Leader Discussion - Confucious

[disjointaccount]

The final of the three (imo all very interesting and fun) "C" leaders - Confucious.
His leader ability is Keju, which is a mere two-parter:

• +25% Growth Rate in all Cities
• +2 Science from Specialists

His attributes are Expansionist and Scientific, giving him access to the Farmers' Market and Research Collaboration endeavors, along with events for attribute points upon reaching 5 population in a Settlement and researching Cartography (per this post).
He has a starting bias for grassland.
Playing as Confucious unlocks Ming (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Silk or having 8 resources slotted into one settlement) and Mongolia (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Horses or having 3 Siege units) in the Exploration Age, and Qing (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Jade) in the Modern Age.
As an AI leader, his agenda is Guanxi - Increase Relationship by a Medium Amount for having the most Specialists in an empire. Decrease Relationship by a Small Amount for the leader with the least amount of Specialists in an empire. Only triggers if Confucius has at least one Specialist.

So what are everyone's thoughts? Likes/dislikes? Strengths and weaknesses? Fun strategies? Good civs to pair him with?

 

[Leucarum]

He's my vote for the most generalist leader in the game. Everyone's going to use specialists and growth. The AI usually does well with him in my experience which is also a good sign. His momentos are fun to stack on top of his base kit as well which is always fun.

For me his strength is also his weakness. I tend to bypass him because he doesn't really shake up the game in any interesting way. Nothing outwardly wrong with him, I just don't know when I'd ever sit down and say "I want to play a Confucious game today."

 

[Navelgazer]

Sort of a counterpart to Augustus, Confucius wants as many cities as you can afford to give him. This on its own makes him play a little differently, IMO (though he's still pretty generalist.) He fits beautifully with Han, naturally, but I like pairing him with a civ with some real econ behind it (other than Carthage, of course) so that you can get your cities online faster. Aksum, Egypt and Mississippian are all solid picks there. Make sure you get the Silk Roads legacy so that you can keep your cities in Exploration (though your initial income in the Exploration Era might suffer a bit from that, so watch out!) and you should have an absolute breeze picking up the Enlightenment Legacy. You could also go with Khmer, which likes tall empires but also punishes you for it, but for every situation I can think of, there are preferable options to Khmer.

 

[Lord Lakely]

With the way the leaders are balanced in this game, there are two clear tiers in my book: the good leaders that will always emerge on top thanks to their abilities and are fun to play as they do so, and the miserable leaders who provide generic experiences in the best circumstances and are either weak or boring in general.

I've never played Confucius, and one of the main reason for that is my suspicion he's a miserable leader posturing as a 'good leader'. His ability is a 'Win More', surely? Specialists are already so overpowered by themselves that the absurd burst of science Confucius gets is not only superfluous, it actively hurts your development as it accelerates the end of the age. Which means it's HARDER to get legacy points with him in any path besides Enlightenment.

 

[Navelgazer]

With the way the leaders are balanced in this game, there are two clear tiers in my book: the good leaders that will always emerge on top thanks to their abilities and are fun to play as they do so, and the miserable leaders who provide generic experiences in the best circumstances and are either weak or boring in general.

I've never played Confucius, and one of the main reason for that is my suspicion he's a miserable leader posturing as a 'good leader'. His ability is a 'Win More', surely? Specialists are already so overpowered by themselves that the absurd burst of science Confucius gets is not only superfluous, it actively hurts your development as it accelerates the end of the age. Which means it's HARDER to get legacy points with him in any path besides Enlightenment.

I think it's hard to call him miserable - he's probably one of the stronger if not one of the strongest leaders in the game. I see what you're saying about his ability pushing the end of the age faster, though. I think because I focus on culture so much with whoever I'm playing with that I haven't seen that be as much of an issue with him, as he can shore up science without having to invest as much into it if you're trying to slow-roll the age to get everything you can, legacy-wise. And while extra science from specialists could certainly be considered "win-more," the extra growth in cities is nothing to sneeze at.

