In fairness,
I don’t think the current Governor system could be described as “wrong headed”. There are legitimate reasons for FXS to have designed Governors the way they did.
As I’ve said, I think the Governor / loyalty mechanic works well - Governors let you respond to loyalty on a city by city basis, can be buffed via policy cards, promotions, buildings etc., but there is an opportunity cost using Governors this way.
The title mechanics are straightforward. The specific faces for each Governor makes them visually easy to recognise on the map. And the “one of each” design + everyone has access to the same pool of governors and titles makes balancing really easy. (eg Pingala can’t ever really be overpowered, because everyone has access to him, and everyone gets one of him).
So, I can get why FXS implemented Governors this way.
But God help me, this “keep it simple” design means they’re really boring and immersion breaking as a result. And what really gets me is that they wouldn’t take much to improve.
For example:
- Governors could work more like a Spy unit. You’d have maybe three sorts of Governors - a Emissary (that can be sent to City States and maybe other Civs), a Commander (broadly like Victor, who can defend cities and Governor.
- You could earn these units and promotions for these units the same way you do now - ie titles through the civics tree. Or they could maybe work more like Spies and you have a “capacity” or limit to how many you can have based on tech level, buildings maybe government tier etc.
- When you choose an Emissary, Commander, Governor, they have a generic graphic like the spies and other units do (maybe tailored a bit for each culture) and they get a unique name for each Civ. Some of these names could maybe reference real people (like the Spies do). You can then assign these units to Cities just like you do for Spies and Traders.
- You’d be allowed to choose more than one of each type, and they’d continue to have promotion trees. You earn promotions the same way you do now - eg you earn titles, and decide whether to get a new unit and or promote an existing unit. You could maybe randomise the promotions a little, so each time you promote you choose between two or three random promotions (so you couldn’t guarantee always getting Pingala or Magnus’ perks).
- You’d otherwise keep the Governors buff loyalty / establishing takes time mechanic you have now.
I think something like the above would be a lot more immersive (Governors would be more abstract but would actually feel more specific to your game) and would allow for more variations in gameplay by giving you more flexibility.
But you don’t even need to go that far. I mean, if you just had say three or four new Governors, and then each game randomly only gave you seven of those to choose between, that would be much more interesting. You would literally not be able to choose Pingala every game, because sometimes you wouldn’t have access to him at all. And when you did have access, it would feel like a much bigger deal.
For me, Governors are an additional and unnecessary game mechanic.
I'd prefer to see Great Governors as another type of great person, competed for and claimed using the existing great person point systems.
Or alternatively fold the governor's promotions and city state envoy points into a common currency which you can use to promote your state externally or internally.
Or let cities above a certain size gain their own municipal policy cards that builds on the existing empire-wide policy card mechanic.
Anything other than a completely new system with own set of rules for how they move around on the map, what they do, etc.
I liked the suggestion at one point I saw where you mixed in a lot of the smaller "currencies" together. Basically, free envoy points, governor titles, spies, etc... maybe should all come from the same bucket, and then you can allocate them as you see fit. Maybe you want to heavily focus internally, in which case you spend them all on governor promos. Maybe you want to focus on city-states, in which case you invest there. Or maybe you focus externally, and have a large spy network.
But in the end, they basically need to decide for governors what exactly their purpose is and should be. Are they a roving band to give temporary boost to certain cities, or are they a way to specialize your empire by having a permanent bonus/focus on certain cities? I think the big flaw with them is that they kind of act both ways at different times, which makes it a challenge to balance, and leads people to complain about them.
Yup. Agree with all that.
I really like the idea of having one pool of points for envoys, spies etc. It really is getting tedious having all these different currencies. We need sort of a single currency, like “monarch points” or “admin points” that pulls some of this stuff together.
More generally. I really think
it’s dumb that you can only have one “Diplomat” that you can place in other Cities. And only one Castelleon / Victor that can defend a City. And it’s really dumb there is only one Civ that can place a Governor in another Civ ... and they can only do that once!
At the end of the day,
Governors aren’t such a big deal to me that I won’t play Civ. The loyalty and movement thing works fine, and there are some interesting (if narrow) decisions about how you spend the first few titles. Governors pull me out of the game a little, but there’s so much other stuff that’s awesome that I can live with it. And like I said, while Governors aren’t to my taste, I do understand why FXS structured them the way they did.
But increasingly I find I just don’t spend my governor titles. They’re just so tedious. I hate getting pulled out of the map to keep making these barren choices. I can’t get excited about touring Magnus and Liang through my Cities and while I’ll put a Pingala or Reyna in one of my “good” cities, I don’t really feel like it adds much.
I think I’ve mostly said my peace. I get other people maybe don’t feel as negatively about Governors, and maybe some people even like the mechanic. But ultimately, I just think Governors could add so much more to the game if FXS was willing to rework them a bit.
