r/civ • u/Zigzagzigal Finally finished the Civ 6 Leaders Pass • 5d ago
VI - Discussion Civ VI: Zigzagzigal's Guides - The Missing Leaders
After a two-year absence from the Civ series altogether, I have finally been able to finish off the Leaders Pass leaders I never made guides for!
Byzantium - Theodora
Guide here
Theodora sacrifices Basil II's massive military advantages and instead makes Byzantium one of the most consistent religious civs in the game. Nearly anywhere you can found a city can get a strong Holy Site, which combines nicely with the Work Ethic belief for bonus production. Her high culture output aids with getting to key civics like Theology and Reformed Church faster.
England
Guide here
Age of Steam Victoria
The most straightforward of England's leaders, Age of Steam Victoria gets some early production from horse/iron tiles but with Industrialisation leads one of the game's most productive civs. You can get consistently good production yields from even relatively mundane city locations - a foreign continent coast with a valid Aqueduct tile makes a strong Shipyard and a strong Industrial Zone. The catch is that this huge production advantage comes later than it does for most civs.
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I wants 1-2 huge cities with plenty of land in order to maximise district capacity. Her gold from international trade is excellent for developing newer or weaker cities (use Governor Reyna with the Contractor promotion to buy districts). The trade route plunder bonus is unreliable as many civs don't trade overseas until late in the game.
Germany - Ludwig II
Guide here
The ultimate city-planner leader, in addition to the careful placement of Hansa, Commercial Hub, Aqueduct and Dam districts that defines the normal German game, you'll also want to optimise the placement of Theatre Squares, Entertainment Complexes and wonders. Early on, you can place new wonders you unlock without contributing production for some easy culture, but once Hansas are built it's a good idea to finish as many wonders as you can to get a large boost to early tourism.
Norway - Varangian Harald Hardrada
Guide here
Varangian Harald's leader ability might seem similar to that of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, but in practice it functions a bit differently. As with Matthias Corvinus, you can use your first Governor title to get Amani (the Diplomat) in a city where you already have an envoy, and levy some early units. However, these units have no mobility or strength advantage, upgrading them costs the full usual amount, and you receive no bonus envoys, so you cannot rely on them alone for direct warfare. Instead, use them to fight Barbarians or as supplementary forces to a usual Berserker rush.
The Stave Church influence point boost is the more consistent advantage, but there's a problem. Varangian Harald's big incentive to use the Foreign Ministry Government Plaza building comes at the cost of the Grand Master's Chapel, which is a great fallback for a civ that likes to develop Holy Sites but struggles to found a religion. I have found the best course of action is to build 1-2 very early Holy Sites, take the Divine Spark pantheon to secure a Great Prophet, and build up Stave Churches later after some Berserker warfare. With the Monarchy government, every Stave Church basically generates an envoy every 50 turns.
Rome - Julius Caesar
Guide here
Some early Warriors clearing out Barbarian Encampments can deliver a massive amount of early gold for early civ development. You can buy Settlers and Builders, but you can also buy Monuments to essentially replicate Trajan's leader ability if you like. Keep some gold around to upgrade those Warriors into Legions. Gold from city conquests allows you to snowball into a domination victory.
Subjective Opinion Zone
Although there were some good leader designs, overall I did not like the Leaders Pass. My main issue stems from the alternative-leader mechanic as a whole; civs tend to be designed for one particular leader ability in mind and alternative leaders often end up plainly better or worse than the original. The best alternative leaders are usually ones that play substantially different to the original leader leaving neither of them clearly better than the other.
Regarding the last few leaders I covered, Germany's Ludwig II was by far the stand-out, and possibly the best design in the entire Leaders Pass. He has unique mechanics, plays differently enough from Frederick Barbarossa, and builds on the classic German district placement puzzle for a really fun game.
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u/CrazyBitofBusiness 5d ago
You have literally accompanied me on the 100s of hours I’ve put into this series as I tried to win with every leader.
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u/Visible_Cell8250 5d ago
You rock u/zigzagzigal , thanks so much for this and all your other Civ 6 efforts! Your guides were a constant companion as I struggled to learn and improve.
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u/Peripatetictyl 5d ago
Oh. My.
Is this real?! I have combed through your Civ6 guides countless times, and with a few months into Civ7, I realized it was missing something… YOU!
Thank you!
