Zigzagzigal's Guides - China (GS)

If you're willing to put in the effort, China will reward you with rapid technology and civic gain - making them suited to both scientific and cultural victories. Here, I detail Chinese strategies and counter-strategies - for all leaders.

Introduction

Following this guide requires the Gathering Storm expansion.

Furthermore, it is written with the assumption you have all Civ 6 content released prior to the Leaders Pass:

• Pre-Rise and Fall content packs
  
  • Vikings, Poland, Australia, Persia/Macedon, Nubia, Khmer/Indonesia
• Rise and Fall Expansion
  
• New Frontier content packs
  
  • Maya/Grand Colombia, Ethiopia, Byzantium/Gauls, Babylon, Vietnam/Kublai Khan, Portugal

These content packs include exclusive civs, city-states, districts, buildings, wonders, natural wonders, resources, and a disaster, but not core game mechanics - all you need is the base game and the Gathering Storm expansion for those.

The Leaders Pass is only relevant when playing as or against leaders released in its content packs; otherwise it makes no difference to the game.

Peace, stability and unity. The three are inseparable. To achieve them, you must be willing to use any means necessary. Take the initiative when the enemy is weak. Ensure your subjects obey only the law. Standardise the empire's workings to ensure efficiency. And never allow yourself to become idle. A complacent leader is always bested by those willing to act, whether they be external or internal enemies.

How to use this guide

This guide is divided into multiple sections explaining how best to use and play against this specific civ.

• The Outline details the mechanics of how the civilization's unique features work and what their start bias is if they have one.
  
• The Victory Skew section describes to what extent the civ (and its individual leaders where applicable) is inclined towards particular victory routes. This is not a rating of its power, but an indicator of the most appropriate route to victory.
  
• Multiple sections for Uniques explain in detail how to use each special bonus of the civilization.
  
• Administration describes some of the most synergistic governments, government buildings, policy cards, age bonuses, pantheons, religious beliefs, wonders, city-states and Great People for the civ. Only the ones with the most synergy with the civ's uniques are mentioned - these are not necessarily the "best" choices when playing as the civ for a given victory route.
  
• Finally, the Counter-Strategies discusses how best to play against the civ, including a consideration of leader agendas if the civ is controlled by a computer.

Note that all costs (production, science, etc.) mentioned within the guide assume a game played on the normal speed settings. To modify these values for other game speeds:

• Online: Divide by 2
  
• Quick: Divide by 1.5
  
• Epic: Multiply by 1.5
  
• Marathon: Multiply by 3

Glossary

Terminology used in this guide and not in-game is explained here.

AoE (Area of Effect) - Bonuses or penalties that affect multiple tiles in a set radius. Positive examples include Factories (which offer production to cities within a 6 tile radius unless they're within range of another building of the same type) and a negative example is nuclear weapons, which cause devastation over a wide radius.

Beelining - Obtaining a technology or civic quickly by only researching it and its prerequisites. Some deviation is allowed in the event that taking a technology or civic off the main track provides some kind of advantage that makes up for that (either a source of extra science/culture or access to something necessary for a eureka or inspiration boost)

CA (Civ Ability) - The unique ability of a civilization, shared by all its leaders.

Compact empires - Civs with cities close together (typically 3-4 tile gaps between city centres). This is useful if you want to make use of districts that gain adjacency bonuses from other districts, or to maximise the potential of area-of-effect bonuses later in the game.

Dispersed empires - Civs with cities that are spread out (typically 5-6 tile gaps between city centres). Civs with unique tile improvements generally favour a more dispersed empire in order to make use of them, as do civs focused on wonder construction.

GPP - Short for Great Person Points. Districts, buildings and wonders generate these points and with enough you can claim a Great Person of the corresponding type.

GWAM - Collective name for Great Writers, Artists and Musicians. All of them can produce Great Works that offer tourism and culture, making them important to anyone seeking a cultural victory.

LA (Leader Ability) - The unique ability of a specific leader. Usually but not always, they tend to be more specific in scope than civ abilities. Some leader abilities come with an associated unique unit or infrastucture.

Prebuilding - Training a unit with the intention of upgrading it to a desired unit later. An example is building Slingers and upgrading them once Archery is unlocked.

Sniping - Targeting a specific city for capture directly, ignoring other enemy cities along the way. Typically used in the context of "capital sniping" - taking a civ's original capital as quickly as possible to contribute towards domination victory without leading to a drawn-out war.

Start bias - The kind of terrain, terrain feature or resource a civilization is more likely to start near. This is typically used for civilizations that have early bonuses dependent on a particular terrain type. There are five tiers of start bias; civs with a tier 1 start bias are placed before civs of tier 2 and so on, increasing their odds of receiving a favourable starting location.

Super-uniques - Unique units that do not replace any others. Examples include India's Varu and Mongolia's Keshigs.

Tall empires - Empires that emphasise city development over expansion, usually resulting in fewer, but bigger, cities.

Uniques - Collective name for civ abilities, leader abilities, unique units, unique buildings, unique districts and unique improvements.

UA (Unique Ability) - A collective name for leader abilities and civ abilities.

UB (Unique Building) - A special building which may only be constructed in the cities of a single civilization, which replaces a normal building and offers a special advantage on top.

UD (Unique District) - A special district which may only be constructed in the cities of a single civilization, which replaces a normal district, costs half as much to build and offers some unique advantages on top.

UI (Unique Improvement) - A special improvement that can only be built by the Builders of a single civilization. "UI" always refers to unique improvements in my guides and not to "user interface" or "unique infrastructure".

UU (Unique Unit) - A special unit that may only be trained by a single civilization, and in some cases only when that civilization is led by a specific leader.

Wide empires - Empires that emphasise expansion over city development, usually resulting in more, but smaller, cities.

Outline (Part 1/2)

Start Bias

China has no start bias.

Civilization Ability: Dynastic Cycle

• All boosts (eurekas and inspirations) complete 50% of the base research cost for their respective technology or civic, up from 40%.
  
  • "Base research cost" refers to the cost of the technology if you are in the corresponding game era. The amount of research gained through a boost is fixed, but it will represent a higher percentage of research if you are in a later game era, or lower if you are in an earlier game era.
    
  • In other words, eurekas and inspirations offer 25% more science and culture respectively than normal.
• When completing a world wonder, receive a random eureka and inspiration boost of its respective era.

Kublai Khan's Leader Ability: Gerege

• All governments receive an extra economic policy card slot.
  
• When first establishing a trading post in another full civ, gain a random eureka and inspiration boost.
  
  • You may only receive this bonus once per full civ you send a route to.
    
  • The random eureka and inspirations will favour technologies and civics you are able to research but lack the boosts for.

Mandate of Heaven Qin Shi Huang's Leader Ability: The First Emperor

• Builders have an additional charge (4 by default instead of 3).
  
  • This extra charge is kept if the Builder is captured by another civ.
• Builders can use a charge to contribute 15% of the production cost of a wonder from the ancient or classical era.
  
  • This is affected by modifiers to general production and wonder production.
    
  • This is tied to the wonder's era, not your current era.
    
  • You cannot add a charge to a wonder that is not currently being worked on.
    
  • If you contribute more production via a charge than is needed to complete the wonder, the excess is carried over to the next thing you build.
• Canal districts are unlocked at the ancient-era Masonry technology rather than the industrial-era Steam Power technology.

Note: These bonuses are identical to Qin Shi Huang's regular abilities for those not using the Rulers of China Pack.

Unifier Qin Shi Huang's Leader Ability: Thirty-Six Strategems

• All melee infantry units have a charge of the Convert Barbarians action, consuming the unit to convert all Barbarian units in adjacent tiles to your control.
  
  • This ability may be used while the unit is embarked.
    
  • Converted Barbarians will be at the same health they had pre-conversion, and cannot take an action until the following turn.
    
  • Destroying a Barbarian Encampment by converting a Barbarian on its tile will not trigger the healing effect from the Initiation Rites pantheon, though it will still grant the faith.
    
  • If you have the Hagia Sophia wonder, melee infantry units have a second charge of the action, and may use one charge without being expended.

Wu Zetian's Leader Ability: Manual of Entrapment

• +1 Spy capacity at the classical-era Defensive Tactics civic, and gain a free Spy.
  
• May purchase Spies with faith.
  
• All Spies on operate at +1 level.
  
• Upon a successful offensive espionage mission in a foreign city, receive 100% of the science, culture and faith that city produced that turn.

Yongle's Leader Ability: Lijia

• All cities gain access to the three unique Lijia projects. These convert a portion of production into their respective yield . They have no completion bonus, unlike other city projects.
  
  • Lijia (Faith) - 50% of the city's per-turn production is converted into faith.
    
  • Lijia (Food) - 50% of the city's per-turn production is converted into food.
    
  • Lijia (Gold) - 100% of the city's per-turn production is converted into gold.
• Cities of at least size 10 gain +2 gold, +1 science and +1 culture for every point of population
  
  • This means cities of size 10 receive a bonus +20 gold, +10 science and +10 culture.

Outline (Part 2/2)

Unique Unit: Crouching Tiger Cannon

A medieval-era ranged land unit which does not replace anything

Research	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Cost	Resource	Maintenance
Machinery Technology Medieval era	Ballistics Technology Industrial era	None	Field Cannon (350 )	140 or 560 or 280 *	None	3

*Purchasing units with faith requires the Grand Master's Chapel government building, which requires either the medieval-era Divine Right or renaissance-era Exploration civics.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
30	50	2	1	2	Unable to capture cities -17 vs. city defences -17 vs. naval units Deals -50% damage to city walls and urban defences Does not exert zone of control	None

Notable features

• Has 1 range; Crossbowmen, which are available at the same technology, have a range of 2.
  
• Has 50 ranged strength; 10 more than a Crossbowman (40) but 10 less than a Field Cannon (60).
  
• Costs 140 production/640 gold/320 faith, 22% cheaper than a Crossbowman (180 production/720 gold/360 faith)
  
• Costs 390 gold to upgrade to a Field Cannon, 26% higher than the Crossbowman to Field Cannon upgrade cost (310 gold)

Unique Improvement: Great Wall

Research	Terrain requirement	Constructed by	Base pillage yield
Masonry Technology Ancient era	Featureless land tile on the border of your territory, not adjacent to more than two Great Wall tiles, nor two Great Wall tiles which are already adjacent to each other.	Builder	50

Defensive bonus	Direct yield	Adjacency yields	Miscellaneous bonus	Maximum possible yield
4	2	2 per adjacent Great Wall	Can never be removed by natural hazards; only pillaged.	6

Enhancements

Research	Direct bonus	Adjacency bonus	Miscellaneous bonus	New maximum yield*
Castles Technology Medieval era	None	2 per adjacent Great Wall	None	6 4
Flight Technology Modern era	None	None	Culture yield added to tourism	6 4 4 **

*This assumes you already have the enhancements of earlier eras.

**Note that the tourism yield does not require the improvement to be worked.

Victory Skew

In this section, the civ is subjectively graded based on how much it leans towards a specific victory type - not how powerful it is. Scores of 3 or more mean the civ has at least a minor advantage towards the victory route.

Leader	Culture	Diplomacy	Domination	Religion	Science
Kublai Khan	7/10 (Good)	5/10 (Decent)	5/10 (Decent)	6/10 (Decent)	10/10 (Ideal)
Mandate Qin	9/10 (Ideal)	7/10 (Good)	5/10 (Decent)	6/10 (Decent)	9/10 (Ideal)
Unifier Qin	6/10 (Decent)	5/10 (Decent)	8/10 (Good)	4/10 (Acceptable)	8/10 (Good)
Wu Zetian	7/10 (Good)	8/10 (Good)	5/10 (Decent)	4/10 (Acceptable)	9/10 (Ideal)
Yongle	8/10 (Good)	7/10 (Good)	6/10 (Decent)	7/10 (Good)	10/10 (Ideal)

Culture

Under any leader, culture is an effective victory route. The Great Wall can provide lots of extra culture to get to key civics like Cultural Heritage faster, and can provide a good amount of bonus tourism later in the game. The civ ability also brings an added incentive to build wonders with its free eurekas and inspirations.

Kublai Khan - The extra economic policy card slot makes it easier to fit in wonder-constructing and tourism-boosting bonuses.

Mandate Qin - Early-game wonders provide the most tourism and Mandate Qin is particularly well-equipped to build them.

Unifier Qin - Outside of his military advantages being useful to capture wonders and the like, Unifier Qin offers little extra to the cultural game relative to other leaders.

Wu Zetian - Stronger Spies (and more of them) can more effectively steal Great Works from other civs. You can also use them defensively to protect your own Great Works from being stolen.

Yongle - Yongle generates a huge amount of culture with his large cities. Being able to convert production to faith can be useful for obtaining Naturalists and Rock Bands.

Diplomacy

China has a modest advantage in the diplomatic game for any leader - the huge gold output of the Great Wall can really help you to compete in aid emergencies. Faster civic accumulation thanks to stronger inspirations and Great Wall tourism helps you get faster envoys.

Kublai Khan - The extra economic policy card slot could help you fit in more gold bonuses, or else free up a wildcard slot for diplomatic bonuses.

Mandate Qin - You can rush the Apadana wonder followed by others in the same city for bonus envoys, which then can be used to secure suzerain status over city-states helping you accumulate diplomatic favour. You can also rush the Mahabodhi Temple for two diplomatic victory points.

Unifier Qin - You can convert Barbarians for a cheap army and use them for aid emergencies, without needing to spend precious production or gold used for other things. It's a weak advantage relative to other leaders however.

Wu Zetian - She has an edge here as her more numerous and more effective Spies can use the Fabricate Scandal mission to secure suzerain status over more city-states, in turn granting more diplomatic favour.

Yongle - Yongle's incredible gold yield makes winning aid emergencies easy, and you can more easily trade other civs for diplomatic favour.

Domination

China is modestly effective at the domination game. Crouching Tiger Cannons' poor range makes them unsuited for offensive operations, though faster technology and civic accumulation can grant you a military edge, and Great Wall gold aids in purchasing, maintaining and upgrading units.

Kublai Khan - The economic policy card slot allows you to use military-focused governments like Oligarchy while still having room for good economic support options.

Mandate Qin - Early Canals have some strategic applications. Some early wonders like the Statue of Zeus can be rushed for a military boost.

Unifier Qin - Being able to convert Barbarians is a massive boost for your early military capabilities, and can still grant you powerful units later in the game if you can keep Barbarian encampments safe from other civs. Due to the way Barbarian unit spawning works, Unifier Qin is particularly strong against scientific civs relative to most other warmongers.

Wu Zetian - Receiving a Spy earlier than anyone else allows you to conduct the Listening Post mission for extra diplomatic visibility, which in turn can grant your units a strength advantage.

Yongle - Yongle's impressive science and gold outputs are great at supporting an advanced military.

Religion

Outside of leader bonuses, China has little to help in the religious game. Stronger inspirations can help get to key civics like Theology sooner.

Kublai Khan - His extra economic policy card makes it easier to stack bonuses in the religious game.

Mandate Qin - You can try rushing Stonehenge and taking the Divine Inspiration belief. If you can then rush Mahabodhi Temple as well, you can get a mature religion early along with a nice faith output. The problem with this method, however, is it heavily depends on factors outside your control.

