Civ 6 Deity Tier List –– discussing DLC civs now, R&F civs starting 2/19

[jaegybomb]

This is a diety tier listing, so it's balance in multiplayer should be moot.

Fair point.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Can you provide reasoning in your OP for why they are ranked as such and such? I think that would be more valuable than the rankings themselves.

I agree with this 100%. I just finished reading 9+ pages of discussion, and it's really impossible to remember all the reasons for the rankings without playing all the Civs/Leaders mentioned. There wasn't always a consensus about which Civs ranked where either.

What is the point of the ranking without listing reasons for each Civs ranking? The game and Civs and Leaders in aren't well known by most players yet.

The reasons can be tersely listed on a single line prefixed with the Civ and optional leader names.

 

[Ornen]

I agree with this 100%. I just finished reading 9+ pages of discussion, and it's really impossible to remember all the reasons for the rankings without playing all the Civs/Leaders mentioned. There wasn't always a consensus about which Civs ranked where either.

What is the point of the ranking without listing reasons for each Civs ranking? The game and Civs and Leaders in aren't well known by most players yet.

The reasons can be tersely listed on a single line prefixed with the Civ and optional leader names.

I will be adding an index of what civs are discussed on what pages for easier reading. Been meaning to do this soon & update the thread as well, but it's been a busy couple of weeks.

A terse one-line reason will be met with a lot of "Well, what about ___" responses – I worry that it would be too reductive and would provoke reductive responses and questions that have already been answered. And once we have dozens of civs/leaders, it'll be a whole lot of clutter. I'm still considering it, but those are the reasons why I'm not crazy about it. I'm hoping the index will help.

 

[CoccoBill]

^I disagree, a short summary would be not just tremendously helpful, but also IMHO lessen the wellwhatabouts. Here's a sample for A tier:

A Tier: Significantly stronger than most of the other civs.
Germany - Hansa, hansa and hansa
Greece (Gorgo) - Extra wildcard policy, Acropolis, culture from combat
Aztec - Extra amenity and combat strength from luxury resources, builders hurry districts, eagle warrior
Sumeria - War carts, village reward from barb camps, shared pillage and exp with allies
Rome - Free building in every city, Bath, trade route boosts
Scythia - Double immortal badass cavalry

 

[Soffacet]

Wrong , "anti-cavalry" units don't benefits that 50% boost

This is a base game list, but I just want to point out that the reputable mods that I'm aware of generally add anti-cav to the melee/ranged production cards, and I think it's fairly likely that Firaxis will eventually patch that into the base game as well.

Greece is overrated in general. They are a balanced, midrange speed civ and Rome, Russia and China do what they do better than them.

Greece and those other civs are similar in that they all belong to a category of similar strength. But I'm not seeing how they do the same thing, and certainly not how they do it worse. Referring to Gorgo, of course.

Kongo

I used to think that they were weak due to slow start. However, I have decided after a few more plays that the slow start is not a total killer as long as you can ramp up your military quickly enough after things get moving to take over at least 1 and a half other civs before crossbows come into play.

Later on, the Unique Building allowed me to really ramp up my city growth and I was able to quickly get to the point where I had triple or quadrouple the AI's science output. Even then, they still manage to stay ahead in science race until almost the very end of the game due to whatever insane bonuses they have (plus I am certain they are doing a ton of research agreements among themselves). But at the end I caught up and used my superior great people point production to snag the best great people for the space race.

So overall, Kongo is definitely a slow start but they are able to sustain early conquest a little longer than most other civs which leads to more cities faster, and then their superior growth in population is also big for the mid to late game push.

Brazil

They don't really have an early game advantage as far as conquest, so my early conquest was very hard fought and I had to improvise a lot and had to be at war a lot longer early on. So they are even more of a slow start than Kongo I would say. However, their adjacency bonuses from rainforest tiles gives a big science boost over the long haul and they have a significant boost to obtaining great people. I was able to consistently snag successive great people because my great people point generation was so high (plus getting the partial refund after getting great people) that the AI couldn't compete for a lot of the important ones.

