Civ 7 — After Strategy

Civilization 7 best Mementos by goal and Age (2026 guide)

Sat, 07 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The best Memento in Civilization 7 depends on your goal and the current Age. In Antiquity, the most flexible pick is an attribute point Memento matched to your leader, such as Antikythera Mechanism for Science. After that, equip a bonus tied to your plan: Corona Civica to expand, Brace of Pistols for naval war, Uraeus for Culture. Nothing is locked in, because you can swap the pair between Ages.

This guide follows Dev Diary #7 and the patch notes up to update 1.5.0 of September 15, 2026, plus a hotfix on September 30. Most online rankings date from February 2025, yet effects have been rewritten twice since. It was not written from play: values come from official notes, and opinions are credited to the players who gave them.

How Mementos work

A Memento is a bonus attached to your leader for the game. The official diary sets four rules, and each one shapes your choice.

Two slots. Each leader equips two at most, and any Memento works with any leader.
About a hundred bonuses. Firaxis announced nearly 100 at launch, and updates added more, such as Gordian Knot for Alexander.
No purchases. You earn them only by playing, never with real money.
Multiplayer included. They stay available online, but a game can disable them.

The least known point concerns Ages. PC Gamer and Millenium explain that Mementos can be changed at each transition, on the civilization selection screen. Both guides date from 2025, but CivFanatics players still built their pairs Age by Age in June 2026. An older support page describes a choice that lasts the whole game, so check the transition screen if you cannot find the button.

PC Gamer adds a detail that changes the math: an attribute point Memento applies at the start of each Age in which it is equipped. In practice, keeping one through Antiquity and Exploration yields two points, and one CivFanatics player reserves them for exactly those two Ages.

Which Mementos to pick for your goal

This table starts from your game plan, not a general ranking. Each row gives the version in which the value was recorded. A “per Age” bonus grows with each Age, which matters for late-game pairs.

Goal	Memento	Effect	Recorded in
Opening	Antikythera Mechanism, Groma, Complaint to Ea-nāṣir	+1 Scientific, Expansionist or Economic attribute point	Game8, 2025
Expansion	Corona Civica	+1 Settlement Limit each Age, +50% Convert to City cost	1.4.0
Exploration	Merchant’s Saddle	+1 Movement for Scouts, Merchants, Settlers and Explorers	1.1.0
Land war	War Club	+1 Combat Strength for Infantry per City-State Suzerainty	1.4.0
Taking cities	Chanda-Mahasena	+3 Combat Strength against Fortified Districts during a Celebration	1.4.0
Naval war	Brace of Pistols	+2 Combat Strength for Naval units when attacking	1.3.1
Science	Kiem	+2 Science per Army Commander Promotion	1.4.0
Alliances	Glass Armonica	+15 Science and Happiness per Age in an Alliance, for you and your ally	1.4.0
Culture	Uraeus	+10 Culture per Age in Cities with at least one Wonder	1.4.0
Gold	Mascapaycha	+1 Gold from Specialists, +1 more next to Mountains	1.4.0
Influence	Shisa Necklace	+50 Influence per Age when you become Suzerain	1.4.0
Production	Wampum Belt	+1 Production per Age in Cities per Suzerainty	1.4.0

In Antiquity: the attribute point, without consensus

Attribute point Mementos unlock early and suit every leader. On CivFanatics, one player rates them much stronger since Test of Time, arguing points are harder to get. Another calls them worthless, and a third finds their yields too weak. What matters is the tree you are aiming for: a point only makes sense if it quickly opens a bonus your plan needs. Take the point matching your leader’s attributes, then replace it once that tree is full.

Two simple bonuses round out the pair. Lydian Lion gives 200 Gold per Age at the start of each Age according to Game8, and Millenium rates it strongest in Antiquity. Corpus Juris Civilis adds one starting Social Policy slot: one player calls it a favorite, while others find it often unnecessary.

For expansion: Corona Civica, on one condition

Corona Civica gives +1 Settlement Limit each Age and no longer scales with the Age since 1.4.0. The price stays fixed at +50% Convert to City cost. In practice, it pays off if you keep many Towns, and it hurts if you convert quickly. One player calls it mandatory, while another avoids it for that exact reason.

