Civ 5 Art Direction.

[Lars_Domus]

One thing, the pictures that you showed were modern pictures. While I am not an expert, I do love history and one thing that I can say is that Mongolians of today likely look quite different from Mongolians from Khan's era. From those pics, they look to have Chinese influence, afterall, after Ghengis Khan, I am sure that there was a lot of interbreeding between the cultures.

This is one of the things that has fascinated me about history (and I would like to see incorporated into Civ a little). It is the same thing in Europe. If the Romans did not move in to conquer the rest of Europe, people in Britain and France could look quite different then they do today. Throughout history, many cultures mixed together as they met, creating more varieties of people.

As far as Genghis Kahn goes, if you are saying that he looks more western, consider this: There has been mention that the Huns are said to come from Mongolia. That being the case, wouldn't you think that more European people would have asian characteristics if the pictures that you posted are true representations of what Mongolians looked like back then?

You might or might not have a point. Damnit, Jim, I'm a jurist, not an anthropologist!

At any rate, don't you think it's just a tiny bit hypocritical to depict Genghis Khan's appearance very differently from how his descendants view him, while totally depicting the Roman leaders like we westerners usually imagine them? Sure, it's not a big deal, it's just a game, yadda yadda, but it's a detail that occasionally irks me a little when I'm in the diplomacy screen.

(Also I would like to point out that there are twice as many Mongols living in the People's Republic of China than in Mongolia.)

 

[SJSerio]

I am sure that we could argue the semantics of culture mixing until the end of time. However, as you pointed out, Hypernova, it would be getting way off topic. What it comes down to is this, it is pointless for us to nitpic over the appearance of someone that none of us have met in person, face to face (unless I am mistaken). If the representation of Genghis Kahn was that of a britain, I could understand the complaint. But that is not the case! The model is obviously not European.

Until somebody goes back in time and snaps a picture of him and brings it back (if he hasn't sliced you in half for exposing him to strange magic before you could make it back), we will just have to settle with what we get.

 

[Hypernova]

Firstly this has nothing to do with culture, appearance has nothing to do with culture. Secondly, your argument, taken to its logical extreme, would give the Firaxis the option to depict any leader before photography as they please. We may not know exactly what leaders looked like, but we have some idea, we know Genghis Khan was a Mongol and we know that the term Mongol has always referred to the same ethnic group. Now you may say that is exaggerating and making a strawman of your argument, but remember this isn't nitpicking, Civ 4 Genghis looks far more European than he does Mongol.

And as I have already mentioned this is beside the fact that there are contempory protraits of Genghis Khan which while not like photographs are detailed enough to show his ethnic group, now I know leaders have been known to remove the odd mole from their portraits, but not changing their whole appearance to that of another ethnic group.

 

[Ingvina Freyr]

Another LH that comes off as much to europeanized in Civ4 is Cyrus who IMO looks more like an Irish fisherman than a Persian king. I've always pictured him much darker. More like Darius in the movie Alexander.

Spoiler big picture of Cyrus :