I have been enjoying a civ/leader combination and wanted to discuss it more. Here are the basics and my setup:
Civs: Assyrian; Bulgarian; Bugandan
Leader/Mementos: Himiko High Shaman
Antiquity: Sword of Brennus, Kusanagi no Tsurugi
Exploration/Modern: Brush and Scroll, Kusanagi no Tsurugi
Game Setup: Deity, Continents Plus, Catastrophic Disasters, Crises on (but Plague off). I play on Epic speed with a 20 turn warning and the Regroup setting for transitions.
Rationale: This is a fun setup where military conquest and empire-building are designed to be synergistic. While normally in Civ 7, war is generally detrimental due to high happiness and production costs, this setup uses war and conquest to build the empire back home, advancing technology in antiquity and all yields in exploration. Himiko High Shaman and her associated memento create an incredibly strong culture and happiness setup, while the Assyrian bonuses advance technology and production. With the Sword of Brennus and a mild bonus to influence buildings, you have all of the major resources covered.
Introduction: I greatly enjoy the new changes that Civ 7 brought, but miss the ability of conquest in prior games (back to the original and Alpha Centauri) to bring resources back to your empire. I don’t mind the heavy combat penalty for Deity, as I think there are ways to adapt to this (more later) and really like the current age transitions. There are ways to game these (that this build takes advantage of), but in general I think the main thing lacking is a narrative tying the ages together – I think the mechanics actually work pretty well. I play on Continents Plus but this works even better on Pangea Plus, I just find that the massive number of city states really makes Pangea a lot easier, and the Exploration age suffers as you only get to see a few new islands.
Antiquity
Generally, for start locations, you are looking for standard good resources and a confluence of rivers. It’s pretty easy to find a settle where the Royal Library will provide 6+ science, and it’s not unusual to find a hex totally surrounded by rivers. Build some scouts, and pick up production, food and science from goody huts, if possible. Because of the Royal Library, you don’t need Writing early, and I favor Pottery/Animal Husbandry, followed by either Sailing if needed for exploration/good huts or Irrigation for the Garden and Hanging Gardens.
Because of Himiko High Shaman, your initial culture is pretty high. An early Cultural Exchange and Celebration can bring it up to around 25 or so, which can be as high as any of the Ais. You will rapidly research Chiefdom and then have a choice to make. You want all of the following 6 civics as soon as possible:
Mysticism for your Pantheon and Altar
Mysticism Mastery for the Great Stele
Discipline for the free Commander
Discipline Mastery for Gate of All Nations
Birtutu for the Citadel
Tupsarrutu for the Royal Library and codices on settlement capture
If you start Mysticism, you might get an early Altar. I usually grow my Capital to 4 and build a Warehouse building to get to 5 for my first Settler production, but if you get lucky with Culture, your first building can be the Altar. With Himiko’s bonus to Altar production, and a selection of one of the better pantheons, this can be excellent. At baseline, with no adjacencies, your Altar will produce 4 happiness, 3 culture and -1 science, and you can further boost this with Himiko’s bonus to culture and Classical Republic. Combined with your pantheon, this can be an amazing start and help you move quickly through the civics tree.
Starting Discipline you will get your free Turtanu early. Combine this with a few slingers and a warrior and go murder a few Independent Powers. Militaristic/Scientific powers make the most sense, especially if hostile, as the set production or science bonuses can accelerate your growth. You also get to level up your Turtanu, taking the key Initiative and Mobility Promotions.
If you start with Birtutu, you can get an early bonus to production with the Citadel and can shore up your weak science with the Royal Citadel. You can also buy/hard build a Turtanu PRIOR to researching Discipline, which means your free Turtanu will be your second (and more expensive) Turtanu. However, overall I think this is the weakest path, since the Assyrian civics take a long time to research and you have other early priorities.
In general, during this first phase of your empire, you want to get out a settlement or two, have a small army, build the Great Stele and be working on either your unique buildings or the Gate of All Nations moving forward. Although you get a bonus to Dur-Sharrukin, this is such a poor wonder I would only pick it up if you are already doing very well with all the other goals. Now, it’s time for war.
Hopefully by now, you have angered one of your neighbors. There’s no very good reason for polite greetings to any of the AIs (except one, see later). If you’ve forward settled and dispersed an independent power being befriended, you may already have been denounced or have a hostile relationship. This is ideal, providing it’s the right opponent.
