Who else misses having multiple leaders per civ?

As I play Civ V, I find myself missing having multiple leaders per civ as was the case in previous iterations. It seems that instead of adding more and more obscure civs, the game developers should look into adding new leaders for existing civs. Most civilizations have had many interesting leaders with diverse personalities throughout their long history. How about bringing back Stalin for Russia or Mao for China?

This also helps avoid incongruities such as Napoleon, who is famous for his military prowess, being given a cultural focus and UA simply because France is more known for being a "cultural" civ.

I personally would prefer buying DLCs that added new leaders to existing civs with their own UAs (the UU/UB/UI can stay unchanged), rather than DLCs for new civs.

Everyone. And it's the only feature that they can add to make anyone buy Civ VI (one day).

No. I hate having multiple leaders. More civs 1 leader each civ please

Glassmage said:

No. I hate having multiple leaders. More civs 1 leader each civ please

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This.

I love the way leaders work in CiV. Out of all the changes in V, that's the one that I'd be most annoyed if they got rid of (with the possible exception of IUPT, but even that needs tweaking - 1 leader per Civ is fine as it is).

At first I did but then I realized that in 4 all the leaders had a combo of 2 of 7 traits which made for quite a few repeats making it a purely aesthetic thing in a lot of cases. In 5 every leader comes with their own unique UA (some are similar but they still work different) making for more variety. I didn't miss it much after that.

I don't know how much work goes into those leaderheads but they make it sound like it's the biggest part of adding a new civ. If that's the case I'd rather they add a new civ with a new set of uniques, no matter how obscure it is, than paste a new leader onto an old civ.

As for Napolean and his cultural civ, culture can be anything. Extra culture just means Napolean can plow through honor and autocracy faster if he wants to be a warmonger. Extra tourism means he's more likely to impose a happiness penalty on his enemies, giving him an advantage in battle.

If they have multiple leaders like in 4, and everything was unique to the leader, not the civ, it would just be too complicated for me to remember every unique. On the other hand, if new leaders were purely aesthetically and served no in-game purpose, I would wonder what the point of adding new leaders is.

I totally didn't see how any one would ever hate having a choice between 2 leaders for a civ.
Then I looked up the civ4 civs/leaders here on cff and immediately understood - they were 99% the same anyway (actually it looks like all leaders are the same there with like every 3rd sharing the same trait).

I am sure though that this isn't the problem of you guys. Explain your problem then, because 'i hate having multiple leaders' isn't a particular strong argument.

Of course to make it of any use every leader must have an absolute unique ability. This allows for much more flexibility as for e.g. when I played Germany I wouldn't always have to play a military game as leader A has a rather militaristic trait but leader B now has something of cultural nature.
Currently: a civ with their single leader has 3-4 abilities (UA, UU, UB)
Then: a civ consists of 2 abilities + 1-2 from a chosen leader. That might mean for some civs same UA and same UB, but for e.g. different UUs. Most of the time of course the UA would differ according to the leader and the UU and UB would be the same (depends on what the real history of a civ actually gives us).

protipp @ any devs: Players chose their Civ first. Then the map is created and only upon seeing the starting location a leader is chosen.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

At first I did but then I realized that in 4 all the leaders had a combo of 2 of 7 traits which made for quite a few repeats making it a purely aesthetic thing in a lot of cases. In 5 every leader comes with their own unique UA (some are similar but they still work different) making for more variety. I didn't miss it much after that.

I don't know how much work goes into those leaderheads but they make it sound like it's the biggest part of adding a new civ. If that's the case I'd rather they add a new civ with a new set of uniques, no matter how obscure it is, than paste a new leader onto an old civ.

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No one is asking for it to be an aesthetic thing only. I'm saying that UAs should be attached to leaders instead of civs, and each leader should come with his or her own UA and personality traits. This would allow you to combine different UAs and personalities with the same set of UU/UB to come up with diverse gameplay possibilities.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

As for Napolean and his cultural civ, culture can be anything. Extra culture just means Napolean can plow through honor and autocracy faster if he wants to be a warmonger. Extra tourism means he's more likely to impose a happiness penalty on his enemies, giving him an advantage in battle.

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The issue is not whether extra culture/tourism has utility for a warmonger, but whether it is historically representative of that particular leader. The fact is, nobody associates Napoleon with being cultural. He should be given a militaristic UA.

Brettapod said:

If they have multiple leaders like in 4, and everything was unique to the leader, not the civ, it would just be too complicated for me to remember every unique. On the other hand, if new leaders were purely aesthetically and served no in-game purpose, I would wonder what the point of adding new leaders is.

