Which Leader in Civ 6 is the most interesting? (Historically, and in your opinion)

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Hallyu notwithstanding, there's just so much that's awesome in Korean history that's completely obscure in the West. Traditional history tends to focus more on China (and even then it's the big, big, big picture), and Japan has managed to dominate pop culture. Korea kind of gets forgotten.

Tell that to K-pop fans.

Yeah, it's super weird that they chose Trieu over Trung Trac, especially since the ability could work pretty much the same. Given how anachronistic Trieu's portrayal is, might as well just use the same model, too. I'm guessing they chose Trieu for the quote (that happens to be on her Wikipedia page ), but that seems a poor reason to choose a leader.

I'm assuming they decided to go with her because they didn't want to only include one Trung sister.

Canada in the base game would be absurd to me, but honestly I'd take Canada over Australia--or any other Anglophone ex-colony due to the Francophone influence. That doesn't mean I'm giddy about the possibility of Canada returning, but a Champlain-led Canada that looked a lot more like Civ6's Cree would be a decent civ IMO. (It still amazes me that with 50 civs in the game, we only got a single Native North American civ, already a downgrade from Civ5, and that single Native American civ is located in Canada and could easily have been taken as a stand in for Canada.)

If we get a Francophone colony in Civ 7 I'd like for it to be Haiti.
I think the Iroquois could return and make a good stand in both geographically and thematically. Obviously they would take a more aggressive approach toward diplomacy and trading though.

 

[Zaarin]

Tell that to K-pop fans.

Of all the things that had to come to represent Korea, it's K-pop. Oh, and we can't forget K-dramas, either.

If we get a Francophone colony in Civ 7 I'd like for it to be Haiti.

I would neither be upset nor excited to see Haiti, but I personally would find it less interesting than Champlain-led Canada. Given my choice, though, I'd vote for neither--both are too modern for my tastes.

I think the Iroquois could return and make a good stand in both geographically and thematically. Obviously they would take a more aggressive approach toward diplomacy and trading though.

I'm fine with the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee becoming a staple--they certainly deserve it--but only if we also get at least one other Native North American civ to represent the enormous diversity of cultures to choose from.

 

[Kupe Navigator]

Of all the things that had to come to represent Korea, it's K-pop. Oh, and we can't forget K-dramas, either.

As Korean-New Zealander I don't see the problems with either of those things. Sure some songs/dramas are cringe and fans can be toxic BUT aren't everything extreme toxic?

 

[Zaarin]

As Korean-New Zealander I don't see the problems with either of those things. Sure some songs/dramas are cringe and fans can be toxic BUT aren't everything extreme toxic?

Eh, I don't like pop in general, but East Asian pop in particular (K-pop, J-pop, C-pop, all of it) is just drowning in electronic noise and autotune. I just prefer real instruments; that's why I mostly listen to acoustic singer/songwriter, indie folk, bluegrass, and Americana.

I remember when I lived in Korea in the 90s walking past the shops in the evening was like attending several dance clubs at the same time with all the dubstep and electronic sounds pouring out of every doorway.

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

As a Canadian, I'd rather that ability be given to the Swiss if they appear in Civ 7.

Yo I don't know you're a fellow Canuck, haha, I thought you were English. But same here, I'd rather see Swiss.
I think my Civ6 experience will be dramatically better if we get a native american civ instead of canada.

 

[Kupe Navigator]

Eh, I don't like pop in general, but East Asian pop in particular (K-pop, J-pop, C-pop, all of it) is just drowning in electronic noise and autotune. I just prefer real instruments; that's why I mostly listen to acoustic singer/songwriter, indie folk, bluegrass, and Americana.

Don't diss my boys BTS mate. They worked hard and deserve all the spotlight.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Back to topic please.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

In another Thread I've been posting about Progressive Changes of Leader Uniques and Civ Uniques to get variety in the game, including slipping in 'generic Unique' choices for those Civs too short-lived or monolithic IRL to generate lot of their own 'Uniques'.

It occurs to me reading through this Thread that 'generics' reduce the innate uniqueness of the Leader choices, but on the other hand, if as posted a number of the current Leaders are in fact bordering on the Generic, there needs to be a harder look taken at Real Uniqueness for the Leaders before we can think about what is a choosable Generic attribute and what is really specific to a given historical (or semi-historical) Leader for a Civ.

And, of course, there are very, very few Leaders whose Unique should include anything to do with the cultural peculiarities of a Civ's music or 'pop' contribution.

