Will There be Heroes in the Game?

[FinalDoomsday]

Not too keen on heroes really for a game that spans so long I like my cities to feel like the characters not immortal 'great men'. They were tolerable in Endless Legend considering it was fantasy so having all those rpg elements felt ok.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Not too keen on heroes really for a game that spans so long I like my cities to feel like the characters not immortal 'great men'. They were tolerable in Endless Legend considering it was fantasy so having all those rpg elements felt ok.

I confess I like the personal identification with the named Great People in Civ VI, even though all the named characters in the game are pure fantasy - realistically, most of them would automatically evaporate in 1 - 10 turns until the Modern-Atomic Eras. It looks so far to me (based on very, very incomplete information, so this is just an 'impression') that Humankind is going for much more general Cultural, Political, or Social traits for each Faction rather than any specific personal characterization - we won't see Alexander the Great, but we might see a Classical Macedonia with the semi-feudal social system and Greek cultural/scientific influences that he lived with.

By the same token, I don't think now hat we can realistically expect Great Generals, but the game might include Aristocratic Leadership as a Social/Political thing (Card? Development? Synthesis?) that enhances the combat power of all your units, or just your Knights. Or in the Industrial Era you can build a Military College in your Military Quarter (or is that too Civ VIsh?) like Sandhurst, St Cyr or West Point and get a general Upgrade in effectiveness among all your land military Units because of better-trained leadership at all levels - but no separate General Unit, named or un-named.

As said, this is nearly pure speculation, but extrapolating from the Humankind system of not having named leaders at the Faction level it seems likely.

For me personally that's a shame, because I probably know as many obscure effective or disastrous Military Leaders in History as anyone on the forum and would love to 'sneak' them into my games . . .

 

[Elhoim]

The "heroes" even as units could represent a part of your population, like a ruling party, a commercial guild, or a military order.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Broke this discussion out of the Known Info About Humankind thread as they are not in the game.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

Short answer: No, probably not, at least not for release. That panel was held almost a year ago and we were still considering it at the moment, but last I heard this is no longer planned. (Though I did not hear why.)
But please, do continue the discussion about heroes, since it will be valuable input if/when we return to it.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

If great people were a core part of the vision for what the dev team wants to do with HK, I'd be fine with great people being in the game.

If the core game vision doesn't require great people, I'm happy to not have them.

Less is often more when it comes to creating fun and accessible games.

 

[WillowBrook]

A hero system sort of along the lines of civ vi's great people would be great IMO. At least, having real historical people who show up under certain circumstances and give you some sort of unique benefit is one of my favorite systems in civ vi.

The way you earn them could potentially be very different from civ. And the possible benefits are only limited by creativity and the game systems.

If I were designing the system, I think I'd require that the person be used soon after appearing. It's kinda weird how in civ you can just sit a great person somewhere and not use them for centuries until they have maximum effect. Having more than one possible use could be fun, too, as long as each choice could be best under different sets of circumstances.

 

[pokiehl]

I would prefer to not have Hero units. In a historical game, they take me out of the experience and "gamify" everything too much.

I like that Humankind does not have leaders, because the immortal leader lasting thousands of years in Civ hurts my immersion. Heroes would similarly hurt immersion for Humankind.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The Heroes debate in historical gaming (i.e., between Humankind and Civ) is somewhat a product of the Great Man Theory of history and historiography.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, History was all about the actions of Great Men: Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, Newton, Temuchin, Watt, Brunel, Lincoln - they made history Happen.

Then, partly as a result of the 20th century Catastrophes brought about by 'Great' Men like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Lesser Great Men, the academic trend went to what was sometimes called Marxian History: Great Social, Civic, Military, etc Movements caused history, and individuals were just along for the ride. Alexander was Great because he happened along at the right time in the right place to 'ride' a historical movement, not because he 'caused' anything himself.

Now, we're sort of in between the two. The direct actions of individuals cannot be ignored completely, and there is hot debate on what the 'balance' is between Mass Movements and Individuals.

