The lives of different leaders

[Verrucosus]

I agree with Scooby_Doo that it is not possible to make the game more realistic by changing leaders. If anything, it would draw more attention to the unrealistic lifespans. When it comes to leaders, we just have to suspend our disbelief (as we always have). I don't like the idea of leader change because it's more realistic, but because it's an easy way to add some uncertainty to a game that is sometimes a bit predictable and to force the player to be more flexible in his strategy.

[Unimatrix11]

I think in EU3 you can choose wether you want the leaders to be random or historical. And AFAIK even if you choose historical, their livespans differ - so they reign in different times than their originals. After having founded the UK in the 15th century, i began to get their leaders (as opposed to englands) and thus got them all a century or so too early... but still Henry the IV. wont be before Henry the II. and their attributes are supposed to be close to reality.

[ColdPhoenix]

Originally posted by Scooby_Doo
I also think, personally, that too many Great People would result in a situation where soon people would be asking for a Great Roadsweeper and Great Chimneysweep. It has to end somewhere!

"Lu-Tze has been born in Ankh-Morpork!"

[Scooby_Doo]

Well, quite

[Tattila the Hun]

Perhaps not leaders, how about dynasties?

[Unimatrix11]

like the bush-dynasty ? Or the denver clan ? You´d get a lot of "greed"-quests with those, i suppose...

But the idea is not too bad - a dynasty would get toppled when too many people are unhappy - like, say, 1/5 of total population is "red". A turn of anarchy and a new, random, civic-setup... But still no leader change for me, please.

[Virulent]

What I would like to see in a hypothetical Civ V is having every Civ have at least two leaders and then have the ability to switch leaders at some point during the game.

Of course this wouldn't come without cost, ideally there would be a longer than normal period of anarchy associated with changing leaders and the switch would be permanent, no being able to switch to your old leader.

I think this would add an extra layer of depth trying to find the best point to switch from a military-type leader to a builder-type leader or vice versa.

[frenzyfol]

Originally posted by Scooby_Doo
I think the Great Leader idea is a good one, but I can see problems with that too. Firstly, players may not want to change their attributes (see my third point above) and this would make the Leader redundant, or at least woefully underpowered. Also, linked to this, a player may wish to change their attributes once or maybe twice in a game, once they've done that the Leader again becomes redundant. Thirdly, I think that the game needs to be careful about having too many Great People, the core few were a nice idea but the Warlord idea seems ill-conceived and underpowered and I think that adding more would add to this problem. I also think, personally, that too many Great People would result in a situation where soon people would be asking for a Great Roadsweeper and Great Chimneysweep. It has to end somewhere!

The great leader idea is essentially the same game mechanic as civic change.

If you didn't want a great leader then you wouldn't build wonders/assign specialists who generate GL points.

Agree that you wouldn't want to increase the number of GP too much.

I'm not entirely convinced that warlords are underpowered. An early warlords 20+ experience can mean the difference between capturing those few extra cities.

[Aro]

An option in the "custom game" tab, maybe? Death of leaders and sucession (randomic or not): On/Off.

[Arrian]

Didn't the original Master of Orion have something like this? Every once and a while one of the other groups would have a leadership change and thus the "personality" you were dealing with would change...

-Arrian

[breffie]

It would certainly spice things up if the ai-players would switch leaders once in a while, not to get realistic life-spans but to avoid the game from being decided halfway through, and to add some flavor in diplomacy. But for human players I think it's just isn't fun.

[Verrucosus]

If I remember correctly, we could randomize the AI leader personalities in Civ1 during the game by pressing ctrl+r (or shift+r?). This would not change the leader himself, but his attributes (aggression, research focus, expansionism) to a random setting.

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by Lord Avalon
Now back to moose & squirrel.