Can you elaborate on what is "slow" about Kongo's start? Do they have some sort of inferior location bias?

Kongo gives me a bit of Civ 5 Spain vibe. It's not exactly the same since Mbanzas and 2x GWAM points are useful no matter what, but they are so much better if you find a Hut Relic on an early turn. Their strength also depends quite a bit on the RNG Great Artist order, since they benefit so much more from Sculptures than other forms of art.

Brazil also needs some luck to truly shine. If you have rainforests in the right places you can set up some incredible Campuses by combining with the Natural Philosophy card. I wish that Street Carnival had some passive benefit over Entertainment Complexes. As a unique district they are half-price and uncapped, but they still don't really... do... anything... until you are setting up Zoos and/or spamming the Carnival project.

^I disagree, a short summary would be not just tremendously helpful, but also IMHO lessen the wellwhatabouts. Here's a sample for A tier:

A Tier: Significantly stronger than most of the other civs.
Germany - Hansa, hansa and hansa
Greece (Gorgo) - Extra wildcard policy, Acropolis, culture from combat
Aztec - Extra amenity and combat strength from luxury resources, builders hurry districts, eagle warrior
Sumeria - War carts, village reward from barb camps, shared pillage and exp with allies
Rome - Free building in every city, Bath, trade route boosts
Scythia - Double immortal badass cavalry

Those don't seem like very useful descriptions. You are just listing a civ's bonuses without any reasoning for why those bonuses are better or worse than other bonuses.

To do it right the list needs a preamble that essays a series of normalizing principles (such as that early bonuses being generally superior to later ones due to snowballing potential, or that bonuses that trigger consistently being more useful than ones that are situational or require luck, etc) and then every civ in the list would need several paragraphs explaining why their bonuses are useful or not useful in light of those principles.

 

[CoccoBill]

^Even when they are clearly just made up in 5 seconds and half-jokingly, they're still far better than nothing at all, don't you think?

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

^I disagree, a short summary would be not just tremendously helpful, but also IMHO lessen the wellwhatabouts. Here's a sample for A tier:

A Tier: Significantly stronger than most of the other civs.
Germany - Hansa, hansa and hansa
Greece (Gorgo) - Extra wildcard policy, Acropolis, culture from combat
Aztec - Extra amenity and combat strength from luxury resources, builders hurry districts, eagle warrior
Sumeria - War carts, village reward from barb camps, shared pillage and exp with allies
Rome - Free building in every city, Bath, trade route boosts
Scythia - Double immortal badass cavalry

I agree 100%. People will more likely read a short summary for each Civ/leader than follow a link to where each one is discussed at length.

I'd suggest a focus on what your audience really wants, a quick summary with one line descriptions. A link to a comprehensive guide (known as a resource in this new forum system) would be a good addition to the list of one line summaries. Few viewers will want to read all the old discussion, but links to that from the guide would be appropriate.

A simple list just causes more questions from new viewers, whereas a short summary would often answer those questions immediately.

Proposed sequence for organizing the leader rankings in order of the ratio of greatest benefit to readers / difficulty for the author:

1) The rankings with each civ/leader name followed by a single line summary of why they deserve the assigned rank in a manner that CoccoBill above wrote for Tier A.

2) A resource guide with sections for each Tier. Each tier would start with a generic description of the tier itself, followed by a paragraph for each Civ/leader describing in detail what advantages and disadvantages determined its ranking. A link to discussion that came to this ranking concensus/decision could added for those readers that question the ranking of this Civ/leader.

3) Skip the resource guide and just do its links as described in the last sentence of step 2 above.

The one line summaries could be added to the ranking with relative ease. Most readers will read these one line summaries.

