That girl is a born communist freedom fighter, though.
The one issue I have with the choice is that it avoids all of Vietnamese imperial history. Her shtick might as well be communism since she tells you nothing about what life in Vietnam was like, how its government functioned, who actually lead it.
So all the heavy-lifting will have to be done by the text in Civilopedia and banner at the start. As it stands, if I told a random person on here that Vietnamese had rajas, worshipped Vishnu and what-not, they wouldn't be able to tell I was making stuff up unless they explicitly looked up Vietnam beforehand. Everyone knows that Europe had kingdoms with kings and aristocracy, that muslim world had harems and viziers and so on but Vietnamese history is a blank slate for most casual observers.
So you have the civilisation's bonus focused on the Mekong river delta (an area that was conquered by Vietnam in 19th century), freedom fighter bonus for the leader that would be the same as on Ho Chi Minh, the leader herself wearing a modern Vietnamese dress in its 20th century form instead of a maybe more fitting armor set. You then have a guerrilla elephant unit, whose soldiers also don't seem to be going for any visually striking characteristics of Vietnamese arms and armor aside from showing that Vietnam used elephants in battle. And finally you have the fortress which is for now mostly a fairly neutral fortification acting as it would anywhere else in the world, first for defense and later for tourism.
As it stands, I'd be more inclined to say the civ's design says: "You know the communist Vietnam, right? Well it didn't sprung into existence during the Cold War, it was there before, used elephants and if you want to know any more then you'll just have to suck it up and learn Vietnamese.
" but at its core it's still just Auntie Trieu's ranged guerrilla troops battling anonymous foreign aggressors in the humid jungles of South Vietnam while the opponent needs to get rid of all the forest cover. Instead of Uncle Ho's ranged guerrilla troops battling US aggressors in the humid jungles of South Vietnam while the opponent needs to get rid of all the forest cover. I think there's still a fairly big room for improvement yet if Vietnam makes it into a later Civ game (and it would be a shame if they did not) and the explicit mission is to create a different and more pre-colonial image of the country rather than that of Viet Cong's guerrilla struggles. But critique is easy and designing an alternative that fulfills this goal without removing the fairly engaging wood elf gameplay is genuinely hard. So yeah, I do look forward to any change in perception of Vietnamese history among the Civ community, although the sceptic in me says it will be more of the same but with elephants hidden in those trees that speak Vietnamese.
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