Do we need leaders?

[orinsul]

Leaders have always annoyed me, with all the bismark declared war on catherine bollocks and never being able to work out who is leader is for the colour on the map when asked to declare war or break treaties and the constant changing of nouns.
A Nation is more than its leader and the focus on leaders in 4 was a damnedable pain

 

[frekk]

Gotta have leaders ... it gives a personality to your opponents. Puts a face on your friends and enemies.

The inconsistency between leader names and civ names on the map and scoreboard is not a product of having leaders, its just a bad interface design. It's easy to fix too; instead of using "Spanish" or "Isabella" in different places, you use one thing in all places - "Spanish (Isabella)", for example.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Even though I am not dead against the leaders represented by silly cartounish-painted leaderhads.... lets be honest: They actually add next to NOTHING to the game. I am sure u would think of number of strategic games without such a nonsense as immortal leader.
I know the way it is it is a tradition in CIV and it is used as simplification but I do not think u have to be a genius to come up with something more realistic, historicaly relevant and still satisfy those who need some personification in the game.

 

[Tacgnol]

Gonna have to go with the crowd here, it wouldn't be civ to me without leaders and I enjoy the cartoony leaderheads but at the same time I think they've grown to play a little to big a role in CIV. They should essentially just be there for diplomacy and nothing more, something more like a president or pm than a god-king, which is kind of where they are today. One thing though, kind of irrelevant but I think that part does make FFH better, not saying that should have any influence on Civ V as FFH will probably not exist but hey, credit where credit's due.

 

[Chalks]

Gotta have leaders ... it gives a personality to your opponents. Puts a face on your friends and enemies.

The inconsistency between leader names and civ names on the map and scoreboard is not a product of having leaders, its just a bad interface design. It's easy to fix too; instead of using "Spanish" or "Isabella" in different places, you use one thing in all places - "Spanish (Isabella)", for example.

Certainly. I'm not sure if you're addressing me directly, but I thought I said exactly this in the sentence that began "I think leaders add some nice flavour from the game..."

 

[Rusty Edge]

I like leaders to play against, because I like to pretend I'm playing against Napoleon or Alexander The Great, rather than a computer. I liked the way leaders changed clothes in CIV III, and I like that some of the flavor came from the civ rather than the leader (seafearing, etc.). I'd just like them to be more realistic, and less of a charicature.

As for the maps/ colors there's a need for improvement. It can get confusing if the shades aren't far enough apart. It's not so bad if a civ is a vassal and another shade of the same color, because it's under the control of the same entity for diplomatic purposes. Maybe they need to introduce stripes( vert/horiz/diagonal), or stars, or something to make the different civs more distinct on the world map.

 

[Civinator]

However, I always had an idea that many never discuss. Make two or three leaders per Civ and led it changer of time in one game.

One immortal leader for a civ in 6.000 years in my eyes is a very spoiled concept and it is astonishing that this was never changed in the civ series - especially as a change of leaders for a civ during the game offers a lot of additional convincing possibilities to change the traits for that civ and to add more realism to the game without destroying the flair of the civ series.

In my Civ 3 mod I made use of these possibilities and it works very well. Here are screenshots with the different leader names and graphics in an earlier phase of the developement of the mod:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7596888&postcount=92

And here are some screenshots of a later stage of that mod with streamlined leader names (shown at the example of Egypt), as the full names caused some overlapping problems in the Civ 3 trade texts:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8066459&postcount=186

 

[Ahovking]

well Civilization (Britain,Russia) can have leader and nation (Australia,Canada) can have no leaders

 

[Magma]

I like having leaders, just to have a face to chat to. I never really liked all the flag addons for cIV, always felt so boring. I am not for them having any traits though. Just like the visual thing.

In other news... I think a civ's speciality should be based on UBs, UUs and UTs, but also player decisions. The way you form your empire should have an influence on its traits. That mght come to show with the tyranny-slider and stuff though.

 

[Shurdus]

Leaders were a nice touch, it gave a nation a face rather than just a color and fancy city names. Also I liked the traits, it was a ncie system that was easy to understand and there were quite a few solid combinations of nice traits. Also it was intuitive... Maybe the traits were not that much of a logical thing, but it was really interesting to see that every leader was truly unique.

