Leaders?

[Lemmy]

I think a Total War type system where you have an heir and family members can be governors would be w00tly for CIV.
The effect of the governors/leader avatar could depend on your form of government, very large effect under Despotism, very little effect under Democracy.

[Solver]

Changing leaders would suck in Civ4 if they actually had an impact. With a turn being 20 years early on, you'd get leader changes every 2-3 turns, and every 5-7 turns later in the game. To have changes every so often would suck. Besides, Civ is about you taking all the decisions and taking control, so any situation where a "leader" would prevent you from doing what you want would be bad.

[DerSchwarzfalke]

Having the player choose various successive leaders could be interesting though, especially if he or she were basing his or her (god the English language needs epicene pronouns) decisions on where they are looking to go strategically over the next few turns. While you are a despotism or monarchy, you can choose different people from within a house; a republic or democracy, different candidates; communism, different high ranking party members. I think it would add a nice element, even if it is too late for Civ IV.

I will keep it in the back of my mind for Civ V

[Kuciwalker]

There aren't enough leaders.

[Ninot]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
There aren't enough leaders.

Agreed

5 or 6 leaders for each civ would make the game -really- interesting.

[Lemmy]

Their lifespans don't have to be realistic...if current leaders life for thousands of years, why shouldn't these replacable leaders be allowed to live for a few hundred years as well? There is no need to make it realistic all of a sudden, it's about the added gameplay value.

But if unrealistic lifespans bother you, you could abstract it into families and/or dynasty. You could pick a ruling family instead of an individual leader....under a democracy this could evolve into a partisan system, where you have no control over the ruling party.
Each city would have a preferred family, and families can only stay in power if they have a certain amount of cities supporting them, the less democratic your government, the less support your favorite familiy needs to rule.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ninot
Agreed

5 or 6 leaders for each civ would make the game -really- interesting.

No, I meant that there aren't enough historical leaders to make DerSchwarzfalke's proposal work. I'm fine with the number of leaders now.

[Zoid]

I don´t think there is a shortage of leaders, really. But leader changing like some are proposing would make Civ a totally different game. We have civics, it works fine. Let´s leave it at that.

[Kuciwalker]

How are you going to come up with 100 leaders for every country, assuming you switch leaders every 60 years?

[Zoid]

You can´t. Not with the Civ time frame. That´s what I meant about it being a totally different game.

[Adagio]

Just do as I proposed: Each Civ can during a game only switch leaders once. Switching leaders can happen if something big happened to the nation (like taking over the capital or such) but doesn't happen always

That way you don't have to have 100+ leaders for each civ, you just need at least two

[Adagio]

I'm not sure if I support that idea, I haven't decided yet, but that's how I see it could happen in a Civ game without overcomplicating it

[DerSchwarzfalke]

Who said they had to be historic leaders? One could come along at some point during the different ages, and you would be a moron if you did not choose him or her to be the leader for the broad advantages they would provide, but other than that the names could be assembled by a random name generator and given a "specialty," like military, economic, expansionist, etc. It is a nice element of strategy to the game and could be used similar to figuring out balanced governments for the various SMAC factions.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Dr Zoidberg
You can´t. Not with the Civ time frame. That´s what I meant about it being a totally different game.

linky