It's time to ditch Fascism

[JNR13]

Personally, I would've gone with a slight variation of that:

Government	Monarchy	Oligarchy	Republic
Ruling Class	Nobility	Clergy	Bourgeois
Ideology	Nationalism	Liberalism	Socialism

A socialist clerical monarchy?

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Sure, why not?

 

[BlessedBull]

Late-game government options in Civ V and VI share two conflicting problems:

1. The devs (justifiably) don't want to depict a happy-smiley version of national socialism which furthers its interests through purely soft-power means in pursuit of a diplomatic, cultural, scientific or economic victory.
2. Fascism/Autocracy is a boring one-trick-pony government for domination victory only, whereas Democracy/Freedom and Communism/Order are nuanced and customisable, and can more easily be directed towards a range of victory conditions.

As I see it, the only way around this is to drop the "Fascism" label entirely. I'm not trying to be overly censorious here, and I acknowledge that plenty of other violent regimes are playable in-game without controversy. But even from a purely historical point of view, fascism was a major player in world politics for no more than two decades. Both before World War II and over the past 80 years, a wide range of governments have achieved regional and global influence while distancing themselves from the mainstream communist and liberal-democratic blocs, and they have done this without identifying as fascists or launching total wars for world domination. So far, Civ has never really attempted to model this. The franchise regularly expands its representation of different regions, cultures and religions, but when it comes to ideology, all that ever seems to matter are the great powers of 1925-45 and the two Cold War superpowers. Even if the devs added dozens of new Modern Era civs from Africa, Asia and Latin America, this representation would be cheapened if the new civs' only government options are the Politburo, the United States Congress and the blackshirts.

Consider the Non-Aligned Movement. Sure, you could say that in Civ terms, Nehru picked Democracy and Tito picked Communism -- but wouldn't it be better if they had an ideological faction of their own, allowing them to cooperate against the interests of the mainstream liberal democracies and communist states? Wouldn't that be more interesting than reserving the game's third ideology for a clique of civs all pursuing domination victories? Or look at 21st-century Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Dubai -- they're hardly Marxist or liberal-democratic, but clearly their preferred "victory conditions" are economic and cultural rather than militaristic. Then there's the porfiriato, the kemalists, the ba'athists, the peronists, the ayatollahs, Park Chung Hee, Julius Nyerere, the list goes on. Of course these regimes don't all share the same ideology, but there are major ideological divisions within communism and liberal democracy as well, and ultimately each civ customises its own government through policy cards, traditions, and so on.

In any case, has anything resembling any of those regimes ever emerged during one of your civ games? I'd argue this is another reason why so many players find the late-game boring -- every 20th-century civ is either the USA under Kennedy, the USSR under Khrushchev or a fascist war machine. The game ceases to be an open-ended alternate history and turns into a low-res simulation of an endless 1940s, 50s and 60s.

My pitch is to rename the third ideology "Nationalism" (it's not perfect, but I can't think of anything better) and to make all three late-game governments viable for all victory conditions in different ways. Brave New World flirted with this concept in Civ V, but was hamstrung by problems 1 and 2 mentioned above because "Autocracy" was clearly supposed to represent only the Axis Powers of WWII. Fascism doesn't need to be name-checked in-game, but terms like "lightning warfare" (as in Civ V) could be used for Nationalist policy cards oriented towards domination victories.

I think "Militarism" is more appropriate than "Nationalism"

 

[BuchiTaton]

How do we mix up Communism, there?

It depends on what vision of Communism we are talking about. The original theoretical ideal stateless society that have never been reached would require to implement "extreme" policies on top of your Social ideology. Itself could be an interesting end game challenge to achieve your ideological goal.

But for the more common vision of "Communism" as an authoritatian left aligned regime we could use examples like Republic+Oligarchy+Social for something like the Soviet Politburo, then if you replace Oligarchy with Autocracy we get something closer to the North Korean Kim "dynasty".

Personally, I would've gone with a slight variation of that:

Government	Monarchy	Oligarchy	Republic
Ruling Class	Nobility	Clergy	Bourgeois
Ideology	Nationalism	Liberalism	Socialism

Is a nice optional model also.

