Boes, Have you considered doing a meme game where you can only make tile improvements from city states? So you turn on all the tile only ones and see what you can make happen with that chaos? I think also civ specific improvements from whoever you roll should also be allowed.
I still have it S-tier because in my experience, it completely changes the way I play the game. I go Monarchy instead of Merchant Republic and I don't have to hard-build flood barriers everywhere. It isn't as impactful as Kumasi but close.
The fact that the faith price is fixed while the production cost scales with each tile and the level of climate change means that Valletta becomes S tier for any naval focused civ, and just shy of necessary with Apocalylse Mode enabled.
Auckland is so good in naval games that it basically guarantees the win. I do agree that if you play more landlocked games it loses effectiveness, so A tier seems fair for it. I definitely wouldn't put it below that.
I'd argue Auckland is easily S-tier due to its unique characteristics that it can transform losing starting positions where everything is terrible into auto-wins. I don't think any other city state has the same ability to single-handedly guarantee a win. I think Auckland can be compared to Yerevan, in that it is situationally so extremely overpowered that it can guarantee you the win. I'd argue Auckland is able to do this much more convincingly than Yerevan, and can do this for essentially any win condition, and hence is quite a lot stronger than Yerevan.
I agree, when you're unable to use a leader/civ ability its awful just for the opportunity cost of it. When you aren't able to use Auckland it's fine, as you can just prioritise another city state. I don't know any other cs where I'd go to war over their liberation like Auckland when it's really cooking, when you can use it its just brilliant
One thing that makes Aukland great that isn't mentioned is that you almost never need to fight for it in single player. Toss two envoys + Charismatic Leader and you're done. It's your forever. Maybe you'll creep up to six by completing missions
Nihongs are ridiculously good. They have no strategic resource cost and scale with your encampment buildings which means they get their combat bonus before new units are unlocked. The barracks is unlocked at bronze working the swordsman is unlocked at iron working. That means you can have 40 strength Nihongs before you can have 35 strength swordsmens. You can also build the armory before you can unlock musketmen and build the military accedmy before you can build infantry.
But in that first scenario where is the faith income to buy them? By the time you've got maybe a couple of holy sites and relic for good measure, are you going to be able to faith buy Nihangs before the AI gets 45 strength MAA? And which domination civs have a naturally good envoy game for you to buy them whenever? Yeah Hungary, but there it's cheaper to just levy the units with them Later on, maybe if you can faith pillage, but I'd argue using that faith to buy great people is usually more consistent
Not to mention, this entire hypothetical scenario requires you to find, suze, and keep suzerain on them super early game. it’s cool when/if it works out but 99% of the time there’s other stuff I want to do with my faith
To try and play devil's advocate, that is true for many city states in the game, so that is not a massive point against it However, I do strongly agree with your opinion that yh, typically I have better uses for my faith (monumentality, apostles, great people, grand master's chapel, Valetta)
@@johnhawkins5314 oh for sure, but with Lahore and Nihangs, there’s a larger commitment/opportunity cost since not only do you need to invest in the city state, but you also need to be in a position where you’re at least partially going domination, rushing very specific techs, AND you’re spending one of your most precious resources (faith) on getting their max value, where a lot of other city states only have one specific opportunity cost, and not a bunch of intertwined ones like Lahore
@@johnhawkins5314 Getting the faith for a pre iron working nihong might be a bit tough unless your playing someone like mali that starts with bonus faith and can get an early pantheon that gives even more faith but you should easily get enough faith to buy them while they're still stronger then swordsmen. Also some people are cursed and never have strategic resources. Quill 18 never has iron.
Cahokia Mounds are A-tier (arguably S-tier) imo because: - Housing, food, gold and amenities that scale with time are helpful for every kind of civ, playstyle and victory condition. - They can be built on a surprisingly large variety of tiles. - They make building off fresh water do-able. - The mounds don't disappear if the city-state gets taken/razed. - You only need two mounds per city and they can be built outside the three-ring radius and still grant the amenity and housing bonus. - It doesn't over-shadow/take-over a Civ's ability but rather complements it. The only only negative I can think of is if you have cities with limited tiles or if you're playing a Civ who already has a good tile improvement (Australia, Gran Colombia). Even so, Cahokia Mounds are worth designing entire cities/empires around.
This has gotten much better with each iteration. One innovation that Ursa Ryan introduced was splitting the tier list into situational and general categories. Compare Auckland (situationally great) to Ayutthaya (generally great). I can't verify this, but I think Hong Kong stacks with Yongle. (As if Yongle weren't already OP enough.) Yerevan is also broken with Convert Heathens. Being able to farm barb units is quite handy.
Hard to rank something that is so situational. and even harder to prioritize which ones are best given the number cards available to each civ can widely vary from game modes and wonders.
I think it's only 3 Tiers, "Broken", "Situational" and "Useless/unneccessary". With "Broken" being comprised of exactly Serfdom, Colonization, Discipline and God King as those are more or less the only cards you will always use and useless/unneccessary being mostly the early Great People cards (the flat +2 point cards except the Prophet and maybe Scientist cards are just too low impact to use them regularly). All the other cards have more or less niche use cases.
Agree with your S tier city states... maybe i´d add Akkad, as a fan of Dom games is one of my favorite city state. May i suggest your next tier list? Religious beliefs... or Unique units... or policy cards... or great peoples.
Given how powerful faith can be in a game I would think Valletta punches well above its weight class as a civ6 city state. Its a great way to colonize a new island or continent from turn you settle it Monument, Granary, Watermill, Walls and a defending unit with grand magisters temple all in the same turn its founded is pretty dope.
I think part of why percentage modifiers are so good in 6 is how rare they are. Most modifiers in 6 are flat (+1 science per library, +4 production to every city in 6 tiles) so when you can get some real good scaling, you gotta take it. Previous civ games had most of their modifiers as percentage-based and I'm still kinda sad they changed that.
