In a live stream today Pete Murray and Ed Beach of Firaxis games showcased the new leader mechanics in the upcoming release Civilization VI. It has been pretty obvious for a while that Civ VI would include the ability to pick different leaders for each civilization, but the inclusion was officially confirmed yesterday with the reveal of the Greek leader Gorgo:

Beach claimed that one of the major reasons Firaxis decided to include multiple leaders was to allow more customization in the mod scene. The example he used is that if somebody does not want to play Teddy Roosevelt with the United States they can get a mod to be able to play as Abraham Lincoln or George Washington.

In terms of actual game mechanics, each leader has a single ability attached to them and an AI personalty. For example, the leader ability for Pericles of Greece provides extra culture for every city-state that he is the suzerain in, while Gorgo’s provides culture for every kill her military units get. This small change in bonuses can effect a player’s decision on weather to befriend or attack a city-state.

Beach and Murray also mentioned that multiple players can use the same civilization in the same game, provided they choose different leaders. Each leader has their own color and capital city. It will be interesting to see what new leaders are introduced, and how they will differentiate.a civilizations play style.

There are a few things that Beach and Murray mentioned but didn’t go into detail on: New tourism lenses were talked about, but we didn’t get a chance to see how they work. Having a specific map lens tourism obviously implies that location will have some effect on tourism, but to what extent is unknown. Firaxis will reveal more information on multiplayer and advanced starts before the full release on October 21st, so make sure to check back here for more information.