Please stop killing my leaders

[Xmudder]

One of the reasons I dislike Republics and Democracies is because the leaders die every 8 years. Given that leaders get more powerful over time, and Rulers have the biggest impact on your civ, this weakens these forms of governments and result in there being no point in getting invested in a good Ruler character.

When I play other governments, like Technocracy, I am much happier... until the virtuous and enlightened Way of the Ancients appears, which requires my leader to be brutally slaughtered in an orgy of revolutionary violence and replaced with a total noob. I tend to dismiss several until I get one without bad traits.

Then of course, the dreaded "you must once again brutally slaughter your enlightened leader or have the second most important planet in your empire secede and join your neighbor" appears. Cuz, you know, that is The Way of the Ancients! Once again, you are left breaking in a total noob.

Stupid Ancients. If only the government form wasn't so good.

And Republics and Democracies are even worse, you get to slaughter your ruler every 8 years! How very Celtic.

Can we please change the leader succession rules to demote the old Ruler to one of the various Leader classes, so they can keep at least some of their stats? And pull from existing characters that have not yet been Rulers to replace them at least some of the time. This will increase player investment and reduce leader bloat. I'd like to be able to get invested in my better leaders / rulers. Or at least their mad skills. Given that Technocracies are supposed to be ruled by scientists (it's right there in the description of "Leader replaced from) I think this sort of behaviour was somehow intended but not implemented.

[OrnluWolfjarl]

Other government forms have at least one or two serious downsides, and get big bonuses in a certain category.

Democracies and Republics have no downsides, besides being penalized for very long wars, which really is not a big problem if you prepare for it. This is their downside: They can't have a leader become as good as, say a Monarch or a Dictator.

If you are really bothered by it, you can easily mod it by editing the entry in the government.xml file.

[Mathalamus]

I just use monarchy. you can reroll the leader as much as you want with zero downside until you get the leader you want. and then its there for sixty years. the penalties for being a monarchy is basically nonexistent, and its extremely useful in peacetime or wartime.