Some thoughts about leaders depiction and choices

It's cool seeing the faces of the leaders - for the first hundred or so times. Then it becomes repetitive and pointless.

Franklin Delano would have been really unique on his wheelchair (I am not sure whether or fits here more) and yes, he was cool.

As Arachnofiend said - either him or second Roosevelt, very good and very distinctive leaders Definitely more interesting than George "I hope you are a friend of liberty" Washington.

As an American and a history buff, I would pick Lincoln.

Kurtbob said:

I agree with your post (I totally relate to your second paragraph) and would also welcome the mod you requested.

When I play civ, I don't role-play the leader of the civ I have chosen to play nor do I feel as though I am great leader meeting other great leaders while playing. I play civ to watch an alternative history unfold in front of me, a history of cultures and peoples, not great leaders. So, 3D leaderscreens have actually taken some of the immersion out of the game for me. I suppose I may be 'playing the game wrong' by not following the devs intentions (playing a leader among leaders), but I'm sure I'm not alone.

With that said, I would welcome numerous static 2d leaders per civ over one highly ornate 3d leader.

Removing leaders entirely would be a radical concept for civ, but as a mod, why not? And who knows, getting rid of leaders may open up gameplay. For example, it would be nice to see Great Statesman GPs and statesman specialists in future civ titles.

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The mod only got as far as beta unfortunately. Not sure when and if it gets completed.

j51 said:

I think Hannibal, or a Hanno would be better for Carthage than Dido. I really do not like the use of legendary leaders if there are alternatives available (Hiawatha, Gilgamesh). Wu Zeitan, Maria I, and Theodora are also obviously just attempts to include more women. (I find it especially annoying that Taizong has only ever made it in the Chinese version of IV.) Hatshepsut, who was included in IV, is a great female choice. Margaret is another, but what fun is Denmark without a Viking age leader?

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Wu, from looking into her following a bunch of threads complaining about her inclusion, is worthy enough - there are better options among Chinese rulers, but she doesn't reek of a desire to stretch to find female rulers as Maria - who had few notable achievements to her name - does. And even if she were added just to push female rulers, as the only non-European female leader in the game she's a better option in that regard than another European woman.

Aside from Gandhi, Hiawatha, and the female choices listed above, the only galling leader is Haile Selassie. They clearly only included him because he's famous, mostly from Reggae.

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They included him because the expansion was Gods & Kings. As the Rastafari messiah, he was an obvious fit for the expansion's religious theme. I'm not actually aware of any connection between Haile Selassie and reggae beyond the fact that both reggae and Rastafarianism are Jamaican.

I don't consider him a bad choice for Ethiopia's leader regardless. What's surely important is what Ethiopia accomplished while he was in charge rather than how many times he was ousted, and it had a significant role as a founding member of the UN.

He lost control of Ethiopia twice! Menelik II is the obvious choice, so much so that he's the leader in the Scramble for Africa scenario.

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Surely he's the leader in the Scramble for Africa scenario merely because he was the leader during that time period?

All the other choices are good, but it would be nice to see: One of the Roosevelts for the US; Cyrus the Great, Artaxerxes I, or a Sassanid ruler (Shapur, Khosrau, etc.) for Persia; Trajan for Rome (or go back to Julius Caesar. Man, I miss him.); Victoria for England; Frederick the Great, or Otto of Saxony for Germany (Bismarck is the obvious choice, but Fred is sooooooo cool. ); Canute for Denmark; Sigismund II Augustus for Poland.

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Most of these are good ideas, but they deliberately chose an English rather than British ruler for England, and Canute is an awkward 'dual ruler' who could be claimed by either Denmark or England - more importantly he's post-Viking, and the Danish civ's theme demands a Viking leader.