This is another reason I feel like Egypt is a decent pairing with him - you need culture and Confucius doesn't help you with that on his own, and you want economy to, at the very least, keep converting settlements into cities. Egypt helps with both of those things, and encourages settling navigable rivers (which have their own downsides in terms of how you grow out your cities, but the +25% city growth helps to mitigate that) and then if you transition into Songhai for Exploration, you've got basically two legacy tracks locked down from the start, allowing you to focus on Culture and Military, which can both basically be brute-forced in Exploration anyway.

 

[Lord Lakely]

This is another reason I feel like Egypt is a decent pairing with him - you need culture and Confucius doesn't help you with that on his own, and you want economy to, at the very least, keep converting settlements into cities. Egypt helps with both of those things, and encourages settling navigable rivers (which have their own downsides in terms of how you grow out your cities, but the +25% city growth helps to mitigate that) and then if you transition into Songhai for Exploration, you've got basically two legacy tracks locked down from the start, allowing you to focus on Culture and Military, which can both basically be brute-forced in Exploration anyway.

Theoretically, this is true. or you could be Aksum which gets more culture and more gold. Confucius tends to do well when he starts as Aksum too (which he often does in my games as Han is more or less my default Antiquity Civ now.) Egypt's ONE advantage over Aksum is that they also get Happiness, which is relevant for Specialist focused abilities.

If anything, Kong should be paired with MISSISSIPIANS who have food and gold bonuses (both relevant to Kong). Or Khmer, so that he's guaranteed to get Majapahit in Exploration.

I think it's hard to call him miserable - he's probably one of the stronger if not one of the strongest leaders in the game. I see what you're saying about his ability pushing the end of the age faster, though. I think because I focus on culture so much with whoever I'm playing with that I haven't seen that be as much of an issue with him, as he can shore up science without having to invest as much into it if you're trying to slow-roll the age to get everything you can, legacy-wise. And while extra science from specialists could certainly be considered "win-more," the extra growth in cities is nothing to sneeze at.

I will consent that the growth is good, which is hard to obtain outside of being Mississipians/Khmer or Tecumseh. The Science is redundant. Science by itself doesn't win you games. What wins you games is the ability to create things, which is determined by Gold and Production, to which Confucius gets no meaningful boost (specialists that give Prod/Money adjacencies apply to everyone's specialists, not just Confucius's).

If Confucius gets anything done it'll be off the back of his Civilization, not the other way around and that is what separates the good leaders from the not good ones.

It also takes until Currency before he can even start planting specialists.

If his abilities gave CULTURE I'd agree and say he's one of the better leaders. Plenty of strong passive effects are unlocked via the Civic tree, as well as any relevant Exploration wonder. Science just doesn't hit as hard in Civ7.

 

[disjointaccount]

I like Confucious. He's straightforward but he's good at what he does. If you can support a tall(ish) playstyle with well-fed cities he'll grow them faster snd give you lots of science in them. There isn't much more to say - he's simple but effective. I think of the more simple or one-trick-pony leaders in the game, he's one of my favourites, perhaps just because tall play still feels novel off the back of 6 and pre-food-patch 7.

I like him with Khmer and Mississippi, and of course there's synergy with Han. As others have said, though, he's generalist enough that most civs will benefit from him to some degree. I'd like to try a supercharged specialist game at some point with Confucious, the mementos for extra specialist yields, and a run of civs that all have specialist-yield-focused traditions. Seems like seeing how high the yields could go would be fun from a "number-go-up" perspective.

 

[Nikolai II]

I really like Confucius, as a primarily builder type. I also like Mongolia, which he unlocks, as a means to be able to switch up midgame and ignore the new world, whose mechanisms I find weak.

 

[reddishrecue]

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Even though i haven't tried him as much, I do feel that Confucius is a good leader because he has science upgrades which make civilizations good at technology. He's like ben Franklin it seems. I usually use mementos that are tech based which make me get a good tech lead that makes me think that I don't need to get a tech leader since I always focus on tech either way.