Note: This guide assumes you have all game-altering DLC and expansion packs (all Civ packs, Wonders of the Ancient World, Gods & Kings and Brave New World.)



There are forty-three playable Civilizations, all of which have their own unique advantages. Some of these are obvious - Babylon is very good at scientific victories for example. But some features of Civs are less well-documented, or less well-known, such as the fact Greece's units can enter the lands of City-States without losing influence no matter the level of influence they have. Some features can be unclear, such as how the Shoshone defensive bonus works. And some features have interesting applications or strategies that aren't always well known.

This guide is about compiling those little interesting details about Civs, free from the discussion of general strategies. Find out more about your favourite Civs, or discover something about a Civ you may have previously written off.

If you want to know more about certain Civs, there's links to full guides for every single one at the end of this guide. They're generally intended for singleplayer below Deity difficulty.




This guide has a section for each Civ, divided into tricks, hidden features and clarifications.

Tricks are interesting and/or unusual things you can do with a Civ's uniques or starting bias. An example of this is how Brazil can use the Freedom tenet Volunteer Army, and then upgrade all the Foreign Legions into their UU to get 6 Pracinhas with a 20% bonus in foreign lands quickly.

Hidden features are unique features Civs have which aren't featured in the Civilopedia - both positive and negative. One example is how Merchants of Venice can move two tiles a turn more than regular Great Merchants while embarked.

The clarifications section clears up features of Civs sometimes (or often) believed to be true but aren't, or those often not understood. Sometimes, this is can be unintentional, such as how ranged mounted units (Chariot Archers, Keshiks, Camel Archers, etc) don't take an extra 50% damage from Spearmen and Pikemen despite their Civilopedia entry claiming they do.

Throughout the guide, gold and production costs given assume a normal-speed game. To adjust for other game speeds:

• Multiply by 0.67 for quick-speed games
  
• Multiply by 1.5 for epic-speed games
  
• Multiply by 3 for marathon-speed games

Finally, keep in mind this guide is intended as a reference rather than necessarily to be read from start to finish. As such, there may be repetition within certain sections to account for this.


This guide will be using some terms that might be unfamiliar to some players, so here's a glossary of those.

Beelining - Getting a technology quickly by only researching it and its requirements, and nothing else until the technology has finished being researched.

Building tall - See Tall Empire - "building tall" is the process of making your empire a tall one.

Building wide - See Wide Empire - "building wide" is the process of making your empire a wide one.

Early-game - Defined as the ancient and classical eras in my guides. Other players may define the early game differently.

GWAM - Collective name for Great Writers, Artists and Musicians, the three types of Great People which can create Great Works.

ITR - Short for International Trade Route. These are trade routes between different Civs (the ones that give you gold rather than production or food.)

Late-game - Defined as the industrial and modern eras in my guides.

Melee mounted / Mounted melee unit - Horsemen, Knights, Lancers and Cavalry, along with all unique units replacing them (with the exception of Camel Archers and Keshiks.)

Melee unit - In this guide, "melee unit" refers to military units that don't have a ranged attack. "Standard melee unit" refers to the class of unit including Warriors, Swordsmen, Longswordsmen, Spearmen, Pikemen, unique units replacing them, Landsknechte and Spain's Tercios.

Mid-game - Typically the medieval and renaissance eras in my guides. This differs slightly from the offical definition (Gatling Guns are described as a mid-game unit but come in the industrial era.)

Ranged mounted / Mounted ranged unit - Chariot Archers, unique units replacing them, Camel Archers and Keshiks.

Spotter - A unit used to provide a line of sight to ranged units with a higher range than sight, enabling them to use their full range.

Standard melee unit - See Melee unit

Start bias - Many (but not all) Civs have increased odds of starting near certain terrains. That's the start bias. Often, the start bias synergises with at least one unique feature of the Civ (Morocco, for example, is biased to start near desert, which it needs to construct its unique improvement.)

Tall empire - A low number of cities with a high population each. Tall cities tend to be better at building wonders, generating Great People and are easy to manage. On the downside, they're disadvantaged when it comes to founding religions.

UA - Short for Unique Ability, the unique feature that doesn't have to be built. Every Civ has their own version of this.

UB - Short for Unique Building, a special building that can only be built by one Civ and replaces an existing one. Not every Civ has this - ones that don't have a Unique Improvement, Unique Great Person or second Unique Unit instead.

UGP - Short for Unique Great Person. There's only two in the game - Mongolia's Khans (replacing Great Generals) and Venice's Merchants of Venice (replacing Great Merchants.) These are improved versions of their generic counterparts, with additional features. Civs besides Mongolia and Venice can get these randomly by completing the Patronage Social Policy tree and allying with City-States.

UI - In this guide, UI is short for Unique Improvement, a special tile improvement that can only be built by one Civ. Unlike Unique Units, Buildings and Great People, these do not replace a generic tile improvement. Not to be confused with "User Interface".

Uniques - A collective name for Unique Abilities, Buildings, Units, Improvements and Great People.

UU - Short for Unique Unit, a special unit unique to one Civ which replaces an existing one. Every Civ has one of these, and some have two. If a particular Civ isn't in the game, it's may be possible to obtain their UU as a different Civ (so long as it's a land-based UU) by allying with a militaristic City-State.

Very-late game - Collective name for the atomic and information eras used in my guides.

Wide Empire - A high number of cities with a low population each. Wide empires tend to be better at getting gold, building large armies and developing religions, but often struggle with happiness.

A common area for confusion or incorrect assumptions concerns start biases. Many, but not all Civs are more likely to start in or near a particular type of terrain. These are not guaranteed to be your starting location. Start biases can be disabled in the advanced options when setting up a new game.

Note that civs with coastal start biases are placed before those with terrain-based ones. Venice is placed before all of those civs as well. A civ with a coastal start bias which doesn't get placed on the coast will be granted a river start bias, which comes after coastal start biases but before terrain-based ones.

Unique Ability: Manifest Destiny

• The sight bonus combined with a Scout with the Scouting II promotion has a sight of 5. If you place a Scout on a hill three tiles or less away from a city, you can see its entire workable area - excellent for spying on enemies.
  
• The sight bonus cancels out the sight penalty siege units have, enabling them to hit units up to 2 tiles away without a spotter.

Unique Unit I: Minuteman

• Backed by an Armoury, Minutemen can get immediately to the Siege promotion - giving you a unit that's both effective against cities and mobile enough to get to them quickly.

Unique Unit II: B17

• B17s never obsolete, so in the very-late game, you can build them for their promotions and then upgrade them cheaply to Stealth Bombers.
  
  • Stealth Bombers can't be placed on Carriers, so not upgrading some B17s may still be useful for getting a foothold on new continents.

Start Bias

• America doesn't have a starting bias. The game's code has a river start bias for America, but it's disabled, meaning they're no more or less likely to start next to a river than anyone else.

Unique Unit I: Minuteman

• All unique promotions carry over on upgrade.
  
• The Golden Age points on kill attribute has no effect when you're already in a Golden Age.

Start Bias

• The desert start bias Arabia has makes it easy to use the powerful Desert Folklore Pantheon to rapidly found a religion.
  
• A desert start bias also is great for getting a better chance of grabbing the Petra wonder. The extra trade route it offers certainly goes nicely with your UA, and the production/food bonus makes powerful oasis and desert oil tiles with a Bazaar.

Unique Ability: Ships of the Desert

• Boosts to religious spread (the Religious Texts Enhancer belief, the Religious Unity Enhancer belief, the Grand Temple National Wonder and the World Religion decision in the World Congress) all stack with your UA's double-pressure-on-trade routes ability.
  
  • These factors all stack multiplicatively, so with all the above except Religious Unity, that comes to 7.5 times the normal religious spread from trade routes that other Civs with none of the bonuses would have.
    
  • Try stacking as many bonuses as possible, then sending lots of trade routes to a specific city of a rival religion to rapidly convert it. Keep in mind you need 100 pressure in total to convert a citizen, which can be spread over many turns.
• The doubled quantities of oil stack with the Autocracy ideology's Third Alternative tenet to make quadruple quantities!

Unique Unit: Camel Archer

• As the unit retains the ability to move after attacking, it's able to move within city range, fire and move out in a single turn. Camel Archers therefore are excellent against cities, although they can't capture them by themselves. Bring a non-upgraded Horseman or Lancer along with them to be able to safely finish the city off.

Unique Building: Bazaar

• The Bazaar will double the quantities of Indonesia's unique luxuries (nutmeg, cloves and pepper.) So, not only can you get a monopoly of a resource type, but you don't have to just trade your excess to one Civ at a time.

Unique Ability

• The "double oil quantities" means your oil made from your own oil wells and offshore platforms will produce twice the normal amount. Oil you obtain from City-States or trading won't be doubled.

Unique Unit: Camel Archer

• Camel Archers are classed as ranged units rather than mounted units, meaning:
  
  • Bonuses against mounted units do not affect them (e.g. Spearmen, Pikemen, Lancers)
    
  • They will use ranged promotions
    
  • Stables won't help you build them faster, but the Temple of Artemis will.
• Camel Archers actually resist ranged attacks (including city attacks) better than regular Knights do as land-based ranged units use their ranged strength when defending against ranged attacks.
  
• Melee-specific promotions (Shock, Drill, etc.) earned by Horsemen do not work when upgraded to Camel Archers (with the exception of Blitz,) and ranged-specific promotions earned by Camel Archers (with the exception of Logistics) do not work when the unit's upgraded to Cavalry.

Unique Ability: Treasures of Nineveh

• For the technology-stealing ability to work, you need to make such your enemy has at least one technology you don't have. As such, try focusing on military technologies and using conquests to soak up the rest.

Unique Unit: Siege Tower

• If you're attacking cities with Siege Towers, always bring them in pairs as they can apply the Sapper bonus (when adjacent to an enemy city, friendly land units within 2 tiles gain a 50% attack bonus against that city) to each other.

Unique Building: Royal Library

• Always move your Great Writings to the Royal Libraries in the cities where you're building (or buying) units in. The XP offered is enough for the unit's first promotion if it's not receiving extra starting XP from anywhere else.

Unique Unit: Siege Tower

• The Sapper bonus works even while the Siege Tower is embarked. This means you can make use of that 50% city-attack bonus even in the late-game - just be sure to escort it with a strong naval unit.

Unique Ability: Treasures of Nineveh

• The technology-stealing ability even works when capturing City-States. Look at the yields of tile improvements within their limits and their military units to get an idea of whether they have a technology you don't or not.

Unique Unit: Siege Tower

• The Sapper bonus does not carry over if you upgrade Siege Towers. However, melee promotions you earn will still be useful on upgrade.
  
• Melee-specific promotions (Drill, Shock, etc.) earned by Siege Towers do not work when upgraded to Trebuchets (with the exceptions of Blitz and Siege.)

Unique Building: Royal Library

• When the Great Writing slot is filled, it grants new units 10XP - less than that offered by XP buildings (Barracks, Armouries and Military Academies add 15XP each)

Unique Ability: Diplomatic Marriage

• Once you have Radar, you can marry a City-State on another continent, buy an Airport there and airlift in an army. This allows you to invade new continents without needing a navy.
  
• If another Civ has conquered a City-State, you can liberate and then annex it via your UA (after 5 turns,) to give yourself a city at the expense of another Civ, while reducing your warmonger penalites. Liberated cities are automatically allied to you, so you don't need to worry about paying to gain influence.
  
• If you have lots of obsolete units which you can't currently afford to upgrade, try gifting them to a City-State, waiting for them to upgrade it, then annexing the city. Although City-States are costlier to annex when they have more units, the increased cost is typically lower than the cost of upgrading the unit, especially in the mid-game when unit upgrades cost the most.

Unique Unit: Hussar

• Autocracy's Lightning Warfare is amazing with upgraded Hussars. Ignoring Zone of Control makes surrounding units and stacking flanking bonuses super-easy.

Unique Building: Coffee House

• Build cities next to rivers or lakes so you can build both Gardens and Coffee Houses there for a 50% bonus to Great Person Points.

Unique Ability: Diplomatic Marriage

• In normal-speed games, the cost of annexing a City-State starts at 500 gold and scales with the number of units owned by the City-State.
  
• The turn you first allied with a City-State does not count as one of the 5 consecutive turns before they can be married.
  
• The cost of marrying a City-State scales with the number of units they control. All the units controlled by the City-State (including ones outside their own lands) become under your control. If the City-State has more than one city, you will gain them all.
  
• All buildings present in a City-State are retained when the city is puppeted or annexed.
  
• Annexed City-States do not count as occupied, and as such creates no more unhappiness than puppeting the city.
  
• An annexed or puppeted City-State loses its original capital status, and hence is able to be razed by rivals and is unable to become a City-State once more. The number of delegates needed to win diplomatic victory is adjusted accordingly.
  
