With Civ VI over, how would you design its Civs?

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As a break from this thread's current tensions, I wanted to know how you would design Civ VI's Civs (all of them from launch to expansions and DLCs) now that we have the full picture of the game's mechanics.

These don't have to be super-hyper-100% historically accurate with logical reasoning and statistical data. Any Civ design is going to exclude some aspects of a Civ. Redesigning them just gives you a chance to highlight different aspects.

If you want to give criticism for anyone's ideas, that's fine. Just keep it constructive and don't make it personal.

I'll start:
Greece
Gorgo- Leader Ability: Helots and Hoplites
Farms generate +1 Production when constructing a military unit or support unit. Incur no war weariness from wars against denounced players.

Pericles- Leader Ability: Glorious Acropolis
+25% Production toward Wonders or districts on hill or in cities whose City Center is on a hill. +1 Diplomatic policy slot in Classical governments.

Civ Ability: Greco-Persian Wars
+100% Influence Points during a defensive war or when at war with a city-state. Units receive +2 Combat Strength for 5 turns after refusing an offer from another player.

Unique Infrastructure: Agora
City Center replacement that yields +1 Influence Point on the coast. Has its own Economic policy slot viewable from the Government screen where you can place its own Policy cards in it. They only affect that City.

(ex. God King and Urban Planning would only give their yields to that city.)

Unique Unit: Hoplite
Otherwise unchanged but with this bonus: Citizens generate +1 Production when constructing a Hoplite.
 
Haiti
Leader: Toussaint Louverture
Start bias: close to a coast

UA: La Perle des Antilles - Plantations grant +2 production, +2 faith and +1 gold, these bonuses are doubled after Mercantilism. Encampments can only be built on hills, but they grant +5 culture, which is converted into tourism after Flight.

Leader ability: Father of Haiti - Builders have combat strength similar to the most modern recon unit that has been unlocked by Haitian civ, with an extra +2 combat strength for each unused charge.
When Haiti is at war, it allows you to start Rebellion city project.
Rebellion project: cannot be done in more than one city at the same time. When active, grants +35% production to military units in all cities. Upon completion, it grants three free anti-cavalry units and all military units receive double experience from battles over the next 12 turns, plus +5 era score. Only one rebellion project can be done per era. This project is twice as expensive to produce as a normal district project.

Unique building: Ounfò
Replaces Temple
Available in Theology
+4 faith
+1 citizen slot
+1 Great Prophet point per turn
+1 relic slot
+2 extra faith for each religion that has at least 1 follower in the city.
Allows the city to buy the Houngan religious unit.
Houngans: have 3 charges to heal other religious units or land military units. Every time they heal a unit, a small boost of faith is generated. They are more expensive than Missionaries and Gurus, but cheaper than Apostles.

Unique unit: Mawon - replaces Pike and Shot. This unit is weaker than Pike and Shot (50 combat strength instead of 55), but receives +10 combat strength during Dark Ages. When a Mawon pillages a plantation, you get another free Mawon.
 
Haiti
Leader: Toussaint Louverture
Start bias: close to a coast

UA: La Perle des Antilles - Plantations grant +2 production, +2 faith and +1 gold, these bonuses are doubled after Mercantilism. Encampments can only be built on hills, but they grant +5 culture, which is converted into tourism after Flight.

Leader ability: Father of Haiti - Builders have combat strength similar to the most modern recon unit that has been unlocked by Haitian civ, with an extra +2 combat strength for each unused charge.
When Haiti is at war, it allows you to start Rebellion city project.
Rebellion project: cannot be done in more than one city at the same time. When active, grants +35% production to military units in all cities. Upon completion, it grants three free anti-cavalry units and all military units receive double experience from battles over the next 12 turns, plus +5 era score. Only one rebellion project can be done per era. This project is twice as expensive to produce as a normal district project.

