Complete Leader Tier List
Below is my leader tier list based on many hours of playing various leaders, mainly on Deity and multiplayer. I do not use Mementos so these rankings do not take them into account. There are still a few leaders I have not spent much if any time with so I am very open to moving these rankings around based on any feedback.
S Tier
No surprise here. Isabella’s leader abilities related to Naval units are solid and naval units are very strong this game. Getting +50% towards purchasing naval units and cheaper maintenance on those units is great. The reason she is S tier though is that her ability should read “Start with 300 gold and a natural wonder. You will get double yields on the natural wonder’s already great yields”. You get the point. Combined with the fact that you will probably find another natural wonder on your starting continent fairly soon for another 300 gold she can just snowball to any victory condition very easily.
[Harriett Tubman](Harriet%20Tubman)
This one will be a surprise to many. 5 war support on all wars declared against you is huge. This makes the AI (and other human players) much less likely to attack you, allowing you to play much greedier, spending production on settlers and buildings. Surprisingly, that isn’t even her most powerful ability. She gets half price espionage actions. Espionage actions are probably the most powerful use of influence in the game, giving you a guaranteed civic or tech every 10-15 turns (or a large amount of culture/science if you are ahead in civics/tech). You can also “pick” which tech or civic you want because it won’t give you one you’re currently researching. This combined with the fact that 50% of the time on perfect success espionage actions you also get a free migrant to boost your cities population, it is a no brainer to constantly run espionage actions. Her starting bias of vegetation and units moving through vegetation with no penalty is the cherry on top.
A Tier
[Lafayette](Lafayette)
Lafayette may be the best military leader in the game. He gets +1 combat strength per tradition slotted and +2 in foreign lands. Combined with a civ path like Rome/Normans you get +12 legions early in the antiquity age and +18/+27 chevaliers in the exploration in home/foreign lands respectively. Absolutely massive unit buffs that blow away even deity’s +8 combat buff. His unique endeavor lets him easily get enough policy slots to get the traditions in early and his +2/+4 culture and happiness per age per settlement is nothing to scoff at either. Just to put that bonus in perspective, in the modern age each foreign settlement is giving +12 culture and happiness.
[Catherine the Great](Catherine%20the%20Great)
I have not played enough with Catherine to give a great analysis but based on what I’ve seen and read, she is very strong. None of her bonuses are crazy but all of them are good and work well together. +2 culture per age on great works is solid. For the antiquity that is probably around a 10% boost to culture. Getting 25% of your culture added as science can be incredible because it means as long as your cities are founded in tundra, you can just pump your culture up without worrying that you are falling behind in science. Overall I feel good with her in A tier but I would not be surprised if I moved her up or down a tier in the future.
Influence is very strong in this game and +3 influence per age is simple but strong. The even stronger part is +50 gold per age for accepted diplomatic actions and +100 for denied. Early game you can just spam out open borders and the cheaper endeavors for a ton of gold meaning you can buy all your settlers instead of having to use production on them. The best part is when the ai starts to turn on you, your open borders request get denied and you don’t spend any influence but you still get the 100 gold per age. This lets you get large amounts of gold instantly to buy military whenever you need to. Being able to declare a formal war no matter your relationship and being able to levy city state units that you aren’t suzerain of is secondary, but also very strong.
B Tier
[Ashoka World Renouncer](Ashoka,%20World%20Renouncer)
The big ability here is +1 happiness adjacency on buildings for all improvements. If I’m understanding correctly that means any rural tile gives each building +1 happiness. In other words a single quarter surrounded by 3 rural tiles is getting +6 happiness which is very nice. This means constant celebrations once you get going. Combined with +1 food in cities for every 5 excess happiness means the cities will be growing fast to add more improvements/rural tiles. He also has a +10% food in all settlements during celebrations to boot. Just a ton of synergy with his abilities making him a strong B tier. I wouldn’t be surprised if he moves higher in the future.
[Benjamin Franklin](Benjamin%20Franklin)
Ben Franklin is the perfect example of no single broken leader ability but just multiple very good ones bringing him to a high end B tier. +1 science per age on production buildings in cities is very good. There can be 6 production buildings per city going into the modern age (4 of which are ageless, and keep in mind military buildings don’t count). 6 buildings*4 cities*3 per age means you can be getting 72 science immediately in the modern age just from this ability. +50% towards building an important building type is very nice. Production is crucial in Civ 7. +1 science per age on endeavors is also a nice boost especially considering you can double up on each endeavor. Double science and culture endeavors are extremely powerful. Just a great overall leader.
