Should "Unrestricted Leaders" be used?

Should the Unrestricted Leaders option be used?

Yes - use the option
No - don't use the option

Public poll, 3 days.

This is not the "Random Personalities" option.

This poll is real good.

I hope "unrestricted" wins, so people do not speculate in which civ would match their Faction Election leader best, so it is about traits, not about the entire nation. Only way to make a level playing-field election with some suspense.

This option makes all leader / civ combinations unrestricted, for players and AIs. It is known to be unbalancing in actual Civ4 play. We could get an incredibly weak neighbor, or an incredibly strong one. We could see off-continent AI's eliminating each other where they would normally be balanced.

This could be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view. My opinion is that it's a bad thing, because we're already changing many other things which will take the community outside their comfort zone. Let's keep something constant, and that's how the underlying civ game plays.

Several of us would lose our comfort zone in elections, if we bundle the civ with the leader choice. It will be a totally different election. I think we need to preserve what little is left from the original intent from Factions.

Say, we are all born by default where we are born, but we still choose our leaders, right?

Yet, to answer no to this poll, destroys the idea of the first term election traits platform. Without unrestricted personalities, whatever leader we choose will have their civ attached to them. So the first election won't be about leaders, it will be about which civ to play. If you want the first term elections to be about the leaders and their traits, then do not vote yes for unrestricted leaders.

Voting no allows a leader and trait to be chosen. It just restricts the choice of civ to the one normally associated with the leader.

In effect, this means that the No-vote effectively represents that the election should impact the selection of Civ, hence nulify the random vote for choice of Civ. (They are for selecting a Civ bundled with leader).

This ruins our experience of fair faction elections, as UU, buildings and our core identity is on the table. We want to shape our own identity, not simply be served one. It was bad enough to lose the minimum member requirement, now this, if this continues, the set-up will be damn close to traditional in the end.

We are indeed, in a double entendre way here, dealing with "unrestricted leaders"

Eventhough it does not matter now, voted no.

CivGeneral said:

Eventhough it does not matter now, voted no.

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I think it matters quite a lot, in fact the vote is much closer than it was in the early days.

Should we allow new arrivals (after the announcement) a vote?

Not for the core rules. We need to agree on which periods of the game that should have a window for change, to get some predictability of the terms.
I do not want a Polish or Italian Parliament at this point, to be honest.

Shattered said:

Yet, to answer no to this poll, destroys the idea of the first term election traits platform. Without unrestricted personalities, whatever leader we choose will have their civ attached to them. So the first election won't be about leaders, it will be about which civ to play. If you want the first term elections to be about the leaders and their traits, then do not vote yes for unrestricted leaders.

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I'm confused about this poll. I thought the idea behind unrestricted personalities was that we would select which traits we wanted to play; and we would also select which civ we wanted to play. Am I reading some of the comments correctly that if we vote for unrestricted leaders we're not voting to also determine which civ we want to play? If that is the case, I'm voting no. If I've got this all wrong (quite likely!) I'll change my vote after I receive a better explanation about all the ramifications of this vote.

This isn't a core rule which could be changed later, it is a one-time gameplay decision. If you'd rather accept the risk of having the game die before it even starts due to a bad choice turning off potential incoming players, that's a valid strategy I guess.

I will assume that's not intended to be an ethnic joke. Some in the US might take it as such, we have a history of beating up on the Poles in ethnic jokes and don't have a lot of information about their or the Italian government.

Bertie said:

I'm confused about this poll. I thought the idea behind unrestricted personalities was that we would select which traits we wanted to play; and we would also select which civ we wanted to play. Am I reading some of the comments correctly that if we vote for unrestricted leaders we're not voting to also determine which civ we want to play? If that is the case, I'm voting no. If I've got this all wrong (quite likely!) I'll change my vote after I receive a better explanation about all the ramifications of this vote.

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My opinion:

Yes does not imply random. A faction could propose random as their civ choice, or they could propose a specific civ.

No takes civ selection off the table completely. We get the civ that the leader is associated with.

My objection to unrestricted leaders is an in-game objection, based on the effects it will have on AI's. The game designers went to a lot of trouble to design a game with balanced AI's, and the combination of traits, starting techs, UU's, UB's, and AI preferences (probabilities in the code) are meant to provide that balance. Choosing either unrestricted leaders (this poll) or random personalities (soundly defeated in a previous poll) may result in extreme unbalances between the AI's, to the extent that the underlying civ game comes falling down around us in the middle of the role playing that so many people want.

Gameplay aside, role players also come in two camps. One camp wants everything to be a complete surprise, the other camp wants the game to follow relatively common patterns so their roleplay is within a relative comfort zone. Of course there are shades of gray, your mileage may vary. I strongly believe that when we open up the game, more people will want the civ to be predictable so they can roleplay in a stable framework.

