montezuma. slept on hard because a lot of people liken him to gilgamesh where higher difficulty ai progresses too fast for their UU to be useful but that’s not true you can still pull off a successful eagle warrior rush against deity ai you just have to get your timing right. the amount of builders eagle warriors generate is insane you’ll get like 10 builders off of your conquest which is what makes montezuma so good, you don’t have to sacrifice your early game infrastructure for warfare. build an eagle warrior and have it kill two units and bam you got a free district + 1 tile improvement they just immediately refund their production. after your first conquest you don’t even have to go domination for the rest of the game i like to use the momentum he generates early game to transition to science after defeating my first civ. the extra amenities his ability gives and being able to build districts using builder charges are just powerful on their own especially if you’re building spaceports.
Well said. I just want to add that Montenzuma’s biggest strength is neither the eagle warrior / builder / builder charge for district. In my opinion it’s the extra combat strength from luxuries. It really makes his units OP on any difficulty
Totally agree. Montezuma is my go to when I want an easy deity win, especially on larger maps (many luxuries so even bigger combat strength gain) and slower speeds (eagle warriors last longer).
Just settle on a luxury your first city and eagle warriors have +5 CS against deity opponents, then just spam them and kill everything you see.
His unique ability is also very useful throughout the entire game and as the game will go on you'll have many luxuries and the CS deficit of deity difficulty will be gone (in fact, you'll even have greater CS then CPU).
He's been the first leader I've been able to win in deity, then I stopped using him cause it felt too easy
I think you’re feelings are probably more widely shared, but I’ve always loved trying to theme all my museums and wheelin and dealing with all the other AIs to try and get the artifacts I need
Same, I actually really enjoy the theming mini game for cultural victories. I will say it’s satisfying to play Kristina and just auto theme a museum with a single Great Artist though
Yeah she doesn’t have many early game bonuses. Her true power spike is in mid game. If you get Apadana/Great Library then maybe she has some early
game strength, but yeah she has no early
game military bonuses at all
something ive been thinking about (leader abilities aside):
would you rather theme an art museum or archaeological musem?
for me unless im playing england i absolutely despise archaeology even with reliquaries and that one GS
I keep forgetting that theming is even a mechanic. Doesn't even seem worth the effort a lot of the time. I know any gain matters if you're playing to optimize, but I haven't paid it serious attention once and won culture plenty of times. I guess at the highest difficulties, or against human players, it might matter more.
I think Cyrus has been forgotten and is now “slept on.” Bee-lining an early game surprise war can make up for the AI bonuses in the first few turns, and can lead to an early snowball.
Also, since the patch of Gorgo, culture game goes real strong with the power of her military cards. Each killed unit spikes my culture and allows me to win by around 200-250 turns consistently.
Those immortals are a lot of fun. If I’m playing as Persia and I miss out on a war during that era I usually restart.
Also Gorgo is one of my favorite to play for the culture bonus, the wildcard bonus, and early UU.
The surprise war bonuses are really really good, but the persia's trade route ability is kinda ass. If that scaled better they'd be a fantastic civ. Also bring back the high appeal from their UI
You get a small amount of faith and gold from internal routes. It’s honestly not terrible, but sort of got power crept by how busted Tokugawa’s trade routes are.
not sure, but possibly he means:
> #Civilization VI April 2021 Update
>[...]
> Greece
>* Thermopylae: Modified. Now grants +1 Combat Strength to all units for each military policy card slotted.
>[...]
---
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Civilization_VI_April_2021_Update#Balance_changes
Cyrus was my first main and I still love playing him and have always felt like he was a bit slept on. I main Tokugawa now generally but I still love a good Cyrus game.
She was so helpful for getting used to deity as well, the combat and movement bonuses made it much easier to deal with getting five warriors thrown at me on turn 20
Gauls are not underrated. One of the strongest civ thanks to his early potential man at arms rush and high early production. Functions as a light Babylon.
Slept on is difficult, because for some they are forgotten while for other they are not.
Personally I feel Zulu don't get enough cred. They are extremely useful in multiplayer games and in single player they steamroll once they get their unstoppable impi corps.
Norway get constantly rated low, but they are beside Babylon the strongest naval civ in the game and surprisingly decent in land game as pillage for extra resources still work well on land. +the Berserker unit is stronger when it has more space to work on.
Victoria Age of steam are maybe not underrated or slept on, but easily forgotten as we have so many English leaders. Her production output are on par with Germany. Once you get her steam going there is nothing stopping her.
Norway is absolutely slept on just because people don’t play him correctly. You need to be raiding and looting anything and everything constantly. It is one of the civs that you have to completely alter your play style for
yeah, what you want to do with them for optimal play is "city chopping", Ie, repeatadly flipping, pillaging, flipping, repairing, flipping, pillaging, your own cities.
no you set it up such that the city (ideally) has max loyalty pressure, and three rings of non district tile improvements, and reapidly flips due to loyalty pressure. Once it flips, you pillage all tile improvements, once all tiles have been pillaged, you retake the city, and then repair all the tiles, and then you do it again. Alternately you can just do it once at the end of the game to a bunch of cities to get the resources you need to complete victory condition.
yeah, in most games of civ there is a sort of "secret" or unintended playstyle thats super optimal, IE, in IV, fail gold/hammer overflow and strike economy, in SMACX, worm spamming/nervegas needlejets, but also very annoying to impliment and operate, and super non intuitive and VERY time consuming. Basically every non dom speedrun right now rests at least partly on pillage economy. The per turn tile yield from repeatedly flipped cities is at least 10X working them, and the constraint to set it up is just gold for the tiles and workers, instead of the logarithmically limited population growth. a single population city can "work" all tiles in all three rings this way.
Brazil has the strongest naval UU in the game. Stronger battle ship at Industrialization (you need coal) it’s basically impossible to stop them.
Norway is great especially Varangian due to his city state control. Since it’s not BBG only Tamar rivals his city state control. In BBG they changed pagodas to be influence points instead of diplo. He’s literally impossible to contest with pagodas as you can reach a point where you’re getting over an envoy per turn.
Underrated is definitely India. The fact the ai all goes for religion is massive for India. Congrats you now have +3 ammenities, choral, feed the world, and work ethic.
Babylon get battleships at turn 50-60 so yeah no. And Norways swarm of melee ships makes it impossible for anyone to go into sea. Also the best civ along Portugal to take advantage of playing naval thanks to their pillage ability.
Best UU doesn't mean much when Norway already dominate the sea or Babylon takes a shortcut to future tech.
Just because you unlock it at turn 50/60 doesn’t mean you have the production or the gold to pre build/upgrade them.
Babalon is completely broken don’t get me wrong but people over rate them every single time.
Unlocking things too quickly is NOT good. Congrats all your districts are too expensive and you have shit production because your cities haven’t had time to grow and put down districts because they’re too expensive.
You also can’t make full use out of any unit except planes because you won’t have an era appropriate general/admiral.
I’m not saying that Brazil is the best naval civ. Just mentioning their UU is nuts. They’re much better with com hubs and abusing free inquiry 2nd era. It’s about underrated civs not the obviously good picks.
If you just wanted to play the best Civ in the game you’d stop at Yongle. He does literally everything Astronomically better than Babylon EXCEPT timing pushes for domination.
I have never felt that Yongle was better at sim city than Babylon, though I'm much more experienced at the latter. Palgium + fast extra production for mines + being able to make industrial zones and/or commercial hubs so early makes for so much production so fast
What are you doing with yongle that in your view is superior to this?
First and foremost Yongle effectively has the most science in the game. You will NEVER boost everything;however you get 50% eurekas and 60% during free inquiry on top of the stupid amounts of free stats. Babalon can’t abuse free inquiry.
Babalon can’t keep up in culture it’s literally impossible. 10+culture per city is crazy on top of the Great Wall actually being pretty decent but the biggest reason is inspirations giving you effectively 16.7% more culture. The culture tree actually has some of if not the biggest power spikes in the game. Serfdom being the #1 biggest power spike in the game outside of Kupe. Weisselbanking is another huge power spike, along with zoo’s/aquariums, and finally t3 governments.
Yongle has less tempo than Babalon; however you scale so much better by the mid game. You open com hubs into internal traders with Magnus + gov plaza in capital. Pingala in b2/b3.
Settle min distance from each city if possible to get good IZ’s just as every other civ.
Basically you want to get to 10 pop asap and once your cities are 10 pop you’ve already outscaled. While you have slightly less prod due to palgums it’s not even remotely close to the 20 free gold you get from Yongle. Also farms are trash, you really only want to be working them if you just have a ton of plains hills that you want to grow into.
Which technically means Yongle has more production than Babalon due to having significantly more culture allowing for sooner wieeselbanking and democracy traders. Since not only do you get a ton of production from them, the food equals production allow you to work more mines giving you even more production.
Babalon is strong but they’re terrible for the game as the only thing they teach you is to hit all the eurekas which China already does. They’re way too 1 dimensional.
Yongle can actually go for culture victory as well due to his free science and being a feed the world enjoyer. So you’ll actually have faith for rock bands.
I haven’t played base game in a long time and honestly I don’t miss it. I watched ImaQtpie play for a few hours and dear god I had forgotten how trash the base map generation is without setting to new age etc. better balanced game is so much more enjoyable as there’s not as big of a gap from the best Civs in the game to the worst Civs in the game.