So, what makes the right opponent? Simply, Carthage and not Mississippian. Carthage has all the things you are looking for: it’s unlikely their unique unit is online yet, they expand early and have several settlements available for capture, and they have a limited production base because they have to make everything in one city. Mississippian is a terrible opponent – their Burning Arrows will wreck your units on Deity, no matter how clever your strategy, and they can buy extra troops with ease. Roman Legions are also annoying, as is the Mayan Huilche, but the only AI that you really can’t afford to fight is Mississippians. They are the only ones worth of a polite greeting and you should avoid war until the end of antiquity.
You declare war. Your opponent has more troops, more settlements and a massive bonus to combat. What to do?
Well, tactics and your commander are key. Generally, on Deity, you can’t afford to slam your troops into theirs – they will kill you on the counterattack. You have to fight with a Fabian strategy – always retreating after ranged attacks, using blocker units to hold key positions while your ranged ones get to attack with impunity, and retreating to settlements for safety. Scouts are incredibly useful – they can take a single hit, look around for enemies, and sit in your commander to provide the stacked Mobility bonus all the time. Your goal in this first war is simple – don’t lose any troops for the first half of it, kill a few of the AI’s troops, and promote your commander again.
Then, with 3-5 turns before you can sue for peace, you want to do the following. First, finish Gate of All Nations. Combined with the +1 war support you get from your Militaristic Attribute point from murdering an early independent power, you should be even or ahead on war support with this. Then, take your commander with 2-3 warriors and 2-3 slingers (you can “carry” more than 4 if you unload/reload in tandem), head for an enemy settlement that your scouts have explored and that is relatively undefended. Speed is essential, as it’s quite possible that the AI will both send reinforcements to the settlement AND start attacking your settlements, now that your Turtanu is occupied. While you might normally sit back and use slingers to plink away at a settlement, use warriors buffed by the Turtanu ability to slam into the settlement instead. It’s ok to lose one or two, as long as you capture the settlement on or right before the first turn you can sue for peace. If you can capture two settlements, even better.
Now, peace talks. You can trade the newly captured settlement for a different one. This nets you 400 gold, 2 techs, 2 codices (+1 for the first capture quest). Use the gold to upgrade your Slingers if you get Bronze Working, or to buy a City. Congratulations, from here on out, it’s much easier!
Your Science has been suffering, but the addition of a few free techs and a Royal Library with a few codices should put you back on your feet. Befriending independent powers and getting free techs/civics can also help, although you may not get lucky with your choices of new friends. In general, since you don’t want to make friends with the other AI civilizations, you should have plenty of influence for befriending. Now, we need to talk about the Wheel.
Simply put, the Wheel is the best tech for you, and should be your next priority. You get your unique Magarru, the Catapult and the Villa, all of which are incredibly helpful moving forward. There’s even less point to building infantry units than ever, once you have the Magarru, and you should replace fallen infantry with these, and create new armies with a few of them paired with Archers and Catapults (this is still Deity, and slamming units into Walls hurts). The Villa is an amazing building for you – without ANY adjacencies, it provides 2 Influence, 7 Happiness, 6 Culture and -2 Science. Combine with the Monument for an overpowered Quarter, especially with decent adjacencies.
For most of the rest of Antiquity, this is the play pattern. You will have a strong core of 3-6 cities, making wonders, buildings and troops, while your armies take new towns and then return them/trade them to the Ais, picking up techs, codices and gold on the way. I like to have a total of 4 armies, and complete the Assault tree with my first commander, then going into the Logistics tree with Quartermaster and Looting after the Assault tree is completed for my first commander, and after Mobility and Initiative on the remaining commanders. You should almost always be at war with at least one of the AIs, and should declare war as soon as you are able, so that you can declare peace early after settlement capture and start another round of war.
Legacies and Age Transition
The legacy paths are relatively straightforward – Wonders being the biggest obstacle. Even giving away settlements, as long as you are regularly conquering, it is likely you will complete the Military Legacy path at some point. Ditto for Economic – while you won’t have many (or any) AI trading partners, trading with a few city-states and the resources present in the towns you conquer should put you over the top. Finally, you should be almost drowning in Codices, if things are going well. In order to complete 7 Wonders, you need to pay attention and keep a few cities working on them regularly. The Classical Republic celebration helping Wonder building may help, although you should only take this if building key or multiple Wonders, as you get such a huge Culture boost from the other choice. Himiko HS with her memento gets such large Culture production that you should move through the civic tree quickly to unlock them. Here are the ones I consider: Great Stele*, Gate of All Nations*, Hanging Gardens, Mundo Perdido, Oracle, Pyramids, Coliseum, Emile Bell, Nalanda, Ankor Wat and Weiyang Palace. Generally, the AI doesn’t seem to rush these quite as much, and some are hard for the AI to build due to restrictions. You should also try to capture the Mausoleum of Theodoric if built on your continent.
