Charlemagne Leader Guide For Civ 7

Charlemagne is a powerful militaristic leader in Civilization 7. He receives a lot of bonus Happiness, a consistent way to generate production-free units, and some great combat buffs during Celebrations. Much of Charlemagne’s strategy revolves around warfare, although balancing his happiness requirements while taking cities and dealing with war weariness makes Charlemagne a little harder to pilot than some of the easier leaders in Civ 7.

This guide covers the best Charlemagne strategy to get the most out of his free cavalry units, the best civilizations, research paths, and more.

Charlemagne Overview

Charlemagne, the Father of Europe, has some excellent leader bonuses. Let’s take a look at them.

Happiness Adjacency

Charlemagne’s Happiness Adjacency on buildings like Libraries and Barracks will help you manage your overall happiness levels, as long as you’re smart about your adjacency planning.

Free Cavalry

Charlemagne receives two free cavalry units every time he enters a celebration. While this is a bit slow at the start of the game – it requires you to research The Wheel to unlock cavalry units – things can start to get really out of hand later in the game.

There are multiple methods to stack celebrations so that you instanty enter another once the current celebration ends. Repeat this over and over and print free powerful units with Charlemagne – in the Modern Age, this means free tanks. You can’t go wrong with free tanks.

One of the simplest ways to overpower enemy armies is to make sure that your combat strength is higher than theirs. It sounds simple, but you need to know where to find these bonuses.

On Deity difficulty, the AI receives huge combat strength bonuses.

Charlemagne gets a nice solid boost of +5 to Cavalry combat strength while in combat. Considering you should be in a celebration almost constantly come the Modern Age, this is a great help.

Best Antiquity Age Charlemagne Strategy In Civ 7

Regardless of your civilization (we’ll get to the best civs to pick for Charlemagne in a moment), Charlemagne has a solid strategy that focuses around generating early Happiness via the Altar.

Then you push for an early Library to earn the Bronze Working tech quickly, and then start to earn lots of cavalry units via the celebrations earned by your excess happiness.

Scouting And Discoveries – What Should You Choose From Discoveries?

As we recommend for every leader in the game, you should always build two or three scouts as your first production in your capital. This is because early game Discoveries are so important.

Discovery Priority List

• Gold – Gold is fantastic early on – it can let you purchase a quick settler, for example – and otherwise hard to come by.
• Science – As Charlemagne, you want to earn science quickly to reach the Bronze Working tech asap.
• Culture – Charlemagne also benefits from picking up the Discipline civic early, though we still tend to grab Mysticism first for early pantheons.
• Influence – Influence is very important in the early game as always, but as Charlemagne, you’re likely to be fighting your neighbors pretty soon anyway. It’s also a good idea to wipe out any nearby city-states also, to get early experience on your commander.

Best Government

There are two options here: either grab the Food and Production or go for Science and Infantry Unit Production. Food and Production provides more all-round benefits, whereas Science and Infantry can really push for that military victory in the Antiquity Age.

Early Tech And Civics

Generally, we like to pick up Pottery into Writing on Charlemagne to start earning science early on.

In terms of civics, you want to get your general online as soon as possible, so Discipline into Mysticism (to pick up a decent production Pantheon) is a great path.

No two games of Civ 7 will be the same, and your early strategy can often change moment to moment – especially depending on which civilization you’ve chosen to pair with Charlemagne.

Settling, Resources, And Conquering

Depending on the closeness of your neighbors, you may want to forego settling too many towns yourself. Charlemagne is a warmonger, and there’s no reason why you can’t just scoop your neighbor’s juicy capital as one of your early cities.

That being said, you want to be on the lookout for some key resources when playing as Charlemagne, regardless of civilization choice:

• Wine – Provides Happiness in the capital. This makes perfect sense to pair with Charlemagne’s overall happiness bonuses.
• Gold & Silver – Gold toward purchasing buildings and units. These two resources are some of the best in the game. Silver in particular can help you reduce the cost of units purchased with gold significantly, which makes it much faster to get your army online.
• Cotton, Sheep, Hides – These are all great early game resources for bonus food and production.

Best Wonders

Charlemagne benefits from military wonders. Here’s the wonder priority list.

• Gate Of Nations – Charlemagne should 100 percent focus on grabbing the Gate Of Wonders. This wonder provides +2 War Support for all future wars. War support, if it’s not in your favor, will cause unhappiness. This directly affects Charlemagne’s happiness bonuses.
• Sanchi Stupa – This wonder provides a nice +2 Happiness bonus as well as +1 Culture per excess Happiness in the settlement it’s built in. This also complements Charlemagne’s happiness-focused play style.
• Terracotta Army – This wonder grants a flat +2 production in the settlement as well as a free army commander. All armies also receive +25% experience. The free army commander is massive for Charlemagne. Though he gets free cavalry, it can be hard to transport them to the frontlines – however, using the army commander’s reinforcement ability, you can transport your cavalry across the map.

Best Civilizations For Charlemagne

Charlemagne has some great early options for civilizations in the Antiquity Age, such as the Khmer, Maurya, and the Maya. While these don’t seem like obvious picks for the European King, they do make sense within the context of Charlemagne’s bonuses.

Maurya

The Maurya have one of the best Antiquity Age cavalry units, the Purabhettarah. This unique unit receives an extra +5 Combat Strength against Fortified Districts. Pair this with Charlemagne’s +5 Combat Strength to cavalry during celebrations and you suddenly have a menacing +10 Combat Strength cavalry unit.

The Maurya’s focus on both growth and happiness also complements Charlemagne’s playstyle. The Dharamshala and Vihara unique buildings both provide Happiness, and the Matha (the unique Quarter with both districts inside) provides a boost of +10 percent happiness in the settlement.

You can use the Maurya’s extra Pantheon to grab some useful Pantheons early on, like the Wonder building Pantheon, or the Pantheon that provides +10% Growth in the settlement.

Khmer

The Khmer boast a powerful Antiquity Age cavalry unit, the Yuthahathi. It has higher combat strength than regular cavalry from the Age, but it does move slower. Also immune to flood damage.

It’s not as powerful as the Mauryan cavalry, but if you’re playing a leader who gets free cavalry, you might as well get the best units possible.

Much of the strategy for the Khmer revolves around the Baray, their unique tile improvement. This provides +3 base food, which is a pretty sizable bonus – but it also provides +1 Food on all floodplain tiles in the settlement. Lots of food to fuel production in Charlemagne’s cities.

Maya

The Maya are currently our default pick for leaders in Civilization 7 if we just want to dominate science from an early stage. While science is definitely not as crucial as in previous games – there are plenty of other avenues to win the game – it’s still very useful, particularly for a military leader like Charlemagne.

The quicker you manage to get to Bronze Working tech, the quicker you can start to generate your free cavalry units with celebrations. The Maya can get there quickly. Very quickly with the right start.

The Maya’s default bonuses aren’t amazing – that extra Science from Vegetated Terrain can be totally useless if you get a city start in a barren spot – but it’s really their civics and science adjacency that cause scientific mayhem in the Antiquity Age.

The K’uh Nah unique building provides +1 Science adjacency for Wonders (amazing), and the civics that revolve around science adjacency for the Altar are also fantastic. You can quickly get sizably ahead on Science with the Maya.