Civilization 6 Tier List 1.0

[Keaton_AU]

TL;DR:

Tier 1 – God tier
• Germany as Frederick Barbarossa

Tier 2 – Great tier
• Greece as Pericles
• Greece as Gorgo
• Rome as Trajan
• Brazil as Pedro II
• Japan as Hojo Tokimune

Tier 3 – Good tier
• Kongo as Mvemba a Nzinga
• Russia as Peter
• Arabia as Saladin
• China as Qin Shi Huang
• Scythia as Tomyris

Tier 4 – Okay tier
• Egypt as Cleopatra
• Aztec as Montezuma
• England as Victoria
• Spain as Philip II
• Norway as Harald Hardrada
• India as Gandhi

Tier 5 – horsehocky tier
• America as Teddy Roosevelt
• Sumeria as Gilgamesh
• France as Catherine de' Medici


Long Version


Tier 1 – God tier
• Germany as Frederick Barbarossa

1. Free Imperial Cities (10/10)
2. Holy Roman Emperor (7/10)
3. U-Boat (4/10)
4. Hansa (10/10)​

Tier 2 – Great tier
• Greece as Pericles

1. Plato’s Republic (9/10)
2. Surrounded by Glory (8/10)
3. Hoplite (7/10)
4. Acropolis (7/10)​

• Greece as Gorgo

1. Plato’s Republic (9/10)
2. Thermopylae (7/10)
3. Hoplite (7/10)
4. Acropolis (7/10)​

• Rome as Trajan

1. All roads Lead to Rome (9/10)
2. Trajan’s Column (10/10)
3. Legion (6/10)
4. Bath (6/10)​

• Brazil as Pedro II

1. Amazon (9/10)
2. Magnanimous (6/10)
3. Minas Geraes (4/10)
4. Street Carnival (6/10)​

• Japan as Hojo Tokimune

1. Meiji Restoration (7/10)
2. Divine Wind (6/10)
3. Samurai (6/10)
4. Electronics Factory (7/10)​

Tier 3 – Good tier
• Kongo as Mvemba a Nzinga

1. Nkisi (5/10)
2. Religious Convert (2/10)
3. Ngao Mbeba (9/10)
4. Mbanza (9/10)​

• Russia as Peter

1. Mother Russia (8/10)
2. The Grand Embasy (1/10)
3. Cossack (2/10)
4. Lavra (7/10)​

• Arabia as Saladin

1. The Last Prophet (6/10)
2. Righteousness of the Faith (7/10)
3. Mamluk (8/10)
4. Madrasa (4/10)​

• China as Qin Shi Huang

1. Dynastic Cycle (7/10)
2. The First Emperor (10/10)
3. Crouching Tiger (6/10)
4. Great Wall (4/10)​

• Scythia as Tomyris

1. People of the Steppe (9/10)
2. Killer of Cyrus (9/10)
3. Saka Horse Archer (6/10)
4. Kurgan (4/10)​

Tier 4 – Okay tier
• Egypt as Cleopatra

1. Iteru (7/10)
2. Mediterraneon’s Bride (5/10)
3. Maryannu Chariot Archer (10/10)
4. Sphinx (5/10)​

• Aztec as Montezuma

1. Legend of the Five Suns (4/10)
2. Gifts for the Tlatoani (8/10)
3. Eagle Warrior (9/10)
4. Tlachtli (4/10)​

• England as Victoria

1. British Museum (3/10)
2. Pax Britannica (2/10)
3. Redcoat (4/10)
4. See Dog (6/10)
5. Royal Navy Dockyard (5/10)​

• Spain as Philip II

1. Treasure Fleet (5/10)
2. El Escorial (6/10)
3. Conquistador (6/10)
4. Mission (4/10)​

• Norway as Harald Hardrada

1. Knarr (4/10)
2. Thunderbolt of the North (4/10)
3. Beserker (5/10)
4. Viking Longship (6/10)
5. Stave Church (4/10)​

• India as Gandhi

1. Dharma (3/10)
2. Satyagraha (4/10)
3. Varu (8/10)
4. Stepwell (7/10)​

Tier 5 – horsehocky tier
• America as Teddy Roosevelt

1. Founding Fathers (4/10)
2. Roosevelt Corollary (3/10)
3. P-51 Mustang (3/10)
4. Rough Rider (3/10)
5. Film Studio (4/10)​