• Annexing or puppeting mercantile City-States destroys their unique luxuries.

Unique Unit: Hussar

• The increase to the flanking bonus carries over on upgrade; the sight and speed bonuses do not.
  
• The 50% increase to the flanking bonus means the Hussar deals 15% extra damage for every friendly unit adjacent to the unit it's attacking, rather than 10%. The promotion only affects the unit that has it - it won't increase the flanking bonuses of adjacent Riflemen, for example.

Unique Ability: Sacrifical Captives

• The Aztec UA stacks with Honour's Opener to give you twice a Barbarian unit's strength (or ranged strength if it's higher) as culture

Unique Unit: Jaguar

• As Warriors get turned into Spearmen if they get the "advanced weapons" outcome from Ancient Ruins, and all Jaguar promotions carry over on upgrade, you can potentially have Spearmen, Pikemen, Lancers, Anti-Tank Guns and Helicopter Gunships with the bonuses Jaguars have.
  
  • The Woodsman promotion has no effect on Helicopter Gunships, but otherwise all the bonuses are intact.

Unique Unit: Jaguar

• All unique attributes carry over on upgrade.
  
• Unlike the bonuses held by Ottoman Janissaries or Indonesian Kris Swordsmen with the Recruitment promotion, the health-on-kills attribute works when killing Barbarian units.
  
• No health is restored when capturing civilian units.

Unique Building: Floating Gardens

• The multiplier on Floating Gardens is a food bonus as opposed to the more common growth bonus - these are distinct from each other.
  
  • Food bonuses modify food supplies before some is eaten by citizens, meaning it increases the maximum size the city can grow to. The Temple of Artemis wonder also offers a food bonus (even though the description confusingly calls it a "growth" bonus.)
    
  • Growth bonuses modify food supplies after some is eaten by citizens, meaning it only impacts how quickly a city can grow. Growth bonuses are less effective than food ones as a result.
• Lake Victoria is not affected by the food bonus on lakes.

Unique Ability: Ingenuity

• Place your first Academy adjacent to your capital so it's hard for Barbarians to pillage it.
  
• The Great Library, Oracle, Porcelain Tower, Red Fort, Brandenburg Gate and Hubble Space Telescope are the world wonders offering Great Scientist points - worth going for if you want to maximise your Great Scientist output.

Unique Ability: Walls of Babylon

• A city with the Walls of Babylon has the same health as a city with Walls, a Castle and an Arsenal - the latter has over 8 times the construction cost!

Unique Ability: Ingenuity

• The free Great Scientist does not increase the cost of future Great Scientists, Engineers or Merchants.
  
• The bonus to Great Person generation stacks additively with other bonuses (so just the UA and a Garden would give a 75% bonus to Great Scientist production)

Unique Unit: Pracinha

• You can take the Volunteer Army tenet from the Freedom ideology and then upgrade the Foreign Legions you receive to get 6 Pracinhas with a 20% foreign lands bonus.
  
• If a Civ has at least 10 points of unhappiness (you can tell by clicking on the tourism icon at the top of the screen, then going to "cultural victory,") that means Barbarian rebels can spawn in their land. Try getting Open Borders with the Civ and sending Pracinhas there, so you can get Golden Age points from kills without having to declare war on anyone.

Unique Improvement: Brazilwood Camp

• If you have the Sacred Path Pantheon, it will increase the tourism yield of Brazilwood Camps. This only works if you have a Brazilwood Camp on the tile.

Unique Ability: Carnival

• The doubled tourism output during Golden Ages affects base tourism (before modifiers such as ideological tenets, Open Borders and the like come into play) meaning it stacks multiplicatively with other bonuses.
  
• The bonus to GWAM generation does not affect base Great Person Points, and stacks additively with other bonuses.

Unique Unit: Pracinha

• The unique attribute carries over on upgrade.
  
• The Golden Age points on kill attribute has no effect when you're already in a Golden Age.

Unique Improvement: Brazilwood Camp

• Culture from Brazilwood Camps is added to tourism with the appropriate buildings - it's not just restricted to Moai, Chateaux and Landmarks.

Unique Ability: Patriarchate of Constantinople

Byzantium's UA is very flexible and there's all sorts of crazy religious combinations you can make. Here's a few, but it's by no means an exhaustive list.

• By taking two religious buildings as Follower beliefs, a third as a bonus belief and the Sacred Sites Reformation belief in your religion, you can win an early cultural victory so long as you also can build plenty of cities and have a strong faith output to keep buying religious buildings with.
  
• The Itinerant Preachers Enhancer belief allows cities to contribute pressure from further away, meaning your religion should spread faster providing you have a cluster of cities of your faith in the first place. Byzantium can combine this with Religious Texts for even faster passive religious spread. Unity of the Prophets as well will make your religion's presence particularly hard to remove.
  
• Faith Healers is excellent when used with aircraft, as they can heal rapidly between bombing raids or interceptions, but it's often risky to pick up being a Pantheon belief that doesn't generate faith (hence putting you at a severe disadvantage towards founding a religion.) Byzantium can have the best of both worlds, using a faith-based Pantheon and Faith Healers as the bonus belief.

Unique Unit I: Dromon

• Because Dromons upgrade to Galleasses (instead of Caravels) yet still obsolete at Astronomy, there's a brief window of time you can build both Dromons and Galleasses. It's 11% cheaper (assuming no cost modifiers) to buy a Dromon and upgrade it to a Galleass than it is to directly buy a Galleass.
  
  • In fact, it might be worth not building Galleasses at all - Dromons deal only 12% less damage to other naval units (assuming no promotions) but are 44% cheaper to build and 33% faster.

Unique Ability: Patriarchate of Constantinople

• Byzantium gets an extra 20 points to score when founding a religion compared to other Civs due to the way the scoring system takes account of the bonus belief.

Patriarchate of Constantinople

• You can't choose a Reformation belief as your bonus belief, but you may take any other that hasn't already been taken.
  
• If you take a Pantheon belief as your bonus belief, it will not be treated as a Pantheon for the purposes of the Religious Tolerance Social Policy.

Unique Unit I: Dromon

• The 50% bonus against other naval units does not carry over on upgrade.
  
• While land-based ranged units use their ranged strength when defending against ranged attacks, naval ranged units use their melee strength instead. This means Dromons are always weaker in defence than Triremes are.

Unique Unit II: Cataphract

• None of the unique features carry over on upgrade.

Unique Ability: Phoenician Heritage

Mountain-crossing

• Warrior Code in the Honour Social Policy tree is the fastest way to get an early Great General, allowing you to start crossing mountains nice and early.
  
• Units on mountains can see their full sight range in all directions, not blocked by rough terrain or other mountains. Try moving a Scout with the Scouting II promotion on and off a mountain to spy on a large area.
  
• Fast units work brilliantly with mountain ranges: They can cross the mountain range, do some damage and pull out before the enemy can properly respond. Until Artillery and planes become available, it's very hard for other Civs to deal with threats like that.

Free Harbours

• If you haven't built any roads, one Barbarian or enemy ship near your capital can cut off your entire city connection network. To greatly reduce that risk, link your capital to at least one other coastal city by road.
  
• Because of your free Harbours everywhere, you can build Seaports sooner in new cities - great for getting their production up.

Unique Ability: Phoenician Heritage

• Carthage can build roads on mountains! Be sure to keep moving the Workers out during the construction process so they don't get killed by the -50HP/turn effect.
  
  • These roads do not allow other Civs to cross mountains - it's still the case that only Carthage can do so.

Unique Unit II: African Forest Elephant

• African Forest Elephants cost half as much to upgrade compared to regular Horsemen (50 instead of 100 gold in normal-speed games)

Unique Ability: Phoenician Heritage

Mountain-crossing

• The pathing system for land units does not take account of the fact they may end their turn on mountains. Always be aware when sending your armies long distances or setting units to explore.
  
• You can never cross Natural Wonders, even the mountainous ones.

Free Harbours

• Harbours cannot form city connections until you have The Wheel.
  
• Your free Harbours are technology-free, production-free and maintenance-free.

Unique Unit II: African Forest Elephant

• The Feared Elephant bonus does not carry over on upgrade (for obvious reasons.) The Great Generals II promotion, however, is kept.
  
• Great Generals II increases the unit's contribution to the Great General counter by 100%.

Unique Ability: Druidic Lore

• God-King is powerful in the earliest turns of the game, and the Celts can usually found a Pantheon much earlier than anyone else. Put the two together, and you can get off to a great start.

Unique Unit: Pictish Warrior

• A good way to account for the lack of a bonus against mounted units is to give lots of your units Shock or Accuracy promotions; open terrain is where mounted units normally perform better in.
  
• Try keeping some Barbarian encampments standing so you can kill units for faith without having to declare war on anyone.
  
• Because pillaging costs no movement points, only performing that action and nothing else won't interrupt per-turn fortification healing. This means you can heal 35 health in a single turn - or more with Medic promotions.

Unique Building: Ceilidh Hall

• The high happiness contribution from this building coupled with its cultural nature works well with the Order ideology's Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Unique Unit: Pictish Warrior

• The faith-on-kills attribute does not carry over on upgrade. Free pillaging and the Foreign Lands Bonus, however, do.

Unique Ability: The Art of War

• African War Elephants, Companion Cavalry, Keshiks and Samurai all have bonuses to Great General gain and can potentially be obtained through alliances with Militaristic City-States, so long as their respective Civs aren't in the game. That works nicely with your unique bonus to Great General gain.
  
• Got lots of excess Great Generals? Try getting a few together and chaining Citadels to steal a significant amount of land from an enemy. Excellent for assaulting those particularly tricky cities.

Unique Unit: Chu-Ko-Nu

• Because Chu-Ko-Nus can attack twice, they can get two loads of XP (and two loads of Great General contribution.) Try to get them to the Range promotion so they remain useful when upgraded.
  
• Normally, getting the Logistics promotion on Chu-Ko-Nu have no effect. There's three ways to circumvent this, all of which require increasing the unit's maximum movement:
  
  1. As China, get a Scout to the Scouting III promotion, get it upgraded through Ancient Ruins and then promote it all the way to a Chu-Ko-Nu.
     
  2. As Persia, get a Chu-Ko-Nu as a gift from a militaristic City-State and enter a Golden Age.
     
  3. As Denmark, get a Chu-Ko-Nu as a gift from a militaristic City-State. Once you have Astronomy, you can move it from being embarked adjacent to a coastline onto land and still have three moves remaining.

Unique Building: Paper Maker

• Sovereignity, a Social Policy from the Rationalism tree, causes Paper Makers to generate even more money. Unlike a reduced maintenance cost (which would be the case for all other Civs) extra cash can be increased through gold modifiers, such as Markets, Banks and Stock Exchanges. As such, the policy can make slightly more money for China than anyone else.

Unique Ability

• The bonus to Great General gain isn't actually 50% consistently due to the way the bonuses are calculated. It's especially odd once you've taken the left-hand side of the Honour tree. Click here for more complete details.

Unique Ability: The Art of War

• Khans (which you can obtain from allied City-States with the Patronage tree complete) and Heroism Kris Swordsmen (which may be able to be obtained of allied militaristic City-States if Indonesia isn't in your game) benefit from your UA's increase to Great General combat bonuses.
  
• The increased Great General bonus does work on cities, meaning China is a fair bit more effective at taking them down than other Civs.

Unique Unit: Chu-Ko-Nu

• Land-based ranged units use their ranged strength when defending against ranged attacks, but their melee strength against melee attacks. As such, Chu-Ko-Nus are weaker at defending against ranged attacks (including cities) than regular Crossbowmen.
  
• The double-attack attribute carries over on upgrade.
  
• The Logistics promotion won't let you attack three times with Chu-Ko-Nus unless you have a method of increasing their maximum movement (see the tricks section)

Unique Ability: Viking Fury

Disembarkment

• When a unit disembarks, the number of movement points it has remaining is the same as if the unit moved the same distance by sea. For example, if an embarked Catapult with three moves was adjacent to land, then disembarked, it'd have two movement points remaining - enough to set up and fire.
  
  • Because the movement points remaining on a unit is based on the number of movement points it had while embarked, slow units gain more out of this UA than fast ones. This, coupled with the high mobility of both of Denmark's UUs, minimises the need for mounted units in Danish armies.
• The ability to disembark without ending a unit's turn allows you to disembark a Settler and found a city immediately (meaning if there's Barbarians in the area, they can't capture the Settler.) This saves you having to escort it with a land unit.
  
• Disembarking without depleting movement points also can shave a turn off Worker, Archaeologist or Great Person actions - they can get to work immediately after entering a new landmass.

