A new idea for historical personalities

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The William Walker thread got me to think about this, but that wasn't really the place for an idea that I believe deserves its own.

In HoI and EU2 historical personalities were confined to one of three things: battlefield leaders, monarchs/political leadership, or abstract modifications to your country's domestic policy.

But HoI and EU2 didn't have the population model that Victoria is going to have.

So why not have historical personalities be tied to certain population units? I'm not sure how fluid the population units will be, but they seem to be fairly soluble within the greater mix; this is good.

The idea can be expressed with the Walker example: tied to a population unit comprising soldiers, William Walker emigrates to Nicaragua during its period of internal strife. This population unit leads a military coup and installs a presidential democracy under Walker (I understand Walker was not leader-in-name from the article, but this clouds the issue with talk on how puppet governments should be handled). Walker's attributes then are a desire to emigrate, a desire to seize power, with ideological beliefs including a pro-slavery agenda and a tendency toward authoritarian government. Instead of manuever/shock/fire or a diplo/admin/mil rating, a deeper and more detailed personality can be crafted. Perhaps he'll go to another country; perhaps he'll fight and die in the Civil War; perhaps the Nicaraguans will beat him ahead of schedule; perhaps he'll get TB and cough his lungs up; perhaps due to an element of randomness I'd like (as opposed to a detailed list of antecedents, which would be impossible) he'd just never be born at all.

Other examples:

Gavrilo Princip part of a population unit of six, with nationalist and violent attributes, and a penchant toward assassination. His population unit gets anywhere near and Austrian population unit with Archduke Franz Ferdinand in it, and we've got the spark for WWI.

Lenin, a population unit of one, with communist, totalitarian, and violent attributes, and substantial personal charisma, emigrates back to Russia after the fall of the Tsarist government, bringing many to the side of Bolshevism in his effort to topple the Kerensky government.

Not ruling out the old military values, Trotsky would be much the same as Lenin, but with the capability of organizing an effective military force, i.e. attracting soldiers and turning clerks into soldiers.

Not all of them have to violent: Thomas Edison, with fairly neutral political beliefs (as far as I know, I know more about the violent, to be honest) but with great scientific inventiveness and a propensity toward monopolistic capitalism.

A Richard Wagner unit suggests that perhaps dynamic change should be possible, but this may be beyond the pale, so to speak.

These might read a bit like one-paragraph biographies, but note the terms I use; it is simply a matter of building this into the game model, then classifying the attributes of our historical personalities: in broad strokes their skills in the political, religious, scientific, military, economic, and moral arenas, as well as possibly physical and mental characteristics (i.e., sickliness, e.g. Edgar Allen Poe--just the first example to come to mind, I'd hardly expect him in the game--or lunacy and suicide-prone, like Ludwig the Deranged of Bavaria, whom I do expect).

Well, this is just an idea. Perhaps it is unworkable. Hope not, though.

 

[Tim O]

Great idea but way to complicated.

 

[unmerged(5067)]

A great idea but that needs some work - maybe too much for Victoria.
Still, you have to be careful. It was suggested that the player who owned Corsica in EUII would get Napoleon; but that would have meant that everyone would rush to Corsica. The same could happen here.

I don't think historical people can be linked to population units. There weren't that many people who emigrated with Lenin.

Finally, this would mean that much of the game would be pre-determined; I don't like this.

Still, a good idea.

 

[Surgünoglu]

Also, you've got the problem that most people aren't populations of one. Lenin couldn't have been shipped to France to cause revolution, for example. Only Russia held underground societies willing to support his revolution. He had friends abroad, but no army.

The same with the others. Edison in Bolshevik Russia would probably have been executed.

Maybe it's my philosophy, but I think it makes more sense to play the history that created the people. After all, Edison, I believe, was deafened or otherwise disabled at a train station, which might have led to his skill and attention to science. If I have my facts correct, this could suggest science led to science. And this I do know--Lenin's elder brother was executed for revolutionary activities. Perhaps if the tsar had acknowledged real threats to the crown, he would have averted a Lenin, who was simply the culmination of a certain movement.

Don't get me wrong. I do love the idea, because the game often becomes impersonal and the masses undifferentiated. But that is life as a king.

 

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Samourai Steven:

You can make a case (writer Alan Moore did) that the process that determines individuals is so mind-bendingly precise that the slightest deviation would produce someone different, and while not necessarily substantially so, not necessarily anything close, either. So that logic taken to its conclusion means that other than scenario start leaders few if any new leaders should arise in a player-controlled country--or possibly even its neighbors. It's true logic, but can be safely ignored to a point.

The Napoleon example: barring the fact that another country's occupation could easily have changed whether his parents met, the exact time they met (makes a difference too), etc., only in the climate of the French Revolution or something similiar would he have come to prominence. Perhaps he would've still been sent to a military school, but it's unlikely he would have become dictator of, say, Britain, or Genoa. In all this you're right. But should he have been in Genoa at the time of a French Revolutionary invasion (probably inevitable all things being equal) could he have still been an asset to the Republican government? Yes. Not their leader, but a marshal.

