[GS] Power Ranking the Civs (Gathering Storm)

[Jewelrunna]

"You thought it was over, huh?"

Philip II: Spain's been another one of the board's favorite punching bags, and they're still on the lower end of the Civ VI power spectrum. But hey, I've been claiming for a while that Spain is bad, but not that bad, and the Mission's gotten buffed to an somewhat ludicrous degree, if we're being honest. If you meet all the placement criteria for the Mission, you end up with an improvement that gives +1 food, +1 production, +4 faith, and +2 science (assuming you only sandwich between one holy site and campus each). That's honestly pretty insane for a single tile. However, Spain still has all the same problems: Treasure Fleets sort of forces you to play colonialist (which sucks for all the same reasons that it doesn't work with England) without giving you major incentive to do so, and they're highly contingent on founding a religion without any real bonuses towards doing so. However, it is worth noting that if Spain does manage to found a decent religion, El Escorial and the Conquistador are both really powerful. Thus, I think Spain is somewhat underrated by the board (but not that much—they're still pretty weak).

Lautaro: Gathering Storm had the opportunity to right a wrong that was done to the Mapuche; now that the Courser is in the game, Lautaro should be able to upgrade his Malon Raiders from that unit. However, for some reason the Malon Raider still has to be raw built, really hurting the potential of that unit. On the bright side, since volcano tiles often tend to be high appeal, the Mapuche should be able to build Chemamulls on said tiles, and reap the benefits of getting a lot of yields, culture, and tourism out of them. But besides that, Lautaro still has the same problems. Most of his bonuses are pretty inconsistent, and even when they are, they're contingent on the opponent doing well— not exactly a great game plan. Plus, his Swift Hawk ability is largely inconsequential, since even if you flip a city (which isn't totally guaranteed), you still have to take the city yourself. If you don't, there's a good chance it will just flip right back to your opponent. So while the Mapuche are still one of the most interestingly designed Civs in the game, they're still pretty underpowered by that design.

Khmer: Because of the changes to Pingala, tall Civs are now buffed, which means an indirect buff to the Khmer. The problem is that Pingala can only be placed in one city, which means that buff is really more of a "buff one large city", rather than totally buffing Civs that want to grow a few tall cities. Even beyond that, however, the Khmer are still limited by the rest of their abilities, which are largely unchanged. They're a faith and population growth oriented Civ, while being outclassed in both those regards by other Civs. Their faith is quite good, but only if you can already afford to spam Missionaries. Their growth potential limited by housing, which the Monasteries of the King really doesn't help you with. They're just overall mediocre, in my opinion. Though I know there's a number of vocal Khmer defenders in this thread, so if anyone wants to enlighten me here, be my guest.

 

[Archon_Wing]

My revised tier list, for Spring 2019

Specific Inter-tier rankings are probably cloudy and not reliable. But I think there's a significant gap between A and B tier, for example. This is also why the lower ranks are spaced much further out, D-tier civs are much worse than C tier civs imo.

I honestly considered putting Saladin as C tier because Mamluks requiring iron really made them less consistent.The rest is good, but no longer looks as good compared to the other civs as of GS. Shaka's sort of a marginal pick between B/C since while strong, his really weak early game is hard to judge.

Kupe is no longer godly after the nerfs, but plenty strong anyways. Hungary I'm also not sure about, but I guess their district bonus I never made that much use of, so they should be better as well, as well as their geothermal vent thingy that I didn't note.

Also after hearing Redcoats requiring niter, well RIP, that's actually another nerf to England, and well what's left? lol.

 

[AsparustheSaiyan]

My revised tier list, for Spring 2019

Specific Inter-tier rankings are probably cloudy and not reliable. But I think there's a significant gap between A and B tier, for example. This is also why the lower ranks are spaced much further out, D-tier civs are much worse than C tier civs imo.

I honestly considered putting Saladin as C tier because Mamluks requiring iron really made them less consistent.The rest is good, but no longer looks as good compared to the other civs as of GS. Shaka's sort of a marginal pick between B/C since while strong, his really weak early game is hard to judge.