Free pillaging

• Because pillaging costs no movement points, only performing that action and nothing else won't interrupt per-turn fortification healing. This means you can heal 35 health in a single turn - or more with Medic promotions.

Unique Unit I: Berserker

• The Berserker is available before the Swordsman obsoletes, and can still be built after Musketmen become available. Buying a Swordsman and upgrading it to a Berserker is 11% cheaper than buying a Berserker directly, while buying a Berserker and upgrading it to a Musketman is actually 15% more expensive than directly buying a Musketman.
  
• You shouldn't build Musketmen as Denmark unless your iron supplies are very tight - Berserkers are 12.5% weaker, but 20% cheaper to build, 33% faster and have two keep-on-upgrade advantages (the Amphibious promotion and free pillaging.)

Unique Unit II: Norwegian Ski Infantry

• The Norwegian Ski Infantry is the only example of a UU which is in the upgrade path of an earlier one from the same Civ. As such, you don't need to build many of these units, if any - upgrade Berserkers to them instead.
  
  • If you can manage to get a Jaguar, Maori Warrior, Kris Swordsman or Mohawk Warrior from an allied Militaristic City-State, you can have a Norwegian Ski Infantry with attributes from three different UUs.
• Fast tundra/snow/hills movement combined with the disembarkment system from Denmark's UA allows you to rapidly flood high-latitude regions with your units. This is excellent for getting a foothold in new continents.

Unique Ability: Viking Fury

• The free pillaging ability standard melee and standard mounted units get carries over on upgrade. So, while new Norwegian Ski Infantry won't get the attribute, but Berserkers upgraded to them will.
  
• Your Work Boats and Great Admirals also have +1 movement.

Unique Unit I: Berserker

• Berserkers cost 20% more gold to purchase than regular Longswordsmen. This is due to the formula used to calculate costs of buying items; items available with earlier technologies are more expensive to purchase assuming the same production cost.

Unique Ability: Viking Fury

• Disembarking always costs 1 movement point as Denmark, regardless of the terrain type you're disembarking on to.
  
• Standard melee (Warriors, Berserkers, Pikemen, etc.) and melee mounted (Horsemen, Knights, etc.) units receive the free pillaging promotion. Gunpowder units, armoured units, ranged units and any other type do not, unless a standard melee or melee mounted unit has been upgraded into them.

Unique Unit I: Berserker

• Upgrading a Berserker will keep the Amphibious promotion and the free pillaging attribute, but not the speed bonus.

Unique Unit II: Norwegian Ski Infantry

• Double hills movement does not stack with the Altitude Training promotion (received by moving the unit next to Mount Kilimanjaro)
  
• The unique promotion carries over on upgrade.

Unique Building: Burial Tomb

• Because this building is maintenance-free but generates both faith and happiness, it suits a very wide-building playstyle well. Try taking a religion with two religious buildings and Sacred Sites, building lots of cities and exploiting early tourism gain for a cultural victory.
  
• Burial Tombs, as Temple replacements, have a high number of modifers:
  
  • Piety - Opener (-50% production cost)
    
  • Piety - Organised Religion (+1 faith)
    
  • Piety - Theocracy (+25% gold output for city)
    
  • Follower - Choral Music (+2 culture if the city has 5+ followers)
    
  • Follower - Feed the World (+1 food)
    
  • Follower - Religious Centre (+2 happiness if the city has 5+ followers)

Unique Ability: Monument Builders

• Both World Wonders and National Wonders (including the three Guilds) are affected by Egypt's 20% wonder construction bonus.

Unique Unit: War Chariot

• War Chariots are classed as ranged units rather than mounted units, meaning bonuses against mounted units do not affect them (e.g. Spearmen, Pikemen, Lancers) and Stables won't help you build them faster, but the Temple of Artemis will.
  
• Ranged-specific promotions (Accuracy, Barrage, etc.) earned by War Chariots do not work when upgraded to Knights (with the exception of Logistics.)

Unique Building: Burial Tomb

• Songhai's triple-gold-on-city-capture or the double-gold-on-city-capture feature of Landsknechte stacks with the doubled gold other Civs get from capturing a city with a Burial Tomb, although the bonuses of Songhai's UA and Landsknechte do not stack with each other.

Unique Ability: Sun Never Sets

Naval movement

• If you control the Great Lighthouse wonder and have the Exploration Opener, your naval units are guarenteed to outpace those of other Civs, meaning damaged naval units can almost always safely retreat.
  
• Your embarked units will move fast enough to match or outpace the movement speed of equivalent-era Barbarian naval units, meaning you can keep a minimal number of escorts when not at war.
  
• A naval unit with Logistics can move after attacking. Extra movement means they can move in from further away, allowing you to get more attacks on cities every turn.
  
• Ironclads in particular gain a lot from England's UA as it allows them to move 4 extra tiles per turn in coastal areas.

Extra Spy

• By puppeting or razing what you capture, building the National Intelligence Agency later in the game becomes much easier. It gives you a considerable edge to espionage over other Civs.
  
• Consider using a Spy as a spotter for your Longbowmen and Range-promoted Ships of the Line. You can still defend against technology theft or target a scientific Civ with the other Spy (or Spies) you have.

Unique Unit I: Longbowman

• A range of 3 means you can deal damage to a city without the city being able to deal any damage back to your units. Try bringing a Horseman or Knight along to provide a line of sight (you can move the unit in, fire with your Longbowmen and move it out again.)

Unique Ability: Sun Never Sets

• Embarked units also receive +2 movement, as do Great Admirals and Work Boats.

Unique Unit II: Ship of the Line

• Upgrading a Galleass to a Ship of the Line costs 80 gold (in normal-speed games) - that's 55% lower than Galleass to Frigate upgrade route, costing 180 gold.
  
• However, upgrading a Ship of the Line is 8% more expensive than upgrading a Frigate to a Battleship - 420 gold vs. the usual 390 gold in normal-speed games.

Unique Ability: Sun Never Sets

Extra Spy

• The extra Spy comes at the same time as your first Spy would normally (as soon as someone enters the renaissance era.)

Unique Unit I: Longbowman

• Being a promotion any ranged unit can earn, the Range promotion carries over when you upgrade the unit. It's particularly good for increasing the viability of Gatling Guns, Machine Guns and Bazookas.

Unique Unit II: Ship of the Line

• The extra sight does not carry over on upgrade - nor does any other of the Ship of the Line's features, for that matter.

Unique Ability: Spirit of Adwa

• This ability isn't just effective defensively. So long as the number of your cities (including puppets) is lower than that of an opponent, you'll get a 20% bonus against their units. If you want to make some conquests with this, be sure to raze most of the cities you take. Consider also starting by attacking tall-building empires and working your way up to wide empires (as you can't raze original capitals and will hence have to keep them.)

Unique Unit: Mehal Sefari

• A city with a Military Academy and the Brandenburg Gate will produce Mehal Sefari with four starting promotions - enough to get straight to March. This essentially turns them into cheaper versions of Sweden's Caroleans.

Unique Building: Stele

• If you want to maximise your faith output, build wide - with Piety's Organised Religion, a cities with a Stele and a Temple gives 7 faith each. True, this will make your UA worthless in the process, but you can outpace the faith output of nearly every Civ in the game that way.

Unique Unit: Mehal Sefari

• The Musketman to Mehal Sefari promotion line costs 110 gold, down from the normal 160 in normal speed games (a reduction of 31%.)
  
• However, upgrading Mehal Sefari costs 25% more than normal - a cost of 250 rather than the normal 200 in normal speed games.

Unique Ability: Spirit of Adwa

• The 20% combat bonus works on City-States with more cities than you, in addition to regular Civs.

Unique Unit: Mehal Sefari

• The near-capital strength bonus starts at 30% if the unit is on the same tile as your capital, 27% if adjacent to your capital, and falls off by 3% for every extra tile's distance from your capital. At 10 tiles or more, no bonus applies.
  
• If you lose your original capital, the near-capital strength bonus will instead be calculated from your new capital.
  
• The promotions Mehal Sefari have (both the near-capital bonus and Drill I) carry over on upgrade.

Unique Improvement: Chateau

• Plan out where you intend to place Chateaux before you build them. You can only place them adjacent to luxury resources, and not next to each other, so position your first one carefully.
  
• Starting locations (on standard map settings) are in range of at least two luxuries (commonly three, and sometimes four) making your capital in theory a good spot for Chateaux. The problem is, working lots of Chateaux will hurt the city's production. A solution to this is to not build Chateaux near your capital until all of the theming bonus wonders have been built.

Unique Ability: City of Light

• All theming bonuses are doubled in effectiveness in your capital - not just those of Museums and World Wonders.

Unique Ability: City of Light

• The Aesthetics Finisher stacks multiplicatively with France's UA, causing theming bonuses in the capital to output four times the usual amount of culture and tourism.

Unique Improvement: Chateau

• You can build Chateaux next to sea-based luxuries and cities with unique luxuries (mercantile City-States and certain cities founded by Indonesia) as well as the standard land-based luxuries.

Unique Ability: Furor Teutonicus

• If you can track down enough Barbarian encampments early enough, you can capture enough units to raise an early army and potentially launch an early attack on an unprepared rival Civ.
  
• Barbarians can produce units based on the technologies Civs have reached. They can't start making Hand-Axes until someone's researched The Wheel, so if you want some of your own, consider grabbing the technology early.
  
• Hand-Axes are basically ancient-era Gatling Guns in terms of their usage, but they upgrade to Knights for the same cost as it takes to upgrade a Chariot Archer (135 gold in normal-speed games.)

Unique Unit: Panzer

• Panzers never obsolete, and while their strength is 20% lower than that of Modern Armour, they have an extra movement point, are about 12% cheaper and use oil rather than aluminium as a strategic resource. As a result, Panzers are still useful into the information era.

Unique Building: Hanse

• With all technologies increasing the Trade Route limit and all your Trade Routes being with City-States, Hanses offer a 40% bonus to production. With Petra and the Colossus under your control, that's a 50% bonus.

Unique Ability: Furor Teutonicus

• Brutes (the Barbarian Warrior replacement) are 50% more expensive to upgrade than regular Warriors, (120 rather than 80 gold in normal-speed games) but are otherwise identical. Once your army's moved on to more advanced warfare, it's probably best to disband your Brutes.
  
• Most early converted Barbarian units don't require strategic resources (though you may require them to upgrade them, such as if the captured Barbarian unit is a Swordsman.)
  
  • Because these units count separately to the generic equivalent, building the Terracotta Army wonder will duplicate both them and a regular Swordsman if you have it.

Unique Ability: Furor Teutonicus

• The Raging Barbarians setting when starting a new game does not increase the frequency of Barbarian encampments, only the speed at which Barbarians spawn at. As such, it doesn't really synergise with Germany's UA.
  
• The 25 gold gained when you convert a Barbarian to your side does not scale with game speed; it's 25 gold regardless of whether it's quick speed or marathon.
  
• It's easy to assume that a 25% reduction in land unit maintenance means you can support 33% more units for the same cost. In reality, individual costs of unit maintenance rise the more units you have.

Unique Building: Hanse

• Every International Trade Route you have with a City-State adds a stacking 5% production multiplier in all your cities with Hanses. The source or destination of the route doesn't matter. Even cities without any Trade Routes can gain the production bonus.

Unique Ability: Hellenic League

• Reduced influence decay means you'll gain more influence per turn if you're using the Treaty Organisation or Gunboat Diplomacy tenets compared to other Civs with the same tenet.
  
• If you have Patronage's Opener and a shared religion with a City-State, your influence with that City-State will not decay whatsoever! This even applies to City-States with the Hostile personality.

Unique Unit I: Hoplite

• Hoplites only have 1 point of strength less than Swordsmen, but are 25% cheaper, resource-free, come earlier in the technology tree and carry a 50% bonus against mounted units. As such, there's little reason to ever use Swordsmen as Greece.

Unique Ability: Hellenic League

• Your units can freely enter City-State territory without incurring trespassing penalties.
  
  • Because this treats your units as friendly to all City-States, your units can always heal 20HP per turn in City-State territory - even if you're at war with them! Sending a few units into City-State lands, setting them to fortify and declaring war on the City-State is a good way to farm experience.

Unique Unit II: Companion Cavalry

• Great Generals I increases the unit's contribution to the Great General counter by 50% and is the only feature of Greece's UUs that carries over on upgrade.

General

• Do not build Barracks or wonders prior to preparing your early attack. It'll make your attack take longer to launch, greatly reducing its effectiveness. I know that's not exactly a trick, but it's something I have to make clear.

Unique Ability: Scourge of God

• Cities you found after your first will take their names from Civs in your game (including defeated Civs.) As such, you can use this to work out which Civs are present before you meet them.