Including a description of the bonus on screen when you talk about a city state would be so helpful, I don't remember most of the bonuses of the top of my head and it would be nice to read what it does while you talk about it.
I’ve won dom games on deity with Lahore/Nihangs being the centerpiece. They work great with bombards because you can save your niter for bombards and frigates. They’re also fantastic for defending your empire against barbarians, because you can spawn them in any city instantly. If there’s a barbarian camp that pops up on the outskirts of a fresh city, it’s gonna be vulnerable to pillaging but you can instantly spawn a Nihang unit or 3 right there instead of having to shift a unit form across your empire. in general they are good for defense for empires that don’t intend on having a large standing army, but need a few in a pinch to defend or clear barb camps. And they’re actually quite powerful until the modern era. you can also faith by corps and armies of them and make them even stronger. Yes, you have to have really solid faith income, yes you have to commit to a specific tech path and yes you have to be able to maintain steady suzerainty over Lahore, especially if they’re going to be used as a centerpiece for an invading ground force, and because of all those factors I wouldn’t put them at the top of the tier list. But F? No way edit - by the way, I get it’s a personalized tier list based on your play style and I’m a huge fan of these, I’ve watched all of them all the way through and I think you do a great job. I enjoy hearing opinions about individual game mechanics from people who are great at the game, and I also love the tier lists simply because It gives an overall summary of one part of the game, in this case the individual city states, and that’s hard to find on any other type of video All I’m saying is that an F tier city state shouldn’t be able to win you the game. You’re never going to win the game with Preslav, or with trading domes, or with Vilnius. but you can definitely win a domination game with Nihang units being your primary front line military unit in the right situation. To me, this makes them substantially above F tier. anyway, I just wanted to say that because I understand the premise of the videos and I really enjoy them as well so I don’t wanna seem too snarky haha. Keep up the good work.
Boes: I have an amenity bias Also Boes: Cahokia is B-tier The first Cahokia Mound in a city gives that city +1 amenity, +1 from the second Mound after Natural History. and +2 Housing after Cultural Heritage. They are absolutely busted
I think Cahokia should be A, you can eventually get +2 amenities and housing for every city in your empire without having to work them plus you can stack them in petra flat desert. You have to be really starved for land to not have a use for the mounds. 2 Builders and 6 tiles with cahokia is at least as good as Zanzibar.
yeah, 1 Amenity and 1 housing from a tile you don't have to work is pretty nice, and the thing is you can even plan your city building around Cahokia mounds a bit so they get that extra food. 1 Food and 3 gold on a tile improvement is nothing to sneeze at, especially when 2 of those tile improvements can invalidate the need for housing and amenity districts.
I can't wait for Boes to make a new city-state tier list and put Lahore in the S tier because they are a unit that is generated with only 200 faith (Effectively 100 production), which can be gathered through pillaging (and has a promotion that gives it faith based on 50% of the enemy combat strength), and a line infantry (which is functionally the tech equivalent at max ) has 5 less attack, requires no upgrade cost, and costs 360 production. Its Kasumi all over again
This is more of a "for fun" idea for a tier list, but what if you did a tier list of the "CIVITAS City-States" mod? I know there's some pretty powerful ones in that. (Preslav is still dirt though)
I'd rate Kabul way higher, yes you have to be initiating the battle but Akkad is literally the same way because you can't attack walls without initiating. There are some really strong unit promotions in this game and promotions also heal your units which is huge. You can stack it with the exp bonuses from encampment buildings and get super highly promoted units. I'd also have Akkad higher since taking cities is how you win a domination game but Kabul would be at least B tier, probably low A
Excuse me, Lahore in F? Nihangs have much more potential than you make them seem to have IMO, and I will state why: 1. While they do cost faith, they are much cheaper than the equivalent melee units they would replace. Faith is pretty easy to build up through pillaging. 2. They have often higher base strength than the basic equivalent unit (Warrior, Swordsman and Line Infantry). +5 is nothing to scoff at when comnbined with other bonusses. 3. They require zero strategic recources, which means that you can use those for things like Knights or, even better, Siege equipment like Bombards and Artillery 4. They have a fixed maintenance of 2 Gold, which makes them easy to mass in mid-game 5. Unlike Warrior Monks, they benefit from both exp bonusses from encampment buildings and Great Generals. 6. They upgrade automatically when you build the next tier Encampment building once, no Gold cost or upgrade action required, and no need for things like Professional Army to do it more efficiently. I would not use them as my core army, but they are an excellent auxilliary force since you can just pillage a ton of Faith first and then turn that into a wave of fresh, low cost troops that are far easier to keep up to date. They will eventually drop off as an offensive force, but they still have a pretty big window of opportunity. And while an Encampment as a requirement is early investment, it's always good to have at least one in order to train military engineers anyway, so it's not THAT big of an investment. Anyway, rant over, good vid, but I had to step in for ma boi Lahore
Bro, imagine you had a Zulu game with Industrial Nihang armies. 92 base combat strength up to 102? Sheesh! Man that would be fun one-shoting everything.
I learned first hand how good multipliers are with the new Victoria Age of Steam leader. Had a terrible start on deity and thought the game would go nowhere. Fast forward to basically every one of my cities having +200 production my strongest having 500 and I wasn't even really planning it too hard. The extra production you get from industrial zones is just god tier. I could easily have gotten 1000+ in retrospect. And Hong Kong basically gave me an instant science victory once I had the necessary techs unlocked.
+2 Loyalty for every city in your empire for your highest level encampment building would still be C-tier. I don't know what Firaxis was thinking here.