Kupe is no longer godly after the nerfs, but plenty strong anyways. Hungary I'm also not sure about, but I guess their district bonus I never made that much use of, so they should be better as well, as well as their geothermal vent thingy that I didn't note.

Also after hearing Redcoats requiring niter, well RIP, that's actually another nerf to England, and well what's left? lol.

Yay! Russia in S tier! Haha XD

 

[Arent11]

My revised tier list, for Spring 2019

Specific Inter-tier rankings are probably cloudy and not reliable. But I think there's a significant gap between A and B tier, for example. This is also why the lower ranks are spaced much further out, D-tier civs are much worse than C tier civs imo.

I honestly considered putting Saladin as C tier because Mamluks requiring iron really made them less consistent.The rest is good, but no longer looks as good compared to the other civs as of GS. Shaka's sort of a marginal pick between B/C since while strong, his really weak early game is hard to judge.

Kupe is no longer godly after the nerfs, but plenty strong anyways. Hungary I'm also not sure about, but I guess their district bonus I never made that much use of, so they should be better as well, as well as their geothermal vent thingy that I didn't note.

Also after hearing Redcoats requiring niter, well RIP, that's actually another nerf to England, and well what's left? lol.

Actually Norway is quite good now. You basically have a vanilla civ with the ability to gain science from pillaging mines. I ignore everything Norway offers, build standard units & maximize pillaging. It works.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Actually Norway is quite good now. You basically have a vanilla civ with the ability to gain science from pillaging mines. I ignore everything Norway offers, build standard units & maximize pillaging. It works.

That's actually kinda true though as some of the weaker civs as Spain went up as well, I'm not really sure if that's enough to put them in acceptable tier since most of the civs there would pillage much more and more successfully even if it's not science.

 

[Jewelrunna]

I’m playing another game as Canada right now, and I do have to say that the Civ does become pretty good if Sweden is in the game. They win the Nobel Prize contests without much trouble because of their bonuses.

 

[Socrates99]

I really want to go back and give Norway a shot once I finish the GS civs. I know how OP the pillaging was in my Hungary game. It made a deity game feel like settler. Understandably in part because Hungary is pretty op on its own.

The fact that Norway kept a mechanic that was practically game breaking when all civs had it seems like it should push them up the tier ranking quite a bit.

 

[Archon_Wing]

True, but note you can still pillage science from campuses with all civs and sometimes the AI doesn't even build mines, lol.

 

[Socrates99]

The AI does a pretty crummy job building as many campuses as they should as well.

They do drop farms on hills entirely too much. They place mines on strategics and luxuries though and you'll still get culture from other improvements as well.

All I know is how over the top it felt in the few wars and one dom game I had pre patch. I'll have to play them but I can't see them as a below average civ anymore.

 

[Wingednosering]

I've always been confused by this: why were the iroquois in Civ V considered worse than a vanilla civ? Just the longhouse?

Anyway, I feel like people are sleeping on Canada a bit. They definitely aren't high tier, but they're certainly better than England. Tundra cities are a noob trap, but there IS something they do better than anybody else. Their national park potential is just insane in the late game. The biggest thing holding them back isn't the fault of their abilities...it's Rock Bands. RBs are so overtuned that the national parks have less of an impact.

You could also argue their inability to swipe settlers hurts them, but that's only for specific playstyles.

I'm of the opinion that all of the colonial civs need loyalty boosts on other continents, perhaps only for coastal cities. Dido does this right, although her Move Capitol ability is tough to pull off with the way its costs scale.

I guess England having improved Loyalty would be a bit weird from a flavor perspective since the Commonwealth is basically the template for Loyalty-based city flipping.

 

[DWilson]

In V the other two abilities for the Iroquois were also pretty bad to worse. The Mohawk was barely stronger than the swordsman (forest/jungle only), and while yes it didn't need iron, if you didn't have iron you were gonna have issue upgrading an underused unit to its more used and valuable upgrade (sword to longsword), and subsequently even in best use case, it wasn't that great and was sometimes worse.