Unique Unit I: Battering Ram

• Hunnic Warriors will turn into Battering Rams if they receive the "Advanced weapons" possibility from Ancient Ruins. It's possible to wipe out a Civ before 10 turns have passed if you get really lucky in that regard, but there's also a downside - Battering Rams are vulnerable in defence and have a low sight radius, making them poor units at exploring if that's what you were using the Warrior for.
  
• Always bring at least two Battering Rams when attacking a city, so if one gets attacked, the other is still available to do some damage.
  
• Battering Rams count as standard melee units for the purposes of promotions and construction. Warrior Code from the Honour Social Policy tree will allow you to build them faster as a consequence.
  
• Battering Rams only need 10 XP (or two hits on a city) to be able to reach Cover II and hence a large defensive bonus against ranged units.
  
• If you can manage to get a Battering Ram to the Siege promotion, you can stack it with the Barrage promotion once it's upgraded to a Trebuchet or beyond for an extra 100% bonus against cities.

Unique Unit II: Horse Archer

• Build your Horse Archers before your Battering Rams, so they can scout out the route to your nearest enemy and gain experience fighting Barbarians.
  
• If a Horse Archer fights Barbarians up to the XP cap, they'll have enough experience to get to a third promotion. March is a good choice, as is Accuracy III (it's one promotion away from Logistics or Range.)

Unique Unit I: Battering Ram

• The 300% bonus against cities Battering Rams have massively outweighs their long list of downsides compared to regular Spearmen. Don't just assume they're just a niche Spearman replacement - they'll tear down cities rapidly.
  
• Melee-specific promotions (Drill, Shock, etc.) earned by Battering Rams do not work when upgraded to Trebuchets (with the exceptions of Blitz and Siege.)

Unique Unit II: Horse Archer

• Horse Archers are classed as ranged units rather than mounted units, meaning bonuses against mounted units do not affect them (e.g. Spearmen, Pikemen, Lancers) and Stables won't help you build them faster, but the Temple of Artemis will.

• Like generic Chariot Archers, Horse Archers don't actually count as mounted units for the purpose of the 50% bonus against them Spearmen have, so they're less of a threat than they may immediately seem.
  
• While Horse Archers have a higher strength than Chariot Archers, they don't defend any better against ranged attacks (including cities) as land-based ranged units use their ranged strength for that purpose.
  
• Ranged-specific promotions (Accuracy, Barrage, etc.) earned by Horse Archers do not work when upgraded to Knights (with the exception of Logistics.)

Unique Ability: Great Andean Road

• Because roads on hills have no maintenance cost, once you're done building tile improvements that offer yields, you can go and build roads on all the hills in your empire. It might look messy, but it will allow your units very high mobility in defence.
  
• Because ignoring hill movement costs applies to civilian units...
  
  • Workers can move onto hill tiles and start improving them on the same turn
    
  • It's much harder for rival Civs to get your Missionaries, Prophets, Great Musicians and other such civilians stuck by surrounding them with units.
• Incan units with the Altitude Training promotion (obtained by moving the unit next to Mount Kilimanjaro) can move through two hills tiles per movement point - so moving through hills is actually faster than open terrain!

Unique Unit: Slinger

• Never escort a civilian unit with a Slinger or upgraded Slinger - if they are attacked by melee and retreat, the civilian will be captured.

Unique Improvement: Terrace Farm

• Be sure to settle as many of your cities as you can next to a mountain. While you may lose out on a little potential food, you'll be able to build Observatories for a 50% science bonus.
  
• Grab the Temple of Artemis for its 10% food bonus (despite what the tooltip says, it's not a growth bonus - it's better than that.) It'll make your Terrace Farms go even further.
  
• Desert hills next to mountains are particularly good spots for Terrace Farms, if you can get Petra up and running. That city will have very strong growth and high production, too.

Unique Improvement: Terrace Farm

• Natural Wonders count as mountains for the purpose of adding food, with the exception of the Rock of Gibraltar, King Solomon's Mines, Krakatoa, the Great Barrier Reef, El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth.

Unique Ability: Great Andean Road

• Even forested hills or ones with jungle only cost one movement point to enter, though crossing a river onto a hill will be no different from other Civs (it'll still deplete all the unit's movement unless there's a route or it has the ignore-terrain-cost attribute)
  
• With Commerce's Wagon Trains, all Incan roads and railroads will be free to maintain, regardless of location.

Unique Unit: Slinger

• The unique potential-to-retreat promotion Slingers have carries over on upgrade.

Unique Improvement: Terrace Farm

• Unfortunately, you can't build Terrace Farms on tiles with resources. It's rather annoying if there's a tile surrounded by mountains with just some sheep in the way.

Unique Ability: Population Growth

• For a city to start generating less unhappiness than those of other Civs, it needs to be at least size 7. That's on standard-sized maps or smaller - unhappiness from number of cities is lower on the biggest map sizes. For large maps, the cities need to be at least size 5, and for huge maps size 4.
  
  • This is much different, however, if you're comparing cities hitting the local city happiness cap. For large maps or smaller, you'll need the city to reach at least size 17 to reliably outperform cities of other Civs, or size 15 on huge maps.

Unique Building: Mughal Fort

• Mughal Forts count as culture buildings for the purpose of Tradition's Legalism, so if you get all the culture buildings your technologies allow, research Chivalry and then pick up Legalism, you should get some Mughal Forts for free. The downside to this strategy is that Tradition's generally India's best Social Policy tree to start in, and delaying Legalism means delaying strong early-game policies like Landed Elite.

Unique Ability: Population Growth

• The local city happiness cap is modified to be 2/3 of the city's population rounded down, instead of being equal to the city's population.

Unique Unit I: War Elephant

• Upgrading a War Elephant to a Knight costs 19% less than upgrading a Chariot Archer (110 rather than 135 gold in normal-speed games)

Unique Ability: Population Growth

• The Monarchy Social Policy (from the Tradition tree) combined with India's UA will reduce the unhappiness from population in their capital to a quarter of the standard level rather than completely removing it (as the Civilopedia's description of Monarchy would suggest.)

Unique Unit: War Elephant

• War Elephants are classed as ranged units rather than mounted units, meaning bonuses against mounted units do not affect them (e.g. Spearmen, Pikemen, Lancers) and Stables won't help you build them faster, but the Temple of Artemis will.
  
• No unique feature of War Elephants carry over on upgrade.
  
• Ranged-specific promotions (Accuracy, Barrage, etc.) earned by War Elephants do not work when upgraded to Knights (with the exception of Logistics.)

Unique Building: Mughal Fort

• Hotels, Airports and the National Visitor Centre do not affect the tourism output, although city-wide or empire-wide multipliers will still apply.

Unique Ability: Spice Islanders

• Your unique-luxury cities cannot be razed, meaning:
  
  • You can deliberately position one of them in a spot that denies other Civs a good city spot (e.g. just out of range of sea resources so Japan can't use them and exploit their culture bonus.)
    
  • Any wonders you build in those cities will be permanently safe
• Indonesia's UA can be mostly shut down by banning their unique luxuries in the World Congress. To stop this happening, trade your unique luxuries with diplomatic Civs holding a large number of delegates.

Unique Unit: Kris Swordsman

General

• As Warriors don't obsolete until Metal Casting, you can build them and cheaply upgrade them to Kris Swordsmen for 80 gold (in normal-speed games) to churn out your UU faster. Buying a Warrior and upgrading it costs 280 gold; buying a Kris Swordsman directly costs 390 - 39% more!
  
• Fight some Barbarians before launching a war so you can find out what your Kris Swordsmen's promotions are in a safer environment.
  
• Once you have a Heroism unit, consider using your Great Generals to build Citadels to steal enemy land, then place an Invulnerability unit on the tile. It'll prove incredibly difficult for enemies to remove.
  
• Either Restlessness or Invulnerability units should be used to get the last hit on cities. The former moves faster and the latter heals faster, letting them get back to full health and back to the front lines sooner.

Enemy Blade

• This only has any effect if the unit's in the lands of someone you're at war with, so you can avoid this problem by using the unit solely in your own, neutral or friendly lands.

Invulnerability

• Always work towards giving these units the March promotion for super-rapid healing.
  
• The extra health healed per turn stacks with other boosts to per-turn healing. An Invulnerability unit backed by a Medic-promoted unit or Khan (you can get them from allied City-States with the Patronage tree complete) will be incredibly hard to kill.
  
• If you don't have a Heroism-promoted unit, you can stack a Great General with an Invulnerability unit to keep them safe.
  
• Giving these units Medic promotions is great for keeping the rest of your army safe. However, that requires a slightly different upgrade path to March.

Restlessness

• An extra attack also lets the unit move after attacking. This means you can attack, move the unit back a couple of tiles and fill that space with a unit on more health - a good way to keep your Restlessness unit safe.
  
• With Blitz, these units can attack three times in one turn (though being melee units, they'll lose a lot of health in the process, so be careful how you use it.)

Unique Building: Candi

• You can get a free Candi early on by building the Hanging Gardens wonder. While it's a bit too early for it to achieve its full potential, you can still enjoy the +2 faith bonus it has.
  
• The Peace Gardens Follower belief is particularly effective for Indonesia compared to other Civs as Candi have no terrain restriction while regular Gardens do. That potentially means 2 points of local city happiness in every city!

Unique Ability: Spice Islanders

• Founding a unique-luxury city on a tile with an existing resource will remove the old resource. As such, be careful when settling on new landmasses!
  
• The tiles the unique-luxury cities are on generate an extra 2 gold.

Unique Ability: Spice Islanders

• The separate "continents" needed for the unique-luxury cities can be landmasses of any size (even one-tile islands.)
  
• The unique-luxury cities must be on separate landmasses to each other as well as your capital, so you'll need to have cities on at least four landmasses for your UA to reach its full potential.
  
• You can only create the unique luxuries by founding cities, not by any other means (such as conquest or trade deals.)

Unique Unit: Kris Swordsman

General

• All special promotions of Kris Swordsmen are kept on upgrade, whether they are positive, neutral, both or just the starting Mystic Blade promotion.

Heroism

• This bonus is identical to the Great General's combat bonus in every way, meaning it won't stack with that of another Heroism unit or Great General.

Invulnerability

• The "double healing rate" promotion from the Fountain of Youth only increases healing by 10HP per turn - as such, it's still useful but doesn't synergise as well with this promotion as it may at first seem.

Recruitment

• This actually only heals 50HP on kills, not the full health claimed by the promotion's tooltip.
  
• No health is restored when killing Barbarian units or capturing civilians.

Sneak Attack

• This changes the flanking bonus the unit receives to 15% per supporting unit, up from 10%. So, the bonus is increased by 50 percent, not 50 percentage points.

Unique Ability: The Great Warpath

• Because forests and jungles act as roads to your Caravans, they can reach cities further away early on. That makes it easier to trade with full Civs rather than City-States for more gold and the possibility of some science (especially in higher difficulties.) Combine that with cheap city connections and you can get your economy to a strong start.
  
• Remember that forests and jungles outside your lands can't help you form City Connections. You may need to build some roads to deal with that until you can gain the land for yourself. Be sure to remove any roads on forests/jungles once you own the tiles.
  
• Because of your low need for roads, it's significantly harder for enemies to defend any cities they capture from you - they'll lack the mobility they'd normally have in their own lands. Remove the roads on forests/jungles around any city you capture to make re-conquest harder.

Unique Unit: Mohawk Warrior

• As Warriors don't obsolete until Metal Casting, you can build them and cheaply upgrade them to Mohawk Warriors for 80 gold (in normal-speed games) to churn out your UU faster. Buying a Warrior and upgrading it costs 280 gold; buying a Mohawk Warrior directly costs 390 - that's 39% more!
  
• In addition to this, Mohawk Warriors don't obsolete until Gunpowder, meaning they're available for all the time Longswordsmen are. It's actually cheaper to directly buy Longswordsmen then buying Mohawk Warriors and upgrading them (460 vs. 490 gold in normal-speed games about 6%) so build Mohawk Warriors and upgrade them instead.
  
• The 33% bonus in forests and jungles is actually a separate promotion to the one Jaguars have. This means if you receive a Jaguar from an allied militaristic City-State and promote it, it'll have a 66% bonus in forests and jungles!

Unique Ability: The Great Warpath

• Forests and jungles in friendly lands bordering rivers act as bridges on roads do, even if you don't have the Engineering technology.
  
• Forests and jungles act as railroads once you have the respective technology for the purpose of the 25% production bonus for linked cities, but not for the purpose of the movement bonus.

Unique Ability: The Great Warpath

• Moving out of jungle or forests without roads in friendly lands onto adjacent roads on unforested lands won't act as a continous road for movement purposes. This is most likely a bug.

Unique Unit: Mohawk Warrior

• The 33% forest/jungle combat bonus carries over on upgrade.