The guide/resource would be significant effort, but some readers might help put together individual Civ/leader paragraphs once they saw good examples of them for the primary tier A Civ/leaders. Some or maybe even most readers will be interested in such a guide.

The links from the guide (or summary ranking) for each Civ/leader to the detailed discussion on its ranking could be a major effort, since the discussion of each Civ/leader may not just be in one place in this thread; there could be many such places, between which many other Civ/leader rankings were discussed. The effort in doing this might be even harder than writing a guide. A few readers will be interested in all the discussion that lead to the current state of the rankings, including the history of how the ranks changed with the passage of time (unless all the old arguments are discarded/ignored/not linked).

 

[Soffacet]

I agree 100%. People will more likely read a short summary for each Civ/leader than follow a link to where each one is discussed at length.

I'd suggest a focus on what your audience really wants, a quick summary with one line descriptions. A link to a comprehensive guide (known as a resource in this new forum system) would be a good addition to the list of one line summaries. Few viewers will want to read all the old discussion, but links to that from the guide would be appropriate.

A simple list just causes more questions from new viewers, whereas a short summary would often answer those questions immediately.

Proposed sequence for organizing the leader rankings in order of the ratio of greatest benefit to readers / difficulty for the author:

1) The rankings with each civ/leader name followed by a single line summary of why they deserve the assigned rank in a manner that CoccoBill above wrote for Tier A.

2) A resource guide with sections for each Tier. Each tier would start with a generic description of the tier itself, followed by a paragraph for each Civ/leader describing in detail what advantages and disadvantages determined its ranking. A link to discussion that came to this ranking concensus/decision could added for those readers that question the ranking of this Civ/leader.

3) Skip the resource guide and just do its links as described in the last sentence of step 2 above.

The one line summaries could be added to the ranking with relative ease. Most readers will read these one line summaries.

The guide/resource would be significant effort, but some readers might help put together individual Civ/leader paragraphs once they saw good examples of them for the primary tier A Civ/leaders. Some or maybe even most readers will be interested in such a guide.

The links from the guide (or summary ranking) for each Civ/leader to the detailed discussion on its ranking could be a major effort, since the discussion of each Civ/leader may not just be in one place in this thread; there could be many such places, between which many other Civ/leader rankings were discussed. The effort in doing this might be even harder than writing a guide. A few readers will be interested in all the discussion that lead to the current state of the rankings, including the history of how the ranks changed with the passage of time (unless all the old arguments are discarded/ignored/not linked).

Consider Rome. If the list is nothing but one-line summaries, then for Rome it will say something to the effect of, "Free Monuments. Trade Posts. Roads. Baths." And that is completely useless because it is just a regurgitation of publicly available information.

 

[Chibisuke]

Can you elaborate on what is "slow" about Kongo's start? Do they have some sort of inferior location bias?

Kongo gives me a bit of Civ 5 Spain vibe. It's not exactly the same since Mbanzas and 2x GWAM points are useful no matter what, but they are so much better if you find a Hut Relic on an early turn. Their strength also depends quite a bit on the RNG Great Artist order, since they benefit so much more from Sculptures than other forms of art.

Brazil also needs some luck to truly shine. If you have rainforests in the right places you can set up some incredible Campuses by combining with the Natural Philosophy card. I wish that Street Carnival had some passive benefit over Entertainment Complexes. As a unique district they are half-price and uncapped, but they still don't really... do... anything... until you are setting up Zoos and/or spamming the Carnival project.

I was definitely referring to the location bias. Almost every game I started with Kongo they start in the thick of rainforest and less of the strong bonus or luxury resources. Also the rainforest location made exploration super slow so it was hard for my warrior and slinger to find goodie huts or kill barbarians who could easily run away when damaged. Thus, it is easy to miss out on a lot of early tech boosts with Kongo. Sure once you have bronze working and a few workers, you could chop some, but by then the AI is already accelerating their lead. So yea, on average I think Kongo is slow start. However, I think if you play them very deliberately and manage to survive the first 50 turns or so, you can start to claw your way back with the superior swordsmen that are pretty good at fighting walled cities and then when you get the housing boost from the special improvement, you can build taller cities that can help with tech and production so you can grind back to the lead over a lengthy mid/late game push. You just have to be very deliberate about it.

