Great Leaders in conquest

[GodKing]

OK. A feature I have been thinking about and would like to see implimented in Conquest if possible. I would like to be able to use great leaders in more ways than we now can.

Naval GL's come to mind. That would be cool.

But also, I would like to be able to use a GL for more than rushing a building (wonder) or making an army.

I was thinking along these lines:

Founding a city - but to spice it up, say a size 5 city with markets, temple, grainery, barracks, library & 2 of your best defenders (vets please) and 2 workers. Theory behind this is something along the lines of "This great person founded a city and all these people suddenly said, wow, I like him, lets move".

Instant science research. Wouldn't it be cool to just pop this guy into your capitol (or any city) and hit a button, and presto whamo, you get the tech you are currently researching for free. Kinda like the ToE wonder but with only 1 tech. "The guy was great afterall, so he was inspired and came up with a new concept, (insert tech name here)".


Just a couple of ideas. So, what do you think?

[MqsTout]

Naval GLs might help to influence people to use more of a navy in the game than currently exists. Noone uses a real navy much.

GLs founding a city, sure. But your suggested city is too much.

GLs for a tech, maybe. It seems like it'd be a little unbalancing in some types of games.

Of course, there's the whole question of peaceful GLs. They've been suggested a zillion times before, and I agree. GLs for certain goals that aren't militaristic would be great. Refer yourself to older threads for what goals they are.

[Hellish]

Naval idea is good

Your city idea sounds kinda overpowered

The tech doesnt make sense, maybe you could assign him to a city perm and it would double scientific output?

[Rhothaerill]

I don't think that GL's for techs would be a good idea either. There is already much power in going to war and demanding techs or gold for a peace treaty. Add the random factor of GL's in there and it gets too unbalancing IMHO. As it stands now, if you receive a GL in a war you have to protect it and guide it back to a city before you can use it, or else make an army that may or may not have its uses (usually not in my experience). If you try and guide it back to a city and "hoard" the GL for a special project it can take several turns in which you won't be receiving more GL's in battle. If you add the option for completing a tech then you've just unbalanced the tech progression quite a bit because you can ust the GL immediately for something far more worthwhile than an army. Say you get 6 leaders within a few turns (it's possible, read Mimi's recent post) then suddenly you're six techs above the AI because of an almost completely random factor of war. Plus you still have the opportunity to grab techs and gold for a peace treaty.
Naval GL's (Admirals) are an interesting thought, but I think the code for AI naval combat needs to be improved first. No one uses naval combat very much because the AI is so poor at conducting it.

[Kaos XIII]

Your GL ideas are good, especially the tech rush and the Naval GL. However, these ideas will heavily favor the war-mongers. We should have Peaceful ways to get a GL. Why should the nations, which don't brutally kill their neighbors, be penalized.

[Kuciwalker]

I like the city idea, but it needs to be toned down.

[vmxa1]

Any improvements to the uses of a leader are probably going to hurt the AI. It will not likely make optimal use of them and be at a bigger disadvantage against teh humans.

[TheGuitarist]

The naval GL idea is great, but the only problem is that, if you get one, he would have to come with his own little boat. What if the elite unit that spawned him was, say, a battleship (which can't transport units)? This is certainly a hurdle, but easily overcome with some programming magic.

[Flip McWho]

Yeah, to echo some of the others i like your ideas aswell.

The navy one does really sound interesting as i like to use navies a bit (pity the AI doesn't really). Also the city one is good, however halfing the benefits recieved would probably be more balancing.

The tech one i can see how it could be unbalancing but the thinking behind it is good, maybe if the GL takes off say a couple of turns of the research time, eg Astronomy is taking 20 turns to research and you get a great leader who takes it down to something like 10 turns.

I would really love to see peaceful GLs for us builder types as, well as it stands my GLs are very few and far between.