Unifier Qin - Aside from using your early units to capture cities with Holy Sites, Unifier Qin lacks advantages in the religious game.

Wu Zetian - Outside of securing suzerain status over religious city-states, and the token amounts of faith, Spies are largely irrelevant to the religious game.

Yongle - Yongle's ability to convert 50% of production into faith can secure an early pantheon, as well as grant a competitive faith yield later on. Playing the religious game with Yongle is somewhat of a high-risk high-reward strategy - strong early production could translate to a huge faith advantage, but if you can't win an early victory, you'll be behind thanks to the production you didn't use for general development.

Science

Like culture, science is a reliably effective victory path for China. Stronger eureka boosts means more for scientific victories than stronger Inspirations does for cultural victories, and bonus eurekas from finished wonders makes that go even further.

Kublai Khan - He gets even more free eurekas on top, and a very helpful economic policy card for fitting in more science and production bonuses.

Mandate Qin - Extra Builder charges goes nicely with the Royal Society building to rush space race projects.

Unifier Qin - Making early conquests and using that stronger science base towards a scientific victory is an effective strategy.

Wu Zetian - With a Spy available earlier than anyone else, you can use it to steal eurekas before anyone has adequate counter-Spy options. You'll also receive a small extra science boost every time you have a successful offensive Spy mission.

Yongle - Yongle's science output can become absurd with multiple size 10+ cities.

Civilization Ability: Dynastic Cycle (Part 1/2)

Won't take long to research these!

Stronger Boosts - Mechanics

Almost every technology and civic has an associated action which causes you to instantly research a chunk of it. If you are in the same game era as the technology, its worth 40% of the progress - making boosts important to the cultural game and even more so for scientific victories. Careful use of boosts can put you ahead of other civs even if your science/culture outputs are somewhat lacking.

For China, chasing up boosts becomes even more important. As a good hypothetical example, imagine the game has just begun, and it takes 10 turns for both China and a competing civ to unlock Sailing. Both civs get the eureka. China needs only 5 turns to get the technology now, while the competing civ needs 6. China essentially gets a 17% reduction in the research cost, or to put it another way, a 20% science bonus!

Technologies and civics become 20% cheaper if you are in a later game era than their corresponding era (e.g. researching Sailing in the classical era or later). Researching technologies and civics from later eras than the current game era will cause them to cost 20% more, stacking multiplicatively per era. However, the amount of science or culture from eurekas and inspirations respectively is fixed. This means boosts for research of earlier eras will cover more than 50% of the progress for China, but ones for later eras will cover less than 50%.

Here is a table to show what the effective percentage of research is covered by boosts:

Era Difference	Technology Cost	Boost Value	Boost Value for China or Free Inquiry (technologies) or Pen, Brush and Voice (civics)	Boost Value for China with Free Inquiry (technologies) or Pen, Brush and Voice (civics)
-1 or more	80%	50%	62.5%	75%
0	100%	40%	50%	60%
1	120%	33.3%	41.7%	50%
2	144%	27.8%	34.7%	41.7%
3	172.8%	23.1%	28.9%	34.7%

Though getting eurekas and inspirations ahead of time won't generate more or less science, they (and by extension the Chinese civ ability) has a bigger relative effect if you avoid researching too far ahead. The nature of Mandate Qin's leader ability discourages researching too far ahead early on, though later on you may want to consider whether it's better to spread out your research or beeline key technologies.

Civilization Ability: Dynastic Cycle (Part 2/2)

Stronger Boosts - Usage

China's civ ability is particularly strong early in the game, when most eurekas and inspirations are relatively easy to unlock. Many are tied to Builder actions, and the fact you have an extra charge on every Builder helps get you these eureka/inspiration boosts even faster. It gets rather trickier into the middle of the game, where many boosts require use of specific units or unusual research orders. You can try researching technologies or civics to 50% completion and then switch to something else while you try to unlock their corresponding boosts, but this isn't always the best option. If you come across an important technology or civic with a tricky boost (Mass Media is a good example), don't feel you have to wait for the boost - just go ahead and research it.

What to get the boost for and what not to can be a tricky The situation can vary substantially depending on how your game's going, but here are some general points to consider:

• Boosts dependent on Builder actions are generally easy to obtain. Early in the game, if you lack an appropriate resource type for the boost, you can usually settle a new city in range of it. Later on, that's not always possible, so getting the technology/civic without the boost is often a better option.
  
• Boosts dependent on constructing districts or buildings should be given special attention. Try to ensure all your cities have a diverse range of districts between them, and getting these boosts won't be too hard.
  
• Boosts dependent on specific units are a problem if you lack access to their respective strategic resources, but otherwise the Great Wall improvement provides enough gold that you generally should be able to afford to purchase some copies after a few turns.
  
• Eurekas dependent on the civic tree and inspirations dependent on the technology tree can vary considerably in difficulty, but on the whole if you keep your science and culture outputs reasonably balanced it should make the process much easier.
  
• Boosts dependent on Great People can be tricky and pretty unpredictable. Don't dedicate too much effort to picking them up unless they're Great People you'd want to obtain anyway (e.g. a Great Artist to help with cultural victory) or have enough spare gold to afford patronage.
  
• Boosts dependent on other civs like the ones for Writing and Defensive Tactics are highly unpredictable. Unless they're on an important research path, it can be worth holding off researching them for a while to increase the odds you'll get the boost.

Some boosts you can find sneaky ways around. The Mobilisation inspiration (have three corps/fleets) for example can be worked around by simply making Warrior corps if you don't have a sufficient military to achieve that by other means.

There's alternative means of gaining boosts as well, but you typically don't have so much control over them. Here's a list of those methods:

• Kublai Khan can use his leader ability - see that section for more details.
  
• Randomly from ancient ruins
  
• Various Great People (mostly Great Scientists); see the administration section of this guide for more information.
  
• The classical-era Great Library wonder (available at the Recorded History civic) grants you all ancient and classical-era eurekas and grants you more every time another civ generates a Great Scientist. This is one of the wonders you can rush with Builders thanks to Qin Shi Huang's leader ability.
  
• Having a level 2 or higher research alliance with another civ (requiring both civs to have the medieval-era Civil Service civic) will grant a new eureka every 20 turns.
  
• Spies can steal eurekas from other civs via the Steal Technology mission. Wu Zetian is particularly effective at this - more information on how to use Spies will be covered in her leader ability section.
  
• If Sweden is present in the game, there's the opportunity of the Nobel Prize in Physics scored competition in the industrial era or later. It awards up to two random eureka boosts.
  
• The modern-era Broadway wonder gives a random free atomic-era inspiration boost.
  
• The information or future-era Sky and Stars Golden Age dedication grants a set of free eurekas, depending on the era.

Remember that scientific victories benefit from certain late-arriving civics like Space Race, and cultural victories benefit from some late-arriving technologies like Computers. Try to have a good output of both science and culture regardless of which victory route you're going for.

Wonder Boosts

Every time China finishes a wonder, they receive a random eureka and inspiration of its respective era.

On paper, this sounds like a powerful additional bonus allowing China to accelerate through technology, but in practice, it takes a long time to complete most wonders, limiting the potential. Mandate Qin can use this for faster early development, but remember that early expansion is often more important than early wonders.

All this, however, is not to say this ability is useless - something it is very useful for is filling out boosts on low-priority technologies and civics, so any other source of random boosts (e.g. Kublai Khan's leader ability) is more likely to boost something you want.

Here's an example: Naval Tradition is a dead-end civic with an awkward inspiration requirement (kill a unit with a Quadrireme). If you lack Harbours, there may be little reason to research it even into the modern era and beyond. Trouble is, a source of random inspirations may end up giving you Naval Tradition's boost rather than something more useful like Mass Media. However, by building any medieval-era wonder, even if you have all the other medieval-era civics, you can grab the Naval Tradition boost and ensure that your boosts that aren't era-restricted go somewhere more useful.

In a nutshell, this bonus is mostly useful for catching low-priority eurekas and inspirations.

Summary

• Avoid beelining more than an era ahead early on to maximise this ability's efficiency.
  
• Look out for as many eureka and inspiration boosts as possible - Spies and research alliances will help.
  
• Keep your science and culture reasonably balanced as eurekas and inspirations often require use of the other tree.

Kublai Khan's Leader Ability: Gerege

Among the leaders of China, Kublai Khan is perhaps the most straightforward. You get the extremely reliable and ever-present bonus of an extra economic policy card slot, and some bonus eurekas and inspirations on top.

+1 economic policy card slot

Starting with a second economic policy card slot allows you to stack Urban Planning and Ilkum or Colonisation together to gain two lots of production bonuses towards key early civilian units. The Urban Planning/Colonisation combination in particular helps you settle plenty of cities early on - something that's important regardless of your victory route.

Further into the game, more economic policy card slots makes it easier to hold cards that boost yields (e.g. Natural Philosophy, which doubles Campus adjacency bonuses) and those which help general development (e.g. Serfdom, which adds extra charges to Builders). This makes it easier for your cities' development to keep up with your fast research.

While you can use the extra economic policy card slot to help with using governments that have few of them, this isn't necessary. Autocracy's wonder-construction bonus might go reasonably well with China's civ ability, but Classical Republic's Great Person Points bonus and amenities are also really useful to have around.

Ultimately, the economic policy card is a reliably useful bonus for China which doesn't require particularly careful planning. For more ideas on what to put in the extra policy card slot, look at the Administration section of this guide.

Boosts from trading posts

You can establish a trading post in a city by sending a trade route there, and ensuring it stays active until it expires. At a minimum, trade routes take 21 turns to complete.

For Kublai Khan, setting up your first trading post in another civ's city will give you a free random eureka and inspiration. The more full civs there are in the game, the more potential boosts you can get from this ability, so it tends to be more powerful on larget map sizes.

The temptation is simply to send trade routes to other civs early on to get extra boosts, but consider that many early eurekas and inspirations are relatively easy to earn. There's also the risk of international trade routes getting pillaged by Barbarians, which prevents them from being able to establish trading posts.

On the other hand, trade routes take longer to complete later in the game, depending on the current world era:

World era	Minimum time to complete trade route
Ancient Classical	21 turns
Medieval Renaissance	31 turns
Industrial Modern Atomic	41 turns
Information Future	51 turns

So, while it's possible to get future-era eureka boosts from this leader ability, the sheer time it takes to set up trading posts late in the game makes it fairly impractical.

A good compromise is to send out international trade routes around the medieval or renaissance eras. The time taken for trade routes to complete isn't yet too slow, and there's plenty of technologies and civics with awkward boost requirements (e.g. Castles, Siege Tactics, Square Rigging, Humanism).

Conclusion

Kublai Khan's leader ability is one that's easy to learn and reliable. It's great for someone aiming to learn how to play as China - or even learn cultural or scientific games in general. So long as you remember to send international trade routes to every other major civ at some point, you can easily get most of the benefit of this.

Mandate Qin's Leader Ability: The First Emperor (Part 1/4)

Mandate Qin brings a unique early-game for China. While others would struggle, he can produce large quantities of early wonders. And long before anyone else can, China can connect the seas and lakes of the world with uniquely early access to the Canal district.

Builder Charges

Mandate Qin's extra Builder charge is a very straightforward bonus - every Builder can do one more thing, making them more cost-effective. That can help save time with early city development - you can mix improving tiles with chopping down forests to help with both short-term and long-term city potential. Be sure to build on this with further boosts to Builder charges, such as Governor Liang (the Surveyor), the Pyramids wonder or the medieval-era Serfdom policy card, available at Feudalism.

Rushing Wonders - Mechanics

Early-game wonders are often quite a risk to pick up. Dedicating a lot of production early on to something there's no guarantee you'll win (especially on high difficulties) instead of developing your cities can easily backfire. For Mandate Qin, however, smart use of Builders can see you secure multiple wonders even on the highest difficulties, setting you up for the rest of the game.

At the start of the game, you should try and expand fairly quickly. 4 cities is a good number to have. With the Ilkum economic policy card (available at Craftsmanship) you can affordably get Builders trained even in small cities, allowing your entire empire to contribute towards wonder construction. Just one Builder can cover 60% of the production cost of an ancient or classical-era wonder.

A good trick to speed up construction is to use all but one of the charges on any Builders you have dedicated to constructing tile improvements. That way, when they contribute to wonder construction they will be depleted, freeing up the tile and letting you move another Builder in. This can allow you to contribute multiple charges in a single turn! If you get a one-charge Builder on a wonder surrounded by others (at least five surrounding them must have one charge remaining) you can rush an entire wonder in a single turn.

Another crucial trick you can use to maximise production efficiency is as follows:

1. Set a city to build a Wonder
   
2. Contribute a Builder charge
   
3. Set the city's production to something else
   
4. End turn
   
5. At the start of your next turn, switch production back to the wonder
   
6. Contribute another Builder charge
   
7. Set the city's production back to the other thing
   
8. End turn
   
9. Repeat steps 5-8 until the wonder is complete.

Essentially, it will allow your city to build two things at once.


But why stop at just two items? By switching my city between working on two wonders and a building, I can develop the wonders with Builders while using the city's production to help develop itself. I'm essentially building three things at once!

As Builder charges are almost always cheaper than 15% of the cost of a wonder, it's not a bad idea to use this trick to train Builders in cities that also have wonders in progress.

You can go beyond the normal 15% of wonder costs by using bonuses that boost wonder production (or modifiers to general production, but they arrive too late to be relevant). Key ones include:

• (Pantheon) Monument to the Gods: +15% production boost to ancient and classical-era wonders. This makes every Builder charge worth an extra 2.25% of ancient/classical wonder costs.
  
• (Government) Autocracy: +10% bonus to wonder construction. This makes every Builder charge worth an extra 1.5% of ancient/classical wonder costs.
  
• (Policy Card) Corvée: +15% production boost to ancient and classical-era wonders. This makes every Builder charge worth an extra 2.25% of ancient/classical wonder costs.
  
• (City-State) Brussels: +15% production bonus to all wonders if you are suzerain. This makes every Builder charge worth an extra 2.25% of ancient/classical wonder costs.
  
• (Natural Wonder) Ik-Kil: +50% wonder construction in adjacent tiles.

The bonuses from Monument of the Gods and Corvée are the most consistent. Brussels and Ik-Kil won't appear in every game and the former's suzerain bonus may be hard to secure.

Rushing Wonders - The List

Now that the mechanics are out of the way, let's consider the wonders themselves. Here's a list of all ancient and classical era wonders in a rough chronological order.

Great Bath

Requires the ancient-era Pottery technology.
Must be constructed on a floodplains tile.
+3 housing and +1 amenity in this city. Floodplains along the river this wonder is on are immune to flooding damage but produce 50% less food and production bonuses from floods. Floodplains belonging to this city gain +1 faith every time flood damage is mitigated.

The Great Bath's extremely early arrival makes it extremely competitive, and more to the point it means you have to dedicate time on it rather than early expansion. It's generally not worth it to build this wonder as the lost expansion time will cost you down the line.

Stonehenge

Requires the ancient-era Astrology technology.
Must be constructed on flat land adjacent to stone.
+2 faith. Free Great Prophet and may found a religion on Stonehenge.

