Bonyduck Campersang
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- Dec 11, 2022
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So I have a rough (and admittedly not very well thought out) idea of how to redo Great Persons concept-wise and mechanics-wise. In this post I might also refer to half-backed mechanics that do not exist in Civ 6.
Great Persons are special civilian units, but now there are no different types of Great Persons like Great Scientists, Great Writers etc. Instead every Great Person has their own unique bonus/abilities. This is so that Great Persons are not constrained to a single category, and so that each Great Person feels unique instead of being just a different flavour of the same type of Great Person.
So there are two ways a Great Person appears: 1) born (passive) 2) recruited (active). (1) is from Civ 5, where you just get a Great Person when you satisfy the conditions, regardless of whether the player want them or not. (2) is from Civ 6, where the player makes a decision whether to choose a certain Great Person or not. This is due to the fact that Great Persons in Civ 6 have unique bonuses while different Great Persons of the same type in Civ 5 are just different names.
So you have three ways to go about this: 1) passive 2) active 3) passive and active. For my system I will go with (3), and whether a certain Great Person is born or recruited depends on which Great Person it is. This will be elaborated on further.
So you the player can gain Great Persons in one of two ways: 1) definitive 2) probabilist. In (1) the player gains the Great Person by being the first person to fulfil the conditions. In (2) the player has a chance of gaining the Great Person by fulfilling the conditions. Again you end up with three ways to implement this: 1) definitive-only 2) probabilist-only 3) definitive and probabilist. Again I will go for (3). This too will be elaborated.
Great Persons can have different abilities. Some Great Persons can produce Great Artworks. Great Artworks will increase tourism in the city where they are held and be connected to the wider Culture system. Some Great Persons can produce Great Writings. There can be different types of Great Writings: some will be similar to Great Artworks and will be tied to Culture. Some Writings can help propagate an Ideology or Belief (holy texts and philosophical writings), or be the cause for their apperance in the first place. Besides the implications for gameplay, this conceit will also help to resolve the confusion of what sort of Great Writings should be included in the game. Should a great work be included based on its literary merit or its material impact? The answer is yes.
Some Great Persons can help research a Technology. (Some Great Persons are gained through being the first to research a Technology!). Some Great Persons allow the player to be the first to be able to do something or build something. (Terribly vague this, but hopefully my examples later on will explain.) Later on that ability is transmitted to other players as well. But that too is its own mechanic.
Due to the conditions for their apperance, Great Persons will tend to only appear in their appropriate eras. So you won't see Napoleon in the Ancient Era, or Leonardo da Vinci in the Modern.
Some Great Persons will be consumed by their abilities. Some Great Persons will stick around and be relevant until they are killed. Again this depends on which Great Person they are.
Great Generals! They won't be called 'Great Generals' because of my rule that everyone is just a Great Person. But they will act very like Great Generals in previous iterations of Sid Meier's Civilization. These sort of Great Persons can either be born or recruited. Though mostly they will be born. Mostly they will be gained probabilistically instead of definitely.
So you are in the Medieval Era. The Religion that is followed in the majority of your cities tends towards Superstition, Divine Inspiration, Sainthood and similar Beliefs. You have been involved in a lengthy war and the enemy is occupying most of your cities and has greater war-score. So now you have a chance of Jeanne d'Arc being born to your civilization! And the more of your cities that follow that religion and the more that religion tends towards those beliefs the greater your chance of gaining Jeanne d'Arc. Jeanne d'Arc gives a combat bonus to units within a certain range, and gains greater war-score when winning engagements. However too many won engagements can have also the (probabale, not definite) effect of alienating the clergy (if Religion tends towards Patriarchy) and the nobility (because Jeanne d'Arc is a peasant girl). But also has the chance of the peasantry gaining 'Martial Ardour' or some similar modifier, which emboldens their demands and behaviour, and also increases the chance of gaining other Great General -like Great Persons (even later on in other Eras) with humble origins.
