Which leaders would be offensive?

for me there are already 3 offensive leaders in Civilization: Churchill, Mao & Stalin.

You are seriously warped if you think Churchill is offensive, unless it is because he "sold out" Eastern Europe to Stalin, as I know a lot of people I know in Poland think. But you appear to be Dutch. Care to explain?
 
Stalin? He saved Europe and started mankind on its way to explore the stars. Did it ever occur to anyone that the people he is accused of detaining were guilty?
It was the U.S. president who killed more innocent civilians from bombings then did Hitler and the Nazis -and irradiated women and children.
 
You are seriously warped if you think Churchill is offensive, unless it is because he "sold out" Eastern Europe to Stalin, as I know a lot of people I know in Poland think. But you appear to be Dutch. Care to explain?

It will be a short explanation. His decision to Bomb Dresden, the bombing of dresden is a War Crime, which nobody has been prosecuted for and D-day sending thousands of young men in to death, only because the Russians where ending the war already.
 
For me is the problem not to let Hitler in, but to take Mao and especially Stalin out. There is no doubt, Stalin is the one whose tyranny caused most deaths in the whole history. And there is no doubt that he is still (after so many facts revelaed) treated with some kind of indulgence.

Mao killed four to seven times as many as Stalin killed, and in a much more brutal way.

Ironically we would have a big problem to name ONE russian leader in the history , who would be famous enough to put him/her in the game without any controversy :) Ivan IV the Terrible? Lenin? They were not nice guys either.

Ivan III?
 
Stalin? He saved Europe and started mankind on its way to explore the stars. Did it ever occur to nyone that the people he is accused of detaining were guilty?

He starved 10 million people to death when he sold all of his nation's food.
 
And to add to Stalin's problems, the war on the eastern front was won in spite of Stalin. He was very lucky that the Germans did not demolish the red army that he nearly fatally weakened through his purges. Not to mention his strategic directions were often questionable. We can all be thankful that Georgiy Zhukov was such an adept manipulator of Stalin, otherwise World War Two may have ended very differently.

On war crimes, its debatable if Churchill directly ordered the dresden bombing. Roosevelt and De Gaulle certainly both oversaw militaries that committed atrocities, Curtis LeMay anyone? We can add the vast majority of Civ leaders to the war criminal category if we want to take the current definitions of war crimes. However, the point of the game is not to teach history, its to allow you to replay it in an entertaining fashion. Should leaders from history be excluded based on their crimes, probably. But that would make for a dull game. Besides I think we are all capable of determining the difference between a game and reality. If people don't know what the leader's they are playing as did in history, hopefully they will read up on them and become more educated as a result.
 
Onagan, you're going to call Churchill one of the top 3 "evil" leaders in the game because of a couple war crimes? I'm not disputing that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime, but if you want to put up a few war crimes and trying to stop Soviet expansionism across Europe up against the other leaders, I don't know if it really compares.

Short points: Montezuma presided over an empire with extensive slavery and an institutionalized practice of human sacrifice (read torture).

Asoka converted to Buddhism only after seeing the death and destruction his armies had wrought over much of modern india.

Genghis Khan: see Baghdad, Samarkand, Khuzestan.

Catherine is often grouped with the "enlightened" despots, but her treatment of the Russian peasantry was more despotic than enlightened.

Isabella's crazy religious intolerance in the game is based on the explusion or torture/ forced conversion of almost all the Jews and Muslims in Iberia.

Ramesses had institutionalized slavery of entire populations.

Pacal II- see Montezuma.

Sitting Bull: The end of the Battle of Little Bighorn is probably comparable to the bombing of Dresden as a war crime.

Boudica also had a particular fondness for massacres of captured cities.

I'm not saying that the bombing of Dresden wasn't a terrible thing, just that to rank Churchill as equivalent to Mao and Stalin, and more "evil" than all the above leaders for it is a bit of a stretch.
 
There is victor and victim in all wars, and by the rationale some posters are presenting, any leader who prosecutes war is at some point a "war criminal" in some other's eyes, which I suppose is a natural outcome of such violent and terrible business.

The inclusion of a particular leader in the game is more a factor of historical "star status," fame or infamy, than an endorsement of policy. Esp. since WWII is such a huge fascination for most history buffs, and most civ players are history buffs to an extent, I'm 100% on board with all axis and allied leaders being playable.
 
Sitting Bull: The end of the Battle of Little Bighorn is probably comparable to the bombing of Dresden as a war crime.