The temptation of an early free religion is great, but even with China's ability to rush wonders it's a hard one to pick up. Still, if you manage it, you can grab the Divine Inspiration belief and enjoy a strong early faith output.

Etemenanki

Requires the ancient-era, Writing technology.
Must be constructed on floodplains or marsh.
+2 science. +1 science and +1 production to all floodplains in this city, +2 science and +1 production to all marsh tiles in your empire.

The boosted science output is powerful with China's civ ability, and finding a city with a few floodplain tiles isn't too hard. Writing is a high-priority technology for most civs, so act fast to maximise your chances of getting the wonder.

Hanging Gardens

Requires the ancient-era Irrigation technology.
Must be constructed adjacent to a river.
+15% growth in all cities, and +2 housing in this city.

Requiring two technologies rather than Stonehenge's one, the Hanging Gardens is a little less competitive on higher difficulties - though it can still be a gamble. Larger cities are ideal for building post-classical era wonders.

Temple of Artemis

Requires the ancient-era Archery technology.
Must be constructed adjacent to a camp improvement.
+4 food and +3 housing in this city, in addition to +1 amenity per camp, pasture or plantation within four tiles of this wonder.

A great wonder for developing a strong early city. If you can manage to get it and Petra in a desert hills city, it'll have both the size and production capable of building many post-classical wonders. The technology's also useful for keeping your civ defended, so there's no problem with picking it up early.

Great Pyramids

Requires the ancient-era Masonry technology.
Must be constructed on a desert or floodplains tile without hills.
+2 culture. Grants 1 free Builder, all Builders receive +1 charge.

One of the best early wonders for China, an extra Builder charge will help you build future wonders even faster. The free Builder from this wonder will be enough to help you get 75% of another wonder built, or 90% with Governor Liang (the Surveyor). There is the problem you need to track down desert land, but you'll often be able to get at least one tile by your second or third city.

Mandate Qin's Leader Ability: The First Emperor (Part 2/4)

Oracle

Requires the ancient-era Mysticism civic.
Must be constructed on hills.
All districts in this city produce +2 Great Person Points of their corresponding type (Theatre Squares only produce Great Writer Points). Patronage of Great People via faith costs 25% less.

A reasonable wonder which is particularly good in large cities that can support a large variety of districts. Qin's China doesn't get any direct bonuses to faith output, so the cheap patronage is a fairly niche bonus.

Great Lighthouse

Requires the classical-era Celestial Navigation technology.
Must be constructed on the coast (not a lake), adjacent to a Harbour district containing a Lighthouse.
+3 gold and +1 Great Admiral Point per turn. All naval units gain +1 movement.

Mainly useful for water-heavy maps, though in a region with high potential for canals it can be quite helpful for defending your lands as well. Its relatively high positioning requirements make it a pretty uncompetitive wonder which means you can pick it up some way into the game. That's helpful if you want to plan around maximising Theatre Square adjacency.

Jebel Barkal

Requires the classical-era Iron Working technology.
Must be constructed on desert hills.
Awards +4 faith to all cities within six tiles, and +6 iron per turn.

Mostly useful if you're going for an early religious game with the help of Stonehenge and the Divine Inspiration belief. China doesn't have a great need for faith otherwise, so this isn't the highest priority wonder out there. Petra is much more useful for a city with desert.

Colosseum

Requires the classical-era Games and Recreation civic.
Must be constructed on flat land adjacent to an Entertainment Complex with an Arena.
+2 culture, +2 amenities and +2 loyalty to all city centres within six tiles.

A good wonder to have in the hands of practically any civ, the Colosseum should eliminate any problems you have regarding amenities for a long time. The notable downside is the need to build an Entertainment Complex early in the game instead of something like a Campus or Theatre Square and dedicate further production to an Arena, but that's a pretty manageable price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

Apadana

Requires the classical-era Political Philosophy civic.
Must be constructed adjacent to your capital's City Centre.
+2 Great Work slots of any type, +2 envoys, all future wonders built in this city provide +2 envoys.

An extremely powerful wonder if you can set it up right. By emphasising plenty of Monuments early on, you can rush to Political Philosophy fairly quickly. Then, you can use your Builders to rush other pre-medieval wonders in the same city and get an enormous amount of envoys. This can make you suzerain over a lot of city-states early in the game, and give you a huge advantage to diplomatic favour.

The main problems with this wonder are that it arrives at a civic most civs want to obtain quickly, and that it's very limited in regards to where you can build it - just six tiles at the most are eligible.

Colossus

Requires the classical-era Shipbuilding technology.
Must be constructed on the coast (not a lake), adjacent to a Harbour district.
+3 gold, +1 Great Admiral Point, +1 trade route capacity, gain a free Trader

The Colossus is a fairly uncompetitive wonder and has a rather useful benefit with its free trade route. That can help your smaller cities to grow faster via internal trading, getting you ready for the tougher technology/civic boosts in the middle of the game.

Petra

Requires the classical-era Mathematics technology.
Must be constructed on a desert or floodplains tile without hills.
All desert tiles (except floodplains) in range of the city gain +2 food, +2 gold and +1 production.

A very powerful wonder if constructed in a city with a lot of desert hills, though even flat desert can become pretty decent considering Great Walls can be constructed on desert. Bring a couple of Builders and even a new city can get this constructed in six turns at the most, or seven Builder charges. The main problems are finding an appropriate spot (you won't always start near desert) and getting to Mathematics reasonably quickly.

Terracotta Army

Requires the classical-era Construction technology.
Must be constructed on grasslands or plains adjacent to an Encampment district with either a Barracks or Stable.
+1 Great General Points. All current land units gain a promotion. All Archaeologists can enter other civs' territory without open borders.

Mostly useful if you intend to take China to a cultural victory, being able to send Archaeologists to foreign lands without open borders makes it easier to fill Archaeological Museums and get theming bonuses. You probably won't get many free promotions out of this.

Machu Picchu

Note: This wonder cannot be rushed due to its inaccessible location for Builders!

Requires the classical-era Engineering technology.
Must be constructed on a non-volcanic mountain tile.
+4 gold. All Commercial Hubs, Theatre Squares and Industrial Zones gain +1 adjacency from mountains.

The effectiveness of this wonder heavily depends on how many mountains there are in your empire, and whether you can spare the production to build it in its entirety. Theatre Squares would have the most to gain normally as their adjacency bonuses are typically hardest to earn out of the three, but Mandate Qin's ability to rush a lot of wonders means you can make even more lucrative spots for Theatre Squares. Commercial Hubs on river sources can get pretty decent yields, however, and Industrial Zones sandwiched between Aqueducts or Canals and mountains are moderately productive as well.

Statue of Zeus

Requires the classical-era Military Training civic.
Must be built on flat land adjacent to an Encampment with a Barracks.
+3 gold per turn. +50% production towards anti-cavalry units in all cities. Gain 3 Spearmen, 3 Archers and a Battering Ram when complete.

Focusing so much on wonders can lead you to neglect defence, but here's a wonder that can help with just that. The prerequisite is a little bit tricky, and the civic requirement is also a detour from the more important Feudalism civic, but it can still be worth going for once you have the Serfdom policy card.

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

Requires the classical-era Defensive Tactics civic.
Must be built adjacent to a Harbour.
+1 charge for Great Engineers. This city's coast tiles gain +1 faith, science and culture.

The extra Great Engineer charge is very useful - particularly for ones that offer wonder construction boosts later in the game. A coastal city with this wonder and a lot of sea resources or potential for fishery improvements via Governor Liang (the Surveyor) can produce some pretty decent yields as well.

Mandate Qin's Leader Ability: The First Emperor (Part 3/4)

Great Library

Requires the classical-era Recorded History civic.
Must be built on flat land adjacent to a Campus district with a Library.
+2 science, +1 Great Scientist Point, 2 Great Works of Writing slots, gain all pre-medieval eurekas, gain a eureka every time another civ gains a Great Scientist.

A very powerful wonder if timed right, but has the problem of arriving at a tricky point in the civics tree. Manage your research right and you could gain an enormous amount of science at once. Even if you're doing well in science and can't get many boosts out of it immediately, you can still get further boosts from other civs getting Great Scientists. Consider passing on some that don't offer boosts so you can maximise the quantity you do get.

If those boosts weren't enough, you also get a bit of science, a Great Scientist point and two slots for Great Works of Writing, helping you pursue both scientific and cultural aims.

Mahabodhi Temple

Requires the classical-era Theology civic.
Must be built on woods adjacent to a Holy Site with a Temple, and you must have founded a religion.
+2 diplomatic victory points, +4 faith and +2 Apostles

A tricky wonder to pick up which is pretty competitive in singleplayer, and not particularly synergistic with China's other uniques. Still, if you managed to rush Stonehenge, this wonder lets you fill out all your religious beliefs without you having to spend any faith. It also denies diplomatic civs from taking the victory points this wonder offers.

Rushing Wonders - Side-effects

One useful side-effect of getting a lot of early wonders is the ability to maximise culture yields from Theatre Squares. If possible, position your wonders to allow space for future Theatre Squares in between as many as possible, and you'll be rewarded with even faster civic accumulation (not to mention faster city border expansion).

Furthermore, wonders are a great source of era score, granting 4 a time if they correspond to the current (or a later) game era, and 3 if they're of an earlier era than the current game era (e.g. completing the Temple of Artemis in the classical era). This allows China to reliably enter a medieval-era Golden Age, providing a choice of Free Inquiry (for stronger eurekas) or Pen, Brush and Voice (for stronger inspirations).

If you can secure the Apadana early on and then go back for other wonders, you can accumulate a huge number of envoys, allowing you to become suzerain over more city-states than most civs can manage.

Builders and Wonders - Beyond the classical era

You can still rush ancient and classical-era wonders later in the game, and combined with the Serfdom economic policy card (available at Feudalism) this becomes even easier; just one Builder can rush 90% of a wonder's progress - or all of it with Governor Liang (the Surveyor).

Otherwise, the main use of Mandate Qin's Builder bonus by this point will be more productive Builders. Keep in mind that Builders become more expensive for every one you build or buy, and training many of them early in the game to rush wonders with could make them pretty costly by the medieval era. Again, the Serfdom economic policy card will really help.

Later in the game, you can use the Royal Society Government Plaza building to allow Builders to contribute all their charges towards a city project. This includes all space race projects, giving Mandate Qin a distinct edge here.

Building lots of wonders will reward you with a strong amount of tourism. Wonders produce two tourism each, plus one for every era since the era they first became available. An ancient-era wonder will be worth 10 tourism by the future era and a classical-era wonder 9, boosted by the atomic-era Computers technology and the information-era Environmentalism civic.

Mandate Qin's Leader Ability: The First Emperor (Part 4/4)

Canals - Introduction

Mandate Qin brings another change to early gameplay in the form of early Canal districts. Rushing wonders is generally more of a priority early in the game than developing Canals, but you can still enjoy some strategic advantages you otherwise wouldn't have.

Canals - Mechanics

Canals are a special non-speciality district which allows naval units to pass through land tiles. Normally, they require the industrial-era Steam Power technology, and can only be built on a tile:

• Within 3 tiles of a city centre in owned land
  
• On flat featureless terrain, unless the feature can be removed (woods, rainforest, marsh).
  
• Not on a tile which already has a district or wonder
  
• With a coast or lake on one side, and a city centre and/or another body of water on the other.
  
• With land tiles on either side of the canal.
  
• That would not result in a three-way canal.

That's quite a list of requirements! To help visualise what might be valid canal spots or not, here's a diagram:


This city is on a snaky island , but not all of these potential locations can host Canals...

• Spot 1 cannot host a Canal as land tiles are only on one side of it (not both).
  
• Spot 2 can host a Canal - there's bodies of water on both ends and land on both sides - though not if Spot 3 already has a Canal.
  
• Spot 3 can host a Canal (though not if Spot 2 or 4 have one present). The city centre is treated like a water tile rather than another Canal.
  
• Spot 4 can host a Canal if Spot 3 or 5 doesn't have one, and Spot 5 can host one if Spot 4 doesn't have one and Spot 6 doesn't have the Panama Canal.
  
• Spot 6 cannot host a regular Canal, but the Panama Canal wonder could theoretically be built there to connect the city to the water in the south-east, assuming Spot 5 isn't taken.
  
• Spot 7 cannot host a Canal as it already has a district present.
  
• Spot 8 cannot host a Canal as it isn't flat terrain.
  
• Spot 9 can host a Canal once you have the Bronze Working technology. Placing a Canal there would remove the rainforest.

Canals cost 50% more than speciality districts to build, but the expense can be partially mitigated by using Military Engineers to provide build charges to them, much like how Mandate Qin allows Builders to add charges to wonders under construction. Every charge contributes 20% of a Canal's total cost.

In addition to allowing naval units to pass the tile, Canals have some additional effects:

• International Traders gain +1 gold for each Canal tile they pass through, and treat Canal tiles like water for the purpose of transportation efficiency (adding extra gold to the trade route - see "Mechanics - Transportation Efficiency" in the Guide to the Inca for more information)
  
• Industrial Zones gain +2 production for each adjacent Canal.
  
• Governor Liang (the Surveyor) with the Water Works promotion grants +1 amenity for every Canal present in her city.

With the industrial-era Steam Power technology, there's the opportunity to build the Panama Canal wonder. It functions like a Canal of two or three three tiles in length, potentially allowing you to connect two city centres together, or connect bodies of water three tiles apart without needing an intervening city.

There's three possible valid Panama Canal spots in the image:

• Option One creates the longest possible route, but requires City A and City B to already connect to the sea via Canal districts. The city able to build the wonder is whichever one owns the middle tile, but they don't need to control all three.
  
• Option Two could be built by City A. While not as long a route as Option One (therefore not quite as effective defensively as less ground can be covered by your navy), it doesn't require as much setup.
  
• Option Three could be built by City B but it'd make a pretty redundant canal.

Note, however, that both City A and City B had to be settled off the coast, and away from fresh water leaving them with a low housing base. This is a common problem that purpose-built Canal cities have - to circumvent it, use your Great Wall gold to purchase Granaries in the cities and bring Builders over to build farms.

Canals - Early Canals and Strategies

By unlocking Canals early in the game, China can use them in ways that other civs cannot. The most obvious benefit is being able to connect two seas, allowing one navy to serve the purpose of defending both seas, or allowing a naval ranged unit to retreat behind a city while still being able to fire on their targets. But it can also be helpful for boosting city production - Canals provide a +2 adjacency bonus to Industrial Zones, and together with an Aqueduct, a second Canal or a few mines or quarries, you can get an impressive adjacency bonus that doubles with a Coal Power Plant.

Still, be sure you can actually spare the production to build a Canal. Basic infrastructure and wonders will generally be more important early on - outside of the most important strategic uses, it might be best to wait until the medieval era so you can use them to accompany Industrial Zones.

Summary

• Expand to a few cities so they can train Builders and contribute to wonder construction
  
• Strong wonders to aim for include the the Pyramids, the Colosseum, Petra and the Great Library.
  
• Builders may be quite expensive by the medieval era; use the Serfdom economic policy card to cut costs.
  
• Early Canals can help you get more out of your navy defensively, provide a little more gold to international trade routes or boost the production of Industrial Zones.

