If you’re like us, there’s no better victory path in any Civilization game than science. There are perks to them all, but being the first to achieve orbit, or head to Mars, or even Alpha Centauri – that’s just plain cool. In Civilization 7, the long-standing accomplishment is back.
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Yet, you’ll have fun little markers along the way, via the Legacy Paths available in the Antiquity and Exploration Ages. Whether you pull them off is up to you, but they’ll both assist you in the Modern Age’s grand finale. We’re covering best practices for Civilization 7’s scientific win, from start to finish, with flourish.
Conduct Your Research
As with Civilization 7’s other victory paths, you’ll be gaining momentum on other potential victory paths while you’re working on the science one. Don’t discount the usefulness of making milestones in the alternative Legacy Paths between the ages, as they can help you out along the way.
The Antiquity Age’s Scientific Legacy Path is fairly straightforward. Your goal here is to gather and display ten codices. That second part is crucial, because you not only require ten codices; you have to find the means to find “slots” to place them in.
Your first order of business is to research Writing. Should you beeline it? Honestly, not really. You can, but it would behoove you to learn all three of the prior techs rather than just the two that are necessary for it. This stuff is all rudimentary, but despite its simplicity, it’ll help you throughout the age.
While you await the Writing tech, temporarily ignore the culture and especially gold tiles during your settlements’ population-based expansions. The former, while highly useful, will slow us down a bit for now; the latter is just not as important early on for scientifically-minded players.
What you should instead be doing is focusing on the food you’ll need for more growth and the production you’ll need for constructing science buildings, the first of which is the Library, Build these immediately in any of your cities (though at this point, you may still have just the one).
Get some experience with specialists once you can place them in cities. This won’t happen until later into the Antiquity Age, but not only are they highly valuable in any age; specialist know-how will aid you in the Exploration Age.
Collect Your Codices
The Writing tech, in and of itself, won’t snag you your first codex. Research its mastery before moving on so that you have that. You’ll automatically slot it in, as any available slots will do that for you at any time, and Libraries contain codex slots.
We can’t emphasize this enough: don’t forget unslotted codices if you acquire any while lacking spare slots. The game will not notify you when that changes. Maybe you have a sterling memory, but we’ve totally forgotten to open up the Great Works tab and do so for a few turns, and that means less science output until we did so.
You’ll not reach it for quite some time, but the Mathematics tech will allow you to build Academies, which will help greatly in acquiring slots – and extra science to keep propelling you forward.
Don’t rest on your laurels; check your tech and civics tabs routinely and research any that offer codices and/or slots. You can find these at several points along the way. You probably won’t get to ten of either resource until you get those Academies, but nor would you get all ten codices without these “detours”.
If you happen to botch getting all ten, you’ll still gain Science Legacy Points for the age transition thanks to each milestone you’ve achieved. But do aim for ten, as the Scientific Golden Age card will enable you to continue your Academy science yield in the Exploration Age – a major boon.
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Ramp Up Those Yields
The Exploration Age Scientific Legacy path is more complicated. In theory, it’s simple: you need five tiles with an output of 40 or greater. In practice, however, it can be a terribly daunting task.
Before you can really get going, you’ll need the Education tech, as its research is part of the first milestone. Keep an eye out for any and all Policy Cards that improve your science yield while you’re at it, because we’re going to want these at all times.
Also, keep tabs on happiness-related Policy Cards, as your specialists are going to partly nuke your happiness when placed. Besides which, crises affect happiness, so it’s good practice to ensure your settlements have as much as possible in preparation for that phase.
Buildings and wonders provide adjacency bonuses to scientist-infused tiles – add as many of those as you can before or after you place those specialists. Add them to the tiles with the specialists, too, since, you know, that’ll clearly add to that specific tile’s output.
Another good idea is to grow rural tiles next to areas that are potentially impacted by floods and eruptions.
These regularly-occuring disasters can be a real nuisance, but you won’t have to spend as much on repairing rural improvements, and they’ll gain increased output the first several times they’re impacted. Place urban tiles in safe spots just behind the rural tiles to reap adjacency rewards.
If you happen to have been fortunate enough to settle near any Natural Wonders, these fantastic tiles will continue to be a great boon to you, especially when placing urban tiles for specialists.
Take To The Skies
Oddly enough, despite requiring quite a few steps, the Modern Age isn’t so bad for scientific victories. Frankly, all you need to do is to follow the directions for each milestone, constructing the requisite buildings for each project.
We’re not entirely sure yet whether the AI gets more hostile toward you when you’re nearing a victory condition, as was the case in at least Civilization 5. For good measure, build up your army as well. This is easier once you have Flight, anyway, and that’s an early milestone objective.
In Civ 7, you don’t need to plan a trip to Mars or Alpha Centauri. You “just” need to get into space en route to the moon. As we said earlier, this does take several projects, but so long as you’ve maintained a sturdy science yield in past ages, your opponents will be less likely to get to the finish line ahead of you!
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