Zigzagzigal's Guides - Persia (GS)

Skilled at rapid warfare and creating beautiful landscapes, Persia is strong at domination and cultural victories alike. Here, I detail Persian strategies and counter-strategies.

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.

We are part of an ancient and powerful realm; an empire that has endured conquerers and would-be conquerers; fierce rivals and uncertain allies. This new world that opens up before us is yet another filled with uncertainty except this: we shall thrive. We shall be the opportunists knowing when to strike and when to not. We shall be the empire-builders, who know that our artistic pursuits matter as much as our victories on the battlefield. In the end, Persia shall win by outlasting all who we meet.

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

Persia has no start bias.

Civilization Ability: Satrapies

• Gain +1 trade route capacity with the classical-era Political Philosophy civic
  
• Internal trade routes are worth an additional 2 gold and 1 culture
  
• Roads constructed in your territory are one tier more advanced than normal (classical roads in the ancient era, etc.)
  
  • Roads constructed by you outside your own territory are unaffected.

Cyrus' Leader Ability: Fall of Babylon

• Declaring a surprise war has 33% reduced grievance penalties, as if it was a formal war.
  
• All units gain +2 movement for the first 10 turns after declaring a surprise war.
  
• Occupied cities have no penalties to growth and yields.
  
• Occupied cities with a garrisoned unit gain an additional +5 loyalty per turn.

Nader Shah's Leader Ability: Sword of Persia

• All military and religious units gain +5 strength when attacking units on full health
  
• Cities not founded by Nader Shah gain +3 gold and +2 faith for all domestic trade routes.

Outline (Part 2/2)

Unique Unit: Immortal

A classical-era melee infantry unit which replaces the Swordsman

Research	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Cost	Resource	Maintenance
Iron Working Technology Classical era	Apprenticeship ** Technology Medieval era	Warrior (130 10 )	Man-at-Arms (130 20 )	100 or 400 or 200 *	10	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.

**You may continue to train Immortals even beyond Apprenticeship if you have insufficient iron.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
35	25	2	2	2	Deals -85% damage to city walls and urban defences when using a melee attack Deals -50% damage to city walls and urban defences when using a ranged attack -17 vs. city defences if using a ranged attack -17 vs. naval units if using a ranged attack	+5 vs. anti-cavalry units

Negative changes

• Costs 100 production, 400 gold or 200 faith, up from 90, 360 and 180 respectively (+11%)
  
• Costs 130 gold to upgrade into from a Warrior, up from 110 (+18%)

Positive changes

• Requires 10 iron, down from 20 (-50%)
  
• Has an optional ranged attack (25 strength, 2 range)
  
  • If using the ranged attack, -17 strength penalty vs. city defences and naval units, and cannot benefit from Battering Rams or Siege Towers, though suffers only a 50% penalty against city defences instead of 85%.
• Costs 130 gold to upgrade to a Man-at-Arms, down from 150 (-13%)

Unique Improvement: Pairidaeza

Research	Terrain requirement	Constructed by	Base pillage yield
Early Empire Civic Ancient era	Must be constructed on one of the following in your own land: Desert Grassland Plains Tile must be featureless and not adjacent to another Pairidaeza.	Builder	25

Defensive bonus	Direct yield	Adjacency yields	Miscellaneous bonus	Maximum possible yield
None	2 1	1 per adjacent City Centre or Commercial Hub 1 per adjacent Holy Site or Theatre Square	1 appeal to adjacent tiles	2-7 * 1-6 *

*Due to conflicting adjacency bonuses, getting the maximum amount of culture means you get the minimum amount of gold shown in the range and vice versa.

Enhancements

Note that "maximum yields" assume you have all the enhancements of earlier technologies and civics as well.

Research	Direct bonus	Adjacency bonus	Miscellaneous bonus	New maximum yield
Diplomatic Service Civic Renaissance Era	1	None	None	2-7 * 2-7 *
Flight Technology Modern Era	None	None	Culture yield added to tourism	2-7 * 2-7 * 2-7 *

*Due to conflicting adjacency bonuses, getting the maximum amount of culture and tourism means you get the minimum amount of gold shown in the range and vice versa.

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
Cyrus	7/10 (Good)	5/10 (Decent)	9/10 (Ideal)	6/10 (Decent)	3/10 (Acceptable)
Nader Shah	7/10 (Good)	6/10 (Decent)	8/10 (Good)	7/10 (Good)	3/10 (Acceptable)

Both leaders of Persia perform similarly well to each other in each victory route. As a general rule, Cyrus is stronger during wars and Nader Shah is stronger outside of them.

For the cultural game, Persia has a few advantages. The Pairidaeza can offer tourism with the Flight technology, and even before then offers a helpful +1 appeal bonus which aids with National Parks and Seaside Resorts. The extra trade route could mean squeezing in a 25% tourism bonus against another civ, while the culture boost from internal trade helps you get through the civics tree a bit faster. For Cyrus, declaring a surprise war boosts the movement speed of all units - including Archaeologists and Rock Bands. For Nader Shah, extra faith from internal trade aids with buying Naturalists and Rock Bands.

Diplomatic victories aren't amazing for Persia, but it's a viable path. Persia's decent gold output can help with aid emergencies, while extra culture helps with getting to key civics like Global Warming Mitigation. However, Cyrus' incentive to declare surprise wars, even with the grievance reduction, doesn't work very well with a diplomatic approach to victory. Nader Shah has the added boost of some extra gold from internal trade.

Domination is what Persia's best at under either leader. Immortals combine the advantages of Swordsmen and Archers onto a single unit, making them incredibly versatile. Gold from internal trading and Pairidaezas means you can have a decent economy without worrying about routes being pillaged in war-time. Nader Shah has the added advantage of dealing bonus damage against full-health units, but Cyrus has the edge here. Extra movement from surprise wars is a humongous boost and can keep the war machine moving along even on faster game speeds, where warmongers tend to have less time to fight, while stronger yields and loyalty in occupied cities lets you get a lot more out of your conquests sooner.

Religious victory isn't the strongest route for Persia, though a few unique advantages can really help. Early boosts to culture can help you get to key civics like Reformed Church sooner, an extra trader route could mean a bit more religious pressure on another civ, Pairidaeza appeal makes it easier to make lots of faith out of the Earth Goddess pantheon and the Preserve district. For Cyrus, movement bonuses for surprise wars can help your religious units as well as military ones. For Nader Shah, the strength bonus in theological combat and extra faith from internal trade are both beneficial.

Persia is weakest at scientific victories and lacks much in the way of direct advantages to it. Faster civic accumulation can help with a few eureka boosts as can extra gold to buy certain units or buildings with. Of course, early conquests can give you a strong base to go for a scientific victory with, but you'd be better off going for culture.