It's a dangerous game, tiering city states, Boes. If I were to do it (hahaha), I'd tier them according to their impact in a best-ish case scenario rather than generally. That is, if you're playing an X-type game, how much would you be willing to fight to suz the city state? Example: even in the best case scenario of a trade-route focused game, Samarkand's trading domes aren't going to net you much as you they too many contingencies (locations to place them + number of trade routes you can send be from that city (because until late game most trade routes are accomplishing something besides/in addition to gold and it might take you 20 turns before you can send one out the of the dome city)). So they're D tier, as compared to Mogadishu, which is A tier. On the other hand, in the best case scenario for Auckland (you're playing one of the dozen coastal civs and/or you're on not on a continents map), Auckland wins you the game. Lahore's Nihangs aren't worth much if you don't have faith to burn or if you're pumping out units already in a dom run, but if you're a doing a culture/science run backed up by faith (especially a tall play, when you're not buying settlers), Nihangs are game-changing because they're so so cheap (no upgrade/maintenance cost). Another factor is sheer cognitive load/playstyle impact: City states that give you bonuses for things you're already going to do (send trade routes, settle on the coast, build defensive units) are foolproof. Suzing a cs like Samarkand, building a dome, and 5 turns later realizing that's the only place to put a wonder sucks.
big agree on the percentage modifier point, was playing some casual multiplayer with friends and got so much culture everyone else’s graph looked like a flat line after the victory by combining percentage bonuses.
Vatican City works well with generals, admirals, wandering scientists/merchants (use on a non-local tile), and a few odd engineers. It helps to fix your religion early, can decimate an opponent's religion when used offensively, and the AI doesn't regard it the same way as a missionary/Apostle being used in their territory. PLUS, that doesn't change how you'll use the Great People, mostly. In cultural games (or with GWAM-heavy civs), it wrecks religious civs. It's high C/low B.
You're sleeping on Vatican City, it's incredible for Crusade. (Which is perfectly on theme.) Retire an old general/admiral or two and convert an entire front! It's especially funny with GWAMs, since you can drop multiple charges with a single great person in quick succession. Especially if it's in a theater square you just captured, you can just... move all the existing great works out.
If you settle on a strategic ressource you never improved, you still get Hattusa's bonus so you can have an income of +5 towards that strategic ressource quite easily
I agree with you mostly, although i do value Cardiff a little more than you do. If nothing else, it allows you to get earlier power in your harbor cities. I also might put Chinguetti into S tier. You can easily get 2 to 3 hundred faith just from trade routes and faith has a lot of value in multiple victory types. I agree on Kandy as well. One other possible negative to Kandy, you need to have a space to put the relic! Can't say how many times I have found a natural wonder and lost the relic because I didn't have a temple ready yet. Also, if you use Suze'ing to supplement your exploration, you can't even control when you discover the wonder.
I think bologna works pretty good with domination, as it scales by how many districts you have, and on a dom game you'll have a lot of them, if nothing else it can help you pivot into another victory type later.
I had one game where I wished I had Preslav. I wasn't really going for domination, but my neighbor wouldn't peace me and kept attacking, so I got annoyed and made a minimal attack force. I couldn't get through the terrain as it had mountain/lake choke points and difficult terrain, and he was higher tech than me by a bit. But his back cities were on the coast, and I had some leftover frigates. Those ripped through his three back cities, which all had encampments with armories. Loyalty was a problem for a little bit, had to plug in a couple of cards to give me time to capture the rest of his cities that I couldn't get to with my navy. So yeah, having Preslav would have saved me a couple card slots... for like 10 turns.... in one game out of hundreds... Yup, F tier. Just maaaaybe not so bad it's off the tier list?
One build that I think fez really fits into is crusade. In pure faith games civ doesnt really incentivize spreading your religion abroad because the founder beliefs are all...not good. But if youre in a faith dom game, the extra science is pretty substantial and can help you hit a good unit or upgrade timing. Midgame science isnt about the science victory, its about hitting a timing on a crucial tech. Also sad about alcazars because I do like appeal games ... but I get it if theyre not strong. At least you can do sphinx alcazars with ptolemaic cleo 😅
I wish there was some kind of bonus or even achievements if you control a combo of city states, natural wonders, world wonders and Great People that belong to the same Civ IRL. For example if you play Mapuche and suzerain Rapa Nui, control Torres del Paine and get Gabriela Mistral. What a combo!
Armagh d tier sadge :( Monasteries gives 2 housing when you reach mid game and it can be built on hills where the Cahokia Mounds and Mahaviharas couldn't. It has no business being in the same tier as Alcazars and Trading Domes.
Some statistics for CS types as a whole: Militaristic ends up in low C-high D, with a 2.625 overall Religious and Industrial are solid Bees, sharing an average of 4 Mercantile get a high C, scoring 3.285 Cultural are a high B and Scientific a low B, with 4.25 and 3.75 respectivelly If only Preslav gets a buff where fully loyal cities get something like 7% in all yields, then Militaristic would be around 3.2-3.4, making for a generally balanced distribution. Or you know, while you're at it buff NIhangs too, given Lahore's exceptional fighting game scene.
Fez is A+ for Mali and that's it. When it's turn 150 (if you're playing a huge map that you have to move across water) and you're still rocking 30 science it's convenient to rush to a unit that can defend properly and have totally had at least 2 games where Fez has saved me as Mali!
Only thing I'd note is maybe adding an asterisk to some city states depending on what game mode(s) you're playing with. I feel like Valetta moves up a tier easily when old god obelisks are factored in, and doesn't hong kong help with recruiting/discovering heroes? Maybe even Preslav can be useful during dramatic ages (though I doubt it)
i've used Yerevan for stacking culture and science through all my science/culture victories.. cross culture (+1 science for every 4 followers) or world church (+1 culture for each 4 followers) combine that with Yerevan and you'll get at least +100 extra science or cutlery (depending on your religion) 😊
I am from Kazakhstan and I want cities from my country be in game as cs. Almaty was in civ5 you know. I can create a mod to add it in civ6 but what suzerein bonus should it have..