Two openings circulated on CivFanatics in June 2026, and they remain player reports written before 1.5.0. The first pairs Groma with Gold & Sapphire Flowers. The second combines Xerxes, King of Kings, with Corona Civica, Gordian Knot and Qajar. Their authors describe Settlers available before turn 10.

For war: check the unit type

War Club now covers Infantry only, not all units. If you play Cavalry or Naval, it leaves the pair. Chanda-Mahasena also fell from +5 to +3, but it stays focused on taking cities during a Celebration. Brace of Pistols comes up often among players for naval battles at the end of Exploration.

On the Commander side, Game8 ranked The Art of War first in 2025: +10% experience, +50% inside the radius of a higher-level Commander. It arrives late, at Foundation level 44. Promotion Mementos pay out in yields instead: Kiem in Science, Artilleryman’s Gloves in Culture at +2 per Promotion, Flag of Jhansi in Influence at the same rate. These three are flat values per Promotion, so they follow your Commanders and not the Age.

For Science, Culture and Gold

Uraeus now gives a flat value per Age to any City with a Wonder, whereas 2025 guides required owning the most Wonders. Noli Me Tangere gives +1 Science, Culture and Gold per Age for each Major Triumph in an Age, which makes it a late-game pick. Lotus Blossom converts 4% of Gold income into Science and Culture according to the 1.1.0 notes, and one player keeps it for the Modern Age.

For Gold, Game8 listed Green Colonel’s Jacket and Kwalkwali in 2025: the first pays per Trade Route, the second per Resource assigned to Cities. Neither value appears in later adjustments, but check the tooltip before building a strategy on them.

What changed: advice to stop following

Firaxis adjusted Mementos in two passes. Update 1.1.0 toned down those overshadowing leader abilities. Update 1.4.0 removed most percentages and double-scaling. Rankings from 2025 therefore sometimes describe a different Memento under the same name.

Memento	Effect in 2025 guides	Current effect
Great Imperial Crown	+5% Science per Great Work, 25% max	+2 Science per Age on Towns in Tundra
Dong Son Drum	Celebration when declaring war	Tech Boost when declaring a Formal War
Uraeus	+10% Culture with the most Wonders	+10 Culture per Age per City with a Wonder
War Club	+1 Combat Strength for all units	+1 Combat Strength for Infantry
Noli Me Tangere	+10% per Legacy Path completed	+1 per Age per Major Triumph
Glass Armonica	+10% Science and Happiness	+15 Science and Happiness per Age
Shisa Necklace	+100 Influence per Suzerainty	+50 Influence per Age per Suzerainty

Great Imperial Crown shows the trap: Game8’s top Culture pick of February 2025 now only gives a Science bonus in Tundra. Dong Son Drum, for its part, lost the Celebration that made it attractive for war.

How to unlock Mementos

Mementos arrive automatically when your Legends level up. According to Millenium, challenges supply the experience, such as turns played, Wonders built or Age objectives completed. The Foundation Path is tied to your account and holds the most accessible bonuses, based on Game8’s list from February 2025.

Foundation level	Mementos
2	Inscribed Sling Bullet (Militaristic), Complaint to Ea-nāṣir (Economic)
3	Treaty of Kadesh (Diplomatic), Groma (Expansionist)
4	Shakokidogu (Cultural), Antikythera Mechanism (Scientific)
5 to 7	Sword of Brennus, Lydian Lion, Imago Mundi
8 and 9	Corpus Juris Civilis, The Travels of Marco Polo
44	The Art of War

Each leader also has a path. Game8 puts Corona Civica at Augustus level 2, Uraeus at Hatshepsut level 9 and Dong Son Drum at Trung Trac level 9. Some require a paid leader: Chanda-Mahasena goes through Ashoka, World Conqueror. The 1.4.0 notes state that earned levels and rewards are unaffected, even if some challenges show as uncompleted again.

Mistakes to avoid

Three habits waste a slot, and each takes a minute to fix at the transition screen.

Copying a 2025 tier list. Check the in-game tooltip, because a familiar name can hide a rewritten effect.
Doubling a bonus without measuring it. Firaxis says a Memento that copies a leader ability matches it or stays slightly weaker.
Keeping the same pair to the end. Lydian Lion loses weight outside Antiquity according to Millenium, while per Age bonuses gain value.