• Sumeria as Gilgamesh

1. Epic Quests (4/10)
2. Adventures of Enkidu (1/10)
3. War-Cart (7/10)
4. Ziggurat (5/10)​

• France as Catherine de' Medici

1. Grand tour (4/10)
2. Catherine’s Flying Squadron (3/10)
3. Garde Impenale (5/10)
4. Chateau (2/10)​

Preamble: I have currently played 35 hours of Civ 6. I have played 1000 hours Civ 5, and follow the competitive / NQ scene rather religiously. I focus on Min/Maxing, and especially on the most efficient mean to an end. These tiers are based solely on the player's ability to manipulate the civilization, and not the AI or their agenda. These tiers are not necessarily based on the civ's ability to achieve a certain victory type, but rather getting ahead of the other civilization's and establishing oneself as the games leader.

Current Meta: Most effective early game meta is currently 5-7 cities, into commercial hubs, maxing out internal trade routes on newer cities, into industrial districts with workshops into campuses.

Justification: While science in Civilization 5 reigned supreme, it is most certainly production that reigns supreme in Civilization 6. In Civ 6, there is such a magnitude of things to build, if you built a campus district prior to an industrial district, you'd have time for barely half the buildings. For this reason, a much higher emphasis is placed on early production and a civilization's ability to obtain early production.

Germany is most definitely the strongest civilization in Civ 6. While the U-Boat and the attack bonus against city states are almost irrelevant, the ability to build the hansa for half the cost, receive significantly more bonus production and have the district count for free, make the Hansa district, IMO, the most desirable civ bonus in the entire game. Combined with Free Imperial Cities, this allows Germany to hit the three core districts (commercial, industrial, science) without concern for district and population limitation.

All the other rankings are based on their abilities to achieve the desired outcome listed above and in general the usefulness of their abilities and attributes.

Comments and criticism welcome.

 

[kolpo]

I am playing my first game with Germany and am actually disappointed in the Free Imperial Cities abilities because I never hit the district cap in any of my cities. I might hit it if I play another civ, but for now do I see little use in something which raises a cap I never hit.

But I agree that the hansa is extremely powerful, you always have way more things you want to build then things you can build, production is extremely valuable in civ 6.

 

[criZp]

What's exactly wrong with the roosevelt corollary? The combat bonus seems nice to me, and rough riders has base +5 strenght and additional +10 in hilly terrain, add to that the +5 combat and +culture when fighting on home continent, add to that you save significant gold if you get a bunch of them.

Norway's naval abilities are indeed weak. The problem with them is that pillaging tiles is only decent in the early game, and that navies are not very important in civ 6 due to very strong land trade routes. The healing outside friendly territory should apply to ranged ships as well as melee ones. I also believe the viking ship comes too early to be much use, not a whole lot of coast to pillage in the ancient era unless its an island map.

 

[Frank327]

How are Scythia and China so low? Scythia dominates everyone in military and China effectively has a 20% cost reduction (needing to research 40% instead of 50% of a tech/civic with boost) to almost all science and culture costs. Along with 33% better builders that can also rush wonders.

 

[Tomice]

I'm impressed how well-rounded and versatile Rome is!
- Legions are the swiss army knife among UU's and come just as you need them, no matter if you defend or conquer
- Strong culture and better tile aquisition through free monuments
- Trade/gold bonus
- faster movement along free roads helps both economy and military

Norway is fun sometimes, but it is a very situational one-trick pony. Berserkers don't seem too cost-effective (at least if you have iron for swordsmen).
The stave church might not be too bad on water maps with few mountains.

 

[CaptainUnknown]

Sumeria was excellent for me. With all of the barb encampments I am constantly hitting euraka and inspirations even in the late Renaissance from these camps. Essentially this makes him a "puedo-science" power even late game. Also since you can declare ancient wars with no penalty, war-cart rushing for free settlers (wait for AI to build, they never protect) is just too easy. You can even siege cities with ease with the 4 movements. Can't say much for their joint war ability, I was kind of a warmonger and killed my continent.