Civilization Ability: Satrapies

Persia's civ ability makes extensive internal trade much more effective, especially in the classical era, helping you to support conquests, civic development and more.

Extra trade route with Political Philosophy

Political Philosophy is a key civic any civ will want quickly, and Persia gets even more out of it than most. The Oligarchy government offers a +4 strength boost to Immortals (the only unit with a ranged attack in the entire game that benefits) while you also get an extra point of trade route capacity. You'll want to prepare for Immortal warfare early in the game, and with an extra trade route, you can put off building Commercial Hubs for a bit in order to focus more on that.

Extra gold and culture for internal trade

Internal trade routes are a good source of food and production, but don't offer much in the way of gold. For Persia, you can get all the food and production advantages while also receiving a reasonable sum of gold and some culture. This is particularly powerful early on - extra gold lets you support more Immortals while more culture gets you to Political Philosophy sooner.

Nader Shah gets even better yields from internal trade once a few conquests are made - this will be covered in his leader ability section.

Later on in the game, the small culture yield can help new cities to expand their borders right away without you needing to spend gold or construct a Monument. If you're after a cultural victory, you should generally stick to internal trade until your tourism output balloons in the modern era and the 25% tourism boost for sending a trade route to a civ becomes more powerful.

Improved roads

Traders create roads when they travel along trade routes, helping you to move your units around more rapidly. Internal trade routes result in roads connecting up your cities, letting you move forces around more rapidly, relocate Builders to where they're needed, and so on. Aside from trade routes, roads are also automatically created on district tiles (including the city centre). Starting in the medieval era, Military Engineer units may construct roads directly, but this is rarely worth it - especially as they can build railroads later for even faster movement without using charges.

There's four types of road in the game:

Road Type	Effects
Ancient Road	Units ignore terrain movement costs except for river crossings
Classical Road	Units ignore terrain movement costs Forms bridges over rivers allowing units to cross them for no additional movement cost
Industrial Road	Units ignore terrain movement costs Forms bridges over rivers allowing units to cross them for no additional movement cost Units use 0.75 movement points per road tile instead of 1
Modern Road	Units ignore terrain movement costs Forms bridges over rivers allowing units to cross them for no additional movement cost Units use 0.5 movement points per road tile instead of 1

Normally, each type of road is unlocked as soon as you enter their respective era (whether through technology or civics). For Persia, however, you end up with roads a tier better than you'd expect - though only for roads within your own territory. You'll get classical roads from the start of the game, industrial roads in the classical era and modern roads in the industrial era.

Although this bonus might look like a powerful bonus to unit mobility in the classical era, the reduced movement cost will only help units get around your empire if they have at least three movement points to begin with.

Thankfully, Cyrus' extra movement when you declare a surprise war will get all your units over that threshold. Builders and Settlers in your lands may be able to move as many as 5 tiles a turn following a surprise war declaration in the classical era or later - other civs won't manage more than 2 for quite some time! That can really help cut down the time needed to reach new spots for settling.

For the 10 turns following a surprise war, use Persia's enhanced roads to get any necessary reinforcements to the front lines sooner. Be prepared to purchase some tiles containing roads so you can get them upgraded to industrial roads, as roads outside your territory won't be bumped up a tier.

When you enter the industrial era, you'll end up with modern roads. Unlike industrial roads, these offer a strong speed boost to all land units, including those with only two movement points. This advantage is short-lived, however - Flight, Radio and Conservation are key technologies and civics for the cultural game, and they all arrive in the modern era. More to the point, railroads arrive at the industrial-era Steam Power technology and allow units to travel considerably faster than they can on any kind of regular road.

Summary

• You should mostly trade internally until the modern era.
  
• Industrial roads in the classical era is most effective when combined with Cyrus' surprise war movement bonuses.

Unique Unit: Immortal (Part 1/2)

Immortals have a really unusual status in the game. They're essentially a Swordsman and Archer combined into a single unit, allowing them to do things other units cannot do.

Preparation

Immortals require 10 iron resources to be trained, so it's important to start off by researching Mining and Bronze Working to reveal the resource. Bronze Working's eureka boost is easy enough to achieve - you just need to kill three Barbarians.

If there's iron in the region, send a Settler over to found a city there and improve it as soon as you can. That'll help you accumulate iron ahead of the Iron Working technology, as well as providing you with its eureka boost.

If there's no iron in the region, don't worry - Persia has a backup strategy. Research Writing and get some Campuses built for science, pick up Archery and train some Archers, and then finally work towards Machinery for Crossbowmen. While this method takes longer and might not have the immediate power that an Immortal rush can have, Crossbowmen with lots of movement via Cyrus' leader ability or extra power via Nader Sha's leader ability are still very effective.

Assuming you have iron secured, you can now work towards Iron Working. Be sure to train a decent number of Warriors in the mean-time so you can upgrade them as soon as you have the technology. Building a couple of Encampments, or one with a Barracks can also help you get a Great General ready for your Immortal wars. It's also helpful to research Masonry for Battering Rams in case any enemies build city walls.

Immortals are unique among units with a ranged attack in that they can also attack from melee. As such, it's quite possible to have an army consisting of only Immortals. Keep in mind that right-clicking adjacent enemies to attack them generally defaults to a melee attack - if you want to use ranged attacks, remember to click the "ranged attack" option first.

A Very Unusual Archer

When using their ranged attack, Immortals are more like Archer replacements than Swordsmen replacements in terms of their role in combat. Compared to Archers, Immortals have the following differences that affect how you train and support them:

• Takes longer to research (225 base science cost for Iron Working vs. 75 for Archery)
  
• 67% higher cost (100 production/400 gold/200 faith rather than 60/240/120)
  
• Different upgrade path
  
• Double maintenance (2 gold/turn instead of 1)

And here's the differences that matter in combat:

• Can melee attack and therefore capture cities
  
  • When melee attacking, no -17 strength penalty vs. city defences
• 35 melee strength, up from 15
  
• +5 strength bonus vs. anti-cavalry units
  
• Imposes zone of control, which also means fewer units are needed to place a city under siege
  
• Uses melee infantry promotions rather than ranged promotions
  
• Can benefit from Oligarchy/Oligarchic Legacy's +4 strength bonus.
  
• Counts as a classical-era unit, so unlike Archers there's Great Generals that can boost them

Let's look at all of those differences in that order:

Better defence

Immortals defend at a massive 20 points more than Archers. To give you an idea of what that's like in practice, here's a table of the average damage received by Archers and Immortals when attacked by certain units. This assumes both units have no promotions or similar strength bonuses and are at full health at the start of combat. The values shown may vary by up to 25%.