The opposite risk exists too: spending ten minutes on a screen for a tiny gap. One player even won on Deity without any Memento, as the May 2026 community recap reports. They give momentum, not victory.

Going further

Your Mementos depend on your leader first, and our tier list of civs and leaders helps you settle that. Our breakdown of the 1.4.1 governments completes the game plan. Advanced settings are in our complete console commands guide. Everything else is on the Civilization 7 page.

Civilization 7: how to capture a city, step by step (2026)

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT

To capture a city in Civilization 7, destroy and then occupy each Fortified District, meaning every urban tile with walls around it. Next, move a military unit into the City Center and choose whether to keep or raze the settlement. The City Center cannot fall while any fortified tile holds out.

That rule comes from the combat dev diary of December 2024. Everything else relies on the patch notes up to update 1.5.0 of September 15, 2026, plus the hotfix of September 30. This guide was not written from play, and player reports are labelled as such.

The steps to capture a city

The method stays the same for a fortified City or Town. Follow these six steps in order.

Declare war. A surprise war gives the other side more War Support and penalizes you, so line up your support before crossing the border.
Find the Fortified Districts. Hover over each urban tile and look for the fortified district label, because the game does not list them clearly.
Break the defenses. Your siege units target the walls while the rest of the army protects these fragile units.
Occupy each tile. According to the official diary, destroying and then occupying a Fortified District gives you control of it and removes its yields from the defender.
Enter the City Center. A military unit must move in once the Fortified Districts have fallen.
Choose your option. The Raze or Keep menu asks what you want to do with the settlement.

Leave a unit on captured tiles if you can. A Steam thread from February 2025 explains that you do not have to hold every tile at once, but an empty tile can be retaken.

Town or City: the difficulty varies widely

The official diary stresses this gap. An undefended frontier settlement falls quickly, while a fortified Town or City nearly always demands siege units. What matters, then, is the number of walls, not the settlement’s status.

A large City has several positions to breach, and each fortified tile counts. A Well of Souls table, dated March 2025 and marked as unverified, lists +100 HP for the district and +15 Combat Strength for defenders per wall. A Town set to a defensive focus also adds 25 Health to its walls, according to that page. Treat these values as a rough guide.

A settlement on a navigable river carries a particular risk, because the diary states that a fleet can sail inland and take it if it is undefended. Update 1.3.2 confirms that a military naval unit can capture a fortified tile once all its buildings are pillaged.

Which units to bring

A balanced army beats a mass of infantry. Here are the roles to fill, with the names listed by Game8 and Well of Souls.

Siege. Ballista in Antiquity, then Catapult, Trebuchet and Bombard in Exploration, with modern artillery after that.
Infantry. It shields the siege line in melee and occupies the freed tiles.
Army Commander. It carries units, attacks with a combat bonus and can call Reinforcements in a hard siege.
Ranged. It softens up garrisons before the assault, and Focus Fire concentrates shots on one target.
Espionage. The Open the Gates action damages or destroys Fortified Districts in Exploration, according to the 1.2.1 notes.

On paper, siege alone can break through. In practice, an empty tile can be retaken, so keep a covering force nearby. At sea, 1.4.2 also lets a Fleet Commander’s Focus Fire target a Fortified District with a garrison.

Why your city will not fall

Sieges often stall on the last turn. These causes come up in official notes and on forums.

A fortified wonder. Himeji Castle and Hwaseong act as Fortified Districts that must be conquered, according to the 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 notes.
Red Fort. Several players report this block on CivFanatics: one took the City Center, then Red Fort the next turn, and the city flipped.
A retaken tile. An enemy unit may have moved back into a district behind your army.
An ally on the tile. One player reports on Steam that an allied unit disrupted the capture, with no official confirmation.
An old bug. Update 1.4.2 fixed Machu Pikchu, which could become impossible to capture once surrounded by walls.

If nothing works, check each urban tile one by one, starting with wonders. A Steam thread from February 2025 advises this hover check, since no dedicated view listed the remaining tiles at that date.

Keep or raze the settlement

Our default choice is to keep the settlement. The 1.4.0 notes reworked the Military Victory: each settlement you control earns Dominion points, with extra for captured settlements and original capitals. A razed settlement gives you none of that.