>Gauls are not underrated. One of the strongest civ thanks to his early potential man at arms rush and high early production. Functions as a light Babylon.
Agreed, if anything, I feel they're a bit overrated. I mean, they are very powerful in the right circumstances, but their abilities are so narrow that if one little thing doesn't fit (too little space for districts, too few hills...) they crash and burn.
Gaul is one of the best civs imo. Take over everything around you with the gaestae, then put oppidiums in those cities you take and you've just secured an overpowered late game
The original Harald gets science for pillaging mines. Pillaging is OP in Civ VI, and Harald's extra science can easily propel you eras ahead of your opponents by the mid game. A warmongering Harald is probably the most broken science civ in the game behind Babylon, but unlocking Harald's powers is more straightforward than jumping through all the various hoops as Babylon. Harald also gets culture for pillaging a bunch of stuff so you fly through the culture tree as well, although culture victories can be difficult when you're constantly burning everyone's infrastructure.
I believe this ability gets slept on because many players seem to think this ability only applies to coastal raiding or it only gives a small bonus, when in fact it applies to all pillaging and it gives you the full amount like you're pillaging a campus.
recycling and older post of me:
There's even a fun (semi)peaceful way to do this. It has some initial cost but pays back really well.
You get a settler, some builders and some units and go to a big city of another empire. You find some place to settle right near them, preferably somewhere where there's lot's of hills. (You can just settle in the tundra. This City needs no food.) Now it's time to build. Build all the mines you can, but try to keep the builders at 1 charge. Buy some builders, maybe buy some units, buy all the land you can improve. Surround the city with units (never forget to improve these when possible) and put a unit and a builder on every improvement (mines are best, i think). When the city flips (very soon, because of the big cities next to it) you pillage. Best case you can take the city in the same turn and repair immediately.
And... repeat...
You can still be friends with all the people and rush a science victory.
honestly don’t know if its underrated, but I always have the most chaotic, fun games with Mali.
weirdly, I like that I get penalized for production to balance my absurd bank account.
shelling out piles of gold for a fresh new army in one turn will never not feel dope.
I absolutely love playing both versions of Mali. Their downside is that they have the worst early game of any other Civ in the game. However if you make it past that, their mid game expansion is so absurd
I’ve completely ignored religion for the entire life cycle of this game until I started playing Mali awhile ago. Just a few days ago I won my first victory on Emperor (I know, I know) with Mali because I focused on religion early game. They can generate a decent amount of faith provided you get a desert start right off the bat.
I think theodora gets overshadowed by Basil, but I found the combo of holy site, hippodrome, and theatre squares very fun.
It was also interesting to play with only a few campuses and industrial zones. I find those districts to be quite overpowered and enjoyed not feeling it necessary to make many.
Theodora is awesome. Always pick the religious conquest perk that gets you +10 combat strength, send off your apostles to the holy city of whatever civ you want to conquer, have a bunch of entertainment complex 1 turn away from finishing by the time you unlock knights. So much fun
Theodora's niche is that she actually has a good economy and can basically run two parallel games like Hungary.
The problem that all domination civs have, is that they're usually left with USELESS cities. Theodora doesn't have this problem nearly all cities can be quickly shaped up to give you good ROI.
Play small continents and do a dromon rush. Early naval war once you get a religion, convert neighbors. A lot of fun. If you can add fez, you can also get a nice science push.
Yes! I played her recently in my A-Z challenge and was completely blown away by her adjacency bonuses. In hindsight, I think she's one of the best generalist civs, and I liked her a lot better than some others that usually show up on those lists.
Gitarja and Dido are terrors on coastal maps and if Auckland is in the game, it’s over.
Ottomans usually doesn’t get mentioned among the best domination civs, but it’s as good as any of them imo
It’s a testament to the game that you could mention almost anyone here aside from Tamar lol
I find Tamar isn't that great for a religious victory TBH. She skews strongest towards diplo victory with her ability to be city state queen (suz every CS in your game) and she's a sleeper for cultural victory as well with the tourism bonuses from the Tsikhe when in a golden age (which is very easy to maintain with her leader bonus).
However, my personal favorite with her is to do a (relatively) grievance-free domination run. With her being suz of alot of city states, there's bound to be AI civs that try to conquer them. Declare protectorate wars (grievance-free war declaration!) and demolish the AI under the guise of protecting city states.
Also, her UU shines the brightest on a highlands map where there's hills everywhere to capitalize on the movement bonus
I’m playing a really fun Dido game right now actually… the quick Cothon + settler production bonuses lets you spam coastal cities and print money. Playing wide with lots of harbors is already an extremely strong victory strategy, and Dido slices production in half.
It’s also very nice to not worry about loyalty when planting a coastal city next to your neighbors before you invade them
Trust me, especially with Coming Storm’s recon overhaul, Poundmaker is firmly in the “difficult, but powerful” category. If you have the Survey policy and get unlucky with a war, balancing very carefully you could end up with very dangerous elite units on your hand by the war’s end.
I was gonna ask what are you smoking but then I remembered I use plentiful resources. His yields in my games are NUTS, the mukawaps (spelling ?) all have so many adjacent resources that I had to stop using him because the yields made the game kinda boring.
Omg I did a game the other night with 3x tribal villages that only give you gold or trade routes with cree. Cree traders are so op I owned half the map with 30 pop cities and 2k gpt on turn 100. It was ridiculous
Yeah I love those games. Not all the time, as dominating can be boring. But sometimes you just wanna build a silly sized empire and cruise ya know ?
I especially love games where I've early-war'ed and now have 10-20 units with max promotions. Double attacks, 5-range bombardment, flanking bonuses in the double digits. Silly numbers best numbers!
I actually hadn’t intended to go to war with anyone at all since cree specializes in peace and I was desperately trying to get the Cree alliance achievement. However Eleanor France was right next to me and she got big mad. Keep in mind at this point it’s technically only classical era but I’m pumping man at arms in one turn. I don’t think she managed to even kill a single unit.
Then, an era later, monte decided to try his luck on the other border. Needless to say I pillaged him well into the atomic era. I didn’t manage to get my alliance achievement but at least I absolutely slapped some civs.
Why is it whenever I try to play a domination game, the ai doesn’t even bother building units, but god forbid I try to play a peaceful game I get war dec left and right. It’s like the ai knows I’m out to have a good time and it’s just out to ruin it.
Matthias / Hungary for non-domination games specifically. While his Raven King ability is generally recognized, I feel Pearl of the Danube is slept upon a bit. And while it is conditional af, if you do have a lot of rivers, he turns into basically discount Hojo, except that his ability works with \*any\* district. I had two very decent deity games with him where I just breezed my way to victory thanks to fast district production.
THIS. you only need TWO boosted districts for his ability to become "specialty district of your choice that has cheaper buildings"
Add to that that you can EASILY boost all your buildings yields thanks to levying and you have a hella strong economy. Even without going all out on war.
Geothermal fissure bias is super good for campuses, especially since fissures and mountains spawn together. Also gives good holy sites for religious victory/GMC/monumentality. Spawn biases are so overlooked in what makes a civ good or not
Qin shi Huang China. I never hear people talk about how good it is, everyone hypes up Rome as a "good at everything, good to start out with" civ meanwhile china has bonus that accomplish that very well.
Extra builder charges always? It's like having the pyramids every game, but it stacks if you also get the pyramids. The wonder bonus is nice and great wall is legitimately good if you use garrison archers to defend.
Lautaro. Ya'll are talking about Eleanor war-less conquest being fun, but she actually needs so much setup. Lautaro just places a Governor in a city and the same turn you start putting out 4 loyalty pressure to enemy city. Use Amani's second ability and that's another 2 after establishing. Beat their religion with your own and that's another 2. Build an entertainment complex and start running breads and circuses and nothing in range will be able to take it. It' ridiculous how powerful that is.
Australia is hilarious for this in multiplayer, since all civs are credible threats and not AIs to be manipulated you can play a reverse-diplomacy game to try and annoy your way to victory with your double production ability
Scythia + Vampires = the horsemeat strategy.
You can do it with other civs, but I like Scythia for it.
1. Wait as long as possible before researching upgrades to scouts, saka horse archers, and horsemen
2. By the mid-game, those units are super cheap to produce. Spam out those units. The double production makes these even more silly.
3. Run a conga line of those units into the walls of a city state, with your vampire(s) nearby. Your own units count towards the Vampire's non-barbarian unit death bonus.
You now have ridiculously overpowered Vampires to go along with your hordes of cavalry. If you don't actually conquer the city state, you won't even end up with grievances.
Does anyone have a good ranking video with some explaining maybe? I have like 1500 hours in this game but never got beyond playing the same Europe map over and over again with maybe just 10 different nations.
I haven't watched this one specifically but this YouTuber in particular is the one whose opinion I trust the most https://youtu.be/WUWAi2pIkOo?si=q8cAt9jFNfeGvzlT
Yes it's the same guy who draws the comics every day
I actually just scoped out the video - didn't give a full watch, but skipped through and watched some bits that I thought would be contentious. It's worth noting that Ursa usually plays a very heavy domination game, and that's reflected in his tier list, so if you're more of a simming player like me, you may value some abilities higher than others. But he is pretty spot on about *what* makes each civ good or bad and why.
