Leader Discussion - Machiavelli

[disjointaccount]

Another delay, in part deliberate because I was kind of hoping things would work out like they did with Genghis and we'd get the opportunity to slot Lakshmibai neatly in where she'd be anyway, and in part because Silksong is consuming my life. Anyway, here's Machiavelli.
His leader ability is Il Principe, which is a four-parter:

• Gain +3 Influence per Age
• Gain 50 Gold per Age when your Diplomatic Actions are accepted, or 100 Gold per Age when they are rejected
• Ignore Relationship requirements for declaring Formal Wars
• You can Levy Military Units from City-States you are not suzerain of

His attributes are Diplomatic and Economic, giving him access to the Local Festival and Open Markets endeavors, along with events for attribute points upon researching Discipline and Authority (per this post).
He has no starting bias.
Playing as Machiavelli unlocks Normans (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Iron or having 5 ancient walls) and Spain (otherwise unlocked by recapturing a lost settlement) in the Exploration Age, and Russia (otherwise unlocked by having three settlements in tundra) and France (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Wine) in the Modern Age.
As an AI leader, his agenda is The Spider - If not at war with Machiavelli, increase Relationship by Medium Amount for each other war.

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

 

[disjointaccount]

He's definitely not the strongest, but he's fun. 3 influence in the very early game is genuinely pretty nice (though as an aside, I think "per-age" scaling is a little too weak to keep up and I think this is one of the strongest examples of it), and backstabbing your allies to declare war is great and very on point thematically.

 

[UWHabs]

He's basically set up to just constantly be angry with everyone, since you get basically free gold every X turns from having them reject your open borders requests. Plus you can just constantly spam them with simple denounce requests which they invariably just accept, and that's even more. The best part is when they actually reject it, it doesn't actually cost you influence, so you can have your 70 influence and get open borders rejected from 3-4 civs without even using it up.

I don't think you actually want to do anything in those wars, since you can only send those requests when you're at peace. You can also play him passively, if you're friends with someone it's still only 50/50 that they will actually support rather than just accept most requests. Even just collecting that 50 gold here or there for doing what you normally would do doesn't hurt.

 

[Nic@Melbourne]

Love him. Hard not to pair with Greece

 

[The Civs 6]

Who did he lead irl?

 

[Leucarum]

Who did he lead irl?

It doesn't matter! That's the beauty of leader/civ mixing and matching. We get really interesting and important historical figures that never led nations, and we get to have civs with leaders too poorly attested to get one.

I critizise a lot of things in Civ7, but this is a feature I'll vigorously defend.

Meanwhile if you don't like leaders who didn't leave a civ, you don't have to pick them!

Machiavelli is fun. Extra early influence and gold really add up. He's better in the hands of a player, the AI doesn't really make use of him well IMO.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Who did he lead irl?

Spiritually and intellectually, almost everybody. A copy of his most (in)famous work, The Prince, was supposedly kept in the pocket or at the bedside of such 'real' Leaders as Napoleon, Frederick, Tallyrand, and a host of other ministers and monarchs. He may have been the most influential of all political writers in practice in the early modern period.

To the point where 'machiavellian' has entered the language to mean a scheming politician . . .

 

[Lord Lakely]

Surprisingly playable. +3 Influence goes a long way given how powerful vassalization is. Mach can do the same things Greece and Han starts build up to, but he has the luxury of pulling this off while playing literally any Civ.

My favourite part of his kit is that he gains gold from asking OPEN BORDERS. He can convert 20 influence into 100 Gold per age if you keep asking OBs from Civs that dislike you, and that's a very good deal. (since he's already swimming in Influence to begin with).

I still don't like that he's specifically a leader, when you know... Cesare Borgia and Alcibiades exist, but again, I find him very playable.