Defending against	Archer damage	Immortal damage
Warrior	37	16
Archer	45	20
Spearman	45	16*
Heavy Chariot	51	23
Swordsman/Horseman	70	30

*This surprisingly low number is a consequence of the +5 strength bonus against anti-cavalry units Immortals have.

That's a substantial difference! Immortals can survive at least one extra hit from any unit of its time, which helps to compensate for its higher production and maintenance cost.

Bonus vs. anti-cavalry units

Because having a +5 strength bonus against anti-cavalry units is a core feature of the melee infantry unit class, Immortals get to have it. You can often kill Spearmen in 3 hits where Archers would need 4, and defend against them very effectively. Being able to use this attack at range combined with Cyrus' speed bonuses when starting a surprise war makes Persia particularly effective against civs that rely on early anti-cavalry units as you'll be more mobile than them. Outside of war, this is great for clearing Barbarian Encampments as by default they use anti-cavalry units to defend them.

Zone of control

Zone of control is a mechanic that prevents non-cavalry units from easily slipping past enemy units, and also allows units to place a city under siege (which prevents it healing) without completely surrounding it. Archers need a promotion to impose Zone of Control, but Immortals do not, making sieges much easier to pull off - especially in conjunction with Cyrus' movement speed bonus.

Unique Unit: Immortal (Part 2/2)

Promotions

Now we're getting into some really interesting differences. Immortals use melee infantry promotions, which have a bit more of an immediate impact than those of land ranged units.

Let's go through each promotion and look at what they mean to Immortals:

Promotion	Prerequisite	Effect	Notes
Battlecry	None	+7 vs. melee infantry, anti-cavalry and land ranged units.	Although slightly narrower in scope than the Volley promotion Archers have (which applies to all land units), a +7 strength bonus instead of +5 is a helpful little boost - especially as it works in defence as well as attack. For Nader Shah , you'll be able to kill Warriors and Spearmen in just two ranged attacks, and have a chance at a one-hit kill with melee.
Tortoise	None	+10 when defending against ranged attacks.	Gives your Immortals essentially 45 strength against ranged attacks. It's much better than the Emplacement promotion ranged units can pick up as it applies against all ranged units - not just city attacks - and also is on the first, rather than third, row of promotions. That being said, consider carefully whether it or Battlecry is more useful to you, as Battlecry leads to the useful Commando promotion while Tortoise leads to the far less useful Amphibious promotion.
Commando	Battlecry or Amphibious	Can embark from, or disembark onto, cliff tiles. +1	With it, Immortals are the only ranged unit that can disembark onto cliff tiles until very late in the game. More importantly, you receive +1 movement. For Cyrus , this allows Immortals to move at an impressive 5 points per turn for the first 10 turns after starting a surprise war, or 6 with a classical-era Great General. This allows you to pillage, move and shoot all in the same turn, or cross a river into rough terrain and fire in the same turn.
Amphibious	Tortoise or Commando	No combat or movement penalty when using a melee attack across a river.	This promotion has niche usage for Immortals. Although useless when you're performing a ranged attack, it can be helpful if you need to take cities across a river. You're usually better off taking something else.
Zweihander	Commando or Amphibious	+7 vs. anti-cavalry	Fight even more effectively against Spearmen. When attacking them at range, you'll have a 17 strength advantage (24 with Battlecry), letting you kill them in two hits fairly reliably. You'll also be able to do decent damage against Pikemen. For Nader Shah , an Immortal with Battlecry can kill a Spearman in one hit from ranged just under half the time. With this combination, you can kill Pikemen in three hits from ranged, or two with a Great General.
Urban Warfare	Commando or Amphibious	+10 when fighting in a district.	Unfortunately, this won't help you deal more ranged damage against cities. The ranged promotion line has Incendaries, for a +7 strength bonus against cities while Immortals get no equivalent - one of the downsides of the different promotion set. Still, it can help you defend if your unit's positioned on a district tile, and it's still useful when you're using your melee attack - including against enemy units on any district.
Elite Guard	Zweihander or Urban Warfare	+1 additional attack if sufficient movement points are remaining. May move after attacking.	Despite the differing descriptions, this basically works the same way as Expert Marksman in the ranged promotion tree. Moving after attacking is most effective in the first few turns of a surprise war as it allows you to move in, fire and move out again without the risk of being counter-attacked.

Overall, these promotions offer slightly less in the way of damage output but an awful lot more when it comes to defence against enemy attacks. Thankfully, Immortals have a couple of extra tricks that help them exceed the damage output of Archers.

Oligarchy

Because Immortals are classed as melee infantry units, they can benefit from the Oligarchy government's +4 strength bonus, as well as its associated legacy card. This gives Immortals melee strength better than Horsemen (allowing them to defend reasonably well against all pre-medieval threats) and, more importantly, a stronger ranged attack than Archers can manage.

Great Generals

The earliest Great Generals in the game arrive in the classical era - too late to boost Archers but just just in time to make Immortals faster and stronger. If you can get a few Encampments built or captured early on, you might be able to grab a classical era Great General (while building Encampments uses up district capacity you could be using for districts that boost the Pairidaeza UI, you'll probably capture cities that have the right kind of districts so it's a fair trade-off).

An Immortal boosted by a Great General, Oligarchy/Oligarchic Legacy and Cyrus' surprise wars has 5 movement, 34 ranged strength and 44 melee strength, which makes them a fair bit better than Egypt's Maryannu Chariot Archers for a lower production cost!

Alternatively, an Immortal boosted by a Great General, Oligarchy/Oligarchic Legacy and Nader Shah's leader ability has 3 movement, 39 ranged strength and 49 melee strength - a ranged attack similar to Crossbowmen and a melee attack similar to Knights!

Melee Attack

Immortals can perform a melee attack like regular Swordsmen. This prevents the -17 strength penalty against city defences, allows Immortals to make use of Battering Rams and Siege Towers, and lets them take cities. Be careful how you use the melee attack against cities, as while it deals with city health at a faster rate, your units will take damage in the process. One possible compromise is to use melee attacks only when the Immortals need to capture a city or are close to a promotion - that way, they can heal up the damage they take.

Against units, you should generally stick to ranged attacks unless the defending unit has a particularly strong defence against them (e.g. the Tortoise promotion for melee infantry units, and especially Kongo's Ngao Mbeba units). You'll be able to tell when you hover over the unit.

Conclusion

Immortals are weird units with the advantages of both Archers and Swordsmen. More than perhaps any other UU, you can rely on them alone to lead your early conquests. Don't forget to grab Oligarchy and a Great General for maximum impact.

If you have no iron near your start, you can use a Crossbowman-based force instead as a backup, though remember to bring units with melee attacks (such as Pikemen or Coursers) as well to capture cities.