Unique building: Ounfò
Replaces Temple
Available in Theology
+4 faith
+1 citizen slot
+1 Great Prophet point per turn
+1 relic slot
+2 extra faith for each religion that has at least 1 follower in the city.
Allows the city to buy the Houngan religious unit.
Houngans: have 3 charges to heal other religious units or land military units. Every time they heal a unit, a small boost of faith is generated. They are more expensive than Missionaries and Gurus, but cheaper than Apostles.

Unique unit: Mawon - replaces Pike and Shot. This unit is weaker than Pike and Shot (50 combat strength instead of 55), but receives +10 combat strength during Dark Ages. When a Mawon pillages a plantation, you get another free Mawon.
Though I did originally mean official Civs, I don't mind seeing your ideas. You're always very passionate about less popular history.
 
I'll start with Scotland who I think is the worst.

Leader Robert the Bruce- Leader Ability: Bannockburn
Can declare a Reconquest War with Defensive Tactics, instead of Diplomatic Service. You suffer no grievances when liberating cities of your allies.
Gain the Schiltron UU which replaces the Pikeman. +5 Combat Strength when fighting in woods and hill terrain.

Civ Ability: Scottish Enlightenment- Can stay the same

UU: Highlander- Ranger replacement that unlocks at Metal Casting. +5 Combat strength when initiating an attack after movement of more than one space (Highland Charge ability).

UI: Golf Course-
+2 Amenities
+2 Gold
+1 Appeal
+1 Housing (with Globalization)
You may use a builder charge to build a golf course in one of your allies' cities. Your golf courses also provide +1 culture for every foreign civ you've built a golf course in. Provides tourism equal to its cultural output at flight.
Limit of one per city.
 
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I'll start with Scotland who I think is the worst.

Leader Robert the Bruce- Leader Ability: Bannockburn
Can declare a Reconquest War with Defensive Tactics, instead of Diplomatic Service. You suffer no grievances when liberating cities of your allies.
Gain the Schiltron UU which replaces the Pikeman. +5 Combat Strength when fighting in woods and hill terrain.

Civ Ability: Scottish Enlightenment- Can stay the same

UU: Highlander- Ranger replacement that unlocks at Metal Casting. +5 Combat strength when initiating an attack after movement of more than one space (Highland Charge ability).

UI: Golf Course-
+2 Amenities
+2 Gold
+1 Appeal
+1 Housing (with Globalization)
You may use a builder charge to build a golf course in one of your allies' cities. Your golf courses also provide culture for every foreign civ you've built a golf course in. Provides tourism equal to its cultural output at flight.
Limit of one per city.
I like how this changes all of Scotland's niche abilities while (presumably) either keeping them accurate to history or changing them to be more accurate.

As for building golf courses in allied territory, is it one per empire or one per city? Regardless, I wish there was a mod for this version of Scotland, because there is no playstyle funnier to me than befriending everyone so I can spread my golf courses across the world :lol: (now that I mention it, this would pair very well with a religion named "Golf" as well :mischief:)
 
As for building golf courses in allied territory, is it one per empire or one per city? Regardless, I wish there was a mod for this version of Scotland, because there is no playstyle funnier to me than befriending everyone so I can spread my golf courses across the world :lol: (now that I mention it, this would pair very well with a religion named "Golf" as well :mischief:)
Theoretically I guess you could build in all cities, like the golf course currently for just in Scotland, but there would be no need. You'd just be giving your allies even more benefits, without the rewards. Better to build more of them at home.

And yeah, I guess there is a reason why Golf Course would be unlocked at Reformed Church now. :lol:
 
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To me, a well-designed kit consists of abilities that are all useful and encourage interesting strategies not easily done with other civs. Most civs in the game, especially the powerful ones, fall into this category. Some civs that I don't consider to be particularly strong also fall into this category because they encourage play styles that buck the trend. Canada is a good example because it's the only civ that wants to play in a cold map (Russia can't get food in Tundra), one of the only ones that can get consistent value from the Goddess of the Hunt pantheon, and one of the few that allow you to pursue a strong culture game without strong faith generation.

Here are a few that do not fall into that category for various reasons.