@@boesthius Screenshotted in case it is needed. You are now mortally bound to this contract. Your soul will be released when either the challenge is completed or Civ VII releases
I agree with most of what you've put and your reasoning is thorough and well thought out. I would disagree with Vatican City only because I've managed to save my religion with their religion spread on many occasions. Especially when it comes to coastal games and Admirals if you build harbors early enough. Just chuck a bunch in the direction you're attacking, boom, boom, boom and all of a sudden crusade it for an easy win.
Tried playing as Basil in a sensible spawn. Yet always get bitch slapped by the barbs. Except for a particular spawn where Akkad was the first CS I've met, and I was the first to meet them in the game. Although I have like 2 horses somewhere in the east, my melee and Herc carried me all of the way until I got my Tagmas. Then I went warmongering like a madman.
If you ever do this again, for the love of all that is good and holy put a screenshot of the city's suzerain effects on the right side of the screen while you're talking about each one
Just finished this vid after several days of watching in pieces. I wonder if separating them out by type next time would make watching and editing easier? id be interested to see the ranking for just cultural city states, for example. Either way you format it imma watch it tho lol.
I am confused when boes is talking about Akkad he mentions doing a lot of damage with a battering ram but I thought the whole point of Akkad was to not need a battering ram
Totally understand not doing it this way but...Potato's "by victory condition" system makes more sense. Also, the "fun" vs. "pure power" factor. Akkad is crappy for anything but pure domination, hugely powerful and somewhat fun. Fez is not great for anything but Religious Victories, is pretty meh overall but a lot of fun. That said, it'd be a nice 6 hour video to do all of that with all of the extra civs and extra city states.
Average warrior monks fan: (Georgia) Average nihang enjoyer: not Boes 😠 I should say, that in my 1000 hours of playing, just once Lahore has been close and early enough in the game and I was playing Mansa Musa. I conquered my dear neighbour Persia before it managed to researche Swordsmen. They are cool. You have to challenge yourself and win domination using nihangs only. Spoiler: it will be times easier than by warrior monks
Ok, it may not be the BEST City State, but my favourite will ALWAYS be Valletta... Being able to pollute the world and pray in flood barriers is amazing
I've probably said it before, I'll definitely say it again: Fez is fantastic. Not for Science Victories, nah, not even with Arabia would I call it anything but okay/niche, but for every other victory type where you won't focus science as hard, the flat lump sum science can be a significant boost. First of all I think you undervalue science for RV, Haghia is a potential option, but even later than that you want ocean travel on most maps. Heck, if things are going rather poorly, even Railroads can be useful. For Culture there's all kinds of techs you want, plus if you have a Religion you want to remove the different religion tourism malus anyway, so it's a pretty siginificant boost for a pretty small investment. Finally it can be very strong in Crusade-backed Dom, the most consistent Dom. It's not the most consinstent, auto-god-tier city-state, but it's situation of "I want to spread my religion", is actually relatively common, and it's effect (which can often translate to 80 science for 1 Apostle or even Missionary charge) is really powerful. You rightly speak of how powerful percentage modifiers can be with high base yields, but if one has a low base yield, flat sums are where it's at, and the fact that they can be effectively stored up and used as you see fit, gives Fez even more flexibility.
SRY THIS WAS A FEW HOURS LATE, i messed up a recording part so i had to go back and record a few City-States again
ANYWAYS HOPE U ENJOY
Great video
something wrong happening there
Boes,
Have you considered doing a meme game where you can only make tile improvements from city states? So you turn on all the tile only ones and see what you can make happen with that chaos? I think also civ specific improvements from whoever you roll should also be allowed.
Ah was it the mix up with Cardiff and Mexico City?
I wonder how many times Boes will revise his city-state ratings before we let him live down that C-rating for Kumasi.
"The limit does not exist!"
kumasi is actually pretty strong, solid culture generation.
@@Cecilia-ky3uwit’s literally one of the strongest city states in the game
Geneva is actually an F tier city state because I am always at war with the monster within
"I swear this time we are not getting anymore content" meanwhile Firaxis HQ "Okay so now's the time to release the City State Pack"
My favourite is still Valletta. So good when you can spend these cheap 160 faith points to build a flood barrier which would take 80 turns to produce.
I still have it S-tier because in my experience, it completely changes the way I play the game. I go Monarchy instead of Merchant Republic and I don't have to hard-build flood barriers everywhere. It isn't as impactful as Kumasi but close.
I also have Valletta as S tier.
@@jyutzler ok
Another great thing about Valetta is that the AI never go for it so it only costs a minimum of 3 envoys
The fact that the faith price is fixed while the production cost scales with each tile and the level of climate change means that Valletta becomes S tier for any naval focused civ, and just shy of necessary with Apocalylse Mode enabled.
Auckland is so good in naval games that it basically guarantees the win. I do agree that if you play more landlocked games it loses effectiveness, so A tier seems fair for it. I definitely wouldn't put it below that.
I'd argue Auckland is easily S-tier due to its unique characteristics that it can transform losing starting positions where everything is terrible into auto-wins. I don't think any other city state has the same ability to single-handedly guarantee a win.
I think Auckland can be compared to Yerevan, in that it is situationally so extremely overpowered that it can guarantee you the win. I'd argue Auckland is able to do this much more convincingly than Yerevan, and can do this for essentially any win condition, and hence is quite a lot stronger than Yerevan.
I agree, when you're unable to use a leader/civ ability its awful just for the opportunity cost of it. When you aren't able to use Auckland it's fine, as you can just prioritise another city state. I don't know any other cs where I'd go to war over their liberation like Auckland when it's really cooking, when you can use it its just brilliant
One thing that makes Aukland great that isn't mentioned is that you almost never need to fight for it in single player. Toss two envoys + Charismatic Leader and you're done. It's your forever. Maybe you'll creep up to six by completing missions
Valetta's faith buy sea walls at an unscaled 160 faith per city is a bit OP, only way to bypass the cost scale as the water raises!
