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The second age in Civilization 7, the Exploration Age, is all about exploring new lands, collecting new resources, and founding a religion. Almost everything resets when the game transitions into the Exploration Age: cities become towns, your armies are reduced in size and placed back on your city and town tiles, and all wars are forgotten – although relationships with the AI do carry over between ages.
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It is always worth it to explore the oceans and encounter Distant Lands – any land beyond your homeland’s continent. There are certain resources that provide extra benefits for new settlements, and some civilizations lean heavily into this strategy.
Win Conditions
Much like the Antiquity Age, there are four possible win conditions for the economic age – cultural, scientific, economic, and militaristic.
Culture Victory – Toshakhana
Display 12 relics in your empire.
The Cultural victory requires you to collect and display relics, mostly earned through religious conversion. You can also earn them via narrative events and becoming the suzerain of city-states. You’ll need to build Temples and wonders to be able to have enough slots to display the relics.
If you’re able to successfully display 12 relics by the end of the age, you’ll achieve a Cultural Golden Age, which allows you to retain your religion’s founder beliefs into the next age.
This win condition is all about building missionaries and spreading your religion. To be successful with this condition, you may have to put your exploration of Distant Lands on the backburner, grabbing the early Piety civic to get your Temples up quickly. Combine this with the boost to wonder construction you earn with the Inspiration civic and you can quickly get your relic wonders online.
Economic Victory – Treasure Fleet
Gain 30 Treasure Fleet Points from returning Distant Land Treasures.
Economic victory is all about settling new towns and cities on Distant Lands, i.e, any island or opposite continent than where your original settlements are on.
You can settle new towns on some of the new resources you discover while exploring, like Sugar, Cocoa, etc. Once you’ve researched Shipbuilding, Treasure Fleets will spawn. You can return these to your Homelands coast and receive gold rewards, as well as building your Treasure Fleet score.
If you manage to return 30 points worth of Treasure Fleets, you will earn an Economic Golden Age – all cities remain cities, and any cities in Distant Lands will earn two population in the new age.
Preparation is key for an Economic victory. Build several naval units to quickly begin exploring the islands beyond your continent, and have Settlers ready to leave your coastline once you’ve researched Cartography. Speed is key, as it’s likely the AI (especially on harder difficulties) will settle new islands very quickly.
You will encounter city-states on nearby islands, and you can decide whether it’s worth becoming their suzerain and later incorporating them into your empire to gain access to nearby Treasure Fleet resources, or to just wipe them out and settle in their place.
Military Victory – Non Sufficit Orbis
Gain 12 points from Settlements in the Distant Lands. 1 Point for each Settlement (doubled if it is a conquered Settlement or follows your religion – quadrupled if both apply).
The Military victory in the Exploration Age is all about conquering and converting cities to your religion. You can essentially blitz through this win condition if you have a large military supported by waves of missionaries.
If you’re able to hit the Golden Age for the Military Victory, all your Distant Land settlements will receive an extra Infantry and Ranged unit in the Modern Age.
Science Victory – Enlightenment
Have 5 Districts that are not the City Center with 40 total yield each.
The Science Victory is actually about earning as many specialist and specialist slots on your cities as possible. Specialists grant significant extra yields from tiles on top of base yield, hopefully pushing you towards that 40 yield total. You’ll need to research Education to boost the number of specialists allowed per tile. Growth and science are key for this victory condition.
If you’re able to successfuly reach 40 yield in five separate districts, you’ll achieve the Scientific Golden Age – Universities become Golden Age universities in the Modern Age.
Exploring Distant Lands
The Exploration Age is all about venturing beyond your homeland and onto new shores. This is achieved by researching Astronomy and Cartography as your first two research techs.
If we’re planning on a big economic push to settle new lands – with access to Exploration Age resources like Sugar, Cocoa, and Tea, then we should research Cartography first, as this allows Settlers to make their way across Deep Ocean tiles.