Personaly I put the ruling class as a kind of implicit (maybe explicit from some unique policies) part of combine Oligarchy with others elements, for example Oligarchy+Monarchy the ruling class is the Nobility, Oligarchy+Theocracy is the Clery, Oligarchy+(Republic)Liberal is the Bourgeoisie, Oligarchy+(Republic)Social is the Party, etc.
There are some gameplay mechanics behind the categories and options I want, but there are also naming advanteges for the use of these particular combinations of terms. For example you can see a Danish civ named as "Danish Liberal Democratic Monarchy" or "Liberal Democratic Kingdom of Denmark" so you get the identity and their "tri-goverment mains" directly from their name.

A socialist clerical monarchy?

Grenada was at least for a short time a socialist nation that recognized the british monarchy as the Head of State.
The religious part is also not as contradictory as we could think considering ideas like the Liberation Theology, Utopia and the works from Vasco de Quiroga, Bartolome de las Casas and some examples of Mesoamerican and Andean cultures that mixed the clergy and communal elements.

By the way this is also a reason to avoid the use of specific names of "extreme" models like Fascism and Communism. We jump to think in those very particular models in a way that blinds us from others possible options.

I think "Militarism" is more appropriate than "Nationalism"

Militarism could be an associated particular policy but is reductionist to turn all that model to just military. I think Nationalism allow to portrait more aspects of conservative/right wing ideologies and like said "National" fit more naturally in a government/nation name than "Militar".

 

[Kyriakos]

I am not familiar with how it is in the more recent Civ games, but was fascism ever that prominent/elaborate there? There is certainly an issue with how popular it became in the Paradox games, but maybe the mechanics in Civ don't really allow for such?

 

[Patine]

Personally, I would've gone with a slight variation of that:

Government	Monarchy	Oligarchy	Republic
Ruling Class	Nobility	Clergy	Bourgeois
Ideology	Nationalism	Liberalism	Socialism

So, what would be the, "ruling class," of a Communist nation, in that scheme?

 

[BackseatTyrant]

So, what would be the, "ruling class," of a Communist nation, in that scheme?

If you're referring to state-capitalist nations like the USSR or modern China, it'd be bourgeois; most of the ruling party members may have a proletarian background in such nations, but their status in society have consistently been comparable if not identical to the politicians and industrialists of the liberal west. Actual communism would resemble more the free cities we've seen in Civ 6, consisting of fully decentralized communities, flat hierarchies and zero consideration for "winning the game of civilization". In fact, I'm certain the idea of one nation-state triumphing over others is considered fundamentally anti-communist, depending on who you ask

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I am not familiar with how it is in the more recent Civ games, but was fascism ever that prominent/elaborate there? There is certainly an issue with how popular it became in the Paradox games, but maybe the mechanics in Civ don't really allow for such?

In Civ 6 I don't think I ever have picked it once. It's supposed to be the late game domination victory but if you are going for that you might as well just go for Communism which gets almost as many military policy slots and bonuses towards military, production, and science (which Fascism inherently doesn't give science bonuses).

 

[Patine]

In fact, I'm certain the idea of one nation-state triumphing over others is considered fundamentally anti-communist, depending on who you ask

I believe the, "World Revolution," ideal was just for a global upending of Capitalism, Feudalism, Theocracy, and Fascism, and didn't address the notion of what workers' states governed where, after.

 

[Gorbles]

So, I think the solution isn't change it name, but this game force to show and prove how and why fascismus is a bad choice.

How would you do this without punishing the player for their choices?

 

[Fummy]

They would have to ditch communism too if they care about that sort of thing.

 

[Citron]

My pitch is to rename the third ideology "Nationalism" (it's not perfect, but I can't think of anything better) and to make all three late-game governments viable for all victory conditions in different ways. Brave New World flirted with this concept in Civ V, but was hamstrung by problems 1 and 2 mentioned above because "Autocracy" was clearly supposed to represent only the Axis Powers of WWII. Fascism doesn't need to be name-checked in-game, but terms like "lightning warfare" (as in Civ V) could be used for Nationalist policy cards oriented towards domination victories.

There are nationalist democratic countries and nationalist communist countries so it wouldn’t make sense if the ideology was called nationalism