Not all Great General -like Great Persons will have such specific conditions and specific bonuses and abilities. Some will mostly be gained through your units engaging in combat and will then be gained probabilistically. Some will be gained through points from military buildings (but not all!).
Now onto a more radical type of Great Person. So you're in the Industrial Era. Capitalism has been introduced and Factories are being constructed across the continent. Your civilization has a great philosophical tradition. You have Cafés. Now you get a notification that the Great Person Karl Marx is available for recruitment. Karl Marx will produce the Great Work 'The Communist Manifesto' and so introduce the Socialism ideology. Eventually this will spread throughout the world. And as the patron of Marx you will be the vanguard of the revolution and will gain certain bonuses. But you will also hurt diplomatic relations with capitalist empires. And Marx will be unpopular with the bourgeois in your country and may cause instability that you do not want to deal with. So you decide not to recruit Marx. Instead he goes elsewhere and another civ has the choice to recruit him. If no-one recruits him, eventually he will write 'The Communist Manifesto' and Socialism will spread. However you will have lost the chance to position yourself as the leader of socialists everywhere and the chance to direct the revolution and ideology yourself.
Marx is just one of such Great Reformers and Great Revolutionaries. Martin Luther is another, with his own set of prerequisite conditions. Voltaire is another, and a special one, because he also produces Great Cultural Works.
Have a strong capitalist tradition and lots of factories and are at the forefront of technology? Now you have gained Henry Ford, who will allow your civ to be the first to adopt Mass Production and the Model T. Mass Production is self-explanatory, but the Model T will allow city infrastructure to spread out more and effective range will increase due to more people being able to afford automobiles and travel greater distances.
Some Great Persons can be retired, and the city in which they were retired will have a Tourism bonus.
Leonardo da Vinci is a sort of super Great Person. He will produce Great Cultural Works, he can construct da Vinci's Workshop which will increase Great Person generation, he can provide scientific bonuses, he can singlehandedly boost a Cultural Revolution in your civ.
These are only some examples that I hope will serve to illustrate my system.
Great Persons are special civilian units, but now there are no different types of Great Persons like Great Scientists, Great Writers etc. Instead every Great Person has their own unique bonus/abilities. This is so that Great Persons are not constrained to a single category, and so that each Great Person feels unique instead of being just a different flavour of the same type of Great Person.
So there are two ways a Great Person appears: 1) born (passive) 2) recruited (active). (1) is from Civ 5, where you just get a Great Person when you satisfy the conditions, regardless of whether the player want them or not. (2) is from Civ 6, where the player makes a decision whether to choose a certain Great Person or not. This is due to the fact that Great Persons in Civ 6 have unique bonuses while different Great Persons of the same type in Civ 5 are just different names.
So you have three ways to go about this: 1) passive 2) active 3) passive and active. For my system I will go with (3), and whether a certain Great Person is born or recruited depends on which Great Person it is. This will be elaborated on further.
So you the player can gain Great Persons in one of two ways: 1) definitive 2) probabilist. In (1) the player gains the Great Person by being the first person to fulfil the conditions. In (2) the player has a chance of gaining the Great Person by fulfilling the conditions. Again you end up with three ways to implement this: 1) definitive-only 2) probabilist-only 3) definitive and probabilist. Again I will go for (3). This too will be elaborated.
Great Persons can have different abilities. Some Great Persons can produce Great Artworks. Great Artworks will increase tourism in the city where they are held and be connected to the wider Culture system. Some Great Persons can produce Great Writings. There can be different types of Great Writings: some will be similar to Great Artworks and will be tied to Culture. Some Writings can help propagate an Ideology or Belief (holy texts and philosophical writings), or be the cause for their apperance in the first place. Besides the implications for gameplay, this conceit will also help to resolve the confusion of what sort of Great Writings should be included in the game. Should a great work be included based on its literary merit or its material impact? The answer is yes.
