Originally posted by rustydawg
If I go out next week and invent time travel does that make me a leader? no. Progressive? maybe. Ahead of my time? Brilliant? Changed the world? Yes to all these things but the primary definition of leader in my and i imagine most others is someone who actually leads people.
But that's exactly my point. That the concept of a "leader" being someone who specifically leads a military or political effort is a limited perspective, particularly in light of the fact that culture, production and religion are such important components of the Civ III game.
Webster's defines leader as: 1. One who, or that which, leads or conducts; a guide; a conductor. Especially: (a) One who goes first. (b) One having authority to direct; a chief; a commander.
So, by the most reliable definition, the inventor of time travel would be a leader. He goes first.
As for the Siddhartha reference, the only reading I've done on the subject put him as sort of an apprentice to Buddha. Maybe that was creative license on the authors part.
Think of it as God/Jesus. There's a duality in it -- a human manifestation of a religious force.
Muhammed was the force behind one of the worlds largest religions as well you neglect to mention.
I didn't think that was necessary. My point was simply that he was a militant religious leader. He spread Islam through conquest.
Point is I don't think that throwing in the 'pope' unit is something that will significantly add to the game and the designers will almost certainly offend someone and not be 'PC' for what its worth.
What's not PC is having the only great cultural leaders available in the game emerge from warfare. This elevates the importance of, say, Patton over, say, Ford. Which do you think contributed more to the long-term success of the U.S.? (That's a rhetorical question -- I think it they aren't comparable.)
Einstein gave Oppenheimer legitimacy when taking his case to the federal government. He didnt actually lead the project but he got it going. He was forced from Germany due to the totalatarian state there. I think that is a time of crisis.
Agreed that it was a time of crisis. However, Einstein's legacy was already established as soon as the specific theory of relativity was published. The general theory, IIRC, was published before 1940, and that established Einstein as the leading scientific mind of the century. All of this was, of course, before WWII. Certainly what Einstein had to say about the Manhattan Project had a lot to do with its outcome, but if anything, that only strengthens the argument that it's not necessarily a great conqueror that can create an atmosphere of tremendous motivation and success.
Anyway I'm a history minor so i'd love to get into the specifics but I'm going off on tangents here. My point that is relevant in this forum is that the leaders were obviously intended primarily as military units (hence the names and army function) and you run into all kind of game balancing problems like several others have mentioned.
Given that the result of the game is that leaders are almost never used for armies, and are almost entirely used to rush Wonders, I would categorize the association of the emergence of leaders with military-only ventures as a mistake on the game designer's part. Put simply, in order to get the ability to rush a Wonder, you have to go to war. There's no other way to do it. Which means the game's design encourages the player to be militaristic. But the obvious intention of Civ III was to develop *alternatives* to militaristic approaches to the game, and therefore opening up some avenues for leader aquisition through non-militaristic means would make an awful lot of sense.