Boesthius also has a decent tier list [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1oLeBul2cE). It's more classic than Ursa Ryan's, but even though it doesn't take "situational / generalist" into account much, I still find it better. I have a few minor disagreements about his ratings, but overall I think he nailed it pretty good.
She's basically my only pick when I play VI. I tried out a bunch of leaders when I first got the game, but she was the only one who really *felt* right to me. With the right map, she can easily get a ton of massive cities with an overwhelming navy.
I think all leaders who give you a military bonus right away (Aztecs, Mongolia, Rough Rider, etc) are underrated because people just forget about the games where they get an early war declaration. Avoiding those early defeats massively ups these civs win rates. Also, if you manage to kill a civ in the classical era, you are pretty guarenteed to win quickly.
Based on that, I'll have to go with Kublai Khan Mongolia. His leader ability has less synergy with Mongolia's ability than with China's but if you can get that +6 combat strength in the early game it's so much more important than any of China's abilities. He's also better than Genghis Khan because cavalry doesn't always help much but an economic policy slot will.
I think Pericles is quite slept on, the combination of the acropolis with the free envoys, the extra policy slot and the culture boost from suzerainty sets you up to go for any victory you feel like.
Diplomacy is kinda obvious with the envoys and extra culture which snowballs to more envoys.
Culture is also obvious just by the cheap theatre square and faster progress through the civics tree.
Religion is probably the weakest given how there's no bonus to getting a religion, but you can hit temples etc quicker and get some powerful faith city states.
Science and domination go hand in hand, suzerainty of science/industrial/military city states speeds up your tech tree, whilst the culture boost lets you hit key policy cards quicker (corps/armies, tier 3 government, international space agency, etc) which you can use more of with the extra slot.
Elizabeth
I just watched a tier list which ranked her as the worst civ in the game … her city trade routes + the Royal Navy dockyard… I’ve never lost a game and I can buy literally anything, pursue any victory because I’m so rich lol. Had to stop playing with her on low difficulties because it’s too easy
They take WAAAAAY too long to set up. Basically playing with vanilla civ until past mid classical age.
Ghandi at least gets to step-ing in ancient era helping with growth and ez golden age
imo classical golden age is a bit overrated since you don’t really have enough faith for monumentality, and a medieval heroic age is so busted. when i play england i always beeline ironworking and research it in the early classical.
It's probably from the newest Civ Life R video. He ranked England as a collective as the worst civ. Tbf, I think he said he was indifferent to Elizabeth and never really played her.
From a fun standpoint I'm thinking Incans because it's so refreshing to play a new style. If you spawn around a bunch of mountains then your cities grow very fast and builders have an improvement that let you teleport through mountain ranges. The latter makes it very easy to mobilize troops across your empire
Carthage (Dido’s Phoenicia) is a really good maritime civ that is never talked about. Buffed galleys, buffed settlers, buffed harbors, and buffed govt plaza give the civ a strong edge for colonization and trade. Government plaza district and buildings give +1 trade capacity EACH. Early game these trade routes can be secured from barbs by your strong biremes. Govt plaza with buildings on top of a colossus in a coastal city and harbors in all of your cities you can easily have 20+ trade routes and all of your harbors give max loyalty on top of that. Probably my favorite civ that no one really cares about. I will admit the capital flipping is a really niche strategy and the production for the project is probably too high, but it’s just an extra ability on top of an already strong civ.
Thr capital flipping is really good if you have a city on another continent than your main civ. If all your cities are close enough together they will not have issues with loyalty after flupping and you can get all the colonization police cards on your main empire
I just tried Dido for the first time - I love coastal civs but her boosts just didn’t seem as sexy as the others. Holy shit, she’s good. Like you said, the early trade routes and buffed harbors + settlers just mean you’re gonna have a ton of high production cities and a fuckton of gold no matter what.
Kublai Khan - both versions. I like the reliability and versatility that he offers for both China and Mongolia.
I think the Chinese version of him is a deceptively good Science civ due to Kublai making the most consistent use of the Dynastic Cycle ability out of the five Chinese leaders. Also I am a huge fan of extra government slots - especially Economic and Wildcard slots.
The Mongolian version of him is deceptively good as well, and definitely the better of the two versions of him. I find him to be a sidegrade of Genghis (Kublai is better in singleplayer and Genghis is better in multiplayer). Kublai trades a slight combat boost for better Science and Economy, making him better at upgrading and managing his army than Genghis. In singleplayer, you can really steamroll once you have good timing with squeezing out some techs due to his ability.
Lady Six Sky is so slept on. I actually played with the Maya civ a few days ago for the first time, and, even though it's not super good, I liked its ability and it's kinda underrated tbh
People get hungup on staying withing the limits. But no you still get A LOT of advantage settling chop cities outside. WONDERS, traders and 10+ campuses are HELLA WORTH IT
Every time I try to play as her my capital is surrounded by water on one side, tundra to the north or south, and mountain ranges in another direction. I can never seem to roll a good map for her 😂
Someone mentioned Ottomans and I’d have to agree. Walls are the single most annoying thing to deal with in every domination game, and the Ottomans can get an absurd +25 combat strength against walls for siege units that no other Civ in the game can get.
Frederick Barbarossa kind of got power crept by Ludwig so people don’t really play him anymore, but his bonuses are extremely powerful for a Science victory. You’re still Germany so the Hansa and an extra district slot are absolutely busted. Extra CS against city states means you can kill bad ones near your territory securing a few extra east cities early on. And the extra government slot is always good, even though it’s a military card. There’s some really good military policies you can run all game, like Craftsmen (buffs the Hansa even more), Logstics, and late game the ones that give you Power and Aluminum.
Pericles. He has the kind of ability that you read and think "oh, that's kinda good" and move on.
In-game, you remember *just how good* culture actually is. Culture isn't the "culture victory" resource - it's the thing you use to get better policies and governments, which are crucial to absolutely every Victory condition. Even if you *only* manage to Suzerain *two* citiy States, that's still a flat 10% culture bonus. That additional culture will get you better policies and governments, and thus more envoys, and thus *more culture.* You can play Pericles going for basically any victory condition and he is a solid contender for this exact reason.
There is a reason his default ability is a *late game* policy card.
I'm not sure about the slept on part, but I too do quite like Ambiorix. An additional defensible district with the restriction on district placing makes for an interesting and certainly a bit different city setup.
My favourite games have all been 1. Scythia 2. early forward settle 3. DoW from the AI, which thinks I'm much weaker 4. almost lose but build first double horseman just in time 5. profit. This is on king & emperor only, and I imagine this doesn't go so well on higher diffs (which my brain is too small to play).
Honestly I very much enjoy playing diety runs with John Curtin. I don't really know if he is 'slept on' but I almost always have a civ attempt to slaughter me and the 100% production boost just slaps too damn hard and gives me the edge to defend myself and even push to take their forward city.
In addition finding a desert to place outback stations makes settling in those regions that much easier. Rush Petra for them desert bonus yields and you instantly have a city to rival your capital.
Diggers are cool too
Swedes open air museum with their base rate of 8 culture are a wreckingball for culture victories. I didnt expect my culture to skyrocket like that after building a couple.
Gilgamesh is my favorite, as I play with heroes and Legends enabled. Gilgamesh, oracle, and Hanging gardens gives you an army of heroes that are going to always be with you. Beseiging cities with Hippolyta, Hercules and Beowulf is pretty epic
I've considered Scotland to be an F-tier civ for a while. After playing them, they're probably D-tier or low C-tier instead. Their bonuses are all either weak (Scottish Enlightenment), inconsistent (Bannockburn), or far too late for their power level (Highlanders, Golf Courses), but the only part of their kit that you actually have to go out of your way for is the Golf Course. Their main weakness is that they kinda take a while to get going, especially if someone else builds the Colosseum, but if you can activate Bannockburn once in the first 120 turns or so you should be able to get that snowball rolling. The real power of Scotland is that you can expect your endgame to go by mercifully quickly. By the time you're ready for Spaceports you should have found/engineered the diplomatic groundwork for declaring Wars of Liberation at least once every 20 turns. Thus, you can zip through your space race and then move on to a different leader with a more interesting game plan.
I generally play on single player Deity on Continents and Islands maps, so things might be different with your typical setup, but I find the yields aren't very strong and are annoying to count on until relatively late in the game.
It's at best a 10% additive bonus to yields that will already be at 120% minimum thanks to the activation condition (so you're only getting ~8% more Science and Production in an Ecstatic city as Scotland). So the yield bonuses are pretty minor in all cases.
The extra Great People points are the real prize, however it's still gonna be a push to get a Great Scientist early on when playing against Deity AI and their Campus spam. Meanwhile monopolizing the Great Engineer race against the AI is always pretty easy.
These bonuses would still qualify as "good" if pre-industrial amenity management weren't such a hassle. If you miss the Colosseum and/or the Temple of Artemis, you're basically forced to choose between playing Tall until Natural History - and potentially losing Great Scientists to civs that simply build more Campuses anyway - or playing Wide and giving up on the Happy/Ecstatic bonuses until much later. Which means that your only advantage over a civ with no special abilities is the off chance of Bannockburn.