Unifier Qin's Leader Ability: Thirty-Six Strategems (Part 1/4)

Unifier Qin is distinct among China's rulers for his ability to amass units in bulk, giving him an edge in warfare especially early in the game. However, the outcomes of this ability can vary wildly between each game based on the progress of other civs and the spawning of Barbarian outposts, so every game with Unifier Qin is unique.

Starting Out

Many civs benefit from training a Slinger first in their capital city, as Slingers can deal damage without taking any. For Unifier Qin, however, it can be useful to train a Warrior first instead as the extra opportunity to convert Barbarians will be very useful early in the game.

Because using a charge to convert Barbarians uses up your Warrior, you should be careful how you use that ability. Here's a few good examples of when to use the charge early on:

• If you'd gain a Warrior plus another unit, as you wouldn't lose any charges as a result.
  
• If you'd gain at least two units where neither are Scouts nor likely to immediately be killed. This will result in more valuable units than your Warrior would be.
  
• If you'd gain your first naval unit in the process. Obtaining your first naval unit grants era score - especially if it's the first in the world - and can be great for early exploration.
  
• If your Warrior would otherwise be killed.
  
• If the converted unit is more advanced than any unit you can currently train (e.g. an Archer when you don't have Archery).

To find Barbarian outposts, discover as much land as you can and pay attention for when a Barbarian outpost spawns - there'll be a special sound that plays when that happens assuming it's in land you've uncovered. Barbarian outposts can only spawn in land out of sight of any units, so be sure to avoid having too much of the map in sight at once.

If you encounter a Barbarian Scout or Galley with a ! symbol (exclamation mark) above its head near your territory, follow it with a Warrior but do not kill or convert it. When it returns to its home outpost, it will spawn additional Barbarian units that you can then convert over the course of a few turns. You can alternatively keep a Warrior adjacent to a Barbarian outpost ready for it to spawn extra units you can convert.

Close to home, mix together basic development, expansion and training additional Warriors when needed. Getting to the Masonry technology early on will be useful as the Great Wall's gold yield allows you to maintain and upgrade your converted forces with ease. If you can build around 2-3 Holy Sites early on and secure a religion, you will be able to build the very useful Hagia Sophia wonder later, which gives an extra convert-Barbarians charge to all your melee infantry units! You can alternatively just capture the wonder later for the same effect.

Basic Strategies

In an ideal situation, you can use Unifier Qin's leader ability to convert lots of Barbarians early on, building yourself a larger army than most civs can manage in this period of time. You can then use these units together with some Archers to attack a neighbouring civ at a point in the game where they won't yet have city walls.


In the early stage of the game, random Barbarians getting in the way of your conquests is common - but for Unifier Qin, you can turn this into an advantage!

In practice, however, Unifier Qin's ability to pull off an early rush will vary tremendously between games. If you start with few Barbarians near you, or your nearest neighbour is strong early on (e.g. the Aztecs, Gaul), attempting an early rush can end poorly. Instead, it may be worth simply emphasising Settlers and general city development instead.

As more of the map fills up, Barbarian outposts can become harder to find. If possible, expanding near tundra/snow regions, or near desert can be helpful - civs are less likely to settle there, leaving gaps where Barbarians are more likely to spawn. Further into the game, the best place to find Barbarians is isolated islands, typically those found in snowy regions. As such, it's helpful to head towards the Shipbuilding technology reasonably early so you can bring Warriors over to them. Shipbuilding is needed for Buttress, in turn needed for the Hagia Sophia wonder, so it's very worthwhile on that basis as well.

Barbarian units scale to the technology of full civs in the game, so as the game goes on they will produce increasingly strong units. This makes seeking out outposts still worthwhile late into the game to save production - particularly if one of your older, weaker melee infantry units can trade itself for a much stronger up-to-date unit.

Once you reach the industrial-era Urbanisation civic, build a Neighbourhood in a key city, preferably away from any key districts or tile improvements. Place a melee infantry unit or two by it, and ensure you don't have a Spy protecting it. That way, if other civs target the Neighbourhood for a Recruit Partisans mission on that city, you'll easily be able to convert the Barbarian anti-cavalry units the mission creates.

Basic Strategy Conclusion

Ultimately, Unifier Qin's leader ability can be used to support early rushes, but otherwise is mostly useful to save production when it comes to securing up-to-date defensive units. A reasonable strategy is to start off aggressive in the first two eras, but settle down into a scientific or cultural playstyle for the rest of the game.

It's a shame to leave things there though. After all, if you want to play a typical scientific/cultural game as China, there's four other leaders that can do that just as well. So, let's look more in-depth into how this whole ability can be used more effectively...

Unifier Qin's Leader Ability: Thirty-Six Strategems (Part 2/4)

Intermediate Strategies and Tricks

Unifier Qin's leader ability can be simply used to convert Barbarian incursions into opportunities for extra units, but you can get even more out of it if you get the hang of how Barbarians work.

Outpost Tribe Types

You may notice that not all Barbarian outposts spawn the same units. That's because there's actually three different types!

• Melee Tribe - The most common. These start with a recon unit (initially a Scout), and will spawn a new unit every 15 turns. 25% of these regularly spawned units will be ranged land units, but otherwise it largely spawns melee infantry units, and can spawn extra recon units. Very, very late in the game these can spawn Giant Death Robots due to the way those units are coded.
  
• Cavalry Tribe - The rarest tribe type, and only appears near a horse strategic resource. These start with a Scout, and will spawn a new unit every 25 turns. Early in the game, 25% of these regularly spawned units will be either the unique Barbarian Horse Archer (earlier in the game), or a recon unit (starting with Skirmishers). Otherwise, these outposts largely spawn light cavalry units.
  
• Naval Tribe - These uniquely start with naval melee units, and will spawn a new unit every 10 turns. 25% of these regularly spawned units will be naval ranged units, but otherwise it largely spawns melee naval units.

The type of tribe an outpost is also determines what units they create when they initiate a Barbarian Raid or Barbarian Attack - more on that later.

Identifying the type of outpost tribe is fairly straightforward:

• If it spawns a Scout, or isn't adjacent to the coast, it can't be a naval tribe. If it spawns a naval unit, it is always a naval tribe.
  
• If it spawns a Warrior or Slinger, it is always a melee tribe.
  
• If it spawns cavalry units, it is always a cavalry tribe.

Identifying the tribe of a camp is useful for ensuring you're always getting the most relevant units.

• Melee tribes are always useful as they produce melee infantry units, which when converted can be used for further conversions.
  
• Cavalry tribes are generally bad at the start of the game because the unique Barbarian Horseman and Barbarian Horse Archer units they spawn are weak and cannot be upgraded, but once they start producing proper Horsemen they become considerably better.
  
• Naval tribes are good in the very earliest turns of the game as they can secure you an early naval unit and the associated era score. Later on, you can use an embarked Warrior protected by a stronger naval unit to get close, allowing you to safely convert units with a much lower risk of your Warrior being killed.

Raids and Attacks

Barbarian outposts always spawn with a recon unit (for melee and cavalry tribes) or a naval melee unit (for naval tribes). If these reach a tile adjacent to a non-city-state city, and then return to their original outpost, they will cause a Barbarian Raid to occur.

When a Barbarian Raid starts, the outpost will cause new units to be spawned every 2 turns (or every turn on Immortal/Deity difficulty) until all the raid units are produced. Depending on the tribe of the camp and your game's difficulty, that can be between 1 and 5 units, as follows:

Tribe	Settler to Chieftain	Warlord to Emperor	Immortal to Deity
Melee	2 melee infantry	2 melee infantry 1 land ranged	3 melee infantry 2 land ranged
Cavalry	1 light cavalry	2 light cavalry 1 mobile ranged*	3 light cavalry 2 mobile ranged*
Naval	2 naval melee	2 naval melee 1 naval ranged	3 naval melee 2 naval ranged

*This will be one Barbarian Horse Archer earlier in the game, or a recon unit starting with Skirmishers.

When all of the units for a Raid has spawned, and after certain conditions are met (e.g. the Barbarian outpost's units kill two units without losing any) then units for a Barbarian Attack will be generated, in a similar manner to the Raid but with more units:

Tribe	Settler to Chieftain	Warlord to Emperor	Immortal to Deity
Melee	2 melee infantry 1 land ranged 1 siege	3 melee infantry 2 land ranged 1 siege 1 Battering Ram	4 melee infantry 3 land ranged 2 siege 1 Battering Ram
Cavalry	2 light cavalry 1 mobile ranged*	3 light cavalry 2 mobile ranged* 1 heavy cavalry	4 light cavalry 3 mobile ranged* 0 heavy cavalry**
Naval	2 naval melee 2 naval ranged	3 naval melee 3 naval ranged	4 naval melee 5 naval ranged

*This will be one Barbarian Horse Archer earlier in the game, or a recon unit starting with Skirmishers.
**Due to bad code, cavalry tribes will not produce heavy cavalry on Immortal or Deity difficulty. They're supposed to produce 2.

Like Barbarian Raids, Barbarian Attacks spawn one unit at a time, every two turns on Emperor difficulty or below, or every turn on Immortal difficulty or higher.

Overall, Barbarian Raids and Barbarian Attacks make Unifier Qin's leader ability substantially stronger on Immortal and higher difficulty than it is on lower difficulties, as you'll be able to secure far more units, and the faster spawning rate of raids/attacks increases the chance the units will be clustered together.

Usually, it's easy enough to force a Barbarian Raid (just allow the outpost's Scout or Galley to reach your city and return). Barbarian Attacks are much harder to force, but some thoughts of the matter are covered under the Advanced Strategies subsection of this leader ability.

Unifier Qin's Leader Ability: Thirty-Six Strategems (Part 3/4)

Unique Barbarian Units

Cavalry tribes have two unique units they can spawn early on which you can convert to your cause. Let's have a look at them!

Unique Unit: Barbarian Horseman


An ancient-era light cavalry unit which does not replace anything

Research	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Cost	Resource	Maintenance
None	Horseback Riding * Technology Classical era	N/A	N/A	35 **	None	1

*Barbarian outposts that can produce regular Horsemen will no longer produce Barbarian Horsemen.
**This unit's production cost is irrelevant as it can never be produced by conventional means.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
20	N/A	3	N/A	2	Deals -85% damage to city walls and urban defences	Ignores Zone of Control

Unique Unit: Barbarian Horse Archer


An ancient-era ranged land unit which does not replace anything

Research	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Cost	Resource	Maintenance
None	Machinery * Technology Medieval era	N/A	N/A	35 **	None	1

*Barbarian outposts that can produce Skirmishers will no longer produce Barbarian Horse Archers.
**This unit's production cost is irrelevant as it can never be produced by conventional means.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
10	15	3	1	2	Unable to capture cities -17 vs. city defences -17 vs. naval units Deals -50% damage to city walls and urban defences	Ignores Zone of Control

Analysis

These unique Barbarian units have a key advantage - the mobility of Scouts while matching up to the power of Warriors and Slingers. This makes them great at exploring, but there are some niche other applications. For example, because Barbarian Horsemen impose Zone of Control but ignore it from other units and cities, you can use them to easily surround an enemy city and put them under siege, preventing them from healing.

In theory, the high mobility of these units could make them good pillagers on higher difficulties - assuming there's anything worth pillaging this early in the game. Barbarian Horsemen with the Depredation promotion can pillage two adjacent tiles in the same turn, granting you some decent yields or allowing the unit to heal up rapidly off enemy farms.

The main disadvantage of these units is that they can never be upgraded - unlike any other unit you can get from Barbarians at this point in the game. As such, once classical-era units enter the battlefield, they have to be relegated to strictly non-combat roles.

Making the Most of Warriors

Warriors are great to use with Unifier Qin's leader ability because they're cheap. 40 production isn't much, while they have no resource requirement and no maintenance cost. However, they eventually obsolete, cutting out that easy option for cheap conversions.

With careful management of strategic resources and technology, however, you can train Warriors much further into the game than normal, ensuring you can convert Barbarians for cheap for much longer!

If you have the Iron Working technology and at least 20 iron, you will lose the option to train a Warrior. However, you can simply trade away your iron to another civ, and the option to create a Warrior will be there again. It's a good idea to purchase Warriors at this point in the game rather than to produce them, as cities will switch Warrior production to Swordsman production the moment you have 20 iron again. This trick continues to work if you have Apprenticeship (which unlocks Men-at-Arms units), but you will be completely unable to train Warriors once you have the Gunpowder technology. As a result, it can be worth avoiding researching Gunpowder until later in the game.

As Warriors have only a mere 20 strength, they'll struggle to resist attacks by stronger Barbarians. As such, keep a stronger unit between your Warriors and the Barbarians you want to convert. You can then make the units swap places and use the Convert Barbarians charge on your Warrior immediately afterwards. That way, the only threats to your Warrior will be ranged attacks and flanking cavalry.

Embarking Warriors is also a good way to keep them safe. Embarked units' defensive strength is defined independently of their unembarked strength. In other words, an embarked Warrior will defend just as well as an embarked Man-at-Arms. Prior to the renaissance, embarked units only have 15 strength, but once you have any renaissance-era technology or civic, that's boosted up to 30, and even higher in later eras. And, of course, you can escort embarked units with naval units for even better defence.

To summarise, for the most efficient conversions, aside from getting the Hagia Sophia wonder you can hold off getting Gunpowder and sell your iron so you can train cheap Warriors.

Unifier Qin's Leader Ability: Thirty-Six Strategems (Part 4/4)

Barbarian Technology

Barbarian technology scales based on the technology level of other civs in the game - how this happens is not exactly known. One theory is that Barbarians have the technology that half the full civs in the game have, yet you may notice that Babylon skipping ahead to later technologies can be enough to make Barbarians tougher.

Until the exact details are known, you can assume that Barbarians will largely keep up with most civs' technological advancement. What makes this useful for Unifier Qin is it allows you to convert units that you otherwise the technology to train - such as Pike and Shot units before you unlock Metal Casting. Many military units in the renaissance, industrial and modern eras arrive at technologies on the bottom half of the technology tree, while many of the most relevant technologies to a scientific or cultural game are on the top half, so this means that a scientific or cultural Unifier Qin can cover the military weakness many other scientific/cultural leaders and civs can have at the same time.

One catch with converting advanced units comes in the form of strategic resources. If you have no copies of the strategic resource a unit needs (e.g. horses for Horsemen), they will be unable to heal except when gaining new promotions. Later units like Infantry which consume resources every turn will additionally have a strength penalty for every strategic resource deficit (so if you have no oil and 10 Infantry, they will all have a 10 strength penalty).

Now, let's take a step further into more specific mechanics regarding Barbarians...

Advanced Strategies

Barbarians are subject to certain hidden mechanics which affect when and where they spawn, and when they launch Raids. Understanding those can help you track down more Barbarians to convert!

Barbarian Outpost Spawning

Barbarian outposts have some relatively strict rules regarding how and where they appear.

Outposts must spawn in territory not in line-of-sight of any civ, at least 7 tiles from another outpost, and at least 4 tiles from a city centre (this distance is increased from a player below Prince difficulty). They can spawn on any type of flat or hilly land terrain which is either featureless or has woods, rainforest, marsh, floodplains or volcanic soil. Barbarians cannot spawn on other features like geothermal fissures or natural wonders.


