Just like my idea about landscapes, this idea has its "roots" in Civilization.
In Civ, there is a small chance that a "great person" will be born in one of your cities. For example Da Vinci, Michelangelo and others. These people give a significant boost to one of the cities' attributes, like culture, science and so on.
What I think would be really cool, would be to tie this together with the item creation that I've heard is supposed to be in the game.
Lets say "Zamul the Great Swordsmith" is born in one of your cities. He would significantly increase the quality of the soldiers' swords if they are created at this city. But, this is what I think would be awesome:
Perhaps you could be able to give him lots of gold (or whatever generic monetary unit this game will use), and tell him:
"Dedicate your life to creating the best sword ever to exist, and I will make sure you never go hungry!"
He would then get started, if he agrees, and then, MANY turns later, he will have created a legendary sword sort of like Narsil/Andúril or Glamdring. You could then give it to one of your heroes. Perhaps this process of creating the sword would require you to do a quest to find certain, rare, materials to be used. Perhaps a certain creature, say, dragon, would drop this material (dragon teeth or a dragon-bone for example).
To balance things (and make them interesting), the chance of a "great person" being born in one of your cities would be incredibly small, the time it would take to create the sword would be very long and it would cost a lot of gold, and perhaps there could even be a minimum level restriction for a hero to be able to use it. In return, this sword would be insanely powerful, truly a legendary item that you strive to get in each game you play, but might not always get it. And once this sword has been created, it would be cool if you could find it in another game you play (of course it would be hard to obtain it there too, maybe it's split into many pieces that you have to find or something like that). Also, if the hero wielding this sword would soehow die, then there would be a chance that the enemy might pick it up. This would add some thinking to the whole "I've got the best sword and I'll slaughter everything" mentality that might arise. You don't want to simply give away your epically awesome sword.
So, yeah. What do you think? I think this would add some interesting aspects to the game, and being able to get your hands on a really hard-to-get sword or armor always feels really rewarding, like you've accomplished something awesome.
