Obvious and Not so Obvious Civ and Policy Synergies

Sweden and Piety:

With To the Glory to God reformation belief you can purchase any Great Person with Faith, an obvious advantage for any civ but Sweden can use this to purchase the cheapest great person to gift to a city state. Also piety give you more faith which will mean some more great people.

Piety with France/Polynesia/Brazil:

The 3 most powerful civilization then it comes to culture, piety may not seems like that obvious choice but each civilization that follow your religion (I think this apply to civs that have founded their own religion as well was a long time since I played Civ 5) will get a nice tourism bonus that is more dependable then open borders and trade routes in the late game.

Piety will give you more faith and cheaper missionaries, the founder belief should be pilgrimage for the extra faith and the reformation should be Evangelism which will greatly help your religion, cheaper missionries are great as the enhancer while picking things that add more faith as follower belief are great (no buildings because faith is for missionaries and great people).

With all extra faith could mean an extra great musician in the end game and maybe some support great person you would otherwise not be able to get while your strong religion should greatly help you.

Something I stumbled on much earlier which I'm sure is common knowledge:

India's UA with Aesthetics Bonus Happiness is Culture Tenet - 40 Happiness becomes 20 culture/turn!

If you can build some colosseums and circus maximus - they contribute to culture!

Also with Netherlands UA is a good for this as well! Trade out luxuries for gold and buy culture/happiness buildings. Keep half the bonus and have money to buy more of this with the aesthetics bonuses.

Im not a fan of having surplus happines, golden ages can be gotten by Great Artist while the happines can be turned into population which I find is useally better.

GKShaman said:

India's UA with Aesthetics Bonus Happiness is Culture Tenet - 40 Happiness becomes 20 culture/turn!

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But how is this a particular strong synergy for India? Does not any civ with a happiness buff get a similar effect? For example, I would characterize Celts as offering more synergy with this SP. Their UB gives +2 happy and is on a building (Opera Hall) that has higher priority when focusing on the Aesthetics tree.

beetle said:

But how is this a particular strong synergy for India? Does not any civ with a happiness buff get a similar effect? For example, I would characterize Celts as offering more synergy with this SP. Their UB gives +2 happy and is on a building (Opera Hall) that has higher priority when focusing on the Aesthetics tree.

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With Traditions Monarchy and India Half the Unhappiness from Pop - Happiness mid game become a non issue. Especially since local unhappiness from pop because halve or a 66 percent cut (MadDjinn explained this in a youtube series).

So to grow to the fullest as India is very easy since every pop ISNT another point of unhappiness whereas for every other civ it IS.

Often as other civs (when im growing all my cities) every pop animation usually drops me on the scale. So at some point I have stop growing or go for social policies. With India this isnt a concern.

Celts UB is cool with +3 happiness BUT it will easily be outgrown in 20 turns or so. India's UA is active from T0 (Not great in the early).

So grabbing that Aesthetics policy - India will always be good at using it. In fact its easy. Hope I explained that well.

beetle said:

Their UB gives +2 happy and is on a building (Opera Hall) that has higher priority when focusing on the Aesthetics tree.

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To support your point more, it actually gives +3 happiness.

These are all probably obvious, but I'll state them anyways because they are teams normally not played.


Netherland: Protectionism
If you trade away your last luxury, you still retain 4 of the happiness, while another civ loses all 6.

Carthage: Meritocracy, Merchant Navy, Maritime infrastructure, Naval tradition, and Warrior Code

With Carthage, somebody mentioned meritocracy (which works well with messenger of the gods). Also the plus +1 gold for harbors, lighthouses and seaports makes all three maintenance free for them, while other civs still retain 2g net maintenance cost per city if they have all three. The free happiness is good. The added production to coastal cities policy also obviously works nicely for them, making exploration a pretty important tree for Carthage.

I also will take warrior code from honor if I need the second part of their UA for some reason, since it gives you a great general.

Ottomans : gunboat diplomacy
The ottomans UA works well with gunboat diplomacy, something I pretty much take every game with them if I need to keep city state influence. Very cheap and free naval units leads to really low sacrifice in opportunity cost when having your naval units on cs borders.

Yeah Carthage does quite well with a Liberty and Exploration game with coastal cities - although very frustrating if there is a Natural Wonder 4 tiles inland from a coastline.

