Zigzagzigal's Guides - Scythia (GS)

Scythia sweeps across the map with a huge, fast army and can pick apart enemies with rapid speed. Here, I detail Scythian strategies and counter-strategies.

Introduction

Following this guide requires the Gathering Storm expansion.

It also assumes you have all other Civ 6 content, listed below, though it is not necessary to have these to utilise the key strategies of each civ.

• 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 world has forgotten its bravery and its honour, and we are left with cowards, who thrive on deception. Cowards who would spill every drop of blood save even one drop of their own. What world are they creating? A realm of thieves and traitors, of those who would desecrate the tombs of our most beloved leaders? It is time to end this. Call upon the cavalry and ready the bows.

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

Scythia has a tier 2 start bias towards horse resources, and a tier 5 start bias towards flat grasslands and flat plains. Getting access to horses is very important for Scythia, as while Saka Horse Archers don't require them, Horsemen certainly do. Furthermore, pasture resources such as horses enhance the Kurgan UI. The grassland and plains start biases improve the odds of starting near pasture resources in the event you don't start near horses.

Civilization Ability: People of the Steppe

• Every time you produce a Saka Horse Archer, Horseman, Courser, Cavalry or Helicopter, receive two copies of the unit, corps or army instead of one.
  
  • Purchased units do not count.
    
  • If the city has an Encampment district and both the City Centre and Encampment are free from units, one will be placed on the Encampment tile and one on the City Centre tile.

Tomyris' Leader Ability: Killer of Cyrus

• All military and religious units gain +5 strength when attacking units on less than full health
  
• All military and religious units heal 30 HP when they kill a unit

Outline (Part 2/2)

Unique Unit: Saka Horse Archer

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

Research	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Cost	Resource	Maintenance
Horseback Riding Technology Classical era	Ballistics Technology Industrial era	None	Field Cannon (470 )	100 or 400 or 200 *	None	2

*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
20	25	4	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	Ignores Zone of Control

Notable features

• Classified as a ranged unit, therefore:
  
  • Unable to capture cities
    
  • -17 strength vs. city defences
    
  • Does not exert zone of control
    
  • Uses ranged promotions
    
  • Built faster with the Agoge policy card, not Manoeuvre.
    
  • Benefits from Barracks rather than Stables.
• Ignores Zone of Control, unlike other ranged units
  
• Has a vulnerability to anti-cavalry bonuses, unlike other ranged units.
  
• Has a melee strength of 20, 5 points higher than Archers (15)
  
• Has a ranged strength of 25, the same as Archers.
  
• Has 1 range (Archers have 2)
  
• Has 4 movement points (Archers have 2)
  
• Production cost of 100 (Archers cost 60), but thanks to Scythia's civ ability, two are produced at once.
  
• Maintenance of 2 (same as Horsemen but twice as much as Archers).

Unique Improvement: Kurgan

Research	Terrain requirement	Constructed by	Base pillage yield
Animal Husbandry Technology Ancient era	Featureless flat land tile within your own territory	Builder	25

Defensive bonus	Direct yield	Adjacency yields	Miscellaneous bonus	Typical maximum yield	Maximum theoretical yield
None	3 1	1 per adjacent pasture	None	3 3	7 3

Enhancements

Research	Direct bonus	Adjacency bonus	Miscellaneous bonus	New typical maximum	New theoretical maximum
Stirrups Technology Medieval era	None	Additional 1 per adjacent pasture	None	5 3	13 3
Flight Technology Modern era	None	None	Faith yield added to tourism	5 5 * 3	13 13 * 3

*This improvement generates tourism even when not 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
Tomyris	7/10 (Good)	4/10 (Acceptable)	10/10 (Ideal)	8/10 (Good)	3/10 (Acceptable)

Cultural victory is an effective direction to take Scythia in. Faith from Kurgans can be useful for Great Person patronage, National Parks and Rock Bands, while with the Flight technology they will directly add tourism.

Scythia isn't really inclined towards the diplomatic game. Gold from Kurgans can help a little with aid emergencies, and a good military can help with other kinds, but Scythia has little to help with other sources of diplomatic favour.

Domination is the best route for Scythia. Their major weakness here is their lack of advantages against cities, but they can carve through the armies of enemy civs even if their enemies have a substantial production advantage.

Religion works rather well. While Scythia has no direct advantage to founding a religion, you can use your early combat advantages to take Holy Sites off other civs and gain Great Prophet points that way. Tomyris' bonuses to military units also applies to theological combat, which helps immensely in prolonged religious struggles. Kurgans can be a reasonable source of faith as well. They might struggle against some of the religious powerhouses like Russia or post-renaissance Spain, but they'll give it a good shot.

Finally, science is a weak path for Scythia; they barely have any advantages at all there. The gold and faith from Kurgans can be used to buy science buildings, Great Scientists or civilian units to help with development, but that's not much of a specific bonus. You'd be much better off trying to go for domination or religion.