Razing no longer costs what it did at launch, but it is not free. The 1.2.1 notes removed the War Support granted to your enemies. In exchange, the conquest Influence penalty doubles for the rest of the Age, and 1.2.2 extends these rules to the Modern Age. Update 1.4.0 also sped up razing: the settlement loses one district per Age per turn.

Keeping has a cost too. Game8 describes a period of unrest in which the settlement produces nothing, and 1.4.0 limits conquest Influence penalties and unrest to the Age of capture. The Influence penalty also goes away if you lose that settlement, according to 1.2.0. You can exceed your settlement limit, at a cost in Happiness across the empire.

Raze only a badly placed or very distant settlement, or one that would push you over that limit with no real gain. The risk is holding too many small settlements at the end of an Age, when War Weariness already weighs on your Happiness.

War Weariness: watch your Happiness

According to the diplomacy dev diary, the side with less War Support suffers War Weariness. It cuts Happiness in all its settlements and its Combat Strength against that opponent. Update 1.4.0 raised the cost in Exploration and Modern, as this table shows.

Age	Settlement founded by you	Founded by another civ	Founded by an enemy at war
Antiquity	3	5	7
Exploration	5	7	9
Modern	7	9	11

These values give the Unhappiness per settlement, and the Antiquity figures did not move. A long Modern conquest therefore costs far more than a quick Antiquity war. Update 1.2.4 clarifies that this Happiness effect does not stack across several wars, which avoids the worst on two fronts.

A peace deal can also finish the job. Game8 notes that a settlement can be ceded there after a few turns of war, and 1.4.2 adds Gold and Influence to the table. One player on Steam even suggests handing back surplus settlements during talks.

What has aged in online guides

Many pages date from February 2025 and have not kept up with patches. Two mistakes keep coming back.

War Support after razing. That penalty disappeared with 1.2.1.
Losing siege units at the Age change. Since 1.2.3, your siege units and ships carry over from Antiquity to Exploration.

Going further

Your choice of civilization shapes these wars, and our tier list of civs and leaders helps you spot the military profiles. Recent changes are covered in our piece on update 1.5.0. To test a siege without waiting, see the console commands guide. All our coverage sits on the Civilization 7 page.

Civilization 7: how to increase your settlement limit (2026)

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT

To increase the settlement limit in Civilization 7, study the civics and techs that give +1, take the Expansionist and Militaristic leader attributes, then add City-State bonuses, Mementos and certain wonders. The limit also rises each Age: at least 3 in Antiquity, 8 in Exploration and 16 in Modern. You can exceed it, but the Happiness penalty has had no cap since 1.4.0.

This guide follows dev diary #3 and the patch notes up to update 1.5.0 of September 15, 2026, plus the hotfix of September 30. Most online civics lists date from February 2025, so fragile points are flagged. It was not written from play, and player reports are labelled as such.

How the settlement limit works

The official diary calls it a soft limit: the number of Cities and Towns you can maintain without penalty. Both settlement types weigh the same on the counter, shown at the top of the screen according to Game8. Each Age sets a minimum, listed by PC Gamer.

Age	Minimum limit at the start of the Age
Antiquity	3
Exploration	8
Modern	16

A CivFanatics thread from October 2025 finds the value of 8 on a standard map and speed, so check the counter on other settings. Babylon, added in 1.5.0, starts with a reduced limit.

Carryover between Ages remains the least documented part. A developer note in 1.4.0 confirms the limit can be retained. According to PC Gamer and CivFanatics, your new base is the higher of the Age minimum and your end-of-Age total.

In practice, finishing Antiquity at 7 does not put you ahead, since you restart at 8 anyway. Only bonuses that repeat each Age matter then: one player works out 9 at the start of Exploration by keeping a Memento. Another calls that a bug, and nothing official settles the debate.

Every way to increase the limit

Each source usually adds a single point, and the developers stand by that scarcity. Here are the levers to combine, from the most common to the most specific.

