Civilization 6 Tier List 1.0

[CaiusDrewart]

England should definitely be higher.

Unique and cheap harbor adjacent to commercial hub means two quick trade routes per coastal city while your inland-cities specialize in production, science and culture. Production in your coastal cities gets boosted by in-land factories and internal trade routes. No need for industrial zone. International trade routes boosted by social policies give you tons of money, science and culture.

Short guide:
Quickly expand in early game, I'd say 6 cities minimum (4 coastal). If you run out of space, consider attacking a neighbour, especially when you have early horses.

After that, rush towards exploration (government with +2 trade routes), explore with two caravels (upgrade two galleys) while going for both unique units (they unlock roughly at the same time). Now, the second expansion wave can start to all the lucrative locations on other islands and continents (use +50% settler card again). You get a free redcoat unit per city and can immediately spam cheap harbors to quick-start those new cities via trade routes.

After this second wave, you should be looking at 10-15 cities with 20+ trade routes and quite a strong military, both naval and land.
Now you have two options. Either go for domination or, even easier, for cultural victory. Each british museum can hold SIX artifacts and you only need one archeologist per museum. With the guaranteed (!!) theming bonus, England gets roughly 55 tourism and 35 culture per museum !! Depending on how well you managed your core cities, you can have four museums up and running rather quickly. If not, just use your 300-400 gold per turn to rush buy them. You can also build the Eiffel Tower and spam seaside resorts in your coastal cities. Also remember that open borders and international trade routes give you +50% (or +40%?) tourism with each civ.

With this strategy, I won culture VC on turn 245 with 1010 tourism per turn. =) Emperor, standard speed + map size. Fractal map. It felt like CIV5 Venice on crack.

Edit: Also, England's music is amazing

Screenshot one turn before victory:

Spoiler :

Really interesting post. I've been trying to make the super-wide, trade-heavy culture victory work as England and I haven't had nearly as good results (playing on Immortal). The lack of any help at all until Royal Navy Dockyards show up hurts. So does the fact that sea tiles and sea resources are currently horrible to work (I hope that changes eventually.)

There's also some downsides to the unique harbor. They're definitely good--they're cheap and they grant a trade route. On the other hand, though, harbors generate the least useful kind of great person points, and are the only early game district not to benefit from any city states. (They should add in some Maritime city states that give Harbors bonuses!) And of course, sometimes the good city spots are more than 3 tiles from the coast. All these factors make harbor spam a little less enticing.

Nevertheless, you've inspired me to try another England game. It seems really fun if you can pull it off.

 

[lamaros]

Really interesting post. I've been trying to make the super-wide, trade-heavy culture victory work as England and I haven't had nearly as good results (playing on Immortal). The lack of any help at all until Royal Navy Dockyards show up hurts. So does the fact that sea tiles and sea resources are currently horrible to work (I hope that changes eventually.)

There's also some downsides to the unique harbor. They're definitely good--they're cheap and they grant a trade route. On the other hand, though, harbors generate the least useful kind of great person points, and are the only early game district not to benefit from any city states. (They should add in some Maritime city states that give Harbors bonuses!) And of course, sometimes the good city spots are more than 3 tiles from the coast. All these factors make harbor spam a little less enticing.

Nevertheless, you've inspired me to try another England game. It seems really fun if you can pull it off.

With the right circumstances harbours will make you really really rich. If you have a few commercial districts next to harbours you will have a lot of gold coming in. You'll also get some production from the for internal trade routes, and even the city itself.

At worst if you build a harbour you will get some gold, and can use the trade route to get another two production to a city of your choice.

At best you will get a heap of gold, as well as some production via the shipyard, and some more gold and food and housing from the lighthouse.

The problem is that the techs to make the most of it are off on their own, and the site setup needs to be just perfect. But when it is, a commercial district next to a harbour will be very good.

 

[lamaros]

Yeah, I think a lot of people went very hard on science in their first few games, hit a production wall, and veered very hard towards Germany.

But I think there are a lot of other very strong civs, it's just that the strength doesn't scream out at you from simply reading the ability.

 

[Truronian]

I think Gilgamesh is really under-rated here. The war-cart is a very good unit (particularly with the "+100% for cavalry" card) and synergised well with Epic Quests. You can easily build a band of roaming barb hunters to pop camps for science boosts and other goodies. The leader bonus is a little rubbish, I've mainly leveraged it for the city state unit levying discount.

 

[LDiCesare]

I think Sumeria is stronger than Scythia personally. Tried both,on Deity and had way easier game with Gilgamesh.