I'm not saying that the bombing of Dresden wasn't a terrible thing, just that to rank Churchill as equivalent to Mao and Stalin, and more "evil" than all the above leaders for it is a bit of a stretch.
The difference between the ancient leaders and Mao/Stalin/Churchill is that are still victims of their crimes.

And Little Bighorn, I thought it was a battle the US lost, nothing more, nothing less. There were (AFAIK) no civilians killed.
 
IMO leaders should be in the game because of their impact on the human history, not becuase of the crimes they did.
 
I apologize for not knowing the answer, but how was Dresden worse than the Luftwaffe raids of London and other British cities?
I hardly think that D-day's invasion could be considered a war crime. Stalin had been pleading with his allies to start a western front for years and the Red Army had gained some momentum, but the Nazis were hardly defeated. The Normandy invasion was necessary. The Americans and British were needed to divert forces and materiel from the Eastern Front. I must say calling Churchill one of the 3 most "evil leaders" is extremely harsh and inaccurate.
 
I didn't call him the one of the most "evil" but one of the offensive leaders (a difference). And about Dresden, go and read about it. We all know about the crimes of the Germans, but we forget about the crimes against them. Where both fight, there will be crimes.
 
IMO leaders should be in the game because of their impact on the human history, not becuase of the crimes they did.

I totally agree with you, but that would include the Nazi leader too. He changed the world.
 
Changing the world does not qualify someone to lead their civ. The later Ming emporers of China changed the world by isoslating themselves and ending all exploration. They do not deserve spots as leaders.
Hitler was an incompetent leader who turned a poor, weak nation into a poorer, weaker, occupied nation with an intermittent period of glory.
 
Hmm, people complain about leaders who did bad things, but I'm yet to hear people complain about the Raze City option, having the player himself choose to do a bad thing. To that end, and many others, you have to take civ as an abstract. It would be nice if there was an option to include or remove ANY leaders anyone didnt want, or just have an availibility check to choose or remove them.
 
The whole leader thing all comes down to marketing.

  • AH? Germany may ban it, those Jewish guys will protest. Bad.
  • Stalin? How many Russians play Civ? Americans know him well, good.
  • Mao? Only the middle age Chinese hate him. Younger generation in China actually think he's cool. And Americans know him well, good. (and not bad to tag him with a horrible trait combo to screw the evil commies as well)
  • Montsy? Why not? A bloodthirsty tribal leader, adding flavor to the game. good.
  • Catherine? Who cares about the peasants? A Russian hottie (probably when she was still young) who may have fun with horses is just too good for guys, the principal buyers of Civ. Some guys probably get turned on by her face-slapping. In fact, I guess people don't mind if Sharapova to be added as the 4th leader.
  • Bourdica? She suxed as a leader, totally messing up a military based resistance. Wait, a celtic queen with big bxxb and a dirty and defiant look! She will conquer the hearts of many Civ playing guys even she couldn't conquer Romans. Let's give her the ultimate aggressive/charismatic military combo then. Good!

Forget about PC, it's FC, the financial correctness that truly rules.
 
Area bombing at Dresden was in no way comparable to the crimes of Stalin, Mao, or Hitler. It's very debatable whether Dresden even was a war crime, let alone comparable to the deaths of millions. To be sure, it was horrible, but Dresden wasn't the only city to get firebombed; if anything Tokyo should be considered the worst, and so Roosevelt is the "most offensive."

DDay is completely absurd to mention... so it's better for Russians to die than British or American? As others have pointed out, it's not as if the USSR was disappointed that a western front was finally opened.
 
Hitler, Mao and Stalin may have been responsible for about as many lives but Hitler systematically killed millions of people of a certain ethnicity and started WWII. Meanwhile Mao and Stalin mostly killed their own people mostly because of paranoia and negligence. A lot of people would be offended if Hitler was included but Mao and Stalin are still admired in China and Russia respectively (beats me why).

And finally and most importantly. Mao and Stalin despite being evil, mass murdering tyrants actually made their countries great powers. Hitler was on the verge of making Germany a Superpower but he failed. He became a leader of a temporarily weakened country that was still the greatest industrial power in Europe and ended up shooting him self in the head in a bunker under the capital of a thoroughly defeated country with starving people and crumbling infrastructure. Sure Germany still did well in the future but it wasn't thanks too Hitler. Judging by the end result he was a bad leader.
 
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