- And as soon as I typed that I remembered that Friedrich der Grosse of Prussia wrote music and was considered a pretty good flutist, though when he found time to practice in between beating up Saxons, French and Austrians is another question . . .

 

[Zaarin]

And, of course, there are very, very few Leaders whose Unique should include anything to do with the cultural peculiarities of a Civ's music or 'pop' contribution.

- And as soon as I typed that I remembered that Friedrich der Grosse of Prussia wrote music and was considered a pretty good flutist, though when he found time to practice in between beating up Saxons, French and Austrians is another question . . .

And quite a few monarchs have been poets, and some of them have actually been good. I mentioned Elizabeth I earlier, and in more modern times Queen Margrethe II of Denmark is a very talented illustrator who pseudonymously illustrated Lord of the Rings and earned Tolkien's seal of approval. Then, of course, there were the rulers who thought they were artistically talented...like Nero.

 

[BD123]

In terms of historical studies I'd say Eleanor is the most interesting to me, but I wouldn't say she was a great inclusion game-wise. She added nothing new to France and was completely detached from England's general gameplay.

Dido is also interesting but I think that's because as a legendary figure she reads more like a fun story than actual historical record.

Trieu is an interesting since reading the in-game bio and info on Vietnam there's an emphasis on women's roles and their supposed greater powers historically but there's debate to that and just how pro-woman Vietnamese society has historically been. I'm biased towards having Trieu or Trung Trac over Le Loi though - I did a fair amount of undergrad research on the historiography of women's resistance in Vietnam and its historical perception so it was fun seeing her in game. Le Loi is just so archetypal and perfect as a national hero that he's boring and completely sterile to me.

On a side note I'm surprised we had Suleiman and Pachacuti return to 6 after 5. I'm not saying they're not interesting but the Ottomans definitely have fun and interesting choices to avoid repeats, and I believe Civ 4 had Hayuna Capac for the Inca so there's alternatives to the Inca being led by someone else. Glad that they made Suleiman's model attractive in 6 tho... maybe it was an apology for the downgrade of Civ 6 Alexander the Great compared to V's

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Trieu is an interesting since reading the in-game bio and info on Vietnam there's an emphasis on women's roles and their supposed greater powers historically but there's debate to that and just how pro-woman Vietnamese society has historically been. I'm biased towards having Trieu or Trung Trac over Le Loi though - I did a fair amount of undergrad research on the historiography of women's resistance in Vietnam and its historical perception so it was fun seeing her in game. Le Loi is just so archetypal and perfect as a national hero that he's boring and completely sterile to me.

Yep, I wrote that stuff! Vietnam is positioned oddly between Southeast Asia and East Asia. The language itself is a Mon-Khmer (though distant) language, and the Vietnamese state had a long time of expanding into/colonizing/incorporating areas that were Champa or Khmer. Further, in Trieu's time the area was a real poly-ethnic mix. The Chinese termed everyone there "Yue", including Cantonese speakers along with Vietnamese and Lac (both Trieu and the Trung sisters' people) and earlier Tai languages (indeed, the origins of Tai are from the Laos/Vietnam/China borderlands - "Tai" here means Thai, Shan, Lao, etc). So there's a real interesting polyethnic society that grows up there in the early years.

Early Chinese travelers to Khmer, for instance, also noted the status of women (often disparagingly so), noting that business transactions were a female domain. This doesn't necessarily mean a higher status, as monks and warriors (all men, excepting the occasional bhikkuni movement) were considered superior to merchants, but it does mean a fair degree of autonomy relative to the status of women in East or South Asia. That said, there are occasional queens, too, in the region (and not just regents), e.g. Cama (Jamadevi), or female warrior figures (Trung sisters, Trieu, Lady Mo). Even today, Thailand is the country with the highest number of female CEOs in the world - yes, that's a number that includes the USA, Denmark, Finland, or wherever else you're thinking.

But this exists alongside other forms of patriarchy, of course. It's just different, in a way that allowed a woman with a fair degree of social capital from other sources (e.g. family, magico-religious power, a compelling story, a way with swords, charisma, etc) to be accepted as a leader. Other systems that came in were extremely patriarchal (many strains of Buddhism and Confucianism, for example., militarism and Chinese-style feudalism, colonialism). So it becomes a mix. One simply can ask "how shall I make a claim to authority" - the paths nearly everywhere are more manifold for men, and more limited for women; Southeast Asia (as well as a few other places; e.g. West Africa) just expands the latter option a little more.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

I do not know why cry emoji is here.

 

[Thormodr]

The Canadian bashing continues, as always. Sid frowns on you guys.