Nihongs are ridiculously good. They have no strategic resource cost and scale with your encampment buildings which means they get their combat bonus before new units are unlocked. The barracks is unlocked at bronze working the swordsman is unlocked at iron working. That means you can have 40 strength Nihongs before you can have 35 strength swordsmens. You can also build the armory before you can unlock musketmen and build the military accedmy before you can build infantry.
But in that first scenario where is the faith income to buy them?
By the time you've got maybe a couple of holy sites and relic for good measure,
are you going to be able to faith buy Nihangs before the AI gets 45 strength MAA?
And which domination civs have a naturally good envoy game for you to buy them whenever? Yeah Hungary, but there it's cheaper to just levy the units with them
Later on, maybe if you can faith pillage, but I'd argue using that faith to buy great people is usually more consistent
Not to mention, this entire hypothetical scenario requires you to find, suze, and keep suzerain on them super early game. it’s cool when/if it works out but 99% of the time there’s other stuff I want to do with my faith
To try and play devil's advocate, that is true for many city states in the game, so that is not a massive point against it
However, I do strongly agree with your opinion that yh, typically I have better uses for my faith (monumentality, apostles, great people, grand master's chapel, Valetta)
@@johnhawkins5314 oh for sure, but with Lahore and Nihangs, there’s a larger commitment/opportunity cost since not only do you need to invest in the city state, but you also need to be in a position where you’re at least partially going domination, rushing very specific techs, AND you’re spending one of your most precious resources (faith) on getting their max value, where a lot of other city states only have one specific opportunity cost, and not a bunch of intertwined ones like Lahore
@@johnhawkins5314 Getting the faith for a pre iron working nihong might be a bit tough unless your playing someone like mali that starts with bonus faith and can get an early pantheon that gives even more faith but you should easily get enough faith to buy them while they're still stronger then swordsmen. Also some people are cursed and never have strategic resources. Quill 18 never has iron.
Wow, Kumasi made a huge jump! I've razed them in every game since your last tier list ;)
damn, boes has caused the death of so many kumasians.
Cahokia Mounds are A-tier (arguably S-tier) imo because:
- Housing, food, gold and amenities that scale with time are helpful for every kind of civ, playstyle and victory condition.
- They can be built on a surprisingly large variety of tiles.
- They make building off fresh water do-able.
- The mounds don't disappear if the city-state gets taken/razed.
- You only need two mounds per city and they can be built outside the three-ring radius and still grant the amenity and housing bonus.
- It doesn't over-shadow/take-over a Civ's ability but rather complements it.
The only only negative I can think of is if you have cities with limited tiles or if you're playing a Civ who already has a good tile improvement (Australia, Gran Colombia). Even so, Cahokia Mounds are worth designing entire cities/empires around.
valletta is slept on so hard its easily on par if not past akkad
This has gotten much better with each iteration. One innovation that Ursa Ryan introduced was splitting the tier list into situational and general categories. Compare Auckland (situationally great) to Ayutthaya (generally great).
I can't verify this, but I think Hong Kong stacks with Yongle. (As if Yongle weren't already OP enough.)
Yerevan is also broken with Convert Heathens. Being able to farm barb units is quite handy.
Yeah I really enjoy ursas list of situational vs non situational, it's a breath of fresh air
One thing I haven't seen anywhere is a Tier list of policy cards. Any Chance?
Hard to rank something that is so situational. and even harder to prioritize which ones are best given the number cards available to each civ can widely vary from game modes and wonders.
I think it's only 3 Tiers, "Broken", "Situational" and "Useless/unneccessary".
With "Broken" being comprised of exactly Serfdom, Colonization, Discipline and God King as those are more or less the only cards you will always use and useless/unneccessary being mostly the early Great People cards (the flat +2 point cards except the Prophet and maybe Scientist cards are just too low impact to use them regularly).
All the other cards have more or less niche use cases.
Agree with your S tier city states... maybe i´d add Akkad, as a fan of Dom games is one of my favorite city state. May i suggest your next tier list? Religious beliefs... or Unique units... or policy cards... or great peoples.
Given how powerful faith can be in a game I would think Valletta punches well above its weight class as a civ6 city state. Its a great way to colonize a new island or continent from turn you settle it Monument, Granary, Watermill, Walls and a defending unit with grand magisters temple all in the same turn its founded is pretty dope.
I think part of why percentage modifiers are so good in 6 is how rare they are. Most modifiers in 6 are flat (+1 science per library, +4 production to every city in 6 tiles) so when you can get some real good scaling, you gotta take it.
Previous civ games had most of their modifiers as percentage-based and I'm still kinda sad they changed that.
I miss the customary Mapuche music assaulting my eardrums during this city-state tier list
Including a description of the bonus on screen when you talk about a city state would be so helpful, I don't remember most of the bonuses of the top of my head and it would be nice to read what it does while you talk about it.
Cahokia mounds also give you an amenity for your second one at some point. The archaeology civic I think.
I’ve won dom games on deity with Lahore/Nihangs being the centerpiece. They work great with bombards because you can save your niter for bombards and frigates. They’re also fantastic for defending your empire against barbarians, because you can spawn them in any city instantly. If there’s a barbarian camp that pops up on the outskirts of a fresh city, it’s gonna be vulnerable to pillaging but you can instantly spawn a Nihang unit or 3 right there instead of having to shift a unit form across your empire. in general they are good for defense for empires that don’t intend on having a large standing army, but need a few in a pinch to defend or clear barb camps. And they’re actually quite powerful until the modern era. you can also faith by corps and armies of them and make them even stronger.
