Hey, thanks for the shout out!
**** I haven't really managed to explain why a Civilization rep would be awesome to see (Nuclear Gandhi or not) - sometimes because those posts lacked a point and was poorly thought out. Lets take that extremely awkward segue and rectify that! This is going to be a long one.
Now, first thing first, I have no goddamn clue what to choose. Gandhi himself is probably ruled out as playable (possible NPC though) since
a lot of Indians revere him as practically a saint (see reactions to Clone High Gandhi), a Smash appearance would risk contradicting the real Gandhi's efforts and his normal pacifist playstyle in Civilization, and Nintendo generally wants to avoid controversies whenever possible. I don't think Nuclear Gandhi caused a near-revolt in India because it started out as an unintentional bug. That and if that had happened... we would've already seen it. Nuclear Gandhi first became a thing during the Civ I days (early 1990s).
It's gotten a bit controversial within the Civ fanbase (like the CivFanatics forum) partly because it's an old meme, and so the Civilization devs have begun adding alternate Indian leaders like the more straightforwardly militaristic Chandragupta Maurya (who conquered almost the entirety of India around 300 BC and fought Alexander the Great before abdicating the throne and became a monk in order to repent).
So it's difficult to say. Amongst the playable leaders Japan's leaders might be hypotheoretically attractive to Nintendo: Nobunaga is the representative leader in V, Hojo Tokimune in VI (the regent during the Mongol invasion and the famous kamikaze). Those two are not controversial but could perhaps be adapted into playable characters. A lot of mainstays are your usual suspects for history-based games: Napoleon for the French (coincidence of all coincidences, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems also produced a Napoleon game for the GBA), Elizabeth I / Victoria for the English, Genghis Khan for Mongolia etc.
And yes, Civilization relies a lot on national stereotypes. It has done so ever since III, which began to differentiate the different factions' playstyles.
And if you gotta differentiate the different playable civs... well, you go with the obvious markers. Especially since
Civ VI has 50 different playable civs / factions in total. For example, America usually gets late game bonuses: of course America's unique building in Civ VI is the Film Studio! And the Film Studio is, of course, very well suited if one's playing as America and going for a Cultural victory (gaining more visiting tourists from other civs than any other civ has domestic tourists). There are 6 different victory conditions (peaceful ones like Science, warmongering ones like Domination etc.), and the unique units, buildings, leader bonuses etc. are going to have a major impact usually on what to pursue. Then again, one can win any victory with anyone.
The difficulty level does play a major part: on lower levels, the player gets small bonuses. The fourth standard "Prince" level is more or less even. But on higher levels the AI players get more and more ridicolous bonuses: On the highest level Deity the AI players get to found three cities to the player's one from Turn 1, and they get major bonuses to production, gold and combat.
As for how Nintendo reacts to stereotypes, well they're not too afraid of using national stereotypes themselves as long as they're not demeaning. They've used stereotypical Japanese music and trappings themselves a number of times. Also consider:
Really, the only way the devs could've made Windmillville even more Dutch was to have copious amounts of
polders in the background.
Civilization as a game is heavily reliant on the early game - usually the normal 4000 BC start point to the end of the Medieval Era. When one is starting out, settling the first couple or so cities, scouting and getting the needed techs for early game resources, formulating plans for later on. Oh and surviving potential hordes of barbarians, clearing out barbarian camps (because they autospawn barbarian units, often best to take them out ASAP) and prepping for or guarding against any aggresive AI neighbors like Alexander or Cleopatra.* Or if one is playing multiplayer, everyone's going to go aggro sooner or later for teh win.
That's where I think a Civ representative in Smash could work - cities in Civ work by giving "zones of control" to surrounding land. The more the city can grow, the larger territory it will control. As such, a Civ representative could maybe work by establishing a similar, but lets say more fluid "zone of control" that strenghens the longer one attacks and / or keeps oneself from getting hit too much, but it shrinks after consecutive hits. The ZoC could offer various small but useful buffs to the character and possible teammates. Late game units like tanks might only buff the player if the ZoC is "strong" enough. In order to prevent excessive camping problems it might be worth it to make the ZoC semi-autonomous and not staying entirely in place, but moving a bit on its own so the player also has to react a bit.
I'm spitballing with the idea, the moveset could pull from a vast variety of weaponry, and that is awesome in itself. It's also a major reason why I support both Master Chief and KOS MOS, after all.
*It's also map-dependent: Horses are invisible when starting a game in Civ VI (somehow, the sneaky mother****ers weigh a lot for crying out loud) until one researches the beginning tech Animal Husbandry - if one is playing a cavalry-centric Civ like Mongolia or Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire) and one gets a bad start with little workable land and no horses around? Whelp, time to hit the restart button and hope for better map RNG. The map RNG is usually not that cruel - most starts are pretty decent and a lot of civs have start biases towards terrain they're most famous for. Still though.
Civ VI is definetely worth it if you're into strategy games: It's feature rich, got loads of replayability and allows for a lot of crazy images and scenarios: but buggy as hell and the late game can be a chore sometimes. It's also not cheap: Civ VI plus its two expansions costs a pretty penny. Then you also have the New Frontier's Pass, another 8 civs + game modes for another $25 I believe.
And that's not counting the stand-alone DLC, which is another seven Civs (The Poles, Australians, Persians, Macedonians, Nubians, Khmer, and Indonesians) plus scenarios. The pack containing those seven civs cost $50ish in total unless it's on Steam Sale FFS.
And now I'm suddenly reminded of why I ****ing hate 2K's microtransaction practices.