Cyrus' Leader Ability: Fall of Babylon (Part 1/2)

Only 100 grievances rather than the usual 150!

Cyrus' leader ability lets you really be the opportunist and declare wars on a whim, but its true power comes in how it can help you put together a strong empire really quickly.

Lower penalties for surprise wars

Surprise wars have the advantage that they can catch opponents off-guard, but come with bigger grievance penalties. For Cyrus, surprise wars are no more punishing than formal wars. As a consequence, you don't need to worry about denouncing civs and waiting some time before starting a war; start as soon as you want to. Less grievance penalties also means less loss of diplomatic favour, so you may still be able to keep a presence on the World Congress you wouldn't otherwise have.

+2 movement for 10 turns after declaring a surprise war

Extra movement allows you to pull off a lot of manoeuvres that you usually can't - such as destroying that Barbarian Encampment and then retreating a tile to avoid the Barbarian Quadriremes.

Starting on your first turn after you declare a surprise war, all your units gain +2 movement for ten turns. Because this bonus is only for a limited time, you'll want to avoid getting involved in drawn-out wars; make sure you have a strong enough army before you start a war. Alternatively, you can declare a surprise war against another distant opponent when the first ten turns are over, so long as you can handle the diplomatic repercussions.

On the front lines, extra movement allows your Immortals and other slow units to be as mobile as cavalry (except for the fact they don't ignore zone of control). This makes moving through rough terrain much easier, as well as evacuations of wounded units. Light cavalry units with the Depredation promotion become devastatingly effective pillagers, but even your slower units will still have a movement point left over after pillaging - particularly helpful for Immortals as their ranged attack makes it easier to make use of that final movement point.

Reinforcement also becomes faster with extra movement, especially from the classical era as it pushes slower units over the threshold where industrial roads start providing even more movement. This could cut your travel time by as much as 60%, making a five-turn journey possible in just two turns.

This bonus isn't just useful for war; explorers also will benefit. 2 extra points of movement for Scouts, naval units and so forth means you can uncover a lot more tiles and meet more civs and city-states.

Even civilian units gain from extra movement. If there's some unclaimed land you want to grab, you can get a Settler over much faster. You don't even need to worry about sending an escort in most cases as the Settler's high sight and mobility will allow them to dodge Barbarians. Meanwhile, Builders can move onto rough terrain and improve it in the same turn, letting you have better tiles a little bit sooner - or save time clearing features.

Religious units can exploit the extra movement to weave through enemy armies and evade being pillaged, especially with the Missionary Zeal belief. This is a risky course of action to take, but converting enemy cities while you're at war is a great source of era score, so it's worth considering if you're after a Golden Age.

This ability is powerful throughout the game, but it falls off in effectiveness late in the game when units tend to be faster. Still, it can help relatively slow units like Submarines catch up to faster enemies.

Occupied cities have no yield penalties

With the eyecatching movement speed bonus from surprise wars, it's easy to ignore the other huge advantage Cyrus brings to the table. Captured cities aren't prevented from growing, and produce things just as well as cities you founded yourself. You'll still have to deal with population loss and damaged buildings that need repairing, but recovery will be a lot faster.

So long as you make sure stronger captured cities have a reasonable supply of food to recover from population loss (internal trade is great for that), they'll end up competitive with your best cities. That's great for training reinforcements for your army, but alternatively you could fill out the districts you need or even start building wonders.

Aside from the advantages you gain to city development from this bonus, it helps to cover a potential weakness from Cyrus' surprise war movement speed. Because you only get a movement speed bonus for ten turns, your opponents are incentivised to try and drag the war out as long as they can. Without this bonus, this would mean dealing with captured cities that can't grow, but with it, you don't need to worry so much.

Occupied cities gain +10 loyalty from garrisoned units rather than the usual +5

Loyalty is a struggle for many warmongers to deal with, but so long as Persia can spare a military unit, it won't be much of a problem.

Capturing cities needs a melee attack, and as such a unit that captures a city will be injured. Leave the unit to heal up for a few turns and it can boost the city's loyalty at the same time. You can use that time to train a new cheap unit like a Scout in that city, allowing you to move out your more valuable units while still getting the loyalty boost.

This ability can reduce the need to move Governors around to secure conquests, allowing you to keep Governors where they'll provide the most effective bonuses, rather than moving them around to help secure conquests. Over the course of a game, that can add up to a lot of extra turns of bonuses compared to the typical domination-inclined civ.

Alternatively, you can stack this bonus, a Governor's presence in a city and maybe some loyalty-boosting policy cards to practically ignore the loyalty mechanic altogether, getting captured cities to full loyalty (and hence avoiding the penalties of low loyalty yields) sooner, and reducing your need to capture less important cities to secure control of the more important ones. This allows you to "snipe" enemy capital cities by attacking them directly, which will help considerably in speeding up your wars.

Cyrus' Leader Ability: Fall of Babylon (Part 2/2)

Bonus Alternative Strategies: Deception

Fast units following a surprise war, combined with the ability to snipe enemy capitals and Persia's UI, allows Persia to pull off an effective deception strategy. Emphasise Paridaezas (in particular, their gold output) and Holy Sites while making sure your army isn't large enough to be perceived as a threat. In multiplayer games, that can imply to other players that you're taking a culture-heavy path to victory. Save up as much gold and faith as you can (the Big Ben wonder will help), and build the Grand Masters' Chapel Government Plaza building.

When you're ready, use your saved up Pairidaeza gold and faith to purchase lots of units, and declare a surprise war on your first victim. 10 turns of extra movement will help you get those units towards their capital quickly, and your loyalty bonus will help you hold onto it.

Deception can work the other way as well - moving at least a couple of Immortals near a rival cultural civ early on can make a rival civ fear an early invasion. That might push the other civ into emphasising defence instead of cultural infrastructure or wonders, making it easier for you to get a head start with it.

Summary

• Formal wars are useless when playing as Cyrus' Persia; just go for surprise wars
  
• Make sure you have a reasonably large military before declaring war so you can clearly get the upper hand in the first ten turns of war
  
• Occupied cities can grow and produce as if you founded them yourself, which really helps with empire development.

Nader Shah's Leader Ability: Sword of Persia

Both Cyrus and Nader Shah excel in warfare, but there is a fair amount of distinction in the details. Cyrus loses a lot of potential if he stops declaring new wars, but Nader Shah has a little bit more versatility with more relevant advantages to peace-time.

+5 strength vs. full health units

Warfare

Normally, units are at their strongest on full health. After losing a point of health, they lose a point of strength, and every subsequent 10HP lost, they lose another point of strength. For Nader Shah, however, you can deal as much damage against full-health units as you could normally on units with just 50-59HP.