What do you know - 4 tiles distance! Usually outposts won't spawn this close.

There's also limitations on how many can spawn, defined by a hard cap and a soft cap:

• The hard cap on the number of Barbarian outposts is three times the number of full civs. For example, a game with 8 civs has a hard cap of 24 Barbarian outposts.
  
• The soft cap takes the number from the hard cap multiplied by the percentage of land tiles in the visible range of full civs (not city-states). If the number of Barbarian outposts in the world falls below this number, new ones can spawn. As an example, if half the world's land is visible to any of the 8 players in a game, new Barbarian outposts will spawn when there's less than 12 remaining.

What this means is fewer Barbarian outposts will spawn as the game progresses and more of the world fills up.

The rate at which new outposts can spawn is also limited to one per two turns, regardless of the size of the map.

Boldness

Boldness is a hidden mechanic tied to each Barbarian outpost which is used to determine Barbarian Raids and Barbarian Attacks. By keeping track of the Boldness of specific outposts, you may be able to force more units to spawn that you can then convert - but this requires some tricky micromanagement!

When a Barbarian outpost first spawns, it will gain 2 Boldness passively every turn.

Outposts gain 15 Boldness if one of their units kills another. Outposts lose 10 Boldness if they lose a unit, or 15 if they lose a Scout. If a Barbarian unit in an outpost is damaged, the outpost will lose 30 boldness. Boldness can enter into the negatives, so if an outpost is under heavy fire and all its units are killed, it's unlikely to spawn any Raids or Attacks any time soon.

I've already covered that Barbarian Raids happen when their recon unit (for land-based outposts) or melee naval unit (for coastal outposts) reaches the border of a full civ's city (indicated by the ! symbol overhead), and then returns to its outpost. However, strictly speaking the Raid will only happen if the outpost also has at least 10 Boldness. In practice, outposts will almost always have 10 Boldness by that time, unless the unit defending the encampment was attacked soon after the encampment spawned.

Once all the units of a Barbarian Raid are generated, then the outpost's Boldness resets to 0. If the outpost reaches 25 Boldness after that point, then the Barbarian Attack can occur. The easiest way to hit 25 Boldness quickly is to let the Barbarians from that outpost kill two units without losing any and without the unit defending their outpost taking any damage.

Forcing a Barbarian Attack to happen isn't exactly easy - you have to:

• Ensure the Barbarian Raid happens first
  
• Count the turns until all the Barbarian Raid units spawn (5 turns on Immortal/Deity)
  
• Then ensure the outpost reaches 25 Boldness

If any other civ or city-state starts killing Barbarian units or attacks the unit defending the outpost, the goal of reaching 25 Boldness becomes much harder. For this reason, if you want to give this a shot, try and use an outpost that's near your lands but isolated from other civs or city-states (such as one in snowy terrain).

Summary

• Let Barbarian Scouts go to the border of your cities and back to their outposts to spawn more.
  
• Build or capture the Hagia Sophia wonder for extra Barbarian conversion charges.
  
• Sell your iron and avoid researching Gunpowder, and you can continue training Warriors for cheap conversions.
  
• Research Cartography reasonably early and you can find isolated islands of Barbarians to convert.
  
• You can avoid researching many military technologies and still benefit from their units by converting Barbarians.

Wu Zetian's Leader Ability: Manual of Entrapment

A Spy so early there's no Campuses I can target - but there's time to train this Spy up!

Thanks to her strengths in espionage, Wu Zetian has two key advantages over other Chinese leaders: she can obtain the most eurekas, and she can more effectively set back other civs without going to war. This makes her ideal for an isolationist scientific game, though she also performs well at cultural and even diplomatic victories.

The Early Spy

Wu Zetian receives a Spy at the classical-era Defensive Tactics civic - notably two eras before most civs gain their first Spy capacity at the renaissance-era Diplomatic Service civic. To speed up your early civic gain, settle a reasonable number of cities and build Monuments in them. You can usually secure all the inspirations for the civics along the way up to Political Philosophy.

It might be tempting, but don't send this Spy to steal technologies or Great Works right away. These initially have a relatively high failure rate. If your Spy is killed, the cost of training a new one is very high at this point in the game, so it's better to go for less risky missions to train the Spy up. Some good missions are Forment Unrest (can be done in any city owned by another full civ), Siphon Funds (can be done in any full-civ city with a Commercial Hub) or Fabricate Scandal (can be done in any city-state) as they have a relatively good rate of success. Note that missions with a fixed 100% rate of success (e.g. Gain Sources) do not level up your Spies.

While your free Spy conducts tasks abroad, it's a good idea to work on your cities' science, production and culture outputs. You'll need a good production base to train subsequent Spies - although you can buy Spies with faith, building up a faith infrastructure is generally a distraction from Wu Zetian's other goals. A good science output can get you to the medieval-era Castles technology quickly, granting you a huge boost to culture from Great Wall improvements and in turn speeding up your civic accumulation rate.

Boosting Spies Further

Once you have any tier two government (Monarchy, Merchant Republic or Theocracy), you can build the Intelligence Agency building in your Government Plaza district. This provides a free Spy, +1 Spy capacity and improves the rate of success for all your Spy operations.

To get this bonus as quickly as possible, research the Divine Right civic for the Monarchy government. This does mean you'll miss out on the opportunity for Merchant Republic or Theocracy's legacy wildcard and arrangement of policy card slots, but for Wu Zetian the benefits of stronger Spies sooner largely outweighs those smaller benefits.

Your Spy capacity will increase further still with the following civics and technologies:

• Diplomatic Service (Renaissance era civic - also needed for the useful Machiavellianism diplomatic policy card which lets you train Spies faster and makes their operations faster)
  
• Nationalism (Industrial era civic)
  
• Ideology (Modern era civic)
  
• Computers (Atomic era technology)
  
• Cold War (Atomic era civic)

As your Spies conduct successful operations, they'll eventually be able to earn up to three promotions. Key promotions to look out for are as follows:

• Cat Burglar - Steal Great Works as if 2 levels more experienced - Ideal if you're after a cultural victory, or even just want to boost your tourism pressure. If your tourism influence over a civ is sufficiently high, all your Spy operations against them will be sped up!
  
• Disguise - Can instantly relocate to another civ's city - Useful in conjunction with Cat Burglar for faster Great Works, or if you need to switch between different civs to steal technologies.
  
• Linguist - Time to complete missions reduced by 25% - Excellent for any offensive operation. Great if you want to get some extra science and culture from Wu Zetian's leader ability.
  
• Technologist - Steal Tech Boost as if 2 levels more experienced - An ideal choice as every eureka is worth more for China.

Science, Culture and Faith

Every successful offensive Spy mission for Wu Zetian yields culture, faith and science equal to 100% of that targeted city's per-turn generation of those respective yields. In other words, if you succeed in a mission in a city with 10 science and culture per turn, you'll generate 5 science and 5 culture from that mission.

Generally, single cities do not tend to generate huge amounts of science on their own, so the amount of science this bonus will yield is relatively small. However, a city with a lot of Great Works (e.g. Kongo's capital) can often yield a high amount of per-turn culture - while a city with many relics can have a large faith output. Still, overall the science, culture and faith is a nice little bonus and not really worth affecting your judgement regarding where you send Spies.

Although Wu Zetian can buy Spies with faith, China's other bonuses generally discourage her from emphasising a faith infrastructure. If you have spare faith lying around, go for it, but don't waste precious district capacity on Holy Sites until your cities are big enough to have exhausted everything else useful.

Later in the Game

After you pick up the modern-era Ideology civic and a tier three government (Communism is ideal for scientific games), take a detour to Nuclear Programme. This allows you to take the Nuclear Espionage policy card granting a second eureka boost every time you successfully steal a eureka. This is really effective for cleaning up the eureka boosts you might otherwise have difficulty earning.

Wu Zetian's Spies at maximum level have the highest success rate of any leader's Spies, but keep in mind that any mission without a fixed 100% success rate (e.g. Gain Sources) will be capped at a 90% success chance. This means there's always a possibility of your Spies being killed.

Once you have a Spaceport, consider keeping a Spy in home territory to defend it. The benefits of having an extra Spy on offensive missions are not as significant as the production cost from having to repair a pillaged Spaceport.

Once you run out of eurekas to steal, and have all the Great Works you want, it may be a good time to set back other civs by sabotaging their Industrial Zones, breaching their Dams and neutralising their Governors. The Breach Dam mission in particular is highly destructive but usually has a low rate of success. A highly-promoted Spy under Wu Zetian can often take the risk.

Alternatively, you can carry out the Fabricate Scandal mission in city-states to take envoys off other civs. This is particularly effective against diplomatic civs trying to accumulate diplomatic favour from suzerain city-states.

Conclusion

China's civ ability demands you put in the work to make the most of it. The more eureka boosts you can acquire, the stronger it is. Wu Zetian makes that job a lot easier by making technology stealing much more reliable. Just keep your culture output high early on to get to Defensive Tactics and Divine Right quickly, and ensure your production is sufficient to train later Spies, and you shouldn't have too much trouble.

Yongle's Leader Ability: Lijia

The moment you hit size 10 the benefits are enormous.

Yongle likes to build large cities - and quickly. Do so and you'll have an extremely potent culture and gold output, with a strong science output to match China's powerful eurekas. Helping him on this task are three unique city projects that allow him to convert production to faith, gold, or, uniquely, food.

Starting Out

From the very first turn, you can use the Lijia (Faith) project in your capital to convert production to faith. This allows you to secure a pantheon very early on - Religious Settlements is a great choice for the bonus Settler, saving you precious early production and avoiding a point of population loss in your capital. Once you have a pantheon, you can switch to training a Slinger or two for defence and a Settler for a third city.


A Settler at just turn 11.

Yongle's early game is a careful balancing act of expansion and city growth. It is a lot easier to grow six cities to size 10 than three cities to size 20, so do not neglect training Settlers early on. At the same time, the first city you can get to size 10 will have a significant boost to your science, culture and gold which is worth getting as soon as reasonably possible.

Thankfully, there are a few things you can do to help meet both needs. You can use Governor Magnus (the Steward) with the Provision promotion so you can train Settlers without losing population. His Surplus Logistics promotion also speeds up growth in the city. It takes a bit of time to unlock these promotions, so until then consider training Builders and/or defensive units.

Try to get a city to 11 housing at a reasonably fast rate. Cities with only 1 point of surplus housing relative to their population will have a 50% penalty to growth rate, so reaching 11 housing ensures the city can grow to 10 population at its optimum rate. If your capital starts on fresh water, it will start with 6 housing - you can get to 11 with a Granary and six tile improvements which grant housing (farms, fishing boats, camps, pastures and plantations). Most of these tile improvements also offer food which will be necessary to maintain the 10 points of population. Once a city has 11 housing, you can use the Lijia (Food) project to get it to 10 population faster - though this works best if the city has more than a token amount of production.

Amassing Size 10 Cities

Once you have your first size 10 city, you'll gain a massive +10 science, +10 culture and +20 gold per turn. The gold can be put to good use purchasing Granaries and Builders in cities to help boost their housing. While your biggest city focuses on training Settlers with Governor Magnus preventing population loss, focus on boosting the population of your other cities to size 10.

Two things that will help in the process of raising extra cities to size 10 is the Classical Republic government and the Audience Chamber building in the Government Plaza. Classical Republic offers +1 housing and amenity to cities with a district present, while the Audience Chamber offers +4 housing and +2 amenities to cities with governors. Once again, use Granaries and housing-boosting tile improvements like farms to get cities up to 11 housing, and then use the Lijia (Food) project to reach size 10.

Although you gain extra science, culture and gold for every point in population, growing a city past size 10 is less important than getting a new city to that point. It's best to continue to train new Settlers until you have all the decent city spots you can take. Outside of ones necessary for eureka boosts, you can neglect building districts as their yields at this point in the game are significantly smaller than the boost from reaching size 10. This frees up production for defensive buildings and units and/or extra Builders.

Settling Down

Once you've settled all the decent cities you can, and have reached size 10 in as many as possible, the rest of Yongle's game becomes simpler in comparison to the start. The huge science output from Yongle's leader ability combined with China's strong eurekas makes him exceptional at the scientific game, though the cultural game is a fine alternative - large cities are great at building wonders and the Lijia (Faith) project can be useful for obtaining Rock Bands and Naturalists.

Continue to grow your cities providing you can support the costs involved. Building Aqueducts will be useful both for their additional housing and the strong adjacency bonus they grant Industrial Zones, making the Lijia projects more effective. Entertainment Complexes and Water Parks shall be crucial as having lots of large cities will be a huge strain on amenities.

One problem you're likely to face growing large cities is the trade-off of using the Great Wall tile improvement versus building more farms. It might be a good idea to restrict use of the Great Wall to tiles that might otherwise be hard to improve (e.g. tundra).

The question of what to do with city projects becomes relevant again later on in the game. Lijia (Food) remains excellent for quickly filling up a city's housing capacity so long as the city has a reasonable production base. Lijia (Faith) is mostly useful for Rock Bands for the cultural game, or Naturalists for extra amenities. Lijia (Gold) is a good option for cities which have already built everything they need to as you can use the gold to purchase things in other cities. That being said, things cost four times as much gold to purchase as they do production to produce, so be aware of how efficient (or not) you're actually being.

Ultimately, maximise science and production, and you'll soon be ahead in the space race or the race for wonders.

Alternative Strategy: Yongle and Monasticism

If you can keep your era score low early in the game, Yongle can achieve a massive science output in a classical or medieval-era Dark Age thanks to the Monasticism wildcard. Monasticism grants +75% science in all cities with a Holy Site, at the cost of -25% culture in all cities.

To keep your era score low, avoid clearing Barbarian outposts where possible and consider holding off from building the Great Wall improvement.

The requirement to build Holy Sites becomes a lot more manageable if you take the River Goddess pantheon, which makes river-adjacent Holy Sites grant +2 amenities and +2 housing - perfect for growing cities.

Summary

• Use the Lijia (Faith) project right away and you can usually secure the Religious Settlements pantheon for an early second city.
  
• Governor Magnus with the Provision promotion helps you settle cities without losing city population.
  
• Give your capital a Granary and six farms or similar tile improvements, then use the Lijia (food) project to get it to size 10 quickly.
  
• Settle extensively early on as it will maximise your overall number of population points.

Unique Improvement: Great Wall

As your cities grow you'll be able to generate Builders faster, and you may have a few spare citizens available in your cities. That's a great time to start making use of the Great Wall improvement, which can offer a huge amount of gold and eventually lots of culture too!

While the Great Wall improvement holds great potential, it also needs careful planning. Pieces of it can only be built on a tile on the border of your land, they can't be built in a triangle, and they can't be next to more than two other Great Wall tiles. For the maximum yield, you need a Great Wall tile adjacent to at least two others, so it takes three Builder charges to get your first optimum tile. Consider positioning Great Wall segments three tiles away from a city centre where possible so you don't disrupt adjacency bonuses for other improvements or districts.