Yes, you have to have really solid faith income, yes you have to commit to a specific tech path and yes you have to be able to maintain steady suzerainty over Lahore, especially if they’re going to be used as a centerpiece for an invading ground force, and because of all those factors I wouldn’t put them at the top of the tier list. But F? No way
edit - by the way, I get it’s a personalized tier list based on your play style and I’m a huge fan of these, I’ve watched all of them all the way through and I think you do a great job. I enjoy hearing opinions about individual game mechanics from people who are great at the game, and I also love the tier lists simply because It gives an overall summary of one part of the game, in this case the individual city states, and that’s hard to find on any other type of video
All I’m saying is that an F tier city state shouldn’t be able to win you the game. You’re never going to win the game with Preslav, or with trading domes, or with Vilnius. but you can definitely win a domination game with Nihang units being your primary front line military unit in the right situation. To me, this makes them substantially above F tier. anyway, I just wanted to say that because I understand the premise of the videos and I really enjoy them as well so I don’t wanna seem too snarky haha. Keep up the good work.
Boes: I have an amenity bias
Also Boes: Cahokia is B-tier
The first Cahokia Mound in a city gives that city +1 amenity, +1 from the second Mound after Natural History. and +2 Housing after Cultural Heritage.
They are absolutely busted
I think Cahokia should be A, you can eventually get +2 amenities and housing for every city in your empire without having to work them plus you can stack them in petra flat desert. You have to be really starved for land to not have a use for the mounds. 2 Builders and 6 tiles with cahokia is at least as good as Zanzibar.
yeah, 1 Amenity and 1 housing from a tile you don't have to work is pretty nice, and the thing is you can even plan your city building around Cahokia mounds a bit so they get that extra food. 1 Food and 3 gold on a tile improvement is nothing to sneeze at, especially when 2 of those tile improvements can invalidate the need for housing and amenity districts.
Would be curious to see a game played with S and A tier CSes versus same game played with D and F tier CS.
I can't wait for Boes to make a new city-state tier list and put Lahore in the S tier because they are a unit that is generated with only 200 faith (Effectively 100 production), which can be gathered through pillaging (and has a promotion that gives it faith based on 50% of the enemy combat strength), and a line infantry (which is functionally the tech equivalent at max ) has 5 less attack, requires no upgrade cost, and costs 360 production. Its Kasumi all over again
Personally, 60% of the time I find Kandy, there is a wonder within 6 tiles, and 90% chance there was one within 10 tiles.
This is more of a "for fun" idea for a tier list, but what if you did a tier list of the "CIVITAS City-States" mod? I know there's some pretty powerful ones in that.
(Preslav is still dirt though)
I'd rate Kabul way higher, yes you have to be initiating the battle but Akkad is literally the same way because you can't attack walls without initiating. There are some really strong unit promotions in this game and promotions also heal your units which is huge. You can stack it with the exp bonuses from encampment buildings and get super highly promoted units. I'd also have Akkad higher since taking cities is how you win a domination game but Kabul would be at least B tier, probably low A
Excuse me, Lahore in F?
Nihangs have much more potential than you make them seem to have IMO, and I will state why:
1. While they do cost faith, they are much cheaper than the equivalent melee units they would replace. Faith is pretty easy to build up through pillaging.
2. They have often higher base strength than the basic equivalent unit (Warrior, Swordsman and Line Infantry). +5 is nothing to scoff at when comnbined with other bonusses.
3. They require zero strategic recources, which means that you can use those for things like Knights or, even better, Siege equipment like Bombards and Artillery
4. They have a fixed maintenance of 2 Gold, which makes them easy to mass in mid-game
5. Unlike Warrior Monks, they benefit from both exp bonusses from encampment buildings and Great Generals.
6. They upgrade automatically when you build the next tier Encampment building once, no Gold cost or upgrade action required, and no need for things like Professional Army to do it more efficiently.
I would not use them as my core army, but they are an excellent auxilliary force since you can just pillage a ton of Faith first and then turn that into a wave of fresh, low cost troops that are far easier to keep up to date. They will eventually drop off as an offensive force, but they still have a pretty big window of opportunity.
And while an Encampment as a requirement is early investment, it's always good to have at least one in order to train military engineers anyway, so it's not THAT big of an investment.
Anyway, rant over, good vid, but I had to step in for ma boi Lahore
FIGHT ME ON IT
TELL ME YOUR TERMS
Bro, imagine you had a Zulu game with Industrial Nihang armies. 92 base combat strength up to 102? Sheesh! Man that would be fun one-shoting everything.
I learned first hand how good multipliers are with the new Victoria Age of Steam leader. Had a terrible start on deity and thought the game would go nowhere. Fast forward to basically every one of my cities having +200 production my strongest having 500 and I wasn't even really planning it too hard. The extra production you get from industrial zones is just god tier. I could easily have gotten 1000+ in retrospect. And Hong Kong basically gave me an instant science victory once I had the necessary techs unlocked.
Damn, Preslav is going up high this time. My favorite city-state ever!
+2 Loyalty for every city in your empire for your highest level encampment building would still be C-tier. I don't know what Firaxis was thinking here.
It's a dangerous game, tiering city states, Boes. If I were to do it (hahaha), I'd tier them according to their impact in a best-ish case scenario rather than generally. That is, if you're playing an X-type game, how much would you be willing to fight to suz the city state? Example: even in the best case scenario of a trade-route focused game, Samarkand's trading domes aren't going to net you much as you they too many contingencies (locations to place them + number of trade routes you can send be from that city (because until late game most trade routes are accomplishing something besides/in addition to gold and it might take you 20 turns before you can send one out the of the dome city)). So they're D tier, as compared to Mogadishu, which is A tier. On the other hand, in the best case scenario for Auckland (you're playing one of the dozen coastal civs and/or you're on not on a continents map), Auckland wins you the game. Lahore's Nihangs aren't worth much if you don't have faith to burn or if you're pumping out units already in a dom run, but if you're a doing a culture/science run backed up by faith (especially a tall play, when you're not buying settlers), Nihangs are game-changing because they're so so cheap (no upgrade/maintenance cost).
Another factor is sheer cognitive load/playstyle impact: City states that give you bonuses for things you're already going to do (send trade routes, settle on the coast, build defensive units) are foolproof. Suzing a cs like Samarkand, building a dome, and 5 turns later realizing that's the only place to put a wonder sucks.