[Charlemagne](Charlemagne)
The happiness bonus is small but nice. The reason he is only B tier is because he is essentially forced to conquer other settlements. Luckily for him, his bonuses are very well positioned to do that. +5 combat strength during a celebration is great especially considering he will more often than not be in a celebration once the game gets going. Pair him with a civ like Maurya with happiness bonuses and a strong unique cavalry unit and he will steamroll other settlements.
[Confucius](Confucius)
Confucius was the first leader I played with and has a special place in my heart. With that said I think the initial opinion of Confucius may have been a little too high when it felt like everyone thought he was the strongest leader. 25% growth rate in cities is fantastic and almost single handedly puts him in this tier. Unfortunately with how fast food requirement grows even with 25% growth, city growth still slows significantly later in the game. His other ability of +2 science on specialists is good but nothing groundbreaking. In antiquity when this +2 would be significant you only have a couple specialists at most. In the modern age when you have a good number of specialists +2 doesn’t really move the needle and doesn’t scale with age. Even if you have 30 specialists, 60 science in the modern age just isn’t strong enough to put him in A tier.
Supporting endeavors for free is the big one here in my opinion. This grants a lot of bonuses and frees up influence to spend on grabbing city states. A +25% science endeavor is extremely strong and +4 science per age for each friendly leader is small but a nice bonus on top of her other abilities. Unlike Napoleon who I talk about later, it is much better that she gets bonuses based on being friendly with other leaders as opposed to hating other leaders. I do think she is on the lower end of B tier though.
Initially I thought very highly of Ibn because he allows for very versatile play and his additional sight on units helps a lot with scouting early. The problem is his attribute points are spread out through the ages meaning you aren’t able to snowball with massive early bonuses like you can with someone like Isabella. Either way, the additional site and 6 total attribute points are too strong to put him any lower than B tier.
+1 trade route with all other leaders is surprisingly very good, not only for getting additional resources but for maintaining friendly relationships with other leaders. +50 culture and +100 gold per age per trade route or road is also a nice boost and easy to do. The big reason he is in this tier though is his +1 gold and culture on unique improvements. This allows you to pair him with a civ like Aksum/Ming and spam unique improvements across all your towns and cities providing massive amounts of gold and culture per turn. Carry that huge gold yield into the modern era with the Mughal and you can buy yourself to a victory very quickly.
+1 settlement limit per age is almost all he needs her to put him in B tier. Having the ability to have extra settlements without the happiness penalty is just a big advantage early. The rest of his abilities are fine. +10% gold is always welcome along with his nearly universal +3 combat strength and bonuses for conquering settlements.
C Tier
Tecumseh may be the only leader I could see moving up multiple tiers. As of now I think he is fine in C tier because he only has a single ability and it isn’t especially strong early since it takes time to build out enough settlements and befriend enough independent powers to make use of his +1 food/production per age per city state suzerain. With that said, combining with civs like Greece or Siam (once the unlock bug is finally fixed) could allow you to have 5+ city states fairly early into the age and dominate with massive food, production and combat strength.
20 culture and gold per age for each narrative event is nice combined with his additional narrative events. He may be the only leader that can make the Oracle strong with his additional narrative events and boosting the culture per narrative event even further. +50% celebration length is great and extra happiness towards celebrations means he will more often than not be in a celebration. One of the few leaders that as I write the summary I want to move up a tier. I think for now he is fine at the top of C tier though simply because 15 turn celebrations very likely mean less celebrations overall and therefore less social policy slots.
[Amina](Amina)
Just nothing groundbreaking. +5 combat strength in some common tiles is good. +1 gold per age for resources assigned just doesn’t move the needle much. Even if you complete silk roads, this is only giving 20 gold at the end of antiquity. Not bad but not great. +1 resource capacity in cities is fine. Basically 3 ok but not great abilities, I feel good about her being in C tier.
[Ashoka World Conquerer](Ashoka,%20World%20Conqueror)
+1 production per excess 5 happiness is much stronger than his alternate persona getting +1 food per 5 excess happiness. Why is this persona a tier lower you may ask? Unfortunately this Ashoka’s other abilities don’t synergize as well. None of his other abilities give a bonus of happiness to provide that production bonus and actually do the opposite by almost requiring that you go to war. Declaring a formal war giving a celebration is interesting and could be powerful but It’s hard to see declaring enough formal wars to make it worth it especially when you should already be getting celebrations fairly frequently. The +10 combat strength against fortified districts in a celebration is nice on paper but he gets no bonuses against other units which is often the problem in wars.