Which is what my idea is; in theory, Lenin could get executed by the Tsar's secret police instead. In theory, Russia could win WWI. Thereby Lenin (presuming he's still alive and made it to Switzerland or another neutral country) would never return at all, because the conditions that would allow a Bolshevik revolution would never have existed.

So it's not that deterministic. It would be better than a global event: "Marx writes Das Kapital. Capitalist nations can now convert to Communism." The very reason I propose this is for fluidity. It doesn't go as far as no Marx = no Lenin. Others would've (and, actually, had and did) come up with Communism, as it's an obvious idea. But the character of the revolutionary spirit might have been very different.

Another example--given the situation at the time, William McKingley was elected president. With a different situation, perhaps William Jennings Bryan (unfortunately, another figure who might require a dynamic change) would have won in 1900 and got to wear his old crown of thorns. We don't yet know how the democracies are to work, yet, but from what we do know, but there is no rationale for player control (there is a rationale for player influence), and with this sort of system as I envision, it's even conceivable neither one would win. It's even possible such a situation would arise in 1912 (or on the numerous other occasions, God bless him) that Eugene V. Debs could be elected president--without him being "Action_D." Especially when, all things being equal, a socialist president would have been unlikely--to say the least.

Addendum: I imagine military commanders would have a special attribute that would allow you to pick them out of a list ala HoI. I liked the list and wished it was in EU2.

Timothy Oritz:

Yes, it is complicated. But surely it's just a matter of degree of complexity, and not of quality? After all, a detailed event chain can get quite complicated, as well. In the Wagner and Bryan examples I think it might be technically infeasible, though even then not impossible.

Surgünoglu:
But that's why they sent him to Russia instead of France. Firstly, of course, he was Russian (my dad actually has a theory on Lenin being more a Russian nationalist in communist trappings, and while it has merit, I tend to discredit it); secondly, France, while tottering, wasn't on the verge of breakdown (far less than Germany was, even), whilst the first Russian Revolution had already came, provided my chronology isn't screwed up, and Kerensky was already in power, making the disastrously stupid decision to stay in the war. (Kerensky's attributes must include, then, a sensitivity to his allies' desires, the worst political sense, and a stubborness--'ferocity' in EU2 terms, I suppose, the most frustrating value in the game.)

Another addendum: since under this plan figures like Lenin and Marx are obvious, obvious threats--as you say--then undoubtedly there must be a "hidden" value for such personalities as well. Wouldn't do as Tsar Alexander (the one before Nick II, I think that's it) to simply burn down Lenin's parents house in 1850. Though this is an extreme example--I doubt Vic will give you (even as Russia, heh) the ability to randomly kill people, it brings to light that a player shouldn't really know where Lenin is, what he's about to do, or if he's even around at all... because if you're playing as Russia, Lenin is your enemy, and you really shouldn't see it coming.

 

[unmerged(2695)]

I'm afraid the effects of personaliteis must be simulated through the good old events.

 

[Dunderdon]

if the possibility that people who played a role in real history don't play a role in the game, why don't we have the possibility that people who didn't play a role in real history play a role in victoria?
if we take real possibilities then the possibility of everyone who in fact played a role to be born and have a life that leads to him playing exactly his role is quite exactly 0%.
so victoria has to be predefined a lot, otherwise that all wouldn't make sense.

 

[Tim O]

Originally posted by weyoun
if the possibility that people who played a role in real history don't play a role in the game, why don't we have the possibility that people who didn't play a role in real history play a role in victoria?
if we take real possibilities then the possibility of everyone who in fact played a role to be born and have a life that leads to him playing exactly his role is quite exactly 0%.
so victoria has to be predefined a lot, otherwise that all wouldn't make sense.

This just left me confused.

 

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Originally posted by Timothy Ortiz
This just left me confused.

Maybe its an east coast thing Ortiz, but I didnt get it either. I think what he means is that charecter traits will have to be defined in some way in order to have charecters played historically.

Ex: General Lee: Command ability 5 (1-5) something along those lines, I think.

 

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I figure Weyoun's saying that due to dynamic change in any system, you're going to get results completely out of whack with history. "Predefined" I think--now do correct me--means "predetermined." Now I'm all for determinism in philosophy, but it ties games like EU2 and limits their ability to "kick back" at human action the way they should.

He's also I believe making a call for a random personality generator, though this may be an ironic way of saying that my core idea was no good. Well, either way...

The second first: a random personality generator would be okay and I'd have no essential objections to such. Though the names would start to repeat themselves no doubt.

The first second: I understand that if we were seriously rerunning an causal chain in a system with something along the lines of 10^10000000 quantum states and with one guy moved a foot to the left, it would be unlikely to rerun itself exactly--or even close. But I think even the most nondeterministic player (me, though not for the usual reasons) still wants to see his great men do well.