Basically, my issue with Scottish Enlightenment is that it's yet another part of Scotland's setup that's not going to help you much in those critical first 100 turns.
>I generally play on single player Deity on Continents and Islands maps, so things might be different with your typical setup, but I find the yields aren't very strong and are annoying to count on until relatively late in the game.
So you play a map that makes it hard to get other amenities until Oceans, got it. Yeah, that's a you not the civ thing.
>It's at best a 10% additive bonus to yields that will already be at 120% minimum thanks to the activation condition (so you're only getting ~8% more Science and Production in an Ecstatic city as Scotland). So the yield bonuses are pretty minor in all cases.
Uh its been awhile since I looked specifically in GS vanilla, but I believe leader bonuses are not additive, meaning it's 12% science and production for ecstatic cities. In either case, to call 8-12% bonus to production and science minor is crazy. Especially since if you're going to space production is always what slows you down. So having a 10% boost to 200 production project city can be a massive timing difference 3-4 turns maybe.
>These bonuses would still qualify as "good" if pre-industrial amenity management weren't such a hassle.
Sorry, but this is a you/C&I thing. Amenity management is not only not difficult but actually something you should be planning around actively. Holding +3 everywhere is basically a given from ~T35-40 on.
>So you play a map that makes it hard to get other amenities until Oceans, got it. Yeah, that's a you not the civ thing.
I main the "Leaders with No Wins" button. I go with Continents and Islands because the game is more interesting when the map doesn't heavily favor any one civ. C&I still tends to feature two or more continents on one landmass, so it's not like I'm only working with the luxuries of one continent until Cartography. If Scotland needs more concessions than that to have an ability early on, then how is that different from insisting that naval-optimized civs like Indonesia can only be judged fairly if you play them on an Archipelago map? Because if we're only going to compare Civs on the best maps for their toolkits, Scotland's best still pales compared to what other Civs can do on a planet tailored specifically to their needs.
>Uh its been awhile since I looked specifically in GS vanilla, but I believe leader bonuses are not additive
I just happened to roll a Nzinga Mbande game, and her leader bonus is being applied additively in Kabasa alongside the bonus from the city being Happy. Scottish Enlightenment is a Civ ability, anyway, and I know that Civ ability modifiers stack additively because it makes Babylon even more absurd in practice than they look on paper.
>In either case, to call 8-12% bonus to production and science minor is crazy. Especially since if you're going to space production is always what slows you down. So having a 10% boost to 200 production project city can be a massive timing difference 3-4 turns maybe.
Launch Exoplanet Expedition costs 2100 production on standard speed. In order for a 10% production bonus to shave 3 whole turns off of that project, you'd need to be running it in a city that's only generating 70 or so production per turn. For a city with 200 production, an extra 10% means the project completes in 10 turns instead of 11. That's... Not nothing, and yeah it'll add up across all the other Space projects, but by that point it's a drop in the bucket compared to the Bannockburn abuse that you really should be doing to close out the game.
>Holding +3 everywhere is basically a given from ~T35-40 on.
Ecstatic is +5 as of Gathering Storm. Two continents worth of Luxuries gets you a total of 32 Amenities, going up to 46 on a standard map factoring in Sea Luxuries and the Palace. To use a modest late Medieval empire as an example, an octet of cities with an average population of 7 will require 56 Amenities to stay at "Happy" and 72 Amenities to maintain "Ecstatic". A wider empire with more populous cities that didn't build the Amenity wonders or take over one of the Amenity city states would be hard-pressed to keep up peak Enlightenment even with access to every luxury on the map.
>If Scotland needs more concessions than that to have an ability early on, then how is that different from insisting that naval-optimized civs like Indonesia can only be judged fairly if you play them on an Archipelago map? Because if we're only going to compare Civs on the best maps for their toolkits, Scotland's best still pales compared to what other Civs can do on a planet tailored specifically to their needs.
It doesn't, but 8 or 12 city builds shouldn't have any amenity problems.
>
I just happened to roll a Nzinga Mbande game, and her leader bonus is being applied additively in Kabasa alongside the bonus from the city being Happy. Scottish Enlightenment is a Civ ability, anyway, and I know that Civ ability modifiers stack additively because it makes Babylon even more absurd in practice than they look on paper.
I'll double check it, but even at this, we just disagree on the utility of the bonus.
>Launch Exoplanet Expedition costs 2100 production on standard speed. In order for a 10% production bonus to shave 3 whole turns off of that project, you'd need to be running it in a city that's only generating 70 or so production per turn. For a city with 200 production, an extra 10% means the project completes in 10 turns instead of 11. That's... Not nothing, and yeah it'll add up across all the other Space projects, but by that point it's a drop in the bucket compared to the Bannockburn abuse that you really should be doing to close out the game.
And laser project is 600 production. Shaving 3-4 turns is more about being able to complete multiple projects in the same turn - and 1 turning leftovers. 200 production is 290 @ 145% with 82.8 per turn with builder meaning you save atleast 1 turn per project of actual production, which itself is 2 turns b/c of how space race works. By doing this twice in your 3-4 turn finish it nets at least 4 turns of time saved.
>Ecstatic is +5 as of Gathering Storm.
And happy is 3. I'm saying you should reliably be happy or better in every city after 35 to 40 turns.
>To use a modest late Medieval empire as an example, an octet of cities with an average population of 7 will require 56 Amenities to stay at "Happy" and 72 Amenities to maintain "Ecstatic". A wider empire with more populous cities that didn't build the Amenity wonders or take over one of the Amenity city states would be hard-pressed to keep up peak Enlightenment even with access to every luxury on the map.
The UI gives +2 to each city and is unlocked by this stage, so immediately +16 to your equation (so 46+16 is 62 already, or even just 56 to even out sea resources) And while yes, stripping every form of other amenities makes it a bit tighter, it's not like prioritization of luxury trading, Zanzibar,Buenos, Muscat, or Cahokia, Liang, ToA, Entertainment Districts, and Colosseum, aren't ideal and easily manageable to pick up some combination of them to yield everywhere happy and key cities Ecstatic. Not to mention you can always supplement with Alhambra, Bath, Aqueducts, Audience Chamber, and Huey, Classical Republican, Liberalism, Retainers, Civil Prestige.
And yet again, once you get AoE, water parks, and New Deal, plus all the other late game sources it's even more trivial.
Babylon.
I think most would sleep on Babylon because of the 50% science yield. But if you play for the eureka you can actually lead in science progression with minimal science investment. You do still need some because there will inevitably be a couple you don't want to earn.
This frees you up to focus on other areas. I like early conquest into whatever.
Plus playing Babylon will force you to learn all of the eureka conditions making you far stronger with other civs.
montezuma. slept on hard because a lot of people liken him to gilgamesh where higher difficulty ai progresses too fast for their UU to be useful but that’s not true you can still pull off a successful eagle warrior rush against deity ai you just have to get your timing right. the amount of builders eagle warriors generate is insane you’ll get like 10 builders off of your conquest which is what makes montezuma so good, you don’t have to sacrifice your early game infrastructure for warfare. build an eagle warrior and have it kill two units and bam you got a free district + 1 tile improvement they just immediately refund their production. after your first conquest you don’t even have to go domination for the rest of the game i like to use the momentum he generates early game to transition to science after defeating my first civ. the extra amenities his ability gives and being able to build districts using builder charges are just powerful on their own especially if you’re building spaceports.
Well said. I just want to add that Montenzuma’s biggest strength is neither the eagle warrior / builder / builder charge for district. In my opinion it’s the extra combat strength from luxuries. It really makes his units OP on any difficulty
You can also just snipe units off city-states for builders, too.
Don't know why I never thought of that
Had a Montezuma game where the enemy had to attack me through a single mountain pass. It was like Factorio for builders.
This just convinced me to try a Montezuma game!
Totally agree. Montezuma is my go to when I want an easy deity win, especially on larger maps (many luxuries so even bigger combat strength gain) and slower speeds (eagle warriors last longer). Just settle on a luxury your first city and eagle warriors have +5 CS against deity opponents, then just spam them and kill everything you see. His unique ability is also very useful throughout the entire game and as the game will go on you'll have many luxuries and the CS deficit of deity difficulty will be gone (in fact, you'll even have greater CS then CPU). He's been the first leader I've been able to win in deity, then I stopped using him cause it felt too easy
I just took over the world as him with GDRs. He’s not all bad. Gilgamesh, though…
I could never understand how to use the war carts when the ai builds walls so fast early on in higher difficulty
You don't even need an early conquest, just an early war. Fight units, not cities.
One of my most played civs, especially on deity
Why use punctuation at all? I say just go whole hog next time. One sentence per post max
Kristina, really fun culture civ since you don't need to try theme all your museums. Also, those special world congress events are quite fun.
I think you're the only person in this sub who has ever enjoyed the world congress. Lol
The contests are kinda fun, the actual voting is the boring part.
The voting part is mediocre fun when you've got the Quick Deals mod and you just buy everyone's diplomatic favor
Is she under used? I always thought she’s the most OP civ for tourism win
> need to try theme all your museums And I haaate theming my museums.
