Peace Time Ways to Create Great Leaders

[grapedog]

Plenty of Great Leaders have come in peace-time as well as war time...but why is it in Civ III that you can only create a great leader through conflict. I think there should be another option using peace, diplomacy and culture to great a non-war great leader. If a great leader can arise from battle why not a culturally advanced city or perhaps through some sharp negotiating with the AI's..IE: you're foreign advisor. Civilizations with a militaristic trait who engange in many small wars have a chance of creating a number of leaders over much shorter time periods which can lead into increased land/cities through war, or getting many of the big wonders.

Just curious if anyone as any thoughts on this...

[spy14]

How about the completion of wonders createing a great leader? If they can finish the things then surely the unrushed construction of them could generate leaders to

[The Eliminator]

Yes, there should be some sort of way to get leaders in peacetime, but it shouldn't be too easy. Maybe get them at certain intervals, like if your civ reaches such and such a population at a certain time, era, or something like that. I dunno.

[MiloMilo]

I have a problem with my current game: I'm well into the industrial age, and have been involved in one war or another for much of the game. But, as a non-militaristic civ, I have had bad luck and no leaders. This means no armies, so no Heroic Epic, No Military Academy, and no Pentagon. And again, no armies, even built ones. This really stinks. The ability to build armies conventionally later is still tied to your getting a leader in the ancient age?? Maybe you should get a leader in a city when it amasses more than, say, 10,000 culture points.

[Sinapus]

For the army problem, I modified the Military Academy so that it did not require a victorious army to build, figuring that by that time the concept of armies would have spread enough that gaining a military tradition would allow it.

Boy are those armies expensive, though.

(Am now experimenting with making the Heroic Epic, Pentagon and Forbidden Palace capable of building armies as well. The Forbidden Palace is given that ability because I was thinking of trying to give the Palace the ability, but am unsure of what the effect of turning it into a small wonder would do.)

Personally, I think the part about not being able to get a GL from fighting barbarians should be removed. Fighting off one of those 24 Horseman stacks during a Raging Hordes uprising *has* to inspire great leaders.

[Coracle]

Originally posted by grapedog
Plenty of Great Leaders have come in peace-time as well as war time...but why is it in Civ III that you can only create a great leader through conflict. I think there should be another option using peace, diplomacy and culture to great a non-war great leader. If a great leader can arise from battle why not a culturally advanced city or perhaps through some sharp negotiating with the AI's..IE: you're foreign advisor. Civilizations with a militaristic trait who engange in many small wars have a chance of creating a number of leaders over much shorter time periods which can lead into increased land/cities through war, or getting many of the big wonders.

Just curious if anyone as any thoughts on this...

This is all Soren's weird sense of irony.

He played down warfare for this Culture bullbleep, but we can only get leaders in warfare. However, the leaders have NO effect on combat itself and can only create armies, which we all know are rather useless especially compared to being able to instantly create a Wonder.

After Civ 2 we all wanted military leaders who could effect combat the way Napoleon or Hannibal would have. But we don't get it in Civ 3.

Non-military keaders could have a cultual or political effect.

There are lots of options besides Firaxis' simpleminded idea.

[Sean]

I find the whole game is geared towards war. In this respect to great leaders, but also the scoring system is largely based on landmass and population (which is best aquired through war. We should get direct points for year of victory and wonders, and possibly techs, to help placate our desire to crush.

[The Eliminator]

And a bonus to your score for peace, like the "peace bar" in Civ2.

[Coracle]

Speaking of irony. . .

Soren and Firaxis gave us all those female leaders, a dark-skinned Cleopatra, lots of "Culture", and played down warfare, no Fundamentalism, no terrorist options, and other PC crap.

But to them it is OK for a single unit to wipe out a city of over a million people almost instantly, turn all the buildings into grassland, and process (into cat food??) all those corpses. And of course all these people marched like sheep to their own deaths!

It is so braindead and false Fioraxis should be shamed of itself.

But as long as they find ways to sell more disks for their Infogrames puppet masters they don't care.

[zulu9812]

Originally posted by grapedog
Civilizations with a militaristic trait who engange in many small wars have a chance of creating a number of leaders over much shorter time periods which can lead into increased land/cities through war, or getting many of the big wonders.

Absolutely.