As you come to the end of Antiquity, there are a few things to consider. First, if you’ve selected either a 10 or 20 turn warning, you have an opportunity to juice your leader’s attributes by picking up many future techs. If you time things right, you can take a large number of settlements and pick up many of them before the Age ends. You will likely go way over settlement cap, but with Himiko’s happiness bonus, you can go considerably over the limit before your cities are unhappy, and they won’t have time to rebel (if you get the happiness crisis) before the Age ends.
Exploration
Exploration is much easier. Use your Silk Roads Legacy to keep your cities. You want 5-7 cities to exploit Bulgaria’s production bonus from pillaging. You’ve got a huge army with accomplished commanders, so with the Mausoleum of Theodoric, you can push your cities to produce buildings and then Culture Projects. These will rocket you through the Bulgarian civic tree, so you can pick up False Retreat and Strategems. Then you can change to Science Projects and rapidly research Shipbuilding to colonize the Distant Lands and get your troops over to attack new targets. You build the Rila Monastery first, and then can pick up most, if not all, of the remaining Wonders. You can rapidly build up towns and cities both with your pillaging bonuses, and can work Science/Culture Projects at the end of Exploration to get further Future Techs/Civics.
Legacy Paths are simple, with only Economic to worry about. Even if you never build a single Missionary, you will have plenty of Relics, and your original Citadels and Royal Libraries make great targets for specialists for the Science Path. Military is trivial – just pick up a few settlements and give them back once the path is complete. Notably, if you trade VERY unevenly – two or three settlements given to the AI, while you have the advantage in War Weariness – you will get lots of Influence. So grab up Distant Land settlements after pillaging, and then return them back en mass to their owners once there is nothing left to pillage. Economic is, as always, a challenge, but since you can get Shipbuilding incredibly quickly, it’s easily possible if you don’t get unluck with treasure resource distribution.
Modern
Modern at this point is trivial and you may not want to play it. If you do, Buganda’s pillage bonuses combined with Bulgarian traditions can create massive towns that constantly grow, before being reconverted to cities.
Thoughts? I've been enjoying Civ 7 quite a bit and this is my favorite of the leader/civ combos.
Civs: Assyrian; Bulgarian; Bugandan
Leader/Mementos: Himiko High Shaman
Antiquity: Sword of Brennus, Kusanagi no Tsurugi
Exploration/Modern: Brush and Scroll, Kusanagi no Tsurugi
Game Setup: Deity, Continents Plus, Catastrophic Disasters, Crises on (but Plague off). I play on Epic speed with a 20 turn warning and the Regroup setting for transitions.
Rationale: This is a fun setup where military conquest and empire-building are designed to be synergistic. While normally in Civ 7, war is generally detrimental due to high happiness and production costs, this setup uses war and conquest to build the empire back home, advancing technology in antiquity and all yields in exploration. Himiko High Shaman and her associated memento create an incredibly strong culture and happiness setup, while the Assyrian bonuses advance technology and production. With the Sword of Brennus and a mild bonus to influence buildings, you have all of the major resources covered.
Introduction: I greatly enjoy the new changes that Civ 7 brought, but miss the ability of conquest in prior games (back to the original and Alpha Centauri) to bring resources back to your empire. I don’t mind the heavy combat penalty for Deity, as I think there are ways to adapt to this (more later) and really like the current age transitions. There are ways to game these (that this build takes advantage of), but in general I think the main thing lacking is a narrative tying the ages together – I think the mechanics actually work pretty well. I play on Continents Plus but this works even better on Pangea Plus, I just find that the massive number of city states really makes Pangea a lot easier, and the Exploration age suffers as you only get to see a few new islands.
Antiquity
Generally, for start locations, you are looking for standard good resources and a confluence of rivers. It’s pretty easy to find a settle where the Royal Library will provide 6+ science, and it’s not unusual to find a hex totally surrounded by rivers. Build some scouts, and pick up production, food and science from goody huts, if possible. Because of the Royal Library, you don’t need Writing early, and I favor Pottery/Animal Husbandry, followed by either Sailing if needed for exploration/good huts or Irrigation for the Garden and Hanging Gardens.