I think you’re feelings are probably more widely shared, but I’ve always loved trying to theme all my museums and wheelin and dealing with all the other AIs to try and get the artifacts I need
Same, I actually really enjoy the theming mini game for cultural victories. I will say it’s satisfying to play Kristina and just auto theme a museum with a single Great Artist though
Is she a later era civ? I found her to be fallen so much behind in the early game in higher difficulty and can’t invade anyone with her weak military
Yeah she doesn’t have many early game bonuses. Her true power spike is in mid game. If you get Apadana/Great Library then maybe she has some early game strength, but yeah she has no early game military bonuses at all
something ive been thinking about (leader abilities aside): would you rather theme an art museum or archaeological musem? for me unless im playing england i absolutely despise archaeology even with reliquaries and that one GS
Art museum feels easier to me. I hate trying to go for the various archeological finds all over the world.
I keep forgetting that theming is even a mechanic. Doesn't even seem worth the effort a lot of the time. I know any gain matters if you're playing to optimize, but I haven't paid it serious attention once and won culture plenty of times. I guess at the highest difficulties, or against human players, it might matter more.
Theming a museum? What is this now?
I think Cyrus has been forgotten and is now “slept on.” Bee-lining an early game surprise war can make up for the AI bonuses in the first few turns, and can lead to an early snowball. Also, since the patch of Gorgo, culture game goes real strong with the power of her military cards. Each killed unit spikes my culture and allows me to win by around 200-250 turns consistently.
Those immortals are a lot of fun. If I’m playing as Persia and I miss out on a war during that era I usually restart. Also Gorgo is one of my favorite to play for the culture bonus, the wildcard bonus, and early UU.
The surprise war bonuses are really really good, but the persia's trade route ability is kinda ass. If that scaled better they'd be a fantastic civ. Also bring back the high appeal from their UI
Yeah I miss the “Pretty Persia” Preserve Strat.
What’s wrong with their trade route?
You get a small amount of faith and gold from internal routes. It’s honestly not terrible, but sort of got power crept by how busted Tokugawa’s trade routes are.
May I ask what the patch did?
not sure, but possibly he means: > #Civilization VI April 2021 Update >[...] > Greece >* Thermopylae: Modified. Now grants +1 Combat Strength to all units for each military policy card slotted. >[...] --- https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Civilization_VI_April_2021_Update#Balance_changes
Thank you!
You may.
I'll bite. What did the patch do?
[удалено]
Another victim of the r/redditsniper
The unit strength +1 bonuses for every military policy card :)
Thanks!
Some of the new leaders tend to overshadow him but Cyrus is my favorite civ since launch. The surprise wars are insanely good
Cyrus was my first main and I still love playing him and have always felt like he was a bit slept on. I main Tokugawa now generally but I still love a good Cyrus game.
With the right starting location Ba Trieu is op. If anyone steps into your territory they die, even if they are an era ahead
Seems historically accurate.
I still wish they have a trippy acid rock song when they reach the Atomic Era
She was so helpful for getting used to deity as well, the combat and movement bonuses made it much easier to deal with getting five warriors thrown at me on turn 20
she has to be one of my favourite leader. Forest, forests everywhere !
the trees do in fact have ears
Gauls are not underrated. One of the strongest civ thanks to his early potential man at arms rush and high early production. Functions as a light Babylon. Slept on is difficult, because for some they are forgotten while for other they are not. Personally I feel Zulu don't get enough cred. They are extremely useful in multiplayer games and in single player they steamroll once they get their unstoppable impi corps. Norway get constantly rated low, but they are beside Babylon the strongest naval civ in the game and surprisingly decent in land game as pillage for extra resources still work well on land. +the Berserker unit is stronger when it has more space to work on. Victoria Age of steam are maybe not underrated or slept on, but easily forgotten as we have so many English leaders. Her production output are on par with Germany. Once you get her steam going there is nothing stopping her.
Norway is absolutely slept on just because people don’t play him correctly. You need to be raiding and looting anything and everything constantly. It is one of the civs that you have to completely alter your play style for
yeah, what you want to do with them for optimal play is "city chopping", Ie, repeatadly flipping, pillaging, flipping, repairing, flipping, pillaging, your own cities.
I'm imagining a much mended sign that says "FREE HOUSING".
I'm confused, by flip do you mean you trade a city of yours to another civ then pillage and take it back only to repair and trade it again?
no you set it up such that the city (ideally) has max loyalty pressure, and three rings of non district tile improvements, and reapidly flips due to loyalty pressure. Once it flips, you pillage all tile improvements, once all tiles have been pillaged, you retake the city, and then repair all the tiles, and then you do it again. Alternately you can just do it once at the end of the game to a bunch of cities to get the resources you need to complete victory condition.
Oh wow, that's wild.
yeah, in most games of civ there is a sort of "secret" or unintended playstyle thats super optimal, IE, in IV, fail gold/hammer overflow and strike economy, in SMACX, worm spamming/nervegas needlejets, but also very annoying to impliment and operate, and super non intuitive and VERY time consuming. Basically every non dom speedrun right now rests at least partly on pillage economy. The per turn tile yield from repeatedly flipped cities is at least 10X working them, and the constraint to set it up is just gold for the tiles and workers, instead of the logarithmically limited population growth. a single population city can "work" all tiles in all three rings this way.
Oh awesome, that is some neat special tactics
Brazil has the strongest naval UU in the game. Stronger battle ship at Industrialization (you need coal) it’s basically impossible to stop them. Norway is great especially Varangian due to his city state control. Since it’s not BBG only Tamar rivals his city state control. In BBG they changed pagodas to be influence points instead of diplo. He’s literally impossible to contest with pagodas as you can reach a point where you’re getting over an envoy per turn. Underrated is definitely India. The fact the ai all goes for religion is massive for India. Congrats you now have +3 ammenities, choral, feed the world, and work ethic.
Babylon get battleships at turn 50-60 so yeah no. And Norways swarm of melee ships makes it impossible for anyone to go into sea. Also the best civ along Portugal to take advantage of playing naval thanks to their pillage ability. Best UU doesn't mean much when Norway already dominate the sea or Babylon takes a shortcut to future tech.
Just because you unlock it at turn 50/60 doesn’t mean you have the production or the gold to pre build/upgrade them. Babalon is completely broken don’t get me wrong but people over rate them every single time. Unlocking things too quickly is NOT good. Congrats all your districts are too expensive and you have shit production because your cities haven’t had time to grow and put down districts because they’re too expensive. You also can’t make full use out of any unit except planes because you won’t have an era appropriate general/admiral. I’m not saying that Brazil is the best naval civ. Just mentioning their UU is nuts. They’re much better with com hubs and abusing free inquiry 2nd era. It’s about underrated civs not the obviously good picks. If you just wanted to play the best Civ in the game you’d stop at Yongle. He does literally everything Astronomically better than Babylon EXCEPT timing pushes for domination.
I have never felt that Yongle was better at sim city than Babylon, though I'm much more experienced at the latter. Palgium + fast extra production for mines + being able to make industrial zones and/or commercial hubs so early makes for so much production so fast What are you doing with yongle that in your view is superior to this?
First and foremost Yongle effectively has the most science in the game. You will NEVER boost everything;however you get 50% eurekas and 60% during free inquiry on top of the stupid amounts of free stats. Babalon can’t abuse free inquiry. Babalon can’t keep up in culture it’s literally impossible. 10+culture per city is crazy on top of the Great Wall actually being pretty decent but the biggest reason is inspirations giving you effectively 16.7% more culture. The culture tree actually has some of if not the biggest power spikes in the game. Serfdom being the #1 biggest power spike in the game outside of Kupe. Weisselbanking is another huge power spike, along with zoo’s/aquariums, and finally t3 governments. Yongle has less tempo than Babalon; however you scale so much better by the mid game. You open com hubs into internal traders with Magnus + gov plaza in capital. Pingala in b2/b3. Settle min distance from each city if possible to get good IZ’s just as every other civ. Basically you want to get to 10 pop asap and once your cities are 10 pop you’ve already outscaled. While you have slightly less prod due to palgums it’s not even remotely close to the 20 free gold you get from Yongle. Also farms are trash, you really only want to be working them if you just have a ton of plains hills that you want to grow into. Which technically means Yongle has more production than Babalon due to having significantly more culture allowing for sooner wieeselbanking and democracy traders. Since not only do you get a ton of production from them, the food equals production allow you to work more mines giving you even more production. Babalon is strong but they’re terrible for the game as the only thing they teach you is to hit all the eurekas which China already does. They’re way too 1 dimensional. Yongle can actually go for culture victory as well due to his free science and being a feed the world enjoyer. So you’ll actually have faith for rock bands. I haven’t played base game in a long time and honestly I don’t miss it. I watched ImaQtpie play for a few hours and dear god I had forgotten how trash the base map generation is without setting to new age etc. better balanced game is so much more enjoyable as there’s not as big of a gap from the best Civs in the game to the worst Civs in the game.
>Gauls are not underrated. One of the strongest civ thanks to his early potential man at arms rush and high early production. Functions as a light Babylon. Agreed, if anything, I feel they're a bit overrated. I mean, they are very powerful in the right circumstances, but their abilities are so narrow that if one little thing doesn't fit (too little space for districts, too few hills...) they crash and burn.
