Leaderheads -> political leaders

This is an idéa from the suggestions-thread, now available as a separate thread. It was originally two posts which I have copied below, edited and added on. I hope it is readable and not too metaphysical.

I think the concept of the player taking the roll of the civilizations head of state is flawed and should be scrapped. For a start, it doesn't makes sense together with democracy. Neither can he/she live for 6000 years, of course.

Instead, the model should be that the player takes the role of the civilization as a whole, the civilization spirit if you want. After all that's actually what the player does isn't it(especially in regicide mode)? It also have a nice democratic feeling. The head of state should be considered a product of the civilization, not its boss. You could consider the population and all units to be "braincells" and the player/civilization is the mind.

This opens up another possibility: political leader units, like the millitary and C3C scientific leader. She can emerge under some conditions and be used for 2 or 3 tasks that would otherwise require a lot of resources. These leaders would of course have names from their real life counterparts. One of Americas leader could be Kennedy, one of Germanys could be Helmut Kohl.

I got this idea as well. Scrap the Palace stuff, that grand building you may add a piece to when you are doing some general progress in the game.

First:If you introduce the concept of political leader as I suggested above, this palace thing doesn't fit in well. The reason is that the player then takes the role of the people, not the head of state they are celebrating by enlarging his palace.

Second, the same formula that occasionally allows the player to improve the palace would be perfect to use for calculating whether the political leader should emerge! It seems to include a bunch of factors that together summons up the general progress of your civ. So instead of letting the player add a pice to the palace, a political leader would emerge (maybe less often). Another nice advantage with this is that part of that palace thing now gets a gameplay function!

Things you could do with a political leader:

• ease transitions between government types, down to 4 turns for non-religious and 1 turn for religious.
• decrease corruption in one city for 20-40 turns (practical to do in the city you want to build your Forbidden Palace or a wonder)
• add 1 shield/commerce/food on each worked tile within the city radius of the city where the leader is consumed, for X turns.
• super-negotiator, giving you better deals with the AI for 1 or more turns, when trading tech, ROP, signing MPP etc

There could surely be more.

I think is a great idea, because a lot of countries had lot of politicians who were extremely good for the prowess. It's also a way to give a reward to the player that follows a pacific and eficient government.
Examples: England: Winston Churchill; Russia: Lenin; India: Nehru; Persia: Xerxes, etc...

I agree- that's a good idea. They should put in leaders, but ones that die. Not like the Regicide game from Civ3, but more like Total War. It would also make revolutions more interesting- some of your country could break off and follow your old leader, and then you could have a civil war (alwys fun).

Traitorfish said:

I agree- that's a good idea. They should put in leaders, but ones that die. Not like the Regicide game from Civ3, but more like Total War. It would also make revolutions more interesting- some of your country could break off and follow your old leader, and then you could have a civil war (alwys fun).

Click to expand...

That is the best idea for civil wars I've heard yet.

Well, the thanks goes to Creative Assembly and the Total War series.

I'm not sure I want full mechanics in this direction, but it should be this way at least comestically. For the 50 year turn spots, that could mean many different leaders per turn. At least in those times it should be probably be a dynasty or other categorical designator until the turn scale matches lifetimes and shorter. You could adjust for governments, and make the leaderheads the haralds instead, like in Civ 2. Revolutions would definitely change those things, of course and give a sense that you are dealing with more than the Democracy mask of whatever country whenever they switch.