The new iteration of Civ coming out in Feb has deemphasized leaders because they've completely overhauled the classic "Pick a leader/civilization to stand the test of time, going from the stone age to space" meta.

Now you pick a starting leader and a starting civ. The game goes through 3 canned historic eras with pre-scripted "crises".

They've tried to decouple the historic leaders from their historic nations.

At the end of each era, the player will have the option to "evolve" to a more modern civilization.

So in this version, you can't start as the Americans in the Stone Age, you start as someone like the Egyptians instead.

The initial example they gave was that the Ancient Age Egyptians would have the option of morphing into the Mongols in the Exploration Age if the player has access to horses.

Which isn't canon and is fucking retarded.

So since they've broken the whole " X historic leader leads Y nation", they've watered down the requirements of what constitutes a historical leader, claiming it doesn't have to be a political or military leader from history, it can be "anyone who made significant contributions to science or culture".

Again allowing them to shoehorn in more DEI BS.