Leader Discussion - Friedrich, Baroque

[disjointaccount]

Moving on to our next set of personas, first up is Friedrich, Baroque (or culture Fritz, if you struggle with the persona names like me).
His leader ability is Hohenfriedberger Marsch, which is a three-parter:

• Gain a Great Work upon capturing a Settlement for the first time
• +1 Culture per Age on displayed Great Works
• Gain an Infantry unit when you complete a Civic Mastery or construct a Culture Building

His attributes are Cultural and Militaristic, giving him access to the Cultural Exchange and Military Aid endeavors, along with events for attribute points upon reaching 10 population in a Settlement and discovering a Distant Lands continent (per this post).
He has no starting bias.
Playing as Friedrich unlocks Norman (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Iron or having 5 tiles with Ancient Walls) and Spain (otherwise unlocked by recapturing a lost Settlement) in the Exploration Age, and Prussia (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Nitre or having 3 Army Commanders) and France (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Wine) in the Modern Age.
As an AI leader, his agenda is Parisian Sensibilities - Increase Relationship per built Wonder in the Capital by a Medium Amount. Decrease Relationship per Building in the Capital by a Small Amount.

So what are everyone's thoughts? Likes/dislikes? Strengths and weaknesses? Fun strategies? Good civs to pair him with?

 

[Navelgazer]

I can't say that Freddy B. is strong - none of his abilities are anything you can really reliably build a strategy around - but the one game I played through as him, starting as Egypt, was super fun, at least. Good attributes/endeavors to have access to, so that's something. Freddy O. might be stronger (though I generally think that Culture is more important than Science in Civ7), but I've never been able to get an enjoyable game going with that persona. This one can at least be a good time.

Both personae are likely to just get themselves eaten alive through ill-advised war-mongering as AI. Which I'm fine with. Freddy is a good neighbor to start near, not because he's going to be/stay friendly, but because you can just rest assured that part of his empire is going to end up in your hands without too much effort, and mostly focus on other things until he "longs for the sound of cannons" or whatever and you can hustle over and take what you want.

He pairs well with, well, any civ with a Unique Infantry, I guess. In Antiquity, that's Egypt, Greece, Persia and Rome, and 3/4 of those are also Cultural Civs, two of those (Egypt and Greece) with Unique Quarters where one of the Unique Buildings has a culture base to trigger your free Infantry Unit (Rome is missing the Culture Building in their UQ.) I think I like the Egyptian pairing myself because the Medjay is primarily a defensive unit, and getting them for free means you can spend that much more time building your wonders (and Seven Wonders is easily the hardest Legacy Path in Antiquity right now, I'd say.)

 

[Leucarum]

So he's got the fastest culture victory potential in modern as artefacts have some timegating... so he's probably got the game's best speedrunning ability. By "fastest potential victory" as a metric, he's probably the best leader.

Other than that though... It's a deeply underwhelming kit.

 

[Gen.Washington]

not mechanics related but I feel like for a game wanting true to life leaders they made him far too flamboyant. Seems disrespectful giving him a personality he never historically had just for gay icon points.

 

[Leucarum]

not mechanics related but I feel like for a game wanting true to life leaders they made him far too flamboyant. Seems disrespectful giving him a personality he never historically had just for gay icon points.

Gay Icon Points sound amazing. Can we get more?

All the leaders are caricatures. And honesrtly Bolivar's representation is probably the most egregious devation from reality.

 

[aieeegrunt]

not mechanics related but I feel like for a game wanting true to life leaders they made him far too flamboyant. Seems disrespectful giving him a personality he never historically had just for gay icon points.

He absolutly hated the spotlight, dressed in an old army coat whenever possible, and his extremely unpretentious ways was a big part of the Cult Of Frederick that grew up around him.

At least once in his career as King when returning to Berlin after a victory, upon learning that some sort of celebration honoring him was planned, he bailed out of the royal carriage, used it as a decoy, and snuck into Berlin by a different route.

He was almost certainly gay, didn’t really try to hide it, but most certainly did not dance around like a Pride Parade mascot

It’s an insult honestly

 

[Leucarum]

Each leader in Civ7 has what... less than 10 voice lines in order to convey something historical about them. And often that also has to be filtered into a form that a modern audience will recognize, usually in a language which they don't speak. If you're lucky the leader left an appropriate historical quote which you can slip in there. But for the most part, a Civ writer has very little to work with. It's caricatures all the way down.

 

[sixty4half]

I never got the impression that Fred was gay just from the way his in game personna is. Is there some scene I have seen yet where he's flirting with other leaders or something else I missed?

I get the feeling he thinks he's better than me and that he has a flair for the dramatics.

But also; Gay Icon Points do sound pretty cool.

 

[Leucarum]

I never got the impression that Fred was gay just from the way his in game personna is. Is there some scene I have seen yet where he's flirting with other leaders or something else I missed?

I get the feeling he thinks he's better than me and that he has a flair for the dramatics.

I also didn't pick up on it until a native german speaker pointed it out.

Having him act a little campy is probably a better way to convey his orientation than having him discuss how he likes the shape of cannons or something equally cringe...

 

[WillK96]

I've played Freddy B with a Greece-Spain-Prussia path twice (And several other times with paths starting from Rome). He is very fun to play with. Maybe not the most optimized but fun regardless, especially if you can go really wide in Exploration. Tons of free infantry. The settlement cap somewhat hinders him, so hopefully there are mods/customization coming that changes the cap.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

not mechanics related but I feel like for a game wanting true to life leaders they made him far too flamboyant. Seems disrespectful giving him a personality he never historically had just for gay icon points.