Civilization Ability: People of the Steppe (Part 1/2)

Sometimes, a perfectly good plan for war can be ruined by the need for production. A nice-looking unique unit suddenly doesn't look so good when they're obsolete by the time you have a good-sized force trained. And as units die on the battlefield, a more productive foe can get the upper hand. Scythia laughs in the face of this issue; they can spam out units like no-one else.

Starting Out

The first thing to do is prepare for war. It's a good idea to research Animal Husbandry at the start of the game so you know where the horse resources are. Train at least one Slinger in your capital for defence and a shot at Archery's eureka boost, and try to expand to at least three cities to ensure you can grab at least one horse tile while also having a good production base for training your army.

You can take a diversion to Astrology to try and get a Holy Site or two built, but that will delay an early rush and hence make it less effective. Instead, you can capture Holy Sites from other civs to help get a religion started. You may also want Bronze Working to build Encampments for a shot at a Great General.

Once you have Horseback Riding, you can (and should) train both Horsemen and Saka Horse Archers. Keep in mind that Horsemen are trained faster with the Manoeuvre military policy card, while Saka Horse Archers are trained faster with Agoge. Until you've reached a government at Political Philosophy, you may need to keep switching between these cards for the optimum production bonuses. To spam units quickly, consider using Governor Magnus (the Steward) in a city and chop down woods for extra production.

While Saka Horse Archers can fight without taking damage thanks to their ranged attack, leaving enemies injured and vulnerable to follow-up attacks, Horsemen are strong, slightly cheaper and can handle cities more effectively (so long as they don't have walls). It's easy to assume you should just emphasise the unique unit, but generally you should train more Horsemen instead.

Sooner or later, Horsemen and Saka Horse Archers together will be costing you a lot of money in maintenance, so be ready to switch to the Conscription policy card and to work a few Kurgans for money once you've got a reasonable-sized army together. That's not to say you should stop building more units entirely - Saka Horse Archers in particular are fairly squishy and die easily, so will need to be replaced.

As great as Horsemen and Saka Horse Archers are against units and unfortified cities, before long your opponents will build walls. As such, once you've cleaned up Horseback Riding, Writing and other relevant early technologies, consider heading to Engineering so you can build Catapults, or to Military Engineering for Trebuchets.

Light Cavalry

Aside from Horsemen and Saka Horse Archers, Coursers (medieval era), Cavalry (industrial era) and Helicopters (atomic era) are also traimed in double quantities, making this unique ability useful throughout much of the game.

Coursers arrive at a time where enemy cities start becoming more resilient. While Spearmen early in the game aren't a huge threat to Horsemen, Pikemen are definitely a problem for Coursers. It may be worthwhile to bring along some Swordsmen with Siege Towers so you can deal with Pikemen and urban defences while your Coursers handle other enemy units.

Cavalry are fairly powerful for their time as their prerequisite Military Science technology can be beelined fairly easily. Head to Siege Tactics afterwards so you can bring along some Bombards to handle cities. The arrival of corps and armies in the industrial and modern era respectively ensures Cavalry are still useful for a while (and with a Military Academy present in a city, you can get some very cost-effective Cavalry armies trained there) - though beware of the high maintenance costs associated with corps and armies. By the time Cavalry are fading in power, Helicopters arrive.

Scythia only requires the strategic resources for one light cavalry unit to produce two - with the exception of Helicopters. That's because Helicopters require 1 aluminium resource every turn in maintenance. Hopefully by this point you should have conquered enough land for this to not be too much of a problem, but it's definitely something to be aware of in the last eras of the game.

Civilization Ability: People of the Steppe (Part 2/2)

Light cavalry units all have in common a vulnerability to anti-cavalry units (once Pikemen and their later counterparts start appearing, bring some melee infantry units like Swordsmen, Musketmen and so forth to handle them), immunity to Zone of Control and a distinct promotion tree. Those promotions are as follows:

Promotion	Prerequisite	Effect	Notes
Caparison	None	+5 vs. anti-cavalry	Useful if Spearmen, Pikemen, Pike and Shot units, AT Crews or Modern AT units are being a pain as this essentially halves their bonus. Notably, Horsemen end up with a 6-point strength advantage over Spearmen.
Coursers	None	+5 vs. ranged and siege units	Ranged units can focus a lot of firepower on your individual units, so being able to both defend against them more effectively and attack them more effectively will be useful. Both ranged and siege units have low defence, making it all the easier to finish them off and gain the handy +30 HP via Tomyris' leader ability.
Depredation	Caparison	Pillaging costs only 1	A pretty amazing promotion if you want to get some good yields while you capture cities. Favour pillaging improvements over districts, as improvements are far easier to repair once you own the city yourself. Pillaging Campuses and Industrial Zones yields science, while Theatre Squares and Government Complexes yield culture, so they may still be worth pillaging anyway. Farms and Entertainment Complexes heal your units when pillaged, just in case Tomyris' ability isn't enough.
Double Envelopment	Coursers	Flanking bonus doubled	Flanking bonuses offer +1 strength per additional unit adjacent to your target, so the maximum bonus is normally +5 strength. Doubling it might not make an enormous strength advantage, but it isn't restricted to fighting one type of unit (like the Caparison and Coursers promotions are).
Spiking the Guns	Depredation or Double Envelopment	+7 vs. siege units	Combined with the Coursers promotion, that's an impressive +12 strength bonus against siege. This bonus is mostly useful defensively seeing as siege units are most effective when actively attacking cities.
Pursuit	Depredation or Double Envelopment	+1	Synergises very well with Depredation, but is useful anyway for flanking and slipping through enemy lines.
Escort Mobility	Spiking the Guns or Pursuit	Formation units inherit escort's movement speed.	Largely a support bonus, though it's also useful for allowing Great Generals to keep up with your cavalry. You can use it to escort captured civilians out of enemy territory. If you use all but one movement point on a cavalry unit in formation, you can unattach them, reform with another unit with the promotion and keep going. With sufficient units, you can bring a civilian or support unit an unlimited distance across land in a single turn.