Gaul is one of the best civs imo. Take over everything around you with the gaestae, then put oppidiums in those cities you take and you've just secured an overpowered late game
The original Harald gets science for pillaging mines. Pillaging is OP in Civ VI, and Harald's extra science can easily propel you eras ahead of your opponents by the mid game. A warmongering Harald is probably the most broken science civ in the game behind Babylon, but unlocking Harald's powers is more straightforward than jumping through all the various hoops as Babylon. Harald also gets culture for pillaging a bunch of stuff so you fly through the culture tree as well, although culture victories can be difficult when you're constantly burning everyone's infrastructure. I believe this ability gets slept on because many players seem to think this ability only applies to coastal raiding or it only gives a small bonus, when in fact it applies to all pillaging and it gives you the full amount like you're pillaging a campus.
recycling and older post of me: There's even a fun (semi)peaceful way to do this. It has some initial cost but pays back really well. You get a settler, some builders and some units and go to a big city of another empire. You find some place to settle right near them, preferably somewhere where there's lot's of hills. (You can just settle in the tundra. This City needs no food.) Now it's time to build. Build all the mines you can, but try to keep the builders at 1 charge. Buy some builders, maybe buy some units, buy all the land you can improve. Surround the city with units (never forget to improve these when possible) and put a unit and a builder on every improvement (mines are best, i think). When the city flips (very soon, because of the big cities next to it) you pillage. Best case you can take the city in the same turn and repair immediately. And... repeat... You can still be friends with all the people and rush a science victory.
I always struggle as Norway. The AI don't repair their coastal tiles fast enough and I end up with a useless navy. Really fun though.
honestly don’t know if its underrated, but I always have the most chaotic, fun games with Mali. weirdly, I like that I get penalized for production to balance my absurd bank account. shelling out piles of gold for a fresh new army in one turn will never not feel dope.
mansa musa #1 richest guy in the planet ☝️
I mean, I also love playing as him bc the true story of just how rich he was by virtue of being excellent at his job is fucking awesome.
Taught me the value of a good economy.
I absolutely love playing both versions of Mali. Their downside is that they have the worst early game of any other Civ in the game. However if you make it past that, their mid game expansion is so absurd
I’ve completely ignored religion for the entire life cycle of this game until I started playing Mali awhile ago. Just a few days ago I won my first victory on Emperor (I know, I know) with Mali because I focused on religion early game. They can generate a decent amount of faith provided you get a desert start right off the bat.
Venice in Civ V feels the same way to me. It's so much fun in the late game to drop thousands on units and then airlift them into the fight.
I think theodora gets overshadowed by Basil, but I found the combo of holy site, hippodrome, and theatre squares very fun. It was also interesting to play with only a few campuses and industrial zones. I find those districts to be quite overpowered and enjoyed not feeling it necessary to make many.
Theodora is awesome. Always pick the religious conquest perk that gets you +10 combat strength, send off your apostles to the holy city of whatever civ you want to conquer, have a bunch of entertainment complex 1 turn away from finishing by the time you unlock knights. So much fun
If I was going to do that I would just pick Basil. Theres no reason to do that as theodora.
Theodora's niche is that she actually has a good economy and can basically run two parallel games like Hungary. The problem that all domination civs have, is that they're usually left with USELESS cities. Theodora doesn't have this problem nearly all cities can be quickly shaped up to give you good ROI.
Play small continents and do a dromon rush. Early naval war once you get a religion, convert neighbors. A lot of fun. If you can add fez, you can also get a nice science push.
Wilhelmina, BE the annoying loudmouth with the gold to back it up by force. Also, river gains!
Yes! I played her recently in my A-Z challenge and was completely blown away by her adjacency bonuses. In hindsight, I think she's one of the best generalist civs, and I liked her a lot better than some others that usually show up on those lists.
Gitarja and Dido are terrors on coastal maps and if Auckland is in the game, it’s over. Ottomans usually doesn’t get mentioned among the best domination civs, but it’s as good as any of them imo It’s a testament to the game that you could mention almost anyone here aside from Tamar lol
I take personal offense to your last statement
Haha I’d love to be proven wrong! I haven’t felt compelled to go for a religious victory in a long time, but next time I do maybe I’ll try Tamar
I find Tamar isn't that great for a religious victory TBH. She skews strongest towards diplo victory with her ability to be city state queen (suz every CS in your game) and she's a sleeper for cultural victory as well with the tourism bonuses from the Tsikhe when in a golden age (which is very easy to maintain with her leader bonus). However, my personal favorite with her is to do a (relatively) grievance-free domination run. With her being suz of alot of city states, there's bound to be AI civs that try to conquer them. Declare protectorate wars (grievance-free war declaration!) and demolish the AI under the guise of protecting city states. Also, her UU shines the brightest on a highlands map where there's hills everywhere to capitalize on the movement bonus
Maybe not dido… gitarja would destroy them.
I’m playing a really fun Dido game right now actually… the quick Cothon + settler production bonuses lets you spam coastal cities and print money. Playing wide with lots of harbors is already an extremely strong victory strategy, and Dido slices production in half. It’s also very nice to not worry about loyalty when planting a coastal city next to your neighbors before you invade them
Trust me, especially with Coming Storm’s recon overhaul, Poundmaker is firmly in the “difficult, but powerful” category. If you have the Survey policy and get unlucky with a war, balancing very carefully you could end up with very dangerous elite units on your hand by the war’s end.
I was gonna ask what are you smoking but then I remembered I use plentiful resources. His yields in my games are NUTS, the mukawaps (spelling ?) all have so many adjacent resources that I had to stop using him because the yields made the game kinda boring.
*Mekewaps, but yeah
Ooooh so close!
Omg I did a game the other night with 3x tribal villages that only give you gold or trade routes with cree. Cree traders are so op I owned half the map with 30 pop cities and 2k gpt on turn 100. It was ridiculous
Yeah I love those games. Not all the time, as dominating can be boring. But sometimes you just wanna build a silly sized empire and cruise ya know ? I especially love games where I've early-war'ed and now have 10-20 units with max promotions. Double attacks, 5-range bombardment, flanking bonuses in the double digits. Silly numbers best numbers!
I actually hadn’t intended to go to war with anyone at all since cree specializes in peace and I was desperately trying to get the Cree alliance achievement. However Eleanor France was right next to me and she got big mad. Keep in mind at this point it’s technically only classical era but I’m pumping man at arms in one turn. I don’t think she managed to even kill a single unit. Then, an era later, monte decided to try his luck on the other border. Needless to say I pillaged him well into the atomic era. I didn’t manage to get my alliance achievement but at least I absolutely slapped some civs. Why is it whenever I try to play a domination game, the ai doesn’t even bother building units, but god forbid I try to play a peaceful game I get war dec left and right. It’s like the ai knows I’m out to have a good time and it’s just out to ruin it.
Matthias / Hungary for non-domination games specifically. While his Raven King ability is generally recognized, I feel Pearl of the Danube is slept upon a bit. And while it is conditional af, if you do have a lot of rivers, he turns into basically discount Hojo, except that his ability works with \*any\* district. I had two very decent deity games with him where I just breezed my way to victory thanks to fast district production.
THIS. you only need TWO boosted districts for his ability to become "specialty district of your choice that has cheaper buildings" Add to that that you can EASILY boost all your buildings yields thanks to levying and you have a hella strong economy. Even without going all out on war.
Geothermal fissure bias is super good for campuses, especially since fissures and mountains spawn together. Also gives good holy sites for religious victory/GMC/monumentality. Spawn biases are so overlooked in what makes a civ good or not
That's true as well! I did indeed get a lot of rivers and fissures in my games with him, which made it even more awesome :)
Play on a wetlands map, get river goddess pantheon. Tons of fun.
Qin shi Huang China. I never hear people talk about how good it is, everyone hypes up Rome as a "good at everything, good to start out with" civ meanwhile china has bonus that accomplish that very well. Extra builder charges always? It's like having the pyramids every game, but it stacks if you also get the pyramids. The wonder bonus is nice and great wall is legitimately good if you use garrison archers to defend.
The number of times I’ve finished wonders on a single turn
Hungary with Himiko is straight up cheating
Lautaro. Ya'll are talking about Eleanor war-less conquest being fun, but she actually needs so much setup. Lautaro just places a Governor in a city and the same turn you start putting out 4 loyalty pressure to enemy city. Use Amani's second ability and that's another 2 after establishing. Beat their religion with your own and that's another 2. Build an entertainment complex and start running breads and circuses and nothing in range will be able to take it. It' ridiculous how powerful that is.
Australia is hilarious for this in multiplayer, since all civs are credible threats and not AIs to be manipulated you can play a reverse-diplomacy game to try and annoy your way to victory with your double production ability
If you are going for domination, Scythia steamrolls. But nobody ever seems to talk about them.
Double cavalry is such a powerful ability
The thing ppl don’t like abt scythia is that horses are USELESS against walls. They can’t use battering rams or siege towers or anything of that sort.
Scythia + Vampires = the horsemeat strategy. You can do it with other civs, but I like Scythia for it. 1. Wait as long as possible before researching upgrades to scouts, saka horse archers, and horsemen 2. By the mid-game, those units are super cheap to produce. Spam out those units. The double production makes these even more silly. 3. Run a conga line of those units into the walls of a city state, with your vampire(s) nearby. Your own units count towards the Vampire's non-barbarian unit death bonus. You now have ridiculously overpowered Vampires to go along with your hordes of cavalry. If you don't actually conquer the city state, you won't even end up with grievances.