A consideration with this ability is which order in which you should fight enemies to do the most damage. The amount of extra damage you deal per point of strength accelerates - in other words, you will do more damage with Nader Shah by attacking with a stronger unit first before attacking with weaker units, rather than the other way around. As an example, if you have a Man-at-Arms and a Crossbowman and you want to attack a full-health enemy with both, attack with the Man-at-Arms first, then the Crossbowman.

Theological Combat

As with Cyrus, Nader Shah's leader ability can extend to theological combat. Notably, this allows any Apostles you have promoted with Debater to reliably kill rival Missionaries in one hit, and your Inquisitors to kill rival Missionaries in one hit about half the time.

Bonus domestic trade yields in non-founded cities

Persia already gets better yields from internal trading, but Nader Shah takes that even further once you can capture at least one city - something you can easily achieve early on with the help from Immortals. Sending a trade route from a captured city to any other city you own will yield a minimum of 1 food, 1 production, 5 gold, 2 faith and 1 culture - significantly better than any international trade route at this stage in the game.

Because this trade route bonus doesn't scale throughout the game, it's useful to expand your trade route capacity as much as possible early on. Build up Commercial Hubs with Markets, or Harbours with Lighthouses, where possible.

With 5 gold per turn from every internal trade route, and gold on top from the Pairidaeza improvement, Nader Shah can easily afford to keep units upgraded. Upgrade a few Immortals to Men-at-Arms and you can carry on with early warfare with relatively few issues - keep a few Immortals unpromoted for the time being as they defend better than Crossbowmen and their alternative promotions allows them to excel in certain niches.

As for the faith yield, it could in theory support a religious game with Nader Shah, but in many cases the need to train Immortals early on can get in the way of building Holy Sites. A more reliably useful application of faith arrives if you build the Grand Master's Chapel Government Plaza building, available once you have any tier two government (Monarchy, Merchant Republic or Theocracy). The Grand Master's Chapel allows you to purchase military units with faith - very helpful if you need extra support on the front lines, or for forming corps with the existing heavily-promoted melee infantry units you'll have by this point.

Conclusion

Like Cyrus, Nader Shah should launch an early war with Immortals. Unlike Cyrus, Nader Shah's internal trading advantages offer some general yields in peace as well as war, allowing you to switch away from domination more effectively if need be.

Unique Improvement: Pairidaeza

The Pairidaeza offers a reasonable mixture of culture and gold complementing Persia's civ ability to help you support Immortal maintenance and work towards key civics. Come the modern era, however, and it becomes a good source of tourism - both directly and indirectly thanks to its appeal boost.

Earlier usage

Although Pairidaezas can be constructed in the ancient era, don't overdo it - food and production are generally more important yields early on. Still, a bit of culture helps you get to the Oligarchy government sooner, and extra gold helps you upgrade Warriors to Immortals and manage Immortal maintenance costs.

The base yield of Pairidaezas is reasonable if not exceptional, but once you're done with Immortal wars you can add some adjacent districts for both an incredibly strong economy and rapid civic accumulation.

You can get adjacency bonuses from city centres, Commercial Hubs, Holy Sites and Theatre Squares. The former two offer gold, while the latter two offer culture. Generally, a point of culture is more valuable than a point of gold, though be careful. While Theatre Squares are worth building many of, you won't have a great need for Holy Sites until you need the faith for Naturalists in the modern era and Rock Bands in the modern era, unless you intend to faith-purchase units with the Grand Master's Chapel Government Plaza building. Still, your Immortal city conquests might result in you having multiple Holy Site cities, and you may as well use them.

Using the appeal bonus

Positioning districts and Pairidaezas can be a bit of a puzzle. You'll need to decide whether you want a greater Pairidaeza yield, more district adjacency bonuses or more tile appeal for national parks and seaside resorts later.

For the best appeal boost, use Governor Liang (the Surveyor) with the Parks and Recreation promotion so your Builders can create city parks. City parks provide +2 appeal to adjacent tiles and cannot be placed next to each other - a perfect match for Pairidaezas.


A good appeal-maximisation approach, albeit one that comes with relatively poor direct Pairidaeza yields.


Here is an alternative layout which compromises a bit on national park tourism to create stronger Pairidaeza yields, and eliminate the need for city parks. "Districts" refers to Holy Sites and Theatre Squares, both of which add appeal to adjacent tiles in addition to boosting adjacent Pairidaezas.

Although the optimal layout can be tricky to achieve - especially when you're dealing with cities you've captured which already have Holy Sites or Theatre Squares built, when you need to remove resources from some tiles or when you need to place new Holy Sites in sub-optimum locations - you can still place new Pairidaezas around existing national parks for strong tourism outputs.

Curiously, Pairidaezas may be constructed on desert tiles. Without the Petra wonder, Pairidaezas on desert tiles aren't especially worthwhile to work, but a formation of four Pairidezas offers just enough appeal that you can create a national park there. Although inferior to locations where you can plant trees for extra appeal, or mountainous regions, this does give open expanses of desert a use for Persia that other civs don't have.

Pairidaezas can be great for getting the most out of seaside resorts as well as national parks. It's easier to optimise seaside resorts as they don't have as strict positioning requirements.


This image shows examples of how you can position Pairidaezas on different shapes of coastline to ensure every spot has at as much appeal as possible. City parks can fill in gaps between Pairidaezas if you have them available.

Note that Ski Resorts cannot benefit here as mountain tile appeal is unaffected by appeal adjacency bonuses.

The appeal bonus could also be used in conjunction with a Preserve district for extra yields, though the need to place Pairidaezas next to districts for their full yields makes it difficult to maximise both.

Finally, appeal bonuses are also useful for maximising Neighbourhood housing. A couple of Pairidaezas adjacent to a tile on 0 appeal or better will be brought up to breathtaking appeal, and hence the maximum +6 housing bonus.

Conclusion

The Pairidaeza is a reasonable tile improvement for strengthening your economy or getting you through the civics tree earlier in the game, and offers a small appeal boost to help with tourism later on as well.

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 definitely your best option, seeing as Immortals gain a +4 strength boost from it. You can also enjoy faster experience gain and a decent array of policy card slots.

Complement it with the Warlord's Throne for a production bonus every time you take a city.

Tier Two

Merchant Republic is a good choice. Although it lacks military policy cards, which can be annoying if you want to continue down that route, it helps you build districts faster - useful when you're trying to maximise Pairidaeza yields. Monarchy is a fair alternative if you want a reasonably balanced government you can unlock quickly.