Conclusion

Getting double quantities of light cavalry is incredibly powerful for overwhelming your foes, whether through filling their land so enemy armies lack room to manoeuvre, exploiting flanking bonuses, or surrounding cities to place them under siege. It's tempting just to focus on the fact you'll be building Scythia's UU in double quantities, but even without that feature, it's a powerful warmongering bonus in its own right.

Tomyris' Leader Ability: Killer of Cyrus

Tomyris brings a powerful pair of warmongering abilities, ensuring Scythia has quality as well as quantity in their army. But that's not all - the ability also works for theological combat, giving Scythia a useful boost towards religious victory as well.

Military Units

Look in the bottom-right corner for the bonus.

In the earliest turns of the game, Barbarians can be quite a menace. Training a Slinger or two early on will help most civs handle it, but Scythia can go on the offensive against Barbarians even with a small force. The bonus against wounded units means you can kill them quickly, and the health on kills gives you considerable lasting power. Destroying a few Barbarian encampments will give you a reasonable sum of gold which can help speed up early development.

Of course, where this ability really matters is in wartime. Scythia's civ ability means you'll end up with pairs of units, which works beautifully with this bonus. The first unit can bring an enemy down from full health, while the second can deal heavy damage thanks to the enemy being wounded. In early warfare, get the first hit with a Saka Horse Archer and follow up with a Horseman for the maximum impact.

Wounded units have a strength penalty based on the health they have remaining. Units between 90 and 99 health have a strength penalty of 1, units between 80 and 89 health have a penalty of 2, and so on. Because combat is calculated based on the difference between the strengths of two units, Scythia can essentially add 5 onto those strength penalty numbers.

Killing units restores up to 30 health. For ranged units, healing 30 health means the unit will be 3 points of strength stronger for their next fight. That's pretty important for injured Saka Horse Archers, which have a relatively low amount of strength. For melee units, being able to constantly heal through combat helps counter the constant damage taken from melee combat, allowing Scythia to last a lot longer on the battlefield than most other civs.

Healing on kills also allows for some manoeuvres with melee units which would be too risky for most other civs, one example being to finish off a strong enemy in a way that would leave your victorious unit in range of other enemies. For most civs, making that move would leave the victorious unit with not enough health to resist further attacks, but Scythia can handle that. Thanks to the Scythian civ ability, even if your risk doesn't pay off, it's easy to replace the lost unit with more.

If you want to make a risky manoeuvre like that, pay close attention to the strength difference between your unit and the enemy so it you can ensure it doesn't live thanks to random chance! Here's a table showing how much damage you can expect to deal and take at various strength differences so you can get an idea of when you should fight and when you shouldn't.

Strength advantage		Minimum damage dealt	Average damage dealt	Maximum damage dealt		Minimum damage received	Average damage received	Maximum damage received
0		22	30	38		22	30	38
5		27	37	47		18	25	32
10		33	45	57		16	20	24
15		41	55	69		12	16	20
20		50	67	84		9	13	17

This table shows that if you have a strength advantage of 0, a unit of 22 or less health can be reliably killed. If you have a strength advantage of 10, that number rises to 33. If you have a strength disadvantage of 10, that number shrinks to 16, and with any strength disadvantage, you'll usually take more damage than you can heal from kills.

Because these bonuses do not work against cities, it's important as Scythia not to neglect siege. Most siege units are slow-moving which makes them struggle to keep up with your other units, so consider picking off some weaker cities without siege support while you wait for some to arrive to help with bigger targets. Picking off enemy units or pillaging farms can help recover health from doing so. Late in the game, Battleships, Missile Cruisers and bomber-class aircraft provide a mobile siege solution so this won't be a problem any more.

Religious Units

While buying some Missionaries and Apostles and sending them off to foreign lands to use their "spread religion" function is the typical way to promote your faith, theological combat is a useful secondary method. When you use an Apostle or Inquisitor to defeat a rival religious unit, you will gain a boost to religious pressure to all cities within 10 tiles, while your rival's religion will lose pressure.

The key problem with theological combat is that healing religious units can be tricky - they have to go back to one of your Holy Sites or a city with Governor Moksha (the Cardinal) to be able to recover health, or else you have to spend faith to buy Gurus and use up their charges. Furthermore, because religious units spread religion less effectively when injured, theological combat can be less effective as a tool for spreading your faith as it may initially appear (defeating an enemy religious unit is still very powerful for spreading your religion, it's just that it slightly holds back spread of religious pressure via the usual method). For those reasons, it's a good idea to use all but one of your spread religion charges before you engage in theological combat.

