In your opinion, do VI's leader bonuses portend the addition of alternate leaders?

Zaarin said:

I'd guess that the answer is "no, but they're leaving the door open." To be fair, they did the same in Civ5--the bonus is nominally tied to the leader and in the Civolopedia under the nations it lists "leaders." We may see more leaders as DLC, though; personally, I'd rather see new civs with the exception that I'd love to see Cleo replaced with Akhenaten.

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Hmm, interesting didn't know they were tied to the leaders in V. Strikes me as odd that rough riders are specific to teddy if he's the only leader though;why not just tie it to America? (Obviously in history they're tied to teddy but units were always Civ not leader storewide before now).

I would prefer more Civs instead of multiple leaders as well but if giveth the choice between a number of Civs and the same number of Civs with extra leaders I'll take the extras!

Ed Beach already said there were going to be "18 leaders", so no multiple leaders in Civ6 vanilla.

On the other hand, Firaxis have stated they had wanted to have multiple leaders in Civ5 but they found it too costly to make additional leaderscreens.

The toned-down backgrounds of Civ6 leaderscreens and the recent confirmation of leader-related uniques just reinforce the probability of having multiple leaders.

I don't think devs are planning to add any multiple leaders per civ. I recall interview for civ5 in which they described painful process of adding new leader (it takes weeks to do one leader's diplo screen) and while civ6 at least doesn't have 3d backgrounds, it has even higher quality of leader models so that compensates simpler background. On top of that each leader needs one more unique bonus and one more unique agenda (both of them bug free, balanced, researched etc). Don't forget usually unique theme per leader and of course an entire dialogue for him (in native language).

In civ4 multiple leaders were possible because their diplo screens were very poor when compared with civ5, and they had no unique agendas or abilities (each leader was just a mix of preference wighs and two general traits taken from universal list).

Now it's simply not economic to waste time on all this new high quality stuff for a leader (fun fact, devs said 75% of costs and effort of civ5 civilisations were spent on leaderscreen) while you could make entirely new civilisation instead.

Thus, I am almost entirely sure there won't be any Firaxis-made multiple leaders per civ in civ6, and in fact I prefer it this way - I wanna see more exotic civs, not multiple leaders for old ones.

nunor said:

The toned-down backgrounds of Civ6 leaderscreens and the recent confirmation of leader-related uniques just reinforce the probability of having multiple leaders.

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Toned down backgrounds save minor amounts of effort compared to the fully voiced over, animated leader model (with its quality much higher in civ6) and now each leader also needs unique ability separate from civ + separate AI agenda behaviour, so actually I think making a leader for civ6 requires slightly more effort than for civ5.

nunor said:

Ed Beach already said there were going to be "18 leaders", so no multiple leaders in Civ6 vanilla.

On the other hand, Firaxis have stated they had wanted to have multiple leaders in Civ5 but they found it too costly to make additional leaderscreens.

The toned-down backgrounds of Civ6 leaderscreens and the recent confirmation of leader-related uniques just reinforce the probability of having multiple leaders.

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I don't think civ6 vanilla will have multiple leaders per civ but I would not be surprised if they were planning a big expansion that would include multiple leaders per civ. It just seems like a feature that would really fit well in an expansion. I can see the marketing line already: "This expansion greatly adds to the civ experience by offering players multiple leaders per civ. Now you can experience new gameplay variations on each civ as you play the same civ with different leader bonuses!"

The fact that they are going to the trouble of differentiating bonuses for the civ and bonuses for the leader tells me that the devs want to keep the option available even if they don't use it.

I voted yes. I'd like to see AI leaders change with each age. That way each AI empire will have new agendas over time. That would fit well with specific leader traits.

Leader abilities were separate in civV, too. I doubt it means anything(they are leaving the door open, but probably more for mods)

Birdjaguar said:

I voted yes. I'd like to see AI leaders change with each age. That way each AI empire will have new agendas over time. That would fit well with specific leader traits.

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I don't expect that. But I would like it.

But perhaps we may see some RFC again, with these leaders changing per era.

DeutschDachs said:

Hmm, interesting didn't know they were tied to the leaders in V. Strikes me as odd that rough riders are specific to teddy if he's the only leader though;why not just tie it to America? (Obviously in history they're tied to teddy but units were always Civ not leader storewide before now).

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Why not tie it to America? Because it's tied to the leader. The civilization and leader are always a pair (even if a civ is paired with multiple leaders), so maybe they just wanted to have some feature that's historically tied to the civ and another feature that's historically tied to the leader just for story/flavor purposes.

Rules-wise, it gives each civ a long-term bonus and a short-term bonus. With the focus on leaders and personality, it just makes sense to associate that short term bonus with the leader.

(I know there are also UUs and UIs, but these two other bonuses are a lot more flexible and so they can be used to more strongly differentiate civ/leaders thematically.)

I hope it does mean we will see multiple leaders for each civ. That means two things for me. First, civilizations will not always have the same agendas which mixes things up. Second, it opens up the possibility for some new game play mechanics such as revolutions and oversea colonies to be added in the game. Both are two features I would love to see added in Civ 6, if they are not in by release.