Came here for brutal Preslav slander and was not disappointed.
big agree on the percentage modifier point, was playing some casual multiplayer with friends and got so much culture everyone else’s graph looked like a flat line after the victory by combining percentage bonuses.
BIG 60K!! keep grinding brotha
Vatican City works well with generals, admirals, wandering scientists/merchants (use on a non-local tile), and a few odd engineers. It helps to fix your religion early, can decimate an opponent's religion when used offensively, and the AI doesn't regard it the same way as a missionary/Apostle being used in their territory. PLUS, that doesn't change how you'll use the Great People, mostly. In cultural games (or with GWAM-heavy civs), it wrecks religious civs. It's high C/low B.
You're sleeping on Vatican City, it's incredible for Crusade. (Which is perfectly on theme.) Retire an old general/admiral or two and convert an entire front! It's especially funny with GWAMs, since you can drop multiple charges with a single great person in quick succession. Especially if it's in a theater square you just captured, you can just... move all the existing great works out.
New tier list?? You love to see it.
If you settle on a strategic ressource you never improved, you still get Hattusa's bonus so you can have an income of +5 towards that strategic ressource quite easily
Namn Madol in A is absolutely criminal
ye it should be S tier tbh
Creator response lets go
I agree with you mostly, although i do value Cardiff a little more than you do. If nothing else, it allows you to get earlier power in your harbor cities. I also might put Chinguetti into S tier. You can easily get 2 to 3 hundred faith just from trade routes and faith has a lot of value in multiple victory types.
I agree on Kandy as well. One other possible negative to Kandy, you need to have a space to put the relic! Can't say how many times I have found a natural wonder and lost the relic because I didn't have a temple ready yet. Also, if you use Suze'ing to supplement your exploration, you can't even control when you discover the wonder.
I think bologna works pretty good with domination, as it scales by how many districts you have, and on a dom game you'll have a lot of them, if nothing else it can help you pivot into another victory type later.
I had one game where I wished I had Preslav. I wasn't really going for domination, but my neighbor wouldn't peace me and kept attacking, so I got annoyed and made a minimal attack force. I couldn't get through the terrain as it had mountain/lake choke points and difficult terrain, and he was higher tech than me by a bit. But his back cities were on the coast, and I had some leftover frigates. Those ripped through his three back cities, which all had encampments with armories. Loyalty was a problem for a little bit, had to plug in a couple of cards to give me time to capture the rest of his cities that I couldn't get to with my navy. So yeah, having Preslav would have saved me a couple card slots... for like 10 turns.... in one game out of hundreds...
Yup, F tier. Just maaaaybe not so bad it's off the tier list?
One build that I think fez really fits into is crusade. In pure faith games civ doesnt really incentivize spreading your religion abroad because the founder beliefs are all...not good. But if youre in a faith dom game, the extra science is pretty substantial and can help you hit a good unit or upgrade timing. Midgame science isnt about the science victory, its about hitting a timing on a crucial tech.
Also sad about alcazars because I do like appeal games ... but I get it if theyre not strong. At least you can do sphinx alcazars with ptolemaic cleo 😅
I didn’t even know City States did things until yesterday…
You know what you did, bring him back
Congrats for 60k
Hey I'm sorry I can't watch that right now but definitely I'll come back to it ! keep up the good work.
where is dave?🥺
FRICK
I wish there was some kind of bonus or even achievements if you control a combo of city states, natural wonders, world wonders and Great People that belong to the same Civ IRL. For example if you play Mapuche and suzerain Rapa Nui, control Torres del Paine and get Gabriela Mistral. What a combo!
my head hurts just contemplating it, but that would be so cool - also educational
Armagh d tier sadge :(
Monasteries gives 2 housing when you reach mid game and it can be built on hills where the Cahokia Mounds and Mahaviharas couldn't. It has no business being in the same tier as Alcazars and Trading Domes.
The one time I suzed Preslav, it was to uncover the last part of the map I hadn't explored yet, and I didn't feel like sending a unit out there.
Ngazargamu is great in any game where you need to fight things imo
Some statistics for CS types as a whole:
Militaristic ends up in low C-high D, with a 2.625 overall
Religious and Industrial are solid Bees, sharing an average of 4
Mercantile get a high C, scoring 3.285
Cultural are a high B and Scientific a low B, with 4.25 and 3.75 respectivelly
If only Preslav gets a buff where fully loyal cities get something like 7% in all yields, then Militaristic would be around 3.2-3.4, making for a generally balanced distribution. Or you know, while you're at it buff NIhangs too, given Lahore's exceptional fighting game scene.
Fez is A+ for Mali and that's it. When it's turn 150 (if you're playing a huge map that you have to move across water) and you're still rocking 30 science it's convenient to rush to a unit that can defend properly and have totally had at least 2 games where Fez has saved me as Mali!
Only thing I'd note is maybe adding an asterisk to some city states depending on what game mode(s) you're playing with. I feel like Valetta moves up a tier easily when old god obelisks are factored in, and doesn't hong kong help with recruiting/discovering heroes? Maybe even Preslav can be useful during dramatic ages (though I doubt it)
i've used Yerevan for stacking culture and science through all my science/culture victories.. cross culture (+1 science for every 4 followers) or world church (+1 culture for each 4 followers) combine that with Yerevan and you'll get at least +100 extra science or cutlery (depending on your religion) 😊
Yep, and that can help you win a domination victory too. Science and cutlery.
Yereven can be very powerful during Zombie defense since you can use the Heathen Conversion on a bunch of zombies.
I am from Kazakhstan and I want cities from my country be in game as cs. Almaty was in civ5 you know. I can create a mod to add it in civ6 but what suzerein bonus should it have..
What happened to "I really don't care about amenities so that's why they are bad" from the last Tierlist? xD
I have changed my ways
There will be one more last Pass
if there is i will play a score victory with Gilgamesh
Do it Sid Meier give us one more leader pass.