Initial Usage

Even before taking into account its yields, The Great Wall has a direct defensive use - providing a +4 strength bonus to units defending there. This is available a full three eras earlier than a fort and uses a more affordable Builder charge instead of a relatively expensive Military Engineer charge. Placing a segment of the Great Wall on a chokepoint can keep Barbarians out of your cities and enemy armies away. Land ranged units with the Garrison promotion will also gain +10 strength when situated on it - so your Archers will be really great defenders. By having access to a fort early in the game, China can keep a smaller army than most civs allowing you to put more emphasis on boost accumulation and wonders.

The defensive application is useful immediately, but once you have more than the occasional spare Builder charge, it's a good idea to start building chains of the improvement. With an impressive +6 gold yield, Great Wall tiles adjacent to at least two others can really help you in rushing units, buildings, or even districts via Governor Reyna (the Financier) with the Contractor promotion. It also helps with unit upgrading - combined with China's strong research, you can constantly keep your military up to date.

Great Wall gold is particularly relevant to Unifier Qin who is likely to gain a huge number of units early on from his ability to convert Barbarians. With the improvement's gold, you can easily cover that, and once you get better military technologies, you'll be able toafford unit upgrades.

Yongle, however, has a harder balancing act using the Great Wall. The Great Wall offers no housing nor food, while Yongle benefits from growing cities as large as possible, as fast as possible. He also already generates a lot of gold and culture from his leader ability, so the loss of a few Great Wall tiles is not too difficult to cover. As a consequence, when playing as Yongle, you should generally limit use of the Great Wall to tiles that are otherwise hard to improve (e.g. tundra), hills, or tiles where having a farm instead would make relatively little difference.

Culture and Tourism

Once you've got the Castles technology, working Great Wall tiles becomes even more effective. Great Wall tiles adjacent to two others will yield +4 culture - twice as much as a Monument! That's excellent for getting through civics faster as well as passive accumulation of tiles and resisting the tourism pressures of rival cultural civs.

With Flight, things get even better. Every segment of the Great Wall adjacent to two others now produces 4 tourism - as much as a Great Work Music, and more than a Great Work of Art or Writing. You don't even need to work the tiles to receive the tourism, so consider filling unused border tiles with segments.

If you're going for a scientific victory, you won't get quite so much out of the Great Wall improvement, so don't go overboard building them - or at least be prepared to replace some segments with power-granting improvements like wind farms later on. You may have to break up the Great Wall for the sake of key strategic resources like aluminium.

Conclusion

The Great Wall has a niche defensive utility, but its key benefit is its strong gold, culture and eventually tourism yields. Ensure you build the improvement in a long line for the maximum possible output on as many tiles as possible, as well as on chokepoints to help keep your civ well-defended.

Unique Unit: Crouching Tiger Cannon

Crouching Tiger Cannons offer an alternative option to Crossbowmen in medieval and renaissance-era warfare. While they can't be prebuilt, have a shorter range, and don't count towards the Metal Casting eureka, they're cheap to train and have a considerably higher damage output.

Defensive Usage

The main role of Crouching TIger Cannons is in defence. Positioned on a city centre or Encampment district, they can deal their full damage to adjacent attackers without having to risk being attacked directly. Alternatively, you can position them on Great Wall tiles to partially cover their defensive weaknesses - with the Garrison promotion, those spots are particularly effective in defence (especially if they're also on hills).

If out in the open, Crouching Tiger Cannons shouldn't be left vulnerable. Have a front line of units that defend more effectively, such as Knights - that way, the Knight can move out the way, the Crouching Tiger Cannon can move forward to fire, and the Knight can finish off the enemy unit, occupying the tile. To put it in other words, Crouching Tiger Cannons work best when getting the first hit on a unit to set up other units to get the last.

It's also worth noting the attack strength of your cities with walls (or urban defences at the modern-era Steel technology) is tied to the highest ranged strength of any military unit you control. As such, your first Crouching Tiger Cannon will substantially boost your cities' ranged attacks.

Offensive Usage

Against cities without walls, Crouching Tiger Cannons perform about on a par with Catapults, and defend considerably more effectively. While the units have a 50% damage penalty against city walls relative to Catapults, the ability to move and fire in the same turn provides some mobility that Catapults lack, only at the expense of range. And if any enemy units come into range, Crouching Tiger Cannons are considerably better at dealing with them than Catapults are.

However, this is a niche application with a small window of usage. Bombards defend better than Crouching Tiger Cannons, and deal considerably more damage against cities. Crouching Tiger Cannons' low defence and limited range makes them easily killed by Men-at-Arms. And while Crossbowmen might not deal a lot of damage against cities per unit, their higher range means you can get a lot more attacks in per turn.

Obsoletion

Crouching Tiger Cannons won't perform very well against industrial-era cavalry units like Cavalry and Cuirassiers - they can be killed by them in just one turn! Thankfully, gold from Great Wall improvements will make the upgrade to Field Cannons affordable. They have both better strength and better range.

Conclusion

Crouching Tiger Cannons should be considered an alternative to, not a replacement to, Crossbowmen. They're not vital to a game as China and there's no great loss if you only ever train one for the +4 era score all unique units offer. If you do choose to train a few, they're best-used in conjunction with the Great Wall, city centres or Encampments to defend your cities from would-be invaders.

Administration - Government

Note that the Administration sections strictly cover the options that have particularly good synergy with the civ's uniques. These are not necessarily the best choices, but rather options you should consider more than usual if playing this civ relative to others.

Government

Tier One

Classical Republic is a good starting choice for Kublai Khan, Wu Zetian and especially Yongle due to the good array of economic policy cards and reliable passive bonuses. The housing and amenities in particular goes well with Yongle's leader ability. Mandate Qin may instead want to exploit Autocracy's wonder construction bonus. As for Unifier Qin, Autocracy's strength bonus keeps melee infantry units safe so they can get closer to Barbarians to conver them, and makes the ones you do convert stronger.

The Audience Chamber is the best option for Yongle and reliably good for most other leaders. Still, the Ancestral Hall is good if there's plenty of land to expand into. Unifier Qin should take the Warlord's Throne unless there's no good targets to invade with his converted units.

Tier Two

Merchant Republic is a reliable choice that serves both cultural and scientific victories well due to its good selection of policy cards. However, Monarchy can be unlocked considerably faster making it ideal for Wu Zetain (to unlock the Intelligence Agency faster), and its housing bonuses are helpful for Yongle, but it's still a good choice for anyone else.

Complement the government with the Intelligence Agency so you can steal eurekas from other civs more effectively.

Tier Three

Democracy is a safe choice for cultural victories owing to its high quantity of economic policy cards. For a scientific game, go with Communism. If you're still going for domination with Unifier Qin, take Fascism.

A cultural China will want to complement their government with the National History Museum, but a scientific-oriented China will prefer the Royal Society. Mandate Qin's leader ability means that you'll have more charges on Builders, and hence get more production out of every one sent to rush space projects. For a domination game, take the War Department.

Tier Four

Digital Democracy is generally your best choice in a cultural game, while Synthetic Technocracy is especially good for aiding in scientific victories. For a domination game, take Corporate Libertarianism unless you really need science, in which case take Synthetic Technocracy.

Administration - Policy Cards

Policy Cards

Ancient Era

(Unifier Qin) Agoge (Military, requires Craftsmanship) - Warriors are already cheap to train, but with this policy card you can produce them even faster - and therefore get more charges to convert Barbarians with.

(Unifier Qin) Conscription (Military, requires State Workforce) - Converting a lot of Barbarians early on can cost a lot in unit maintenance. Cutting that cost frees up a lot of gold for more useful things like unit upgrades.

(Mandate Qin favoured) Corvée (Economic, requires State Workforce) - It doesn't just help you build wonders faster the normal way - it also makes rushing them via Builders faster!

(Unifier Qin) Discipline (Military, requires Code of Laws) - Sometimes this policy card is useful for Unifier Qin, and sometimes it isn't. Being stronger against Barbarians is useful if you want to get more of them to surround your melee infantry units so you can convert them all at once. However, Barbarians that fight your units will take more damage and be more likely to die, leaving you with fewer or weaker units to convert. As such, when you unlock new civics, use the opportunity to swap in or out this policy card as needed.

Ilkum (Economic, requires Craftsmanship) - For Mandate Qin specifically, faster Builder training means you should be able to squeeze in more wonders. For any leader, it's useful for setting up segments of the Great Wall faster.

Inspiration (Wildcard, requires Mysticism) - Many Great Scientists offer eurekas, and some offer inspirations. A bonus to Great Scientist Points should help you obtain more of them.

Urban Planning (Economic, requires Code of Laws) - For Unifier Qin, this policy card in conjunction with Ilkum can be better than Corvée for wonder production speed if your entire empire is producing Builders for your key wonder-building cities. For Kublai Khan, your extra economic policy card makes it easier to stack both Urban Planning and Ilkum or Colonisation simultaneously. And for any leader it extra production helps with meeting the requirements for eurekas and inspirations.

Classical Era

(Yongle) Insulae (Economic, requires Games and Recreation) - The more housing you can acquire, the more you can grow your cities and the higher yields you can get out of your leader ability.

Medieval Era

(Mandate Qin favoured) Aesthetics (Economic, requires Medieval Faires) - For Mandate Qin, extensive building of early wonders should provide you with some powerful Theatre Square adjacency bonuses. Make them even stronger with this policy card.

(Yongle) Civil Prestige (Economic, requires Civil Service) - More housing and amenities to help you support larger cities.

Craftsmen (Military, requires Guilds) - Doubles Industrial Zone adjacency. Mandate Qin's early-arriving Canals will provide +4 production to adjacent Industrial Zones instead of +2. You can end up with some rather productive cities this way! Any leader will benefit from extra production to help with securing eurekas and inspirations.

Feudal Contract (Military, requires Feudalism) - If you're really desperate for a quick defence, this policy card can help you get Crouching Tiger Cannon units trained faster.

(Yongle) Medina Quarter (Economic, requires Medieval Faires) - More housing.

(Unifier Qin) Professional Army (Military, requires Mercenaries) - Converting Barbarians early in the game will leave you with a lot of units that will need upgrading later. This policy card therefore can save you a lot of money.

(Yongle) Retainers (Military, requires Civil Service) - Extra amenities to help handle growing cities.

Serfdom (Economic, requires Feudalism) - For Mandate Qin, if there's any remaining pre-medieval wonders, just a single Builder can contribute 90% of their production with this policy card, or the full wonder with Governor Liang (the Surveyor). Even if there isn't, Builders might be expensive by this point in the game with all the wonder-rushing you've done, so getting more out of them is a good idea. For any leader, it helps with Great Wall segments.

Renaissance Era

(Yongle) Colonial Offices (Economic, requires Exploration) - If you can manage to settle another continent, you can get to 10 population and beyond in these new cities sooner.

(Yongle) Liberalism (Economic, requires The Enlightenment) - Extra amenities for growing cities.

Machiavellianism (Diplomatic, requires Diplomatic Service) - Faster Spy training and operations means you can steal more eurekas from other civs. Very useful for any leader, but most of all to Wu Zetian.

(Yongle favoured) Rationalism (Economic, requires The Enlightenment) - While useful for all leaders of China, Yongle's incentive to grow many large cities makes it easier to meet the requirements of this policy card for the full science bonus.

Wisselbanken (Diplomatic, requires Diplomatic Service) - Scientific alliances are a great source of eureka boosts - once you reach level 2. This policy card will help you gain alliance points faster so you can get that boost sooner.

Industrial Era

Colonial Taxes (Economic, requires Colonialism) - If you've been settling outside your own continent, Great Walls there can now provide even more gold.

(Unifier Qin) Force Modernisation (Military, requires Urbanisation) - Upgrade all those Barbarians you converted for cheap.

(Yongle) Public Transport (Economic, requires Urbanisation) - Extra food helps to grow cities even larger.

Public Works (Economic, requires Civil Engineering) - Builders are now very affordable and come with six charges (seven if you own the Great Pyramids or are using Governor Liang, eight with both). That's excellent for building more Great Wall segments or building up key power improvements like wind farms.

Skyscrapers (Economic, requires Civil Engineering) - Any leader of China can earn extra eurekas and inspirations by building wonders, but for some leaders, there might not be enough production to spare earlier in the game. By this point, you can dedicate some cities for wonder construction while still having spare cities for other roles.

Modern Era

(Yongle) Collectivisation (Economic, Communism only, requires Class Struggle) - Extra food helps you grow your cities further.

(Unifer Qin) Levee en Masse (Military, requires Mobilisation) - Aids in maintaining all those ex-Barbarian units.

(Yongle) New Deal (Economic, Democracy only, requires Suffrage) - More housing and amenities aids supporting a larger city.

Nuclear Espionage (Diplomatic, requires Nuclear Program) - Stealing eureka boosts is doubly effective, giving you boosts for two technologies rather than one! Enjoy stealing vast amounts of science.

(Unifier Qin favoured) Resource Management (Military, requires Conservation) - Extra aluminium is useful for any scientific game, but what makes this policy card specifically useful for Unifier Qin is the extra oil. Many units later in the game need oil for maintenance, and many converted Barbarians will too.

Science Foundations (Wildcard, requires Nuclear Programme) - More Great Scientists means more eurekas, or perhaps some production bonuses for the space race.

Atomic Era

Cryptography (Diplomatic, requires Cold War) - Helps your Spies both offensively and defensively.

(Mandate Qin/Yongle favoured) Sports Media (Economic, requires Professional Sports) - An improved version of Aesthetics with amenities on top.

Future Era

Non-State Actors (Wildcard, requires Cultural Hegemony) - By allowing you to pick any promotion for Spies, you can build one around stealing eurekas or protecting your own.

Administration - Age Bonuses and World Congress

Age Bonuses

Only bonuses with notable synergy with the civ's uniques are covered here.

Free Inquiry (Golden Age, Classical to Medieval eras) - A very powerful bonus which makes your eureka boosts worth 60% of the progress to a technology! This is usually the best early Golden Age choice for China, but the others are great for Heroic Ages.

(Yongle) Isolationism (Dark Age, Classical to Industrial eras) - If you've ran out of places to found new cities, enjoy faster growth for your cities.

(Yongle favoured) Monasticism (Dark Age, Classical to Medieval eras) - A size 10+ city with a Holy Site will generate over 26 science per turn from its population alone. Yongle's high culture output means the loss of 25% of it shouldn't slow you down too much.

(Mandate Qin favoured) Monumentality (Golden Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - As Mandate Qin, if you find yourself with a high early faith output and a classical-era Golden Age, this can be potentially even stronger than Free Inquiry, as you can use faith to acquire Builders cheaply, and then use them to rush wonders.

Pen, Brush and Voice (Golden Age, Classical to Medieval eras) - The culture equivalent to Free Inquiry. If you can generate a good diversity of Great People and get a couple of Markets built, you may be able to zoom through the middle of the civics tree, putting you well into the renaissance era before most other civs.

(Unifier Qin) Twilight Valour (Dark Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - Most Barbarians attack with melee, so you'll be able to use this wildcard for most units you convert.

(Yongle) Hic Sunt Dracones (Golden Age, Renaissance to Modern eras) - New cities starting with more population aids in reaching the all-important 10 population threshold sooner.