Kongo
A while back in a different thread, I wrote about how to improve Kongo, hands down the worst civ in the game for me. To summarize, I think almost every component of Kongo's kit is awful and needs an overhaul. Kongo's kit was clearly not designed with how religion works in the game or how the AI tends to play it. I propose allowing Kongo to create a sort of "sect" of its majority religion to deal with this problem. Kongo also suffers from the problem of not being able to collect relics, artifacts and sculptures early enough to make them relevant. I proposed a couple ways of mitigating this, and one of them is to allow Kongo to use its unique unit to obtain artifacts when slaying enemy units.

Germany
Germany is a powerful civ, but I think its overall design is poor because some of its abilities are useless. Given how strong city states are in the game, Germany's combat bonus against them isn't very useful. Germany should be able to partially retain bonuses provided by city states it conquers. For example, when Germany conquers a city state, it foregoes the ability to retain the city state's suzerainty bonus, but it can lock in the Level 1, 2 and 3 envoy bonuses, while, of course, locking everyone else out. Germany also gets a refund of all envoys already sent to said city state.

Maya
Maya is an attempt at tall science, but there are several others like Korea, Inca and Scotland. Korea is, by far, the most capable tall science civ, and Maya is probably the weakest. I'd go as far as to say Maya is just a worse Korea with no unique merits to offer. It also has a bizarre spawn behaviour, always starting next to a river even though it gets no housing bonus from water and quite often even near a coastline.

I can think of a few ways of making Maya more viable and interesting. One is to allow the Mayan capital to increase its effect on nearby cities. Some ways this can be done:

- Each title of the established governor in the capital adds +5% bonus to all cities within six tiles of the capital for a total of +30% bonus.
- All cities within six tiles of the capital receives an yield bonus percentage equal to the capital's population.

Unless its spawning behaviour can be fixed, Maya should also be allowed to move its capital similar to how Phoenicia can.

Maya should also gain more benefits from plantations. If I'm not mistaken, currently, the only other civ that can do anything remotely interesting with plantations is Gran Colombia, so this would be an opportunity for Maya to stand out in some way. It could come in the form of additional yields or housing on plantations themselves or yield contribution to internal trade routes, which I think would be fitting for a civ that likes to build a tight-knit empire.

Eleanor
Eleanor is perhaps the most overrated leader with a terribly designed kit. Peaceful domination is certainly a unique play style, so she has potential to be very fun to play. Aside from the loyalty bonus from great works, however, Eleanor gets practically no help toward this strategy. She gets no bonus to growth, no access to early strong defense against neighbours that need to be very close by, no bonus toward building holy sites or theatre squares or toward generating great people points, or no help exploring the world in order to secure early golden ages. I think adding even just one of these to her kit would make her a very strong leader.

Magnificent Catherine
I'm puzzled by Magnificent Catherine's inclusion in the game, because she clearly makes a mockery of the game. Like other badly designed leaders, most of her kit is weak. You're only playing her for the ability to run Court Festivals, which exposes how broken the game can be. You can win the game in less than 100 turns by carefully manipulating your way around the tech and civic trees to make sure you progress as slowly as possible and buying luxury resources from the AI dirt cheap. You're not even required to explore the map to meet everyone else in the game. I don't really have suggestions to improve her kit. She should just be straight-up removed from the game.
 
less popular history
Haiti shouldn't be a less popular history and I guess this game should do something about making a civ of Haiti for it's history become more popular since it's very important for western civilization.

Speaking about less popular history, other civ it can come is Dahomey.
Leader: Ghezo 1818-1858

Unique ability: King of Slavery Coast; Dahomey civilization can sell civilians of it own cities.
Unique unity: Ahosi (The Amazon Warriors). It receives a bonus atack against male units.
Unique building: Vodoo Temple.
 