 

[Sansa_Stark]

Too early to judge. I played as Teddy and Cleo, Teddy seems weak as expected.

Cleo also felt pretty vanilla to me. Somehow I failed to use Maryannu Chariot Archers, and Sphinx/Iteru are only good as combo, but I failed to rush any of those 4 early wonders (Pyramids, Ganging Gardens, Stonehenge, Oracle) - I was too busy setting up my empire

On the other hand, once I set up Commercial Hubs, I was swimming in gold, which probably won't be the case with other civs, so it was really useful.

Oh and agree with OP - production seems to be crucial, so yeah Hansa will be top.

 

[SpoonyGundam]

Scythia is insane, because of what's probably an oversight. If you delete a light cavalry in your territory, they still sell for the same price as they do for everyone else. Combined with the +100% production policy, it means you're building them all at 1/4 the production cost and selling them for the normal price (IIRC, ~130 gold each for horsemen on standard speed). High production cities can build them every turn, and even very low production ones can swing a batch every 3-4. It ends up being much more production efficient to just build and sell light cavalry and buy every other building and unit.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I agree... Scythia is the number 1 Civ the way the game is set up for now.

 

[Alkaid]

As somebody who has mainly been playing as Egypt for my first 30 or so hours playing around with immortal/deity(played deity only in civ 5) may I ask why you have the Maryannu Chariot Archer as 10/10? I've found that on the higher difficulties defending against any early rushes by the AI (and barbs) is usually done with archers and warriors, even when you turn a fight back towards their soil. Their Chariot Archer isn't bad in of itself, but at 140 production against 50 for an archer I could pop out almost 3 archers instead of 1 chariot, and I don't need to research another tech that's slightly out of the way either.

Maybe I'm just missing something/missing out with them. After a lot of early game restarts(testing out what I want to do for deity early game) I found myself not bothering with them much so far.

Otherwise, I like Egypt. Like Sansa said, pretty vanilla, but the district and wonder production bonus is pretty good and consistently helpful, sphinxes are okay sometimes, and the trade route bonus gold is quite nice early game. I agree it's a good but definitely not top tier civ. I just don't see much going for their chariots with their high production cost that early on.

Also, yeah, Scythia is way too low, it's easily a god tier civ as things currently are.

 

[Homusubi]

Confirmed: the reason Germany and Japan allied in WWII is because of what would happen if both of their UAs were active at the same time...

Also, I'm pleasantly surprised with the Samurai. Civ 5's version was pretty useless simply because it replaced the completely useless Longswordsman, but Civ 6 has given us a faster, stronger pikeman with bushido - way more useful. (P.S. Firaxis - I do hope the Samurai deliberately doesn't need Iron. Not only does it make the unit relevant, it's actually pretty historically accurate, because one of the things that make katana so remarkable is that they were made starting from low quality ore).

Anyway, I don't care that it's second bottom, I'm still going to play as Vulture Sumeria at one point.

 

[esco_]

i dunno, aside from the selling cheat described above, they arent that good. Their horsearcher is pretty strong early but significantly weak by the time medieval era rolls around

 

[SirLemonWinks]

Scythia should be placed a bit higher because of the amount of gold their civilization gets from disbanding their light cavalry units.

This might change soon because the disbanding gold exploit will get nerfed.

 

[Keaton_AU]

Below are some screenshots of a pretty standard Germany game.

Game speed: Online
Difficulty: Deity
Players: 6
Map: Pangaea

I started in the middle of three AI civs. Gorgo declared war around turn 30. War lasted until I pushed her out with crossbows (I have 3 level 4 crossbowman). I planted 5 further cities in addition to my capital. After planting cities and doing initial maintenance on them (one builder each at 3 charges, 2 for the cap) then all into commercial hubs, with the cap pumping out traders, then all into Hansa's, then into Campus districts, with their respective buildings along the way (priority of buildings is Production > Gold > Science). I'm not sure if the timeframe for Industrialization is reasonable, but the demo's are absolutely insane relative to other Civs. Other Civs would be 10 turns behind Germany right now, and it just makes Germany get even further ahead.

