Are any civs or leaders by themselves weak? Are some too good?

[Disgustipated]

It's difficult for me to judge since I'm only on my 2nd leader right now. Played Tecumseh initially. He's pretty cool, but I wouldn't call him overpowered. I'm playing Ben Franklin (Mississippians to Shawnee to Mexico) right now. currently starting modern age. Ben Franklin seems strong on science of course, especially since I tend to prioritize production buildings.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Greece is really strong once those Suzerain boni start to kick in if you can reach the mid-antiquity age.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

So far the most ridiculously OP combination I've found is:

Charlemagne - Mongolia.

Charley gets 2 free mounted units every time he Celebrates. That means, with a little emphasis on getting enough Army Leaders by the end of Antiquity, he can start Mongolia with several armies of Keshiks right out of the box. And they heal after slaughtering the enemy, and they get more cavalry from taking settlements: The combination can storm across a continent like an avalanche. It's almost embarrassing how fast you can overrun everybody.

Mind you, the combination is a One Trick (herd of) Ponies: you want to kill lots of little digital people, you play it. You want to do almost anything else, there are better combinations.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

Himiko, Queen of WA, ended up being my best playthrough of the 4 or 5 games I've finished so far. Being able to support every endeavor that comes your way lead to massive yields, friendly relations with almost everyone and the ability to spend your influence as you like. I focused on the diplomacy tree and I turned probably 7 or 8 IPs into city states in the antiquity age. I then had multiple suzerain bonuses to pick from in each age and had plenty of influence to get them back online at the start of each age.

I went Han > Chola > Meiji, I would have picked Siam but there unlock seems bugged. Greece would have been a good start too, but the Han social policy tree focuses on influence.

 

[Xandinho]

Well, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find unique improvements quite underwhelming, especially compared to unique buildings that offer much better bonuses.

I recently played as the Mississippians, and while they are a great civ for an economic victory, their unique infrastructure feels pretty negligible. The same goes for the Mughals and their Stepwell.

Independent People improvements haven’t been very appealing either.

I feel like tiles now have much more value than in any previous version of Civ, so improvements really need to be worth the “cost” of using up a tile.

 

[Seek]

Well, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find unique improvements quite underwhelming, especially compared to unique buildings that offer much better bonuses.

I recently played as the Mississippians, and while they are a great civ for an economic victory, their unique infrastructure feels pretty negligible. The same goes for the Mughals and their Stepwell.

Independent People improvements haven’t been very appealing either.

I feel like tiles now have much more value than in any previous version of Civ, so improvements really need to be worth the “cost” of using up a tile.

Unique improvements go on top of existing improvements to augment their yields. You can often spam them in towns for huge bonuses.

 

[Sagax]

Well, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find unique improvements quite underwhelming, especially compared to unique buildings that offer much better bonuses.

I recently played as the Mississippians, and while they are a great civ for an economic victory, their unique infrastructure feels pretty negligible. The same goes for the Mughals and their Stepwell.

Independent People improvements haven’t been very appealing either.

I feel like tiles now have much more value than in any previous version of Civ, so improvements really need to be worth the “cost” of using up a tile.

I’m yet to fully decide on the balance regarding unique improvements, but I feel like the developers’ intent with them is that they are less impressive than buildings/quarters in terms of yields, but in return:

1. They are an addition to the yield of the underlying tile and improvement, instead of wiping those completely.
2. They are buildable and spammable in every settlement, while buildings/quarters are limited to one per city and cannot be built in towns.

I think the envisioned approach is to build unique quarters in cities and spam unique improvements in towns.

 

[reddishrecue]

I found the Mayas to be really good at tech in the antiquity age with that Kuh nah and the other building for the quarter.
I also found Machiavelli was a good leader, giving me gold for every trade proposal I would make 200 if rejected and 100 if accepted.
There are also other good tech leaders like Confucious and Benjamin Franklin that can give good technology.

 

[Ornen]

Well, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find unique improvements quite underwhelming, especially compared to unique buildings that offer much better bonuses.

I recently played as the Mississippians, and while they are a great civ for an economic victory, their unique infrastructure feels pretty negligible. The same goes for the Mughals and their Stepwell.

Independent People improvements haven’t been very appealing either.

I feel like tiles now have much more value than in any previous version of Civ, so improvements really need to be worth the “cost” of using up a tile.

I generally agree here. the point of comparison is a little hard to pin because some UB combos (Maya, Abbasid) are bonkers while others (Norman) are pretty underwhelming

but in general, I don’t think it’s an easy balance between civs with a single UI against civs with 2 unique buildings that combine for a district effect

 

[teakbois2112]

I’m yet to fully decide on the balance regarding unique improvements, but I feel like the developers’ intent with them is that they are less impressive than buildings/quarters in terms of yields, but in return:

1. They are an addition to the yield of the underlying tile and improvement, instead of wiping those completely.
2. They are buildable and spammable in every settlement, while buildings/quarters are limited to one per city and cannot be built in towns.

I think the envisioned approach is to build unique quarters in cities and spam unique improvements in towns.

I found the Caravanserai to be pretty good, although making gold is not exactly balanced right now. But its still a pretty nice boost in the early modern age if you are making an extra 100-200 gold per turn because of them. Especially when I was playing as Augustus so I can easily buy museums in all my towns for early age culture boost.