Scythia has a way around that problem. When you defeat a unit via theological combat, your religious unit will recover up to 30 health. Of course, that requires you to directly defeat the unit - bringing it onto low health and having it use its last spread religion charge isn't enough. For that reason, it's a good idea to bring Apostles in groups of at least two when you're trying to spread your religion to the lands of other civs (you'll also get flanking bonuses, so that'll be helpful as well). Much like with Scythia's military units, the first hit can bring the enemy down from full health so the second Apostle onwards can exploit the +5 strength bonus from attacking a wounded unit.

Later Utility

Once you have a tier three government (Democracy, Fascism or Communism), you're able to build the War Department building in your Government Plaza district. This makes your military and religious units heal an additional 20 HP when they successfully kill enemies, making Tomyris' total up to +50 HP on kills. This allows you to heal through kills even with a 10-point strength disadvantage.

Conclusion

Tomyris brings survivability to military and religious units, giving them an edge in attrition battles. Less time needs to be spent on healing up, which means more time conquering or engaging in religious warfare. However, capturing cities can still be quite tricky; Scythia lacks bonuses against them and siege units are considerably slower than cavalry units. Keep this in mind as you cut across the landscape.

Unique Unit: Saka Horse Archer

As unique units go, Saka Horse Archers are not especially powerful. They're no stronger attacking than Archers, have a lower range, are vulnerable to Spearmen, are only mildly cheaper (when you take the fact you get two a time into account) and have double the maintenance cost. However, they do have a very useful pair of features - they have higher movement than other ranged units, and ignore zone of control just like cavalry! Ignoring zone of control usually can help a unit get through enemy defences, but fighting can leave it vulnerable to counter-attacks. For Saka Horse Archers, the fact they can deal damage without receiving any helps there, although keep in mind their low melee strength can still be a problem.

A more hidden benefit of Saka Horse Archers is that unlike regular Archers, they arrive in the classical era and as such can benefit from the strength boost of Great Generals.

Because Saka Horse Archers are squishy and have to get right up to a unit to fight them, make sure you bring along some Horsemen to help protect them. Try damaging enemy units with Saka Horse Archers, then finish them off with Horsemen. Aside from giving the health-on-kills to a unit that will always benefit from it, it'll ensure the Horsemen are on the front lines between your turns.

Against cities, Saka Horse Archers get a -17 strength penalty, making them pretty terrible in that situation (at least, until they can be promoted). Still, if your siege units haven't arrived yet, it can be worthwhile to surround the enemy city with Saka Horse Archers to deal some damage in the meantime. Saka Horse Archers only get a -50% damage reduction against city walls to Horsemen's -85%, so even with the -17 strength penalty you may deal more damage.

By the time Coursers are available, Saka Horse Archers will struggle to be effective any more. Use them for fighting Barbarians or easy tasks like that until you can upgrade them.

Ultimately, Saka Horse Archers aren't the backbone of your military, but a helpful supportive unit to complement Horsemen and ensure they can deal as much damage as possible. Indeed, you'll generally want to train Horsemen more than Saka Horse Archers.

Unique Improvement: Kurgan

The Kurgan occupies an unusual position among Scythian uniques. Although it can complement early warfare, it leans towards benefitting the religious and cultural games. It's one of the earliest sources of faith in the game, and can still be reasonable for faith even late on, in addition to offering a decent gold output.

Early Usage

The biggest thing Kurgans can do for you early in the game is to help you secure a pantheon quickly. Divine Spark is a reliable pantheon to help you found a religion (capture Holy Sites off other civs or build your own and enjoy the boost to Great Prophet Points) while God of the Forge will help you get an army trained sooner and God of the Open Sky builds on your incentive to find plenty of pasture resources.

While Kurgans on their own offer +1 faith and +3 gold, it's best to focus purely on those adjacent to pastures once you have a pantheon secured in order to make more efficient use of your limited citizens.

The second early role of Kurgans is to help support your army. Scythia's reliance on sheer quantities of units makes maintenance troublesome. Kurgans offer 3 gold per turn, which is nearly enough gold to cover the cost of two Horsemen or Saka Horse Archers. With the Conscription military policy card as well, one Kurgan can cover three of these units.

Later Usage

Once you've taken a few Holy Sites off other civs, you hopefully should be able to found your own religion (if you can't, don't worry - faith can purchase units with the Grand Master's Chapel building later on, which makes raising Courser, Cavalry and Helicopter armies easier). Kurgans help supply a reasonable source of faith to help support it, but you can't rely on that alone - be sure to develop your Holy Sites!


When you're done with basic Builder technologies and Horseback Riding, work towards the Stirrups technology. It doubles the faith Kurgans get from adjacent pastures, meaning a Kurgan with two adjacent pastures will be worth an impressive 5 faith and 3 gold!