The gane is geared towards warfare - and that is the bestw ay to win. In most of my games, I'm constantly at war with some varying nations. Than again, I like war. But you're right. you should get peaceful leaders. Anyone have any ideas how?

btw - this is a quote from the May 2001 issue of PC Gameplay UK:

"One of the most significant changes to the game has been made to combat. In Civilization 2, combat was not designed to be a major part of the gameplay. Although world conquest was one of the ways to win the game, Sid Meier and his development team intended the peaceful victory path - becoming the first nation to go into space - to be the main rout to success in the game.

But it wasn't to be. Instead, mor often than not, gamers resorted to the 'beat the hell out of everybody' approach. As a result, Firaxis has made combat a more integral part of Civ 3 with changes to the rules of engagement and new units added. President of Firaxis, Jeff Bridges, explains: "Combat has become a much more significant part of the game.""

So you see - civ2 players wanted more combat. They got more combat (just like Firaxis said they would) and now everyone moans that there's too much combat. So, Coracle - regardless of what Soren may or may not have said, the official line was always that civ3 would involve more warfare.

[V.O.C.'02]

yeah!!! up the irons!

[Jethro83]

It kinda sucks that the main way to victory is warfare (though peacemongering can be boring, there should be a definitive path that way). I mean, the game is called CIVILIZATION. The way you need to play to get anywhere in the game hardly seems civilized at all.

The concept of leaders is completely flawed, and increases the need for war. Even if there isn't any leaders coming out of your elite attackers, there is still the urge to keep fighting until they come. And when they do, you need them to rush your Forbidden Palace to eliminate corruption in the occupied territories (most of the time anyway), or you build them into an army whose units become obsolete quickly. All just to build more wonders that apparantly increase the chance of a leader appearing, and one that allows its city to build an army like any other unit. Most games I play, I never see such things happen. They're nearly as rare to me as Iron Works (which by the way is ESSENTIAL in the city with Military Academy if you want your armies relatively soon).


I'd definitely like to see at least one peacetime way of creating a leader. Maybe when a city accumulates a certain HUGE amount of culture points (that would make the Oracle much more useful BTW since the Oracle is huge on cultural value for an early game wonder). Another way might be if the total population of your civ reaches a certain milestone. There's probably a few more possibilities, but no more come to mind at the moment.

[Ijuin]

Hmmmm. How about:

5% chance of GL when a Great Wonder is completed without being rushed by a pre-existing GL

100% chance of GL if you are the first civ to enter a new age

20% chance of GL when you enter a new age and are not the first civ to do so.

5% chance of GL when your civ's total culture points reaches each binary multiple of 100 (i.e. 100, 200, 400, 800, etc.)--this gives 11 chances before your civ reaches the 100,000 points needed for culture victory.

[Lucilla]

Originally posted by Ijuin
Hmmmm. How about:

5% chance of GL when a Great Wonder is completed without being rushed by a pre-existing GL

100% chance of GL if you are the first civ to enter a new age

20% chance of GL when you enter a new age and are not the first civ to do so.

5% chance of GL when your civ's total culture points reaches each binary multiple of 100 (i.e. 100, 200, 400, 800, etc.)--this gives 11 chances before your civ reaches the 100,000 points needed for culture victory.

I like the first three options, although I think that the percentages should differ with the difficulty level. On higher levels you will almost always stay behind in the tech race, so the AI gets all the GLs from the Great Wonders and new ages, which speeds his development even more up.
I'd say on higher levels the chances for the human player should increase and the chances for the AI decrease. But of course not so significantly that higher levels get to easy.

The last option isn't necessary anymore if you have the other options already, IMHO.

[ShredZ]

I think it should be rather hard to do, like:

100% GL chance after reaching over 100million population
100% GL chance after having peace for over 50 turns
100% GL chance after you have 6 cities with over 10,000 culture each

and to make it harder, maybe it should be 'only the first civ to reach it', but then the AI might get it more times than not, which is what Im trying to avoid.

[Dr. Stiby]

I disagree with a 100% chance of getting a GL. What makes a great leader unique is the fact that you don't know when you'll get one, so you can't adjust you strategy because of a GL. Of course you can push your luck by being a big warmonger, thus increasing your chances of getting one, but you never know when it happens.
GL's through high culture wouldn't make sense, unless they'll have different options. A great painter can't form an army.
So what about differnt types of Great Leaders? A Great Cultural Leader (e.g. Michelangelo, van Gogh) can improve a civ's culture drastically.
Maybe in times of peace there will be another type of leader. Maybe this can give a civ some diplomatic advances, but this concet will be harder to work out.
One can also think about a great science leader (Einstein, Newton), this should improve your science for a couple of turns.

