Even though Civilization 6 has reached its final stages as a game, it got one last piece of content recently - the Leader Pass. Throughout several months, three new leaders or personas would be released on a monthly basis for everyone who acquired the Leader Pass expansion for the game.
This guide will focus on one of the personas added with the last part of the pass, the Rulers of England collection. Here, players will learn everything they need to know about the Varangian persona added for Harald Hardrada - one of the original leaders in Civilization 6.
Updated on September 8, 2023, by Ashely Claudino: Civilization 6 released an update on August 29, 2023, to celebrate the game's 32nd anniversary. This update brought the Leader Pass to Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and Switch, so console gamers can now all enjoy the last Civilization 6 expansion as well.
Along with this update, the developers decided to revamp some leader abilities to make them more balanced, so gamers who have played with some of the Leader Pass leaders will experience some changes. This guide has been updated in order to remain accurate.
Features and Abilities
There are two versions of Harald Hardrada, but they are quite distinct and require players to play the game completely differently, unlike the Leader Pass Ptolemaic version of Cleopatra.
Comparing the Varangian variant of Harald Hardrada to his Konge counterpart, gamers will quickly notice that it does not get access to the Viking Longship unique naval melee unit. The unique ship and Konge Harald's ability were an important part of Hardrada's strategy since they allowed players to explore the sea right away, perform coastal raids, and receive easy early-game yields.
Without these unique features, Varangian Harald is taken in a totally different direction. His Varangian Guard leader ability will make Hardrada much more City-State-focused. Following the free August Update, Hardrada won't have to pay as much Gold maintenance whether playing vanilla or with the DLC packs, and the Stave Church will provide an additional Influence Point per turn.
Name | How it works | |
|---|---|---|
Leader Ability | Varangian Guard |
|
Civilization Ability | Knarr |
|
Unique Unit | Berserker |
|
Unique Improvement | Stave Church |
|
How To Play As Varangian Harald Hardrada
Although it may seem like Varangian Harald Hardrada is inclined toward a Domination Victory, he is quite versatile. Ultimately, his main objective throughout the game will be to become suzerain of as many City-States as possible in order to levy their armies and use these units to take down enemy units for impressive yields.
When setting up a game to play as Varangian Harald, the player might want to modify the advanced settings and add a few extra City-States.
Throughout the game, the player will need to focus on earning envoys and placing them into military-focused City-States. To get more envoys, gamers need to complete City-State quests, increase their Influence Points, and progress through the Civics tree.
Additionally, they will get a bonus envoy if they're the first to meet a City-State - so early exploration will be quite rewarding. On top of this, they can plug in the Diplomatic League policy card early on so that the first envoy sent to a City-State counts as two; gamers can also send governor Amani to a City-State to receive two extra envoys and plug the Charismatic Leader policy card to get +2 Influence Points per turn. Three envoys are the minimum required to become suzerain of a City-State and be able to levy their army.
Vangarian Harald Hardrada can be very versatile because he will increase his yields equally by fighting enemy units with levied warriors. Besides killing units, the player can then raid and pillage their enemies as they wish in order to increase Norway's yields, or they can simply watch the world burn and take down every city in the game in their own way. In the end, to play Vangarian Harald Hardrada, players should take advantage of his Varangarian Guard ability and then decide their victory condition as they go.