 

[rpgalon]

Sorry but Scythia is by far the strongest right now.

The fact you put them on your Tier 3 is nuts.

 

[HarryLime]

I just played through with the Aztecs and thought they were fantastic. I usually play Immortal on CiV, but am playing on King while I get a handle on the game.

I think the OP is underrating thier district rushing bonus. In my game I was constantly at war and the Eagle Warriors kept me swimming in builders. I literally hard built 2 builders the entire game. And with their ability to rush districts, every city, no matter how bad it's production, could complete a district in 5 turns.

They have a very specific play style and it may be harder to do this on Immortal/Diety, but it was one of the most fun warmongering games I've ever had. And I never felt like I was giving up infrastructure in service of combat.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

Sumeria was excellent for me. With all of the barb encampments I am constantly hitting euraka and inspirations even in the late Renaissance from these camps. Essentially this makes him a "puedo-science" power even late game. Also since you can declare ancient wars with no penalty, war-cart rushing for free settlers (wait for AI to build, they never protect) is just too easy. You can even siege cities with easily with the 4 movements. Can't say much for their joint war ability, I was kind of a warmonger and killed my continent.

Agreed. Sumeria is excellent, up at the top with a star on. I was constantly getting eurekas and inspirations, even into the late game, and racing ahead. Ziggurats are excellent for food heavy cities, and war wagons tear up all over the place in the early game. Great for an early rush war, then sitting back and going in whichever direction you please.

Spain I'd drop lower. Too much of the game I felt like I was playing without any bonuses at all. Even the trading faded out by midgame, overwhelmed by district and policy bonuses to the point that I couldn't tell the difference between trading with a different continent and not.

Kongo is solid. Tried to play a tall game with them (had a weird start on a weird fractal map), which worked, but wasn't very interesting, and I was lacking amenities to a ridiculous degree. Going wide and tall wouldn't have appreciably reduced my city growth, so doing it that way was pointless. I also had nothing to do with roughly 10 great writers/artists/musicians. Filled all the slots, had fully upgraded theater districts for all 4 cities, the hermitage and oxford and still didn't have slots for 10 of the great people I earned.

 

[Sansa_Stark]

I just played through with the Aztecs and thought they were fantastic. I usually play Immortal on CiV, but am playing on King while I get a handle on the game.

I think the OP is underrating thier district rushing bonus. In my game I was constantly at war and the Eagle Warriors kept me swimming in builders. I literally hard built 2 builders the entire game. And with their ability to rush districts, every city, no matter how bad it's production, could complete a district in 5 turns.

They have a very specific play style and it may be harder to do this on Immortal/Diety, but it was one of the most fun warmongering games I've ever had. And I never felt like I was giving up infrastructure in service of combat.

When you kill a unit with Eagle Warrior, do you always get builder, or there is only a chance to get one? Also, do they keep this ability once you upgrade them?

 

[Superstate]

When you kill a unit with Eagle Warrior, do you always get builder, or there is only a chance to get one? Also, do they keep this ability once you upgrade them?

Only a chance, but it seems fairly high (~50%). My sample size is far too low though (about 20 units).

And to not post off-topic, @Keaton_AU:
Played as Rome and had an easy science win on deity, to the point that the win was certain around T80 on 8 players Standard speed Pangaea. Rome is already rated fairly highly in OP and by other guys here so nothing particularly unexpected about that. I disagree that the current meta would be 5-7 cities, there doesn't appear to be any particular cap other than the access to fresh water, and most importantly the player's own patience for microing cities in a game where the win is already guaranteed.

 

[HarryLime]

It is only a chance. But it's high enough that I didn't even realize it was possible not to get one until like the Medieval Era.

And they do not keep the ability on upgrade. Do any of the unique unite in CiVI keep their ability? I was playing with and handful of highly promoted Eagle Warriors into the Renaissance Era. But again, king difficulty.

When you kill a unit with Eagle Warrior, do you always get builder, or there is only a chance to get one? Also, do they keep this ability once you upgrade them?