[freeciv-data] Re: Artillery and sea units

scripsit Mike Kaufman:
 
> PS: what would happen to default game strategy if democracy and republic
> switched places in the tech tree? I think it would interesting...

I would eliminate democracy altogether.  At Freeciv's scale, there's no
pure democracy possible.  The archetype -- Athens -- ruled a colonial
empire in which the majority of the populace was wholly excluded from
power.  Republic, representing oligarchic government of the Roman or
Venetian type, ought to remain roughly where it is.

The modern type ought to be called something like Parliamentary
Government.  Liberal parliamentary systems (and here I use `liberal' in
the classical political science sense, not the modern American sense
equivalent to `leftist') are not necessarily democratic, even with full
manhood or adult suffrage.

An important distinction to make may be that between a republic of
yeomanry (where there is a fairly level distribution of wealth) and an
urban, industrial republic with a large, impoverished working class
which is fought over by parliamentary blocs.  I'm not ready yet to
suggest the correct Freeciv representation of either, of course.

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