Civ 6 Governors: The Definitive Ranking and Strategy Guide

In the world of Civilization VI, the Rise and Fall expansion gave us Governors, a strategic layer that completely changes how you can run your empire. These aren’t just simple bonuses; they’re powerful tools you can use to specialize your cities and execute your grand strategy. If you use them right, you can turn a brand new city into a science hub, a vulnerable border town into a fortress, or a simple commercial port into the engine of your entire economy.

I’m going to share my definitive ranking and a deep-dive analysis of every governor. We’ll go through their promotions, find powerful synergies, and give you real, actionable strategies to take your game to the next level. This is the knowledge you need to not just pick the right governor, but to truly master them and lead your civilization to victory.

How Governors Work: Titles and Establishment

First, let’s cover the basics. To use governors, you need Governor Titles. You get these mostly by finishing Civics, especially early ones like State Workforce and Craftsmanship. The best source of titles, though, is building a Government Plaza and its upgrades.

Each title lets you hire a new governor or promote one you already have. This is your first big choice: do you spread out, putting multiple governors with their base bonuses in different cities? Or do you go “tall,” investing all your titles into one or two super-promoted governors to create specialized powerhouse cities?

When you assign a governor, they need time to get set up. This “establishment” usually takes 5 turns (but only 3 for Victor). It’s only after they’re established that their unique promotions become active. But here’s a key tip: the +8 Loyalty they give to a city is instant. This makes them absolutely essential for holding onto newly conquered cities or settling near a rival’s territory.

My Definitive Governor Tier List

Let’s get straight to it. Not all governors are created equal. While they all have their uses, some are just universally powerful and will fit into almost any game you play. This is my ranking based on their overall power, flexibility, and game-winning impact.

• S-Tier: Pingala, Magnus
• A-Tier: Amani, Reyna
• B-Tier: Liang, Moksha
• C-Tier: Victor

S-Tier: The Absolute Powerhouses

The governors in this tier are genuine game-changers. Their abilities are so strong that you can, and often should, build your entire strategy around them. In most of my games, I hire one of these two first.

Pingala: The Science and Culture Engine

Pingala is, hands down, the best governor for blasting through the science and civics trees. His strength is in his simple, huge percentage-based boosts. He’s the ultimate specialist for your single “tallest” city.

His Job: To create one massive engine of Science and Culture that pushes you ahead of your rivals. He’s the foundation of any Science or Culture Victory.

Promotion Breakdown:

• Librarian (Base): +15% Science and Culture in the city. A fantastic start that tells you exactly what he’s for. Put him in the city where you plan to build your first Campus and Theater Square.
• Researcher: +1 Science from each Campus building. It’s a decent, but not amazing, promotion. Think of it as a stepping stone.
• Connoisseur: +1 Culture from each Theater Square building. Just like Researcher, it’s a steady, reliable bonus.
• Grants (The Real Power): +100% Great Person points in this city. This is Pingala’s best promotion and the reason you should rush to get it. Put him in a city stacked with Holy Sites, Campuses, Theater Squares, and Commercial Hubs. Doubling these points means you’ll dominate the race for Great Scientists, Writers, Artists, and Musicians.
  • How to use it: Settle a city with great appeal and lots of resources. Build the Oracle wonder (+2 Great Person Points). Then, build a Campus with a Library and University, and a Theater Square with an Amphitheater and Museum. With Pingala established and his Grants promotion, the Great Person points from these districts and the Oracle are instantly doubled. You’ll be swimming in Great People like Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci while your opponents are left in the dust.
• Curator: Doubles Tourism from Great Works in the city. For a Culture Victory, this is the final piece of the puzzle. Once your museums are full, promoting Pingala to Curator can launch your tourism into the stratosphere.
• Space Initiative: +20% Production towards Space Race projects. For a Science Victory, this is his final, powerful upgrade. In the late game, move him to your city with the highest production to speed up those final, expensive projects.

Works great with: Pingala is amazing with civs focused on Great People and building tall, like Scotland, Greece (Pericles), and Sweden. He’s also incredibly powerful in a city that has the Oracle or the Great Library.

Magnus: The Industrial Juggernaut

Magnus is the master of production and population. He’s the engine for early-game expansion and building wonders in the mid-game. His abilities are all about maximizing your resources to create explosive growth.

His Job: To help you expand rapidly by producing settlers without losing population, and to speed up the construction of key districts and wonders by chopping resources.

