Pingala VS Magnus

[Leucarum]

Gathering Storm seems to have made quite a few first governor choices quite viable. It does seem to me like there's quite a lot of strategy and 'playing the map' as a result.

As the OP said, getting an early Pingala can definitely help make up for a culture deficit and I think is a reasonable choice if nobody else is better. But definitely there's a lot of very common situations where someone else is better first.

If you get a few first meets, hit CS quests, or nab some envoys an early Amani can shift your game play pretty dramatically. She is probably my first choice at least as often as Pingala is.

For Magnus it seems like it primarily depends on when you want to start chopping, though your food situation at starting location may also lead to a preference for Provisions. Not usually my first choice but generally a very early choice. Since I know I will always have an use for him later even if I don't upgrade him much I will often grab him if I need to boost the loyalty of a city that's out on a limb.

Liang is nice because builder charges are nice but she's very rarely my first pick. I had one game where my capital was in volcano alley recently and I picked her up and levelled her up earlyish to prevent damage... I doubt it was the optimal choice, but it was a fun and different choice and made the playthrough memorable.

I don't pick Reyna or Moksha in the early game often. I pick up victor occasionally to cope with dark age warfare loyalty problems... But it always feels like I missed an opportunity when I do.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

In fact I build Warlord's Throne more than Ancestral Hall. Once you completed Ancestral Hall it has already been a lot of turns so usually not enough space for you to settle thereafter. All you get may be 2~3 extra workers. not really interesting. Warlord's Throne is very very useful otherwise. (Especially when it still provides 5T bonus on online speed)

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

The two ain't my favorite governors,
But I use Pingala more. unless I have found a religion with Jesuit Education. He's still useful to me.
Magnus, no clear benefits beyond industrialist.

 

[The Highwayman]

I pick Magnus first on Deity all the time and do just fine. In fact, I often take Liang second for the extra builder charge. There are no absolutes in Civ VI. Pingala is overall the best governor, but one does not need to beeline his promo tree.

 

[Datgingah]

Theorycrafting wise maybe we could devise a set of situations where you would know which governor is ideal.

Something potentially like:
If you are going for a religious victory; max moksha.
If not, but if you have a civ with a lot of early housing available (Cree, Inca, etc) and excess food around; go Pingala 3 -> next governor
If not, and you plan to go for an expansionist early game then go for magnus 2, but if you plan to go for a 4 core city war game then do magnus 1 -> Liang 1/Pingala 3

Maybe people with warmongers nearby should go for Victor.... but I don't know if he'd be worth it that early in the game.

 

[Bangau]

I think his point was that you could go Moksha 4 first to get those Apostle promotions for a religious game.

That may have been the case. Though @Victoria explicitly left out the word 'first' quoting me. ;-) The time you get to temples you can also get your 5th and 6th governor title, but bee-lining temples (and thus apostles) you indeed have exactly four, so starting Moksha towards the 4th promotions can be a good strategy towards super fast religious spread. I'll give it a try sometime!

 

[Victoria]

That may have been the case. Though @Victoria explicitly left out the word 'first' quoting me. ;-) The time you get to temples you can also get your 5th and 6th governor title, but bee-lining temples (and thus apostles) you indeed have exactly four, so starting Moksha towards the 4th promotions can be a good strategy towards super fast religious spread. I'll give it a try sometime!

Victoria stupidly left out rather than explicitly left out
RV is about speed and it is all about fast conversion and powerful apostles
Slowing down an RV makes it harder to convert everyone but maybe more fun.

 

[Stacked_Deck]

Like others have said it's generally map and civ specific. I tend to regard Magnus as the war guy. I'll upgrade a couple of warriors with gold and chop out some swords/horses. Iron and horses are the bottleneck in the vast majority of my games. Which also let's me keep some gold in the bank so I can run at a deficit, and top up through the odd pillage.

If there isn't a lot of room to expand and particularly if I have a city that can grow, then that's obviously Pingala's game. It took me a little while to get the hang of starting small and beelining what I need to expand later, having a tall core and Pingala is the only way I can manage it.

I don't rate an early Viktor too highly. If you're short of iron then Magnus is much better than +1 resource in one city, if I have more than 1 source then I don't consider myself short of iron. If I've fallen into a dark age and still insist on classical war then I've had much more success razing and resettling which devalues his AoE loyalty, at that early point in the game there's still value in losing a tiny bit of AI built infrastructure in order to get well placed, tighter fitting cities with the districts you actually want.

I've played around with an early Reyna, I don't hate it. If I'm on track for a Classical golden age, but have poor faith generation, then you can still get a lot of use out of Monumentality's gold discount. It allows you to make use of a feature rich start while still saving a lot of chops for later. Not the best starter in 99% of games but she has a niche.

I can't stand the slow start and AI apostle spam that goes with founding a religion so I've never had much use for Moksha. At least not until late stages of domination games where I can use him to buy districts in conquered cities.

In water heavy starts Liang can be useful, as in more than 60% of your caps territory is water. It's a long way to shipyards so the production is useful. The only other time I've opened with her is as China, but as you're expanding slower with all of your wonder spamming, I'm not sure the extra charge is worth it over Pingala's science and culture. Like Reyna a fairly niche opener.

And obviously if you're the Otto Man, then Ibrahim is bags of fun to start with.

In all cases I tend not to choose a governor until I have both Early Empire and State Workforce. So that I have a better idea of what map I'm working with.