Gandhi already confirmed as India's leader? (AGAIN?!)

[bite]

It looks like it is confirmed as the developers have talked directly about him, at this point it is probably just cultural inertia, you would upset more people not having him, then you would having him in.

 

[bovinespy]

If they were going to go for a Gandhi by necessity, I'd offer up Indira instead. Controversial? No doubt. But so was her nearby contemporary across the Tibetan Plateau, and he's been in Civ for ages. At least she was an actual PM, unlike her namesake.

India's been getting disappointing Civ representation for ages. China, to a lesser degree, as well. 1/3 of humanity shuffled off into two measly Civs, while upstarts like Venice and Austria draw breath...

 

[Krajzen]

India's been getting disappointing Civ representation for ages. China, to a lesser degree, as well. 1/3 of humanity shuffled off into two measly Civs, while upstarts like Venice and Austria draw breath...

Yeah I hate that and I'm happy somebody else has similar feelings. India is practically as separate "Europe", extremely diverse area with countless great disctinctive civilisations across 2-3000 years, and in civ series it is always portrayed not only as one unitary nation (1/5 of humanity for most of history packed it one state... on par with some random native tribes) but it is portrayed in cartoonish/stereotype ways as well.
In general, India is treated terribly in video games - even strategy ones which should include one of few major civilised hubs of mankind. I recall Empire Earth II, which had 18 civilisations from across the world and there was Korea... but no India. COME ON

However every strategy game ever includes Japan because SAMURAI DUH though until 20th century Japanese influence on the world was completely nothing compared to India's. It's really unfair and weird (I am rabid critic of eurocentrism).

China is also often treated weirdly in video games, however imo it is treated MUCH better than India. Unlike India, China in civ series never had
*ruler who never ruled actual country and was overrated "hippie" Western media were obsessed about - but had actual great leaders instead
*stereotype, stupid units - elephants or the terrible atrocity of civ4's "fast worker" unique Indian unit
*borderline insulting traits (India's trait in civ5 was basically "overpopulation" - it was also the only trait of all civs which had negative aspect, and often regarded as the worst of all)
*descriptions mentioning "terrible poverty" and "great inequality" and focusing on stereotypes ("spirituality!") and leader's biography (Indian introductory text - I may be nitpicky but I pay great attention to text due to my... real life craft and Indian one was very odd compared to every other civ's introduction in civ5). Compare that with Chinese introduction which hailed great Chinese civilisation and counted its worldchanging discoveries.

And China in civ5 was regarded as one of top tier nations (all its unique features were strong or very strong) while India one of the worst (and I often met with the opinion it is outright the worst - and it sucked indeed).

This applies to other games and medias as well. Generally European depictions of history are usually terribly ignorant and eurocentric (or rather few-countries-of-western-europe-centric). If they do include non European nations, it's usually Japan (because it got too powerful in 20th century to ignore it). If they do include other nations, it's China or Middle Eastern civilisations. India is far below regarding 'priority', even much below Precolombian civilisations which were incomparably less populated and powerful.

And that's the treatment of "civilisation" or subcontinent that produced 25-30% of global GDP for most of history, was home to like dozens of giant empires, was "first" in a lot of features assigned to "European civilisation" (especially regarding mathematics) and was probably the most culturally influential "civilisation" in the global history with the possible exception of ancient Greece.

 

[Krajzen]

In short, I am pessimist expecting India will have Gandhi as its only ruler, AI personality of usual cartoonish emotionally unstable pushover passive hippie, stereotype elephant unit and stereotype traits including a) Food because "india fast breeders, overpopulaton" and b) "Spirituality"


You know what would be my dream? Civ6 India ruled by warrior queen Lakshmibai, with some badass early modern units such as Sepoys (musketeers) and traits boosting architecture, culture and science. With AI personality building ethnically diverse, mostly defensive but strongly armed, developed empire.

 

[UWHabs]

One point in favour of Gandhi though is that civ always needs a handful of more pacifist/cultural leaders. If every leader of nations are the military leaders who expanded their empires, then personalities would be prone to war.

Now that being said, if you had more empires with multiple leaders, that solves that better. Then you can have your warmonger Napoleon or the cultural Louis XIV, and handle the quota that way. And you can put a second Indian leader who fills what has been described. Or maybe we can have a second civ for the area - I mean if you can have both the Ottoman Empire and the Byzantine empire, no reason you can't have both India and the Mughals as separate civs, for example.

 

[Callonia]

This is very easy problem to solve, just bring in two india leaders into civ6. That way, people who love Gandhi can continue to play with him and then India will get to play with some other leader for once. lol

 

[bovinespy]

Yeah I hate that and I'm happy somebody else has similar feelings. India is practically as separate "Europe", extremely diverse area with countless great disctinctive civilisations across 2-3000 years, and in civ series it is always portrayed not only as one unitary nation (1/5 of humanity for most of history packed it one state... on par with some random native tribes)

To me, this is a separate issue from:

but it is portrayed in cartoonish/stereotype ways as well.

I'm in agreement with you, but the former concern, about the paucity of distinct sub-units under the Subcontinental venue, is more irksome to me. All videogames sterotype to some degree.

China is also often treated weirdly in video games, however imo it is treated MUCH better than India.

Well, I only play a handful of franchises/games on a regualr basis, but I will agree from my Civ experience that China usually gets a good UU/UB/leader/traits relative to India. Anyone remember Riders in Civ3 and Cho-Ko-Nus in Civ4?

 

[Tee Kay]

Of course one leader is not going to be able to adequately represent a millennia-old civilisation. Civs in Civ are always abstractions, ideally with some measure of faithfulness to history but abstractions nonetheless. You choose leaders for their stature or symbolic value and for what fits your game as much as for what they actually achieved IRL.

And whatever you may think of the man in real life, Gandhi is a pretty good choice for the "India" civ, because:
- He's one of the few truly national/civilisational leaders of India. Segregated by caste and religion and divided for millennia into different warring kingdoms and today into different states, there aren't many leaders who can really represent the subcontinent as a whole. Really, the only other deceased figures of stature who could contend with Gandhi in this regard are Asoka, Jawaharlal Nehru, and arguably Indira Gandhi.
- Though his role may be overhyped he still played a large part in leading India to independence. It really was one of the truly momentous events in human history, you could do worse than putting one of the central figures in making that history into the game.
- Leadership is diverse, as the game acknowledges through having multiple victory conditions. You'd also want to reflect this in leader choice, and in a game almost by necessity mostly populated with leaders who won fame through violence, having someone like Gandhi really balances things out. (Btw, this is why I really like how the Colonialist Legacies mod has someone like Henry Parkes leading Australia and Jose Rizal leading the Phillippines, it's a nice change from kings and presidents and prime ministers)

The only real argument I can see against Gandhi is for mixing it up a bit, in which case my suggestions would be Asoka or Nehru. Leaning towards Asoka because his reign was responsible for both extreme violence and extreme tranquility, that could be a metaphor for the subcontinent's history, and because his memory was used to create symbolism for modern India, he nicely represents continuity between the ancient and modern civilisation.

 

[j51]

Hopefully multiple leaders or more Indian civs

 

[Teproc]

As much as I agree he's a poor choice in theory, he's inextricably linked with the Civ series. It's like the Zulus : they're far from the most significant African people you could havein the game, but Shaka is iconic.

I would love to have many Indian civilizations though. An ancient India civ led by Ashoka, a Mughal civ and a modern India lead by our favorite trigger-happy pacifist.

 

[Dragonflow]

Gandhi is the main character of Civilization.

You mean the main villain obviously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfvLcozLwtE

 

[Gedemo]

Nothing against the man (he was an admirable man), but I'm really tired of having him again and again and again. India should not have Gandhi as its leader since he never controlled the country, it should be someone who was an actual ruler like Ashoka .

I agree wit you 100%

 

[ferenginar]

I think the single leader per Civ in Civ V was definitely a retrograde step from the multi-leader options in Civ IV. Civ V had a good range of Civ options, and understandably an additional Civ would require a lot of additional work, but I would have thought multi-leader was not a resource intensive upgrade.

 

[zarakand]

Rome/Byzantium/Venice but no Mughals/India is pretty crazy, especially when you have nations like Huns or other territorial overlap nations that were much smaller, lasted less time, less influential across history etc. Considering its relative size/population India's pretty under-represented in Civ in general. Europe has a ton of civs that held similar territory throughout the ages, multiple that were included in Civ despite not lasting longer than some very populous, large empires in India. China's a bit hosed that way too.

That's a good point. I'd never thought about it in that way. I'd love to see more Civs added in that we rarely see in Civ 6 like how Indonesia and Polynesia were added to CiV.

 

[darko82]

Ghandi is very specific and iconic. I am happy he's back.

 

[Hannibal XIII]

I'm with Krajzen. Once again, Westerners whose idea of India is basically Beatles music and Orientalist nonsense give us Mohandas "Racist, Pro-Partition, Inspirational Quote Machine" Gandhi as India's leader. He was not a good person and should not be idealized. It's like people who think the Lamas were good for Tibet -- pure ignorance based in a cardboard, idealized view of "Eastern spirituality"...

Nevermind that he helped split the subcontinent in one of the greatest disasters of 20th century Asia. Nevermind that India is as diverse culturally as Europe and should have multiple civs. Nope, we get Gandhi because of a Civ1 glitch and pure intellectual laziness.

I have to see Celts as one civ, a literal city-state as a civ, Shaka Zulu, the HUNS, and others -- and we still get 1960s idealized India representing 1 billion people! By God, not even making Mao a leader for China was that bad!

 

[Tee Kay]

I'm with Krajzen. Once again, Westerners whose idea of India is basically Beatles music and Orientalist nonsense

I take issue with this because this is also partly how India and (some) Indians present themselves to the world, particularly post-independence. Nehru was keen to stress India's pacifist credentials, and even today we get tourism ads from India showing the country as exotic and ticking the same boxes as Western imagination. You can't just blame this on ignorant Westerners.

Mohandas "Racist, Pro-Partition, Inspirational Quote Machine" Gandhi

By modern standard pretty much anyone before 1950 was super racist. And I don't know where you get the pro-partition part from. Gandhi was excluded from the final talks on transfer of power precisely because he was against partition, and assassinated because he was seen as too pro-Pakistan.

He was not a good person and should not be idealized.

Being a Good Person has never been something that Civ leaders have in abundance nor should it be.

 

[Civciv5]

If it is indeed confirmed, I'm not buying this until there is a mod that replaces him with Ashoka or someone else who actually ruled India.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well, I only play a handful of franchises/games on a regualr basis, but I will agree from my Civ experience that China usually gets a good UU/UB/leader/traits relative to India. Anyone remember Riders in Civ3 and Cho-Ko-Nus in Civ4?

India was substantially better than China in Civ IV. Better rulers, better UU, neither UB was amazing. Ashoka was made too peaceful though. Nonsense though the "fast worker" was, it was at least very strong nonsense.

The only real argument I can see against Gandhi is for mixing it up a bit

He did not rule the country. "Leadership is diverse", but Gandhi couldn't declare war on another nation at will. How many other Civ leaders can you name that similarly couldn't do so?

That's a good point. I'd never thought about it in that way. I'd love to see more Civs added in that we rarely see in Civ 6 like how Indonesia and Polynesia were added to CiV.

I'd like to see less of these combo-civs and more actual civs. India alone could have Mughals, Maratha, Vijayanagar, Ashoka's empire, Delhi sultanate. Even offshoots like Bengal have more land mass, duration, and population than civs that have actually made it into the game.

We've gone 5 civ titles and seen Mughals 0 times. That is not just a joke, it's a bad joke. There is no justification for that given the civs we have, literally no inclusion criteria you could possibly use for which civs make the cut that would push all of Hittites, Carthage, Huns, Celts, "Byzantium" (IE ERE IE Roman empire x2), Brazil, or many others in front.

 

[nokmirt]

Then Teddy will be America's leader. I like it!