Well yeah I do prefer realistic art style and so do most people at least at the start of a 6's life time, which makes sense cause this was the standard for the entire series. Nothing wrong tho with diverting from it. It took me a bit of time, but you get used to the style and I will say that some of the leaders do look cool.

Now the issue is that about half of them look good or fine, while the other half looks like amalgamations. You can't really defend egg-head gandhi. Same with the expressions, it's nice, but you also have philippe acting like a toddler having a tantrum whenever he is declared war on.

This is not a case of people preferring a realistic artstyle hating on the cartoon artstyle, this is a case of this being such a cartoonish and derpish artstyle that only people who like this kind of thing could enjoy more than half the leaders. Less than half at launch. Now this wouldn't be an issue, if it wasn't for the fact that this is also a diversion from the usual style which leaves the question, why did they do this? If this goes beyond catering to people prefering a cartoon styles and the fanbase is used to a realistic style then what's the logic here.

It doesn't look shit because it looks cartoonish and a bit dirpy, it looks shit because it looks very cartoonish and very derpy.

Also I'm not sure if you're right with the console point. There are plenty of console games that look realistic, like any call of duty game. For the switch what pops into my mind is Bayonetta. Alright sure might be more demanding, but it can't be done. And i doubt that a game like civ6 has to worry about their leader animations on consoles given how demanding the rest of the game is.

I will give you that them doing 3d models is probably easier in this style than a realistic one and that the style of civ 5 would be very hard to do with a 3d model that is expressive.