Choosing the right civilization to play in each age is a crucial part of your strategy in Civilization 7, with each civilization offering different unique units and buildings. During a full game, you’ll swap civilizations twice: Once when going from the Age of Antiquity to the Age of Exploration, and again when going from the Age of Exploration to the Modern Age.
In Civilization 7, the Normans are an Exploration Age Civilization specializing in Diplomatic and Militaristic strategies. They particularly excel at strategies utilizing cavalry units and when fighting on the coastline, which makes them perfect for pursuing the Military Legacy Path in the Age of Exploration.
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Norman Civ Overview
Norman Abilities, Units, Buildings, Civics, & More
The Norman Civilization is an Age of Exploration Civilization specializing in Diplomatic and Militaristic Strategy. Their Civ Ability makes their armies more effective near the coast and improves their land unit’s speed when embarked, helping them to colonize Distant Lands and fend off invaders. Their starting bias is towards coasts and iron resources, and their unique settler instantly creates medieval walls when establishing a new settlement. All this, combined with their unique buildings and quarter, allows them to establish heavily fortified settlements with surprising ease.
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Name |
Description |
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|---|---|---|
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Civ Ability |
Normannitas |
Land Units receive +1 Movement when Embarked and +5 Combat Strength when adjacent to coast. +30% Production toward the White Tower. |
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Unique Land Unit |
Chevaler |
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Unique Settler Unit |
Sokeman |
Receive Medieval Walls in the City Center when a new Town is created. |
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Unique Infrastructure |
Motte |
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Bailey |
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Donjon (Quarter) |
Created by building Motte and Bailey on same tile, grants a free Chevaler Unit when completed. |
Norman Civ Civics Tree
The Norman Civic Tree is a fairly well-rounded set of Civics that provide bonuses to culture, production, happiness, and the strength of their Chevaler units. Mastering the second and third Civics in this tree will also increase your settlement limit, making it easier to colonize new lands and hold onto conquered territories.
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Civic |
Unlocks |
Description |
|---|---|---|
|
Consuetudines et Justicie |
Motte |
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Palisading (Tradition) |
+50% Production towards constructing Fortification Buildings. |
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Consuetudines et Justicie II/Mastery +1 Combat Strength to Chevaler Units per Tradition slotted in Government. |
Bailey |
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Common Law +1 Social Policy Slot |
Juré (Tradition) |
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Common Law II/Mastery +1 Settlement Limit |
Servitium Debitum (Tradition) |
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Familia Regis (Tradition) |
+2 Culture for Each Tradition slotted in Government. |
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Domesday Book +2 Gold from Farms, this is doubled during celebrations. |
Bayeux Tapestry (Tradition) |
+4 Culture in Settlements not founded by you. |
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Domesday Book II/Mastery +1 Settlement Limit |
White Tower (Wonder) |
+4 Happiness in this Settlement for each Tradition slotted in Government. |
How To Unlock Norman Civ
All Norman Civ Unlock Requirements
Unlocking the Norman Civ is pretty easy compared to some of the other Exploration Age Civilizations, even if you don’t pick the leader or civilizations that unlock it automatically. Players who pick Charlemagne as their Leader, or pick Greece or Rome as their Civilization, will unlock the Norman civ automatically when entering the Age of Exploration. If you aren’t playing any of those, you’ll instead need to accomplish one of the following: Improve 3 Iron Resources, or Build 5 Walls.
Since it’s pretty easy to build 5 walls, especially if you’re building or conquering towns and cities for a military strategy, it’s quite easy for you to unlock the Norman Civ for any leader if you want to.
Best Norman Victory Condition/Legacy Path:
Normans are well-suited to conquest in Civilization 7, making Non Sufficit Orbis the ideal Legacy Path for them to follow. They’ll earn victory points for every settlement they control in distant lands, with settlements they take from other civilizations or independents being worth two points. If the settlement follows your civilization’s religion, the points will be doubled. This is functionally similar to how the Age of Antiquity’s Military Legacy Path works.
