Third Reich"?  -- the entire
meaning, mind you, not just Reich.)
     If you reject the inclusion of the Nazi nation (Nazi being short for
"Nazi Germany") on ANYTHING but the assertion that it is offensive, then
you must reject several other nations included in freeciv.
     For example, because both the Romans and Italians are in there, and
Communist and modern Russia, you can't reject the Nazi nation based
on the argument "that's just Germany in a different time period".

> Fascism
>government is a bit more disturbing. If it ever were to my tactical
>advantage to use it, it would cause a moral dilemma of sorts (see
>disclaimer above). So, I'd rather have, say, Fundamentalism with the same
>ruleset.

Fundamentalism and Fascism are VERY, VERY similar in practice.  I mean in
real life, not in game terms (the game definitions of Fundamentalism and
of Fascism as far as their benefits/downsides are quite different).
     For ideological reasons you might hate Fascism -- but can you
honestly say that Despotism and Communism have been great and wonderful
forms of government in history?  For that matter, even Republics and
Democracies haven't had perfect records throughout history, either.
     I would view including Fascism as a plus for freeciv, because ANY
FEATURE WHICH IS DIFFERENT from the commercial Civ games means it's less
of an obvious rip-off of said games.  Why the freeciv community wants to
blindly mimic Civ II in virtually every detail is beyond my comprehension.

>As for Blitzkrieg - why not make it a wonder that expires with (for
>instance) appearance of nuclear warfare or stuff like that.

No.  It would expire too quickly.  Besides, the real "Blitzkrieg" (I'm not
talking strictly about how the Germans practiced it in WW2) is still a
principle used today.  C.f. "Persian Gulf War, 1991".
     The only plausible suggestion I have heard so far regarding "how to
fix Blitzkrieg" (not that I feel it needs fixing) is to make it a regular
building rather than a Wonder, like an advanced Barracks that sits in each
city (kind of like Mfg. Plant sits in each city along with a Factory).
Then, "Blitzkrieg" (the building) would confer its effect on each unit
which comes out of that city.  But this means more changes to the source
code, and keeping some kind of "tag" along with each unit in addition to
veteran/non-veteran status.

---Reed Meyer