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Amina is the queen of resource-based gameplay in Civilization 7, with her main aim to generate as much gold as possible via trade and expansion. She receives excellent bonuses for connected resources and has extra resource capacity in cities. This comes in handy during the Antiquity Age, where restrictions around resource capacity can be particularly limiting while trying to achieve economic victory.
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Civilization 7: Augustus Leader Guide
Augustus is a powerful expansionist and militaristic leader in Civilization 7, but there’s also a good amount of culture generation to be had as well.
Gold is incredibly powerful in Civilization 7, allowing you to quickly purchase units, upgrade your towns, and otherwise upgrade your civilization as you play. Amina is quite a beginner-friendly leader for this reason.
Amina Overview
Amina receives +1 Resource Capacity in Cities, +1 Gold on Resources per Age, and +5 Combat Strength for Units on Plains and Desert tiles.
Resources are a crucial part of Civilization 7. While they require a little micromanagement, usually you are restricted by the number of slots available in your towns and cities. Resources provide significant boosts to your production, science, culture, food, and more.
Amina favors collecting as many resources as she can with smart settlement planning and trade-based gameplay.
You can read more about Resources in Civilization here – as well as how they change during the Exploration and Modern Age.
Amina Strategy
Amina is an excellent candidate to swiftly complete the economic victory condition in Antiquity.
This is also the easiest victory condition to manage to extend your age, where it relies on how many resources you’ve slotted in your towns and cities, which can be manually selected as opposed to wonders and codices that are immediately attributed to your victory condition points, and thus ending the age faster.
Amina is therefore one of the better leader candidates for hitting two or three victory conditions before the age ends, as economic victory is often an oversight if you’re playing a heavy military, cultural, or scientific game.
Best Resources For Amina
Amina loves Camels, but then all leaders and civilizations in Civilization 7 should love Camels. They’re one of the best resources in the game as they further increase resource capacity in cities.
As well as Camels, Amina should be on the lookout for Gold and Silver as these reduce the costs around purchasing buildings and units.
Best Mementos For Amina
Amina excels with some of the economics-focused Mementos, such as the basis Economic Attribute Point, but there are some other fun and competitive choices as well.
- Amina’s personal Memento (unlocked at level 5) is the Kwalkwali, which provides +1 Gold per Age for each Resource assigned to cities. Combine this with her +1 Gold per age and extra resource capacity in cities, and you can start to see a powerful pattern emerging. You’ll often start the Exploration Age with an absolute heap of gold that can be used to rush settlers for Distant Land expansions, or quickly build a fleet to dominate the seas.
- The Royal Mace Memento provides an extra +1 Gold per Age for each imported resource. Again, combine this with Amina’s other gold-earning potential and you have one of the best economic civilizations in the game.
Best Civilization Combos For Amina
Because of Amina’s flexibility with win conditions – gold is great for all victory conditions, essentially – you have a lot of freedom when it comes to civilization choice.
Aksum
A natural choice for Amina is Aksum as it compliments her economic victory efforts, providing an extra +2 Gold on Resources and the Hawlit unique building that provides +2 Gold and +1 Culture for each adjacent Hawlit and Wonder.
If you are lucky enough to get a good coastal start with Amina and Aksum you can also make use of the Aksumite Unique Unit, the Dhow. This is a naval unit that can establish a sea trade route with nearby civilizations and city-states. You can actually jump past the Code Of Law civic that allows you to purchase Merchants for the first time by constructing Dhows as soon as you research sailing.
The Dhow rush is a great way to get a massive headstart as Amina, as long as you can find enough cities to trade with. This is one of the reasons we really like Amina on Fractal or Archipelago maps, because there are more coastal settlements.
Once you activate a Dhow in a coastal settlement, it spawns a Tankwa – this is Aksum’s unique trade ship that has an extra +10 trade range (this is massive!) and can’t be pillaged by barbarians.
Maya
We actually think the Maya are probably the best Antiquity Age civilization in the game. They receive a massive science boost on Vegetated Terrain and excellent adjacency bonuses for their unique quarter, the Uwaybil K’uh and Altars.
Amina’s extra gold from Resources will help you build the infrastructure quickly in your towns, particularly getting those early Altars up and eventually converting towns into cities to build the unique quarter.
As an early goal, you want to grab Mysticism as quickly as possible with Amina and Maya, build your Altars in any settlements you’ve established, and then get your first unique quarter up and running in your capital.
You can use gold to build your surrounding towns, which will in turn increase your gold and allow you to improve more resources. Then you have the opportunity to focus on constructing Wonders in the capital and using gold to purchase essential buildings by the end of the era.
Persia
A strong gold economy also means you’re able to build a large military force, as units require gold maintenance to function. This makes Persia an interesting military choice as a partnership with Amina.
Persia is known for its powerful Immortal rush with multiple methods to acquire several Immortal units for free via narrative events and production boosts. Their unique tile improvement, the Pairidaeza, also provides gold and culture.
Though Amina is a solid military leader – with that bonus of +5 Combat Strength on Plains and Desert – she also relies heavily on trade. You’re unable to trade with players that you’re at war with. This requires a bit of diplomatic management that might be tricky on higher difficulties, as you want to essentially keep the other civilizations happy while also declaring war on one of them.
It also means you might have to declare war on your closest neighbor, restricting potential trade routes.
Amina In The Exploration Age And Modern Age
As you progress through the Antiquity Age, hopefully picking up an economy victory on the way, you will be faced with the decision of which direction to take your empire in next. This is really situational and games of Civilization 7 tend to develop organically depending on the civilizations you’ve unlocked, the quests you’ve completed, and the overall victory condition you’re leaning into.
Chola For Exploration Age Trade
For trade, we recommend the Chola as an Exploration Age civilization. You’ll unlock the Chola by completing sea trade routes, which is easy as Amina regardless if you picked up the Aksum civilization in the Antiquity Age or not.
The Chola receives a unique naval ship, the Kalam, which can attack an extra time every time. This is one of the best naval units in the game. You can quickly seize control of the Distant Lands and island settlements between the two continents if you’re playing on the recommended Continents Plus map type.
Their unique quarter, The Five Hundred Lords, provides a huge +5 Land Trade Route distance and +15 for ocean trade routes. Be careful though, you can only construct the Anjuvannam district on coastal tiles. This means if you don’t have a coastal city, you can’t actually build the unique quarter, rendering the Chola quite useless.
Songhai
Another civilization that leans into Amina’s trading playstyle is the Songhai. Unlike the Chola, the Songhai focus more on land trade routes, facilitated by the Tajiro unique merchant unit that will grant an extra 100 gold if the trade route is established in a city with a navigable river.
The Songhai also receive some other nice bonuses for navigable rivers, such as +2 Resource Capacity in Towns and Cities on Navigable Rivers. Your trade ships also can’t be plundered while they are on Navigable Rivers.
The Songhai are again quite a situational civilization. If there are no navigable rivers in your lands – or anywhere near you – then it’s best to think about a different civilization.
- Released
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February 11, 2025
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