If generals are going to "pop up" every once in a while (if they're going to be built I lose a bit of steam, but bear with me) then why can't great thinkers pop up every so often as well? People like Homer or Christopher Wren. In RL these people inspired thought and altered (slightly) the course of civilizations.

What do people think of great thinkers who act like short-term "mini-wonders" with much smaller bonuses that you don't build, but rather "just happen" if you set the conditions correctly (and get a little lucky). So if you have a League of City States governance structure, you've got your luxury cranked, and you sustain X number of years of peace, you set the conditions for Homer, and if he is "born", you get a 10(?) turn bonus to diplomacy(inspires rhetoriticians?) and cheaper naval vessels (all those inspired wanna-be Ullyses putting to sea). Frank Lloyd Wright gets you a boom in inspired architecture and thus cheaper buildings for a while.

The effects of these "Great Thinkers" should be short term and give small bonuses so as to preserve balance. But they could be the cultural equivalent of the generals that I guess will be cropping up once in a while. Just as it would be neat to have Joan of Arc appear in the countryside and rally your forces, it would be cool to have Voltaire appear in your capital and give your intellectual base a boost (i.e. a bonus to the effectiveness of your legal system if you've got a democracy and Voltaire appears).

Of course, these things cut both ways. If you've got government by an elite class (high luxury, high taxes) and an oppressed populace that has x amount of discontent ... can anyone say Che Guevara?

You could even tie the name of the "great thinker" into the civlization skin you've chosen (if such things exist). So if you've chosen to play a North Asian civ you may get Lao Tsu, if you play South Asian you get Bhudda, if you play Arabian you get Mohammed etc. - all of them have the same civ effect (founding a major religion and thus giving you, what, morale bonuses?) and all of them have an equal chance to appear in similar circumstances.

While in game turn a single leader/thinker will live really few turns, his/her influence will live a lot longer, so effects should vary in time lenght, not only in relevance, depending on game "background": political situation, social settings etc.

In SMAC we have something similar with special event (e.g. burst of energy) that can be good or bad depending of your cities developement, but they have usually too little effects to bother any strong player, nor the ability to really help soeone in difficult position to recover. Balancing it is difficult, but a real must to make it a succesful game part.

Cannes, specialist are more about people class or job: we are speaking of "special (human) events" that happens more scarcely, like a great earthquake, or a big vulcano eruption, and affects all the "surrounding" people for a quite long time.

Compare Napoleon to the more common class of "generals", or Leonardo da Vinci or Galileo to the generic scientists.

Thinkers to the front!

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the things, they have a-changed

quote: newbies like me never think to look in them

Never mind Echinda, oldies like me have recurrent memory leak, so the match is kept fair