As for a Government Plaza building, the Intelligence Agency is a reliable choice due to the varied uses of more powerful (and more) Spies. Still, if you don't mind weakening your cultural victory potential to enhance a potential sneak attack, consider the Grand Master's Chapel so you can purchase land units with faith. Nader Shah's extra faith from internal trade makes the latter even stronger for him.

Tier Three

Democracy is a great choice if you're after a cultural victory as the high quantity of economic policy card slots allows you to take lots of tourism-boosting ones at once. However, Communism comes with the exclusive Collectivisation policy card which considerably boosts your internal trade yields, and has almost as many economic policy cards, making it a great alternative. Still want to go to war? Fascism offers a strength bonus to all your military units as well as a boost to unit production. Fast, strong units are quite a pain to be up against.

Complement this with the National History Museum for a cultural game, or the War Deparment for a domination approach.

Tier Four

Corporate Libertarianism's production bonus is useful for the domination game, while Digital Democracy is more appropriate for a cultural game.

Policy Cards

Ancient Era

Agoge (Military, requires Craftsmanship) - Helps you train Immortals faster.

Caravansaries (Economic, requires Foreign Trade) - With this policy card, all your internal trade routes will be producing 4 gold each - better than the base yield for international trading! That's very helpful for supporting Immortal-led forces with. For Nader Shah, internal trade routes from captured cities will now be up to a massive 7 gold per turn.

Conscription (Military, requires State Workforce) - Immortals are costlier to maintain than Archers; this policy card makes it a fair bit more manageable.

Classical Era

Equestrian Orders (Military, requires Military Training) - Even though Immortals cost half as much iron as regular Swordsmen, it's all too easy to run out of the resource when building up your army. This policy card helps you stretch a limited supply of iron further.

Medieval Era

Retainers (Military, requires Civil Service) - Garrisoned units in occupied cities provide extra loyalty. This policy card makes them provide amenities as well at no additional inconvenience, helping you handle war weariness.

Serfdom (Economic, requires Feudalism) - The medieval era is a good time to start building a fair number of Pairidaezas, as by this point you should have a few Commercial Hubs and Theatre Squares to boost their yields. Extra Builder charges should really help out there.

Renaissance Era

Logistics (Military, requires Mercantilism) - Extra movement in friendly territory is a bonus that's useful in peace and war alike. Slower units will become just fast enough to benefit from the movement speed bonus of industrial roads, but declare a surprise war as Cyrus and your units will zoom through your realm at breakneck speeds. Whether you're building new improvements, or getting military units to the front lines faster, that'll be useful.

Triangular Trade (Economic, requires Mercantilism) - Need a little bit more money from your powerful internal trade routes? Triangular Trade can help with that. You'll also get a little bit of faith as well.

Industrial Era

Public Works (Economic, requires Civil Engineering) - Get better Builders, sooner. Excellent for constructing Pairidaezas and Seaside Resorts.

Modern Era

Collectivisation (Economic, Communism only, requires Class Struggle) - Domestic trade becomes all the more powerful with this policy card, offering +4 food for each one.

Information Era

Ecommerce (Economic, requires Globalisation) - Good if you're continuing towards a domination victory, as you can enjoy more gold and production with your already-boosted internal trade routes. It also works for international trading, so Persia's extra trade route means they can get slightly more out of it than most other civs even if they're not enjoying their boost to gold and culture.

Online Communities (Economic, requires Social Media) - Unfortunately, you'll have to move away from so much internal trade later in the game to get tourism multipliers, but remember that Persia gets one more trade route than most other civs. That makes it a little bit easier to use Online Communities' huge tourism boost.

Future Era

(Cyrus favoured) Integrated Attack Logistics (Wildcard, requires Information Warfare) - Get an even bigger movement speed advantage in enemy territory!

Administration - Age Bonuses and World Congress

Age Bonuses

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

Isolationism (Dark Age, Classical to Industrial eras) - The boost to internal trade routes is powerful for both Cyrus and Nader Shah. Nader Shah receives stronger yields, but Cyrus' loyalty boost helps cover the additional loyalty pressures you tend to suffer during a Dark Age.

Exodus of the Evangelists (Golden Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - Although Persia isn't the strongest at religious victories, this bonus is worth noting due to its powerful synergy with Cyrus' or Nader Shah's leader abilities. Cyrus' religious units will be able to move too fast for enemies to be able to catch them, letting you convert enemy cities in war-time for a powerful era score boost. Nader Shah's Apostles can easily catch enemy Missionaries and destroy them with little trouble.

Monumentality (Golden Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - This synergises with Cyrus' leader ability to grant you exceptionally fast civilian units. If you've captured some Holy Sites in Immortal wars, you can use the faith to buy Settlers and rush them to their destinations without even needing an escort - their high speed and sight will keep them safe. For Nader Shah, this is a good way to use the faith he receives from internal trading.

(Nader Shah) Twilight Valour (Dark Age, Classical to Renaissance eras) - Best-taken in the medieval or renaissance game era, as Immortals' ranged attacks will not benefit from this strength boost. Nader Shah will be able to deal huge amounts of damage with melee hits on full-health enemies - and the more damage you do with melee, the less damage that melee unit will take.

Reform the Coinage (Dedication, Renaissance to Modern eras) - A simple way to get more era score out of forming trade routes; something you'll be doing anyway.

(Cyrus) Hic Sunt Dracones (Golden Age, Renaissance to Modern eras) - Want to take your speed advantages to the high seas? Build on it even further with this bonus. It's notably good for naval raider units as they tend to suffer from a low base movement speed.

Wish You Were Here (Golden Age, Atomic to Future eras) - Pairidaezas can produce extra appeal to create powerful national parks. This dedication doubles national park tourism. Put the two together and you'll have a great edge towards cultural victory.

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.

Border Control Treaty - Effect A (New districts built by this player act as culture bombs) on yourself.

Culture-bombing with Commercial Hubs, Holy Sites and Theatre Squares allows you to more easily get strong Pairidaeza locations.

(Cyrus) Public Relations - Effect B (The chosen civ generates 50% fewer grievances, and other civs generate 50% fewer grievances toward this civ) on yourself.

Even with a reduced grievance penalty, relying on surprise wars creates a lot of grievances. Reducing them will help mitigate the associated loss of diplomatic favour.

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) on yourself.

An extra trade route means more gold and culture from Persia's civ ability, and even more gold and faith from Nader Shah's leader ability.

(Cyrus) World Religion - Effect B (All players may condemn units of the chosen religion, and doing so grants 25 diplomatic favor) against a strong rival religion.

Religious units are relatively fast, but with the surprise war speed bonus it's a lot easier to track them down and condemn them for the bonus diplomatic favour.