As for Brazil the carnival is pretty useful. In the game I played, I eliminated France early. The AI had already built up Paris a little, so I just used that city mainly as a non-stop Carnevale. It definitely allowed me to nab multiple great people that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten.

 

[Ornen]

I'd rather talk about civs than the format of the thread. It is highly unlikely that I will add one-line descriptions of the civ that match what's already available in-game or online.

Sun Tzu, what you're proposing above is an extended guide to the game's civilizations. This is a tier list & discussion thread, and I have no intention of turning it into an extended guide to any of the game's civs. I'm sure those guides will crop up elsewhere, and I might even draw up a couple civ-specific guides in the future. But not in this thread. It's simply outside the scope. Tier list + discussion is broad enough, as evidenced by the quantity and quality of discussion so far in this thread.

I'll be responding to some civ-specific stuff asap, I've got a lot to catch up on in general since the holiday.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Consider Rome. If the list is nothing but one-line summaries, then for Rome it will say something to the effect of, "Free Monuments. Trade Posts. Roads. Baths." And that is completely useless because it is just a regurgitation of publicly available information.

This is why I like FilthyRobot's approach to doing his tiers, even if I don't 100% agree on all placements he chooses. The concept of bonuses based on how consistently available they are and how much they impact the game when they are available is sound, because that's what separates one civ from another.

For example war carts are always available, are very strong on pangaea, and on top of that you get them early in the game. This makes them a fantastic bonus, offering significantly more than a stock civ gets, in a timeframe that virtually always happens. In contrast Norway's bonuses on Pangaea are pretty weak, since they are rarely impactful even when they are available.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I'd rather talk about civs than the format of the thread. It is highly unlikely that I will add one-line descriptions of the civ that match what's already available in-game or online.

Sun Tzu, what you're proposing above is an extended guide to the game's civilizations. This is a tier list & discussion thread, and I have no intention of turning it into an extended guide to any of the game's civs. I'm sure those guides will crop up elsewhere, and I might even draw up a couple civ-specific guides in the future. But not in this thread. It's simply outside the scope. Tier list + discussion is broad enough, as evidenced by the quantity and quality of discussion so far in this thread.

I'll be responding to some civ-specific stuff asap, I've got a lot to catch up on in general since the holiday.

No, I'm not suggesting guides to Civ VI civilizations in the way you stated above. I'm suggesting a guide that explains the tiers as defined in the OP of this thread. The online link you provided is not at all what I suggested, since it does not even define the tiers, much less justify them.

I see no point in defining tiers and then not documenting why Civs/leaders are ranked the way they are. I suggested a one-line summary for each Civ/leader as an easy way to do this. This summary must not be a simple regurgitation of data available from other sources. Ideally, it will detail what is unique about a Civ/leader and how effective those unique abilities/districts/units/buildings/improvements/... are at winning the game and how limited they might be by the map, its opponents or other aspects of the game. For effectiveness of the Civ/leaders unique attributes, one could rank it from 1 to 10 for brevity. For example "War Cart:10", because it is optimal for the era it becomes available and ancient Era is the best for a rush to snow-ball. However, it can be limited by an island map, so maybe it averages down to "War Cart:9".

Please do whether you want with your thread, but please do not misunderstand or misrepresent what I'm suggesting.

 

[Ornen]

In either case, it's something I'll consider, but that I'm not particularly interested in for a number of reasons. It would be a fair bit of effort for something I don't think would add much to the thread or promote quality discussion, so it's low on my to-do list, even if I were to do it. It invites low effort nitpicking, many civs are greater (or worse) than the sum of their parts, it's hard or even impossible to add something in one line that isn't just regurgitating the bonuses, we have 18 civs already and one day will have dozens, etc etc. The BNW deity tier list was an excellent thread, and it didn't need them. I don't think they would have added much to that thread. I don't expect it to add much to this one.

