Ages, Era scores and leaders.

[orasis]

I was thinking about something today that would be fun for the next expansion.

What if all civilizations in the game had two leaders like Greece and India? What if falling into a dark age would automatically change your leader to the alternate, possibly forever? This would give some serious weight to era scores and your choice of leader. If you're playing deity are you sure you want to start with Gorgo instead of Pericles for example? --- Just imagine how much more important loyalty and espionage would become!

Or, maybe your original leader could be brought back. Many cultures have myths about great leaders coming back to save their peoples. This could be triggered by a state emergency and would be based on the civ/leaders strengths. I could see the Zulu getting Shaka back by war, the Koreans bringing back Seondeok by invention etc.

Good idea? How would you make it work?

 

[halfhalfharp]

Possibly I will never keep Catherine( if she has an alternative) in my hands due to the horrible ancient/classical era. I think the age system is not balanced for this purpose , and possibly will never be balanced as they are not meant for this purpose. It is a great idea to have a mechanism to flip leaders though. But that requires double leaders for every civ or else some civ will be somehow op.

 

[dunkleosteus]

Real true leaders are kind of expensive to design, voice, animate, etc. and this sort of feature would mean that every modded civ would need multiple leaders as well.

Talking about R&F mechanics, I think "free cities" should function more like city states do now, and only be "at war" with the civ that that they are leaving (civil war). They shouldn't be up for grabs for anyone that is passing by. If they did this, they'd have to change how the envoy system works so that new city states popping up suddenly could be interacted with in a useful way without floating a bunch of unassigned envoys all the time. Free cities can exert their own loyalty pressure and if near enough to another of your cities, might flip that city as well, which would join them. At this point, I'd like to see them begin to act like a full civ. They can get a generic-ish placeholder leader and compete for victory.

 

[halfhalfharp]

Yeah why they declare war at everyone, this I wonder as well. Maybe its an encouragement for neighbors to take it? But I don't appreciate this type of aimless attack like barbs. They should act like, free cities, or in other words, city states.