[History] Unexpected Leader Personalities

I'd be very surprised if I was the only one who felt the portrayal of some leaders was a little off; If you found something odd about certain people in the game I'd be interested in hearing about it. I'll kick off with the one I found most jarring:

Frederick II of Prussia fought a series of costly wars against vastly greater powers and was renowned for his military prowess (Napoleon for one considered him one the greatest tacticians in history... and he remains somewhat controversial in Germany because of his perceived warmongering).
I have no issue with the traits - he was a man of diverse interests and any selection would be arbitary.
However, In Civ4, he's far too peaceful in my opinion. He builds a neglegible army, he's one out of 3 leaders whose demands you can refuse with impunity(Hatshepsut and Gandhi being the others) and I don't understand where the Base Peace Weight of 8 comes from.
At the same time, he was very tolerant as far as religion is concerned and I'm suprised this wasn't incorporated.

 

Yes Fredric does come of a bit odd (especially if you ad that his favourite civic is set to universal suffrage when in fact he is the personification of enlightened despotism).

 

BTW - It's believed that Hatshepsut led some wars early in her career.

Many of the leader personalites are a bit off, I think - I noticed this especially with leader traits. In my mod, I changed a ton of leader traits for various leaders that I thought were more realistic... but in doing so, there were instances where I had to rationalize a certain trait combo in order to ensure that each leader had a unique set of traits. It was a juggling game.

Honestly, half the leaders in civ could be considered 'Aggressive' when looking at it from a historical perspective.

 

Random Leader Personalities solves not only the problem of inaccurate historical representations, but also of game predictability.

 

As far as traits go, the problem is that the designers appear to have assigned them on the basis of "Which of these two words do you most associate with this ruler's reign?" and NOT on the basis of the effects of the game mechanics they chose to assign to those words. Man's a Moocow is probably Financial entirely on the basis of how much gold he spent on the hajj, but what Financial actually does (pre-BtS) can be summed up almost entirely as "lead the world in discovering technologies", which Mali never, ever did under any ruler. Financial's commerce bonus would be better suited to Han-to-early-Ming Chinese and older Indian leaders in addition to the post-Renaissance Germanic (German, Dutch, English, American) leaders. And Spiritual gets attached to anyone the designers strongly associated with piety, producing theocrats like Saladin and Isabella with the power to completely change their people's form of government and state religion without anarchy. Meanwhile, they never saw fit to give a Greek leader Industrious despite the huge number of Greek-built wonders in the game...

 

Hannibal's reforms after the Second Punic War allowed the subdued Carthaginians to pay off their tribute to Rome without prolonged, heavy taxation. Of course, that might make him more suited for Organized than Financial...

 

I disagree with Qin Shi Huang with the protective trait. He was quite aggressive in unifying the different regions of China and stamping out dissent.

 

Actually, the Carthaginians fought a lot of wars throughout its history, including several with the Greeks in Sicily.

 

and in Tyre held off Persia for five thousand four hundred twenty eight million years and fought Alexander the Great for awhile there. Now that i think of it i am not sure why the Phonecians/Carthagenians didn't turn into a pirate Civ.

 

I agree - I gave Qin Shi Huang AGG/IND in my mod.

I made a similar change here, as well - I created a new leader trait called 'strategic' and gave it to Hannibal along with organized. I designed strategic as a pro-espionage trait that gives Drill I to melee and gunpowder units. So Hannibal is STR/ORG.

 

It'd be almost impossible in a game like this to get every leaders traits to reflect their real life traits, so I don't mind if they aren't exact or sometimes reflect their country more than themselves...

This conversation is interesting though. The main trait that gets up my nose is Spiritual. It would seem to me that the reason has been given to a few leaders/countries not because they were any more spiritual than others; but more because they lack much else to celebrate.
Is Monty really more 'Spiritual' than Elizabeth or Lincoln? Or the latter just more successful in almost every way. Maybe religions which advocate moderation and doing the small things right are seen to be less spiritual than cutting peoples hearts out of their bodies while they are alive.