Canada
Theme Music: Allouette

UA: Rupert's Land
-50% :c5gold: Gold Cost and no range limit on tiles with roads connecting two of your cities.
Your cities claim a free tile whenever a Trading Post is established there.
Appeal Bonus for tiles next to Rivers and Lake increased to +2

Leader - Wilfrid Laurier
ULA: Sunny Ways
+100% Diplomatic Favor from completing Emergencies and Competitions
+1 Diplomatic Favor for every 100 :tourism: Tourism you earn

UI: Railway Hotel
Unlocked at Steam Power
Allowed 1 per city. Must be built on a tile with a Railroad and Charming Appeal or higher
+1 Amenity
+2 :c5culture:
+2 :c5gold: at Conservation
Gains +1:c5culture: and :c5gold: For each adjacent Preserve and national park Tile
Adds its tile appeal to all adjacent tiles

UU: Expeditionary Force (Infantry)
Available at Replaceable Parts
2:c5moves: 80:c5strength:
+5:c5strength: Combat when attacking
Heals to full if it kills an enemy unit

================================================================================
No more tundra bonuses, and ESPECIALLY no more tundra bonuses tied only to the leader, and not the UA. Ottawa is at the same latitude as Milan, Italy, you ding-dongs. We don't all live in igloos and hunt polar bears. The Canada kit is all overtly insulting memes and zero actual research. The theme music is the goddamn national anthem; how lazy can you get?

The mounties in particular were an absolutely crap-tier choice. Not only are they an institution that is still around, meaning that Firaxis had to do all sorts of modifications to their model and names to avoid copyright, they lionized an existing institution, which means their legacy isn't set in stone and is actively being reassessed in light of recent events. Events such as the mounties fumbling the worst mass shooting in Canadian history so hard that they managed to get more people killed a few years after the game was released. The RCMP is also guilty of some extremely heinous stuff in their very recent history, but it's okay because they chose to portray the Disney-fied, propaganda version of the mounties (yes, actually, look it up). Having the mounties as our national UU is like giving America the Pinkertons as a UA, and giving them KKK members that place a special burning cross improvement on other civs' territories. It would be like giving the Congolese a special ability where they get to sell their own population off for gold. The portrayal of Canada in civ 6 goes beyond ignorant, it lionizes and whitewashes our history of racism and colonialism.

Also, eat my shorts, Australia; I'm taking your UU. :p
 
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Canada gets its uniques changed:

Mountie is replaced by Shock Troops which deal extra damage to non-damaged and/or fortified troops. Represents Canadian troops reputation for ruthlessness, they took less prisoners and inflicted more casualties on average than other units, and them being the vanguard of allied assaults during WWI.

Hockey Rink is replaced by Sugar Shack. Can only be placed on forest tiles. Grants +1 food, +1 gold and the first three constructed grants a copy of the Maple Syrup amenity.
 
I think Babylon is the civ most in need if a redesign. I'd just change them to only getting 100% research to civics from eurekas and taking away their science penalty. Some people like the gimmick, this keeps it from going too far, and given the importance of civics to science they'd still be a top notch science civ.
 
I had a Viceroys idea for Spain (pre-rework) where the first city it acquired on a new continent (settled, captured) would generate an immense amount of loyalty, giving them a series of basically permanent footholds across the globe. It would fit nicely into their continent themed bonuses, and allow them to actually build Manila's and Mexico City's and such in game.

That being said I have no idea how to balance this.
 
The mounties in particular were an absolutely crap-tier choice. Not only are they an institution that is still around, meaning that Firaxis had to do all sorts of modifications to their model and names to avoid copyright, they lionized an existing institution, which means their legacy isn't set in stone and is actively being reassessed in light of recent events. Events such as the mounties fumbling the worst mass shooting in Canadian history so hard that they managed to get more people killed a few years after the game was released. The RCMP is also guilty of some extremely heinous stuff in their very recent history, but it's okay because they chose to portray the Disney-fied, propaganda version of the mounties (yes, actually, look it up). Having the mounties as our national UU is like giving America the Pinkertons as a UA, and giving them KKK members that place a special burning cross improvement on other civs' territories. It would be like giving the Congolese a special ability where they get to sell their own population off for gold. The portrayal of Canada in civ 6 goes beyond ignorant, it lionizes and whitewashes our history of racism and colonialism.
The best part about the mounties, in game, is their ability to create national parks easier. I'd hate to lose this.
The railroad hotel however would definitely synergize with the current version of Canada already.
 
