Role Playing a leader

[Chomper]

My friend recently bought Civilization 4 after hearing me rant about my wonderful experiences with 3, and why? Because she wanted to play the role of a dictator. I have to admit, this was my original reason for buying this game off of a 5 below shelf, even though as I played I became more interested in playing strategically and winning than playing in character.

I don't suggest this as an overhaul to the current AI or victory conditions, they still make a great game. What if there was a more sandbox esque mode, that focused more on the realism aspect. Sure I could just as easily run over the AI now that they're designed to be less intelligent and more realistic, but why when I could be a leader instead of a gamer? In the world today nobody is trying to reach a victory condition, but to continue progression as a species. The mode could have a focus on random events, like disaster and the need for relief, or the staving off of an alien invasion, things that get in the way of a stratgy game but would be ripe for role playing.

I've seen something like this before. I can't honestly remember if it was here or on the 2k boards so I apologize if somebody here posted something similar already.

 

[epicivfreak]

Yeah, that's sort of the major problem with Civilization. There are really two games in one, just as there are two camps of civ players. There's the Strategy Game, and the Roleplaying Game, and Firaxis has always tried to balance the two as a cohesive whole. I think both groups of players would be better served if a separate game was made for each camp, a Civilization: Strategy and a Civilization: Roleplaying, if you will, but that's not likely to happen...

It seems that with Civ5 though, Firaxis has decided to lean much more towards the Strategy than before, and leave the Roleplaying to the fans - or to the mods more accurately. Then these Roleplaying mods can be downloaded by all the Strategy camp players so that they can complain about how the AI can't handle all these features well and it's nothing but an advantage to the human player, not realizing that those in the Roleplaying camp could care less about such things so long as they add to the immersive roleplaying experience...

Ahhh, Civ.