 

[theoddone]

(I'm assuming this tier list is for single player deity)

For those wondering why Germany is top tier, what does every city need in Civ 6 to keep up with the huge production costs of later buildings and higher district costs as the game goes on? Industrial Zones. Because of how fast districts go up in price and how the civ 6 later values work, having a city mid-late game without a industrial district is basically useless as it'll take dozens of turns to build any of the later game units/buildings. Germany's advantage is that their zone is not only better but has a BASE cost which is half of all the other civs. Districts go up in price by quite a bit as the game goes on (the subreddit of civ figures its from tech/civics and how many districts you have) but unique districts have the base cost slashed in half so they obviously go up by half the amount which is huge. That is also why almost all the higher tier civs in this tier list (I agree with most of it) have unique districts as one of their specials. In addition, Frederick's cities aren't halted by population as unique districts don't go towards the cap and Germany receives 1+ to their district cap limit meaning they can have 2+ districts over a non unique district civ without needing the 6 population needed for those 2 more districts. Add in a few other bonuses (military slot being nice) and you have one of the strongest if not the strongest civ in the game. Though this ignores the sell abuse scythia can do as they're the most broken civ if you run the 100% production civic and start selling horses for basically 100-200 GPT early game which will break the game.

That said, I think Pericles and his special is garbage compared to Gorgo, half the time the city states get wiped out in deity relatively early, leaving you with very few of them to work with. And of those to work with, the AI irrationally dumps all their points into a single city state and it can easily be upwards of 15+ envoys per city state as each AI player decides which city state is their favorite. This means that Pericles and his 5% culture special (which isn't even that great unless you have several Suzerains for a long period of time) is difficult to hold by the time the 5% gives any meaningful boost. I feel like Gorgo's special is insane due to how many early wars start and since Greece should be declaring war on someone early to abuse their hoplites, she is able to amass a huge amount of culture at a time where it is needed the most (early game) and in Civ 6 the AI loves spamming quantity over quality when it comes to units so amassing a huge amount of culture off a single war is fairly easy.

I agree with most of the list however, unique districts are way better than unique improvements and any civ favoring a culture victory has a huge edge currently as the deity AI is clueless when dealing with culture victory so it is the easiest/fastest way to win most of the time in a standard 8 player game.

 

[Roxlimn]

Thing with the Hansa is that you can get it to kickstart production in new cities. It's cheap to build, it gets bonuses from Resources even when they are not improved or even in your territory, and of course if you have enough envoys with Industrial city states, it gets bonuses from those as well.

It's half price, so that's great. It's only +2-3 production, so as a kickstarting effect, it's less effective than a Trade Route, which is more effective at kickstarting a city. Assuming you were playing Japan, you could do a similar thing. Front load is twice the time for Germany, for about the same effect. After the thing is up, you get a Commerical Hub for Germany, which then costs full price. You could get any of the 3 Districts for Japan, all of which will be half price. Germany is kind of better - a bit, but much less flexible. Once the Factory comes online, Japan's projects Culture as well as Production, which allows you to expand the borders of a new city faster - assuming there's still contiguous space to expand.

If we're talking about City State influences, then the best would be a Religion-heavy game with any of the Religious leaders (which kind of includes Japan), combined with the perk that allows you to outright buy City Center buildings with Faith. Nothing beats having your Monument and Granary up the first turn.

I feel that some of the feedback here is true - people went hard on Science, ignored +production buildings like they did the last time in Civ V because they can't do math right, then got burned because everything in the late game is horribly expensive when you've been ignoring production the whole game. The solution isn't to turn hard to Germany. The solution is just to build Industrial Zones. And maybe use Craftsmen Policy.

 

[Plus Ultra]

I think Pericles and his special is garbage compared to Gorgo.

I see your point theoddone, but I disagree.

Most city states get conquered in the Ancient era, maybe early Classical era too. That is when your hoplites come out to play.

Just liberate the conquered City states while the warmongering penalties are low/inexistant, use the extra wildcard slot to get double envoys and focus on culture to get complex goverments faster.

I was suzerain of 5 city states at the end of my game, getting a +25% in culture.

I have to admit this was all in King difficulty, so your mileage might vary.

 

[rpgalon]

Really interesting post. I've been trying to make the super-wide, trade-heavy culture victory work as England and I haven't had nearly as good results (playing on Immortal). The lack of any help at all until Royal Navy Dockyards show up hurts. So does the fact that sea tiles and sea resources are currently horrible to work (I hope that changes eventually.)

There's also some downsides to the unique harbor. They're definitely good--they're cheap and they grant a trade route. On the other hand, though, harbors generate the least useful kind of great person points, and are the only early game district not to benefit from any city states. (They should add in some Maritime city states that give Harbors bonuses!) And of course, sometimes the good city spots are more than 3 tiles from the coast. All these factors make harbor spam a little less enticing.

Nevertheless, you've inspired me to try another England game. It seems really fun if you can pull it off.

Harbor gives +2 production to your traders that go there. and gives a trade route, traders and builders are by far the most important thing to grow an empire. so harbor is pretty good for me.

Industrial districts only kick in with at least factory tech, otherwise it's better to build more builders for mines/lumber mills, or traders to Kickstart new cities.


One thing it looks like people are forgetting is start Bias. Scythia gets horse always. Greece gets OP hills. Brazil gets rainforest.