Civics. Game8 counted 36 in February 2025, unique civics included, with +1 each time.
Techs. The same guide names four: Irrigation, Feudalism, Urbanization and Mass Production.
Leader attributes. Well of Souls, updated on September 15, 2026, lists +1 in the Expansionist and Militaristic trees.
City-State bonuses. Update 1.2.2 added Hegemon, Staked Claims and Dependent Territories, then 1.2.5 added Karum, Mappa Mundi and Annexation.
Mementos. Corona Civica gives +1 each Age, in exchange for a 50% higher cost to convert a Town into a City.
Wonders. Brandenburg Gate adds +1 to the limit and +1 War Support since 1.2.4.
Leaders and civs. Xerxes, King of Kings receives +1 per Age, and unique civics such as Satrapies for Persia or Captains of Industry for America also give +1.

For shared civics and techs, WCCFtech offers this split by Age.

Age	Techs	Civics
Antiquity	Irrigation	Entertainment, Organized Military
Exploration	Feudalism	Society and Colonialism (Mastery), Social Class, Sovereignty, Imperialism
Modern	Urbanization, Mass Production	Nationalism, Globalism, Hegemony

This table dates from February 2025. Since then, 1.4.0 has reorganized the tech tree and 1.3.0 has reworked several unique civics. What matters, then, is the tooltip in your own game, so read it before spending your points.

This table also gives a rough scale. Adding these shared sources to each Age minimum brings you to about 6 in Antiquity, 14 in Exploration and 21 in Modern, before attributes, City-States and wonders. WCCFtech likewise mentions more than 20 settlements by the end of a game. These totals are this guide’s own calculation, based on an old list.

Order matters as much as the total. In Antiquity, these points mostly help you settle earlier, since they do not carry over while you stay under 8. The same logic applies in Exploration, where you must pass 16 for your total to survive the move to Modern. If you play an expansion profile, look first for bonuses that repeat each Age, such as Corona Civica or those of Xerxes, because they pay off across the whole game.

What one settlement too many costs

Going over is paid for in local Happiness in each settlement, which also lowers your global Happiness, according to the official diary. Reports from Well of Souls, WCCFtech and Millenium all give -5 per extra settlement, applied to every settlement you own.

Two clues back up that value. The old official cap of -35 matches seven extra settlements, and a CivFanatics player noted -70 cumulative Happiness at their fourteenth settlement, which is 14 times 5.

Update 1.4.0 hardened this system in two ways. The -35 cap disappeared, and each point of local Unhappiness removes 5% of yields, up from 2%, down to -80%. Food is exempt from that reduction. This table shows the effect on a settlement with no other Happiness.

Settlements over	Penalty per settlement	Yields lost
1	-5	25%
2	-10	50%
3	-15	75%
4	-20	80% (cap)

This calculation combines the -5 reported in 2025 with the 1.4.0 rules, and it is not official data. An already happy settlement absorbs some or all of the penalty, while a fragile one tips straight away. At -20 it also reaches the Angry stage created by 1.4.1, which weighs on certain Government abilities.

The cost grows with your empire, because the penalty hits every settlement. Across fourteen settlements, a single extra one removes 70 Happiness in total. Global Happiness drives Celebrations, so you delay those as well. Watch the advisor warning too: since 1.2.3, it no longer appears after 75% of the Age.

Should you go over the limit?

Our reading of the rules is simple: stay at the limit, or one settlement above it if that settlement brings a real gain. On paper, a rare resource or a wonder site justifies the gap. In a wide empire, the same point costs far more, because it hits more settlements.

To absorb a gap, 1.4.1 names four levers.

Fresh water. Found your settlements close to it.
Resources. Improve the ones in your settlements.
Buildings. Construct Happiness buildings.
Commanders. Station experienced Army Commanders in your cities.

One player points out on Steam that surplus Happiness in one city does not spread to an unhappy one. The risk rises in wartime: each captured settlement joins the counter, and War Weariness adds its own penalty. In that case, weigh the conquered settlement against the cost above before keeping it.

What has aged in online guides

Many pages have not caught up with 1.4.0. Four details need correcting.

The -35 cap. It has not existed since 1.4.0.
The 2% cost per point. That figure rose to 5% in the same version.
The Xerxes bonus. It reached +6 over a game and tops out at +3 since 1.4.0.
The start at 4. Several sources from February 2025 state it, while a CivFanatics player corrects it to 3 without leader or Memento bonuses.

The topic will keep moving. The free update due in 2027 will let you turn your own settlements into City-States for finer control over this limit.

