Civilization VII is a considerably different game compared to Civ V and Civ VI. I'm starting with civilization guides while I figure out how I want to tackle the problem of creating guides for leaders that can change civs 3 times in a single game. Unfortunately, the lack of Hot Seat multiplayer severely limits my ability to do specific testing of things like the damage dealt by unique units in different circumstances, certain diplomatic actions, pillage effects, and other things. Hopefully, Hot Seat will be added soon. As always, I welcome feedback. I will probably need a lot of feedback as I learn the new game and experiment with the format of these guides. Of course, you can also support the creation of this content by becoming a Patron.

As has been my tradition with these guides, I plan to start by focusing my attention on civilizations and leaders who have never been playable in Civilization games before. So this guide will highlight the rookie civilization of Askum.

The Persian prophet Mani considered Aksum to be one of the four great powers of the 3rd century C.E., alongside Persia, Rome, and China. It's strategic position straddling the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, separating the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean, gave Aksum a de facto monopoly on trade between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, and they were among the first African polities to mint their own coins. They also built impressive stele monuments throughout the kingdom, as well as complex agricultural infrastructure, such as irrigation, dams, and terraces.

The Aksumites in Civilization VII are a naval trade-oriented civilization who also indirectly favor cultural development and wonder construction.

DISCLAIMER:

Civilization VII is a "live service" game, which means it will be periodically updated with new content, new features, and balance changes. I may update this guide if Firaxis updates the game such that it considerably impacts this civilization, or if new strategies are discovered by the community. This guide is up to date as of the 1.2.0 patch on 29 April 2025.

I welcome any feedback or suggestions that readers wish to offer. Feel free to post on the linked forums, or by posting a comment at the bottom of the page.

Manor Lords had a big update recently (with more coming soon), which has encouraged a lot more people to start playing it again. I even started a Let's Play, with commentary on my secondary YouTube channel, "MegaBearsFan_Plays". I've been playing the game off and on since it's initial launch into Early Access, and so I thought I might also take this opportunity to share some tips and advice that I have for any players who are new to the game, or who might be struggling.

Remember that it's Early Access

The first "tip" is actually more of a disclaimer. If you play Manor Lords, please remember that it is an Early Access game. Though it is playable (and quite good), it is not fully-featured. It contains bugs, isn't finely-tuned or balanced yet, and has entire features and modes that don't actually work yet. For example, take a look at the Policies menu, and you'll notice that there are only a couple working policies, and the rest are place-holders that cannot be activated.

More importantly for the purposes of this guide, the game will change considerably over the coming months (or years), and leading up to its eventual retail release. These tips apply specifically to the Early Access build (in early 2025), and may not be relevant in the final release version of the game. I may write an additional tips guide for the full retail release, if I think the game has changed enough to warrant additional tips.

Civilization VII is a considerably different game compared to Civ V and Civ VI. As such, the leader guides that I wrote for those games won't quite work for Civ VII. Instead, I'm going to be experimenting with a slightly different format of doing independent guides for civilizations and for leaders separately. Leader guides will be complicated, so I'm starting with civilization guides while I figure out how I want to tackle the problem of creating guides for leaders that can change civs 3 times in a single game. Unfortunately, the lack of Hot Seat multiplayer severely limits my ability to do specific testing of things like the damage dealt by unique units in different circumstances, certain diplomatic actions, pillage effects, and other things. Hopefully, Hot Seat will be added soon.

As always, I welcome feedback. I will probably need a lot of feedback as I learn the new game and experiment with the format of these guides. Of course, you can also support the creation of this content by becoming a Patron.

As has been my tradition with these guides, I plan to start by focusing my attention on civilizations and leaders who have never been playable in Civilization games before. So the first guide will cover the rookie civilization of the Mississippians.

For almost a millennium before the arrival of Columbus in the Americas, southeastern North America was dominated by a group of indigenous peoples called the Mississippians. The Mississippians were not a single, unified group, but rather a collection of tribes that shared similar cultural practices. The most defining of these practices was the construction of impressive earthwork structures, such as mounds and pyramids that were used for functions ranging from housing, to temples, to mausoleums. Though they did not have a system of writing, they still created sophisticated social structures and permanent settlements, and their trade networks ranged from the Great Lakes and Rocky Mountains, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The remains of the several remaining mounds at Cahokia (outside of St. Louis) are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and are open for public visitation.

The Mississippians are an expansionist, trade-oriented Antiquity civilization in Sid Meier's Civilization VII. They seek to acquire Resources by claiming new land, and by trading with foreign Settlements.

Civilization VII is right around the corner. For the first time in the Civilization series' history, it will actually have competition in its specific niche. One of those competitors is Microsoft's Ara: History Untold. Of the various games in the "historic 4x grand strategy" genre, Ara might very well be the most unique -- both to its benefit, and also to its own detriment.