Kurgans should be built with caution; working too many ones with low yields will come at the cost of other yields such as food and production. Instead, here's a good general rule to follow:

• If there are no adjacent pastures, Kurgans should only be used if you haven't founded a pantheon yet, you're desperate for gold, or the city has no need for food and production and you need the faith.
  
• If there is one adjacent pasture, Kurgans are useful if you can spare the citizens to work it, but don't go overboard. Once you're fairly close to a religious victory, or need lots of faith for Naturalists/Rock Bands, it may be worthwhile to work more just to squeeze as much faith as possible.
  
• If there are two or more adjacent pastures, Kurgans should almost definitely be built (the main exception being if there's a useful resource or very strong district location blocking the tile). 5 faith and 3 gold is a fine yield! New cities might not be ready to work them, but otherwise the tiles should usually be worked.

You'll need to use your own judgement in regards to exactly how many Kurgans should be constructed and improved. A higher faith output can help speed up a religious victory, but if you set back development too far, it'll leave you vulnerable to attack. Scythia's unique military abilities can only do so much against a greatly superior foe.

For non-religious games, you'll find more uses for the faith yield as the game goes on. The Monumentality Golden Age dedication offers a cheap way of obtaining Settlers and Builders via faith, while the Grand Master's Chapel (available once you have a tier two government) lets you purchase military units with faith. You can potentially support a huge army by faith-purchasing Coursers, Cavalry or Helicopters, and using Kurgan gold to cover maintenance costs. With the modern-era Conservation civic, you can purchase Naturalists to create National Parks, which are great sources of amenities - handy for offsetting war weariness.

Tourism

With the modern-era Flight technology, Kurgans start generating tourism based on their faith yield, even when not worked. Unlike many tourism-granting unique improvements, it's not particularly helpful to spam Kurgans in large quantities as without an adjacent pasture, Kurgans will only yield 1 tourism per turn. Nonetheless, any land you can place a Kurgan on which is adjacent to at least one pasture should have a Kurgan, even if it's out of the working radius of a city.

Summary

• Use Kurgans to help secure a pantheon.
  
• Beyond that point, only pasture-adjacent Kurgans should be worked except in exceptional circumstances.
  
• For non-religious games, Kurgans can help you buy military (with the Grand Master's Chapel) and civilian (with the Monumentality Golden Age dedication) units to support conquest and general development respectively.
  
• For cultural games, use the faith for Naturalists and Rock Bands.

Administration - Government and Policy Cards

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

Oligarchy is a reasonably choice due to the unit experience bonus and ability to support a range of military policy cards. The +4 bonus for melee units might see some use, but remember that you'll mostly be using units that don't benefit from that. Alternatively, you may want Autocracy as a more well-rounded government type which still offers enough military policy card slots.

The Warlord's Throne helps your warmongering strengths feed into general production - useful for training more units, getting your religious infrastructure off the ground or general development.

Tier Two

Theocracy is a good choice here due to its discount on faith purchases, helping you get more out of Kurgans.

Complement it with the Grand Master's Chapel so you can buy military units with faith, helping you raise a huge army quickly. You can pillage any enemy tile for faith with this building as well - light cavalry with the Depredation promotion are particularly good pillagers.

Tier Three

Fascism offers an array of military advantages that will greatly help Cavalry or Helicopter-led conquests. Religious players might want to go with Democracy instead for its better array of policy card slots and discount to gold purchases (you'll get a lot of gold from Kurgans as a side-effect of working them for faith, so you can get a lot out of such a bonus).

The War Department is a great choice of government building, complementing your existing health-on-kills ability to make it even easier to keep your military and religious units going for longer.

Tier Four

If you don't mind losing out on some science, Corporate Libertarianism works well for domination games. For a religious game, Synthetic Technocracy has more economic policy cards and helps you get through Holy Site Prayers projects faster.

Policy Cards

Ancient Era

Agoge (Military, requires Craftsmanship) - Helps you to train Saka Horse Archers faster.

Caravansaries (Economic, requires Foreign Trade) - This allows you to have some money to maintain Horsemen and Saka Horse Archers with while still trading internally for production bonuses.

Conscription (Military, State Workforce) - Reducing unit maintenance costs is very important when you build units in large quantities.

Ilkum (Economic, requires Craftsmanship) - It's useful to be able to make use of Kurgans early, but at the same time, you'll have plenty of other tiles to improve. Getting a bonus to Builder production at this point in the game is therefore a good idea.

Manoeuvre (Military, requires Military Tradition) - Helps you train Horsemen faster, but not Saka Horse Archers.

Classical Era

Raid (Military, requires Military Training) - Light cavalry are particularly good at pillaging thanks to the Depredation promotion. This policy card takes that even further, helping you to receive powerful yields from pillaging.

Medieval Era

Chivalry (Military, requires Divine Right) - Allows you to train Coursers, Cavalry and other pre-modern cavalry faster. Considering Military Tradition is fairly easy to beeline, it's nice for this policy card to arrive relatively early.

Professional Army (Military, requires Mercenaries) - Training high quantities of units makes upgrading a bit of a nightmare. This policy card takes some of the pain out of the process.