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How would it be any more complicated than remembering which civ has which UA? In any case, no one is asking you to remember everything - the game setup screen would tell you, and you can always check the civilopedia in the middle of a game.

I liked having the option of being able to choose from multiple leaders per civ, but I do agree with the people that say that it shouldn't come at the expense of having more civs. With the amount of detail Firaxis put into the leader screens in V I think it's unlikely we'll be getting multiple leaders in this iteration of the series at least (unfortunately).

I know a lot of people here think that if it doesn't add anything to the gameplay there's no reason for it to be included, but I think that having the option of choosing who you were playing as added more flavour to the game and helped to keep things interesting.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

At first I did but then I realized that in 4 all the leaders had a combo of 2 of 7 traits which made for quite a few repeats making it a purely aesthetic thing in a lot of cases.

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Not exactly. BtS had 11 traits theoretically allowing 55 different trait pairs. 52 of them were used. There was not a single repetition.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

I don't know how much work goes into those leaderheads but they make it sound like it's the biggest part of adding a new civ.

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And they have all my sympathy here. I think the hardest part is to find, hire and fly in the voice actor that speaks perfect ancient don't-know-what for a recording session...
So at first it made total sense to me that they only added one leader for each Civ (as much as I enjoyed having several in IV). In BtW however I sometimes wonder if it would not make more sense to add a second really important historcal leader to one of the existing Civ rather than add another "niche" Civilization with a leader that hardly anyone ever heard about.

gps said:

And they have all my sympathy here. I think the hardest part is to find, hire and fly in the voice actor that speaks perfect ancient don't-know-what for a recording session...

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Wouldn't it be easier to find a voice actor to voice a new leader, for, say, America/England/Russia/China/France/Germany/India or any other civs that are still extant in the modern day, rather than hire one to voice some ancient now-extinct civ who isn't already in the game?

Having leaders represent their own civilizations add more DLC options and more money for Sid Meier. Why oh why would they ever stop this practice?

Do you honestly think we'd have 40+ civs represented right now if they had to go back and make five americas and six Englands and four Russias?

FeiLing said:

protipp @ any devs: Players chose their Civ first. Then the map is created and only upon seeing the starting location a leader is chosen.

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I think your idea has merit. If multiple leaders is not possible, how about letting the player see his or her starting location, and then we can pick the best civ for the spot?

I like the idea of multiple leaders per civ. If that isn't possible, perhaps it would be best to unpack some of the non-Western civs a bit more e.g. the Mughal Empire or the Manchu.

Rohili said:

No one is asking for it to be an aesthetic thing only. I'm saying that UAs should be attached to leaders instead of civs, and each leader should come with his or her own UA and personality traits. This would allow you to combine different UAs and personalities with the same set of UU/UB to come up with diverse gameplay possibilities.

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Ah, the question you asked was who missed it. I was just saying why I don't. The traits in 4 didn't make one game play very different from another so I just don't really miss it, that's all. It could probably be done better in 5 but I'd still rather see new civs than new leaders for old ones.

gps said:

Not exactly. BtS had 11 traits theoretically allowing 55 different trait pairs. 52 of them were used. There was not a single repetition.

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You're right, I forgot the exact number. I don't think I made myself clear enough though. What I meant was that each leader drew from the same small pool of traits. Even if the exact combo wasn't repeated it was still just the same small pool of traits. It doesn't compete with the variety in 5.

I'm more or less neutral. I see no reason to have multiple leaders per civ, but I wouldn't particularly care much if this happened. All I really care about is maintaining the current UA system, which is leaps and bounds ahead of the traits in civ 4 IMO.

I LOVED having a choice of leader per Civ.

I just prefered the choice.

However, I can understand why this hasn`t happened since it`s probably 4 times the graphics work, voice-acting and research making alternative Leaders for every Civ now. But I wish it could be done anyway.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

It doesn't compete with the variety in 5.

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True, but it also does not compete with the massive ballance issues in V.

gps said:

True, but it also does not compete with the massive ballance issues in V.

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Massive? Some civs are clearly better than others but I would by no means say massive. There is no civ that is an automatic win every time you play them (the Huns are close though) and that's what I would consider massive. Balance is something you have to sacrifice a little when you start adding a lot of options and variety to a game. Min/Maxers will always find imbalances to take advantage of. It happens. I'm willing to sacrifice a little balance for replay value.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

There is no civ that is an automatic win every time you play them (the Huns are close though) and that's what I would consider massive.

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I leave that judgement to the MP- or HOF-crowd...