Just some ideas for the peaceful players among us!

[Adm.Naismith]

I've spent some posts in the past supporting the concept of Great People (early Firaxis idea, IIRC) opposing to the only military Great General we got.

We should have:
Great scientist -> science bonus
Great artist -> culture bonus
Great merchant/economist -> economic bonus
Great philosopher/religious -> happiness bonus
Great architect/engineer -> production bonus

May be also
Great explorer -> exploration/resources bonus

And about military leader I can't understand why they left out Great Admirals and Aces pilots for navy and air victories


Of course I understand that too many different leaders and too many available at the same time can confuse a player or unbalance the game too much if they are so overpowered to let someone finish three Great Wonder in a turn, so we must tune them down a bit and manage their total number.

I must point out a problem some of you seems to forget:
the Great Leaders should be a "wild card" to help a Civ who is left a bit behind to recover and keep the game interesting.

If we link new leaders only to events that can happen only to an already winning civ, we are simply enlarging the gap, hence we aren't keeping the game interest for long.

Some choices are also potential handicap for special play style, i.e. linking a Leader appearance to a defined number of cities with high culture cut that chance for "One City Victory" games.

We should link the opportunity to events that can happen also to well developed small civ, i.e. gaining a Great scientist if you spend enough money in research and have a library/citizen ratio (or university/citizen) high enough (I haven't decided any percentage at this moment, it's mostly matter for game balancing test).

It will give some use to all that statistics that Civ II used to compute for us.

It can also save some really bad kicked Civ, because a Great Religious can appear easily in a desperate nation, helping it to try to gain back some power (think about Moses for Hebrew people).

On a side note, a Great Leader shouldn't be killed the same turn it appear IMHO (I hate it when my defensive elite unit generate my only leader of a full game then it will be killed the same turn ).
Leader should be put in jail in Capital or maybe in nearest enemy city (escorted by a military unit by all the path or "teleported", I haven't decided yet).

This way you can try to save him/her or trade their freedom (pay for ransom) as often happened in history. May be you can still kill the enemy GL, but only after some turn and with bad diplomatic effects (angry).

[Dr. Stiby]

Beat you to it AN!
Well, your concepts all seem very interesting. I'd like the idea of liberating GL's. this should cause for a wide joy throuhout your entire civ. Maybe the opponent killing your GL should have disadvantages in fighting you. Like your civs soldier are so angry about their GL being killed that they fight more fierce (maybe getting an extra hitpoint?)

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Dr. Stiby
Beat you to it AN!

Yes, I'm a slow writer in english, and you have a better Lan Lag

Maybe the opponent killing your GL should have disadvantages in fighting you. Like your civs soldier are so angry about their GL being killed that they fight more fierce (maybe getting an extra hitpoint?)

I'm pondering about the effect of captured GL, but I think you'll probably end with four different alternatives and related effects:

1) your GL is captured and kept imprisoned for some turns: your people lose faith on victory and suffer worse war weariness; OTOH the longer you keep him imprisoned, the smaller the ransom you could ask.
2) your GL is killed and become a Hero or a Martire: you can draft +1 people as conscript every city per one turn, also if your government/tech usually don't make available this feature (that count as "Volunteers" joining to revenge).
3) your GL is captured but you can free him/her with your troops: you gain a small special bonus for that, e.g. a free turn of "We Love The Boss"
4) you pay the ransom to free the leader: your leader "teleport" back to your Capital or into the nearest city of yours, and became useful again, after a "recover/travel" time (e.g. he show again on the map after xx turn since his liberation).

[Solver]

The great Velociryx has a post about this, where he describes Great Artists. Look it up somehwere, it's a great one, after that Firaxis invited him to join the Beta Team for Civ 3.

[Capt Dizle]

Beta team? You crack me up.

Lots of great ideas posted here and all along. I just can't understand why the professional people who designed Civ3 couldn't have come up with some of them.

[IthacaMike]

How about each city that is in WLT*D gets a roll for a GL each time the civ discovers a new tech that no other civ has?