Retinues (Military, requires Mercenaries) - Helps you save resources when upgrading your vast cavalry army.

Renaissance Era

Religious Orders (Economic, requires Reformed Church) - Gives all religious units +5 strength. With the Theocracy government and Tomyris' leader ability, you could have as much of a +15 religious strength advantage.

Industrial Era

Force Modernisation (Military, requires Urbanisation) - Cuts down the gold and resource cost of unit upgrades, which could save you a considerable amount of both in the later eras of the game.

National Identity (Military, requires Nationalism) - Scythian units already have a lot of lasting power thanks to their ability to heal on kills and bonus against wounded units. This policy card extends that further by reducing the strength penalty injured units have. What may be a fair fight between one of your units and that of an enemy one turn will swing greatly to your favour the following turn.

Total War (Military, requires Scorched Earth) - This will make your Cavalry and Helicopter units' strong pillaging ability even better.

Modern Era

Levée en Masse (Military, requires Mobilisation) - Cutting unit maintenance costs is important considering how many units Scythia typically produces.

Lightning Warfare (Military, requires Ideology) - Allows you to train all cavalry units faster, including Helicopters.

Resource Management (Military, requires Conservation) - Helps you cover the resource maintenance cost of Helicopters.

Atomic Era

After Action Reports (Military, requires Rapid Deployment) - Scythian military units can engage in combat more frequently than units of most other civs thanks to Tomyris' health-on-kills bonus, allowing them to gain more experience in the same number of turns typically. This policy card builds upon that advantage, without the huge financial penalty of the otherwise more powerful Elite Forces Dark Age policy card.

Future Era

Integrated Attack Logistics (Wildcard, requires Information Warfare) - Still using Helicopters to pillage? Enjoy an extra movement point in enemy territory to make pillaging even easier.

Administration - Age Bonuses and World Congress

Age Bonuses

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

Twilight Valour (Dark Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - A great bonus for Scythia, not only does it make your Horsemen incredibly strong at attacking wounded units, but Tomyris' leader ability allows you to circumvent the downside.

Exodus of the Evangelists (Golden Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - Scythia's early-arriving UU and UI, in addition to their strengths at clearing Barbarians, make securing a classical-era Golden Age easy. Scythia's unique bonuses, however, do not directly help you to found a religion. Still, there's a workaround - use your early military strength to capture Holy Sites off other civs, and complement it with the Great Prophet Points of this Golden Age bonus. That'll make it much easier to secure a religion.

Monumentality (Golden Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - Don't manage to found a religion? Use this to convert Kurgan gold into Builders, Settlers or Traders, and get your development off to a strong start.

To Arms! (Dedication, Industrial to Information eras) - Exploit strength in numbers against enemy corps and armies, and you can enjoy some bonus era score. Remember individual units always gain era score when killing corps or armies, even if you're not taking this dedication.

To Arms! (Golden Age, Industrial to Information eras) - Faster unit production helps you create a vast army sooner.

Cyber Warfare (Dark Age, Information to Future eras) - Helicopters are the strongest light cavalry unit around, but they'll struggle against units from later eras. As such, this Dark Age card should really aid your late-game warfare.

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 relevant votes that have high relevance for this civ relative to other civs.

Mercenary Companies - Effect B (Producing, or purchasing military units using the chosen currency type, is -50% of the cost until the next World Congress) on production

The Scythian civ ability only activates on units that are produced, not purchased.

Military Advisory - Effect A (Units of the chosen land promotion class gain +5 strength) on light cavalry.

Together with Tomyris' leader ability, your light cavalry armies should be able to stand up to most contemporary anti-cavalry units.

World Religion - Effect A (+10 strength for all religious units of this faith) on your own religion.

This gives you an even bigger strength advantage in theological combat, meaning your religious units will take less damage before they're able to score a kill and heal back up.

Administration - Pantheons, Religion and City-States

Pantheons

Divine Spark - Considering you may be conquering Holy Sites rather than building them, it helps to have something to help you catch up in the religious race.

God of Craftsmen - Gives your horse pastures better yields, so they can support your army in more than one way.

God of the Forge - Aids in producing Horseman, Saka Horse Archers, Siege Towers and other such useful units faster.

God of the Open Sky - Kurgans encourage you to settle near pasture-heavy land, so this pantheon adds more for you than most civs.

God of War - Scythia's unusually strong ability to slice through enemy units can make this pantheon a viable source of faith.

Religious Beliefs

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

Missionary Zeal (Enhancer) - Chasing down enemy religious units to finish them off can be tricky. This belief makes it a fair bit easier.

Monastic Isolation (Enhancer) - If your attempts to heal up religious units via theological combat go badly wrong, this bonus ensures the damage to your religious pressure is minimised.

Tithe (Founder) - Scythia needs all the gold they can get early on, when double quantities of Horsemen and Saka Horse Archers are a huge drain on gold.

Warrior Monks (Follower) - Combine your military and religious strengths with this special military unit which has access to some powerful promotions!

City-States

Bologna (Scientific) - Offering a bonus similar to (but stronger than) the Divine Spark pantheon, Bologna is greatly helpful when you're trying to found a religion.

