this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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Plenty of games, especially strategy and simulator games, have game mechanics related to politics or economics. From Recettear’s “Capitalism Ho!” to Hearts of Iron 4’s focus trees, political descriptions can be added to flavor game mechanics, and because different game devs have endless variation in personal worldviews, these additions can be absurdly bad at times. Even if the mechanic itself is good, it can have dunk-worthy labelling. Post the worst that you can think of, even if they come from an otherwise great game.

I’ll start: In Civilization VI, different government types you choose have different slots for policy cards, which let you select political policy bonuses for your civilization. In the modern age, two of the government types you can choose are “Democracy” and “Communism”. Already this is liberal drivel conflating Communism with non-democracy and “authoritarianism”. But the policy slots for these governments are even dumber, as Democracy gets more “diplomatic” and “economic” policies, and Communism gets more “millitary” policies. Famously, America and the west (clearly what Democracy is inspired by) never destabilized the world with arms manufactoring and invasions, I guess.

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[–] dumpster_dove@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In previous games, if communism was even there, the bonuses were strictly military.

Not entirely. I think ideology was done in an okay way in Civ 5, with "Freedom" having spies good at rigging elections in city states and "Order" (communism) being the overall best ideology. It had some military bonuses, but a lot of Order stuff was focused on kickstarting production in new cities, and combining that with scientific advancement. Forgot what the fascist ideology was called but it was mostly good for waging war and stealing tech when you're lagging behind.

stealing tech when you’re lagging behind.