 

[Siptah]

Having played around with half of the civs now, I think Maya and Abbasids both provide super good packages on their own: great buildings, rather universally usable traditions, and fun units. I played them both in a game with Franklin, and felt that my science was way too good - actually shortening the exploration age considerably due to multiple future techs. On the other hand, I finished the science legacy very early because it didn't require the 2nd specialist slot.

My general feeling is still that unique buildings > unique improvements, and that great people uniques are very strong in general.

 

[queenpea]

Having played around with half of the civs now, I think Maya and Abbasids both provide super good packages on their own: great buildings, rather universally usable traditions, and fun units. I played them both in a game with Franklin, and felt that my science was way too good - actually shortening the exploration age considerably due to multiple future techs. On the other hand, I finished the science legacy very early because it didn't require the 2nd specialist slot.

My general feeling is still that unique buildings > unique improvements, and that great people uniques are very strong in general.

Egypt to Abbasids with Hatshepsut is very strong. Really agree on the great people uniques, which Egypt also has. Abbasids are amazing with science.

I’m confused by great improvements. Did a Mongols game yesterday, and you can only build Ortoo on tiles that already have rural improvements? That felt silly to me and really limits their placement.

 

[marius_kaparius]

(They actually can but it's basically a bug.) If you tell them to move through the territory, they can enter w/o starting a war.

I just found out that the culture tree upgrade that says the Dhow ignores zone of control actually let's them move into territory when you don't have open borders.

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

I don't know if he's too strong compared to the rest of the cast, but Lafayette is certainly one of the easiest leaders to play.

+2 Happiness and Culture in any Settlement. For free. No strings attached. And that scales per Age.

And then, of course, there's extra Combat Strength for slotted Traditions, which are the best policies that you will already be seeking out.

The only thing that requires some strategizing or extra thought is the Reform Endeavor, which you can safely ignore while still reaping massive rewards. And let's not forget that Lafayette's free yields are synergistic, too- extra Culture for unlocking Traditions and extra Happiness for unlocking more policy slots. All in all a leader who rewards you disproportionately for just... playing the game.

Contrast that with Tecumseh, another Leader focused on getting extra yields for his Settlements while increasing his Combat Strength. Tecumseh starts out completely vanilla and requires 170 Influence (the scarcest resource in the game) + 30 turns of waiting at minimum to get any value out of. Granted, Tecumseh scales a lot harder than Lafayette. With 5 City-States under your thumb in the Modern Age, he's getting a whopping +15 Food and Production in each Settlement!

Still, there's a massive imbalance in effort required. I think there's a place for passive buffs, but I also feel that Lafayette gives players just a littttttle too much for doing nothing.

In case anyone's curious my desired Lafayette change would be to reserve the Culture for Celebrations. That way he can still fly through the Civics tree but only if the player focuses on triggering (and extending) Celebrations.

 

[Navelgazer]

I just finished a campaign as Confucius through the Khmer/Majapahit/Siam line for a Science victory, and that was for sure a powerful combo (if an obvious one.) While Confucius might not have been intended as the "natural" leader for those civs, it's pretty clear to me now that those civs were made with each other in mind, with each building on the previous one in terms of setting up a ton of Specialists and getting the most out of them for the least amount of cost. Confucius just improves all of that by growing your cities faster and giving you the science bonus per specialist. Just super good.

It's also clear to me now that none of the unique units (that I've seen at least, so far) are particularly impactful (except for maybe the Jaguar Slayer.) It's really the stuff in the civ culture trees that makes a difference, I think. Which is cool.

 

[Seek]

I just finished a campaign as Confucius through the Khmer/Majapahit/Siam line for a Science victory, and that was for sure a powerful combo (if an obvious one.) While Confucius might not have been intended as the "natural" leader for those civs, it's pretty clear to me now that those civs were made with each other in mind, with each building on the previous one in terms of setting up a ton of Specialists and getting the most out of them for the least amount of cost. Confucius just improves all of that by growing your cities faster and giving you the science bonus per specialist. Just super good.

It's also clear to me now that none of the unique units (that I've seen at least, so far) are particularly impactful (except for maybe the Jaguar Warrior.) It's really the stuff in the civ culture trees that makes a difference, I think. Which is cool.

Ha, I did a Confucius Khmer/Abbasid run today, and I’m about ready to wrap up explo at turn 55. Bonkers combo. Each specialist I’m putting down is adding 15+ yields.

 

[Giskler]

Queen of Wa with Maya is just broken.

 

[Goldflash]

Queen of Wa with Maya is just broken.

Yeah, i saw a post on reddit that used himiko queen of wa, mayas > abbasids, Meiji to win a science victory on deity in 30 (modern era) turns. I'm going to try that combo (not on deity) next.

 

[Cannonballninja]

Himiko, Queen of Wa definitely feels good and strong. I know I'm getting a lot of value out of someone like Augustus (like, A LOT of value), but every time I get to support an Endeavour for free with Himiko it makes me feel like I've made out like a bandit!

Played a second game of Rome. First impressions were not wrong. Rome is good. This second time around though, I've definitely noticed the Basilica putting in a lot of work. It has an Influence adjacency. That means +Influence on specialists, and I really felt that extra income.

 

[Navelgazer]

Current game is as Lafayette, going Rome into Spain and now just started Modern Age as France. He starts off kind of whatevs (though the free happiness and culture on every settlement is nice) but by later eras, just starting off with a bunch of slotted traditions and knowing that you have a flat CS bonus for each of them is very good. While he’s technically Cultural and Diplomatic, he’s honestly super expansionist. Fun campaign if you haven’t tried him out yet.