Hattusa (Scientific) - If you get an unlucky start and lack nearby horses, being suzerain over Hattusa may be the only way to be able to train Horsemen.

Johannesburg (Industrial) - Seeking out Pastures for maximum Kurgan yields? Enjoy bonus production on top.

Kabul (Militaristic) - The high frequency in which Scythian units engage in combat gives them a lot of experience. Kabul doubles that experience gain, meaning it won't take long until you can reach the really strong promotions like Expert Marksman (can attack twice) for Saka Horse Archers.

Nazca (Religious) - If you're in a desert region, the bonuses Nazca Lines offer will go very nicely with Kurgans.

Taruga (Scientific) - Scythia's horse start bias can help them to get some extra science from Taruga.

Valletta (Militaristic) - If you haven't founded a religion, Valletta's suzerain bonus gives you a useful alternative way to spend faith: City Centre and Encampment buildings.

Yerevan (Religious) - If you constantly give Apostles the Debater promotion, you'll have a huge advantage in theological combat. The only thing you'll really need to worry about is the other civ declaring war on you.

Wolin (Militaristic) - Helps you secure Great Generals without needing a huge investment in Encampments. This frees up production and district capacity for things like Commercial Hubs for covering unit maintenance.

Administration - Wonders and Great People

Wonders

Temple of Artemis (Ancient era, Archery technology) - An area that's good for Kurgans will also be good for this wonder, helping you to create a particularly strong city.

Jebel Barkal (Classical era, Iron Working technology) - If you're crowding cities around a pasture-heavy area to maximise Kurgan yields, this wonder can be a powerful source of faith. The catch is the strict terrain requirement - it has to be built on desert hills.

Mahabodhi Temple (Classical era, Theology civic) - Get your religion off to a great start. Either fill out your religious beliefs, or try to spread the faith further. Remember to try and use up all but one of your spread religion charges before you engage in theological combat to avoid a loss of religious pressure.

Petra (Classical era, Mathematics technology) - Kurgans can be placed on flat desert. With Petra, you can produce something rather impressive.

Terracotta Army (Classical era, Construction technology) - If you have time to build just one wonder, make it this one. Having every individual unit receive a free promotion synergises beautifully with Scythia's civ ability, ensuring you have both quantity and quality in your army.

Alhambra (Medieval era, Castles technology) - Scythia can make good use of a lot of military policy cards, so receiving an additional one will be very helpful.

Kotoko-In (Medieval era, Divine Right civic) - Warrior Monks nicely combine your religious and military strengths, while the 20% faith boost can help you get a lot more faith out of a city with lots of Kurgan potential.

Meenakshi Temple (Medieval era, Civil Service civic) - Extends your advantage in theological combat even further.

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.

Classical Era

Marcus Lacinius Crassus (Great Merchant) - Any gold you can get early on will help with unit maintenance, while being able to annex a tile for free can help if there's a horse resource just outside of your borders.

Medieval Era

Bi Sheng (Great Engineer) - At first glance, a eureka boost for Printing might not sound that impressive, but keep in mind that it's a prerequisite for Military Science (and therefore Cavalry), and that having the eureka that way means you don't need to take a diversion to Education for it.

Atomic Era

Georgy Zhukov (Great General) - Improving flanking bonuses permanently is really helpful considering Scythia's reliance on large quantities of fast units.

Counter-Strategies

Although a war with Scythia is a frightening prospect - especially early in the game - they do have some major weaknesses that you can exploit.

Civilization Ability: People of the Steppe

Scythia sweeps across the battlefield with a vast army, but the huge reliance on light cavalry produces three glaring weaknesses: a reliance on horse resources, vulnerability to anti-cavalry and a relatively poor ability to capture cities.

If Scythia starts near you, denying them access to horses makes them far more manageable opponents. Saka Horse Archers can be fought effectively by practically anything while Horsemen typically need to be met with (preferably promoted) Spearmen along with well-fortified Archers.

If Scythia has access to Horses, make sure you have Bronze Working quickly. Spearmen are fairly cheap, can stand up reasonably well to Horsemen and do very well against Saka Horse Archers. Unfortunately, their usual advantage - their relative cost-effectiveness - is eliminated thanks to Scythia's doubled production of light cavalry. The Echelon promotion can help, but that is cancelled out by the Caparison promotion light cavalry have.

What can help is ensuring Scythia's units attacks yours rather than the other way around. Fortify your Spearmen (they'll get a +6 strength bonus after a couple of turns) and it'll be harder for Scythia to kill your units. Make sure you rotate injured units with full-health ones so Scythia can't score kills.

Building city defences is a great idea. A walled city can be tricky for Scythia's Horsemen and Saka Horse Archers to take without siege support, even if surrounded. This can allow you time for a counter-attack.

Try to work towards Military Tactics if possible. Pikemen have more than enough strength to wipe the floor with Horsemen and Saka Horse Archers, and do great damage against Coursers, meaning Scythia won't be as much trouble until the industrial era. By that point, Pike and Shot units will be around to help you handle their Cavalry, and AT Crews won't be too far away.

