Why Ada Lovelace is not a good choice to lead Great Britain

[GeneralZift]

If they have a good idea for a gameplay mechanic but the best person to embody that mechanic is a significant non leader, should they choose them or try to make another person fit the gameplay mechanic?

No no, I mean I totally see the point you're making, and by all means significant non leaders can make for good characters, but for a starting roster, I see why some people are alienated by the lack of robust classic leaders.

Britain without Lizzy or Vicky is like sad old English weather but without the accompanying fish and chips

 

[Archanist]

No no, I mean I totally see the point you're making, and by all means significant non leaders can make for good characters, but for a starting roster, I see why some people are alienated by the lack of robust classic leaders.

Britain without Lizzy or Vicky is like sad old English weather but without the accompanying fish and chips

Ah yeah I get you. Divorcing leaders from civ makes for a big change and loosening guidelines on who can be leader is another big change.

 

[Zaarin]

Britain without Lizzy or Vicky is like sad old English weather but without the accompanying fish and chips

My favorite thing about this analogy is I don't like fish or Victoria.

 

[RedCourtJester]

My favorite thing about this analogy is I don't like fish or Victoria.

You should watch The Young Victoria. Surprisingly good in the "samey British monarch costume porn biopics we never needed" canon, dare I say the best. Miranda Richardson and Paul Bettany are in it.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Marx was also notably disinterested in states. All of his writings concern people in various social situations, and their behaviour. He was not a political leader, but a theorist and philosopher who called out what he perceived to be the injustices in society.

Those characteristics would make him a strange leader choice in a game where you lead states, and where populations are represented by raw numbers.

he’d be a fine choice for civ 7 specifically. if he’d been in previous civs it would’ve been weird

 

[GeneralZift]

My favorite thing about this analogy is I don't like fish or Victoria.

Fish is great! You just have to get used to it imo. And it depends on how it's cooked ya know

 

[Leyrann]

(which, unless we are lying to ourselves, isn't the case with Lovelace; no one would put her in a list of - say - top ten most important mathematicians)

Probably not in the top ten most important mathematicians, no, but anyone worth their salt would put her in the top ten most important computer scientists.

 

[Arcaian]

Which isn't how countries work, though; the leader may as well be a super-important genius mathematician (which, unless we are lying to ourselves, isn't the case with Lovelace; no one would put her in a list of - say - top ten most important mathematicians) and it won't magically make the country be scientific. The complimentary is also true, a country can be scientific with an uneducated moron as leader.

The same is true of military leaders, though - we're just more used to military leaders. You can take the greatest commander in history, and put them in charge of a state that has no meaningful military, and they won't be able to magic up a military on their own. They'd need to take time to build up the infrastructure required for a functional military - they might be able to have some moments of punching well above their weight due to their skill in military matters, but they're not magic. Similarly, there are definitely examples of states that have completely incompetent commanders as leaders who nonetheless have been successful in their military endeavours - even some leaders who are well known for the military accomplishments of their time could arguably be in that list. Justinian probably shouldn't be called incompetent as a commander, but given the pop history understanding of him as the man who re-conquered the Roman Empire, he wasn't exactly a great tactician. I think that all of this can all be applied to a scientist as well - you can take an incredible scientist, put them in charge of a state that has minimal scientific infrastructure and they'll have to build it up to have the state be a scientific powerhouse, while still likely letting the state punch above its weight while that happens. I think the main difference is that any highly skilled military leader has a lot of experience commanding large power structures, whereas most scientists don't - so you'd need quite a bit of training (and talent) there as well.

 

[Krikkit1]

The same is true of military leaders, though - we're just more used to military leaders. You can take the greatest commander in history, and put them in charge of a state that has no meaningful military, and they won't be able to magic up a military on their own. They'd need to take time to build up the infrastructure required for a functional military - they might be able to have some moments of punching well above their weight due to their skill in military matters, but they're not magic. Similarly, there are definitely examples of states that have completely incompetent commanders as leaders who nonetheless have been successful in their military endeavours - even some leaders who are well known for the military accomplishments of their time could arguably be in that list. Justinian probably shouldn't be called incompetent as a commander, but given the pop history understanding of him as the man who re-conquered the Roman Empire, he wasn't exactly a great tactician. I think that all of this can all be applied to a scientist as well - you can take an incredible scientist, put them in charge of a state that has minimal scientific infrastructure and they'll have to build it up to have the state be a scientific powerhouse, while still likely letting the state punch above its weight while that happens. I think the main difference is that any highly skilled military leader has a lot of experience commanding large power structures, whereas most scientists don't - so you'd need quite a bit of training (and talent) there as well.

Which is why the leaders are not “in charge” but are a personification of some aspects of your empire’s/people’s culture.

 

[Kyriakos]

Which is why the leaders are not “in charge” but are a personification of some aspects of your empire’s/people’s culture.