I'd love to see multiple leaders per Civ like in cIV.

Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen but I think it would add a lot of replayability to the game and allow for different playstyles for a single Civ.

If there are, anyway, I would suspect it won't be in Vanilla but in DLC/Expansions.

lp_04 said:

I don't expect that. But I would like it.

But perhaps we may see some RFC again, with these leaders changing per era.

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I must have missed the craze for tweed suits in the Classical Era or Ancient Egyptian couture in the Industrial Era.

I voted yes.

Multiple leaders was a great thing in Civ IV, though it was hampered by the simplistic traits system. It was nice to meet Peter occasionally instead of Catherine and actually be friends with Russia for once.

With the expanded unique traits and agendas in Civ VI, multiple leaders would be even better, especially on a TSL map as it would really add to the replayability and introduce a lot of random factors into the diplomatic landscape from game to game.

I do wish that Civs would changed appearance based on their era and government but it's just aesthethic thing.

Multiple leaders would be fun but I think they'd need to find a way to maximing the cost.

Let's remember that in Civ 4, we had traits. So you could keep thing sinterestingb ecause against other leaders you had an equal variance in personality type

With Civ 5 and specific bonuses, it becomes harder to make sure that the new leader is interesting.

Spending budget (time, money etc) on a new leader which plays basically the same, is pointless, especially when that budget could've been spent time on creating a new civ instead.

Switzerland!
I wouldn't write multiple leaders off completely, but as others have said we're guaranteed not to get them until a later round of DLCs (if at all).

KrikkitTwo said:

Leader abilities were separate in civV, too. I doubt it means anything(they are leaving the door open, but probably more for mods)

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This is nominally true, but you could only tell by the organization of the Civilopedia (and this was probably a carryover from Civ IV rather than a conscious choice). For all practical purposes, the UA, the UU/UI/UBs, the civ and the leader were a single, inseparable unit.

In Civ VI, by contrast, the developers are going out of their way to designate some bonuses as civ based and others as leader based. We don't yet know the reason for this distinction, but I highly doubt the developers would be highlighting it if there weren't some reason.

Amrunril said:

This is nominally true, but you could only tell by the organization of the Civilopedia (and this was probably a carryover from Civ IV rather than a conscious choice). For all practical purposes, the UA, the UU/UI/UBs, the civ and the leader were a single, inseparable unit.

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Except civ5 maintained the tradition started in civ4 (or perhaps earlier) that you're playing the leader, not the civ. This is something I personally find annoying since you're taking the civ from the dawn of... civilization.. across huge spans of time, but not something I really cared too much about.

This is shown in two different ways; during civ selection you can see that you're selecting Pocetello - of the shoshone civ. You're not picking "The Shoshone".



Then here, at the start of the game, you're playing as Napoleon, of the French Empire. Instead of simply playing "France". This is actually the part that I found particularly annoying in civ5 - it literally addresses you the player as if you are in fact the leader.



My vote was no - there won't be multiple leaders; They just decided to take this concept of leader representation that very much existed in civ5 and add more flavor to it in the gameplay itself.

Amrunril said:

In Civ VI, by contrast, the developers are going out of their way to designate some bonuses as civ based and others as leader based. We don't yet know the reason for this distinction, but I highly doubt the developers would be highlighting it if there weren't some reason.

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We don't know that the leader/civ separation is anything more than nominally true with Civ VI though. You say the developers are "going out of their way" but as far as we know, it's only Ed going out of his way as far as saying a couple sentences to make the distinction.

Yes, there is probably some reason, but it doesn't have to be a reason that is apparent or significant at all to us. Maybe that's just how they do the design internally. Or maybe that's how the software labels the traits, but it has no practical difference to the player.

At least, I'd want to see actual in-game language or even just the official stats on the Civilization website before concluding that the distinction means something. It might be that the "leader ability" doesn't even refer to the leader at all. It might be called "golden age ability", which is not at all suggestive of multiple leaders.

janboruta said:

Yes, in an Alternate Leaders JFD Edition DLC

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where do I subscribe.

TheMarshmallowBear said:

Spending budget (time, money etc) on a new leader which plays basically the same, is pointless, especially when that budget could've been spent time on creating a new civ instead.

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It wouldn't play "basically the same", though. With the Historical Agenda system being based explicitly on who the leader is, then presumably any kind of multi-leader system would have separate agendas for each leader. Assuming they picked leaders with different enough agendas, then the way the civ behaves will be totally different depending on which leader spawns. Okay, with Theodore Roosevelt's agenda, it would be pointless to add James Monroe as another option. But Abraham Lincoln might be guided by completely different factors in making diplomatic decisions. Or think about the Greeks. How you'd feel about finding the Greeks next door to you would depend greatly on whether their leader was glory-seeking warmonger Alexander or science- and culture-focused Pericles.

Eagle Pursuit said:

I suspect that there won't be any in the vanilla game, but if there are any they will be DLCs.

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That's my thought. They're keeping their options open, but they have a lot of art to work on right now and probably aren't going to do multiple leaders just yet.