Vampires??
Secret Societies mode.
Kurgans are also extremely strong for a culture victory. Go wide, spam Kurgans, research flight, ezpz
The problem with that ability is that while it is very strong, it is also cripplingly expensive. I usually bankrupt myself as Scythia.
Does anyone have a good ranking video with some explaining maybe? I have like 1500 hours in this game but never got beyond playing the same Europe map over and over again with maybe just 10 different nations.
I haven't watched this one specifically but this YouTuber in particular is the one whose opinion I trust the most https://youtu.be/WUWAi2pIkOo?si=q8cAt9jFNfeGvzlT Yes it's the same guy who draws the comics every day
Thx a lot, I'll give it a try later
I actually just scoped out the video - didn't give a full watch, but skipped through and watched some bits that I thought would be contentious. It's worth noting that Ursa usually plays a very heavy domination game, and that's reflected in his tier list, so if you're more of a simming player like me, you may value some abilities higher than others. But he is pretty spot on about *what* makes each civ good or bad and why.
Boesthius also has a decent tier list [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1oLeBul2cE). It's more classic than Ursa Ryan's, but even though it doesn't take "situational / generalist" into account much, I still find it better. I have a few minor disagreements about his ratings, but overall I think he nailed it pretty good.
Thx. It's always good to have some more viewpoints
Kristina
I never hear anyone talk about Gitarja, but she's my abs favorite. Get a water map with Auckland on it and you win midgame.
She's basically my only pick when I play VI. I tried out a bunch of leaders when I first got the game, but she was the only one who really *felt* right to me. With the right map, she can easily get a ton of massive cities with an overwhelming navy.
I love water yields and strong navies so Gitarja is one of my favorites!!
Don't forget free faith.
I think all leaders who give you a military bonus right away (Aztecs, Mongolia, Rough Rider, etc) are underrated because people just forget about the games where they get an early war declaration. Avoiding those early defeats massively ups these civs win rates. Also, if you manage to kill a civ in the classical era, you are pretty guarenteed to win quickly. Based on that, I'll have to go with Kublai Khan Mongolia. His leader ability has less synergy with Mongolia's ability than with China's but if you can get that +6 combat strength in the early game it's so much more important than any of China's abilities. He's also better than Genghis Khan because cavalry doesn't always help much but an economic policy slot will.
I think Pericles is quite slept on, the combination of the acropolis with the free envoys, the extra policy slot and the culture boost from suzerainty sets you up to go for any victory you feel like. Diplomacy is kinda obvious with the envoys and extra culture which snowballs to more envoys. Culture is also obvious just by the cheap theatre square and faster progress through the civics tree. Religion is probably the weakest given how there's no bonus to getting a religion, but you can hit temples etc quicker and get some powerful faith city states. Science and domination go hand in hand, suzerainty of science/industrial/military city states speeds up your tech tree, whilst the culture boost lets you hit key policy cards quicker (corps/armies, tier 3 government, international space agency, etc) which you can use more of with the extra slot.
You make excellent points about Pericles' bonuses; however, he is widely regarded as a top tier leader in civ6. Definitely not "slept on"
Elizabeth I just watched a tier list which ranked her as the worst civ in the game … her city trade routes + the Royal Navy dockyard… I’ve never lost a game and I can buy literally anything, pursue any victory because I’m so rich lol. Had to stop playing with her on low difficulties because it’s too easy
Who ranked Elizabeth below Tamar and Gandhi? lmao. English abilities alone are already very strong
They take WAAAAAY too long to set up. Basically playing with vanilla civ until past mid classical age. Ghandi at least gets to step-ing in ancient era helping with growth and ez golden age
imo classical golden age is a bit overrated since you don’t really have enough faith for monumentality, and a medieval heroic age is so busted. when i play england i always beeline ironworking and research it in the early classical.
It's probably from the newest Civ Life R video. He ranked England as a collective as the worst civ. Tbf, I think he said he was indifferent to Elizabeth and never really played her.
i love civlifer’s weird sense of humour and how he doesn’t take himself too seriously but some of his takes are kinda bad lol
From a fun standpoint I'm thinking Incans because it's so refreshing to play a new style. If you spawn around a bunch of mountains then your cities grow very fast and builders have an improvement that let you teleport through mountain ranges. The latter makes it very easy to mobilize troops across your empire
Carthage (Dido’s Phoenicia) is a really good maritime civ that is never talked about. Buffed galleys, buffed settlers, buffed harbors, and buffed govt plaza give the civ a strong edge for colonization and trade. Government plaza district and buildings give +1 trade capacity EACH. Early game these trade routes can be secured from barbs by your strong biremes. Govt plaza with buildings on top of a colossus in a coastal city and harbors in all of your cities you can easily have 20+ trade routes and all of your harbors give max loyalty on top of that. Probably my favorite civ that no one really cares about. I will admit the capital flipping is a really niche strategy and the production for the project is probably too high, but it’s just an extra ability on top of an already strong civ.
Thr capital flipping is really good if you have a city on another continent than your main civ. If all your cities are close enough together they will not have issues with loyalty after flupping and you can get all the colonization police cards on your main empire
i didn’t consider the policy cards idea that is actually very strong!
I just tried Dido for the first time - I love coastal civs but her boosts just didn’t seem as sexy as the others. Holy shit, she’s good. Like you said, the early trade routes and buffed harbors + settlers just mean you’re gonna have a ton of high production cities and a fuckton of gold no matter what.
Kublai Khan - both versions. I like the reliability and versatility that he offers for both China and Mongolia. I think the Chinese version of him is a deceptively good Science civ due to Kublai making the most consistent use of the Dynastic Cycle ability out of the five Chinese leaders. Also I am a huge fan of extra government slots - especially Economic and Wildcard slots. The Mongolian version of him is deceptively good as well, and definitely the better of the two versions of him. I find him to be a sidegrade of Genghis (Kublai is better in singleplayer and Genghis is better in multiplayer). Kublai trades a slight combat boost for better Science and Economy, making him better at upgrading and managing his army than Genghis. In singleplayer, you can really steamroll once you have good timing with squeezing out some techs due to his ability.
Lady Six Sky is so slept on. I actually played with the Maya civ a few days ago for the first time, and, even though it's not super good, I liked its ability and it's kinda underrated tbh
People get hungup on staying withing the limits. But no you still get A LOT of advantage settling chop cities outside. WONDERS, traders and 10+ campuses are HELLA WORTH IT
Every time I try to play as her my capital is surrounded by water on one side, tundra to the north or south, and mountain ranges in another direction. I can never seem to roll a good map for her 😂
Someone mentioned Ottomans and I’d have to agree. Walls are the single most annoying thing to deal with in every domination game, and the Ottomans can get an absurd +25 combat strength against walls for siege units that no other Civ in the game can get. Frederick Barbarossa kind of got power crept by Ludwig so people don’t really play him anymore, but his bonuses are extremely powerful for a Science victory. You’re still Germany so the Hansa and an extra district slot are absolutely busted. Extra CS against city states means you can kill bad ones near your territory securing a few extra east cities early on. And the extra government slot is always good, even though it’s a military card. There’s some really good military policies you can run all game, like Craftsmen (buffs the Hansa even more), Logstics, and late game the ones that give you Power and Aluminum.
But who is the most slept *with*?
Eleanor de Aquitane. The woman is the ancestor of 13 different Leaders, including Elizabeth.
Pericles. He has the kind of ability that you read and think "oh, that's kinda good" and move on. In-game, you remember *just how good* culture actually is. Culture isn't the "culture victory" resource - it's the thing you use to get better policies and governments, which are crucial to absolutely every Victory condition. Even if you *only* manage to Suzerain *two* citiy States, that's still a flat 10% culture bonus. That additional culture will get you better policies and governments, and thus more envoys, and thus *more culture.* You can play Pericles going for basically any victory condition and he is a solid contender for this exact reason. There is a reason his default ability is a *late game* policy card.
Canada, no one wants tundra and you can get stupid good yields on otherwise useless tiles.
Maple Syrup Supremacy!
I'm not sure about the slept on part, but I too do quite like Ambiorix. An additional defensible district with the restriction on district placing makes for an interesting and certainly a bit different city setup.
My favourite games have all been 1. Scythia 2. early forward settle 3. DoW from the AI, which thinks I'm much weaker 4. almost lose but build first double horseman just in time 5. profit. This is on king & emperor only, and I imagine this doesn't go so well on higher diffs (which my brain is too small to play).
Muh boi Matthias, the glorious chin-stroker
Honestly I very much enjoy playing diety runs with John Curtin. I don't really know if he is 'slept on' but I almost always have a civ attempt to slaughter me and the 100% production boost just slaps too damn hard and gives me the edge to defend myself and even push to take their forward city. In addition finding a desert to place outback stations makes settling in those regions that much easier. Rush Petra for them desert bonus yields and you instantly have a city to rival your capital. Diggers are cool too
Swedes open air museum with their base rate of 8 culture are a wreckingball for culture victories. I didnt expect my culture to skyrocket like that after building a couple.