Scythia's emphasis on unit quantity will cost them a lot of gold in maintenance, a cost that can't be avoided by forming units into corps and armies. Consider pillaging Scythia's gold sources (Commercial Hubs, Harbours, Kurgans and/or Traders) to put extra pressure on their economy.

Tomyris' Leader Ability: Killer of Cyrus

The important thing here is to make sure your wounded units are kept out of reach from Scythia. Keep rotating your units so your front lines always consist of full-health units. That way, you won't be on the receiving end of their +5 strength bonus, and they'll find it difficult to use their health-on-kills bonus.

Furthermore, try to focus fire on one Scythian unit at a time if possible so they can't heal up again.

When it comes to religious units, it's a good idea to keep your Apostles paired up when entering Scythian lands. That way, instead of Scythian Apostles and Inquisitors winning an attrition battle against you, you can spread your incoming damage between more than one unit. Remember to return them to a Holy Site you control to heal up, a tile owned by a city with Governor Moksha (the Cardinal) with the Laying on of Hands promotion present, or use up a Guru charge to heal them before you use the spread-religion function again.

Tomyris' Agenda: Backstab Averse

A computer-controlled Tomyris hates civs that declare surprise wars and declare war against civs they recently had a declaration of friendship or alliance with. She likes civs that are willing to keep long-term alliances.

Tomyris will get on well with peaceful civs. Even when playing as a warmonger, you can play around the agenda to some extent if you remember to use casus belli when declaring war and minimise the number of cities you take while ensuring you liberate what you can.

Beware if you intend to backstab someone after your friendship or alliance expires with them. Not only will it trigger a betrayal emergency, but Tomyris will be particularly likely to join in with it due to the relations hit with her you'll have from the betrayal. During such an emergency, the target's units suffer a -2 strength penalty, while all the members gain a +1 movement bonus in the target's territory. That makes her speed and strength advantages even bigger than they are already!

Unique Unit: Saka Horse Archer

Saka Horse Archers are vulnerable in defence, and their low range means they're very prone to counter-attack after they fight. Pretty much any kind of unit can be effective against them, but perhaps the best method is a front line of Spearmen followed by a second line of Archers. The Spearmen can help deal with any incoming Horsemen, while the Archers outrange the Saka Horse Archers allowing you to deal damage without taking it.

Unique Improvement: Kurgan

Depriving Scythia of pasture-heavy lands can help set their future faith output back, but this requires a lot of effort on your part. Generally, if you're going to deprive them of any tiles, deprive them of horses so they can't train Horsemen and therefore their threat is greatly lessened.

When you're at war with Scythia, pillaging their Kurgans is a great idea. Aside from the fact you can't keep unique improvements when you take cities off other civs, and that it'll give you faith, it deprives Scythia of a gold supply. Scythia's reliance on large quantities of units leaves their economy vulnerable. A gold deficit will hurt their science and force them to start disbanding units.

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Gathering Storm

Compilation Guides

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Individual Civilization Guides

• America - no additional content* (Cultural/Diplomatic/Domination)
  
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*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.

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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.

[MeniliteZ]

I've noticed it before with a Seaside Resort, but it was before the Leader Pass, I think.

[Zigzagzigal]

Hmm, that's curious. I've not really been looking much at Civ 6's mechanics lately but it's possible that certain improvements don't generate tourism outside the 3 tile radius.

[MeniliteZ]

I built Kurgans outside of workable radius like you suggest here. But in the Tourism Lens, though it says Generating +4 Tourism, the lifetime accumulation is staying at zero, and so is the visiting tourists number.

Is the tourism adding something civ-wide, though?

[Z0mbiefied]

Is there a bug regarding tomyris killer of cyrus ability? Because i decided to play a religious game as her and did recieve neither the +5 cs nor the heal after killing another religious unit.

[Zigzagzigal]

Do you know if other civs with combat bonuses (e.g. America, Aztecs) are affected?

[weraptor]

Hey Zigzag, just thought that I should let you know that in the newest patch, Tomyris' religious units lost their bonus combat strength and lifesteal abilities. Dunno if it's a bug or intentional design.

[Zigzagzigal]

I tend to play on Emperor because it has a good balance between difficulty and the levels most players are on (also, in some ways, higher difficulties are easier as you can leech off the starting advantages other civs have - there's a reason why the fastest science victories are on Deity).

That being said, I have noticed that buffs to walls and nerfs to siege support has weakened Scythia's rushing ability somewhat. Their ability to slaughter units is still very powerful, but cities provide a much bigger barrier than before.

[SgtZero]

I do have to wonder what difficulty you play on, Lot of the ideas make sense but you sure cant bulldoze anyone with light cavalry, if you are not up against walls you are vs superior tech really quick on the hardest difficulty and you would do better to use other units. Of course the killer of cyrus rocks no matter what you are using or vs, other then cities of course.

[Ghneuma]

Totally agree, thank you Zigzagzigal! Your guides are amazing.

[Quantum Queer]

I really appreciate all the work you put into these guides. They're always so helpful and a great place to start when I'm using a new leader. Thank you Zigzagzigal :]