The best part about the mounties, in game, is their ability to create national parks easier. I'd hate to lose this.
The railroad hotel however would definitely synergize with the current version of Canada already.
I’m pretty iffy on civ6 balance, but I was attempting to balance that with the UA, which basically makes any tile with freshwater access appealing enough to plant a national park.
 
I’m pretty iffy on civ6 balance, but I was attempting to balance that with the UA, which basically makes any tile with freshwater access appealing enough to plant a national park.
I guess I should have clarified that the appeal bonuses are fine. However, Canada is currently the only civilization that doesn't need faith, in order to purchase a Naturalist, to make a national park which to me was a selling point.
Maybe you could get a free naturalist with the completion of a Railroad Hotel?:dunno:
 
Sweden. It's always about Nobel stuff. I would like to have the Viking and explorer stuff. Always the silly Danes and Norwegians getting that. Also one thing I want in Civ 7 is something AoE IV did, they made the different Civs way more different from each other in basically everything instead of giving the different Civs a few unique units and stats/technologies.
 
Sweden. It's always about Nobel stuff. I would like to have the Viking and explorer stuff. Always the silly Danes and Norwegians getting that.
I'm confused. Do you want Sweden to get Viking stuff, or do you not want another Scandinavia civ on top of a Viking one?
The best part about Sweden to me is the unique Nobel Prize competitions.
 
I'm confused. Do you want Sweden to get Viking stuff, or do you not want another Scandinavia civ on top of a Viking one?
The best part about Sweden to me is the unique Nobel Prize competitions.
My idea of CIV7 USA would have similar effects that CIV6 Sweden's Nobel Prize.

1- The Pioneer UU is a self-defend Settler that let you expand aggressively since early game for a proper "continental" nation.
2- Then the Saloon UB attracts extra immigrants to your many cities.
3- From those immigrants your Land of the Free UA gives higher chance for Great People, increasing this benfit as new GP are unlocked with new eras.

Just by look the list of Nobel Prize and their last names we can see who is the nation that realy deserve the title of promiced land for great people. Same with Olympic medals, Academy Awards, etc. USA deserve to be like real life a huge nation that progressively excel in anything at late game, and that power comes from generation after generation of immigrants.

I think Firaxis want to have 2 scandinavian civs every game, still for me only the "Viking" civ is relevant, the role of Sweden as modern scandinavian civ is redundant with other germanic protestant, militaristic and/or scientific nations like England, Netherland and Germany (also Scotland:crazyeye:).
 
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My idea of CIV7 USA would have similar effects that CIV6 Sweden's Nobel Prize.

1- The Pioneer UU is a self-defend Settler that let you expand aggressively since early game for a proper "continental" nation.
2- Then the Saloon UB attracts extra immigrants to your many cities.
3- From those immigrants your Land of the Free UA gives higher chance for Great People, increasing this benfit as new GP are unlocked with new eras.

Just by look the list of Nobel Prize and their last names we can see who is the nation that realy deserve the title of promiced land for great people. Same with Olympic medals, Academy Awards, etc. USA deserve to be like real life a huge nation that progressively excel in anything at late game, and that power comes from generation after generation of immigrants.
Yeah, I like this idea, and it really does fit the U.S. But since this is about redesigning civs from Civ 6, I think having a Sweden civ based around Vikings is redundant as well, considering we already have Norway doing that. Plus, you really can't design a Norway civ that's not Viking related. Well, I guess you can but who wants to play modern Norway? :p
I think Firaxis want to have 2 scandinavian civs every game, still for me only the "Viking" civ is relevant, the role of Sweden as modern scandinavian civ is redundant with other germanic protestant, militaristic and/or scientific nations like England, Netherland and Germany (also Scotland:crazyeye:).
I don't know. I'd eventually be on board for seeing a non-Viking Denmark under Margaret though.
I think a good cultural and diplomatic civ would be better saved for Austria anyway, instead of Sweden for Civ 7. :mischief:
 
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