How to Play as Charlemagne in Civilization 7

In Civilization 7, leaders are now separated from Civilizations, allowing you greater customization of your strategy right from the beginning. Since civilizations will change as you progress from one age to the next, while Leaders stick around from start to finish, so your choice of leader is incredibly important and will likely influence your strategy for the entire game.

Charlemagne is a Militaristic/Scientific Leader in Civilization 7, who is also known historically as Charles the Great, King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, and then Emperor of the Carolingian Empire. This guide will break down his abilities in Civilization 7 and offer strategies on how to use him best.

Charlemagne Leader Overview

Charlemagne is a Militaristic/Scientific Leader with a particular knack for cavalry and generating happiness. This, in turn, allows him to quickly gain access to multiple Policy Slots and take advantage of multiple policies and/or disciplines to strengthen his civilization.

Charlemagne’s unique ability, “Father of Europe”, gives Military and Science buildings a happiness adjacency bonus for quarters, allowing him to trigger celebrations more frequently and generally keep his settlements in good spirits. It also grants him free cavalry units whenever his civilization enters a celebration, and increases their combat strength during celebrations, which makes his cavalry particularly deadly as long as he properly manages the happiness of his settlements.

Charlemagne Leader Natural Civ Unlocks

How To Win With Charlemagne

Charlemagne Leader Strategy & Walkthrough

Best Charlemagne Victory Path:

Charlemagne performs best when going for a Military Victory. I recommend picking Rome in the Age of Antiquity, Norman in the Age of Exploration, and ending on the French Empire in the Modern Age.

Charlemagne Antiquity Age Strategy

In the Age of Antiquity, Rome is a fantastic choice for Charlemagne. Their unique commander, “Legatus”, can place a town for every three levels it gains, allowing them to gain experience from fighting independents and then strategically place new towns to strengthen their position. Their unique infantry units, “Legions”, gain additional combat strength for each Roman tradition in the government, and their unique traditions (especially Latinitas) make it easy to take advantage of this bonus.

During the Age of Antiquity, your first priority should be unlocking Legatus via the Civic “Discipline.” Using the free Legatus and some basic military units, you can clear out any hostile independents in your vicinity to earn easy exp and get your Legatus up to level 3.

This will allow you to create a settlement using your Legatus, saving you the resources on creating a settler and allowing you to expand more quickly. This is especially helpful when paired with Latinitas (Tradition), which will raise the yields of your capital for every town with a specialization, so this will be a high priority in the Rome Civic Tree. Another great tradition you should unlock early on is Cursus Honorum, which gives you 25% of a military unit’s production cost as culture whenever you create a military unit. This will help you gain a culture advantage as you grow your military.

Your main goal during the Age of Antiquity will be completing the Military Legacy Path “Pax Imperatoria.” This requires you to have 12 settlements in your civilization, with any settlement you’ve captured from someone else counting as two.

Activating tracking for this Legacy path will provide you with some solid suggestions for first steps, and you’ll want to prioritize the following technologies when researching: Animal Husbandry (for Slingers), Bronze Working (To unlock Legions, Archers, and Spearmen), The Wheel (Ballistae and Chariots), and Iron Working (Horsemen, Phalanx, and Improved Legions.)

You’ll particularly want to rush The Wheel to take advantage of Charlemagne’s ability and generate free Chariots whenever you enter a Celebration. To keep the celebrations coming in fast, and reap the full benefits of this, you’ll want to build Forums (The Roman Unique District), Villas (Unlocked by The Wheel) and the Coliseum Wonder. Another way to rapidly expand your military as you settle more towns and cities is by unlocking “Legatus Pro Praetore”, which gets you a free infantry unit whenever you establish a new settlement.

Charlemagne Exploration Age Strategy

Charlemagne’s incredible synergy with the Normans makes them the perfect pick for an Age of Exploration Civilization. With Sokeman units to establish fortified towns in Distant Lands and a unique cavalry unit that increases in strength against any unit with less movement than it, Charlemagne is well-positioned to sweep across the Distant Lands and expand his empire.

Your first scientific priorities will be Cartography, Astronomy, and Feudalism (in that order.) This will give you the tech necessary to get your Sokeman units to Distant Lands and give you access to Navy Commanders, making your fleets much more effective and easy to manage. Feudalism also raises your settlement limit, so you’ll be able to create more settlements in Distant Lands without risking the happiness of your civilization. Happiness will be especially important thanks to Charlemagne’s free cavalry generation whenever a Celebration occurs, which will help you to expand your army cheaply and effectively.

