Lafayette Leader Guide For Civ 7

Lafayette is a diplomatic and militaristic leader in Civ 7 with some awesome strategies that help you build units with extremely high Combat Strength right from the start of the game. The main strategy involves taking Greece as your Civilization and stacking Combat Strength bonuses on your Hoplites, but the strategy can work with any unit from any civilization to give you a big advantage over the AI in warfare.

Civilization 7: Leader Tier List

A work-in-progress leader tier list for Civilization 7.

This guide covers the best Lafayette strategy to dominate the Antiquity Age with massively buffed units.

Lafayette Overview

Lafayette gets access to a Unique Endeavor, called Reform. This grants you an additional Policy Slot. If the opponent also supports it, they get a solicy slot as well. You’ll receive +1 Combat Strength for every Tradition slotted in the Government.

+2 Culture and Happiness per Age in Settlements. Doubled in Distant Lands.

Lafayette is one of the best leaders in the game if you manage to pull off his powerful Antiquity Age strategy of stacking policies and buffing your units.

This works by building up lots of Influence gain, sending out the Reform Endeavor to other players in the game, and then stacking Traditions in your Government to increase your unit’s combat strength.

Traditions are policy cards that are specific to your civilization. Regular policy cards will not improve the Combat Strength of your units.

Lafayette Strategy For The Antiquity Age

Lafayette wants to focus on early Influence and then start the military production machine.

Early Scouting And Discovery Priority

Produce three Scouts. Use these to quickly find Discoveries around the map. This is the priority of bonuses you should pick:

Science – You want to grab early Animal Husbandry and Pottery to boost your production.
Culture – Useful for grabbing the Mysticism civic for an early Pantheon.
Gold – Gold can be used to purchase early buildings in your capital.
Production
Food
Celebration bonus

You’re also on the hunt for city-states. Lafayette will likely lean towards generating a lot of Influence, so you can definitely grab some city-states as friends as you go.

Grabbing Early Influence Gain

There are a few ways you can start to earn some Influence early with Lafayette.

First, you can choose to opt for a Neutral Greeting when you first encounter the AI. In theory you should be able to recover that initial penalty to the relationship by sending multiple Endeavors their way later on.

Secondly, you can rush for the Masonry technology to build an early Monument.

If you’re feeling particularly aggressive, you can head straight for the Citizenship civic to get the Weiyang Palace before anyone else. This is the best Wonder in the game for Influence-based playstyles.

The Weiyang Palace is unlocked via the Citizenship civic, which is fairly late in the tree.

The Reform Endeavor

Your unique Endeavor, Reform, should be used whenever it comes off cooldown. It’s a little more expensive than other Endeavors so make sure you save up a little Influence to use it again when it becomes available.

Right at the start of the game, you probably want to prioritise city-states and some early Endeavors to boost your culture and science via the AI rather than jumping right into Reform.

Greek Civilization Combo

Lafayette excels when combined with the Greeks. Not only does Greece provide excellent Influence bonuses (+3 Influence on the Palace), you also get access to some powerful civics that complement Lafayette’s militaristic goals.

Agoge II – The Mastery for the Agoge civic provides +1 Combat Strength to your Hoplites for every City-State you are a suzerain of.
To make city-state friends quickly, you can also research Ekklesia to gain access to the 50% reduction in cost to Befriend Independent Powers.

With the combination of Lafayette’s bonus from traditions providing combat strength and the extra combat strength from city-states, you can scale some very impressive Hoplites in the Antiquity Age.

This is a great strategy for Deity difficulty level, as the enemy receives significant Combat Strength bonuses compared to your base units. With this strat, you can keep up and even overtake their bonuses.