What would be even cooler is that in Civ5, we would be able to create our own leaders, or at least give the option of selecting the traits for the leader that we will use. Also this needs the option for random traits. It will make the game more unique each and every playthrough, even moreso if every opponent would also have unique and random traits.

I do not feel the 'it breaks immersion' arguments at all. Of course leaders do not live for 5000 years, but I think of the other leaders like they are players that I play this huge and advanced board game that is Civ IV with. Anyone who is really feeling like they are leading a civilization - or wanting to lead one and fantasising about that while playing - need a few more realism checks and possibly a pill or two.

 

[trickofthehand]

One immortal leader for a civ in 6.000 years in my eyes is a very spoiled concept and it is astonishing that this was never changed in the civ series - especially as a change of leaders for a civ during the game offers a lot of additional convincing possibilities to change the traits for that civ and to add more realism to the game without destroying the flair of the civ series.

In my Civ 3 mod I made use of these possibilities and it works very well. Here are screenshots with the different leader names and graphics in an earlier phase of the developement of the mod:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7596888&postcount=92

And here are some screenshots of a later stage of that mod with streamlined leader names (shown at the example of Egypt), as the full names caused some overlapping problems in the Civ 3 trade texts:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8066459&postcount=186

That's a damn fine job.

 

[Nuada]

I actually like leaders. They add a bit of flavor, as well as some pretty useful bonuses, if done right. What I'd like to see, though, is each civ having multiple leaders, and insead of picking one leader at the beginning of the game, each age gets you a new leader with different abilities more closely associated with the current era. It would definitely force some mid game strategy shifts, but it also might mean researching certain techs in order to avoid getting certain leaders because you don't want to change eras quite yet.

 

[frekk]

One leader for the whole game doesn't bother me. And having one leader for a thousand years is not "more realistic" than having one for six thousand years - they're both 100% fantasy.

To do leaders realistically, you'd have a new one every turn until the modern era, so there's no point in changing things for realism's sake. It won't work.

From a gameplay perspective, it's also inferior from the present situation because you would have to adapt to changing leaderheads for your opponents all the time. It's much easier if you only have the one leader to associate with a particular culture.

From a development perspective, having a leader for each age means 90 leaders rather than 18, which would delay release considerably.

 

[Shurdus]

Don't know if more leaderheads would delay the release date - I did not take a look into their schedule - but is sure would be waaaaay more trouble than it is worth.

 

[Gre_Magus]

I don't mind the leaders, but I do wish their look would change over time. In any case, in my mind the leaders don't represent any real "in world" person like an emperor, king, or president, but rather the "spirit of the civilization," just as you (the player) do. For more realistic mods I'd rather see the coat of arms, symbol, or flag of the civ than a goofy leaderhead. I think the Civ 3 World War II mod had this feature.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Right! To change realisticaly leaders in 6000 years long simulation of human history would be quite lot of pain to do and to play as well. I can only say that I do not need superrealisticly looking immortal leaders. What I need is better diplomacy and other features.

 

[Swashbuckler.]

Well if we don't have leaders in game we can have them as great people. Every leader would have some random bonuses for that country. Just a thought.

 

[Ahriman]

No leaders! Unchain the masses! Anarchy for all!

 

[The_J]

hey, that's my text .

 

[Crazy George]

...you could make yourself and friends or others as leaders.

Gotta have leaders... it gives a personality to your opponents.

Here. Here.
There WILL be a live action Crazy George Insane Leader Mod!
And if Firaxis doesn't include the tools to make this a plug and play option, they are missing the boat.

In other news,

The way you form your empire should have an influence on its traits.

I second the motion.
I'm not a violent person by nature. But when an uppity populace refuses to acknowledge my rightful - Nay! God given right to rule with an iron fist. Well, I feel that certain bonuses should apply.

No leaders! Unchain the masses! Anarchy for all!

Which is to say, if one utilizes the whip on a regular basis, one can only hope that one would get more proficient in its use.