Unique Ability: Bushido

Wounded combat

• Siege units tend to be the first targets for enemy attacks, meaning they'll usually be severely injured by the time they get the chance to attack. Full damage output even when injured is particularly useful there.
  
• Air units also get a major advantage - when set to sleep, they can only be destroyed by capturing wherever they're based (a city or a Carrier) meaning you can keep them fighting until they're on very low health - with no risk of leaving the units vulnerable or losing damage output.

Unique Unit I: Samurai

• Backed by an Armoury, Samurai can get immediately to the Siege promotion (among other moderately effective options)
  
  • Because Samurai don't obsolete until Rifling, it is possible to pick up the Military Science, build both the Brandenburg Gate and a Military Academy in a city and then build lots of Samurai there with four starting promotions - enough to get straight to March!
• Building Samurai in an Alhambra city will give them flexibility, starting with both Shock I and Drill I. Those promotions are enough to close the gap in strength between Samurai and Musketmen.

Unique Unit II: Zero

• Zeroes are the only air unit without a resource requirement. As such, you can build lots, put them in Carriers and use the result as very-long-range, resourceless Battleships.
  
  • Unlike Bombers, Zeroes can't get Bombardment or Siege promotions meaning their individual damage output will be lower, but they can still get Air Ambush or Air Targeting to greatly improve their damage against armoured or naval units respectively.

Unique Unit I: Samurai

• Normally, promoting a unit from a Longswordsman to a Rifleman would cost a combined total of 230 gold. For Samurai, it's 220 (-4%)

Unique Ability: Bushido

Sea Culture

• The culture added to atolls will not be added to tourism with a Hotel, Airport and/or the National Visitor Centre.
  
• However, the culture added to fishing boats will.

Wounded combat

• For other Civs, units deal about a sixth (~17%) less damage at half-health than they do at full health.
  
• All military units benefit from Japan's UA, whether it's land, sea, air or otherwise. Cities are unaffected as they always attack and defend at full strength.
  
• The Elite Forces tenet in the Autocracy ideology has no effect for Japan. It actually closes the gap between wounded and non-wounded units by 25%, but as there's no gap for Japan, there's no effect.

Unique Unit I: Samurai

• The ability to create fishing boats does not carry over on upgrade.
  
• Great Generals II increases the unit's contribution to the Great General counter by 100% and carries over on upgrade.
  
• Creating fishing boats with Samurai does not consume the unit (unlike Work Boats.) Instead, it merely depletes the unit's movement points for that turn.
  
• Samurai cannot improve offshore oil tiles - you'll need a Work Boat for that.

Unique Ability: Scholars of the Jade Hall

• Get Philosophy early, build the National College early and you can use the science boost to get Drama and Poetry quickly. Then, you can build the Writers' Guild for two early specialists (and hence even more science.)

Unique Unit I: Hwach'a

• With the Volley promotion, Hwach'a are only 7% weaker than unpromoted Trebuchets against cities, while defending much more effectively against their attacks (see Clarifications.) As such, there's little reason why you can't take them on the offensive.
  
• On the defensive, Hwach'a are the best unit for garrisoning cities with until Artillery come along due to their very high ranged strength (even higher than that of Cannons.)

Unique Unit II: Turtle Ship

• With all three Coastal Raider promotions, Turtle Ships can deal almost as much damage to cities as Cannons! Nonetheless, neing melee, they will take a fair bit of damage in the process. Bring some other units like Frigates to help back them up.

Unique Ability: Scholars of the Jade Hall

• Landmarks also receive a +2 science boost, like Great Tile Improvements.

Unique Unit I: Hwach'a

• Hwach'as upgraded from Catapults keep the sight penalty they have. Build or buy Hwach'as from scratch to avoid this.

Unique Ability: Scholars of the Jade Hall

Only the buildings in the following list count for the purposes of the science boost when built in your captal:

• Library
  
• University
  
• Public School
  
• Research Lab
  
• Observatory
  
• National College
  
• Oxford University
  
• Great Library

All others do not count under any circumstances - including certain scientific wonders such as the Porcelain Tower.

Other clarifications:

• The science boost from free technologies is equivalent to that of a research agreement with a Civ with equal or greater science generation than you. As such, this boost is modified by the Porcelain Tower wonder (even though it doesn't give a boost itself) and the Scientific Revolution Social Policy.
  
  • Without either bonus, building appropriate science buildings in your capital gives you science equal to 50% of the median cost of technologies you can currently research.

Unique Unit I: Hwach'a

• Land-based ranged units use their ranged defence when defending against ranged attacks. As such, Hwach'a are actually significantly more resilient against city attacks, Crossbowmen and suchlike compared to normal Trebuchets.

Unique Unit II: Turtle Ship

• Turtle Ships can enter ocean tiles if they're in your territory - the restrictions are the same as they are for pre-Astronomy naval units.
  
• Caravels have a chance to withdraw from combat when attacked by melee. That promotion keeps on upgrade, so Ironclads can have it if it was upgraded to from a Caravel. For Korea, however, Turtle Ships don't get that promotion and hence they can't have Ironclads with it (unless they steal one with a Privateer.) Destroyers, the next unit along in the upgrade line, have that promotion anyway.

Unique Ability: The Long Count

• Great Admirals can cross ocean tiles even if you don't have Astronomy, so choosing one early on could be give you a significant advantage to exploration.
  
• There's three interesting ways you can exploit your UA to spread your religion quickly:
  
  1. Grab a Great Engineer as your first choice, then use it to rush the Hagia Sophia for the free Great Prophet. Then, as your second choice of Great Person, choose a Great Prophet. Finishing either the Liberty or Piety trees can provide you with a third.
     
  2. After researching Theology, start work on Borobudur. Use a Great Engineer to rush the Great Mosque of Djenne in the same city before Borobudur is complete, and enjoy 9 uses of religious spreading.
     
  3. Combine the two above strategies! Finish the Liberty tree and get a free Great Engineer from it, and choose a Great Engineer as your first Long Count bonus. Use those Great Engineers to rush the Hagia Sophia and Great Mosque of Djenne, and build Borobudur in the same city the old-fashioned way.
• Alternatively, complete the Liberty tree and grab a Great Scientist from there, as well as from your first Long Count choice. Use them both to build Academies near a city with either the National College or one next to a mountain for the maximum science potential.

Unique Unit: Atlatlist

• Because Atlatlists can be built immediately, an unconventional route is to start building them as soon as you settle your capital, and sending a few (with your starting Warrior) to attack an enemy. This is unviable on higher difficulties (where enemies start with more units,) but may be good for a bit of fun.

Unique Building: Pyramid

• Shrines have a particularly high number of bonuses or modifiers from religious beliefs and Social Policies. Here's a list of them all. Combining them all together gives you an excellent way of getting new cities off to a strong start, although it comes at the cost of the powerful Pagodas Follower belief.
  
  • Piety - Opener (-50% production cost)
    
  • Piety - Organised Religion (+1 faith)
    
  • Pantheon - Ancestor Worship (+1 culture)
    
  • Follower - Asceticism (+1 happiness if the city has 3+ followers)
    
  • Follower - Feed the World (+1 food)

Unique Ability: The Long Count

• Not exactly hidden once you start playing, but not mentioned in the Civilopedia: Once you research Theology, the calendar at the top of the screen switches to a Mayan Long Count calendar. You can see the normal Gregorian calendar by scrolling over it.

Unique Unit: Atlatlist

• Upgrading an Atlatlist is 6% more expensive than upgrading an Archer - 85 gold vs. the usual 80 gold in normal-speed games.

Unique Ability: The Long Count

You receive a free Great Person of your choice once you reach a year which starts a new b'ak'tun. These dates are fixed, and not dependent on when you research Theology. Here's a list of them all up to 2050:

• 1: 2720 BC (Turn 33 in normal speed games)
  
• 2: 2325 BC (42)
  
• 3: 1931 BC (52)
  
• 4: 1537 BC (62)
  
• 5: 1143 BC (72)
  
• 6: 748 BC (86)
  
• 7: 354 BC (101)
  
• 8: 41 AD (117)
  
• 9: 435 AD (133)
  
• 10: 830 AD (152)
  
• 11: 1224 AD (183)
  
• 12: 1618 AD (234)
  
• 13: 2012 AD (432)

Here's some other points about the UA:

• The Great People aren't entirely free - with the exception of Great Generals and Admirals, these free Great People raise the cost of the next one of its type (and, as always, Great Merchants, Engineers and Scientists will raise each other's costs.)
  
• Each type of Great Person can only be chosen once, until you've picked all of them. Then, the cycle restarts.

Unique Ability: Mongol Terror

• Declaring war directly on two or more City-States in quick succession will lower your influence resting point with nearby City-States and increase the rate of influence decay. To avoid this, declare war on a Civ allied to the City-State - there's no such associated penalty then.

Unique Unit: Keshik

• As the unit retains the ability to move after attacking, it's able to move within city range, fire and move out in a single turn. Keshiks therefore are excellent against cities, although they can't capture them by themselves. Bring a non-upgraded Horseman or Lancer along with them to be able to safely finish the city off.
  
• As ranged units, Keshiks only need two promotions prior to March becoming available (Barrage/Accuracy I and II.) Supported by Khans, you can easily get a horde of Keshiks healing 25HP every single turn.

Unique Great Person: Khan

• Any Civ can receive a Khan of their own by completing the Patronage Social Policy tree and allying with City-States.

Unique Great Person: Khan

• Aside from land units, air units are also affected by the healing rate bonus, although naval units are not. Combine with the Air Repair promotion and the Faith Healers Pantheon for extra effectiveness.

Unique Ability: Mongol Terror

• The bonus against City-States does not affect your ability to intimidate them.
  
• Ranged mounted units (Chariot Archers, Keshiks) do not gain extra movement from the UA. Keshiks have 5 movement points, but that is a specific feature of the unit - if another Civ was gifted the unit, it would still have 5 movement points.

Unique Unit: Keshik

• Camel Archers are classed as ranged units rather than mounted units, meaning:
  
  • Bonuses against mounted units do not affect them (e.g. Spearmen, Pikemen, Lancers)
    
  • They will use ranged promotions
    
  • Stables won't help you build them faster, but the Temple of Artemis will.
• Despite being classifed as ranged units for combat, for purposes of construction, Keshiks still count as mounted units (so stables will boost their production while the Temple of Artemis will not.)

• Keshiks, like all land-based ranged units, use their ranged strength when defending against ranged attacks. As such they defend slightly better against cities, Crossbowmen and suchlike than they do against Longswordsmen, Knights and other melee units.
  
• Great Generals I offers a 50% bonus to Great General gain, but so does the Quick Study promotion (in addition to its XP benefit.) These stack multiplicatively, but the output is rounded during the calculation meaning the net contribution to Great General points isn't exactly 225%.
  
• The Quick Study and Great Generals I promotions carry over on upgrade.
  
• Melee-specific promotions (Shock, Drill, etc.) earned by Horsemen do not work when upgraded to Keshiks (with the exception of Blitz,) and ranged-specific promotions earned by Keshiks (with the exception of Logistics) do not work when the unit's upgraded to Cavalry.

Unique Great Person: Khan

• Units only receive the healing bonus while they're in a state of healing (either not taking an action or with the March promotion.)
  
• The healing bonus offered stacks with all other boosts to healing rate except the Medic promotions.
  
• A unit stacked with a Khan does not recieve the healing bonus, although the Khan itself does.

Start Bias

• The desert start bias Morocco has makes it easy to use the powerful Desert Folklore Pantheon to rapidly found a religion.
  
• A desert start bias also is great for getting a better chance of grabbing the Petra wonder. The extra trade route it offers certainly goes nicely with your UA.

Unique Ability: Gateway to Africa

• Because you'll want to trade with a broad variety of Civs to maximise your UA's bonus, your UA synergises very well with the Treaty Organisation tenet from the Freedom tree; you won't lose as much gold from trading with City-States (as opposed to full Civs) as is the case with other Civs.
  
• Settle colony cities on other continents to be able to set up trade routes with distant Civs or City-States. Desert lands are marginal for most Civs meaning they're often free for colonising.

Unique Unit: Berber Cavalry

• On desert tiles in friendly terrain, Berber Cavalry or upgraded varients fight on a par with units a tier of technology higher. Diplomatic victories (which Morocco performs best at) have the least dependence on science, and Berber Cavalry minimise any shortfall in defensive capabilities as a result.

Unique Improvement: Kasbah

• Settle cities near plenty of desert hills and/or flood plains for the maximum effect from Kasbahs, as they come with base tile yields; flat desert tiles do not.
  
• Golden Ages double the gold yield of Kasbahs. Because they can be constructed in large quantities as a one-size-fits-all improvement in desert lands, Golden Ages are particularly strong for Morocco.