Promotion Breakdown:

• Groundbreaker (Base): +50% yield from harvesting features (like woods and rainforest) and removing resources (like stone and deer). This is strong on its own, but it’s the synergy with his other promotions that makes him S-Tier.
• Provision (The Foundation): Settlers trained in this city do not consume a Population. This is arguably one of the most powerful promotions in the game. In the early game, it lets you pump out settlers from your capital without hurting its growth.
  • How to use it: Found your capital and immediately start building a Settler. As soon as you get your first Governor Title, appoint Magnus and give him the Provision promotion. Now your capital can produce Settlers one after another. Combine this with the Ancestral Hall government building (+50% production to settlers) and the Colonization policy card (+50% production to settlers) to create a new city every few turns, grabbing huge amounts of land before your opponents know what hit them.
• Surplus Logistics: +20% Food Growth in the city, and your Trade Routes ending here give +2 Food to their starting city. This makes Magnus’s city a perfect hub for domestic trade routes, supercharging its growth.
• Industrialist: +2 Production for each strategic resource in the city. A nice bonus, especially if the city has multiple Horses, Iron, or Niter.
• Black Marketeer: You accumulate strategic resources +100% faster in this city. More importantly, you can build units that need strategic resources even if you don’t have any. This is situational, but it can save your game if you’re cut off from something vital like Oil or Uranium.
• Vertical Integration: The city gets Production from all Industrial Zones within 6 tiles, not just the first one. This is a late-game monster. If you plan your cities in a cluster, you can have one city with Magnus receiving bonuses from multiple Industrial Zones, creating enough production to finish wonders in just a few turns.

Works great with: Magnus is fantastic for any civ, but he’s a superstar with Germany (whose Hansa gets extra bonuses from adjacent resources you can chop), Rome (whose free roads make new cities effective immediately), and any civ that wants to expand quickly.

A-Tier: The Powerful Specialists

These governors aren’t as universally dominant as the S-Tier, but in the right situation, they’re just as powerful. They are masters of a specific job and can be the key to getting a critical advantage.

Amani: The Diplomat

Amani is your tool for dealing with the world outside your borders. She’s the only governor you can assign to city-states, which makes her essential for diplomatic games and influencing other nations.

Her Job: To secure control of critical city-states and apply loyalty pressure to flip enemy cities without ever declaring war.

Promotion Breakdown:

• Emissary (Base): Can be assigned to a city-state, where she counts as 2 Envoys. This is her key feature. Sending her on a tour of city-states you’ve met can get you a ton of first-suzerain bonuses and a huge boost to your early-game era score.
• Affluence: While in a city-state, she sends your capital +2 of their luxury resource and +2 of their strategic resource, even if you’re not the suzerain. This is amazing for getting amenities or resources you’re missing.
• Prestige: Puts -2 Loyalty per turn on all foreign cities within 9 tiles. This is her offensive weapon. Put her in a border city next to a rival’s unhappy city to slowly wear them down, which can lead to a free city for you.
  • How to use it: Imagine you’re playing as Eleanor of Aquitaine. You settle a city near a rival’s capital and fill it with Great Works to apply loyalty pressure. Then, you move Amani into that city and give her the Prestige promotion. The combined pressure (-1 per great work from Eleanor, -2 from Amani) will almost guarantee the rival city rebels and joins your empire.
• Puppeteer: Doubles the number of Envoys you have in her city-state. This is the ultimate tool for locking down a critical city-state like Geneva (for science), Brussels (for wonders), or Hattusa (for strategic resources).

Works great with: Amani is a must-have for Hungary, whose leader can levy city-state troops for free if Amani is there. She’s also essential for any Diplomatic Victory attempt and for leaders like Eleanor who play the loyalty game.

Reyna: The Financier

Reyna is all about one thing: gold. In a game where money can buy you armies, buildings, and even entire districts, her ability to generate huge amounts of cash makes her incredibly versatile and powerful.

Her Job: To turn a single city into an economic powerhouse that can fund your ambitions across the map.

Promotion Breakdown:

• Harbormaster (Base): Doubles adjacency bonuses from Commercial Hubs and Harbors. This is incredibly strong. A well-placed Commercial Hub next to a river and a Harbor can easily bring in +10 to +12 Gold per turn with Reyna, even before you build anything in them.
• Foreign Exchange: +3 Gold from each foreign Trade Route that passes through or to the city. This encourages you to trade with other civs and boosts your income even more.
• Tax Collector: +2 Gold for each citizen in the city. In a big city, this promotion alone can generate +40 or +50 Gold per turn, which is a staggering amount.
• Contractor (Her Other Game Changer): Lets the city buy districts with Gold. This is Reyna’s ultimate ability. It’s expensive, but being able to instantly create a district is phenomenal. It lets a new, low-production city get a vital Campus or Commercial Hub up and running immediately.
  • How to use it: You’ve just settled a new city on another continent. It has terrible production and would take 30+ turns to build a Harbor. Instead, you move Reyna to the new city, wait for her to establish, and then instantly buy the Harbor with gold. Now you can build a Lighthouse and Shipyard, and the city becomes a productive coastal hub in a fraction of the time.