Civ straddled this, by having Civics and Social Policies and Technologies that change things in the game by various degrees, but also having named historical (and, in the Civ VI governors, Unhistorical) Individuals as Leaders and Great People.

Humankind, consciously or unconsciously, appears so far to be tipped toward the Impersonal Side, the Mass Civic, Social, Cultural, technological history leaving out the named individual completely.

As a historian, I'll play either one and both. I personally think that the 'Perfect 4X Historical Game' would have to find a way to balance both: that individuals make a difference, but I think the kind and amount of difference they make is very much dependent on the civil, cultural, social, technological conditions they inhabit. In other words, in "the perfect game", Alexander the Great of Macedon in 1000 BCE or 1000 CE or in 2020 CE will not necessarily have the same effect he had in 330 BCE, nor would he have the same effect in 330 BCE in a different Macedonia - say, one without a professional army and the income from the silver mines that made that army possible. BUT it is nearly impossible to imagine that a personality as forceful and full of talent as Alexander would have had no effect at all.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Double Post, but I had a minor Brainstorm (Brain Drizzle?) on the subject of Heroes/Named Characters in the game.

Humankind could remain true to its so-far-revealed system of not having named leaders or people in the game BUT still show the effects of the Hero/Great Person in the game by treating them as Random, or Semi-Random, Events.

So, you don't get to lead your Faction with Alexander the Great or Napoleon, but you get a Random Event of:

"Great General Ascends the throne/Seizes the throne: One Army of any size (your choice) gets X Combat and Tactical Maneuver Bonus (whatever is appropriate: +1 Melee/Range Factor on all units in the army, +1 Movement on the 'tactical map', +1 movement on the Game Map - we don't even know the factors of the units yet!).
The duration of the bonus, of course, would be, for most of the game, very Short - just a few turns, but not necessarily Historically Short - long enough to, say, mount an attack on an enemy city but much less than half an Era.

Random Events of this sort could cover all sorts of Heroic/Great People effects: Diplomatic, Gold, Production, Food/Population increase, Loyalty/Happiness, Religion, Science, etc.
And, my preference, although not to everyone's taste in gaming, would be to have some 'Random Events - Great People' with potential Negative Consequences. This is where not specifically naming them would come in very handy: when playing the French Faction you get a Great General named Marshal Tallard you would know better than to employ him (if you knew any French military history at all), but Unnamed you could blithely put him in charge with appropriate in-game results. Getting John Law or Guy Fawkes or Karl Marx in their respective fields would also cause the knowledgeable player to recognize the potential for future Disaster from employing them, whereas simply a Random Great Financier, Religious Zealot, or Great Writer would ring no alarm bells.

And, of course, some Random Events would be Beyond Player Control: A Great Plague, Drought, Buddha, Mohammed, Robespierre or Rasputin simply Happen and there is nothing you can do about it short of Assassination, which may have even worse effects than you can imagine.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

I'd be happy with important people being incorporated into the event system. I liked the random events in Civ 4 like a diplomat commiting a faux pas damaging relations with another civ.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'd be happy with important people being incorporated into the event system. I liked the random events in Civ 4 like a diplomat commiting a faux pas damaging relations with another civ.

To be honest, I was thinking as much about the "Events and Decisions" mechanic in Europa Universalis, which introduced an element of not only randomness but almost whimsy in some of the 'events' which you had to make a decision about. There was an excellent Mod incorporating the system into Civ V, but it never worked right on my Mac. I downloaded it anyway to keep a record of the types of "Events and Decisions" they used, because I still think it would be a useful system in any 4X historical game.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

I haven't read through all the content for our event system (I don't even know if it's all done being written), but I do think we have some events that are inspired by "great people", though I think we usually do not name them.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I haven't read through all the content for our event system (I don't even know if it's all done being written), but I do think we have some events that are inspired by "great people", though I think we usually do not name them.

