In Civ 6, every type of victory depends in part upon having funds. If you’re going for a domination victory, you need to have an expensive standing army. If you want a cultural victory, you need to pay maintenance costs to maintain many buildings. Whatever your path, you need to produce funds to make it happen.
In Civ 6, there are many ways to get money: through trade, certain building types, adjacency bonuses, and, in the appropriate modes, through heroes, industries, and corporations. You’ll also get money by exploring the map and encountering “goody huts” or by clearing barbarian encampments, especially in Barbarian Clans Mode.
Here are the best civs and leaders to run if you want to make easy, sustainable money.
5 Best Money-Making Civs and Leaders
Because some civs have multiple leader options, I’ve been specific about the most effective combinations.
Mansa Musa of the Mali Empire
Historically, Mansa Musa was the richest man in history — and that includes current billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates. In Civ VI, Mansa Musa is available in the Gathering Storm expansion. He has a phenomenal leader ability: Sahel Merchants. Whenever he enters a Golden Age, Mansa’s trade route capacity increases by 1 — permanently. Additionally, all of his international trade routes provide an extra gold per flat desert tile in the trade route’s origin. This adds up quickly. To make things even better, he has a more lucrative Commercial Hub replacement.
With Mansa, your best strategy is to build trade routes early (and protect them), stack all possible trade bonuses, found cities surrounded by dessert tiles, then rake in the money. Get used to completing lots of items and upgrades with money alone.
Joao III of Portugal
Whenever Joao III meets a new civilization for the first time, he gets +1 to his trade capacity. This is his leader ability, Porta do Cerco. Keep this in mind when you set up your game: the more civs you include, the more trade routes you can have. While this decreases your odds of victory, it’s extremely lucrative.
Build harbors and Commercial Hubs to excel with Joao, but don’t forget that his abilities rely on coastal trade (so you have to develop Seafaring tech, and all the sea-related techs that grant you sea movement bonuses, as soon as possible to get the maximum range for your traders).
Portugal is only able to trade with coastal cities or cities that have harbors. While this makes the civ a tough one to play depending on the map, the trade-offs are worth it: Joao’s merchants can travel further on the sea, and they can immediately embark. Combine this with the aforementioned seafaring movement bonuses, and you’ll crush any other civ when it comes to coastal trade.
Tip: If you’re all about coastal regions and trade, England and Polynesia are also worthy of consideration.
Jadwiga of Poland
Jadwiga is an ideal blend of a money-making monarch and a master of religion. The key to making money as Jadwiga is, of course, through faith and relics. Her bonuses are built on relics, which means you should consider joining the Voidsingers secret society ASAP.
As they advance through the ages, Voidsingers grant cultists, which you buy through faith. These are relatively inexpensive to buy, and you can create them en masse. When cultists expend their last charge (to reduce loyalty in opponents’ cities), they have a chance of generating relics.
For Jadwiga, every relic generates +2 faith, +2 culture, and +4 gold. You can also stack with relics generated by heroes if you’re playing with Heroes & Legends enabled. If you’d like to run a religious victory while ensuring wealth, Jadwiga is the way to go.
Trajan of the Roman Empire
If you’re keen on a domination victory and like funding your military with lots of gold resources and stacking bonuses, consider playing as Trajan.
Trajan is all about making money through expansion and creating a huge empire fast. To make money as Trajan, you’ll want to rush Engineering in your tech tree. Rome’s internal trade routes (though international also help) provide massive money bonuses thanks to the “All Roads Lead to Rome” mechanic. Bank your money, because you’ll want to upgrade to Legions as soon as possible, which may happen before you get the corresponding policy card to reduce upgrade costs. The Legion is your bread and butter for an army of domination in Rome.
Victoria of England
Known for her expansive empire, Queen Victoria uses the resources at her disposal to make wealth generate even more wealth. True to her historical nature, Victoria shines when her forces set sail and she starts to colonize other continents.
The Gathering Storm update provided an alteration to Victoria’s existing Pax Britannica leader ability, which created a real game changer in terms of how much income her ability can generate. Previously, Pax Britannica permitted a free melee unit with every new founded city outside of her own continent. (This in itself is a cost-saving feature, as it costs money and/or production to generate a unit for each city, or to make one and ship it across the sea with your settlers.)
With the update, this free melee unit only applies to the first city on each continent — however, the trade-off is worth it: you get a trade route when you found a city on a new continent as well. This is a major incentive to play a colonialist game as Victoria.
Combined with her prowess for seafaring, this ability makes Victoria a veritable trade powerhouse on any map with an ocean.
If you’re trying out new strategies, it’s advisable to pick a civ and leader amenable to easy money generation and/or trade. This makes these top five money making leaders and civs ideal for experimenting with new techniques in the game.
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