Works great with: Reyna is a natural fit for money-focused or naval civs, like Mali, Portugal, or England. Her ability to buy districts is a huge help for any strategy that needs to develop new cities quickly.

B-Tier: The Reliable Role-Players

The governors in this tier aren’t usually my first pick, but they fill important roles and can be very effective when you need their specific skills.

Liang: The Surveyor

Liang is the master of city infrastructure and improvements. She gives you better builders and helps cities expand and protect themselves.

Her Job: To make your builders more efficient and to provide unique, powerful improvements like Fisheries.

Promotion Breakdown:

• Guildmaster (Base): All Builders trained in this city get +1 Build charge. This is her most consistently useful promotion. Park her in a city, build the Pyramids, and use the Serfdom policy card, and you can create Builders with an incredible 7 charges.
• Zoning Commissioner: +20% Production towards districts in the city. A solid, flexible bonus that helps any city develop faster.
• Aquaculture: Lets you build the Fishery unique improvement on coast tiles, which provides Food and Production. If you have the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, which adds +1 Science, Faith, and Culture to all coastal tiles, Fisheries can become some of the best tiles in your empire.
• Reinforced Materials: The city is immune to damage from environmental effects like volcanoes and floods. This is a lifesaver if you’ve settled in a risky but rewarding spot.

Works great with: Liang is excellent with civs that live on the coast, like Indonesia or Japan. Her extra builder charges are a gift to any civ, especially those focused on building wonders or improving lots of tiles, like Egypt.

Moksha: The Cardinal

Moksha is the governor of faith. If you’re going for a Religious Victory or have a strategy that uses a lot of faith, he’s an essential ally. If not, his usefulness drops quite a bit.

His Job: To strengthen your religious pressure, defend against other religions, and make your religious units more powerful.

Promotion Breakdown:

• Bishop (Base): Doubles religious pressure from this city. Put him in the heart of your religious empire to solidify your faith.
• Citadel of God: The city can’t be put under siege, and its religious pressure isn’t affected by other religions. This creates an unshakeable holy city that will constantly spread your faith.
• Divine Architect: Lets you buy districts with Faith. This is Moksha’s version of Reyna’s Contractor, and it’s incredibly powerful for faith-focused civs like Russia or Ethiopia. It lets you turn your huge faith income into real infrastructure.
• Patron Saint: Religious units trained in this city get +1 extra Promotion. This helps you create elite Apostles who can easily win theological combat and convert enemy cities.

Works great with: Moksha is made for religious civs. Russia, Ethiopia, and Byzantium can all make amazing use of his promotions. The Divine Architect ability is especially game-changing for them.

C-Tier: The Niche Defender

This governor has a very narrow and specific job. He’s not useless, but he’s often outshined by the more versatile and powerful governors.

Victor: The Castellan

Victor is the military governor, focused completely on city defense. The problem is that his bonuses are often too small, too late, or just not as good as simply building more units.

His Job: To give a small defensive boost to a single city. He’s best used as a temporary fix for a frontline city that’s under attack.

Promotion Breakdown:

• Redoubt (Base): +5 Combat Strength to a defending unit in the city’s territory. The garrisoned unit gets +1 additional Ranged Strike per turn. This is his most useful ability.
• Garrison Commander: Defending units get +5 Combat Strength, and the city gets +25 HP when defending.
• Defense Logistics: A city with a garrisoned unit can’t be put under siege. This is very situational, but can be useful if one city is being swarmed.
• Air Defense Initiative: +25 Combat Strength for anti-air units defending against aircraft. This promotion is almost completely useless, as late-game air combat is rarely decided by such a small bonus.

The main problem with Victor is that by the time you can give him several promotions, a strong economy or production base (which you could have built with Reyna or Magnus) would have let you build an army that provides a much better defense than his static bonuses. His main use today is his 3-turn establishment time, which lets you get a quick +8 Loyalty boost in a newly conquered city that’s about to flip back.

Works great with: Victor has very few synergies. He can be situationally useful for civs that expect to be on the defensive, like Georgia, but even then, other governors usually offer a better long-term advantage.

The Secret Eighth Governor: Ibrahim

Ibrahim is a special case. You can only get him when playing as Suleiman of the Ottoman Empire, and only after you build the Diplomatic Quarter. He’s a unique governor who can’t be moved from your capital. He specializes in military buffs and reducing war weariness, which fits perfectly with the Ottoman’s aggressive style. His promotions boost military production, give units extra combat strength, and make it easier to conquer cities. He’s a powerful asset, but he’s locked to one civilization.

Final Thoughts: Governors as Strategic Tools

The governors in Civilization VI are much more than a simple list of bonuses. They are strategic instruments. Understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and knowing when and where to deploy them, is a key skill that separates good players from great ones. Whether you’re using Magnus to fuel a land grab, Pingala to race to the stars, or Amani to build a global alliance, mastering the governors is mastering the game itself.