[Augustus](Augustus)
+2 production in the capital per town is actually very good. You can rush to 3 towns and early in antiquity +6 production is a good bit. The problem is this eventually drops off to the point that even in the modern when you have 10+ towns you could just get that from a single production building with good adjacencies/specialists. Buying culture buildings in towns is nice but culture usually isn’t a limiting factor. The +50% bonus to buying buildings in towns is also very nice but there just isn’t enough quality buildings that you can buy in towns even including the culture buildings. My concern with Augustus is that it encourages very few cities which will very quickly lead to falling behind in science since you don’t have multiple cities with science buildings. I think he is a leader that looks very strong on paper but when playing with him he isn’t as strong because you still want multiple cities to play optimally.
[Friedrich Baroque](Friedrich,%20Baroque)
Initially I wanted this Friedrich with his alternate persona in D tier. Then the more I thought about it the more I wanted to move him into B tier. Ultimately, I feel good with C tier for now. Like his counterpart, An infantry unit per culture building is fine but nothing incredible. The difference is his great work per settlement conquered. In the first two eras this is fine but nothing incredible. In the modern era however this means that if you rush to get explorers out and can realistically grab 8-10 relics quickly, you could conquer 2-3 towns combined with overbuilding for relics to win an extremely early culture victory, without even needing to research Hegemony. In this niche build he could be a strong A tier. Outside of specific builds though I would place him with his alternate persona in D tier.
A lot of nice bonuses for happiness buildings but the bonuses aren’t that great on their own. Happiness for the sake of happiness isn’t overly strong when you aren’t getting a secondary boost for that happiness like excess food/production. I would much rather have Benjamin Franklins bonus towards production buildings than the bonus towards happiness buildings but it is still not bad. Her bonus culture is the selling point but since it comes at the cost of science it isn’t overly powerful (I consider it easier to get culture than science for the most part).
This is a tough one for me to rate, for many reasons including that I haven’t played him. Looking at his ability it’s actually very strong to have every building get good adjacency for mountains and no happiness maintenance for specialists adjacent to mountains. That means you can get some incredibly powerful specialists next to mountains. The problem is if you don’t get mountains, his entire leader ability is worthless. With his starting bias you should get mountains with your capital but after that his ability could be a waste. I wouldn’t be surprised having to move him to a different tier.
Another leader that doesn’t have any single great ability but multiple solid ones. +3 commander upgrades to her first commander is nice. Combine that with someone like Rome and your Legatus can immediately use their ability to build a settlement. +10% science in tropical cities is good considering you can normally make this all cities with her starting bias. An additional commander experience of 20% isn’t crazy but is a nice bonus. Overall wouldn’t be surprised if she moved up a tier in the future.
D Tier
I feel like this one may be a little controversial. Initially I wanted to put her in C tier but after really thinking about it she just doesn’t bring enough to the table. The +1 culture per imported Resource is essentially worthless. This is at best +10 culture at the end of antiquity or +20 in modern. It just doesn’t move the needle. Her big ability of +15% production towards wonders and buildings in cities adjacent to rivers is great and was the reason I almost put her in C tier. The problem is that it pigeonholes you into only being able to make cities on rivers or forfeit her only good ability.
+1 movement for land units is very nice but just not enough to make him a good leader. 50% of defeated enemies combat strength as culture is not very much. Assuming you play aggressively and defeat 20 warriors in the antiquity age, that’s only around 200-300 culture for the whole age.
The merit commendation for commanders is just not that great for a leader ability. The infantry unit per science building built is not bad but infantry units are generally the worst type of unit in the game and there are generally only 2 science buildings you can build in cities each age. Optimistically this will net you 5 infantry units in antiquity age which just isn’t enough to make a huge difference considering he gets no combat buffs. With that said, I have not played with him enough to definitively say so he could move up a tier.
Just terrible. I almost considered making an F tier just for him. Spending influence to hurt other leaders is generally the worst use of influence. There are many more benefits to having friendly relationships than hostile relationships and he doesn’t get any benefits to combat when every other leader inevitably comes to attack.