Families in Civ 5.. would they work?

My older brother, who I've swapped PCs with, is now playing Total War.. like.. every day.. hehe.. anyway, one of the feature that fascinates me is the idea of Family Trees.

And I've been thinking, they would.. in THEORY, work in Civ 5 if you think about it, I mean, you already got Austria doing a smiliar thing with their Diplomatic Marriage to City States...

My idea is that every Family Member would have a single (or more) traits (like the ones that used to be in in previous Civ games), that would be active for as long as they lived or were in your family. The traits would either be hereditary, or were random.

Along with that, any child of your current Monarch could marry into a member of either your nation, or another nation, with other nations providing additional Friendship/Relations bonus if you had a member married into their family, and maybe would provide additional bonuses.

Once your current monarch dies, you choose an heir, and any bonuses that belong to the siblings of the heir would disappear, and the cycle would start again with the children of the new heir.

So.. would that work? in a game like Civ? I mean, I don't know about you but I would personally love that feature.. but then again I'm the roleplaying type as opposed to the proper playing type (although, I tend to play Civ 5 normally, but I'm those that prefer Random Events on rather than off)

... Maybe? I mean, early on you'd have a new ruler every turn, and later on most countries wouldn't have hereditary rule. It would have to be done in a very specific way, an even then it may feel hinky, a you coupdn't plan for every new leader, and thus you may get abilities that you can't capitilize, thus frustrating the player.

Princeofnigeria said:

... Maybe? I mean, early on you'd have a new ruler every turn, and later on most countries wouldn't have hereditary rule. It would have to be done in a very specific way, an even then it may feel hinky, a you coupdn't plan for every new leader, and thus you may get abilities that you can't capitilize, thus frustrating the player.

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Yeah... also, the age problem woudl be kinda weird.. unless for some reason we could ignore it and just let every ruler live for few turns by default (which isn't really that bad considering every rule in Civ games is pretty much Immortal )

It would be an interesting mechanic to be able to pool strategic/luxury resources with another Civ through diplomatic marriage. Nice concept.
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Stupid truth always resistong simplicity.
-John Green

I also think it would avoid a lot of confusion and frustration to start family trees around late classical/ early medieval period when each turn is about ten years (to my knowledge, that is.)
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Stupid truth always resisting simplicity.
-John Green

I know this could work. But... and it`s a big but...

Only problem is the AI leaders. There would have to be dozens if not hundreds of new different animated leaders to represent brothers, sisters sons or daughters that took over after the Leader died.

Would be a bit of a headache to do. Total War doesn`t have the kind of extensively drawn realistic animated leaders like Civ5.

Oh god no. That's what Crusader Kings 2 is there for! I play CiV because I don't want to have to think that hard about everything...

Socratatus said:

I know this could work. But... and it`s a big but...

Only problem is the AI leaders. There would have to be dozens if not hundreds of new different animated leaders to represent brothers, sisters sons or daughters that took over after the Leader died.

Would be a bit of a headache to do. Total War doesn`t have the kind of extensively drawn realistic animated leaders like Civ5.

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Not necessairly, Civ 2 had both Male and Female leaders, infact, my brother's game has pretty simple graphics with only few variations, all they would have to do is create a male counterpart to be placed where the leader currently is, not to mention they would probably be all the same gender because that's how people used to roll.

TheKingOfBigOz said:

all they would have to do is create a male counterpart to be placed where the leader currently is, not to mention they would probably be all the same gender because that's how people used to roll.

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No. The Leaders in Civ5 are very different to the Leaders in any other Civ game. for instance, you couldn`t just replace someone like theodora with just a male model because Theodora acts very feminine and this would look out of place on a male. There would have to be alterations made for the sexes since (contrary to some people`s ideas) women and men actually act differently in subtle ways. They wouldn`t all be of the same gender because circumstances in the game would sooner or later create female leaders.
You did ask for the ability for new heirs didn`t you? What would you do if you happen to only have a daughter left or a wife?

Even Shogun Total War 2 allows a woman (like the wife) to take over for a while until a male is available if there are no males left.

Socratatus said:

No. The Leaders in Civ5 are very different to the Leaders in any other Civ game. for instance, you couldn`t just replace someone like theodora with just a male model because Theodora acts very feminine and this would look out of place on a male. There would have to be alterations made for the sexes since (contrary to some people`s ideas) women and men actually act differently in subtle ways. They wouldn`t all be of the same gender because circumstances in the game would sooner or later create female leaders.
You did ask for the ability for new heirs didn`t you? What would you do if you happen to only have a daughter left or a wife?

Even Shogun Total War 2 allows a woman (like the wife) to take over for a while until a male is available if there are no males left.

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What I meant by replacing leader is not just shove in a male model and give him the animations, I obviously meant for them to be made to fit, but keep the background the same. And yes, I did say that there should be BOTH male and female versions, so by default I'm refering to the fact that different heirs-gender should exist (i.e the English Empire/Nation)

P.S - And quite frankly, I'm only talkign about in theory would the feature work, I don't wanna get into the whole balacing issue and stuff liek that

I`m given my opinion, that`s all, like you asked.

This sounds interesting, it could go along with more internal politics that I want.

TheKingOfBigOz I don't think you understand how much work is involved in creating leaders. It's not "just" making a male and a female version. That's doubling the number of leaders in the game and each leader is a lot of work.

If you're hoping Firaxis will make this, too much work for not enough profit. If you're hoping the modding community will do this, well the modding community hasn't even figured out how to make leaders yet!


If (and this is a big if) it is figured out how to make 2d leaders for diplomacy, then the modding community could pull something like this off. That said, if you want something done...

Why on earth is everybody focusing on the least important aspect of this... who cares about leaderscreens, quite frankly, if I were modding this, that would be literally on the bottom of my priorities.

I even said in THEORY.. (btw, I'm grumpy or aggressive because I'm struggling with Crusader King's demo, which really, REALLY let me down)