Civilization 6 is a great 4X game that can give you countless hours of fun, even playing it solo against the AI, and the various Civ 6 leaders help make it a consistently diverse experience. If you’re lucky enough to have friends who also like playing the game and who can commit to regular play sessions, then this turn-based strategy epic becomes truly transformative.
‘Competitive’ Civ isn’t really a thing in the same way it is in mainstream esports, but there is a certain objective truth to every civilisation and leader. Some are good, some are bad, many are situational. We’ve already got an excellent list of the best Civ 6 civilisations across the various victory types, as well as a guide to all of the different agendas in Civ 6 when playing against the AI.
For this latest guide, we’ve taken a look at the various leader options through the lens of multiplayer. Credit to reddit users Riparian_Drengal, Kirbylover314, and Flyingpengguins, we’ve used their own excellent multiplayer tier guide as a basis for our own rankings. There is also this guide from user Lpexlaheavy, so there’s plenty of other theory crafting out there if you want to go have a look. Additionally, thanks to boesthius and peppermint_butler, whose post-April 2021 balance patch tier lists provided additional insights.
These are the best Civilization 6 leaders for multiplayer:
Please note that we’re assuming you have the Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm expansions, as well as all of the leaders introduced with the New Frontier Pass.
These are the best of the best, the cream of the crop, the elves on the shelves… for the reasons we lay out below, the following Civs represent the best in terms of how they fare in competitive multiplayer. These S-tier civs have the upper hand in multiplayer games because they’re versatile and capable of winning without strong deference to start conditions or outright luck.
Hojo is an excellent generalist civ who can flex into multiple victory types either through his own ability, Divine Wind. This ability gives +5 combat strength to units when fighting on coast and allows the civ to build encampments, theater squares and holy sites in half the time, giving players a huge head start over opponents.. For multiplayer, things like the Japanese Samurai are less impressive despite its innate ability, as you can’t ‘pre-build’ them as early-game units.
Cyrus is well suited to a cultural victory due to the bonuses Persia gets from internal trade routes and their unique tile improvement, but the leader himself is also quite formidable in combat. While he has no innate buffs to combat strength, the movement bonuses from declaring a surprise war can prove decisive in securing an early lead.
Germany’s Free Imperial Cities civilization ability makes Barbarossa a versatile multiplayer civ. The ability allows Germany to build one additional district per city beyond the game’s normal district population limits, which means strong planners can quickly build up their cities in the early game with districts that provide faith, science, culture, gold or production. Additionally, Germany’s hansa, which replaces the game’s industrial zone district, provides hefty production bonuses and requires half as much production to build.
Curtis’ leader ability makes Australia a strong defensive civ, allowing you to create more military units quickly should you find yourself caught unawares. You can also trigger the same production boost if you happen to liberate a city as well, meaning offensive wars carry incentives provided you pick the right target.
Peter is a useful leader in multiplayer because he can still benefit even if your rivals pull ahead, provided he can expand his trade network to the right opponents. The abilities gained from the civ side of things means that you can control large swathes of land quite quickly because he gets free bonus tiles with each city he settles. Even though the game’s April 2021 balance update brought the number of extra free tiles down to 5 (prior to the patch, it was 8), he remains extremely powerful due to his ability to claim land and build strong cities, even when forced to settle on tundra.
As one of the few leaders and civs geared specifically towards science, your route to victory is clear if playing as Seondeok. Her leader ability directly compliments and feeds into the Korean civ’s abilities, and she even gives a boost to culture in case you wanted to flex into that victory type instead. Although Korea’s unique science districts, called seowons, must be built on hills, her Tier 3 start bias toward hills ensures players have a fairly strong chance of spawning near such terrain.
Trajan is another generalist leader, leading a fairly generalist civilization that can tackle any victory type they choose. The unique Roman Legion unit will give you an early military edge, as well as the head-start you have in terms of free city-centre buildings.
Introduced in the New Frontier Pass, Bolívar’s is quite strong in multiplayer, especially for domination wins. As Bolivar, each new era gives you access to a unique great person that acts like a Great General, but with some key differences.
Another New Frontier Pass civ, Lady Six Sky promotes a tight empire that attempts to build tall with yield buffs provided cities are close to the capital city. And, with the April 2021 balance patch, these cities get a free builder as long as they’re within six tiles of the capital. Targeted expansion for key strategic resources may be needed, but generally you’ll be forming a bubble around your capital, and staying there.
If you can’t, or won’t, go with the above, these leaders are also pretty good. Pachacuti of the Incas is able to make excellent use of the preserve district for disgusting tile yields, while a heavy buff to Jayavarman VII of the Khmer renders him able to build high-population cities with extremely high faith outputs.
The leaders in this tier are all fine, dependable choices to take into Multiplayer. Some of their abilities are strong, like Victoria, but only really kick in during a certain age rather than being dependable throughout. Shaka is strong in the early game, but quickly loses ground in later ages. Still, some solid choices here:
These leaders are just about viable, but probably won’t actually win you the game unless your opponents are playing very, very badly. Or have leaders from the next tier down, perhaps:
We don’t know what you’re doing choosing any of these leaders, but meme strats are always amusing. Here are the civs we think belong in the trash tier:
There you go, our 100%* accurate Civ 6 multiplayer tier list. We’ll keep an eye on new developments as they appear, and of course we may fiddle with the list depending on how loudly you all shout at us.