Part Civilization, part city-builder

In addition to the obvious comparisons to Civilization, Ara: History Untold feels almost as much like a medieval survival-village-crafting game along the lines of Banished, Settlement Survival, or Manor Lords. The bulk of the game is spent building resource harvesters, building crafting buildings, and then trying to set up an efficient and self-sufficient economic engine that converts those harvested resources into manufactured goods. As you research new technologies and advance through the eras, you'll unlock new resources and recipes for new things you can craft with those resources. In fact, most of the tech tree is dedicated to unlocking new resources and craft recipes.

There is a huge variety of resources and manufactured goods.

The limited space available to each city will prevent you from ever really feeling like you've built a perfectly efficient machine. There's enough different crafting buildings, enough different resources, and enough different crafting recipes that you won't have enough room to build all the collectors and crafters for everything. So you'll be switching what crafting building is crafting what goods periodically, as certain infrastructure or units may require specific goods. Goods can also be assigned to buildings in order to "accelerate" their crafting efficiency, or to the cities directly in order to satisfy the needs of the population or to provide passive buffs.

For example, if you build a butcher shop in one of your cities, you can assign it to craft either salted fish or salted meat. If you choose salted meat, then you can assign a cow, pig, or venison, as well as optional salt or spices in order to speed up the production of that meat. You can then take that crafted meat and assign it to a city to provide extra food for the population.

Similarly, you can harvest raw iron ore from mines, process them into ingots in a forge, then combine the iron ingots with coal in a foundry to produce steel. That steel can then be used to create everything from skyscrapers to house more population, to luxuries like consumer automobiles and refrigerators, to tanks and battleships.

Candles can be equipped into housing to improve the knowledge rating of the residents.

And there are so many things that you can craft. There's candles, furniture, pottery, linen, medicinal herbs, pastries, coffee, microchips, and so forth. These sorts of items can be assigned to other buildings to provide certain passive benefits. A candle, for instance, can be assign to a residential dwelling to increase the "knowledge" rating of the city, which speeds up your technology research rate. Presumably, the people living in that dwelling are using the candle light to study books and learn things through the night. Similarly, metals, glass, and fuels can be used to craft lampposts, which can be installed in cities to reduce crime and improve the city's security rating.

Firaxis recently released the second civilization and leader pack for its New Frontiers DLC Pass. This pack includes alternate versions of the leaders Teddy Roosevelt and Catherine de Medicci, and the new Secret Societies game mode. The main part of the new DLC, however, is the new civilization, Ethiopia, lead by Menelik II. I expect to have the guide for Lady Six Sky of the Maya published within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, a preview of the Maya guide is already available to my Patrons via Patreon.

Paleontologists believe that Ethiopia was one of the earliest homes of anatomically modern homo sapiens, and that humans crossed through Ethiopia on their way to the Middle East and Asia. Ethiopia is the source for some of the oldest known examples of stone-tipped human weapons and tools, dated at 279,000 years old. Ruins in Bale Mountains suggest the earliest known example of permanent human residence at high altitudes. The earliest kingdoms in Ethiopia were founded out of Semetic traditions, and the region has been heavily influenced by both Islam and Christianity, making Ethiopia a unique melting pot for all three of the Abrahamic religions. Ethiopia and Liberia were the only two African nations to retain their sovereignty during the European colonizations of Africa, and held off an invasion from colonial Italy in 1896 before eventually being conquered by fascist Italy in the lead-up to World War II.

Emperor Menelik II helped to modernize Ethiopia, and also establish Ethiopia as an independent nation after defeating the first Italian invasion in 1896. Menelik II went on to expand Ethiopia's territory and established a Council of Ministers that served long after his death and advised at least two other emperors (and conspired to depose one of them). He adopted a strict prohibition of the slave trade within Ethiopia, and is fondly remembered by the people of Ethiopia for his tremendous benevolence to the poor.

DISCLAIMER:
Civilization VI is still a "living game". Strategies for the game (and for specific leaders and civs) may change as Firaxis applies balance patches, introduces new features, or expands the game through further DLC or expansion packs, or as the Civ community discovers new strategies or exploits. As such, the following strategy guide may change from time to time. I will try to keep it up-to-date, and will make notations whenever changes are made. I'll also post links in the official 2K forums and CivFanatics, where I'll also report any changes made. If possible and practical, I will try to retain the original content of the strategy for posterity.

I welcome any feedback or suggestions that readers wish to offer. Feel free to post on the linked forums, or by posting a comment at the bottom of the page.

This guide is up to date as of the release of the "New Frontiers" Ethiopia DLC pack (July 2020) (ver. 1.0.3.31)

Ethiopia likes to build its cities in the hills. Doing so grants access to the Rock-Hewn church, which grants faith from adjacent hills and mountains. A portion of Ethiopia's hill-folk faith will be converted to science and culture.