Civ 7 Norman General Strategy
Norman Starting Tips
When starting the Age of Exploration as the Norman Civilization, your government of choice is Feudal Monarchy. This means your celebrations can boost food (thus improving the growth of your settlements) or boost production of cavalry and naval units (to strengthen your military), which will be handy when trying to complete the Non Sufficit Orbis Legacy Path.
Your priority early on should be researching Cartography, Astronomy, and Feudalism (in that order). This will give your civilian units (including the Sokeman) the ability to cross deep ocean tiles, unlock fleet commanders to strengthen your navy, and increase your settlement limit by 1, to name the most important parts of each.
While this is happening, you’ll want your navy out searching for places in the distant lands that are suitable for settling. Keep an eye on other Civilizations while this happens and see where they’re setting up shop, since you’ll want to acquire some of their distant land settlements to progress your victory condition.
You should get to work unlocking Consuetudines et Justicie as your first Civic, unlocking the Motte building and the Palisading tradition. The former will be useful to generate extra happiness and fortify your cities, while the latter will make construction of naval units quicker. After that, you should also get Consuetudines et Justicie II/Mastery so you can construct Baileys and receive bonus combat strength on your Chevalers.
Once both of those are learned, move on to Common Law to increase your social policy slots and settlement limit, while gaining access to Juré and Familia Regis. Both will aid your civilization in learning new Civics, and Juré will also provide extra happiness to push you towards celebrations faster.
Fight for the Distant Lands
Your next goal after establishing a foothold in Distant Lands will be establishing control over them as best as you can. For this, you’ll need a strong military on land and sea. If you’re playing as Charlemagne (who I’d strongly recommend for this Civ) you’ll end up with tons of free cavalry units from celebrations, making the land part of this a lot easier. Since your land units gain extra strength near the coast, you’ll be able to overrun coastal towns and cities easier than other Civs could, especially in the Distant Lands where settlements are almost always coastal.
Cogs will be your main coastal unit initially, though as you progress through the tech trees you can add Galleons (Gunpowder) and Carracks (Shipbuilding) to your armada, which should be your research priorities at this point. Having a couple of Fleet Commanders to organise and empower your ships will make things far simpler, and also streamline troop movement across the ocean tiles.
Ideally, you’ll want to find a good spot for a city in Distant Lands, which you can use as a base of operations and to produce units for your conquests. As stated earlier, you’ll need to amass 12 points by settling or conquering settlements in Distant lands to complete Non Sufficit Orbis, so it’s important to be proactive in taking over key locations in Distant Lands. You’ll want to retain some troops back home too, so your capital and other settlements from the previous Age aren’t vulnerable to attack while you do this.
Best Leaders For Norman Civilization:
The Norman Civilization works especially well with four leaders in particular: Charlemagne, Augustus, Isabella, and Napoleon (Revolutionary).
Charlemagne is a fantastic choice, due to his happiness adjacency bonus for science and military buildings next to quarters. With the unique Norman quarter Donjon you can easily reap the benefits of this. He also gets free cavalry units when entering a celebration and boosts the combat power of cavalry units by +5 during celebrations, making him a perfect fit for the cavalry-heavy policies and strategies available to this civ.
Napoleon (Revolutionary), meanwhile, provides a +1 movement bonus to all Land units and gets 50% of an enemy unit’s combat strength as culture whenever his troops defeat one. This simple but useful set of bonuses makes the Norman strategy suggested earlier even more efficient.
Augustus gets +2 Production in the Capital for every town you have, can purchase culture buildings in towns, and gets a +50% bonus toward purchasing buildings in towns. This lets you build up your settlements in Distant Lands much more quickly, and allows you to get more out of your towns than usual, which is always nice.
Finally, Isabella is a great choice for strategies involving the navy and Distant Lands in general. She gets 300 Gold for discovering a natural wonder (double that if the wonder is in Distant Lands), and doubles yields from natural wonders, which is nice, but the real draw here is the boosts she provides for naval units. With +50% Gold toward purchasing Naval Units, and -1 Gold maintenance for Naval Units, she makes your navy easier to build and much more cost efficient.
- Released
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February 11, 2025