Meanwhile their forest city connection ability was broken when your cities had gaps, and you couldn't simply fill in the gap with a road and have it connect properly (to my memory), and the movement bonus only worked in your home territory, which is barely a bonus and unintuitive.

The biggest detraction was the Longhouse, which was significantly worse often, and subsequently the total overall was notable issue and negligible bonuses that often seem to add up to a net negative.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

Strangely enough, when controlled by the AI, the Iroquois were always one of the dominant civs in my V games.

 

[Socrates99]

Strangely enough, when controlled by the AI, the Iroquois were always one of the dominant civs in my V games.

Georgia also tends to do pretty well as an AI in VI. It's weird how well the AI can play civs that are terrible for players. I think it has less to do with abilities and more to do with the scripts the AI uses to play particular civs.

 

[Ziad]

Georgia also tends to do pretty well as an AI in VI. It's weird how well the AI can play civs that are terrible for players. I think it has less to do with abilities and more to do with the scripts the AI uses to play particular civs.

AI does better on generalist civs, which tend to be less exploitable by players or don't depend on best case scenarios to succeed thus being deemed more average by players.

 

[Krajzen]

I have an impression that Khmer are total garbage, on the very bottom next to Canada, England and Georgia. Can somebody make a convincing argument that Khmer are not garbage and that I am underestimating them?

 

[Socrates99]

I have an impression that Khmer are total garbage, on the very bottom next to Canada, England and Georgia. Can somebody make a convincing argument that Khmer are not garbage and that I am underestimating them?

I can't stand them. I'd rather play Vicki than the Khmer. I'm guessing people dont rank them down with Georgia, Canada, England purely because they are good at one VC.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I have an impression that Khmer are total garbage, on the very bottom next to Canada, England and Georgia. Can somebody make a convincing argument that Khmer are not garbage and that I am underestimating them?

Khmer are a bit weak imo; most religious civs are. Focusing on growth isn't really good either. However, you should note that they don't need to actually found a religion to take advantage of their relic ability; they can just borrow someone else's. In some cases it's good for religious sabotage.

They're certainly not Canada/Georgia level though.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

Khmer are fun, just a bit tricky. Takes some city planning to exploit the farms and holy site bonuses. They're pretty weak up until you get a good relic game going on. Definitely take Reliquaries for your belief, and if Kandy is in the game, even better. You can pursue religious and cultural victory at the same time. 2 relics in your prasats give you 12 faith and 24 tourism. It can really snowball from there. You don't need Apostles or the St Michel wonder, just missionaries.

 

[Socrates99]

Khmer are fun, just a bit tricky. Takes some city planning to exploit the farms and holy site bonuses. They're pretty weak up until you get a good relic game going on. Definitely take Reliquaries for your belief, and if Kandy is in the game, even better. You can pursue religious and cultural victory at the same time. 2 relics in your prasats give you 12 faith and 24 tourism. It can really snowball from there. You don't need Apostles or the St Michel wonder, just missionaries.

it's usually one or the other since suiciding missionaries hurt your pressure enough that it often takes a couple new missionaries to undo the damage. I can see where somebody might have fun with them. I mostly just found them frustrating.

 

[Jkchart]

it's usually one or the other since suiciding missionaries hurt your pressure enough that it often takes a couple new missionaries to undo the damage. I can see where somebody might have fun with them. I mostly just found them frustrating.

Khmer take a lot of work, but they were certainly one of my favorite games. I managed to build a food/amenity/evangelist religion with them and I had relatively tall, happy cities with only luxuries/trading and my religion. I didn't have to build a single entertainment complex. Prasats are fun, but you definitely have to go deep into enemy territory with those suicide missionaries you get to avoid the pressure damage to your own cities. But they are a great faith/food civ. Good as a semi-generalist civ, but really built for a religion victory. And if you don't like that, that's fine.

But Monasteries of the King is definitely one of the saddest abilities. I will defend Khmer, but not that part of their civ. +2 food/+1 housing for a holy site on a river and holy site culture bombs is pretty useless.