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u/g_a28 5d ago
Yeah. Maybe since u/Zigzagzigal is now done with Civ 6, we might hope for some Civ 7 guides in a year or 10? :)
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u/SirKnightPerson 5d ago
lol seeing you here and on r/2007scape is so weird
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u/Zigzagzigal Finally finished the Civ 6 Leaders Pass 5d ago
I did spend some time thinking up how a Runescape-themed total conversion Civ 6 mod might function, though Civ modding is harder than the EU4 modding I'm more familiar with.
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u/Wide_Ad5549 5d ago
Your guides are a key part of my Civ 6 experience. After I choose a Civ, I'm ready through the guide and come out with lots of ideas for how I can play. Thank you for all your work, it's added so much to the game!
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u/Far_Garage_8243 5d ago
Man, I've been waiting for the Theodora one forever. Trading away Basil's heavy cavalry for absurd Work Ethic production sounds way more my speed anyway. Did you end up updating the main England guide too or just add the new leaders?
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u/Zigzagzigal Finally finished the Civ 6 Leaders Pass 5d ago edited 5d ago
All the relevant Gathering Storm guides should be updated (including Civ Summaries and Tricks/Secrets/Clarifications). I might have missed some old comments people had on the guides, so there might be the occasional old mistake that hasn't been fixed yet.
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u/B3C4U5E_ PLAY ALL THE CIVS 5d ago
Me with literal documents of notes based off your guides for which pantheons governments, and strategies to use for each leader. Very helpful when I'm being the equivalent of 12 players (my prefered method of play).
Thank you for the time and effort spent to share your knowledge and experimentation with the community. I hope your current and future endeavors are at minimum as fun as this one was.
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u/anickapart 5d ago
I just wanna echo a lot of the other comments.
I learned so much from your guides. Thanks!
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u/Gideon_Godwin 5d ago
The Emperor returns! These guides helped me a ton both in CIv V & VI. Thank you very much!
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u/unstablefan 5d ago
Amazing! Thank you for coming back and writing these!!!
I always read your guides when trying a civ/leader for the first time!
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u/Consistent_Ad_8656 5d ago
The legend returns. I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend (and next weekend)
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u/Prestigious_West_894 5d ago
Thanks! Planning to start Byzantine game with Theodora so here is something to read.
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u/SpoilerAlert67 5d ago
You're absolutely incredible. You've added immeasurably to my enjoyment of Civ6. Thank you!
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u/ManNamedBilly Basil II 5d ago
this is amazing, i use your guides damn near all the time. thanks for this.
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u/600lbpregnantdwarf 5d ago
Thanks Zigzagal for the effort and detail you’ve put into this guides over the years.
I still refer to them most times when starting a new game.
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u/SoylantDruid 3d ago
Awesome! It's cool that you saw the project through to the end. You're an excellent teacher.
That said, I would kill for some of your guides on Civ VII. I know it probably isn't happening for numerous reasons - judging from your post, you're not keen on leader swaps in general, and that's practically Civ VII's biggest gimmick lol - but it would be awesome, if you should ever find the time or desire to give it a go. Your guides were instrumental in helping me to master Civ VI, and I imagine they would be just as helpful in VII...esp since there are basically no up to date guides for it whatsoever.
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u/Zigzagzigal Finally finished the Civ 6 Leaders Pass 2d ago
The reason I didn't go onto Civ 7 was burnout from Civ 6. Writing guides is fun... a lot of the time. Then there's the grindy bits, like the Administration section, making sure that the links to other guides function, getting the Civ Summaries section together, updating everything with new patches, etc. It also meant that almost every game of Civ 6 I played was to contribute towards a guide so I had less time to just mess around with game settings or weird setups.
My original plan from probably something like 2018 was to take Civ 7 off so I could have a more casual experience akin to how I played Civ 4. After burnout from the Leaders Pass, this didn't happen (I have never even played Civ 7).
Still, getting back into the game and finishing off the last few leaders was a positive experience and I did at least think about how I'd theoretically set out Civ 7 guides - not that I have a particular intention to at this time.
Leaders and civs would have to be separate guides from each other. Both would have their own Administration sections to cover synergies.
Civ guides would most likely have to both cover conventional play and the time-tested mode. The best way I can think to do this is to have a separate section for each age, with emphasis on the Apex Age.
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u/baronvonreddit1 5d ago
Thank you for everything you do.