(Yongle) Collectivism (Dark Age, Modern to Information eras) - Yongle's science, culture and gold outputs primarily come from population growth rather than districts, so the loss of 50% of your Great Person Points generation may not be quite as bad as it is for most other leaders. Extra food and housing aids in growing cities, and extra industrial zone adjacency helps with meeting eureka/inspiration requirements.

(Wu Zetian) Bodyguard of Lies (Dedication, Atomic to Future eras) - A simple enough extra source of era score.

(Wu Zetian favoured) Bodyguard of Lies (Golden Age, Atomic to Future eras) - Great for stealing eureka boosts, and incredible for Wu Zetian in particular by speeding up Spy operations.

Sky and Stars (Golden Age, Information to Future eras) - Grants three eurekas for the game era. Some of those eurekas have no normal means of acquiring them, making this dedication a particularly effective way to save science. Also provides bonus aluminium, which helps with building Lagrange Laser Stations.

World Congress

How you should vote in the World Congress will often be specific to your game - if you have a strong rival, for example, it might be better to vote to hurt them than to help yourself. Furthermore, there may be general bonuses to your chosen victory route or gameplay which are more relevant than ones that have stronger synergy with civ-specific bonuses. Otherwise, here's a list of key votes that have high relevance for this civ relative to other civs.

Espionage Pact - Effect A (Spies executing the chosen operation function 2 levels higher) on Steal Tech Boost

By making tech boost stealing more reliable, you'll be able to secure more eurekas. Just beware of other civs stealing tech boosts from you!

(Unifier Qin) Mercenary Companies - Effect A (Producing, or purchasing military units using the chosen currency type costs 100% more until the next World Congress) on Production

Production is the primary way most civs obtain new units. China's high gold output from the Great Wall makes purchasing more effective, and Unifier Qin can get additional units from converting Barbarians, so you can make things harder for other civs without setting back yourself.

International Space Station - Always vote in favour if you're aiming for a scientific victory.

Combined with the Royal Society and Mandate Qin's extra builder charges, the International Space Station's bonus to space race project production means you can use Builders to very rapidly rush through them.

Nobel Prize in Physics (Sweden must be present in your game) - Always vote in favour.

The potential for two eurekas makes the Nobel Prize in Physics a very lucrative scored competition, though it's only available if Sweden is in your game.

(Kublai Khan) Trade Policy - Effect A (Trade routes sent to the chosen player provide +4 gold to the sender. The chosen player receives +1 trade route capacity.) for either yourself or a trade route target.

Kublai Khan doesn't need many trade routes to make the most of his leader ability, but he does need to be able to trade with other civs. As such, you'll want to avoid effect B (Cancels any international trade routes between other civilizations and the chosen player, and embargoes any new ones from starting.)

Administration - Pantheons, Religion and City-States

Pantheons

Note: The Initiation Rites pantheon does not cause the healing effect if you clear a Barbarian outpost by converting the Barbarian in them. It does still provide faith, however.

(Unifier Qin/Yongle favoured) Divine Spark - Securing a religion allows you to build the Hagia Sophia wonder later, which allows all of Unifier Qin's melee infantry units to convert Barbarians twice, or use one charge without being consumed. With Yongle, it strengthens a Holy Site setup to use the Monasticism wildcard later - though River Goddess is better-suited for this role.

(Mandate Qin/Yongle) Fertility Rites - Offers a free Builder - or perhaps 60% or more of an early wonder's construction. The slightly faster growth rate makes it a reasonable backup pantheon for Yongle.

(Yongle) Goddess of the Hunt - Extra food helps with city growth, making this a decent alternative to the early advantage of Religious Settlements.

Lady of the Reeds and Marshes - This is a production bonus that can help you get Builders trained without having to use charges on improvements - handy if you're focusing purely on wonders as Qin Shi Huang.

(Mandate Qin) Monument to the Gods - Get more out of rushing wonders, making your already considerable advantage at early wonder-building even better.

Religious Settlements - Balancing early expansion and wonder construction or even general development is tough, so a bonus Settler can really help save precious production. Yongle can usually secure this pantheon by using the Lijia (Faith) city project at the start of the game.

(Yongle) River Goddess - Has excellent synergy with the Monasticism Dark Age wildcard, allowing you to support a large city that then will produce huge amounts of science.

Religious Beliefs

You can have one founder, one follower, one enhancer and one worship belief.

(Yongle favoured) Cross-Cultural Dialogue (Founder) - Having lots of large cities means you can get a good amount of bonus science from this belief.

(Mandate Qin favoured) Divine Inspiration (Follower) - As Mandate Qin, by rushing Stonehenge along with other early wonders, you can get a surprisingly impressive early faith output. In combination with the Oracle, you could use this faith to cheaply acquire Great People via patronage, but generally it works best in conjunction with the Monumentality Golden Age dedication for extra cheap Builders, or Exodus of the Evangelists for a strong early religion.

(Yongle) Feed the World (Follower) - Although Feed the World is generally more powerful as a follower belief, extra food and housing is nice to have for a leader encouraged to build as tall cities as possible.

(Yongle) Gurdwara (Worship) - Extra food and housing for growing cities.

Jesuit Education (Follower) - China should aim to balance science and culture output due to quite a few eurekas being dependent on similar-era civics, and quite a few Inspirations being dependent on similar-era technologies. Jesuit Education makes that a little easier by letting you buy Campus and Theatre Square buildings with faith.

(Mandate Qin) Sacred Places (Founder) - Mandate Qin's leader ability can ensure a wide range of cities have wonders present, allowing this belief to grant some very impressive early yields.

(Yongle) Stupa (Worship) - Handy bonus amenities to help support growing cities.

(Yongle) Zen Meditation (Follower) - More amenities.

City-States

(Unifier Qin) Akkad (Militaristic) - Barbarians rarely spawn siege units so taking down enemy cities with converted Barbarians can be a pain. Akkad solves that problem by letting the many anti-cavalry and melee infantry units you have deal full damage against city defences.

(Kublai Khan) Bandar Brunei (Trade) - Get some extra gold from establishing trading posts in other civs' cities.

Bologna (Scientific) - Unlocking Great Scientists is one of the best ways of obtaining eureka boosts. Increasing the Great Scientist Point output of Campuses will aid with that.

(Mandate Qin favoured) Brussels (Industrial) - The bonus extends to Builder charges used by Mandate Qin to help rush wonders, so it's a very worthwhile suzerain bonus to have.

(Yongle) Chinguetti (Religious) - Huge cities can generate a strong faith output when trading with the help of this city-state.

(Yongle favoured) Geneva (Scientific) - Although all leaders of China benefit from extra science, Yongle has the largest raw science yield and has minimal incentive to go to war, allowing this science boost to be used to its fullest extent.

(Unifier Qin) Hattusa (Scientific) - If you have no copies of a strategic resource, any units you convert that would require those resources can't heal. Being suzerain over Hattusa avoids that problem.

(Yongle) Hong Kong (Industrial) - Boosts the output of your unique city projects.

(Yongle) Mitla (Scientific) - Aids with city growth in any city with a Campus.

(Kublai Khan) Mogadishu (Trade) - Your trade routes crossing water will be safe from pillagers, making it much easier to establish trading posts overseas.

(Yongle) Muscat (Trade) - Bonus amenities to aid growing cities.

Nazca (Religious) - In desert regions, Nazca Lines adjacent to the Great Wall improvement can make a great overall yield that makes an otherwise unproductive region useful.

(Yongle favoured) Taruga (Scientific) - Magnifies the strong raw science yield Yongle has.

(Yongle) Zanzibar (Trade) - Extra amenities.

Administration - Wonders

Wonders

All pre-medieval era wonders are covered in the section on Mandate Qin's leader ability, although the in-depth discussion takes the specific perspective of Mandate Qin, As such, the most relevant wonders will be covered again here.

Etemenanki (Ancient era, Writing technology) - Extra science works well combined with China's stronger eureka boosts, but this wonder is usually very risky for a leader other than Mandate Qin to build.

(Yongle) Hanging Gardens (Ancient era, Irrigation technology) - Faster city growth allows you to get cities to size 10 faster. The bonus housing is helpful as well for that specific city.

Pyramids (Ancient era, Masonry technology) - Great for any leader as it helps you produce Great Wall sections, and particularly strong for Mandate Qin for rushing subsequent wonders. The free 5-charge Builder makes this wonder refund 90% of its cost for him.

(Mandate Qin) Stonehenge (Ancient era, Astrology technology) - This competitive wonder is usually too difficult to take for yoursef on higher difficulties, but Mandate Qin's ability to rush wonders can make it viable. Securing an early wonder and taking the Divine Inspiration belief lets you turn Mandate Qin's great wonder production into a early faith lead.

(Yongle) Temple of Artemis (Ancient era, Archery technology) - A significant boost to food, housing and amenities ideal for growing a huge city early.

(Mandate Qin) Apadana (Classical era, Political Philosophy civic) - Rushing subsequent wonders in this city will give you a huge number of envoys and lots of associated yield and suzerain bonuses.

(Mandate Qin/Yongle) Colosseum (Classical era, Games and Recreation civic) - A helpful wonder for any leader, but Mandate Qin can get it cheaply while Yongle benefits greatly from the bonus amenities.

Great Library (Classical era, Recorded History civic) - Getting a eureka every time another civ gets a Great Scientist can add up to a considerable amount of science saved over the course of the game.

Petra (Classical era, Mathematics technology) - The Great Wall can be built in desert tiles. Desert hills with a maximum yield Great Wall and Petra yields 2 food, 2 production, 8 gold and 4 culture - an incredible yield you can get as early as the Castles technology.

(Unifier Qin) Terracotta Army (Classical era, Construction technology) - Got a lot of units from converting Barbarians? You can give them all promotions!

(Yongle) Angkor Wat (Medieval era, Medieval Faires civic) - Cities under size 10 will get to that point faster, and any cities of size 10 or higher will instantly start generating an extra 2 gold, 1 science, and 1 culture per turn each.

(Unifier Qin) Hagia Sophia (Medieval era, Buttress technology) - The most important wonder by far for Unifier Qin as it allows all his melee infantry units to convert Barbarians twice, or once without being consumed. The catch is you have to found a religion to be able to build this wonder, so you might have to capture this instead.

St. Basil's Cathedral (Renaissance era, Reformed Church civic) - While not as impressive as Petra, St. Basil's Cathedral can nonetheless make tundra Great Walls produce a strong overall yield.

(Mandate Qin) Panama Canal (Industrial era, Steam Power technology) - Qin Shi Huang's ability to build Canals early makes it a lot easier to prepare for this wonder, allowing you to ensure you build the Panama Canal in exactly the right spot.

(Cultural) Broadway (Modern era, Mass Media civic) - Broadway is slightly more useful for China than other civs as the free random atomic-era civic boost will be worth 50% of a civic rather than 40%.

Golden Gate Bridge (Modern era, Combustion technology) - The Golden Gate Bridge acts as a reverse Canal, connecting two land tiles together across water so land units can cross. But its key usage as far as China is concerned is boosting the tourism from Great Wall tiles by 100% - though make sure you have the modern-era Flight technology as well.

(Yongle) Amundsen-Scott Research Station (Atomic era, Rapid Deployment civic) - Yongle's incredible science output can be boosted even further.

(Yongle) Estádio do Maracanã (Atomic era, Professional Sports civic) - A great boost to amenities to support all of Yongle's huge cities.

Administration - Great People

Great People

Great Generals and Admirals are only mentioned if their retirement bonuses have specific synergy with the civ; not merely for providing a strength bonus to a unique unit. All GWAMs are important for cultural victory, but it would be redundant to list them all.

Classical Era

Aryabhata (Great Scientist) - Provides three random eurekas from the classical or medieval eras.

Euclid (Great Scientist) - Provides the eureka boost for Mathematics (handy if you want to build Petra) and a random eureka from the classical or medieval eras.

Zhang Heng (Great Scientist) - Three eureka boosts, two of which are for technologies with associated wonders that can be rushed via Builders as Mandate Qin.

Medieval Era

Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi (Great Scientist) - Offers one random eureka from the medieval or renaissance eras.

Bi Sheng (Great Engineer) - Provides the eureka boost for Printing.

Imhotep (Great Engineer) - Useful to obtain to deny other civs from getting an easy ancient/classical wonder instead of you.

Isidore of Miletus (Great Engineer) - Production towards wonders - useful for securing an extra eureka/inspiration in a reasonable amount of time.

(Unifier Qin) Leif Erikson (Great Admiral) - Crossing oceans early and granting naval units extra sight allows you to find isolated Barbarian outposts and convert their units.

Omar Khayyam (Great Scientist) - Offers two random eurekas and one random inspiration boost from the medieval or renaissance eras.

Renaissance Era

Emile du Chatelet (Great Scientist) - Offers three random eurekas from the renaissance or industrial eras.

Filippo Brunelleschi (Great Engineer) - Production towards wonders.

(Yongle) Ibn Khaldun (Great Scientist) - Extra housing and an amenity to help grow a city.

Leonardo da Vinci (Great Engineer) - Unlocks a random modern-era eureka.

Industrial Era

Ada Lovelace (Great Engineer) - Unlocks the eureka boost for Computers.

Dmitri Mendeleev (Great Scientist) - Offers the eureka boost for Chemistry as well as a random technology from the industrial era.

Gustave Eiffel (Great Engineer) - Production towards wonders.

James Young (Great Scientist) - Offers two random eurekas from the industrial or modern eras.

(Yongle) Joesph Paxton (Great Engineer) - Extra amenities to help support your many large cities.

(Yongle) John Spilsbury (Great Merchant) - More amenities.

Modern Era

Alan Turing (Great Scientist) - Offers the eureka boost for Computers as well as for a random technology from the modern era.

Albert Einstein (Great Scientist) - Offers a random modern-era eureka boost.

Alfred Nobel (Great Scientist) - Offers one random eureka boost from the modern or atomic eras.

(Unifier Qin) John Rockefeller (Great Merchant) - Extra oil aids in supporting Barbarians from the modern era or later, who often require oil to be maintained.

Robert Goddard (Great Engineer) - Unlocks the eureka for Rocketry. This is notable because Rocketry doesn't have a standard eureka boost.

Shah Jahān (Great Engineer) - Save up some gold from the Great Wall improvement, and you can use it to essentially purchase a wonder (two if you have the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus) via Shah Jahān.

Atomic Era

Erwin Schrodinger (Great Scientist) - Offers three random eureka boosts for atomic or information-era technologies.

(Yongle) Helena Rubenstein (Great Merchant) - Bonus amenities.

(Yongle) Jane Drew (Great Engineer) - Housing and amenities.

(Yongle) John Roebling (Great Engineer) - More housing and amenities.

(Yongle) - Levi Strauss (Great Merchant) - Even more amenities.

Information Era

Abdus Salam (Great Scientist) - Unlocks all information-era eurekas.

(Yongle) Estée Lauder (Great Merchant) - Yet more amenities.

Jamseth Tata (Great Merchant) - Makes Campuses provide tourism, which neatly ties together China's cultural and scientific strengths.

(Cultural/Mandate Qin favoured) Masaru Ibuka (Great Merchant) - Been building plenty of Industrial Zones to make use of Canal adjacency? Now those districts will generate tourism on top!