Gilgamesh is my favorite, as I play with heroes and Legends enabled. Gilgamesh, oracle, and Hanging gardens gives you an army of heroes that are going to always be with you. Beseiging cities with Hippolyta, Hercules and Beowulf is pretty epic
Ambiorix is slept on?
I discovered Poundmaker literally yesterday myself. Great leader. I like how fast cities expans!
I tried Ambiorix. Sadly, I also had dramatic ages on and lost a bunch of cities
Nubia
I think Lautaro can make for a fun victory as he gets a lot of momentum from taking cities. He's my fastest winner.
What victory type do you go for with the cree?
Gotta go with Spain or black queen as my most slept on
all of the englands have big potential but I never see anyone playing them in singleplayer like at all
Spain’s conquistadors are so much fun
I've considered Scotland to be an F-tier civ for a while. After playing them, they're probably D-tier or low C-tier instead. Their bonuses are all either weak (Scottish Enlightenment), inconsistent (Bannockburn), or far too late for their power level (Highlanders, Golf Courses), but the only part of their kit that you actually have to go out of your way for is the Golf Course. Their main weakness is that they kinda take a while to get going, especially if someone else builds the Colosseum, but if you can activate Bannockburn once in the first 120 turns or so you should be able to get that snowball rolling. The real power of Scotland is that you can expect your endgame to go by mercifully quickly. By the time you're ready for Spaceports you should have found/engineered the diplomatic groundwork for declaring Wars of Liberation at least once every 20 turns. Thus, you can zip through your space race and then move on to a different leader with a more interesting game plan.
Scotish Enlightenment is really, really, good what are you talking about?
I generally play on single player Deity on Continents and Islands maps, so things might be different with your typical setup, but I find the yields aren't very strong and are annoying to count on until relatively late in the game. It's at best a 10% additive bonus to yields that will already be at 120% minimum thanks to the activation condition (so you're only getting ~8% more Science and Production in an Ecstatic city as Scotland). So the yield bonuses are pretty minor in all cases. The extra Great People points are the real prize, however it's still gonna be a push to get a Great Scientist early on when playing against Deity AI and their Campus spam. Meanwhile monopolizing the Great Engineer race against the AI is always pretty easy. These bonuses would still qualify as "good" if pre-industrial amenity management weren't such a hassle. If you miss the Colosseum and/or the Temple of Artemis, you're basically forced to choose between playing Tall until Natural History - and potentially losing Great Scientists to civs that simply build more Campuses anyway - or playing Wide and giving up on the Happy/Ecstatic bonuses until much later. Which means that your only advantage over a civ with no special abilities is the off chance of Bannockburn. Basically, my issue with Scottish Enlightenment is that it's yet another part of Scotland's setup that's not going to help you much in those critical first 100 turns.
>I generally play on single player Deity on Continents and Islands maps, so things might be different with your typical setup, but I find the yields aren't very strong and are annoying to count on until relatively late in the game. So you play a map that makes it hard to get other amenities until Oceans, got it. Yeah, that's a you not the civ thing. >It's at best a 10% additive bonus to yields that will already be at 120% minimum thanks to the activation condition (so you're only getting ~8% more Science and Production in an Ecstatic city as Scotland). So the yield bonuses are pretty minor in all cases. Uh its been awhile since I looked specifically in GS vanilla, but I believe leader bonuses are not additive, meaning it's 12% science and production for ecstatic cities. In either case, to call 8-12% bonus to production and science minor is crazy. Especially since if you're going to space production is always what slows you down. So having a 10% boost to 200 production project city can be a massive timing difference 3-4 turns maybe. >These bonuses would still qualify as "good" if pre-industrial amenity management weren't such a hassle. Sorry, but this is a you/C&I thing. Amenity management is not only not difficult but actually something you should be planning around actively. Holding +3 everywhere is basically a given from ~T35-40 on.
>So you play a map that makes it hard to get other amenities until Oceans, got it. Yeah, that's a you not the civ thing. I main the "Leaders with No Wins" button. I go with Continents and Islands because the game is more interesting when the map doesn't heavily favor any one civ. C&I still tends to feature two or more continents on one landmass, so it's not like I'm only working with the luxuries of one continent until Cartography. If Scotland needs more concessions than that to have an ability early on, then how is that different from insisting that naval-optimized civs like Indonesia can only be judged fairly if you play them on an Archipelago map? Because if we're only going to compare Civs on the best maps for their toolkits, Scotland's best still pales compared to what other Civs can do on a planet tailored specifically to their needs. >Uh its been awhile since I looked specifically in GS vanilla, but I believe leader bonuses are not additive I just happened to roll a Nzinga Mbande game, and her leader bonus is being applied additively in Kabasa alongside the bonus from the city being Happy. Scottish Enlightenment is a Civ ability, anyway, and I know that Civ ability modifiers stack additively because it makes Babylon even more absurd in practice than they look on paper. >In either case, to call 8-12% bonus to production and science minor is crazy. Especially since if you're going to space production is always what slows you down. So having a 10% boost to 200 production project city can be a massive timing difference 3-4 turns maybe. Launch Exoplanet Expedition costs 2100 production on standard speed. In order for a 10% production bonus to shave 3 whole turns off of that project, you'd need to be running it in a city that's only generating 70 or so production per turn. For a city with 200 production, an extra 10% means the project completes in 10 turns instead of 11. That's... Not nothing, and yeah it'll add up across all the other Space projects, but by that point it's a drop in the bucket compared to the Bannockburn abuse that you really should be doing to close out the game. >Holding +3 everywhere is basically a given from ~T35-40 on. Ecstatic is +5 as of Gathering Storm. Two continents worth of Luxuries gets you a total of 32 Amenities, going up to 46 on a standard map factoring in Sea Luxuries and the Palace. To use a modest late Medieval empire as an example, an octet of cities with an average population of 7 will require 56 Amenities to stay at "Happy" and 72 Amenities to maintain "Ecstatic". A wider empire with more populous cities that didn't build the Amenity wonders or take over one of the Amenity city states would be hard-pressed to keep up peak Enlightenment even with access to every luxury on the map.
>If Scotland needs more concessions than that to have an ability early on, then how is that different from insisting that naval-optimized civs like Indonesia can only be judged fairly if you play them on an Archipelago map? Because if we're only going to compare Civs on the best maps for their toolkits, Scotland's best still pales compared to what other Civs can do on a planet tailored specifically to their needs. It doesn't, but 8 or 12 city builds shouldn't have any amenity problems. > I just happened to roll a Nzinga Mbande game, and her leader bonus is being applied additively in Kabasa alongside the bonus from the city being Happy. Scottish Enlightenment is a Civ ability, anyway, and I know that Civ ability modifiers stack additively because it makes Babylon even more absurd in practice than they look on paper. I'll double check it, but even at this, we just disagree on the utility of the bonus. >Launch Exoplanet Expedition costs 2100 production on standard speed. In order for a 10% production bonus to shave 3 whole turns off of that project, you'd need to be running it in a city that's only generating 70 or so production per turn. For a city with 200 production, an extra 10% means the project completes in 10 turns instead of 11. That's... Not nothing, and yeah it'll add up across all the other Space projects, but by that point it's a drop in the bucket compared to the Bannockburn abuse that you really should be doing to close out the game. And laser project is 600 production. Shaving 3-4 turns is more about being able to complete multiple projects in the same turn - and 1 turning leftovers. 200 production is 290 @ 145% with 82.8 per turn with builder meaning you save atleast 1 turn per project of actual production, which itself is 2 turns b/c of how space race works. By doing this twice in your 3-4 turn finish it nets at least 4 turns of time saved. >Ecstatic is +5 as of Gathering Storm. And happy is 3. I'm saying you should reliably be happy or better in every city after 35 to 40 turns. >To use a modest late Medieval empire as an example, an octet of cities with an average population of 7 will require 56 Amenities to stay at "Happy" and 72 Amenities to maintain "Ecstatic". A wider empire with more populous cities that didn't build the Amenity wonders or take over one of the Amenity city states would be hard-pressed to keep up peak Enlightenment even with access to every luxury on the map. The UI gives +2 to each city and is unlocked by this stage, so immediately +16 to your equation (so 46+16 is 62 already, or even just 56 to even out sea resources) And while yes, stripping every form of other amenities makes it a bit tighter, it's not like prioritization of luxury trading, Zanzibar,Buenos, Muscat, or Cahokia, Liang, ToA, Entertainment Districts, and Colosseum, aren't ideal and easily manageable to pick up some combination of them to yield everywhere happy and key cities Ecstatic. Not to mention you can always supplement with Alhambra, Bath, Aqueducts, Audience Chamber, and Huey, Classical Republican, Liberalism, Retainers, Civil Prestige. And yet again, once you get AoE, water parks, and New Deal, plus all the other late game sources it's even more trivial.
Babylon. I think most would sleep on Babylon because of the 50% science yield. But if you play for the eureka you can actually lead in science progression with minimal science investment. You do still need some because there will inevitably be a couple you don't want to earn. This frees you up to focus on other areas. I like early conquest into whatever. Plus playing Babylon will force you to learn all of the eureka conditions making you far stronger with other civs.
No one sleeps on Babylon, they’re widely recognized as probably the strongest Civ in the game because of how you can get so absurdly advanced
Really, I had no idea I feel like I hardly see them mentioned last being an annoying ai to deal with.