Anyway, in trying to make all civilisations and cultures equal you're going to deviate just a little away from reality, so now I've had my moan I can accept it.

 

It'd be almost impossible in a game like this to get every leaders traits to reflect their real life traits, so I don't mind if they aren't exact or sometimes reflect their country more than themselves...

This conversation is interesting though. The main trait that gets up my nose is Spiritual. It would seem to me that the reason it has been given to a few leaders/countries is not because they were any more spiritual than others; but more because they lack anything that strongly defines them.
Is Monty really more 'Spiritual' than Elizabeth or Lincoln? Or are the latter just more successful in almost every way. Maybe religions which advocate moderation and doing the small things right are seen to be less spiritual than cutting peoples hearts out of their bodies while they are alive.

Anyway, in trying to make all civilisations and cultures equal you're going to deviate just a little away from reality, so now I've had my moan I can accept it.

 

It's a dodgy trait in its implementation anyway. Changing your outlook to whatever is most convenient at the drop of a hat doesn't sound very spiritual to me.
Haviing said that, I think spiritual is a perfectly fine trait and it does fit Monty, Justinian or Gandhi more than Elizabeth or Lincoln (I agree that the latter get Philosophical... the distinction is a little blurry but on the whole I think the creators did a fair job).

The traits are tricky to assign anyway; I'm more concerned about the personalities. I'm not aware Montezuma II was as reckless a warmonger as he is in the game; supposedly in cases of only 1 leader the image of the civilisation as a whole also plays a part. I already voiced my consternation over Frederick.

 

So what your saying is that Elizabeth, who stood up for her Prodestant Christian faith before becoming Queen, risking her neck in the process (Mary probably killed more prodestants than any other English Monach); who then went on to take her fathers church and turn it into something practical for herself and her people and her God; who played on the image that she was a virgin to try and counter the veneration that alot of people felt for Mary the mother of God(a Catholic practice)...and none of this was easy -it was all risky- as England was largely still Catholic in the clergy; and Elizabeth wasn't an absolute monarch...

The idea that this Elizabeth was less Spiritual than a man who ruled over an empire where they sacrificed slaves to the gods -but I'm not sure that he was directly involved- and that in the short term there was no risk for him as doing this maintained the status quo for his people. In the long run it made him more enemies abroad, but that was largely unavoidable evan if they weren't sacrificing slaves.

If he is more spiritual then spiritual is to be cast into a violent light, likewise with Justinian. Ghandi is different, but still in my humble opinion no more or less Spiritual than Elizabeth.
Which brings me back to spiritual being a cop out. 'Ummmm, you weren't that great at much compared to most empires/leaders so we will call you spiritual and hope that it's to PC for anyone to challenge.'

What I've just said isn't the case everytime, but the moment they make a civ spiritual I think it's a unintentional insult.

As for you not likeing their ability to change civics at a whim; I think they are trying to suggest that a highly religious population will easily follow what their leaders are suggesting as long as those leaders manage to frame it as something their 'god' wants. Which would fit some real life situations.

 

Let me rephrase. Elizabeth: didn't deny her faith, didn't admit any wrongdoing, didn't convert to catholicism; under huge pressure of the like that we hopefully will never have to face.

 

Aside from his given traits, Montezuma is the biggest pain in the ass in history. I have never played a game in which he was an opponent in which he did not declare war on me at least once. No leader, no matter how much of a warmonger, should be that willing to fight wars. It seems like he is never at peace, ever. If I am playing a game and find out that Montezuma and I will share a border, I immediately quit and start over, because it is guaranteed that he will declare war on me at least 3 times over the course of the game. Once I even tried to avoid it by loading a previous save when he declared war, and then tried to make him an ally so it wouldn't happen. I ended up giving him all of my techs (which was like 9), and all of my resources, and I converted to his religion. It said that he was friendly towards me, and he still declared war. It's just dumb.