@@boesthius Screenshotted in case it is needed. You are now mortally bound to this contract. Your soul will be released when either the challenge is completed or Civ VII releases
I agree with most of what you've put and your reasoning is thorough and well thought out. I would disagree with Vatican City only because I've managed to save my religion with their religion spread on many occasions. Especially when it comes to coastal games and Admirals if you build harbors early enough. Just chuck a bunch in the direction you're attacking, boom, boom, boom and all of a sudden crusade it for an easy win.
Man you read my mind. Been watching your old ones cause I love this shit! Merci beaucoups
Mercy buckets
Tried playing as Basil in a sensible spawn. Yet always get bitch slapped by the barbs. Except for a particular spawn where Akkad was the first CS I've met, and I was the first to meet them in the game. Although I have like 2 horses somewhere in the east, my melee and Herc carried me all of the way until I got my Tagmas. Then I went warmongering like a madman.
Love this video. Would be cool if you put up a text showing what the actual bonus was while you describe your ranking.
Laughed so hard at this 😂 1:36:52
Greetings from Yerevan 🇦🇲
Sleeping on Mitla. You can get big numbers on Rationalism policy card and Mitla either helps you get there sooner or sometimes, even at all.
Great vid. Surprised you didn't rate Valletta higher.
I'll never be able to remember the CS symbols. Boes is so good at remembering them I bet he could correct my grammar in hieroglyphics.
Pretty much agree with all these, good job!
Putting Cahokia below A-tier is absolutely criminal. They're S-tier IMO, easily in the top 5 city-states.
We miss you boes we need our saving light 😭
If you ever do this again, for the love of all that is good and holy put a screenshot of the city's suzerain effects on the right side of the screen while you're talking about each one
Nihangs can be good mid to late game I think. Imagine a game on Zulu with Industrial Nihang Armies. God that would be broken.
I feel like Preslav could be fine and in C tier if it gave 100% loyalty if there’s an encampment
congrats on 60k to you and dave
Just finished this vid after several days of watching in pieces. I wonder if separating them out by type next time would make watching and editing easier? id be interested to see the ranking for just cultural city states, for example. Either way you format it imma watch it tho lol.
I think Hong Kong is actually really great! If I'm not wrong, nukes count as projects, and +20% towards nukes is worth mentioning!
Yes! Other powerful projects include Yongle’s Lijia, Magnificence Catherine’s Court Festivals, and space projects.
Nice video 👍 fun to listen 👂
Nothing better than spawning next to Kandy
There have been games where I gave up domination en switched to science just to take full advantage of Geneva
Wake up honey, the new Boes video about city states just dropped, and it's over 1 hour 43 minutes long
Nihangs are really cool units
i love yerevan for culture games too because the AI is constantly trying to convert my cities
Kandy can be insane or meh. Strong but incredibly situational and can restrict your play to maximise effect
Kandy is AMAZING for maps size "LARGE" and bigger......Kandy is near worthless for smaller maps
I am confused when boes is talking about Akkad he mentions doing a lot of damage with a battering ram but I thought the whole point of Akkad was to not need a battering ram
We just got new Civ Content
It's called Civ VII ❤
Nazca is my favourite, i think its the most fun
Totally understand not doing it this way but...Potato's "by victory condition" system makes more sense. Also, the "fun" vs. "pure power" factor. Akkad is crappy for anything but pure domination, hugely powerful and somewhat fun. Fez is not great for anything but Religious Victories, is pretty meh overall but a lot of fun. That said, it'd be a nice 6 hour video to do all of that with all of the extra civs and extra city states.
that would be a cool six hours but it'd take me weeks to understand it
Your second pronunciation of Bandar Brunei was the right one…
No more civ 6 content? Oh Boes you fool just wait til they announce the fursuit pack in half a year
Average warrior monks fan: (Georgia)
Average nihang enjoyer: not Boes 😠
I should say, that in my 1000 hours of playing, just once Lahore has been close and early enough in the game and I was playing Mansa Musa. I conquered my dear neighbour Persia before it managed to researche Swordsmen. They are cool. You have to challenge yourself and win domination using nihangs only. Spoiler: it will be times easier than by warrior monks
I believe what could improve these lists is giving a definition for what each grade or tier means at the start.
Ok, it may not be the BEST City State, but my favourite will ALWAYS be Valletta... Being able to pollute the world and pray in flood barriers is amazing
Nalanda + Babylon pre patch will always be S+ tier
If you're doing a preserve only game, what good is Chinguetti? Without a religion you can't get the trade route bonus, correct?
Hot take but do you have plans to do an A-Z series for leaders then a tier list right after?
No Dave = No Like
Do it for Dave and only Dave
@@snomcultist189truue
Anyone know what the "one strategy" for Religious Victory Bo was talking about?
spam apostles
I always struggle against a pink one can’t remember the name
Auckland is way better than Johannesburg
I've probably said it before, I'll definitely say it again: Fez is fantastic. Not for Science Victories, nah, not even with Arabia would I call it anything but okay/niche, but for every other victory type where you won't focus science as hard, the flat lump sum science can be a significant boost. First of all I think you undervalue science for RV, Haghia is a potential option, but even later than that you want ocean travel on most maps. Heck, if things are going rather poorly, even Railroads can be useful. For Culture there's all kinds of techs you want, plus if you have a Religion you want to remove the different religion tourism malus anyway, so it's a pretty siginificant boost for a pretty small investment. Finally it can be very strong in Crusade-backed Dom, the most consistent Dom. It's not the most consinstent, auto-god-tier city-state, but it's situation of "I want to spread my religion", is actually relatively common, and it's effect (which can often translate to 80 science for 1 Apostle or even Missionary charge) is really powerful. You rightly speak of how powerful percentage modifiers can be with high base yields, but if one has a low base yield, flat sums are where it's at, and the fact that they can be effectively stored up and used as you see fit, gives Fez even more flexibility.