Governors

A new feature in Civilization VI is Governors. They are assigned to specific cities, but do both more and less than you might expect. Unlike the Governors in Alpha Centauri, they do not manage your build queues, or your citizens. They do two important things however. First, is they add Loyalty to the city they are installed in. Loyalty is important because if the loyalty falls too low your citizens might look to a neighboring civilization and decide they would rather join them. So whenever you see your loyalty falling in a city you should send in a Governor right away. Second, each governor brings certain qualities to the city they join, and this varies by Governor. In addition, each Governor can receive promotions that add abilities, and each Governor has their own individual promotion tree..

So how do you get Governors? You do it primarily through the Civics tree. As you look at the civics you can research you will see that certain of them contain the icon of a hand writing, and that indicates that researching the Civic will award one Governor title. But there are a number of other ways to gain Governor titles. Certain Wonders award Governor titles, certain Great People award additional titles when activated, and buildings in the Government Center award titles as well. You will need them because you need one title to rercruit a Governor, and one title for each promotion. Since the number of titles you will accumulate will generally be much fewer then the possible uses for them, you will need to make choices about your priorities. But that is something you always encounter in Civilization, you are always having to make choices. So what are the choices?

The Governors

Each governor has a Default Title that applies as soon as they are recruited and assigned to a city. If you assign an additional Title you can get Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 Titles as they move up the promotion tree.

• Reyna (The Financier) – Her Default Title is Land Acquisition, which means that additional tiles get added to the city faster. Her promotions include tihngs like Foreign Exchange and Tax Collection. A good use for Rayna is in a city where you can see a key resource on a tile outside the city and want to get it more quickly. Later on she is good for increasing your revenue, particularly with a few promotions.
• Victor (The Castellan) – His Default Title is Redoubt, which increases the combat strength of the city garrison by +5. His promotions include Garrison Commander, Defense Logistics, and Embrasure. So it is all defense oriented. A good use for Victor is to assign him to a city that is potentially subject to attack, but note that assigning Governors to a city is not instantaneous. they have to “travel” to their assignment, and Victor will need 3 turns before he is established in the city, so don’t wait until the attack has begun.
• Amani (The Diplomat) – Her Default Title is Messenger, which allows her to be assigned to a City-State, where she counts as 2 Envoys. and she has an important Level 1 Title called Emissary, which means that any city within 9 titles that is not owned by you loses 2 Loyalty per turn. Combine her with good Culture leader like the French queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and you can have a powerful combination for a Culture victory, or even for a Domination Victory. Just picture foreign capitals losing their loyalty and coming over to your Empire without a shot being fired! Early on, use Amani in a City-State to get an easy Suzerainty.
• Magnus (The Steward) – His Default Title is Groundbreaker and it gives him +50% yields from plot harvests and feature removals. One the things you can do to speed up construction of something in a city is what players call chopping, which means to use your builder to cut down Forest or Jungle on a tile, which immediately adds to the production. This can be a very powerful technique and you get it early in the game since Chopping Woods comes with the Mining technology. And since this is something you might want to do in multiple cities, Magnus can get moved around a lot. Since many of the tiles you might want to put a District on contain Woods, you can maximize your output by first chopping the woods to help build something else before you plop down your District. Then there is the Level 1 Title Provision, which allows the city to produce Settlers without consuming any population from the city. This is fantastic in the early game when you can pick a city to pump out Settlers as fast as the Production allows without needing to wait for the population to replenish. In general, all of Magnus’s promotions boost Production.
• Moksha (The Cardinal) – His Default title is Bishop, which doubles the religious pressure from this city to other nearby cities, and gives +2 Faith per turn. and his Level 1 title Divine Architect allows you to purchase Districts with Faith. If you have created a Religion in this game you will be accumulating Faith, and this can be a great way to use some of it. Other promotions give you additional defensive strength as regards religious combat. Moksha is essential if you are going for a Religious victory, and can be handy in other circumstances. But you should definitely try to get him to that Divine Architect promotion to purchase Districts.
• Liang (The Surveyor) – Her Default Title is Guildmaster which gives all Builders trained in this city 1 added build charge. Her Level 1 title of Zoning Commissioner grants +20% Production towards building Districts. Her Level 1 title of Aquaculture allows the building of special Fisheries on coastal tiles. And they stay there even if she is moved to another city. They provide added Food to the city. Her Level 2 title Reinforced Materials protects all of the city’s Buildings, Improvements, and Districts from environmental effects. Liang is used initally to pump out Builders, so select a city with good production, assign her, and crank out Builders that can serve all of your cities. This is particularly valuable in the Early to Middle game when developing your tiles is important. Then you can reassign her to your Coastal Cities to build Fisheries. And then if you have a city subject to environmental effects (very often a city next to a volcano), put Liang there and never worry about having to repair damage.
• Pingala (The Educator) – His Default Title is Librarian, which grants +15% to both the Science and Culture output of the city. His Level 1 title Connoisseur gives +1 Culture per turn for each citizen in the city, and the other Level 1 Title Researcher gives +1 Science per turn for each Citizen. His Level 2 title Grants doubles the Great Person points per turn. Then his Level 3 title Curator doubles the Tourism earned from Great Works of Art, Writing, and Music. and another Level 3 title, Space Initiative grants +30% production for all space-program projects in the city. You can see from this that Pingala is a key Governor for anyone attempting either a Science Victory or a Culture Victory. In either case, make one city your center for either Culutre or Science, put Pingala there, and just keep promoting him. And if you are going for a Science victory, make sure this city is high production by building a fully developed Industrial Zone. Those space-program projects require a lot of production.
• Ibrahim (The Grand Vizier) – This Governor is only available to Suleiman, but if you are playing as the Ottomans you will have him as a choice. His Default Title of Pasha adds +20% to the production of military units in the city. His Level 1 titles are about improved combat strength, while his Level 2 and 3 titles have to do with alliances. Basically, the Ottomans are a very good Domination Victory civ, and Ibrahim complements this with his titles.