Mike G

[Dr. Stiby]

Originally posted by IthacaMike
How about each city that is in WLT*D gets a roll for a GL each time the civ discovers a new tech that no other civ has?

How would that make any sense? I see no link between happy people inventing something and thus getting a GL.

[rubbersoul16]

can great leaders arise from naval conflics? i have tried many times but all of them have been in vain.

[Giovanni Wine]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith


Yes, I'm a slow writer in english, and you have a better Lan Lag



I'm pondering about the effect of captured GL, but I think you'll probably end with four different alternatives and related effects:

1) your GL is captured and kept imprisoned for some turns: your people lose faith on victory and suffer worse war weariness; OTOH the longer you keep him imprisoned, the smaller the ransom you could ask.
2) your GL is killed and become a Hero or a Martire: you can draft +1 people as conscript every city per one turn, also if your government/tech usually don't make available this feature (that count as "Volunteers" joining to revenge).
3) your GL is captured but you can free him/her with your troops: you gain a small special bonus for that, e.g. a free turn of "We Love The Boss"
4) you pay the ransom to free the leader: your leader "teleport" back to your Capital or into the nearest city of yours, and became useful again, after a "recover/travel" time (e.g. he show again on the map after xx turn since his liberation).

Adm.Naismith and Dr. Stiby
You guys have excellent ideas, I would love to see something like that in Civ3, plus e GL for every field (Culture, Science, Happiness etc...) like you stated before.

It would be great, but i think hardly realizable in Civ3, maybe in Civ4.... I don't know.... But i hope for something like this.

Saluti

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by rubbersoul16
can great leaders arise from naval conflics? i have tried many times but all of them have been in vain.

No Rubbersoul, and that's quite silly, as I pointed out into my previus post. Air battle doesn't produce an Ace, too. That's a pity: think about a World War II like wave of 3 Bombers attacking London or Berlin, with a Fighter into the packet to better defend the group!

I served into the Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare Italiana) for a year (as a conscript, not as a pilot) and my nick is about an Admiral: I can't believe that Firaxis minimize the role of both!

Originally posted by Giovanni Wine
I would love to see something like that in Civ3, plus e GL for every field (Culture, Science, Happiness etc...) like you stated before.
It would be great, but i think hardly realizable in Civ3, maybe in Civ4.... I don't know.... But i hope for something like this.

Ciao Giovanni da Torino! Well, some of the concept are probably too difficult to fit in current game to hope they'll show in PTW expansion, but some are quite easy.
It really seems that they were considered for Civ III, but doesn't survive to last design cuts, made both to simplify the game development for a quicker release and for an easier playability for new gamers.

And no, I hope Firaxis start to play with a different design and project, burdening the idea of Civ 4.

I'm not sure if Rise of Nation will be a good game (I didn't liked the Microsoft's AoE serie), but at least it's trying a different approach.

[Giovanni Wine]

I served into the Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare Italiana)

I didn't even noticed you are from Milano
Glad to see a " paisa' " on these boards

Saluti

[kring]

Originally posted by LordAzreal
It kinda sucks that the main way to victory is warfare (though peacemongering can be boring, there should be a definitive path that way). I mean, the game is called CIVILIZATION. The way you need to play to get anywhere in the game hardly seems civilized at all.

I'd definitely like to see at least one peacetime way of creating a leader. Maybe when a city accumulates a certain HUGE amount of culture points (that would make the Oracle much more useful BTW since the Oracle is huge on cultural value for an early game wonder). Another way might be if the total population of your civ reaches a certain milestone. There's probably a few more possibilities, but no more come to mind at the moment.

I got the concept from Zippo in a CivFanatics post. Using Zippo's suggestion, I was able to make a buildable Leader; and I did it without using the Hacked Editor.

Basically, what I did was to go into the editor, save as new bic, change General Settings Tab Battle Created Unit to something other than Leader, assign a cost and prereq. if desired. Play game. I tested it with the multi before 1.21f. The AI will use it to rush Wonders, but on a limited scale. I made it more expensive than the early Wonders, about as much as a mid or late mid Wonder with Warrior Code needed. This limited how many were built by anyone, myself included. I did not build all the Wonders using Leaders, several were built regularly both by me and the other civs; a couple were rushed both by me and the other civs.

The main use of the AI ones seemed to be Armies for much of the game.