Unique Ability: Gateway to Africa

• The 3 gold and 1 culture bonus is received for every different Civ you have a trade route with. It doesn't matter who owns the route.
  
  • Having more than one route with the same Civ only provides the bonus once, including routes that they send you. As such, it might be a good idea to send your trade routes to a broad range of City-States (as they can't set up trade routes themselves.)
• The bonus for Morocco is separate from the trade route yield. Scroll over your gold or culture counters at the top of the screen to see your UA's yield.
  
  • Because the gold isn't directly displayed, some trade routes may actually be more profitable than others with a seemingly higher value. For example, if a trade route with a Civ you haven't got an existing route with is worth 8 gold, and one with another Civ you have got a route with was worth 10, the former route would be worth more than the latter.
• Every single International Trade Route sent to Morocco by another Civ gives that other Civ a bonus of 2 gold. Unlike Morocco's bonus, this can be gained multiple times between the same pairing of Civs.

Unique Unit: Berber Cavalry

• Both attributes carry over on upgrade, and stack with each other for a 75% bonus in owned desert lands.
  
• The bonus in deserts does not apply when fighting desert cities.

Unique Ability: Dutch East India Company

• Trading your last luxuries for more luxuries is a great way to get early expansion off the ground, but keep in mind the other Civ will gain more from the deal than you will. To minimise that risk, trade with Civs that expand slowly such as India or Venice.

Unique Unit: Sea Beggar

• Sea Beggars have more keep-on-upgrade attributes than any other unit: Coastal Raider I and II, Supply and Prize Ships. For that reason, be sure to build them in large quantities before they obsolete.
  
• Backed by just an Armoury, Sea Beggars can get straight to the Logistics promotion. Aside from being able to attack twice, it also allows the unit to move after attacking - excellent for getting out the range of a city's ranged attack. Grabbing Exploration's Opener, the Great Lighthouse or the Mobility promotion will make your unit able to start out of range of a city's attack, damage it twice and retreat out of range once more.
  
• You can use the Prize Ships promotion to create a distraction for enemy attacks. Captured ships will start at 50 HP and hence are more likely to be attacked than Sea Beggars at higher levels of health.
  
• Other Civs can capture Sea Beggars using their own Privateers, so be careful where you position ones on low health.

Unique Improvement: Polder

• Polders on flood plains will produce 1 more point of food than Polders on marshland due to their higher base yield. As such, floodplain-heavy areas should be prioritised over marsh-heavy regions.
  
• Because Polders don't remove marshland if built upon it, it will still cost three movement points for units to enter the tile, and units upon it will still suffer a 15% combat penalty. This makes a good trap for killing would-be pillagers.
  
• Similarly, units on flood plains suffer a 10% combat penalty, (Polder or no Polder,) making another good trap for pillagers.
  
• Marshes can be drained outside friendly territory. If you're playing against the Netherlands, sending a Worker near their territory to destroy marshlands will be an effective move.

Unique Ability: Dutch East India Company

• With the Protectionism Social Policy from the Commerce tree, traded away luxuries will be worth 4 happiness (not the 3 implied by the UA's description.)
  
• Remember, you can't trade luxuries you've been traded yourself, or ones you've received as a gift from an allied City-State.

Unique Ability: Barbary Corsairs

• You can use the Prize Ships promotion to capture UUs! Carthage's Quinqueremes and Korea's Turtle Ships are particularly good targets as they're high-strength melee naval units which will get the Prize Ships promotion for themselves if you capture them.
  
• Barbarian Galleys can be captured by your naval melee units. They cost 20 gold to upgrade into Triremes on normal-speed games, making them a cheap source of an early navy. Consider keeping coastal Barbarian encampments standing to exploit this fact.

Unique Unit I: Janissary

• Blitz works brilliantly with health on kills. It gives your Janissaries a second chance if they don't quite finish off a unit on their first attack, and the health on kills makes up for the damage taken when attacking.

Unique Unit II: Sipahi

• Sipahi have enough sight to be able to see cities from outside their attack range. This is great for providing a line of sight for Artillery.
  
• If you have the Mercenary Army Social Policy from the Commerce tree, you can buy Landsknechte and upgrade them to Sipahi at any point in the game - even beyond obsoletion. This is excellent if you want a relatively cheap, fast scouting unit in the late-game.
  
  • This unit will have the double-gold-on-city-capture promotion, making it an excellent unit to score the last hit on cities. A city with no remaining health will always be captured by a melee attack, so this remains viable even into the end of the game (so long as you can keep the Sipahi safe from enemy planes.)
• Because pillaging costs no movement points, only performing that action and nothing else won't interrupt per-turn fortification healing. This means you can heal 35 health in a single turn - or more with Medic promotions.

Unique Ability: Barbary Corsairs

• The probability of capturing an enemy ship is based on the relative strength of the two units. If yours is significantly stonger, the probabilty can hit as high as 80%. If the enemy unit is much stronger, the probability can be as low as 20%.
  
• Units captured by the Prize Ships promotion always start at 50 HP with their moves depleted.
  
• Capturing a Polynesian Trireme or Galleass on ocean tiles won't allow you to move them, unless they're adjacent to coastal tiles or the ocean tiles are in your territory. In that situation, just disband them.
  
• It's easy to assume that a 67% reduction in naval unit maintenance means you can support three times as many naval units for the same cost. In reality, individual costs of unit maintenance rise the more units you have.

Unique Unit I: Janissary

• The 25% attack bonus does not apply when attacking cities.
  
• No health is restored when killing Barbarian units or capturing civilian units.
  
• Both attributes carry over on upgrade.

Unique Unit II: Sipahi

• The Formation I promotion (that all Lancers have) and the free pillaging carry over on upgrade, the extra speed and sight do not.

Unique Ability: Achaemenid Legacy

Golden Age length

• The Chichen Itza wonder and the Universal Suffrage tenet from the Freedom ideology both stack with your UA. Even if you aim to win a domination victory, taking Freedom as Persia is a good idea.
  
  • Combine these bonuses with some Great Artists, use of particular Social Policies and Wonders and you can maintain a permanent Golden Age.

Golden Age bonuses

• Civilian units gain from the speed bonus as well as military ones. Workers and Work Boats can more rapidly move to tiles and start improving them sooner, Great People can get to their destination sooner (particularly good for Great Merchants,) Missionaries can cut across unfriendly lands faster losing less strength and unescorted civilian units can outrun most Barbarian units.
  
• Extra speed allows siege units to move in range of enemy cities, set up and fire in a single turn.
  
• The speed bonus allows your Battleships to keep up with enemy Destroyers, leaving them with nowhere to run.

Unique Unit: Immortal

• During a Golden Age, Immortals are less than one point of strength lower than an unboosted Swordsman for a cheaper cost, with an earlier technology and with a bonus versus mounted units. As such, there's little reason to build Swordsmen as Persia.

Unique Building: Satrap's Court

• The Freedom tenet Capitalism adds another point of happiness onto this building making it a particularly strong conquest-supporting building.

Unique Ability: Achaemenid Legacy

Golden Age length

• Golden Ages won't last as long if initiated by a Great Artist. Click here for more information on how long Golden Ages exactly are.

Golden Age bonuses

• Embarked units do not receive the +1 movement bonus.
  
• All military units gain from the 10% strength bonus - even air units.
  
• The 10% strength bonus during Golden Ages does apply against cities.

Unique Unit: Immortal

• The extra-healing special promotion carries over on upgrade.
  
• Immortals actually heal 10 HP more per turn than other units, rather than at double rate, so in friendly lands for example, they'll heal 30 HP per turn, not the 40 you may expect.
  
• The extra-healing promotion Immortals have is identical to the promotion units get if they move adjacent to the Fountain of Youth, so it's impossible to stack them.

Unique Ability: Solidarity

• Free Social Policies at the start of each era means you can immediately enter Social Policy trees as soon as they become available. This is particularly powerful for exploiting the science offered by the Rationalism tree sooner.

Unique Unit: Winged Hussar

• Winged Hussars can get straight to the Charge promotion if backed by an Armoury, excellent for finishing off knocked-back units. Backed by a Military Academy and a Ducal Stable, they can get straight to March or Blitz.
  
• Civilian units aren't affected by knockback, so knocking back an escorting unit will allow you to capture the civilian.
  
• If you have the Mercenary Army Social Policy from the Commerce tree, you can buy Landsknechte and upgrade them to Winged Hussars at any point in the game - even beyond obsoletion. This is excellent if you want to build a new Anti-Tank Gun or Helicopter Gunship with the Winged Hussar's promotions.
  
  • This unit will have the double-gold-on-city-capture promotion, making it an excellent unit to score the last hit on cities. A city with no remaining health will always be captured by a melee attack, so this remains viable even into the end of the game (so long as you can keep the Winged Hussar safe from enemy planes.)

Unique Building: Ducal Stable

• The gold added by Ducal Stables is applied directly onto the tiles containing horses, sheep and cattle, meaning a Golden Age will increase this gold output.

Unique Ability: Solidarity

• The free Social Policies received at the start of each era do not remove stored culture, nor do they raise the cost of the next Social Policy.

Unique Unit: Winged Hussar

• Shock I, Heavy Charge and Formation I carry over on upgrade.

Unique Ability: Wayfinding

• Polynesia's almost always the first Civ in the game to circumnavigate the world, so an early message of that is a strong indicator of their presence.
  
• Build plenty of exploration units early - crossing oceans lets you quickly get to Ancient Ruins and discover their secrets before other Civs can, as well as giving you first contact with (and hence extra gold from) City-States. Strong exploration potential is also great if you want to find the best city spots early on.
  
• If you're the first to Printing Press, you can pretty much guarentee founding the World Congress due to your exploration advantages (you can easily meet every Civ in the game before then.)
  
• If you settle a landmass isolated from all others by ocean, you'll be safe from attack until someone else researches Astronomy.
  
  • On Terra maps, no-one will start in the "New World". Consider taking your starting Settler there - you might have a slow start but you can expand and develop in peace, and the only thing you'll need to defend against is Barbarians.

Unique Unit: Maori Warrior

• As Warriors get turned into Spearmen if they get the "advanced weapons" outcome from Ancient Ruins, and the Haka War Dance promotion carries over on upgrade, you can potentially have Spearmen, Pikemen, Lancers, Anti-Tank Guns and Helicopter Gunships with it.

Unique Improvement: Moai

• Moai get the best yields in two-tile thick landmasses due to their coastal restriction and increased culture yield per adjacent Moai.
  
• Because Moai yields are increased with adjacent Moai, you may need to construct some four tiles away from your cities in order to get the best outputs.

Unique Improvement: Moai

• Unlike many improvements, Moai can be built on resource tiles or directly onto marshes without removing them. Forests and jungles are still removed.

Unique Ability: Wayfinding

• Cargo Ships cannot cross ocean tiles prior to Astronomy, even for Polynesia. However, it's possible to relocate Cargo Ships between continents, and city connections can be made across oceans.
  
• All types of military unit receives a 10% bonus when within 2 tiles of a Moai - even air units. Air units will receive the bonus so long as their base is in range of a Moai - it doesn't matter whether the unit they're attacking (or the unit that's attacking them) is in range of one or not.
  
• Moai don't have to be within your territory for you to receive the 10% strength bonus - useful if you need to recapture a city.

Unique Unit: Maori Warrior

• The Haka War Dance promotion...
  
  • Doesn't stack with itself
    
  • Only affects land units
    
  • Doesn't increase the damage the unit receives from ranged attacks
    
  • Can be exploited by other Civs (so for example, if your Maori Warrior's next to a Barbarian, other Civs' melee units will be more effective against it.)
    
  • Carries over on upgrade

Unique Improvement: Moai

• Moai cannot be built next to lakes (unless, of course, the tile is also adjacent to the sea)

Unique Ability: Mare Clausum

• Mercantile City-States and Indonesian unique-luxury cities are guarenteed to have a diversity bonus, and are frequently the most profitable cities for Portugal to trade with.

Unique Unit: Nau

• Constructing Naus and using them to sell exotic goods in distant cities is more efficent than directly converting production to gold (assuming you can move the unit fast enough that unit maintenance isn't a problem.)

Unique Improvement: Feitoria

• Feitorias can replace existing City-State improvements (except those on resource tiles.) Replacing as many of their improvements as possible with Feitorias makes the city both harder for enemies to conquer (due to the fort-like defensive bonus Feitorias have) and less desirable for enemies to capture (as the city will have worse yields until they can rebuild everything again.)

Unique Ability: Mare Clausum

• Normally, diversity bonuses add 0.5 gold per resource that exists on one end of the International Trade Route but not the other. For Portugal, that doubles for 1. This is applied before the 2x gold modifier for sea-based ITRs.
  