Which in turn is false as they carry those empires/people aspects with them regardless of which civ you choose=>they are just someone 'in charge'.

Firaxis (and obviously it is not alone at all in this) wants to eat its cake and have it too, so they do want traits to spice things up, but tried to get away from the idea of those traits belonging to civs - due to possible connotation of superiority/inferiority and other unpleasant stuff. But it is even less logical to argue that the civ 'leader' brings those traits to entire civs. So we ended up with what we have now: floating gods who bestow upon their random civ their divine trait.

It's one step worse from the previous iteration, when at least those leaders were historical leaders and thus directly tied to the civ - while allowing for a weak thesis of pretending that the traits aren't civ-specific.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Which in turn is false as they carry those empires/people aspects with them regardless of which civ you choose=>they are just someone 'in charge'.

Firaxis (and obviously it is not alone at all in this) wants to eat its cake and have it too, so they do want traits to spice things up, but tried to get away from the idea of those traits belonging to civs - due to possible connotation of superiority/inferiority and other unpleasant stuff. But it is even less logical to argue that the civ 'leader' brings those traits to entire civs. So we ended up with what we have now: floating gods who bestow upon their random civ their divine trait.

It's one step worse from the previous iteration, when at least those leaders were historical leaders and thus directly tied to the civ - while allowing for a weak thesis of pretending that the traits aren't civ-specific.

if leaders in civ actually “led” the civ, they wouldn’t be immortal. it’s all abstraction and i fail to see how having to “be a political head of government/state” is the only valid path to making sense as an abstraction of a civ’s values and accomplishments (which ada lovelace totally can be)

this idea of floating gods who bestow traits is what leaders have always done—in civ 3/4 it was just abstract personality traits, in civ 5 they still did it, it just didn’t make the distinction between leader and civ well, and civ 6 is the exact same as 5, just with explicit distinctions made so that civs could have multiple leaders

 

[Kyriakos]

Imo it is too much of a gimmick. I think that it only exists to avoid the question of setting civ traits - and not wishing to be done with traits completely.
Of course it is a game, yet discussion of the mechanic - here with a specific floating deity for context - is perfectly valid.
If they wanted to have traits but not tie them to civs, they could have asked the player to select where to focus on - rpg powers-like. The civs could still have leaders - historical in that case.
I personally found the have-leaders-but-only-historical-ones angle to be a half-decent compromise, as then the excuse is that those traits are about specific people - when in reality they are of the civ as they belong to a historical period with known qualities.

 

[Krikkit1]

Which in turn is false as they carry those empires/people aspects with them regardless of which civ you choose=>they are just someone 'in charge'.

Firaxis (and obviously it is not alone at all in this) wants to eat its cake and have it too, so they do want traits to spice things up, but tried to get away from the idea of those traits belonging to civs - due to possible connotation of superiority/inferiority and other unpleasant stuff. But it is even less logical to argue that the civ 'leader' brings those traits to entire civs. So we ended up with what we have now: floating gods who bestow upon their random civ their divine trait.

It's one step worse from the previous iteration, when at least those leaders were historical leaders and thus directly tied to the civ - while allowing for a weak thesis of pretending that the traits aren't civ-specific.

The Leader is those attributes that remain even as other aspects change (sort of like preexisting Traditions)

 

[Kyriakos]

What are traditions if not explicitly civ-related?

 

[Krikkit1]

What are traditions if not explicitly civ-related?

They are something from a different civ than the one you have now…sort of like your leader is the traditions from your imaginary preAntiquity civ

Your leader is the personification of all the parts of your civ that make the Connection from Egypt to Mongols to Mexico (since your civ isn’t just Egypt, it’s the unique alt history civ expressed as Lovelacen Egypt which progresses to Lovelacen Mogolia to Lovelacen Mexico)

 

[Kyriakos]

The problem is that there is no notion of traditions that are prehistoric... Well, certainly not of the trait type we have in civ

 

[Krikkit1]

The problem is that there is no notion of traditions that are prehistoric... Well, certainly not of the trait type we have in civ

yes… but the point is the “Leader” is the aspects of your people that precede and are separate from the empire they are in.

 

[Kyriakos]

yes… but the point is the “Leader” is the aspects of your people that precede and are separate from the empire they are in.

It's less convoluted to just say that "leader" is simply not aspects of your people

 

[Zaarin]

Fish is great! You just have to get used to it imo. And it depends on how it's cooked ya know

Fish are great when they're alive and left in peace in the ocean. I do like crab, though.

 

[Arcaian]

It's less convoluted to just say that "leader" is simply not aspects of your people

I'm not sure, I think saying that the leader is representative of the focus and spirit of your people, and isn't actually an immortal god-emperor ruling with an iron fist for 6,000 years is pretty straightforward