Your Civic Priorities early on should be Consuetudines et Justicie and Consuetudines et Justicie II/Mastery, to unlock the unique Motte and Bailey buildings, and the Donjon quarter that they form when built on the same tile. They’ll also give you access to the Palisading tradition to help with navy unit construction, and improve your Chevelar unit’s combat strength. After that, unlocking Common Law is important for increasing your settlement limit and social policy slots.

Make good use of your navy units to scout key locations in Distant Lands for settling, taking advantage of fleet commanders, and take note of any other civilizations or independent power settlements in locations that are particularly beneficial (Such as those that have access to natural wonders or treasure fleet resources). Once you’ve established a foothold, you’ll want to start conquering those locations to progress the Legacy Path “Non Sufficit Orbis.”

This is essentially the same objective as the Age of Antiquity Military path, but it only counts settlements in distant lands, and these settlements grant double points if they follow your religion. Establishing a religion and spreading it to the Distant Lands will make clearing this legacy path much easier.

Once you’ve established a foothold and begun conquering, you’ll want to research Gunpowder and Shipbuilding to strengthen your navy and keep up the offensive until you complete the victory path and have claimed all the parts of the Distant Lands that you’re after.

Charlemagne Modern Age Strategy

Our Civilization of Choice for the Modern Age will be the French Empire, which you’ll have unlocked automatically by playing as the Normans during the previous age. You’ll want to begin by researching the Steam Engine, re-unlocking Merchants and helping you build an economic advantage, and then Military Science to access powerful new military buildings.

These two will also give you access to Industrialization (to unlock new modern land units) and Combustion (to unlock new naval units), so you’ll want to research those as soon as possible, though taking a detour to unlock Academics first is helpful to speed up your research.

Early Civics to focus on are Modernization, the Social Question, Political Theory, and Voie Triomphale. Modernization will unlock the Civil Engineering Policy, which will speed up overbuilding and let you quickly modernize your cities. It also unlocks the Living Standards Policy, providing +25% Happiness and Gold toward maintaining buildings. The Social Question provides access to Humanism and Social Science, policies that can make your specialists more potent in exchange for increasing their happiness or food requirements, which can be excellent if you can spare the resources to take advantage.

Political Theory is crucial to the Ideology Legacy Path, and thus a Military Victory. It unlocks Ideologies, allowing you to select an Ideology for your Civilization and gain the benefits associated with it. You earn 2 points towards the Ideology Legacy path for conquering settlements after you get an ideology, and you’ll earn 3 points if the settlement was from a Civilization that didn’t share your ideology. You’ll need 20 points to unlock the Manhatten Project and the Operation Ivy City Project, both of which must be completed to achieve a military victory.

When deciding on an Ideology, two choices prove especially valuable to this strategy: Fascism and Communism. Fascism stands out as the best general choice in the game right now, providing powerful boosts to gold and production via its unique Civic Tree that will benefit a Militaristic Strategy greatly. Communism’s Science and Food focus makes it a decent alternative, helping you speed up the research of more powerful units and expand your towns and cities further.

Voie Triomphale provides access to the unique building “Jardin à la Française”, which provides culture and has happiness adjacency bonuses from wonders and culture buildings. It also gives you the Cocorico Policy, which provides 25% of an enemy unit’s combat strength as culture when you take them down, which will help unlock future civics. Unlocking Voie Triomphale II/Mastery will provide +2 happiness on military buildings and wonders, while also increasing your settlement limit by 1.

As you progress further into the Modern Age, you’ll want to research Flight, Armor, and Mobilization to further empower your military, and along the way you’ll pick up a crucial boost to your production and economy in the form of Mass Production. Key Civics to strengthening your civilization along this victory path are Nationalism II/Mastery, Militarism, and Militarism II/Mastery.

Nationalism II/Mastery provides you with the People’s Army Policy, which gives a +25% bonus to production of land military units, at the cost of increasing gold maintenance for those units by 1. Militarism adds the Materiel and Trenchworks Policies, with the former increasing unit healing by +10 hp and increasing army and fleet movement by +1, while the latter provides a +3 bonus to combat strength for fortified units and districts.

Naturally, you’ll also want to unlock the civics provided by whichever ideology you chose, taking advantage of Fascism’s benefits to gold and production or Communism’s boosts to science and food. Earn those 20 Ideology points you need by fighting other civilizations and taking out their settlements, then complete the Manhatten Project and the Operation Ivy City Project to achieve your victory.