As for Switzerland in Civ VII, that's a hard no for one simple reason. You just know they'd have yodeling and it would be obnoxious. *Ugh* Lol.

As for the OP, I'd definitely say Lautaro of the Mapuche. I had a rather shallow knowledge of the Mapuche and their inclusion in Civ VI caused me to do a lot of research. Fascinating history and they are now my favourite Civ in Civ VI. Hopefully they'll be back for Civ VII.

 

[Navelgazer]

Generally I think that Firaxis did a great job of finding interesting leaders for this installment, where even the mainstays were implemented in new ways (Alexander) or supplemented with alternate interesting leaders (Gandhi with Chandragupta, Genghis with Kublai.) For my answer to this I'd have to look at who both seemed fascinating enough to look up (most of the choices, honestly) and whose personality came across in interesting gameplay choices (still a lot of them) for the most fun game that felt true to the leader. And for me that's gotta be Gitarja.

 

[BD123]

Early Chinese travelers to Khmer, for instance, also noted the status of women (often disparagingly so), noting that business transactions were a female domain. This doesn't necessarily mean a higher status, as monks and warriors (all men, excepting the occasional bhikkuni movement) were considered superior to merchants, but it does mean a fair degree of autonomy relative to the status of women in East or South Asia. That said, there are occasional queens, too, in the region (and not just regents), e.g. Cama (Jamadevi), or female warrior figures (Trung sisters, Trieu, Lady Mo). Even today, Thailand is the country with the highest number of female CEOs in the world - yes, that's a number that includes the USA, Denmark, Finland, or wherever else you're thinking.

But this exists alongside other forms of patriarchy, of course. It's just different, in a way that allowed a woman with a fair degree of social capital from other sources (e.g. family, magico-religious power, a compelling story, a way with swords, charisma, etc) to be accepted as a leader. Other systems that came in were extremely patriarchal (many strains of Buddhism and Confucianism, for example., militarism and Chinese-style feudalism, colonialism). So it becomes a mix. One simply can ask "how shall I make a claim to authority" - the paths nearly everywhere are more manifold for men, and more limited for women; Southeast Asia (as well as a few other places; e.g. West Africa) just expands the latter option a little more.

I don't deny that women in historical Vietnamese society possessed varying degrees of power and agency more than their northern counterparts, I just think it's interesting that historians both Western and Vietnamese have latched onto this image of Vietnam as exceedingly open to female rulership and power in recent years. I remember a documentary hosted by a British feminist scholar who juxtaposed the Trung Sisters and Lady Trieu to Chinese patriarchy and painted Vietnamese society prior to greater adoption of Chinese cultural norms as an almost feminist utopia, or that Vietnamese historical opinion of the Trung Sisters and Trieu have always been positive (based on my own readings, I'd say Vietnamese chroniclers were sympathetic to them for sure, but fully positive? That's more open to discussion). As someone interested in history and as a Vietnamese-American myself I think the fixation on Vietnamese women leading rebellions is due in part to the novelty of female resistance leaders in Western perception, and for Vietnamese scholars of the 19th Century and onwards emphasizing women's roles as a nationalist project, especially in the context of crafting a distinct Vietnamese identity during French occupation and renewed resistance to China's heavy-handed diplomacy in the present-day.

So while women had more avenues to authority and agency in historical Vietnamese society, the question I'm interested in is how much of the modern perception of female agency in Vietnamese history is actual historical fact and how much of it is a socio-political projection? And in regards to this political projection, to what degree do historians or pop culture (like Civ 6) play into this image making? Vietnam has been a popular fan request for years, and the first choice (after Ho Chi Minh) for many fans with some knowledge about Vietnam chose the Trung Sisters to lead the civ and I don't think this is just a random coincidence but rather a culmination of a wider historiographical process entering the mainstream in Vietnam and abroad.

This is probably a bit long already but for this reason I think Trieu was an interesting choice to lead Vietnam in Civ 6 - we wouldn't be having this kind of conversation about women and Vietnamese history if we had instead the likes of Le Loi, who as I stated before, I believe would just be another run-of-the-mill choice, safe but hardly different or interesting from other leaders. The fact that the Trung Sisters and Lady Trieu ultimately did not succeed in their own rebellions I don't think is important - both to their respective legends and continued folk hero status in Vietnam and for Civ 6 (where you know the Aztecs can nuke Madrid in 1275 CE after building Broadway, so why would it be a stretch to play as Trieu and succeed against a Chinese invasion in-game lol). So to conclude I think Trieu and most of the female leaders chosen in Civ 6 were interesting choices in terms of in-game presentation and historically speaking.