Not sure if this really counts but if you play Denmark getting the Honor policies that grant a General and the Discipline policy and a Heroic Epic will see your medieval berserkers with a whopping +45% strength value. You really will terrorize your hapless neighbors.

You might ask can't any other civ do that - well sure but Denmark excels at it because the Berserker comes at Metal Casting rather than Steel and the timing is perfect - you're given enough time to develop your civ and then conquer. Rome for instance doesn't really have enough time to use the Legion as effectively

England's UA obviously gets even stronger with the Exploration opener and with Great Lighthouse its overkill.

Tyrvos said:

With Carthage, somebody mentioned meritocracy (which works well with messenger of the gods).

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Definitely worth calling out Carthage and MotG for this thread. Settle nothing but coasts as quickly as you dare -- those free harbors (unlocked with The Wheel) now provide substantial amounts of early science. OP really, and so much in contrast to how useless MotG tends to be otherwise. Works fine at Deity.

Most obvious:

Combine Secularism with Universal Suffrage, Civil Society, and Statue of Liberty. (Especially as Korea)

Second most obvious:
Combine Avandt Garde with Humanism. (Especially as Babylon)

joncnunn said:

Most obvious:

Combine Secularism with Universal Suffrage, Civil Society, and Statue of Liberty.

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as Korea

Please some list out all the synergies for HAC. I don't play that way enough to spot them all.

The most obvious one is:
- Honor's Professional Army + Autocracy's Militarism and Total War. All cities can produce units with 3 promotions, and also generate 6 extra local happiness.
Another good one:
- Honor finisher + Commerce's Meritocracy + Big Ben + Autocracy's Mobilization. Also various other Commerce/Autocracy policies that give gold or reduce maintenance cost help with this one. This will let you spam a lot of military, and the more units you kill the more gold you get and the more more military you get. This creates a self feeding loop, and as long as the AI is able to spam units you will become stronger and stronger.

Another not so obvious one is
- Honor's Military Caste + Commerce's Mercenary Army (+ Commerce's Meritocracy + Big Ben + Autocracy's Mobilization). This let's you have a cheap garrison in all cities, taking full advantage of the culture and happiness boost. The Landsknechts are able to move the turn they are purchased so you can basically cover all cities, even new conquered ones.

There are also a lot of situational bonuses/synergies that help for conquest in general, a lot of Honor and Autocracy tenets help with conquest, and having the happiness boost from Commerce and all those Autocracy tenets will help in keeping the war machine going forward. The Honor finisher will help you make a ton of gold even though you are in huge negative GPT. Wagon Trains will let you both spam roads to aid conquest, and make trade with caravans (which is safer during war) a little more profitable. Professional Army also helps with upgrading your military cheaper, which helps you in situations like when you are doing a CB rush, or Mongolia/Arabia CA rush, or Zulu (spamming spearmen and upgrading them as soon as researching Civil Service).

Of course there are a lot more, but this were the ones of the top of my head.

The Messiah enhancer belief (Great Prophets cost 25% less faith and have 25% increased conversion strength) is a great choice for Sweden, as you can use each prophet to spread your religion 3 times before gifting it to a city state. With good faith generating beliefs (I particularly like Pilgrimage and Mosques), you can gain half a dozen alliances this way while also gaining the benefits of a widespread religion and setting yourself up to faith buy other great people in the late game.

I remember reading something with Portugal how if you built Big Ben and took Mercantilism, you could purchase a Nau and use its Cargo Ship ability for an arbitrage profit. I tried it and it didn't work, but maybe someone on here has had different results?

Amrunril said:

The Messiah enhancer belief (Great Prophets cost 25% less faith and have 25% increased conversion strength) is a great choice for Sweden, as you can use each prophet to spread your religion 3 times before gifting it to a city state. With good faith generating beliefs (I particularly like Pilgrimage and Mosques), you can gain half a dozen alliances this way while also gaining the benefits of a widespread religion and setting yourself up to faith buy other great people in the late game.

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I have never been allowed to gift prophets to city-states as Sweden, have you?

You can gift prophets as Sweden, as long as they have at least 1 spread mission left.

I swear I have never been allowed to do that.