Ok.
I didn't want to let the cat out of the bag on this secret eventual project I had in mind here but since the proposal concept has grown to this point and I've been asked to explain, here's what I have envisioned (with some help from my wife getting the ball rolling with a more fundamental idea to get started):
1) A GLOBAL great person birth counter that compiles all GP pts from every city each player owns tracks the birth of Anti-Great People. (I was waiting until I'd developed some UI skills to create this bar and fit it in nicely.)
2) These Anti-Great People are fully in
your control and are desirable to get due to the heinous things they can do to your opponents.
3) They can all create Dark Ages for targeted opponents much as our current GPs may start a golden age for us.
4) They can all join opponent cities to create a horrific permanent drag on the cities abilities corresponding to the bonuses you'd get from settling a positive GP in one of yours.
5) Every type of great person gets an Anti-Type defined:
- Great Prophet: Great Heretic - capable of eradicating a religious wonder or holy city or of performing a mission that removes a chosen religion from x # of cities in the nation its carried out in. Potentially capable of generating a 'Cult' a negative religion that no nation wants in its borders (would really make us use those inquisitor units!) but would naturally spread via the multiple religion spread option.
- Great Engineer: Great Demolishionist(or even Great Terrorist) - Can destroy an opponent's wonder, or completely tear apart every production bonus building and all current production in a target city.
- Great Scientist: Great Deceiver - Can actually remove a recently learned tech from an opponent's knowledge. Can steal a tech from another civ without any espionage expense. Can build a School of Dissent (opposite of the Academy) in an enemy civ's city.
- Great Merchant: Great Criminal - Can found Organized Crime 'corporations' (the headquarters is a benefit mostly though increases crime but the spreading is mostly for your opponent's cities to ruin them from within - the new Lawyer unit would work very nicely with this!) Can perform Great Heist missions that steal huge lots of money from opponents. Can crash a Corporation, taking out the Headquarters (which leads to a huge deficit in cost vs benefit for the nation that normally has that Headquarters - it should be re-foundable though and when it returns, all the previously spread outlets still remain. So you can use a Great Criminal/Great Merchant (or whatever is necessary to found the corp) one-two punch to steal the headquarters of an opponent's Corporation.
- Great Artist: Great Revolutionary - Can be used to potentially force a split in an opponent's nation with a mechanism that works regardless of Rev on or off. Can greatly reduce a city's culture volume, and can purge your nation of all cultural overlap from a targeted source. Can create a long lasting anarchy in a target city.
- Great Doctor: Great Diseased - Can start an outbreak of a horrendous new disease. There's a lot of ways to vary that. Can reduce a plot to wasteland.
6) The type of Anti-Great Person that would be generated would correspond to the compiled definition of Global GP pts weighting the random result just as it does for a normal GP being birthed from a given city and would reflect the type accordingly.
I had intended to first generate a few new types of GPs too before getting to this project. It does require some intensive AI work, mission development, UI interaction, mathematical compilations in the dll and unit design. As a result, I was leaving it until I had a pretty good mastery of all subjects. But since its been brought out into the open, if the team wants to start trying to develop this, I'm all for it. I just also figured we had a lot of other things to address of a more important nature first.
cool idea