Because of Himiko High Shaman, your initial culture is pretty high. An early Cultural Exchange and Celebration can bring it up to around 25 or so, which can be as high as any of the Ais. You will rapidly research Chiefdom and then have a choice to make. You want all of the following 6 civics as soon as possible:
Mysticism for your Pantheon and Altar
Mysticism Mastery for the Great Stele
Discipline for the free Commander
Discipline Mastery for Gate of All Nations
Birtutu for the Citadel
Tupsarrutu for the Royal Library and codices on settlement capture
If you start Mysticism, you might get an early Altar. I usually grow my Capital to 4 and build a Warehouse building to get to 5 for my first Settler production, but if you get lucky with Culture, your first building can be the Altar. With Himiko’s bonus to Altar production, and a selection of one of the better pantheons, this can be excellent. At baseline, with no adjacencies, your Altar will produce 4 happiness, 3 culture and -1 science, and you can further boost this with Himiko’s bonus to culture and Classical Republic. Combined with your pantheon, this can be an amazing start and help you move quickly through the civics tree.
Starting Discipline you will get your free Turtanu early. Combine this with a few slingers and a warrior and go murder a few Independent Powers. Militaristic/Scientific powers make the most sense, especially if hostile, as the set production or science bonuses can accelerate your growth. You also get to level up your Turtanu, taking the key Initiative and Mobility Promotions.
If you start with Birtutu, you can get an early bonus to production with the Citadel and can shore up your weak science with the Royal Citadel. You can also buy/hard build a Turtanu PRIOR to researching Discipline, which means your free Turtanu will be your second (and more expensive) Turtanu. However, overall I think this is the weakest path, since the Assyrian civics take a long time to research and you have other early priorities.
In general, during this first phase of your empire, you want to get out a settlement or two, have a small army, build the Great Stele and be working on either your unique buildings or the Gate of All Nations moving forward. Although you get a bonus to Dur-Sharrukin, this is such a poor wonder I would only pick it up if you are already doing very well with all the other goals. Now, it’s time for war.
Hopefully by now, you have angered one of your neighbors. There’s no very good reason for polite greetings to any of the AIs (except one, see later). If you’ve forward settled and dispersed an independent power being befriended, you may already have been denounced or have a hostile relationship. This is ideal, providing it’s the right opponent.
So, what makes the right opponent? Simply, Carthage and not Mississippian. Carthage has all the things you are looking for: it’s unlikely their unique unit is online yet, they expand early and have several settlements available for capture, and they have a limited production base because they have to make everything in one city. Mississippian is a terrible opponent – their Burning Arrows will wreck your units on Deity, no matter how clever your strategy, and they can buy extra troops with ease. Roman Legions are also annoying, as is the Mayan Huilche, but the only AI that you really can’t afford to fight is Mississippians. They are the only ones worth of a polite greeting and you should avoid war until the end of antiquity.
You declare war. Your opponent has more troops, more settlements and a massive bonus to combat. What to do?
Well, tactics and your commander are key. Generally, on Deity, you can’t afford to slam your troops into theirs – they will kill you on the counterattack. You have to fight with a Fabian strategy – always retreating after ranged attacks, using blocker units to hold key positions while your ranged ones get to attack with impunity, and retreating to settlements for safety. Scouts are incredibly useful – they can take a single hit, look around for enemies, and sit in your commander to provide the stacked Mobility bonus all the time. Your goal in this first war is simple – don’t lose any troops for the first half of it, kill a few of the AI’s troops, and promote your commander again.
Then, with 3-5 turns before you can sue for peace, you want to do the following. First, finish Gate of All Nations. Combined with the +1 war support you get from your Militaristic Attribute point from murdering an early independent power, you should be even or ahead on war support with this. Then, take your commander with 2-3 warriors and 2-3 slingers (you can “carry” more than 4 if you unload/reload in tandem), head for an enemy settlement that your scouts have explored and that is relatively undefended. Speed is essential, as it’s quite possible that the AI will both send reinforcements to the settlement AND start attacking your settlements, now that your Turtanu is occupied. While you might normally sit back and use slingers to plink away at a settlement, use warriors buffed by the Turtanu ability to slam into the settlement instead. It’s ok to lose one or two, as long as you capture the settlement on or right before the first turn you can sue for peace. If you can capture two settlements, even better.
Now, peace talks. You can trade the newly captured settlement for a different one. This nets you 400 gold, 2 techs, 2 codices (+1 for the first capture quest). Use the gold to upgrade your Slingers if you get Bronze Working, or to buy a City. Congratulations, from here on out, it’s much easier!
Your Science has been suffering, but the addition of a few free techs and a Royal Library with a few codices should put you back on your feet. Befriending independent powers and getting free techs/civics can also help, although you may not get lucky with your choices of new friends. In general, since you don’t want to make friends with the other AI civilizations, you should have plenty of influence for befriending. Now, we need to talk about the Wheel.
