:king: Out of all Civ 5 rulers, whom was the most historically impressive and crucial

to their nation?

I'm going to say Khan because he conquered the largest empire in the world under his reign, and was the only time in history that the Mongols were very significant.

Alexander conquered the known world without losing a battle, but then died (probably of rampant alcoholism) without having to actually administer any of his conquests.

Isabella "discovered" the New World and took a hell of a lot of it for Spain, even softening a bit on religious persecution in the meantime.

Genghis Khan conquered a greater amount of land empire than anyone, even securing semi-stable administration for it as he went along. Perhaps the most consumate "Great Man" of history, in that without him, Mongolia would almost certainly never have become a major power in any period in history.

Napoleon basically created the modern notion of Nationalism, despite himself only even being "French" by the slightest legal technicality (born almost any other year, he would have been Italian) and through his actions led the world to our current status of Nation-States, though not really intentionally.

Gandhi freed his people from English subjugation through nonviolent means and secured their national identity so that they could build themselves up from an exploited nation to an emerging superpower today.

Elizabeth oversaw England's longest and most important Golden Age, in terms of conquest as well as culture.

Through patriotic pride, I might have to vote for Washington, because as a general who lost almost all of his battles, he was still unanimously voted in as the first president of the U.S. due to his honor, and single-handedly set in place many of the precedents that allowed the nation to administer itself. Very few civilizations can maintain their founding ideals without some massive unrest breaking them. If nothing else, Washington gave the U.S. peaceful transition of power, a monumentally important and pretty radical idea, without which the U.S. probably could have never survived.

The mongol empire "event" certainly shocked history and had consequences for hundred of years.

You could also say Augustus for being the first roman emperor and one of the greatest and longest reign of the empire.

But for how big of an impact was the result of a single man I'd have to go with Genghis Khan yes.

Dido, Ramses, Augustus, Theodora, Ramhamkhaeng, Napoleon, and Haile Selaisse.

Im impressed by Attila... I know one of the reason the Hun's empire fell down after his reign is because he faill in creation of stong institutions to insure the long term properity but still...

Huns were a buch of stupid barbarians before he came, and went back to be barbarians when he died.

It tells a lot about the willpower of the guy... that said, a lot about is lack of management skills too...

I'd vote for Hammurabi, the inventor of Code of Laws. Or perhaps Queen Victoria under whom Great Britain was a true world super power, or Abe Lincoln, could Pericles be considered? definitely not Stalin, but perhaps Lenin? Mao? what about Charlemagne, Emperor Constantine, or Hannibal-although he was more of a great general I guess.
None of them in the game? some used to be in previous versions, this indicates once again the need for more GL's for each nation in the game.

Easy: Caius Iulius Caesar.

- Transformed the Roman Republic into an Autocracy that ruled Europe and the Mediterranean for half a millennium
- Subsequently the highest European titles were named after him:
---> Tsar, a misspelt and mispronounced version of his cognomen
---> Kaiser, a misspelt but not mispronounced version of his cognomen
- A people (forgot which one) in the Caucasus named their god of war after him (Top that! ).
- Great General, victorious in many wars and battles
- Great Politician, rose through the ranks of the Roman magistrate, then brought the people on his side
- Great writer and speaker

I can't think of anyone as complete as he was as a leader with a similar impact on history.


Oh, damn, they omitted him. Bugger. Well, at least his heir is in.

Exact same question, but a new thread that has a poll:


http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=543560

I'm going to say Theodora - attempting to reunite and rebuild the glory of the Roman Empire as well as reforming the social and legal and religious system as well as rebuilding Constantinople to be the greatest city of the early middle ages was a pretty impressive feat.
The reason why the legacy isn't obvious today is largely due to bad luck; the unexpected arrival of the bubonic plague to Europe absolutely devastated the Roman Empire and ruined any chance that the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire had in restoring its vision of classical civilization. Its estimated about a third of the population of the Empire died and the building projects and military campaigns had already overextended the Empire's resources and subsequently it had no chance of continuing its golden age once that disaster had passed.