As your own sequence of thoughts shows, preferential selection for women leaders is harmless since there's no such thing as a perfect set of choices that will please all critics anyway

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The female rulers are awkward for scenarios - look at the Chinese appearances in scenarios that all have to have Wu because a female is the only available leaderscreen, even though she wasn't the ruler at the time, or Catherine instead of Joao III for Portugal in the Conquest of the New World Deluxe scenario.

Arachnofiend said:

...Barbarian is a Greek word. It originally meant someone who isn't Greek.

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More specifically, someone who didn't speak Greek (the word itself is etymologically deliberately meaningless - "bar-bar" being a characterisation of the supposedly unintelligible sounds non-Greek languages used).

Aside from the fact that the game's Greece very consciously represents Alexander's empire specifically (barring its inclusion of Sparta as the second city), with its military focus, at the time there was no "Greek"/"Macedonian" distinction of the sort the poster making this suggestion recognises, because there was no concept of a nation-state. Greece was not a name for a political territory, but a cultural one - Macedon happened to be one kingdom within it. Arguing that Alexander was "Macedonian, not Greek" is akin to arguing that "Maria is Portuguese, not European".

Sacrificing history for politics just makes no sense given that you're going to have to stereotype on some level to fit things into game mechanics. Groups that were at no point cultural leaders in the world, and often had no writing, agriculture, or other hallmarks of civilization are given a civilization in the game. Shaka, Hiawatha, Atilla and Pocatello beat me to the space race, and it's impossible for me to forget that I'm playing a game.

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Civilization was "pushing Guns, Germs and Steel down people's throats" six years before the book was published - the entire game is founded on the idea that every civ it depicts is intrinsically equal to every other and that its relative success is dependent on where it finds itself in the world in terms of terrain and resource availability. Nor did the early games exactly restrict themselves to globally major powers: Shaka or Montezuma could still beat you to world domination (and, if not for AI failings, to Alpha Centauri) from Civ I onwards.

Umm... Actually a screen saying you met the horde or something is more intimidating that that funny little guy with funny voice on a horse.

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One of the most worrying things I saw in a Civ V game was my first game in G&K against Attila - a city-state I'd protected sent me a bubble asking me to denounce the Huns...

2. If they wanted an extra female leader Hatshepsut, or Cleopatra could have worked. It was the Ptolemies who built the Great Lighthouse and the Great Library as well as the Rosetta stone. Without that stone we would know very little about how to read Hieroglyphs.

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Hatshepsut was such an obvious choice given that they did seem to be aiming deliberately for female representation that I remain surprised they didn't include her. But no, Cleopatra would not be a suitable choice even to represent the Ptolemaic period, as she was the last of the Ptolemies and every one of the Ptolemaic achievements you mention predate her.

3. Dido probably didn't exist.

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Hiawatha probably didn't either. Ramkhamhaeng might well have existed as a ruler with that name, but has been fictionalised to such an extent that he's been compared with King Arthur.

I still consider Boudicca one of the worst leader choices; the Celts as the bizarre invention they are in Civ V are hard enough to find a leader for, since they don't represent any kind of real historical entity, but even in that context an East Anglian rebel leader is a poor choice on many levels.

I would sooo much prefer Ahsoka the Great, with ancient Indian language and climatic music...

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As was pointed out on a thread about leader languages when I was last on the forum, Gandhi should really be speaking English as he avoided using Hindi in public life. But Gandhi's fine as a Civ tradition, just as the Zulus are - sure, if Civ I had had a different Indian leader and someone considered replacing that leader with Gandhi, it would be worth making as much of a fuss as if someone proposed replacing the American leader with MLK, but Civ I was nothing if not populist and Gandhi was familiar - it's the same reason we're stuck with the Zulus and Aztecs, which the game included to represent those regions on the basis of pop appeal in place of superior choices historically like Ethiopia or the Maya.

Bulldog Bats said:

As an American and a history buff, I would pick Lincoln.

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I concur. Though I do have to agree that Teddy Roosevelt's leaderscreen would be pretty sweet.