True only to a point. They could have realistically had him playing the flute and writing the music for operettas, which he did when not out attacking his neighbors.

And, as Dr Duffy in his books on Frederick and the Frederickian army pointed out, he WAS flamboyant and theatrical when it suited his purposes to be so: he manipulated his officers and other people around him shamelessly with theatrical gestures and 'quotable' remarks that came so frequently they had to be planned:

"Come, dogs, do you want to live forever?"

"Any mule can obey orders.
I made you an officer because I expect you to know
when Not to obey orders."

"Never forget your big guns, which are the most respected arguments for the rights of kings."

"Artillery adds a note of class to what
would otherwise be a vulgar brawl."

Comparatively, his private (and Classified) 'Instructions' for his officers that he left as his memorial are very prosaic.

 

[Gen.Washington]

He absolutly hated the spotlight, dressed in an old army coat whenever possible, and his extremely unpretentious ways was a big part of the Cult Of Frederick that grew up around him.

At least once in his career as King when returning to Berlin after a victory, upon learning that some sort of celebration honoring him was planned, he bailed out of the royal carriage, used it as a decoy, and snuck into Berlin by a different route.

He was almost certainly gay, didn’t really try to hide it, but most certainly did not dance around like a Pride Parade mascot

It’s an insult honestly

Exactly, He was one of the greatest leaders of the 18th century and it's insulting to make his character so far removed from how he chose to portray himself. Diplomacy with Ben Franklin feels like interacting with Ben Franklin. Diplomacy with Friedrich feels like interacting with a character in a 21st century play.

 

[disjointaccount]

On paper, I don't hate culture Fritz. He has the potential to get a ton of units, and in the process of conquering with them, fill out other legacy paths too. The big problem is that infantry is simply not a desirable class of unit to amass. Half the time I end up just deleting the free units because all they do is sit around costing me money while I do my actual warfare with cav. The +1 culture per age on great works is good and has definite snowbal-y potential, but isn't enough on its own to make him more appealing than Catherine in that regard.

So really, the problem with Friedrich isn't a problem with Friedrich at all; it's just the balance of units in the game as a whole being off. If infantry gets some kind of use case where it's not just objectively inferior to cavalry, then Fritz will immediately become a high-tier leader for me. As it stands, though, he just amasses a bunch of units I have no interest in using.

As for his animations, I don't mind them. I think accuracy is important to civ to an extent, but I don't think it matters much when it comes to depicting a real-world leader's entire personality through like 10 pieces of dialogue and three animations. Especially considering personalities are often the most nebulous aspects of the historiographies surrounding figures (for any number of reasons - there's the most potential for bias/variance in sources from the time since "personality" isn't really an absolute or objective concept; there's the highest potential for propaganda - which is apparently why Augustus is a young man in basically every portrayal he gets - and in the cases of really old leaders, they're more based on myth than fact anyway - looking at you Kupe).

My very first game of 7, I left leader and civ on random and rolled Fritz, and I found his over-the-top, flamboyant animations pretty fun and endearing. Sure, irl Fritz may not have been like that (at least most of the time), but it's an interesting and relatively in-good-taste way to nod to him being gay and ultimately, civ is just us playing with our action figures based on these real people and events anyway. I've never thought of civ as a strict historically-accurate roleplaying simuator. If I don't care about the fact that there was never really a war between Confucious and Jose Rizal (or ancient Rome and the USA, to use the civ 6 equivalent before this turns into a civ-switching discussion), I don't really care if creative liberties are taken with one of the more uncertain and subjective aspects of leaders' identities.

 

[Weraptor]

Also, Frederick II would prefer to speak French in diplomatic affairs or private correspondence.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Also, Frederick II would prefer to speak French in diplomatic affairs or private correspondence.

- In another of his notorious quotes, he said that he only spoke German to his dogs.

 

[socratic]

I call this guy Frederick Broke. I always breathe a sigh of relief when he's my neighbor. Oblique's bonuses make much more sense, if you're going for domination you're likely building Science buildings anyway. The extra Great Works are fine, but don't reward your efforts like other domination leaders do. He needs more Culture bonuses from conquest. Lafayette and Revolutionary Napoleon fill the Culture-Domination niche way better

 

[Lord Lakely]

The bonus culture on Great Works the essential part of the kit here. They're easy to get, and every little bit matters. It allows him to compete with other leaders if he also leads a Culture Civ, and there are plenty of Civs around that have unique Culture buildings that result in free units (Egypt, Normans, France, Mexico, etc).

I haven't played Baroque Freddy, but I have done Oblique and know it's a metric ton of infantry. Baroque gets arguably more than what Oblique gets, and that's already a huge amount by itself.

The only real downsides to playing this leader are the fact that he receives infantry (which are slow and need so many Commander promotions to even become viable) and that his units eat up SO much gold. He's probably the only leader in the game I would actually recommend starting as Egypt (miserable Civ) for. The Gold and Culture matters a lot and each Mortuary temple is a free Medjay per CIty to boot.

Oblique is a lot better, but that's better addressed when his topic is made.

I would classify this leader as 'Miserable to play' (TM) due to his general mediocrity and propensity to be Egypt.