Going further

Happiness also depends on your institutions, and our analysis of the 1.4.1 Governments covers that link. To pick a leader built for expansion, see the tier list of civs and leaders. Recent changes are covered in our piece on update 1.5.0. Everything else sits on the Civilization 7 page.

Civ 7 Tier List 2026: Best Leaders and Civs After Update 1.5

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

More than a year after its February 2025 launch, Civilization VII has refined its meta. The first tier lists were shaky — too many variables, too small a sample. Today, with tens of thousands of community playtime hours cumulated, some leaders clearly dominate. Here’s our 2026 tier list based on CivFanatics, Pocket Tactics, Game8 analyses, and our own experience.

TL;DR:

S Tier (5 leaders): Confucius, Catherine the Great, Augustus, Ashoka, Himiko
A Tier (4-5 leaders): Xerxes, Amina, Napoleon, Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Franklin
B Tier: the rest, solid but situational
C Tier: objectively weak leaders, to avoid
Caveat: Civ VII tier lists are more volatile than Civ V/VI — civs change per age, leader stays
Since June (updates 1.4.1 to 1.5.0): no leader moves; the new leaders are not ranked yet

What changed since the June update

Three updates have shipped since our June revision: 1.4.1 (June 23), 1.4.2 (July 28) and 1.5.0 (September 15). No leader moves up or down: the changes are systemic (governments, diplomacy, a new map), and none of them states a leader-specific figure we could rank on. Our Civilization 7 hub lists every article on the game.

Governments reworked (1.4.1). Each government now has a passive, two reworked Celebrations and two exclusive Traditions, Traditions carry over between Ages, local happiness has five stages, and Celebrations drop from 10 to 6 turns on Standard speed (government guide). Your government choice weighs more than before, so the leader-government pairing is worth testing: the Classical Republic pays +4 Culture in Joyous Cities and Despotism gives +2 Science per conquered Settlement, which makes a culture-first leader like Catherine the Great or a conqueror like Ashoka the obvious candidates. We have not measured those pairings, so the tiers stay as they are.
Diplomacy (1.4.2 and 1.5.0). Peace deals can now include gold and influence, Reconciliation opens as soon as a leader turns unfriendly, and individual victory conditions can be switched off again (1.4.2 article). Version 1.5.0 lets you pay influence to stay neutral when an ally goes to war (1.5.0 article). In principle this helps diplomatic profiles such as Himiko or Amina, but the amounts are fixed per Age and may prove modest, so we do not move them.
True Start Location Earth map (1.5.0). It is Huge-size only and starts in Antiquity, and your civilization’s position is fixed by geography (1.5.0 article). It is a special mode: this ranking still describes standard maps, where Antiquity civilization choice does not tie you to a place.

New leaders: too early to rank

Four leaders arrived since June. We have not played enough of them to justify a tier, and the sources we used describe their abilities without measuring them.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Brush & Blade part 1, with Heian and Sengoku Japan): see the 1.4.1 article.
Yi Sun-sin (Brush & Blade part 2, with Goryeo and Joseon): a naval leader whose value depends on whether the sea becomes a real front. See the part 2 preview and the 1.4.2 article.
Elizabeth I (Hall of History): a Cultural and Economic leader whose Royal Monopoly removes the range limit on Trade Routes, at the cost of land combat strength that falls with each Age (Hall of History article).
George Washington (Hall of History): a Diplomatic and Expansionist leader who gains a Migrant in his Capital at each Celebration (Hall of History article).

Hall of History also adds Babylon, the Gauls and England as civilizations, covered in the same article.

What changed since the June update
How to read this tier list
S Tier: the dominant leaders
A Tier: strong but situational
B Tier: solid without being top
C Tier: avoid in competitive
Leader × civilization combinations

How to read this tier list

Civilization VII has a structural quirk: you play 3 different civilizations within the same game, one per age (Antiquity, Exploration, Modern). Your leader stays the same throughout. Consequence: the leader has more long-term impact than the chosen civ.

Our ranking is based on:

Leader bonuses stable over 500 turns
Adaptability to multiple victory types
Synergy with multiple civs per age
Community feedback 2025-2026 (Reddit r/civ, CivFanatics, Pocket Tactics forums)

S Tier: the dominant leaders

Confucius ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Considered near broken. Massive science bonus coupled with huge civ-choice versatility. Giant cities pumping science every turn. Crowned “reference leader” by most guides.