Because of the Loyalty effects (a Governor adds +8 Loyalty per turn to the city), you will often want to grab all of them. and a nice thing is that the Loyalty effect kicks in immediately when the Governor is assigned, there is no “travel time” lag. It is usually cities on the edge of your Empire and near to another Empire that will show Loyalty problems. You can monitor this by looking at the city’s Title Bar, and if it starts to get bad a red fist will start to show up on top of the city. When that happens, you want to move a Governor there right away while you deal with the underlying issue, which may be lack of amenities, or a shortage of Culture. So moving in a Governor is not necessarily a good long-term solution, but it can stop the bleeding, so to speak, while you address the root causes.

But once you have earned enough titles to have all 7 Governors, you need to make decisions about which ones to promote and when. In general Magnus is a strong governor for all of the production bonuses, and since Production is key to many Victory types you should probably get him at least a few promotions in any game you play, and particularly for a Domination victory. Pingala, as mentioned, is key for a Culture or Science victory, and he is one you will want to promote all the way to Level 3 to get the maximum benefit in either of those cases. Liang is not key to any particular kind of Victory. You might just get her and use her Default Title to get those improved Builders and never promote her at all, though if you are on an archipelago map or have a lot of Coastal cities you might want to promote her to the Aquaculture title to get those Fisheries. Amani is very useful in Culture victories or even Domination victories if you promote her to the Level 1 Emissary title. Victor is very useful for a Domination victory, but in an interesting way. In Civilization VI, the fact that you have conquered a city does not mean you can keep it. The enemy may counter-attack, and the loyalty of the citizens is not with you at this point. So assigning Victor to a newly conquered city does two useful things. It increases the defensive strength of the city against any counter-attack, and it give an immediate boost to Loyalty.

So as you can see how you use Governors is an important part of your strategy in Civilization VI. And you can get more details at the Civilization Wiki.