Administration - Religion and City-States

Pantheons

Dance of the Aurora or Desert Folklore - Pairidaezas can make desert and tundra regions suitable for national parks. Holy Sites offer appeal and make Pairidaezas stronger, but it's usually hard to balance that with trying to get lots of faith out of Holy Site adjacency bonuses. With one of these pantheons, you don't need to worry about that tricky balancing act.

Earth Goddess - Pairidaezas extra appeal you can get more of your empire's tiles offering bonus faith.

God of the Forge - Helps you train Immortals and other early units faster.

Religious Settlements - A bonus Settler early in the game makes it all the easier to track down those vital iron spots so you can start training Immortals.

Religious Beliefs

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

Choral Music (Follower) - Building up Holy Sites to boost your Pairidaezas? Enjoy getting even more culture.

Jesuit Education (Follower) - Pairidaezas benefit from you having lots of Holy Sites and Theatre Squares. Use the excess faith from the former to fill up the latter, and you can really boost your culture output.

Lay Ministry (Founder) - Not an especially strong bonus but has synergy with both Holy Sites and Theatre Squares, which boost Pairidaeza yields.

Missionary Zeal (Enhancer) - Want to play the religious game? Declaring a surprise war will make your religious units faster as well as your military units, and coupled with this belief, they'll move at incredible speeds.

City-States

Akkad (Militaristic) - This city-state won't allow Immortals to deal full damage against city defences via their ranged attack, but will still allow them to do full damage with melee without the need of a Battering Ram. This can save you a bit of production, and can also make your army more mobile as Great General-boosted Immortals move faster than support units.

Bologna (Scientific) - For the best Pairidaeza yields, you'll want plenty of Theatre Squares. With suzerainity over Bologna, they'll produce lots of GWAM points, excellent for helping you work towards cultural victory.

Chinguetti (Religious) - Can help you get more faith out of internal trade - useful for buying Naturalists later in the game. The catch is that you need a majority religion, or a religion of your own.

Hattusa (Scientific) - If you lack iron near your starting location, being suzerain over Hattusa may be the only way you ever get to train Immortals early in the game.

Hunza (Trade) - Using your excellent roads to trade across long distances? You can get extra gold from this city-state.

Kabul (Militaristic) - Immortals' ranged attacks mean they'll be defending less and attacking more than regular Swordsmen, so you'll be gaining experience very rapidly with this suzerain bonus.

(Nader Shah) Mogadishu (Trade) - Frequently, Nader Shah's best trade routes will be between the less developed captured cities and a city closer to home with lots of districts. These long trade routes can be vulnerable to pillaging; being suzerain over Mogadishu at least makes the water portions of these routes safe.

Wolin (Militaristic) - Helps you get an early Great General without the need to spend precious production on an Encampment.

Administration - Wonders and Great People

Wonders

Pyramids (Ancient era, Masonry technology) - A nice wonder to capture as you may need to dedicate a lot of Builder charges to Pairidaezas.

Colossus (Classical era, Shipbuilding technology) - Extra trade route capacity goes further for Persia for most civs, as you can benefit from the gold and culture boosts.

(Cyrus) Great Lighthouse (Classical era, Celestial Navigation technology) - On water-heavy maps, this wonder will go well in conjunction with Cyrus' leader ability to give you an incredibly mobile navy.

Jebel Barkal (Classical era, Iron Working technology) - A good source of faith to prepare you for building National Parks later. Unlike most faith wonders, you don't need Holy Sites or a religion to make good use of this.

Petra (Classical era, Mathematics technology) - Pairidaezas can be constructed on desert tiles. Petra makes desert tiles amazing. Put the two together, and you can make an incredibly rich city.

(Cyrus) Meenakshi Temple (Medieval era, Civil Service civic) - If you decide to use Cyrus' movement speed bonus to aid the religious game, this wonder will help your religious units move even faster.

University of Sankore (Medieval era, Education technology) - Internal trading can now offer science and faith on top of the food, production, culture and gold!

Great Zimbabwe (Renaissance era, Banking technology) - Find a city with lots of bonus resources and enjoy the sheer amount of gold it can produce, especially in conjunction with Persia's civ ability and Nader Shah's leader ability.

Big Ben (Industrial era, Economics technology) - Persia's abilities to accumulate gold make Big Ben's 50% boost to your current treasury powerful. This is especially strong if you're aiming to enhance Cyrus' surprise wars by purchasing lots of units immediately before declaring it.

Cristo Redentor (Modern era, Mass Media civic) - Cristo Redentor makes all seaside resorts doubly effective. This means every point of appeal a seaside resort has adds 4 tourism instead of 2; having two Pairidaezas next to a seaside resort can now add 8 points of tourism!

Eiffel Tower (Modern era, Steel technology) - All of those appeal-heavy tiles your Pairidaezas have made will be even more effective thanks to the empire-wide +2 appeal boost on offer here. All national parks will now generate 8 more tourism, and seaside resorts 4 (8 with Cristo Redentor).

Golden Gate Bridge (Modern era, Combustion technology) - While not as impactful as the Eiffel Tower for your entire empire, its effect on a single city's tourism output is still huge, with +4 appeal for all tiles and +100% tourism from all its improvements and national parks.

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

(Cyrus) Hanno the Navigator (Great Admiral) - This fast Galley can become even faster after you declare a surprise war, making it excellent for early exploration.

Zhang Qian (Great Merchant) - More trade route capacity.

Medieval Era

Bi Sheng (Great Engineer) - Whether you built an early Encampment to try and grab a classical-era Great General, or you built a range of districts aiming to maximise Pairidaeza yields, Bi Sheng's extra district capacity will help ensure that city can still construct other important districts.

Ibn Fadlan (Great Merchant) - More trade route capacity.

(Cyrus) Leif Erikson (Great Admiral) - Combine early ocean crossing and extra sight with the surprise war movement boost, and you can discover lots of the world before most other civs get a chance.

Marco Polo (Great Merchant) - More trade route capacity.

Zheng He (Great Admiral) - A free Trader and more trade route capacity.

Renaissance Era

Raja Todar Mal (Great Merchant) - Makes internal trade provide more money. Who needs international trade now? Well, aside from the tourism multipliers they offer.

Industrial Era

Ada Lovelace (Great Engineer) - Extra district capacity lets you squeeze in a Holy Site for its Pairidaeza-boosting, appeal-increasing or faith-yielding functions, or maybe a Theatre Square. Meanwhile, the Computers eureka is helpful as the Computers technology doubles your tourism output.

Gustave Eiffel (Great Engineer) - Both the Eiffel Tower and the Cristo Redentor are crucial wonders for appeal-centric cultural victories, and Gustave Eiffel can help you to rush them.

(Cyrus) Horatio Nelson (Great Admiral) - Cyrus' huge movement boost after declaring a surprise war makes it easier to make the most of the flanking bonus on offer here, as you can more easily surround foes.