Preferred victory: Science
Ideal civ per age: Han (Antiquity), Abbasid (Exploration), Modern wild card

Catherine the Great ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rare excellence: cultural victory without sacrificing tech. Science bonus via her cultural output — she unlocks techs and civics in parallel. Flexible, strong from turn 30 to turn 500.

Preferred victory: Cultural
Ideal civ: Normans, French (depending on age)

Augustus ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ +2 production in the capital per town built, +50% gold for urban purchases. Rapid expansion, map covered with towns feeding the capital. Versatile across all victories.

Preferred victory: Production (domination OR wonders)
Ideal civ: Romans (Antiquity), Normans, Mongols

Ashoka (World Conqueror) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The military leader who isn’t militarily obligated. Very solid conquest bonuses but his stats also enable peaceful victories. S-tier thanks to his double profile.

Preferred victory: Domination
Ideal civ: Mauryan (Antiquity), then Mongol/Aksumite

Himiko (Queen of Wa) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Queen of Wa — pure versatility. Few massive bonuses but exceptional adaptability between culture and diplomacy. Beloved by players who change plans mid-game.

Preferred victory: Diplomatic / Cultural
Ideal civ: Meiji Japan (Modern)

A Tier: strong but situational

Xerxes (King of Kings) — A+ Excellent late-game science bonus, better in Modern Age than Antiquity.

Amina — A Strong in trade/diplomacy, perfect if your strategy revolves around city-states.

Napoleon Bonaparte — A Classic military bonuses, effective but less versatile than Ashoka.

Benjamin Franklin — A Science and wonder focus, but less “open” than Confucius who plays with any civ.

Harriet Tubman — A Exploration + late-game science, excellent on Tide of Empires maps.

B Tier: solid without being top

José Rizal — good scientist, defensive gaps
Machiavelli — diplomatic but sometimes frustrating against aggressive AI
Isabella — powerful religious but religion meta weakened in 2026
Tecumseh — territorial defense, good vs AI but limited competitively
Frederick the Great — classic military, eclipsed by Napoleon

C Tier: avoid in competitive

These leaders suffer from miscalibrated or overly situational bonuses after 2025-2026 patches:

Charlemagne — too religion-dependent (weakened meta)
Pachacuti — mountain-specific bonuses that block expansion
Trung Trac — military but without the solid bonuses of Ashoka or Napoleon

Important note: “C” leaders aren’t unplayable, just suboptimal on Hard/Deity. On easier modes, any leader can win.

Leader × civilization combinations

Some community-validated meta combos:

Leader	Antiquity Civ	Exploration Civ	Modern Civ
Confucius (Science)	Han	Abbasid	Russia
Augustus (Production)	Rome	Normans	Mongol
Catherine (Cultural)	Greeks	French	Meiji Japan
Ashoka (Military)	Mauryan	Aksumite	American
Himiko (Diplomatic)	Han	Khmer	Meiji Japan

Experiment — Civ VII’s charm lies precisely in the variety of transitions between civs.

This tier list will evolve with upcoming patches — we update it every 6 months.

Civ 7 — After Strategy

Civilization 7 best Mementos by goal and Age (2026 guide)

How Mementos work

Which Mementos to pick for your goal

In Antiquity: the attribute point, without consensus

For expansion: Corona Civica, on one condition

For war: check the unit type

For Science, Culture and Gold

What changed: advice to stop following

How to unlock Mementos

Mistakes to avoid

Going further

Civilization 7: how to capture a city, step by step (2026)

The steps to capture a city

Town or City: the difficulty varies widely

Which units to bring

Why your city will not fall

Keep or raze the settlement

War Weariness: watch your Happiness

What has aged in online guides

Going further

Civilization 7: how to increase your settlement limit (2026)

How the settlement limit works

Every way to increase the limit

What one settlement too many costs

Should you go over the limit?

What has aged in online guides

Going further

Civ 7 Tier List 2026: Best Leaders and Civs After Update 1.5

What changed since the June update

New leaders: too early to rank

Table of contents

How to read this tier list

S Tier: the dominant leaders

A Tier: strong but situational

B Tier: solid without being top

C Tier: avoid in competitive

Leader × civilization combinations

See also

Sources