Fascism: the new Fundamentalism?

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Looks like Fundamentalism was too good not to be brought back, albeit in an altered form. The civilopedia entry for Fascism makes this government type look unbeatable, for the world conquerer. It might even make buying cities via propaganda worthwhile, just like in the good old days of spies under fundamentalism in Civ2! What with killing your people instead of buying improvements, you'll have lots of gold laying around anyways...

...I hope this is not, indeed, far too powerful. I'm happy to have new government types but I like the balance in the current Civ, and I hope that Facism does not turn out to be a "super-government" like the old Fundamentalism, which made it possible to conquer the world the same way every time and still get new techs every 4 turns near the end of the game.

[Stuie]

You're right; it looks pretty potent.

Your cities lose population points upon a change to fascist government...

Is this a polite way of saying that any undesirable portions of our population are exterminated?

[Arrian]

Actually, the government that has shades of CivII's fundamentalism in it is Feudalism (the free city improvements thing).

Facism is a pumped-up Monarchy, pretty much. Relatively low corruption, no WW, high free unit support, with the double-speed worker boost. The downsides are forced labor + the poploss thing (I wonder how much?).

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by Arrian
Actually, the government that has shades of CivII's fundamentalism in it is Feudalism (the free city improvements thing).
-Arrian

Well, I guess that's technically true, but facism will probably come along at about the same time Fundamentalism did, and seems to be a "super government". Who cares who you need to slaughter at that point in the game? What with corruption and all, it'll be good to be creaming some of those size-12 cities to build courthouses and police stations.

Feudalism might have free city improvements, but it looks pretty weak overall.

Who knows though. Both look useful in their own right. We won't know 'til a few months of solid gaming have gone into it I suppose.

[Stuie]

I wonder if the new government types might make the "Religious" attribute even more powerful. I rarely switch goverments using non-Religious Civs - maybe twice a game; otherwise I fall too far behind in the tech race. But with Religious, you can take advantage of whatever government is currently available.

[Myrddin]

The downside of Fascism is the "No culture generated until your population is in the majority"

All these captured cities will only have 8 tiles to work, a high probability of flipping back and your attack units will need to use movement points to get to the front, while the captured cities will remain vulnerable to counterattack by fast-moving units

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

I guess the threat of reverting will be a problem. Still, keep enough high-powered quick-movers outside the city radius and this is NOT really a problem, except that the captured cities with lose more improvements each time - but they lose quite a bit on the initial capture as is.

Hell, fighting the Babylonians, I always get a city or two reverting. It's nothing more but an inconvenience, really (unless, I guess, you capture Utica Minor in the ancient era, and that flips, and you're up against a Numidian Mercanary, or some similar scenario... but that's rare)

[Jaybe]

The downside of Fascism is the "No culture generated until your population is in the majority"

Really historically correct (with currently politically very incorrect consequences).
Your total disregard for life of the conquered encourages you to massively bombard. Partisan activity is rampant, so you must keep large occupation forces (but perhaps outside the city in the game) to suppress/repress rebellion. You will migrate workers to the "expanded motherland" (especially IF it counts in the "majority" population calculation).

A large military may be relatively easy to maintain, but your military requirements may also be larger.

--
Regarding the Religious civ issue. Perhaps the government change will no longer be 1 turn. Perhaps 2 turns or (normal # of turns divided by 2 (or some other number)).

[Myrddin]

I would guess that the change will be the other way round, reducing the Anarchy period for non-Religious civs, rather than extending it for Religious ones

Otherwise who will be using all the new government types?

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Arrian
Facism [...] The downsides are forced labor + the poploss thing (I wonder how much?).

as long as it isn't an absolute number. imagine it takes away 2 pop-points from every city... and all your cities <2 vanish

[Spiffor]

I will never use fascism to conquer, because I'm too fan of a Blitzkrieg tactics: conquer as much as possible in a short time, with a swift yet quite weak force. To have culture in newly conquered cities is absolutely essential in my tactics, and fascism would force me to build a ridiculous force to maintain loyalty in said cities.

It can be quite good if you are overwhelmingly powerful already. But if you're an underdog striving to bite a top dog (or even an equal rival), fascism is not the way to go.

[joncnunn]

Re: Fascism: the new Fundamentalism?

Where did you find this? I didn't see it anywhere on either the Civ III site or in any thread in this forum.

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth
The civilopedia entry for Fascism makes this government type look unbeatable, for the world conquerer.

[Jaybe]

Re: Re: Fascism: the new Fundamentalism?

Originally posted by joncnunn
Where did you find this? I didn't see it anywhere on either the Civ III site or in any thread in this forum.

Civ3 site>Conquests>Screenshots, page 3

[joncnunn]

Thanks.

Saw another downside listed:

1. Switching into Fascism causes all cities to lose some population.

2. Newly captured cities when running a Fascist govt lose populations.

I wouldn't be surprized if foreign pop loses in both cases are higher than native pop loses.

[Louis XXIV]

I think Facism won't encourage Religious civs because you still loose population.

I don't mind the government, except that it makes Communism (in its current form) useless.