• All strategic and luxury resources count for the purposes of diversity bonuses (including the unique luxuries of mercantile City-States and Indonesia) but bonus resources (sheep, bananas, fish, etc.) do not count.

Unique Unit: Nau

• While the sell-exotic-goods ability may only be used once, it carries over on upgrade so you can have Ironclads or Destroyers performing the function.
  
• If you lose your original capital, gold and XP yields will be calculated based on your new capital.
  
• Gold and experience yields from selling exotic goods at the other end of the map are approximately double what they are on the closest cities to your capital (no matter the map size.)
  
  • You can expect a bit over 10 XP for close cities and a bit over 20 XP for those furthest away.
    
  • As a rough guide, gold yields are just under a quarter of a Nau's gold cost (assuming no cost reductions such as the Big Ben wonder) for the closest cities, and just under a half for those furthest away.

Unique Improvement: Feitoria

• Feitorias cannot be constructed on any kind of resource tile (bonus, strategic or luxury.) You can, however, replace existing improvements in City-State lands with them.
  
• Feitorias cannot be built next to lakes (unless, of course, the tile is also adjacent to the sea)
  
• Feitoria luxuries are generally granted as if you were allied with the City-State (the luxuries are untradable, and it's possible to get the unique luxuries from Mercantile City-States) with one exception - Patronage's Cultural Diplomacy has no impact on the happiness output of them.

Unique Ability: The Glory of Rome

• If your capital doesn't start next to a river or lake, you can still get a Garden in there (and hence a Garden-building bonus for your other cities) by building the Hanging Gardens wonder.
  
• Generally, try to use a city other than your capital for wonder construction, so it can keep up with regular buildings.

Unique Unit I: Legion

• Build Legions first before Ballistae if possible - that way they can get to work building up your road infrastructure before you launch an early war.

Unique Ability: The Glory of Rome

• The production bonus stacks additively with other production bonuses (so if you have Liberty's Republic, you'll have a 30% bonus.)
  
• The UA applies to all your cities besides your capital - puppet and regular alike.
  
• The bonus is based on buildings in your current capital, so it still can be used if your original capital is captured.

Unique Unit I: Legion

• The road and fort building ability does not carry over on upgrade.
  
• Legions still need the respective technologies to build roads and forts (The Wheel for the former, Engineering for the latter.)
  
• Workers and Legions cannot improve the same tile similtaniously.

Unique Unit II: Ballista

• Land-based ranged units use their ranged strength rather than melee strength when defending against ranged attacks. As such, Ballistae are 25% better at defending against ranged attacks (including those of cities) compared to Catapults - not the 14% you might expect.

Unique Ability: Siberian Riches

• The Third Alternative tenet from the Autocracy ideology stacks with your UA to make quadruple quantities of horses, iron and uranium!

Unique Unit: Cossack

• The Blitz promotion is a great way to cut through enemy units quickly - first damage them, then hit them again when they're wounded.

Unique Ability: Siberian Riches

• You don't need to improve strategic resource tiles in order to get the +1 production.
  
• The "double quantities" means iron, horses and uranium made from your own mines and pastures will produce twice the normal amount. Resources you obtain from City-States or trading won't be doubled.

Unique Unit: Cossack

• The unique attribute of Cossacks is a separate promotion to Charge, but acts the exact same way and stacks with it. It also carries over on upgrade.

Unique Building: Krepost

• Aside from only applying to the city the Krepost's in, the effect is identical to the Angkor Wat and stacks additively with it (so both together means -50% gold and culture costs for tiles.) Religious Settlements and the Tradition Opener also can go well with Kreposts.

Unique Ability: Great Expanse

• Building lots of cities early on can quickly choke off good city spots for other Civs. Just be sure you can defend them!

Unique Unit I: Pathfinder

• Prior to turn 20 (assuming a normal-speed game,) your first option should be the population point, as it greatly increases the output of your capital in these early years.
  
• From turn 20 until you at least have a Pantheon, you should choose the faith option when available. Get enough faith ruins and you can secure a rather early religion.
  
• If you want to play somewhat differently, choose the advanced weapons option, build another Pathfinder (or a few) and you can start attacking enemy cities.

Unique Unit II: Comanche Riders

• Autocracy's Lightning Warfare suits upgraded Comanche Riders well. Very fast movement combined with ignoring Zone of Control makes surrounding enemy units and exploiting flanking bonuses easy.

General

• The Shoshone start with a Pathfinder instead of a Warrior.

Unique Unit I: Pathfinder

• Pathfinders become a Composite Bowman instead of an Archer if they find advanced weapons from Ancient Ruins

Unique Unit II: Comanche Riders

• Upgrading Knights to Comanche Riders is 22% cheaper compared to upgrading Knights to regular Cavalry (170 instead of 220 gold in normal-speed games)
  
• However, upgrading Comanche Riders is 19% more expensive compared to upgrading Cavalry (310 instead of 260 gold in normal-speed games)

Unique Ability: Great Expanse

• Founded cities receive 8 additional tiles, on top of the default 7
  
  • These tiles are typically those which would have been favoured by the city gaining those tiles via culture
    
  • These tiles do not raise the culture or gold cost of the next tiles (so the first tile the city gains through culture will cost the same as it does for any other Civ.)
• The combat bonus in friendly territory is 15% and only applies to military land units.
  
  • Air and naval units do not gain this bonus. Helicopter Gunships don't get the bonus unless they've been upgraded to from an Anti-Tank Gun.

Unique Unit I: Pathfinder

• Concerning the choice when entering Ancient Ruins:
  
  • Options include gaining culture, gold, faith, a technology, a point of population in one of your cities, revealing part of the map, revealing nearby Barbarian encampments and upgrading the unit. On Settler difficulty, you have the two additional options of a free Worker or a free Settler.
    
  • It has a "cooldown" - you must explore two ruins between each choice of the same option. (e.g. Technology -> Culture -> Population bonus -> Technology.)
    
  • The faith option cannot be chosen until turn 20 (on normal speed games.) Once you've founded a Pantheon, the faith offered by it triples, and its cooldown resets. Once you've founded a religion, you can no longer choose the option.
    
  • You cannot choose to upgrade a unit via Ancient Ruins if it has already received an upgrade from them.
    
  • Only ancient-era technologies can be gained from the technology option. Once you have them all, the option can no longer be selected.
    
  • You can only reveal Barbarian encampments if any currently exist. If they're all eliminated, the option will be unavailable.

Unique Unit II: Comanche Riders

• The Full Moon Striker promotion carries over on upgrade, so you can have super-fast armoured units. Goes great with Autocracy's Lightning Warfare.

Unique Ability: Father Governs Children

• Start by favouring religious City-States so you can get a religion up and running early.

Unique Unit: Naresuan's Elephant

• Naresuan's Elephants have the strength of a Lancer, with a better bonus against mounted units, no resource requirement, a cheaper cost and a better upgrade path. Unless you desperately need 4 movement points rather than 3, Siam has no reason to build Lancers.
  
  • Due to this, you can hold off researching renaissance-era military technologies for a long time, meaning you can instead concentrate on peaceful technologies such as Architecture.

Unique Building: Wat

• Wats count as culture buildings for the purpose of Tradition's Legalism, so if you get all the culture buildings your technologies allow, research Education and then pick up Legalism, you should get some Wats for free (both production and maintenance-free.) The downside to this strategy is that Tradition's generally Siam's best Social Policy tree to start in, and delaying Legalism means delaying strong early-game policies like Landed Elite.

Unique Ability: Father Governs Children

• Unit gifts from militaristic City-States start with 10 more experience than normal

Unique Ability: Father Governs Children

• Mercantile City-States are not affected by the UA.
  
• Siam may have bonuses for befriending or allying City-States, but no advantage to holding alliances. As such, they have no direct advantages to diplomatic victories. They might have two different bonuses to culture, but no tourism advantages and hence no direct advantage at cultural victories. Instead, try using the extra food from maritime City-States to grow your cities tall and get a good science output.

Unique Unit: Naresuan's Elephant

• None of the unit's special attributes carry over on upgrade.

Unique Building: Mud Pyramid Mosque

• This UB works well with puppet cities, seeing as the culture bonus means they can expand their borders faster - making up for the fact you can't purchase tiles there - and the free maintenance means the city won't eat so much into money you'll need for unit maintenance.
  
• Mud Pyramid Mosques count as culture buildings for the purpose of Tradition's Legalism, so if you get all the culture buildings your technologies allow, research Philosophy and then pick up Legalism, you'll get some for free. This is only really viable if you intend to go further in the Tradition tree - otherwise, pick Piety's Opener if you desperately need faster Mud Pyramid Mosque building.
  
• Mud Pyramid Mosques, as Temple replacements, have a high number of modifers:
  
  • Piety - Opener (-50% production cost)
    
  • Piety - Organised Religion (+1 faith)
    
  • Piety - Theocracy (+25% gold output for city)
    
  • Follower - Choral Music (+2 culture if the city has 5+ followers)
    
  • Follower - Feed the World (+1 food)
    
  • Follower - Religious Centre (+2 happiness if the city has 5+ followers)

Unique Ability: River Warlord

Free promotions

• Military land units receive +1 sight when embarked, in addition to the doubled embarkment defence.

Unique Unit: Mandekalu Cavalry

• Upgrading a Chariot Archer to a Mandekalu Cavalry is 41% cheaper than upgrading it to a Knight (80 rather than 135 gold in normal-speed games)
  
• Upgrading a Horseman to a Mandekalu Cavalry is 45% cheaper than upgrading it to a Knight (55 rather than 100 gold in normal-speed games)
  
• Upgrading a Mandekalu Cavalry to a Cavalry is 9% more expensive than the same with a Knight (240 rather than 220 gold in normal-speed games)

Unique Ability: River Warlord

Extra gold

• Barbarian encampment gold scales with both difficulty and game speed. Below Prince difficulty, encampments give more gold. Slower game speeds give more gold, faster game speeds give less. On Prince difficulty or higher in a normal-speed game, encampments give 25 gold, or 75 to Songhai.
  
• The triple gold received from capturing cities does not stack with the double-gold-on-capture ability of Landsknechte, but it does with the double-gold from taking an Egyptian city with a Burial Tomb, making six times the base yield.

Free promotions

• Only military land units receive the War Canoes and Amphibious promotions, although Helicopter Gunships can receive them if upgraded from an Anti-Tank Gun. Civilian units, including Great Generals, will never receive them.
  
• Even units that can't normally earn the Ampibious promotion can receive it, such as Scouts.
  
• Embarkment defence is tied to your era rather than to the unit. As such, obsolete units are just as safe unescorted than any other kind of unit.

Unique Ability: Seven Cities of Gold

• If you're the first to discover a natural wonder very early on, the money will be enough that you can purchase a Settler. You should certainly do so - it'll get your game off to a very strong start.
  
• Always try to get the One With Nature Pantheon - it'll add +8 faith to natural wonders for Spain, making it a fast way to found a full religion.
  
• With the Natural Heritage Sites resolution from the World Congress, and a nearby city with a Hotel, Airport and the National Visitor Centre, the Great Barrier Reef or El Dorado is worth 40 tourism, Mt. Fuji is worth 32, Mt. Kilimanjaro is worth 28 and all other natural wonders are worth 20. Cultural victory is certainly a viable route to go down as Spain.

Unique Unit I: Conquistador

• While Settlers cannot be purchased through faith via the Holy Warriors Founder belief, Conquistadors can be. This is a great way to turn excess One With Nature faith into expansion potential.
  
• Conquistadors can found cities even when heavily injured, and that city will start with full health making it an interesting option if the unit's greatly threatened.
  
• If you've got Commerce's Mercenary Army, you can exploit the speed of Conquistadors to move quickly through enemy lands, set up a city on the other end and start spamming Landsknechte to distract the enemy. Landsknechte are the only units that can move after being purchased, meaning you can rapidly buy an army of them in a single city.
  
• The huge sight of Conquistadors (4 by default, 5 with the Sentry promotion) makes them excellent spotters for siege units even into the late-game. They'll be vulnerable once planes enter the game, but by that point you'll be able to use Triplanes as spotters instead.

Unique Unit II: Tercio

• Because Tercios are classed as standard melee units rather than gunpowder units, the Warrior Code Social Policy from the Honour tree will add a 15% production bonus when building them. This is more than enough to cover the increased production cost of Tercios relative to Musketmen.
  
• On top of that, Tercios won't be vulnerable to the 25% bonus against gunpowder units that the Zulu Impis have.

Unique Ability: Seven Cities of Gold

Natural wonder mechanics

• If Lake Victoria spawns adjacent to a river, the entire length of the river will be wider than normal. As such, if you uncover an extra-thick river, follow it!

