[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Germans and Adolf Hitler

[Vasco Alexandre Da Silva Costa <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005, Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:

> I tend to agree with Miguel.  There are many leaders comparable in their
> cruelty with Hitler.  For me, Stalin definitely is one of them, since his
> policies killed some of my relatives while Hitler planned to but couldn't.
> What distinguishes Hitler from the rest is the taboo about his person.

Yes, we also have Mao Zedong is in the Chinese ruleset, not to mention Qin
Shihuang.

The best way to stop bloodthirsty tyrants from rising again is to educate
our young generations of their negative traits, rather than trying to
whitewash the past. However, Freeciv is a wargame, and as such it must
depict violence. Tyrants included.

They are dead and in the past, so it is uncontroversial to include them
in an historical based game IMO.

> Going further, there are probably no political leaders who do not inspire
> negative emotions in some people.  I know some people who really dislike
> Ghandi, for example.

At least one disliked him enough to assassinate him.

> But to accommodate the concerns of Ruben we can introduce the flags into
> rulesets that prevent certain leaders from being assigned randomly.

I can see how this could be a problem for AIs, of which you cannot
explicitly pick a name, but for humans, they alone must choose their name.
Even if it wasn't in the list, someone can type it.

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa @ Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa