Back to the topic about communist leaders, maybe Russia and China should have leaders of it's imperial times, as Russia with Peter the Great and China with Qin Shi Huang. And be add other civs who don't have great names otherwise it's communist names as Cuba, with Fidel Castro and Yugoslávia with Tito.
Vietnã should be amazing with Ho Chi Minh, but I guess they have a lot of other names.
Fidel Castro would be out anyways, regardless, because he died in the 21st Century.
Okay, Arawk can replaces Cuba. But what South Slavic civ can be draw otherwise the Yugoslavia? Yugoslavia should be a very good civ by the way, it has a strong man as Tito and the only way to see Serbians and Croatians in this game.
And about 20th century... I think is cool to have a diverse pool of leaders, some ancient as Gilgamesh and other more moderns.
Kingdom of Serbia;
Kingdom of Croatia. Kingdom of Croatia wouldn't be a very interesting addition, but Serbia was a powerful Medieval kingdom that absorbed a great deal of Byzantine territory, wealth, and prestige.
I think it's less a matter of "can't" and more a matter of "he's boring and he's literally been in every version of Civ except Civ6 and he's a very poor representative of French history." He can come back in Civ29 when France has gone through all its more interesting leaders.
Or perhaps even Simeon I (a lot of people often forget Bulgarians are also Southern Slavs just because they were never politically united under the Kingdom, and then Federal Socialist Republic, of Yugoslavia). Or, if one wanted a closer to modern, but not too close to home, leader, maybe Nicola Pasic. As Prime Minister of Serbia, he led very stiff resistance and staunch leadership against the expected steamroller of Austro-Hungarian aggression in WW1, before any aid could be sent to them by their new Allies, as everyone was wrangling over the growing Western and Eastern Fronts - Serbian resistance surprised most contemporary observers, and I believe they even made the first aerial bombardments of WW1 (which was only the third war in history such bombardments were ever made in military history, after the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 and the First Balkan War).
If we have Gengis Khan, Alexander the Great and Shaka Zulu who killed thousand of peoples. Why not have Stalin?
Stalin also lived a war period and most of atrocity linked to him, as Holodomor, is in the war context and because the second great war.
The Holodomor (I walk by the first placed monument to it ever erected at the city hall of Edmonton, Alberta every day) was almost a decade before Operation Barbarossa and had nothing, at all, to do with WW2 or Nazis.
I don't personally mind Napoleon, but there are also other better leaders for France like Louis XIV or even Cardinal Richelieu I'd rather see first. If I'd want a militaristic side to France he'd be obviously a good pick.
As for Stalin he'd be one of the last leaders for Russia that I'd personally want, no matter how modern/controversial he is. What "interesting" leader ability would you give him anyway?
I'm pretty sure he wasn't in Civ 3. That honor went to Jeanne d'Arc.
Oh, and I guess Civ 2 had Louis XIV as the male leader.
Yes, Louis XIV and Joan of Arc are the default male and female leaders of the French in Civ2, and I, too, remember the, "Sinead O'Connor," Joan of Arc model in Civ3.
Zaarin did say "whose victims are still alive".
Shaka died nearly two hundred years ago. There's no one alive who remember that time, and even the children and grandchildren of people who lived then are dead. It's in the past now. Genghis is even further back, and Alexander, even further than that. The suffering they created is just text in the history book now, not something that still has a deep personally effect on still-living people.
Some victims of Stalin are likely still alive. Their immediate descendants - children and grandchildren - definitely are. For them, what Stalin things directly armed them or the people closest to them, their loved ones. Turning Stalin into a toy in a game is reopening those wounds, for no good reason.
Of course, there's also context, not just time passed in some cases. For instance, even though no U.S. Civil War veteran, any of their widows, any of their direct children, or anyone who was in a legal state of slavery at the time is still alive, today, the U.S. social and political zeitgeist would still make Jefferson Davis (if one REALLY wanted him, for some reason) prohibitive, while Abraham Lincoln, whose armies and polices killed a LOT more people and did a LOT more damage (the March to the Sea, for example) than Davis could have hoped to do, is an acceptable and honoured choice, again, because of the zeitgeist. So, it's not always as simple as just, "living victims," in all cases.