DaveShack said:

Choosing either unrestricted leaders (this poll) or random personalities (soundly defeated in a previous poll) may result in extreme unbalances between the AI's, to the extent that the underlying civ game comes falling down around us in the middle of the role playing that so many people want.

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I don't believe this to be true. Sure, there might be some AIs who are put at a disadvantage, but they're not going to crash and burn apocalyptically as you seem to be saying. Even if they do, it will likely be at the hands of either our civ, which isn't a problem because no matter what the AI, if we put our minds to it, we should be able to beat up on them, or another, more powerful civ, which happens even without unrestricted leaders, and makes sense historically.

DaveShack said:

This isn't a core rule which could be changed later, it is a one-time gameplay decision. If you'd rather accept the risk of having the game die before it even starts due to a bad choice turning off potential incoming players, that's a valid strategy I guess.

I will assume that's not intended to be an ethnic joke. Some in the US might take it as such, we have a history of beating up on the Poles in ethnic jokes and don't have a lot of information about their or the Italian government.

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Please, do not begin with this political correctness persecution in order to gain cheap political points. A Polish and Italian Parliament have been known to have frequent regime changes, unstable systems and continuous revisions of laws, so do not portray me as a racist or anything.

Also, the game may not die because of this, it will be rejuvenated as it was never done before. I also question whether some players really want a change or not, and I find it important to flag where one stands on the Factions issue.
If we water out the Factions concept too much, only Traditional will remain, in anything but the name.

Also, DS, you seem to give this issue a special treatment, where the Minimum requirement, which was even more contagious, went under the radar. You wrote this poll, so you should not call for parameter changes in order to fix it. It seems you are bent on keeping as much of the traditional ruleset as you can, which is fine, but be candid about it.

Provolution said:

It seems you are bent on keeping as much of the traditional ruleset as you can, which is fine, but be candid about it.

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No, this issue is 100% about how the civ game will play.

Also, DS, you seem to give this issue a special treatment, where the Minimum requirement, which was even more contagious, went under the radar.

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I gave that issue as much attention as this one. My position in that issue was that individuals should not be marginalized. That also has nothing to do with factions, I would make similar arguments if any restriction on who could stand for election was proposed. Term limits are a good counter example to show my track record on this.

DaveShack said:

My opinion:

My objection to unrestricted leaders is an in-game objection, based on the effects it will have on AI's. The game designers went to a lot of trouble to design a game with balanced AI's, and the combination of traits, starting techs, UU's, UB's, and AI preferences (probabilities in the code) are meant to provide that balance. Choosing either unrestricted leaders (this poll) or random personalities (soundly defeated in a previous poll) may result in extreme unbalances between the AI's, to the extent that the underlying civ game comes falling down around us in the middle of the role playing that so many people want.

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Please tell me your joking DS. I play almost all my BTS games with this option turned on, and never once have I had an easy time trying to win or survive. The game is not imbalanced at all. Rather, we'd see Montezuma, with the vikings (scariest enemy ever) kicking butt, Ghandi of the mongols building a culture empire, and so on. The leaders will still use their original personalities, it just won't be the same cut and paste situation they use with their own nation. In fact, the AI gets several advantages over humans because we have no idea how they will run their new nation. Sure, some nations would be worse off, (Isabella of the russians just to name one) but we will most likely see greater challenges and suprises with unrestricted personalities.
If you like the "comfort zone" DS speaks of, along with the predefined strategeys on how to deal with the civs, (which you can find in CFC strat forums) then sure!, down with unrestricted personalities. If you want adventure, and to develop our own ways of dealing with a new nation, forget the predictability of unrandomized restricted leaders. Play a civ game you will have to think about, instead of using the same old boring talk and strategy to deal with the same restricted civs we have all played against many times.

And to provo: DS is right, this isn't about faction vs Traditionalist, it's about the freedom of gameplay. On one hand we have the same rehashed reused recycled gameplay, and on the other, we have new untried unpredictable exciting gameplay. And when I see the votes on this poll, it shows to me that it isn't factionalists vs traditionalists. It's civ 3 veterans vs the people changing things. I know change is hard guys! But come on, give it a try.

Shattered said:

If you want adventure, and to develop our own ways of dealing with a new nation, forget the predictability of unrandomized restricted leaders. Play a civ game you will have to think about, instead of using the same old boring talk and strategy to deal with the same restricted civs we have all played against many times.

And to provo: DS is right, this isn't about faction vs Traditionalist, it's about the freedom of gameplay. On one hand we have the same rehashed reused recycled gameplay, and on the other, we have new untried unpredictable exciting gameplay. And when I see the votes on this poll, it shows to me that it isn't factionalists vs traditionalists. It's civ 3 veterans vs the people changing things. I know change is hard guys! But come on, give it a try.

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You assume people like unpredictability
Also assuming that the same strats people use they find boring
You're right about the faction vs traditionalist though, it's broader than that.