Changing Leaders

[Howard Mahler]

One of the constants has been, whatever a leader a civilization has has in 4000 B.C. they also have at the end of the game thousands of years later.
Clearly this is a vast simplification of reality.
I suspect this is the best choice for creating an interesting and playable game.
I started this thread to explore this idea a little, without suggesting that anything mentioned would be an improvement.

What if we redesigned Civ to make this aspect more realistic?
Well we would probably want a new leader to occur semirandomly.
Mean reign should be 10 to 20 years, and maximum should be 50 or 60 years.

Even at epic speed, this would be a new ruler every turn or two at the beginning of the game. I do not see this as having anything other than nuisance value.

To make this semi-workable, there would be no named ruler prior to some tech or techs are discovered by the civilization.
Choose from a list of techs that make some sense and are usually discovered somewhere about perhaps 1 A.D. Prior to that just called leader of Bozoland or King of France or whatever.
(Historically we know the names of many rulers from before this.)

Names of rulers would be picked off a country specific long list, including Henry I, Henry II, etc. Even over the last 2000 years we would expect 100 to 200 different rulers.

Perhaps, rulers would have 0, 1, 2, or 3 bonuses. (0 bonuses would correspond to an incompetent ruler; players do not like penalties.)
The number and type of bonuses would be correlated with those of predecessor, but still semirandom.
Rulers of certain civilizations might be more likely to have certain types of bonuses.
Ruler bonuses might be similar to CIV IV ruler attributes, or be other things.

There is no need to add other complications such as an underage ruler with a regent, or a senile ruler.

Either each ruler of a civilization would have the same animation or animations would have to be done away with.

I think that all of the above would be a lot of work, with very little if any possible benefit to player enjoyment.

Any thoughts on how to implement rulers changing over the course of history.

 

[Howard Mahler]

To be realistic, diplomatic feelings would likely change when the ruler changed.
If the attitude scale were 10 times as large as in Civ IV, (what is now + 3 corresponds to +30,) a worthwhile change in any case, then one could have the attitude move one or two towards zero every time the leader changed.

Logically, leader personalities would also change, with again a correlation with the predecessor. As a practical matter, this would mean that most players would ignore personalities of computer positions. Not a good game mechanism.

 

[em jay]

IMHO, that's too omplicated. One every few turns? What about quick speed, do you change leader every turn? That's going o be quite hard for a playre to grasp, especially if each leader's bonuses are different. If this was to be implemented (which I doubt it will) It will be one leader for each period. Eg for England, we would have King Arthur in the Ancient era, Boudicca in the Clasical era, Alfred the Great in the Medieval era, Queen Elizabeth in the Renaissance era, Victoria in the Industrial era, and Churchill in the Modern era.

The only problem with this setup is finding a modern day counterpart for many of these civs. For example, the developers will struggle to find an Industrial age leader for the Songhai, where it would have been a colony of a major European power. (Of course, I dont know this for sure, but almost all of Africa was conquered by Europeans during that time.)

 

[Howard Mahler]

As stated anything I mentioned was not, not a good idea.

Your good idea of a new leader every age sounds interesting and workable.
It would be somewhat more complicated than currently, but still simple enough for game play. It moves a little more towards reality, probably as much as the game can stand in this regard.

IMHO, that's too omplicated. One every few turns? What about quick speed, do you change leader every turn? That's going o be quite hard for a playre to grasp, especially if each leader's bonuses are different. If this was to be implemented (which I doubt it will) It will be one leader for each period. Eg for England, we would have King Arthur in the Ancient era, Boudicca in the Clasical era, Alfred the Great in the Medieval era, Queen Elizabeth in the Renaissance era, Victoria in the Industrial era, and Churchill in the Modern era.

The only problem with this setup is finding a modern day counterpart for many of these civs. For example, the developers will struggle to find an Industrial age leader for the Songhai, where it would have been a colony of a major European power. (Of course, I dont know this for sure, but almost all of Africa was conquered by Europeans during that time.)

 

[Seaman Sample]

There's only a few historical epochs, if you will and some civilizations in Civ IV had several leaders. France, America and Russia were a few examples. The option provided by Howard Mahler of one new leader every era is very plausible and reasonable. Of course, this would have to be an option that can be turned off, if the player wants to see the same leader for the whole game.

 

[P-Dubya]

Meh, there's simply too much to worry about as it is without throwing in new leaders every few turns or ages.

Okay, if someone wants it, and if the Civ folks got time, and if it is optional, sure, throw it in. But, we got to keep in mind that YOU, the ruler, is actually more like a god in the whole civ concept. You're there from the beginning of the civ to the dead end. There's simply no way I can foresee having new time-based leaders in a realistic or semirealistic way. . . No matter what, it's going to be you controlling your civ.

 

[lazyguy]

Maybe the tech could be History, you'd need Calendar, Alphabet and Writing, and it would net you +1 or 2 culture, +1 gold per trade route, +2 gold per foreign trade route, and it could act as a sort of research granary, keeping some research over for the next tech (though that may be better for Writing).

Eg for England, we would have King Arthur in the Ancient era, Boudicca in the Clasical era, Alfred the Great in the Medieval era, Queen Elizabeth in the Renaissance era, Victoria in the Industrial era, and Churchill in the Modern era.

Boudicca was before Arthur

 

[sonofkong]

I already thought of this idea and even made a chart with 20 ever evolving civilizations. the england idea was a complete copy of mine.

 

[johny smith]

You might be interested in our idea of having civilizations change through time. Anyway we are trying to layout some ideas for it now. The mod is to be Fabula Terra.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=375930