Some Great Persons can help research a Technology. (Some Great Persons are gained through being the first to research a Technology!). Some Great Persons allow the player to be the first to be able to do something or build something. (Terribly vague this, but hopefully my examples later on will explain.) Later on that ability is transmitted to other players as well. But that too is its own mechanic.
Due to the conditions for their apperance, Great Persons will tend to only appear in their appropriate eras. So you won't see Napoleon in the Ancient Era, or Leonardo da Vinci in the Modern.
Some Great Persons will be consumed by their abilities. Some Great Persons will stick around and be relevant until they are killed. Again this depends on which Great Person they are.
Great Generals! They won't be called 'Great Generals' because of my rule that everyone is just a Great Person. But they will act very like Great Generals in previous iterations of Sid Meier's Civilization. These sort of Great Persons can either be born or recruited. Though mostly they will be born. Mostly they will be gained probabilistically instead of definitely.
So you are in the Medieval Era. The Religion that is followed in the majority of your cities tends towards Superstition, Divine Inspiration, Sainthood and similar Beliefs. You have been involved in a lengthy war and the enemy is occupying most of your cities and has greater war-score. So now you have a chance of Jeanne d'Arc being born to your civilization! And the more of your cities that follow that religion and the more that religion tends towards those beliefs the greater your chance of gaining Jeanne d'Arc. Jeanne d'Arc gives a combat bonus to units within a certain range, and gains greater war-score when winning engagements. However too many won engagements can have also the (probabale, not definite) effect of alienating the clergy (if Religion tends towards Patriarchy) and the nobility (because Jeanne d'Arc is a peasant girl). But also has the chance of the peasantry gaining 'Martial Ardour' or some similar modifier, which emboldens their demands and behaviour, and also increases the chance of gaining other Great General -like Great Persons (even later on in other Eras) with humble origins.
Not all Great General -like Great Persons will have such specific conditions and specific bonuses and abilities. Some will mostly be gained through your units engaging in combat and will then be gained probabilistically. Some will be gained through points from military buildings (but not all!).
Now onto a more radical type of Great Person. So you're in the Industrial Era. Capitalism has been introduced and Factories are being constructed across the continent. Your civilization has a great philosophical tradition. You have Cafés. Now you get a notification that the Great Person Karl Marx is available for recruitment. Karl Marx will produce the Great Work 'The Communist Manifesto' and so introduce the Socialism ideology. Eventually this will spread throughout the world. And as the patron of Marx you will be the vanguard of the revolution and will gain certain bonuses. But you will also hurt diplomatic relations with capitalist empires. And Marx will be unpopular with the bourgeois in your country and may cause instability that you do not want to deal with. So you decide not to recruit Marx. Instead he goes elsewhere and another civ has the choice to recruit him. If no-one recruits him, eventually he will write 'The Communist Manifesto' and Socialism will spread. However you will have lost the chance to position yourself as the leader of socialists everywhere and the chance to direct the revolution and ideology yourself.
Marx is just one of such Great Reformers and Great Revolutionaries. Martin Luther is another, with his own set of prerequisite conditions. Voltaire is another, and a special one, because he also produces Great Cultural Works.
Have a strong capitalist tradition and lots of factories and are at the forefront of technology? Now you have gained Henry Ford, who will allow your civ to be the first to adopt Mass Production and the Model T. Mass Production is self-explanatory, but the Model T will allow city infrastructure to spread out more and effective range will increase due to more people being able to afford automobiles and travel greater distances.
Some Great Persons can be retired, and the city in which they were retired will have a Tourism bonus.
Leonardo da Vinci is a sort of super Great Person. He will produce Great Cultural Works, he can construct da Vinci's Workshop which will increase Great Person generation, he can provide scientific bonuses, he can singlehandedly boost a Cultural Revolution in your civ.
These are only some examples that I hope will serve to illustrate my system.