Subsequently a century later; the extended wars with Sassanid Persia followed by the rise of Islam further weakened the influence of the remaining Roman Empire over the Mediterranean world and instead shifted influence in Europe to the papacy and Charlemagne; hence Western Europe went its own way.

Much of European law is based on Justinians legal codification of Roman law.
The Roman Empire (although only half its original size) when Theodora became Co-Empress to Justinian had suffered from the barbarian wars and the 3rd century crisis but still had the wealth, organization and resources to continue massive construction projects. The Hagia Sophia was more than a building project. It actually revolutionized engineering. The pendentive (placing a round dome on top of a square arch) was something that Roman engineers had tried and failed to master for centuries yet Justinian & Theodora'a architects did it.

It goes further than this, the Hagia Sophia was probably the first building that utilised large scale buttressing - what they tried to achieve in that building was so revolutionary and unprecedented that it exposed many weaknesses in the original design so the engineers had to continually improvise to stop the overloaded structure from collapsing. If you walk into the Hagia Sophia you will see that many of the piers were buckling badly and are bent out of shape, but have stabilized after sufficient buttressing.
The building was actually built from earthquake resistant materials. The mortar was made of crushed brick & cement which being the same material as the brick meant that the chemical bond between the brick and mortar was extremely strong and would reseal after earthquakes exposed cracks in the brickwork. The dome also had windows put in to remove tension in the structure - this was a problem with the Pantheon of Rome; tension caused continual cracking in the dome so the architects in Hagia Sophia put windows in which removed the tension; hence turning an engineering problem into an architectual solution - pretty ingenious for the time.

Nonetheless that was probably the last revolutionary feat of engineering in Europe until the renaissance about 800 years later. Much of the inspiration behind European medieval, renaissance architecture & islamic mosques is from the Hagia Sophia. More impressive is the funding for the cathedral came from the imperial treasury and not from indulgences which were obviously a very controversial issue in Western Europe.

The reign of Justinian and Theodora really was the last breath of late classical civilization that the world would see. But no-one was able to foresee the coming of the bubonic plague. So hence the grand plans of Theodora & Justinian ended up being too over-ambitious and created the conditions that essentially accelerated Europe's slide into the dark ages.

SM1971 said:

Easy: Caius Iulius Caesar...

Click to expand...

Coming from the UK there doesn't go a day where there isn't a program on TV that is talking about the Ancient Romans. Most of our laws are written in latin(or were), some of our major roads follow the major Roman roads, etc.......
Second is whoever built the Pyramids. Thanks to a recent TV program I'm aware there is more to ancient Egypt than meets the eye as about half is still undiscovered.
Third whoever built Stonehenge. At a time when the UK tribes were loin clothing around and before the Ancient Greeks has Mathematics someone built Stonehenge which in civ5 terms would require mathematics and astronomy, not calander.

Well, according to the game's score list - Augustus Caesar.

It might be telling that list includes leaders for playable civs (Hammurabi, Lincoln, Churchill, etc.) none of whom they made leaders in the game - except for Augustus.

Julius C. was the Roman leader in Civ1, Civ2, Civ3 and Civ4, yes, I've been around that long and played all of these before. I guess they wanted to change something there with Rome, Augustus is no doubt the closest all time throne contender Caesar has within his people, I guess. If they wanted to help out Rome in Civ6 they should make it profitable to built balllistas and give Romans more out of their expansionism, they founded so many cities, their road building abilities, games for successful war campaigns, bring back the Praetorians-an upgrade of Legions, give them a bonus for discovering/becoming a Republic? many other options with those guys.
ps. in Civ3 Romans were pre made as commercial instead of the obvious industrial trait they should have been given, what a lack of historical knowledge on part of programmers, man!
I guess Hitler won't be receiving any votes, lol.

I don't know, the Romans were pretty commercial too...I mean, the complexity of their economy wasn't matched in Western Europe until hundreds of years after the fall of the Western empire...