As I've said before, I see leaders as being the face of their civilization, and I'm not really a fan of something that changes that face in the middle of a game.
Especially now that I've had a chance to put a couple hundred hours into
Humankind (post and pre-release), where there is no 'face' on any Civilization/Faction at all, I've come to appreciate the immersive and emotional connection a player can get from a Leader Face. And given that it is now one of the primary things that distinguishes Civ from other 4X gams, I don't see the animated Face leaving any time soon.
On the other hand, I also cannot help being aware of the sometimes extreme disadvantages of a single or even a very limited number of Leaders for each Civ from a game play perspective:
1. It strait-jackets a long-lasting Civ into a single set of Leader attributes from a single tiny fraction of the total time the Civ existed in various forms. For Civs like China, Egypt, England, Persia, Russia - even the Industrial to Contemporary Eras Only USA with 40+ presidents (admittedly, some of which no one sane would ever want to see in any game) that strait jacket can be severe.
2. It assumes a set of Leader traits that may be utterly inappropriate for the in-game situation - ranging from the Civ's starting position to its end game diplomatic/cultural/military position.
3. The fully animated, voice-acted Leader acts as a Resource Sink taking assets away from other elements of the game. Realistically, X amount spent on the Leader alone is X assets that cannot be applied to the Map, Infrastructure, Units, and other game elements and still have a game that can be sold for a profit - and if you cannot do that, the game ceases to exist as a commercial game.
4. Requiring a recognizable Leader with at least a minimally-appropriate language for each Civ means a lot of potential Civs will never be in Civilization. Given the total number of potential Civs, which far exceeds what any commercial game could afford to deploy, this is a minor matter except that some of the 'unavailable' Civs come up all the time in discussions here: Minoans, Olmecs, Harappans, and such. The fact that games like
Humankind can and do include them using their different game/faction structure just makes the comparison with Civ more negative.
IF there is a solution - besides getting Jeff Bezos to bankroll the Civ Franchise and remove all constraints on game development except the total number of computer artists, writers and programmers available to hire in the world - I think it has to include at least the following aspects:
1. There must be a personal, individual animated Face to the Civ. This has become a Civ 'trademark' and its loss would not be well-received by the gaming community.
2. The 'face' should provide clues to the diplomatic and other interactions between Civs. Angry, oily, murderous, benign - it provides a very human way of knowing or guessing where you and your Civ stand in relation to what is, after ll, a Program, but it is a human reaction that I think we need to keep in the game. That means a simple piece of still artwork ala
Old World or
Humankind simply won't do.
3. The personal representative of the Civ should Look like the Civ, or at least as we expect it to look: that means some kind of appropriate costume, uniform, military dress, some appropriate background at least hinted at - and the reactions of the Face/Leader should be appropriate to the Civ as well: Timur-i-Lenk will not express outrage that you are massacring a City State, unless he has an Ulterior Motive, like using the 'outrage' as an excuse to massacre You! That means some serious research into the 'real' Leaders and the Civs they led and the cultural background to both.
I have proposed it before, and I'll trot it out again: One possible solution is to place the Leader at one remove from the direct confrontation with the gamer, and make the animated, voiced interaction take place with a Minister or Diplomat. The animated Face of the Civ would have a Civ-and-Era-specific Hall or Audience Chamber background, and an appropriate but largely 'generic' Minister who would provide the human 'Face' to the Civ - and who might change his costume/background as the Eras advance. The Leader could be represented by a portrait on the wall, a bust on the table/desk, a Statue glimpsed through a doorway in the Great Hall beyond - and requiring only still art, that Leader could change as required throughout the Eras along with the Leader trait(s) appropriate to deal with the in-game situation.
IF Civ VII keeps a Great Person system in the game, the Minister/Face could even be a non-generic one: The USA represented by Benjamin "
Bon Homme Richard" Franklin or George Marshall instead of President Millard Fillmore, France represented by Tallyrand or Cardinal Richelieu instead of Louis XVI, China by Shang Yang, India by Chanakya, the Mexica/Aztecs by Tlacaelel, England by Thomas Cromwell, etc. That could provide a more specific, recognizable, and identifiable historical Face to a Civ while still requiring only a single animated. voice-acted, researched Face per Civ and allowing more flexibility in Civ Leader Traits and Civ adaptability throughout the game.
); that's a very limited civ game. What I was referring to by nationalist fantasies was things like the Hungarians claiming to be Huns or Sumerians, the Iraqis claiming to be Babylonian/Assyrian/Sumerian, and so forth. Even the notion of an unbroken timeline in China or Persia, while not quite as utterly fantastic, is still open to skepticism. What I meant by imperialist dogma would be, for example, portraying pre-Industrial America as Native Americans or pre-Industrial Mexico as Aztec and Maya (which kind of falls into both categories: nationalist fantasies and imperialist dogma).
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