Every empire, regardless of size, gets one FREE citizen every 10 turns. That is without any effort on the player part.
As mentioned above, several times, any empire may create citizens, at a cost. That cost is (generally) social manufacturing. By doing so, you can have more than 1 citizen every 10 turns.
Assume that the citizen creation project is your beloved STEM, and boom, you are back in the game.
Hmmmm, your use of the phrase "without any effort on the player" made me realize that the current methodology is much like a "societal entitlement" mechanism. The equivalent of the "participation trophy", so to speak. I am proposing that we move to an "earned" system. "Great Citizens" don't "just happen". Instead, they happen on purpose, when a young person has teachers, parents, or benefactors in place to help and encourage learning, a strong work ethic, and overall excellence. Of course, the future Great Citizen must have and execute on the drive to take advantage of these opportunities that those aforementioned role models offer.
The "Citizen Creation Project" could certainly serve in the game as one of those benefactors, but it's really only a one-off opportunity, which in a game that can have 500 or 5000 turns, is nearly useless in the length of a game and only useful in getting a temporary advantage.
My proposal improves on the current model because it better rewards the player who employs an ongoing entrepreneurial strategy; which is much closer to how it works in real life with STEM education (even before the acronym was first coined).
This is entirely based on what you believe leads to a Great Citizen...
How would you account for Great Citizens that are not based on the power of Military Academies, STEM, entrepreneurial strategy, Manufacturing, and Financial health?
Education, a happy childhood, positive ideology and the wealth of the birth county are not necessarily a true measure of the path to greatness.
Mother Teresa was born Anjezë Gonxhe (or Gonxha)[7] Bojaxhiu (Albanian: [aˈɲɛzə ˈɡɔndʒɛ bɔjaˈdʒiu]; Anjezë is a cognate of "Agnes"; Gonxhe means "rosebud" or "little flower" in Albanian) on 26 August 1910 into a Kosovar Albanian family[8][9][10] in Skopje (now the capital of the Republic of Macedonia), Ottoman Empire.[11][12] She was baptized in Skopje, the day after her birth.[7] She later considered 27 August, the day she was baptised, her "true birthday".[11]
She was the youngest child of Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu (Bernai).[13] Her father, who was involved in Albanian-community politics in Macedonia, died in 1919 when she was eight years old.[11][14] He may have been from Prizren, Kosovo, and her mother may have been from a village near Gjakova.[15]
According to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, during her early years Teresa was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal; by age 12, she was convinced that she should commit herself to religious life.[16] Her resolve strengthened on 15 August 1928 as she prayed at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Vitina-Letnice, where she often went on pilgrimages.[17]
Teresa left home in 1928 at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English with the view of becoming a missionary; English was the language of instruction of the Sisters of Loreto in India.[18] She never saw her mother or her sister again.[19] Her family lived in Skopje until 1934, when they moved to Tirana.[20]
She arrived in India in 1929[21] and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, in the lower Himalayas,[22] where she learnt Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent.[23] Teresa took her first religious vows on 24 May 1931. She chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries;[24][25] because a nun in the convent had already chosen that name, Agnes opted for its Spanish spelling (Teresa).[26]
Teresa took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937 while she was a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta.[11][27][28] She served there for nearly twenty years, and was appointed its headmistress in 1944.[29] Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta.[30] The Bengal famine of 1943 brought misery and death to the city, and the August 1946 Direct Action Day began a period of Muslim-Hindu violence.[31]
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi[14] was born on 2 October 1869[1] to a Hindu Modh Baniya family[15] in Porbandar (also known as Sudamapuri), a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula and then part of the small princely state of Porbandar in the Kathiawar Agency of the Indian Empire. His father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi (1822–1885), served as the diwan (chief minister) of Porbandar state.[16]
Although he only had an elementary education and had previously been a clerk in the state administration, Karamchand proved a capable chief minister
Rudyard Kipling's days of "strong light and darkness" in Bombay ended when he was five years old.[25] As was the custom in British India, he and his three-year-old sister Alice ("Trix") were taken to the United Kingdom —in their case to Southsea, Portsmouth—to live with a couple who boarded children of British nationals who were serving in India.[26] For the next six years from October 1871 to April 1877, the two children lived with the couple, Captain Pryse Agar Holloway, once an officer in the merchant navy, and Mrs Sarah Holloway, at their house, Lorne Lodge at 4 Campbell Road, Southsea.[27]
In his autobiography, published some 65 years later, Kipling recalled the stay with horror, and wondered ironically if the combination of cruelty and neglect which he experienced there at the hands of Mrs. Holloway might not have hastened the onset of his literary life: "If you cross-examine a child of seven or eight on his day’s doings (specially when he wants to go to sleep) he will contradict himself very satisfactorily. If each contradiction be set down as a lie and retailed at breakfast, life is not easy. I have known a certain amount of bullying, but this was calculated torture—religious as well as scientific. Yet it made me give attention to the lies I soon found it necessary to tell: and this, I presume, is the foundation of literary effort".[25]
Abraham Lincoln was more or less entirely self-educated, though at an early age he actually had a reputation of being lazy. This did not stop him from starting down a career in politics in his early twenties, and being admitted to the bar after teaching himself the law in his free time.
Mark Twain left school after the fifth grade[17] to become a printer's apprentice.
My proposal improves on the current model because it better rewards the player who employs an ongoing entrepreneurial strategy; which is much closer to how it works in real life with STEM education (even before the acronym was first coined).
What is real life and the clear rules that define greatness???