Simply put, the Wheel is the best tech for you, and should be your next priority. You get your unique Magarru, the Catapult and the Villa, all of which are incredibly helpful moving forward. There’s even less point to building infantry units than ever, once you have the Magarru, and you should replace fallen infantry with these, and create new armies with a few of them paired with Archers and Catapults (this is still Deity, and slamming units into Walls hurts). The Villa is an amazing building for you – without ANY adjacencies, it provides 2 Influence, 7 Happiness, 6 Culture and -2 Science. Combine with the Monument for an overpowered Quarter, especially with decent adjacencies.
For most of the rest of Antiquity, this is the play pattern. You will have a strong core of 3-6 cities, making wonders, buildings and troops, while your armies take new towns and then return them/trade them to the Ais, picking up techs, codices and gold on the way. I like to have a total of 4 armies, and complete the Assault tree with my first commander, then going into the Logistics tree with Quartermaster and Looting after the Assault tree is completed for my first commander, and after Mobility and Initiative on the remaining commanders. You should almost always be at war with at least one of the AIs, and should declare war as soon as you are able, so that you can declare peace early after settlement capture and start another round of war.
Legacies and Age Transition
The legacy paths are relatively straightforward – Wonders being the biggest obstacle. Even giving away settlements, as long as you are regularly conquering, it is likely you will complete the Military Legacy path at some point. Ditto for Economic – while you won’t have many (or any) AI trading partners, trading with a few city-states and the resources present in the towns you conquer should put you over the top. Finally, you should be almost drowning in Codices, if things are going well. In order to complete 7 Wonders, you need to pay attention and keep a few cities working on them regularly. The Classical Republic celebration helping Wonder building may help, although you should only take this if building key or multiple Wonders, as you get such a huge Culture boost from the other choice. Himiko HS with her memento gets such large Culture production that you should move through the civic tree quickly to unlock them. Here are the ones I consider: Great Stele*, Gate of All Nations*, Hanging Gardens, Mundo Perdido, Oracle, Pyramids, Coliseum, Emile Bell, Nalanda, Ankor Wat and Weiyang Palace. Generally, the AI doesn’t seem to rush these quite as much, and some are hard for the AI to build due to restrictions. You should also try to capture the Mausoleum of Theodoric if built on your continent.
As you come to the end of Antiquity, there are a few things to consider. First, if you’ve selected either a 10 or 20 turn warning, you have an opportunity to juice your leader’s attributes by picking up many future techs. If you time things right, you can take a large number of settlements and pick up many of them before the Age ends. You will likely go way over settlement cap, but with Himiko’s happiness bonus, you can go considerably over the limit before your cities are unhappy, and they won’t have time to rebel (if you get the happiness crisis) before the Age ends.
Exploration
Exploration is much easier. Use your Silk Roads Legacy to keep your cities. You want 5-7 cities to exploit Bulgaria’s production bonus from pillaging. You’ve got a huge army with accomplished commanders, so with the Mausoleum of Theodoric, you can push your cities to produce buildings and then Culture Projects. These will rocket you through the Bulgarian civic tree, so you can pick up False Retreat and Strategems. Then you can change to Science Projects and rapidly research Shipbuilding to colonize the Distant Lands and get your troops over to attack new targets. You build the Rila Monastery first, and then can pick up most, if not all, of the remaining Wonders. You can rapidly build up towns and cities both with your pillaging bonuses, and can work Science/Culture Projects at the end of Exploration to get further Future Techs/Civics.
Legacy Paths are simple, with only Economic to worry about. Even if you never build a single Missionary, you will have plenty of Relics, and your original Citadels and Royal Libraries make great targets for specialists for the Science Path. Military is trivial – just pick up a few settlements and give them back once the path is complete. Notably, if you trade VERY unevenly – two or three settlements given to the AI, while you have the advantage in War Weariness – you will get lots of Influence. So grab up Distant Land settlements after pillaging, and then return them back en mass to their owners once there is nothing left to pillage. Economic is, as always, a challenge, but since you can get Shipbuilding incredibly quickly, it’s easily possible if you don’t get unluck with treasure resource distribution.
Modern
Modern at this point is trivial and you may not want to play it. If you do, Buganda’s pillage bonuses combined with Bulgarian traditions can create massive towns that constantly grow, before being reconverted to cities.
Thoughts? I've been enjoying Civ 7 quite a bit and this is my favorite of the leader/civ combos.