Unique Spanish abilities

• The effects of the One With Nature Pantheon (normally +4 faith per natural wonder) and the Natural Heritage Sites resolution from the World Congress (normally +5 culture per natural wonder) are doubled for Spain.

Unique Unit I: Conquistador

• Conquistadors cost 22% more gold to upgrade to from a Chariot Archer (165 instead of 135 gold in normal-speed games)
  
• Likewise, they cost 30% more 130 gold to upgrade to from a Horseman (130 instead of 100 gold in normal-speed games)
  
• However, they're 14% cheaper to upgrade compared to a Knight (190 rather than 220 gold in normal-speed games)
  
• Conquistadors can embark even without the Optics technology.

Unique Unit II: Tercio

• Tercios cost 29% more gold to upgrade to from a Longswordsman (90 instead of 70 gold in normal-speed games)
  
• However, they're 12.5% cheaper to upgrade compared to a Musketman (140 rather than 160 gold in normal-speed games)

Unique Ability: Seven Cities of Gold

Natural wonder mechanics

• The number of natural wonders in a map is tied to its size. The Great Barrier Reef counts as one natural wonder for the purposes of this limit.
  
  • Duel: 2
    
  • Tiny or Small: 3
    
  • Standard: 4
    
  • Large: 6
    
  • Huge: 7
• Cerro de Potosi, King Solomon's Mines, El Dorado and Fountain of Youth are less likely to spawn than other natural wonders, in descending order of frequency.
  
• Aside from the Rock of Gibraltar, El Dorado, Krakatoa, the Great Barrier Reef and the Fountain of Youth, all natural wonders count as mountains for the purposes of building an Observatory. However, none count for the purposes of mountain-requiring wonders.

Unique Spanish abilities

• The gold bonus for discovering natural wonders on a normal-speed game is 100, or 500 if you're the first to discover it.
  
• Happiness bonuses both from discovering natural wonders and from owning ones that offer a happiness bonus are doubled.
  
• Aside from One With Nature and Natural Heritage Sites, bonuses that may apply to tiles natural wonders are on (e.g. Petra if it's on a desert tile) are not doubled.

Unique Unit I: Conquistador

• Any landmass not containing your capital can be settled by Conquistadors, no matter the size.
  
• Only the double embarkment defence (and hence the ability to embark without Optics, which is attached to it) carries over when you upgrade a Conquistador.

Unique Unit II: Tercio

• The bonus against mounted units doesn't carry over when you upgrade the Tercio. Tercios are actually stronger against Cavalry than Riflemen are, so it might be worth keeping some around.

Unique Ability: Nobel Prize

• The earliest possible Great Person is from Warrior Code in the Honour Social Policy tree. Gifting that free Great General to a religious City-State is a really good way of increasing your odds of grabbing an early religion with all the faith it provides.
  
• Great Prophets give just as much influence when they only have one remaining use of "Spread Religion" than they do when they've been newly-generated. As such, never gift a new Great Prophet, unless you have no religion of your own or it's a captured Great Prophet of another religion.
  
• The Reformation belief To the Glory of God is particularly useful for Sweden, as it allows you to purchase any kind of Great Person. The faith costs of purchasing a Great Person rise for every one you've bought, so spreading out your faith-purchases across all the different Great Person types gives you the most efficent faith-to-influence ratio.

Unique Unit I: Hakkapeliitta

• If you have Commerce's Mercenary Army, you can buy Landsknechte and upgrade them to Hakkepeliitta even when the latter's gone obsolete. It's useful if you want to make a new Anti-Tank Gun or Helicopter Gunship with the Hakkapeliitta's unique promotions.
  
• If you don't have a Khan, consider giving a Hakkapeliitta Medic promotions and putting them in the middle of a formation of Caroleans. Hakkapeliittas are more support units than anything else, so having Medic promotions rather than direct combat bonuses won't be too much of a problem.

Unique Unit II: Carolean

• By completing the Patronage tree, allied City-States can randomly gift you Great People - including Khans. Caroleans surrounding a Khan will heal 25 health every single turn - and that's in neutral or enemy territory. The healing Khans offer doesn't stack with the Medic promotions.

Unique Ability: Nobel Prize

• The Great Person generation bonus doesn't affect Great Prophets, Generals or Admirals, although they can still be gifted to City-States just as effectively.
  
• The Great Person Points bonus stacks additively, so having two active declarations of friendship open will give you a 20% bonus (and each of those Civs a 10% bonus.)
  
• Both methods of gifting Great People to City-States work (gifting the unit directly when in City-State lands, or via the contact screen) for the purposes of the 90 influence boost, although gifting the unit via the City-State's contact screen have a delay of three turns before you'll get your influence.
  
• The 90 influence from gifting Great People is fixed - nothing increases or reduces the amount.

Unique Unit I: Hakkapeliitta

• The unique features of Hakkapeliitta, as well as the Formation I promotion, carry over on upgrade.
  
• If a Great General or Khan starts their turn on the same space as where a Hakkapeliitta starts, their movement for the turn will be capped by the Hakkapeliitta's maximum movement. Normally, this means more movement than normal, but in the case of Khans or Lightning Warfare-boosted Great Generals, it actually slows them down.

Unique Unit II: Carolean

• Being a standard promotion, March carries over on upgrade. It's a hard promotion for new other units to reach, so make sure you build plenty of Caroleans before you research Replaceable Parts where they go obsolete.

Unique Ability: Serenissima

• Puppets don't raise the cost of Social Policies, so Venice can chew through them faster than most Civs. Similarly, National Wonders are super-easy to build - all you need is the prerequisite building in your capital.
  
• The Great People puppets generate don't raise the cost of future ones. Buy some specialist buildings (e.g. Markets, Universities) and some Gardens in your better puppeted cities to take advantage of that.

Unique Great Person: Merchant of Venice

• Any Civ can receive a Merchant of Venice of their own by completing the Patronage Social Policy tree and allying with City-States.
  
• If a City-State owns multiple cities, a single Merchant of Venice can take them all as puppets under your control. This can be exploited (with some difficulty) to avoid quite a bit of warmonger penalties.
  
• Don't over-use the City-State puppeting ability. Fewer City-States will make it harder to dominate the World Congress later (which you can easily do with your huge gold supply) and new cities raise the science cost of new technologies.
  
  • Still, puppeting City-States allied to a rival Civ can be useful in the late-game if there's a particularly strong diplomatic Civ getting in your way of a diplomatic victory.
• Building Customs Houses isn't as poor a move as it may seem - Trade Route yields are partially based on the non-Trade Route gold output of cities.

General

• In later-era starts, Venice will receive Merchants of Venice instead of additional Settlers.

Unique Unit: Great Galleass

• Compared to the regular Galleass, Great Galleasses are 11% cheaper to upgrade (160 rather than 180 gold in normal-speed games)

Unique Great Person: Merchant of Venice

• Not exactly hidden but not entirely well known: Gold and influence yields for a Trade Mission is doubled when using a Merchant of Venice compared to a Great Merchant. This stacks with Commerce's Entrepreneurship.
  
• Merchants of Venice can move two more tiles when embarked per turn than a Great Merchant can.

Unique Ability: Serenissima

• Faith-purchasing in puppeted cities is possible, as well as buying spaceship parts (with Space Procurements from the Freedom ideology)
  
• You can't buy tiles in puppeted cities.
  
• Wonders that increase the Trade Route limit will raise it by two for Venice. As such, Petra and the Colossus are particularly valuable wonders.
  
• If you get a Conquistador from a militaristic City-State, you cannot found a city with it, even if it's on a different continent to your capital. The option simply won't appear.

Unique Great Person: Merchant of Venice

• Puppeted City-States can never be turned back into City-States, and lose their original capital status (so other Civs can raze it if they capture it.)
  
• Puppeting City-States will reduce the number of delegates needed for diplomatic victory, recalculating the number as if the City-States never existed.
  
• All buildings present in a puppeted City-State are retained.
  
• Puppeting mercantile City-States destroys their unique luxuries.

Unique Ability: Iklwa

• With just a Military Academy in a city, you can get any new unit made there to three starting promotions. That's enough to get air units to Air Repair, sea units to Supply, ranged units to March and land-based melee units to Siege.
  
  • With the Brandenburg Gate, Autocracy's Total War and a Military Academy, you can get any new unit produced in that city to four starting promotions.
    
  • Add the Alhambra and land-based melee units can start with five promotions.

Unique Unit: Impi

• You can sometimes obtain Immortals and Pictish Warriors via alliances with Militaristic City-States if their respective Civs (Persia and the Celts) aren't present in your game. Thanks to the upgrade path of Impis, you can bring their unique promotions to Riflemen and other front-line units.

Unique Building: Ikanda

• You can get Lancers, Anti-Tank Guns and Helicopter Gunships with Buffalo promotions by buying Landsknechte (requires Commerce's Mercenary Army) and upgrading them.
  
• Extra movement from Buffalo Horns makes an excellent counter to the Great Wall wonder. Having a maximum of 2 moves down from 3 is much less significant than 1 move, down from 2.

Unique Unit: Impi

• Impis receive a 25% bonus against gunpowder units, whether attacking or defending. This does not keep on upgrade, nor does it work on Spain's Tercios (as they are classed as melee units.)
  
• The Spear Throw ability works even when Impi are making amphibious attacks while embarked.

Unique Ability: Iklwa

• Only standard melee units have reduced unit maintenance (Warriors, Spearmen, Swordsmen, Pikemen, Longswordsmen, their replacements, Landsknechte and Tercios.)
  
• It's easy to assume that a 50% reduction in standard melee maintenance means you can support twice as many of those units for the same cost. In reality, individual costs of unit maintenance rise the more units you have.
  
• The changed amount of experience needed to obtain promotions does not affect the experience cap from fighting Barbarians; you'll still be able to reach 30 XP that way.

Unique Unit: Impi

• When attacking another unit, Impis first perform the special ranged-like attack, dealing damage without receiving any, before immediately before going into normal melee combat. The ranged attack cannot be perfomed by itself (although if a unit is killed by it, the Impi obviously won't follow it up with normal melee combat.)
  
• Additionally, the ranged attack...
  
  • Benefits from the 50% bonus against mounted units
    
  • Gives experience separately to the main melee attack (assuming no bonuses to XP gain, that's 2 XP for the ranged attack and 5 for melee)
    
  • Is not perfomed in defence or when attacking cities
    
  • Can be used if the Impi is attacking while embarked!
• The Spear Throw attribute is not kept on upgrade.
  
• The upgrade cost from Impis to Riflemen is 40% higher than the normal Pikeman to Lancer upgrade path (280 rather than 200 gold in normal-speed games.)

Unique Building: Ikanda

• Only standard melee units that you've directly built or purchased yourself in an Ikanda city will be eligible for the Buffalo Horns promotion. As such, only Warriors, Spearmen, Swordsmen, Impis, Longswordsmen and Landsknechte will get the promotions when first built or bought.
  
  • Units gifted from militaristic City-States can't get these promotions.
    
  • As the promotions carry over when you upgrade the units, it's still possible to have Musketmen, Riflemen and so on with Buffalo promotions.
• Here's the cumulative total from all three Buffalo promotions:
  
  • +1 movement
    
  • +75% flanking bonus (17.5% combat bonus per other friendly unit next to the one you're attacking, rather than the default 10%)
    
  • +30% defence against ranged attacks
    
  • +10% strength in open terrain
    
  • +10% strength generally

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These guides cover every Civ in the game and can be used as quick reference guides.

• Civ summaries (Gives a brief overview of how each Civ plays)
  
• Civ-specific tricks, secrets and clarifications (Compiles the lesser-known features of each Civ)

All 43 Civs are covered in in-depth guides linked below. In brackets are the favoured victory routes of each Civ.

• America (Domination)
  
• Arabia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Assyria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Austria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Aztecs (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Babylon (Scientific)
  
• Brazil (Cultural)
  
• Byzantium (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Carthage (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Celts (Cultural)
  
• China (Domination)
  
• Denmark (Domination)
  
• Egypt (Cultural)
  
• England (Domination)
  
• Ethiopia (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• France (Cultural)
  
• Germany (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Greece (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Huns (Domination)
  
• Inca (Scientific)
  
• India (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• Indonesia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Iroquois (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Japan (Domination)
  
• Korea (Scientific)
  
• Mayans (Scientific)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Morocco (Diplomatic)
  
• Netherlands (Diplomatic, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Ottomans (Domination)
  
• Persia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Poland (Domination)
  
• Polynesia (Cultural)
  
• Portugal (Diplomatic)
  
• Rome (Domination)
  
• Russia (Domination)
  
• Shoshone (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Siam (Diplomatic/Scientific)
  
• Songhai (Domination)
  
• Spain (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Sweden (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Venice (Diplomatic)
  
• Zulus (Domination)