Modern Era

Alvar Aalto (Great Engineer) - Bonus appeal for a city, meaning even more tourism for its national parks and seaside resorts. Be sure to switch nearby national park and seaside resort tiles to be within this city's limits if they aren't already.

John Rockefeller (Great Merchant) - Get more gold out of your trade routes.

Sarah Breedlove (Great Merchant) - While this bonus does require you to trade internationally rather than internally, remember that Persia has one more trade route over most civs, making this bonus slightly easier to use than it may otherwise be.

Atomic Era

(Cyrus) Georgy Zhukov (Great General) - Much like Horatio Nelson's flanking bonus boost on the seas, Georgy Zhukov's bonus on land works well with Cyrus' leader ability.

Melitta Bentz (Great Merchant) - An extra trade route and more tourism from international trade.

Information Era

Charles Correa (Great Engineer) - Two points of bonus appeal for its city. A tile in the city with two adjacent Pairidaezas will be immediately at Breathtaking level assuming no negatives to appeal like rainforests or mines are adjacent.

Counter-Strategies

Persia can be powerful warmonger, and they can be a threat for cultural victory as well. However, they're vulnerable to pillaging and - in Cyrus' case - preemptive declarations of war.

Civilization Ability: Satrapies

Extra trade route capacity

More trade routes means more routes to plunder. This, along with the Pairidaeza improvement, can make Persia very vulnerable to light cavalry such as Horsemen and Coursers, which are excellent pillagers.

Bonuses for internal trade

Persia is incentivised to keep trade within their own borders - which means you know where they're all likely to be. Internal trading tends to cover shorter distances than international trade, often resulting in Traders being easier to catch and raid.

Roads are a tier better

This makes no difference at all from the modern era onwards or when Persia starts using railroads, and makes relatively little difference in the ancient era, but can be powerful between the classical and industrial eras. For Cyrus, after declaring a surprise war, Persia's armies can rapidly zoom through their territory and even slower units like Spearmen can catch up to cavalry units.

The trick is to target parts of Persia's road network that go over rough terrain or rivers, and pillage it. The resulting gap in the road will greatly slow their units down until they can dedicate a Builder to fixing it.

Cyrus' Leader Ability: Fall of Babylon

Surprise war bonuses

If Cyrus is amassing troops on your border, consider declaring war - even if you're not completely prepared. There might be diplomatic consequences from doing so, but it ensures the war is on your terms and not his. Try a joint war if possible so you can at least share the burden of fighting him and minimise the grievance penalties.

If you're the target of a surprise war, make use of defensive terrain to ensure you can delay Cyrus as much as possible. The less Cyrus achieves in the first ten turns, the better.

Furthermore, be careful of pillagers (especially light cavalry) as they can very quickly tear apart your improvements and districts apart. Use your roads and some cavalry of your own and you should be able to catch up to them. Later in the game, building railroads in your land should help your units go fast as well.

Occupied city bonuses

If Cyrus takes one of your cities, and you're not sure you can immediately recapture it, you might want to employ scorched-earth tactics - that is to say, pillage everything around it. Cities Persia captures off you won't have penalties to yields or growth and can rapidly contribute to their war effort. Don't let that happen! Pillaging farms, Aqueducts and Neighbourhoods will be particularly helpful as cutting down the city's housing limit will stop it from rapidly regrowing to its pre-conquest peak.

The loyalty bonus only works if Cyrus is currently occupying the city. If he is at peace with the civ whose city he captured, he will no longer receive the +5 loyalty boost. This means there are some cities he can hold in war-time he won't be able to in peacetime. That being said, prolonging a war against Cyrus is usually better than declaring an early peace with the hopes the city will flip back to your control.

Cyrus' Agenda: Opportunist

Cyrus likes civs that declare surprise wars, and dislikes those who don't.

Surprise wars have reduced grievance penalties earlier in the game. If you want to please Cyrus (and put him off attacking you), then might be a good time to do so. On the other hand, the AI like to attack civs which are already at war so be careful!

If you're playing a peaceful game and border Cyrus, be prepared for a war at any moment. Training a few military units might cost you a wonder now, but could very well save your empire later.

Nader Shah's Leader Ability: Sword of Persia

Strength vs. full health units

When fighting Nader Shah, it is better to let your units heal to 90-99HP than all the way to 100. Remember the rates at which units heal:

• In an owned city centre or district, it's 20 health per turn.
  
• In other friendly territory, it's 15.
  
• In neutral territory, it's 10.
  
• In enemy territory, it's 5.

It'll be better to let an 80HP unit heal outside a district than inside one when fighting Nader Shah.

Health management aside, another strategy you can use against Nader Shah is to keep your units away from his strongest attackers. Nader Shah deals more damage if he hits with a strong unit followed by a weaker one, compared to the other way around.

Trade route yield bonuses

Nader Shah can't get his bonus trade route yields if he only has founded cities, but unless you're in his direct line of fire, there probably won't be much you can do to stop him fighting early on.

Because Nader Shah has to trade from captured cities for his best yields, look out for cities on the periphery of Persia to find the bulk of his Traders to pillage. Countering this bonus becomes very much like countering Persia's general trade route bonuses.

Nader Shah's Agenda: Sword of Persia

Nader Shah's agenda is simple - he likes civs with a high number of land units, and dislikes those with a low number.

Domination-inclined civs that have not yet gone to war, or haven't yet incurred many grievances in war, are the most likely to meet this agenda, as are civs that might fight early on but settle down into a more peaceful playstyle like Sumeria. Remember that this agenda specifically is about land units - naval powers like England won't have an advantage here.

Unique Unit: Immortal

Immortals attack like Archers but defend like Swordsmen. Horsemen cost less than Immortals do and deal good amounts of damage to them. Keep Spearmen without the Thrust promotion far away from them. Swordsmen of your own are also good, especially with the Battlecry or Tortoise promotions.

Remember that Immortals can perform both melee and ranged attacks, making them the only unit with a ranged attack that can capture cities.

Unique Improvement: Pairidaeza

Pairidaezas produce +1 appeal. Pillaged Pairidaezas - and pillaged districts next to them that boost them - produce -1 appeal. Careful use of Cavalry, Helicopters with the Depredation promotion or bomber-class aircraft can quickly set back Persia's tourism output while also giving you some nice pillaging rewards.

As the easiest way for Pairidaeza improvements to make decent yields early on is to position them next to a city centre, look out for those areas for the best pillaging targets. If you're conquering Persian cities, pillage as many of the improvements as you can along the way as they will be removed when you capture the city.

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.

[Rottenguts]

Excellent guide very informative and well done!

[Kedi]

Oh well made!