Not super interested in discussing this further. Again, I'll continue to consider it.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Fair enough, I've said about all I care to on this subject. I will close with the following ...

I will still say though that the tiers will have limited usefulness, since the choice of Civ/leader is highly dependent on what one wants to accomplish in a given game. For example, one will probably prefer widely different player Civ/leaders for Domination versus Religious or Cultural Victory. The size of the map will change things too. While the tier list does state it is for normal/standard speed, not everyone wants to limit themselves to that speed. The tier list does not yet limit map type, but Pangaea and various water maps can change things drastically.

OP says this tier list is based on this old Civ V BNW tier list:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bnw-deity-tier-list.505057/

Sorry, but I don't believe this Civ VI Deity Tier List is formatted as well as the BNW tier list (link above); That tier list even included a log of all changes to the tiers over time; it also distinguished between broad classes of map types. That is perhaps something that could be changed or discussed here.

Good luck with your Civ VI tier list!

 

[Kizo]

Coming from experience creating and managing a large-scale tier list in the past (of a totally different hobby), I offer my advice: Don't over-complicate things. You will never please everyone, and you will never justify the amount of work you put in. Keep it simple.

Anyway, good work on the list. I look forward to balance changes and added civs so we can move away from what it already a fairly stale, domination-heavy hierarchy.

 

[Landos]

OP, I think the list and tiers are great, and a solid one glance estimation of general strength for someone trying their first few deity games. Thanks for putting the work into building the thread. Related to the topic, I've got to figure out how to make better use of Rome's bonus. I have trouble snowballing them into a dominant position, and believe that I should be able to.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

Now that I've had a chance to play a number of games at high difficulty there are some bizarre decisions in this list. Greece (either leader) and Germany are C tier at best. The extra card slots are nice but don't change the critical first 50 turns at all and I'd rather build an ordinary warrior than a hopite. On the other hand the USA is buried down at the bottom even though their continent bonus is spectacular from turn one.
Scythia and Sumeria seem to be the strongest closely followed by the USA. Rome is also probably top tier. Arabia and Russia seem to be solidly B tier- decisively better than all other civs but not quite top tier.

 

[Soffacet]

You can't seriously be criticizing Gorgo for lack of early game bonuses.

 

[Victoria]

Problem with Roosevelt is that the bonus is situational. I started a game with him and am alone on my continent with one city state. The closest AI is beyond the continent border...

In the right situation the early +5 is for sure strong, but there's no way he is above Germany. Plopping down 3 districts at pop 1 is crazy good.

Teddy is like every other leader, a couple of good things and a coupe of bad things. Now Teddies things allow combat and culture. Stuck on an island is not necessarily a bad thing unless you want to go combat. Build your culture victory through effective 8-10 city management and it can be yours, just watch your shores. If the island is too small then sure restart, tere are always bad starts.

Greece (either leader) and Germany are C tier at best

Gorgo gets culkture for kills and can significantly PWN the culture tree in the first 50 odd moves. If she continues to be as she believes then those culture kills just keep getting better.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Scythia and Gilgamesh definitely need to be an uber tier by themselves.

Or maybe Gilgamesh should be in a tier by himself; The War Cart is Strength 30, immune to anti-cavalry (there is no counter), can be built starting turn 1 (no technology is needed to built them) , has no resource requirement, is zero maintenance, has three moves or four when starting in a flat tile, cost only 55 cogs and early cities just can't get an adequate defense up against War Carts in time. The War Cart's most likely opposition are Warriors at Strength 20, which they can decimate easily; That is a strength difference of 10, meaning the War Cart delivers 1.5x damage and takes just 0.67x damage.