Deep Ocean is any ocean tile that isn’t coastal. Before researching Shipbuilding, all units that end their turn on Deep Ocean will take a tick of damage. Try to plan your route to new islands by hugging the coast as much as possible – we’ve lost plenty of units trying to undertake too long a journey over the ocean.
Ideally, you’ll want to beeline for Shipbuilding tech, which requires you to research all of the first three techs (Machinery, Astronomy, and Cartography), as well as Heraldry and Feudalism.
Getting access to Shipbuilding early is a huge advantage for naval exploration as it allows all units to ignore the damage from crossing Deep Ocean tiles. It also unlocks the first upgraded ship, the Carrack, which will give you a significant advantage in the inevitable upcoming naval warfare.
Shipbuilding will also unlock access to Treasure Fleets, an important part of achieving an Economic age victory in the Exploration Age.
New Resources And Treasure Fleets
There are several new resources only available during the Exploration age, including Incense (not a Treasure Fleet resource, but it does provide extra production for religious buildings and units), Cocoa, Tea, Sugar, and Spices.
These resources will only spawn Treasure Fleets once you’ve researched Shipbuilding. Then they’re on a turn timer. The Treasure Fleet points earned per ship are directly related to how many Treasure Fleet resources the settlement has access to. For example, if you have a town with two Cocoa and one Sugar, you’ll earn three points each time you return that fleet to your homeland.
Religion
Religion takes on a new form in the Exploration Age. Rather than just providing benefits via your Pantheon, you can now spread your religion to other settlements by recruiting missionaries.
Religion can be very strong, with some substantial benefits to your entire civlization – beliefs like Tithe, for example, can grant +4 gold per settlement following your religion. Others, like Holy Ecumene, can do the same for Culture.
Picking your religion is a hugely important part of the Exploration Age, even if you’re not planning on playing a religion-based game.
This is because Unrest and Unhappiness can cause Settlements to revolt and change hands to whoever has a religious majority in that city. Not only can religion impact the overall happiness of your empire, leaving religious settlements unhappy can cause absolute chaos during the Wars of Religion crises that can appear during the latter stages of the age.
Managing religion isn’t a huge micromanagement task, but you should be aware of it. Typically, keeping your settlements aligned with your own religion is a safe bet – but there are certain strategies, narrative events, and even civilization differences that can impact your tactics.
Exploration Age Crises
As the Exploration Age comes to an end, as more players achieve victory milestones, you’ll once again be faced with a worldwide crisis. Generally, this will either be the Plague or a religious war.
Plague
The Plague can be absolutely devastating for your empire, especially if you leave infected settlements unchecked. Unhappy citizens will riot, destroying buildings, and, if particularly unhappy, they may revolt and change allegiances to another nearby civilization.
Thankfully, there’s a new unit – the Physician – which can speed up how quickly your settlements banish the plague. This unit will be unlocked once the Plague crisis begins. It’s always a good idea to swap production to some Physicians immediately.
Much like the other crises in the game, the Plague Crisis isn’t without its potential upsides if you play your cards correctly – there will be some crisis cards that will grant extra culture if you use a Physician on a Hospital tile, for example. Even during the darkest days, you can turn everything into an advantage in Civilization 7 if you make the right decisions.
Religious War
Unlike the Plague, the Religious War crisis is something that can sneak up on you much more quietly. Depending on your crisis card selection, having settlements following different religions can be devastating. There are also several narrative choices here where you must decide on religious tolerance, or religious isolationism.
This really depends on how strong your religious game has been so far. Accept tolerance and your religion will lose dominance, potentially assisting other players. Choose religious isolationism, and you had better make sure your religion is the majority in your settlements – otherwise you face mass unhappiness and revolts.
Choose Your End Of Age Government
Towards the end of the Age, you’ll be able to choose from three possible new governments for the last part of the Age. These grant various buffs towards the win conditions, such as extra science and culture, extra military production, and more.
Grand Strategy
Turn-Based Strategy
4X
- Released
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February 11, 2025
- ESRB
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- Genres
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