Counter-Strategies (Part 1/2)

China can research quickly, defend effectively and is one of the game's wealthier civs, but there's ways you can try to disrupt that.

Civilization Ability: Dynastic Cycle

It's not easy to slow down eureka and inspiration gain, but that's not to say it isn't possible. If China is denied a classical or medieval-era Golden Age, they can't get the extra bonuses from Free Inquiry or Brush, Pen and Voice. Clearing Barbarian encampments before China has a chance, and denying them early wonders are two good ways of doing that - for details on the latter, look at the sub-section on Mandate Qin's leader ability below. That being said, Yongle can benefit greatly from an early Dark Age if he has Holy Sites, so it's probably best not to worry too much about managing his era score.

In general, eurekas and inspiration boosts reward civs that pay attention to a wide range of gameplay features; the more single-minded a civ is, the harder it is for them to obtain all the boosts. The easiest way to force a civ to push in a specific direction is to start a war, pushing them to emphasise war-time industry at the expense of other districts.

A more reliable method to set China back is to try and ensure they don't get Great People who offer boosts. Keep an eye on the Great Person interface and look for opportunities for patronage so you can take them before China can.

The free eurekas and inspirations China gets from wonders will generally not make a huge difference, as usually wonders aren't completed until some time after they first come available to research. Still, it helps to deny China any Great Engineers which provide production bonuses to wonders, so China can't rush a wonder for a current era.

Kublai Khan's Leader Ability: Gerege

Kublai Khan has a reliable and straightforward leader ability. While it holds less potential than the abilities of some of the other leaders, it's also harder to counter.

Extra economic policy card slot

While you can't really stop Kublai Khan from using extra economic policy cards, you can match Kublai Khan's policy card advantage by building the Forbidden City or Big Ben wonders. Despite China's fast research speed, they lack intrinsic production advantages (especially if they're dedicating a lot of citizens to working Great Wall segments). As such, you have a reasonable chance of taking the wonders before they can.

Like all abilities that add extra policy cards, this bonus is most effective early on, and fades somewhat in effectiveness later.

Boosts from trading posts

Kublai Khan when leading Mongolia can get trading posts immediately when trading with foreign civs. Kublai Khan leading China, however, has to complete the trade route first. This means anything that disrupts the route - Barbarian pillagers, a declaration of war, a World Congress resolution and so forth - will set back Kublai Khan's goals of setting up trading posts.

There's two ways you can prevent this bonus from being used entirely - either by surrounding China with fast-moving units ready to pillage any Chinese traders you see, or by voting for option B on the Trade Policy World Congress resolution, and targeting Kublai Khan with it. The latter prevents Kublai Khan making international trade routes whatsoever.

Kublai Khan's Agenda: Pax Mongolica

A computer-controlled Kublai Khan likes civs with a strong military and gold output, and dislikes those lacking in either.

While a few civs have strengths at both gold generation and building up a strong military (e.g. Spain), most civs do not. Still, any decent warmonger needs sufficient gold to maintain and upgrade their army, while any rich civ that doesn't have a decent army could probably do with heeding Kublai Khan's advice in this instance to prevent suffering in a war. It's not the easiest agenda to meet, but it's one that's worth meeting for many civs just because having a decent economy and military is worth having anyway.

Mandate of Heaven Qin Shi Huang's Leader Ability: The First Emperor

There's no grievance penalties for declaring war in the ancient era, and pretty minor ones for doing so in the classical era. With this in mind, you can start a war with China and start picking off their high-charge Builders. Fast units like Heavy Chariots and Horsemen are ideal for this role. Not only will you send China's wonder production back, but you'll also grab some Builders with plenty of charges for yourself.

For medieval-era or later warmongers like Mongolia, China offers a great opportunity - they'll grab a lot of early wonders ready for you to conquer.

Mandate Qin's leader ability also offers China early access to Canal districts. If China manages to build a Canal connecting two seas, they can use a single navy to defend two coasts - though the Canal will act as a bottleneck for units travelling through. Try luring China's navy out by attacking with a small force from one sea, allowing you to attack with a larger force later from the other. Bring some of that larger force over to the Canal city so you can block China's navy from returning.

Alternatively, if you don't want to fight Mandate Qin, his early Canals can make trading with him more lucrative. That's because Canals offer +1 gold for trade routes that pass through.

Mandate of Heaven Qin Shi Huang's Agenda: Wall of 10,000 Li

A computer-controlled Qin Shi Huang likes civs that have fewer wonders than him, and dislikes those with more wonders than him. He will never have the Wonder Advocate hidden agenda as his main agenda already serves the same purpose.

Early in the game, his bonus to wonder construction will usually give you a positive relations boost, but things may get difficult if you're a wonder-builder like Egypt or France, or a wonder-capturing domination civ. If you're one of those two, consider looking elsewhere for alliances. If you're after a scientific or religious victory, however, this isn't a particularly hard agenda to keep to. Diplomatic civs that stack a lot of diplomatic wonders (e.g. Statue of Liberty, Potala Palace) might struggle a little.

Unifier Qin Shi Huang's Leader Ability: Thirty-Six Strategems

If there are no Barbarians around, Unifier Qin's ability is useless. Clearing Barbarian outposts near him and killing their units will ensure his army stays weak, while also denying him era score that could secure himself the bonuses of Free Inquiry and Pen, Brush and Voice. Keeping territory near him visible will stop further Barbarian outposts from spawning.

Every Barbarian outpost spawns with an anti-cavalry unit, so Unifier Qin is likely to have a high number of these. Bringing your own melee infantry units along to a war will help deal with them.

If you can, try to deny Unifier Qin the Hagia Sophia wonder as it gives all his melee infantry units a second charge to convert Barbarians. He'll be unable to build it if he can't found a religion.

Avoid using the Recruit Partisans Spy operation against Unifier Qin as he can convert the Barbarian anti-cavalry units to his side.

Unifier Qin Shi Huang's Agenda: Thirty-Six Strategems

Unifier Qin likes civs that leave Barbarian outposts alone. He dislikes civs that clear them. He will never have the Barbarian Ally hidden agenda as it overlaps with his main agenda, and will never have the Civilized agenda as it conflicts with it.

The civs most likely to leave Barbarian outposts alone are those who are deliberately aiming for an early Dark Age - Georgia benefits greatly from this strategy. Otherwise, this is a difficult agenda to meet as refusing to clear Barbarian outposts has little benefit for most civs.

Counter-Strategies (Part 2/2)

Wu Zetian's Leader Ability: Manual of Entrapment

Wu Zetian's early Spy can cause a lot of trouble as you'll be unable to use a counter-Spy of your own, but if you can build a Diplomatic Quarter (available with the classical-era Mathematics technology) it will at least greatly reduce her Spies' effectiveness in that specific city for the time being. You can then also build a Consulate building to make every city with an Encampment resist Spies more effectively.

If her Spies are being a major problem, consider heading to the Diplomatic Service civic a bit sooner than normal so you can recruit a Spy of your own as a counter-Spy. It will also allow you to build the Chancery building in your Diplomatic Quarter giving you science every time you kill a Spy! Later on, with the atomic-era Cold War civic, you can use the Cryptography diplomatic policy card to slow down her Spies as well. At the future-era Cultural Hegemony civic, you can take the Non-State Actors policy card to choose your Spy promotions from the entire list, letting you tailor your Spies to defend more effectively against her.

Wu Zetian's Spies aren't any cheaper than yours in terms of production cost, and if a lot of hers die, the costs can rapidly build up for her. Although she can purchase Spies with faith, building up a faith infrastructure is costly in terms of production and district capacity at a time Wu Zetian's China would rather build other things. Either way, if Wu Zetian loses a lot of Spies, she's forced to dedicate production to recovering them rather than spending time on other developments.

Alternatively, allying Wu Zetian (requires the medieval-era Civil Service civic) prevents her from using Spies against you.

Wu Zetian's Agenda: Court Intrigue

A computer-controlled Wu Zetian likes civs with weaker militaries and aren't too close to her own cities. She dislikes civs that have strong militaries and/or close cities. She will never have the Paranoid hidden agenda as it overlaps with her main one.

As Wu Zetian cannot use Spies against you if you are allied to her, she makes a good target for an alliance for peaceful civs - particularly scientific civs. If you have a strong enough military for her to dislike you, then you probably have a strong enough military that she isn't a threat for war.

Yongle's Leader Ability: Lijia

Yongle is an absolutely terrifying opponent - if he can get his cities to size 10. Every pillaged farm, every food-rich spot he can't settle, and every time he has to produce something other than the Lijia (Food) project will slow him down in this goal.

Warfare is the best way to deal with Yongle - at least until he secures a strong technological advantage. If you capture any of Yongle's cities, you can raze it so he can't recapture it, setting back his gold, culture and science outputs considerably. Even if you can't siege down his cities, light cavalry with the Depredation promotion can burn down his farms and cause his cities to starve.

Yongle's Agenda: Yinding

Yongle likes civs with a positive gold income. He dislikes those with a negative gold income. He will never have the Money Grubber hidden agenda as it conflicts with his main one.

Civs that build a lot of early buildings, or train a lot of early units, can easily fall into a gold deficit. Later on in the game, it'll mostly be domination-inclined civs that are likely to fail at that agenda. In theory this makes Yongle a good ally for peaceful civs, but given just how powerful he can get later in the game, leaving him to his own devices probably isn't the best course of action unless you can research even faster than he can.

Unique Unit: Crouching Tiger Cannon

Crouching Tiger Cannons hit hard for their era but defend only as well as regular Crossbowmen. Regular Crossbowmen (or even Archers if you're behind on technology) will out-range them, forcing them to either move into the open, retreat, or take damage without being able to react. Men-at-Arms, Coursers and Knights can also do a lot of damage to them, and even swarms of Horsemen can be okay so long as you can avoid being counter-attacked. Once you have access to industrial-era units, Crouching Tiger Cannons will be no threat.

Unique Improvement: Great Wall

China's unique improvement comes with a powerful gold yield and pretty good culture as well, but must be built on their border. This makes them susceptible to culture bombs from a civ that borders them. Building a Preserve district, securing the renaissance-era Great Engineer Mimar Sinan or passing the Border Control Treaty resolution in the World Congress are three ways any civ can activate culture bombs, but some specific civs (most notably Poland) have their own alternative ways.

In warfare, the trickiest part of facing the Great Wall is the early defensive potential. If the Great Wall is well-defended with units, you have a few options. Look for another way around, try to use ranged units to pick off the defenders before using a cavalry unit to pillage the tiles, or just slip through their zone of control by using cavalry units.

Note that as with all unique improvements, Great Wall improvements will be removed if you capture the tiles, so you can't keep them for yourself. You might as well pillage the tiles for the free money before you finish the conquest.

Other Guides

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Gathering Storm

Compilation Guides

• Civ summaries (Start here for an introduction for all civs)
  
• Civ-specific tricks, secrets and clarifications (Ideal for more experienced players)

Individual Civilization Guides

• America - no additional content* (Cultural/Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• America - all additional content* (Cultural/Diplomatic/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Arabia (Domination/Religious/Scientific)
  
• Australia (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Aztecs (Domination)
  
• Babylon (Cultural/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Brazil (Cultural/Domination/Religious/Scientific)
  
• Byzantium (Domination/Religious)
  
• Canada (Cultural/Diplomatic)
  
• China (Cultural/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Cree (Diplomatic)
  
• Egypt (Cultural/Diplomatic/Religious)
  
• England (Cultural/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Ethiopia (Cultural/Religious)
  
• France (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Gaul (Domination)
  
• Georgia (Diplomatic/Religious)
  
• Germany (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Gran Colombia (Domination)
  
• Greece (Cultural/Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Hungary (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Inca (Religious/Scientific)
  
• India (Domination/Religious)
  
• Indonesia (Cultural/Domination/Religious/Scientific)
  
• Japan (All)
  
• Khmer (Cultural/Religious)
  
• Kongo (Cultural)
  
• Korea (Scientific)
  
• Macedon (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Mali (Diplomatic/Religious)
  
• Māori (Cultural/Religious)
  
• Mapuche (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Maya (Scientific)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Netherlands (Scientific)
  
• Norway (Domination)
  
• Nubia (Domination)
  
• Ottomans (Domination)
  
• Persia (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Phoenicia (Domination)
  
• Poland (Cultural/Domination/Religious)
  
• Portugal (Diplomatic/Scientific)
  
• Rome (Domination)
  
• Russia (Cultural/Religious)
  
• Scotland (Scientific)
  
• Scythia (Domination/Religious)
  
• Spain (Domination/Religious/Scientific)
  
• Sumeria (Diplomatic/Domination/Scientific)
  
• Sweden (Cultural/Diplomatic)
  
• Vietnam (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Zulus (Domination)

*The Teddy Roosevelt Persona Pack splits Roosevelt's leader ability in two, meaning the game with it is substantially different from without - hence two different versions of the America guide. Lincoln was added later and is only covered in the latter guide.

Other civs with alternative leader personas are not split because the extra personas added in later content do not change the existing gameplay - as such the guides are perfectly usable by players without them.

Rise and Fall

These guides are for those with the Rise and Fall expansion, but not Gathering Storm. They are no longer updated and have not been kept up to date with patches released since Gathering Storm. To look at them, click here to open the Rise and Fall Civ Summaries guide. The "Other Guides" section of every Rise and Fall guide has links to every other Rise and Fall guide.

Vanilla

The Vanilla guides are for those without the Rise and Fall or Gathering Storm expansions. These guides are no longer updated and have not been kept up to date with patches released since Rise and Fall. To look at them, click here to open the Vanilla Civ Summaries guide. The "Other Guides" section of every Vanilla guide has links to every other Vanilla guide.

[Zigzagzigal]

Updated with Rulers of China leaders. Unifier Qin is the most interesting leader in my view, while Yongle is blatantly overpowered right now so a future patch may require extensive revisions of the guide.

[Phil]

Going for a tall gameplay (settling further apart) with your first cities is very handy as you easily gain a lot of tiles from your wonders (each wonder gives you instantly two new tiles) and also helps you secure suitable tiles for more wonders later on in your stronger cities. Also makes building great walls easier as you do have a lot more border tiles throughout your expansion. Comes at the cost of making district clusters harder to get of course.

[Zigzagzigal]

Guide updated! Both with patch changes and with Kublai Khan. Kublai Khan notably has a very easy-to-use leader ability which makes him a great choice for learning the game.

[Zigzagzigal]

I'll try to get around to it, though right now my main priority is new civs, civs that have changed a lot (e.g. England). Still guides that are easy to update (e.g. Korea) may see updates sooner rather than later.

[Da_Bossie]

You are the best Zigzagzigal, are you planning to make guides for the country's that where in Rise and Fall to for Gathering storm? Are can you customize them for GS?

[Zigzagzigal]

Yep!

[doink000]

Double civ update! Does this mean you'll be updating old and new civs going forward?

[Zigzagzigal]

Thanks for the correction; it's fixed now.

[weraptor]

Hi, just pointing out there is a small mistake in the Great Wall segment - fully enhanced piece of Great wall provides +4 culture (and tourism), which is twice the amount of it provided by Great works of writing (nerfed in a GS patch)