There is no better way to Kickstart a civ than to send a worker with the settler and harvest some rainforest tiles - instant 1 new pop, almost 2 pop if used on 1 pop cities. then sending a bunch of traders from the city. I have grown 1 pop cities to 7 pop in 3 turns by harvesting a banana and the rainforests and sending traders.

 

[Abraxis]

You're all so obsessed with production on single districts, and yet no one mentions Egypt and leaves her to languish as an "Okay" civ? She has 15% production reduction on every building, district, and wonder in the game right from the beginning. Certainly this saves you more hammers over-all than a half cost district or even three.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

I'm going to put Spain at the bottom which makes me sad. The only decent advantage I see them get is the international trade but that's about it.

Let's look:

+4 combat bonus isn't huge against other religions but not wholly crappy.
Create fleets earlier is not extremely useful except on maybe an Island map
The mission is a rather terrible tile improvement and even a farm get's more use throughout the game.
The bonus to international trade is quite good.
Conquistador comes at an awkward time and not hugely powerful
The extra charge on an inquisitor is mostly useless.

But all of this would be decent IF Spain was a Civ that got a unique district. Being a religious Civ they need to crank out that Holy Site early which counts against the district cap. So building your cities presents a challenge and Spain doesn't even get a bonus for a holy site like Japan or Russia and they are quite clearly defined as a religious Civ. Spain grows slow because religion actually slows them down a lot. I feel like they are weaker version of England.

I'd like to see Spain get some kind of perk to founding a religion, maybe a unique district like Russia and get rid of the mission or can we make the Mission Spain's version of the Lavra?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Mission is not bad. Im pretty sure I can get a religion on whatever difficulty simply because the ai don't seems to build projects but missions are very decent for culture victory as well.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

I played a game as England on Emperor (Continents - standard map) and I have to say I was quite impressed. I started off on the northern tip of the larger eastern Continent (Esos anyone?) on the coast. I only had two good places to settle so I was a small 3 city coastal Civ on a continent with Rome and China dukeing it out. Thankfully they fought each other more than they fought me though Rome denounced me a few times for having a relatively small empire. So I basically became a merchant Civ on the home continent trading, trading , and more trading.

Let me say this, Royal Navy Dockyards are pretty awesome. Had 3 of them along with com hubs and IZs + a single campus with mediocre adjacency bonus. But ****, I got 3 great admirals and took over the sea since taking over the land wasn't really viable. Had quadrimes with GAs attached. Reasearched cartography, kept it peaceful with Rome and China and expanded to the other continent. I rather quickly set up 3 more cities there...all with royal navy dockyards, (of course WHY NOT?) and took advantage of the free military units. I secured the north of that continent and coasted into a cultural victory getting in two coastal wars which was easy. Yes it was only 6 cities but England is pretty good for that when they are split on two continents.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

Mission is not bad. Im pretty sure I can get a religion on whatever difficulty simply because the ai don't seems to build projects but missions are very decent for culture victory as well.

On its own I suppose its ok but it's just not as good as most other standard tile improvements. I almost never use it because I'd rather use the tile for something else. My holy site(s) already generate enough faith and a couple of campuses do the job for science.

Again, I LOVE the concept of Spain... They went for a unique Civ that's theoretically good at stopping others from getting religious victories but the fact that they have no unique districts (especially a holy site UD) makes them painfully slow to get fully online.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

I realized my post about England can be summed up in "Royal navy dockyards are an amazing UD"

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

You can not have enough faith if you are going for a culture victory because more faith means more parks.

Use your trade bonus to feed oversea cities and these cities are used to work good missions and that basically it.

Conquistador is pretty decent and should be belined, it is possible that the most important part of the civilization is the unique unit and while conquistador is not the first unique unit it is in a decent spot because you will get oversea travel around the conquistador prime so it is pretty much always decent no matter map type.

Redcoat is similar but comes a bit later but is more powerful. Free melee unit + redcoat is pretty ridiculous, your army because larger and larger as you conquer the other civs.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

Conquistadors just come way too late. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but the 3 games I played as Spain my start was incredibly slow. The only saving grace (pun intended) was the bonus to international trade.

How do you play Spain in terms of prioritizing builds/techs?

 

[GT_OKEZ]

Right now Spain to me just feels like a weaker version of England.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

You should use a tech path with give you conquistador early but you don't have to rush for the conquistador.

A few conquistadors with missionaries, great general and battering ram should be all you need for a while.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Alas I upgraded all my Eagle warriors in my first playthrough. I got about 15 free builders from them though! Conquered Greece and basically could have rushed the world, but I actually wound up winning a cultural victory since I decided to use the massive builder boosts to speed build districts. I think I built my first cultural district in the late renaissance after my last real war and just wound up overwhelming the AI with faith purchases of writers, artists, and musicians from basically free holy site construction. Upping the difficulty for game 2!