 

[WorldWarIV]

We discovered Eleanor of Aquitaine a couple years ago in a French documentary. She was a true badass, and we named our daughter after her.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

So while women had more avenues to authority and agency in historical Vietnamese society, the question I'm interested in is how much of the modern perception of female agency in Vietnamese history is actual historical fact and how much of it is a socio-political projection? And in regards to this political projection, to what degree do historians or pop culture (like Civ 6) play into this image making? Vietnam has been a popular fan request for years, and the first choice (after Ho Chi Minh) for many fans with some knowledge about Vietnam chose the Trung Sisters to lead the civ and I don't think this is just a random coincidence but rather a culmination of a wider historiographical process entering the mainstream in Vietnam and abroad.

Yeah, I think that's true. There's an emphasis on the things that break the seeming mold - SO MUCH of history is about kings that when you get the story of a female revolutionary - or a region where female revolutionaries are more than just one example - it becomes something notable. It's a spotlight to say "here is what's possible," rather than saying "here is how it normally was."

I've been recently reading David Graeber's fantastic The Dawn of Everything, and I can see a bit of similarities here. Graeber really pushes for an idea of Neolithic republics or democratic systems in ways that are both compelling, but also need to be taken in the same way - this isn't how every Neolithic society was, just how one possibility was realized in more than one place (Tlaxcala, Teotihuacan, Sumerian, ancient Ukraine). He makes for an interesting tension between upland foraging societies focused on kingship and honor and larger urban cultures focused on an egalitarian civic life in ways that totally upend the everyday explanation for things. It's effective, especially in showing how the "rise of agriculture leads to an authoritarian state" narrative simply has no basis, but it is weak in that it could be interpreted as making too much of disparate examples. Perhaps the correct thing to say re: Graeber is "an egalitarian, urban Neolithic is possible," rather than "the urban Neolithic was egalitarian".

So... to get back to SE Asia. That figure I mentioned, how Thailand has the most female CEOs. It's 49% by some measures, 30% by others. It's not a majority. That to say that corporate capitalism in its present form is still deeply patriarchal, just that the paths towards female success are open in Southeast Asia... not well, but more so than in other places. (The global average is 24%, using the IBR's rankings - the 49% number for Thailand. By this same ranking China outstrips Thailand at 51%, though not other systems. This complicates my point about Southeast Asia a bit... ).

Anyway - thanks for appreciating Trieu! I like her, too. To be honest, she's my typical go-to leader when I play Civ myself; I gotta say, I typically play SE Asian leaders when I play, Ramkhamhaeng being the (CivV) exception.

I never play him.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

I mean yeah, I’m never gonna take the possibility seriously, there’s literally no proof that they got anywhere. They still only had dugout canoes when the Portuguese arrived a century later, and I’m not certain if sails were even commonly in use.

Heck, as I suggest, the entire story of the fleet is probably just an invention by Musa to cover up him usurping the throne. But it’s an amusing and captivating anecdote to repeat. And as long as there’s no proof against you can say there’s a slim possibility (much in the same way Russell’s teapot could be a thing, but this is much more fun to wildly speculate about).

I’d suggest Michael Gomez African Dominion if you want a more detailed or up to date handling of the supposed Malian voyage. He concludes basically like you that Musa made the story up but there’s a lot more details to the story and reasons as to why Musa would have wanted to legitimize himself (Gomez at one point says he may have killed his mother incidentally, and the whole Hajj was an act of atonement and attempting to legitimize himself. The indigenous oral sources don’t really mention Musa at all btw, only Arab sources).

 

[sukritact]

I’d suggest Michael Gomez African Dominion if you want a more detailed or up to date handling of the supposed Malian voyage. He concludes basically like you that Musa made the story up but there’s a lot more details to the story and reasons as to why Musa would have wanted to legitimize himself (Gomez at one point says he may have killed his mother incidentally, and the whole Hajj was an act of atonement and attempting to legitimize himself. The indigenous oral sources don’t really mention Musa at all btw, only Arab sources).

I’m aware: my boyfriend runs a podcast, History Unwritten, whose first season covered Mali: he went into depth behind Musa’s story.

Edit: he does cite African Dominion in his bibliography for the series actually.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

I’m aware: my boyfriend runs a podcast, History Unwritten, whose first season covered Mali: he went into depth behind Musa’s story.

Ah, I’ve listened to that! I enjoyed it quite a bit.