Names would be out of synch with the spirit of the rest of the game, but having the effects would go a long way towards adding both random and personalizing effects to the game. You could make it more explicitly 'personal' by announcing the Random Event as, for instance:

"Some foreigner is down in the marketplace screaming that there is only one God. Should we throw him out the city gate or refer him to the folks running the Temple?"

And depending on what exactly he's screaming and its effects, he could be an (unnamed) Herodotus, Akhenaton, or Saul of Tarsus . . .

 

[conorbebe]

I haven't read through all the content for our event system (I don't even know if it's all done being written), but I do think we have some events that are inspired by "great people", though I think we usually do not name them.

I can’t help but find it strangely inconsistent that Humankind seems to be avoiding representing/mentioning specific individuals from history, but then also includes the “Confucian School”. I’d personally suggest renaming it to something more generic, such as a “School of Philosophy”, to better encompass the Hundred Schools of Thought that flourished during this era.

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

I can’t help but find it strangely inconsistent that Humankind seems to be avoiding representing/mentioning specific individuals from history, but then also includes the “Confucian School”. I’d personally suggest renaming it to something more generic, such as a “School of Philosophy”, to better encompass the Hundred Schools of Thought that flourished during this era.

I believe part of the reason why events to not use names is that they are not tied to cultures, so the name in the event could be vastly inconsistent with the combination of cultures you are currently playing. That's less of an issue for an Emblematic Quarter.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I can’t help but find it strangely inconsistent that Humankind seems to be avoiding representing/mentioning specific individuals from history, but then also includes the “Confucian School”. I’d personally suggest renaming it to something more generic, such as a “School of Philosophy”, to better encompass the Hundred Schools of Thought that flourished during this era.

They've set themselves up to walk a very fine tightrope in Humankind. On the one hand, they are getting extra flexibility and potential inclusiveness by not requiring named Leaders, so they can include otherwise Unincludeable Factions like Olmecs and 'Harappans' (and, presumably, later the Minoans?)
That's the Plus Side.
The Minus Side is that certain individuals and 'Factions' are indelibly associated in the General Public's (read: Customer's) minds: Greek Hoplites, Olmec Giant Heads,, Confuscius with Chinese philosophy.
AND, all too often, there is a real difference in the effects of, for our specific discussion here, Confuscian and Platonian or Pythagorean Philosophy. Plato might be the "Father of Western Philosophy" (somebody's else's term, not mine) but he never formulated a specific set of rules to live by and run the entire country by and had them incorporated into a School of instruction that trained the people running the country for the next 2000 + years.

Unfortunately for Consistency in Game Design, there are time when a specific name means something both in identification and game play mechanics - and game sales. I could hypothesize a perfectly good game with an army of heavy cavalry, pike phalanx, and mercenary light troops that could conquer Persia and call the Leader Jason of Thessaly and I'd be perfectly accurate in an Alternate History sort of way (Jason would probably have been Alexander's successor if he hadn't been killed relatively young while taking a city) - but in the Real World of Video Game Customers, nobody would know what the H**l I was talking about!

 

[God of Kings]

Don't forget that in history, one's hero is another's villain.

 

[mitsho]

Named Heroes are for flavour. Marco Polo is just that much more interesting than "Great Merchant #3". But I agree, heroes are just another facet of the "Great Man versus Structures" historical debate. So if you want to have heroes, you need a good gameplay reason for it. If you have them, you name them. It's as simple as that. Bonus point if you can name them in a way that makes sense in game (Watsonian?) or explains their effect to the player effectively by referencing real history (Doylist?). In the end, that's the same debate they probably had on whether to go with real world culture names (expected gameplay bonuses by the way of known references to history) or to go with generic traits (reach classical, you can add militarist to your bronze era merchant culture). And that debate was so clearly won by naming these traits, emblematic quarters and units, right.

And I can't possibly comment on whether "heroes" would help since we don't know anything much about the gameplay so far. ;-)