I’ve found that one of the most game-changing experiences in Civilization 6 is the Secret Societies mode. It adds a hidden layer of strategy that can completely reshape your path to victory. When you pick a society, you’re locked in for the whole game, making a pact that grants you access to unique governors, powerful abilities, and exclusive units and buildings. I’m going to walk you through what I’ve learned about each of the four societies: the cunning Owls of Minerva, the mystical Hermetic Order, the shadowy Voidsingers, and the aggressive Sanguine Pact. Let’s dive into their secrets so you can figure out how to best use their power to dominate the world.
Getting the Invite: How to Join a Society
Getting into a secret society all starts with a discovery. Each one has a specific trigger that gets them to notice you. Once they make contact, you’ll get an invitation. It’ll cost you one Governor Title to accept, and remember, it’s a commitment for the rest of the game—you can only join one, so you have to choose carefully. Here’s how you get on their radar:
- Owls of Minerva: Just send an Envoy to any city-state for the first time.
- Hermetic Order: You’ll need to discover a Natural Wonder.
- Voidsingers: Pop open a Tribal Village (one of those goody huts).
- Sanguine Pact: Clear out a Barbarian Outpost.
The Owls of Minerva: The Power of Coin and Conspiracy
If you like playing as the puppet master pulling the strings from the shadows, the Owls of Minerva are for you. Their game is all about finance, espionage, and diplomacy. They’re the perfect choice if you prefer a subtle, manipulative path to world domination, using your wealth and information as your sharpest weapons.
A Head Start in the Early Game
Once you pledge yourself to the Owls, you get an immediate and powerful advantage: an extra Economic Policy Card slot. This early-game boost is incredibly flexible, letting you run powerful economic policies way sooner than your opponents to speed up your city growth, gold output, or settler production.
On top of that, your trade routes to city-states become a direct source of influence. For every trade route to a city-state, you get a free Envoy. This is a potent ability that lets you quickly become the Suzerain of several city-states, grabbing their unique bonuses and building a powerful diplomatic alliance. If you’re playing a civ with trade route bonuses, like Egypt or Spain, you can become a diplomatic powerhouse.
Here’s a pro-tip: Play as Cleopatra of Egypt. Your trade routes already give you extra Gold. With the Owls of Minerva, each trade route to a city-state not only fills your treasury but also hands you an Envoy. This two-for-one deal lets you rapidly lock down Suzerainty over key city-states, using their resources and bonuses to fuel your empire.
The Gilded Vault: Mixing Gold and Culture
In the Medieval Era, the Owls unlock their unique building: the Gilded Vault. It replaces the Bank in your Commercial Hub, and not only does it provide Gold and Great Merchant points, but it also generates Culture equal to the hub’s adjacency bonus. This is where you can turn your economic centers into cultural engines.
You’ll want to start strategically placing your Commercial Hubs next to Harbors, Rivers, and other districts to maximize those adjacency bonuses. A well-placed Commercial Hub with a Gilded Vault can seriously boost your progress through the civics tree, helping you unlock powerful policies and governments much faster. This works especially well for civs that can get high-adjacency Commercial Hubs, like Germany with its Hansa.
Spies and Late-Game Control
As the game progresses, the Owls of Minerva shift their focus to espionage. Their later promotions give you more spies and make them better at their jobs. You’ll find your spies succeeding more often, whether they’re stealing tech, sabotaging production, or stirring up rebellion in rival cities.
One of their most powerful late-game abilities is the ‘Master Plan’ promotion in the Atomic Era. With it, your successful offensive spy missions will steal a percentage of the target city’s Gold, Science, and Culture. This can be a devastating blow to a rival while giving you a nice boost. If you enjoy the cloak-and-dagger side of the game, the Owls of Minerva give you an unmatched edge.
Best Civilizations for the Owls of Minerva
- Germany: The Hansa’s production bonus combined with the Gilded Vault’s culture creates an economic and industrial monster.
- Greece (Pericles): Pericles gets bonus Culture for every city-state he’s Suzerain of, which pairs perfectly with the Owls’ ability to generate Envoys through trade.
- Mali: The Owls amplify Mali’s already incredible gold generation, letting them essentially buy their way to any victory condition.
The Hermetic Order: The Quest for Arcane Knowledge
If you’re the kind of player who believes knowledge is the ultimate power, the Hermetic Order offers a path to scientific and esoteric dominance. This society is for the planners and thinkers who see the world as a web of unseen energies just waiting to be tapped into.
The Magic of Ley Lines
When you join the Hermetic Order, your whole view of the map changes. You’ll suddenly be able to see Ley Lines, a new tile feature no one else can see. Any specialty district you place next to a Ley Line gets a standard adjacency bonus. This opens up incredible new options for city planning, letting you build super-powered districts in places that would otherwise be mediocre.
The key to making the Hermetic Order work is to find and settle near clusters of Ley Lines. A city with several Ley Lines can become a massive producer of science, culture, or production. It’s a high-risk, high-reward strategy that really depends on how the Ley Lines are scattered across your map.
Think about it like this: You find a spot with three Ley Lines touching. You can settle a city there and place a Campus, a Theater Square, and an Industrial Zone all next to them, giving each a huge head start and creating a city that excels at everything.
The Alchemical Society: Turning Science to Gold
The Hermetic Order’s unique building is the Alchemical Society, which replaces the University. This building is fantastic; it doesn’t just boost Science and provide Great Scientist points, but it also generates Gold equal to the Campus’s adjacency bonus. You’re literally turning knowledge into cash, which is a powerful economic engine.
With the Alchemical Society, a high-adjacency Campus becomes a source of both intellectual and financial strength. This is a huge help for science-focused civs, as it helps pay for the high maintenance costs of a large, technologically advanced empire.
The Power of Great People
The real power of the Hermetic Order kicks in during the later eras. Their ‘Indoctrination’ promotion, available in the Industrial Era, makes your Ley Lines dramatically better. For every Great Person you earn, all of your Ley Lines get +1 of that yield. So, every Great Scientist adds +1 Science to every single Ley Line you own.
This creates an amazing feedback loop: getting Great People improves your Ley Lines, which in turn helps you get even more Great People. This can lead to some insane exponential growth in your yields, turning your cities into production, science, and culture behemoths. Their final promotion, ‘Occult Research’, is a city project that gives you even more Science and Great Person points based on how many Ley Lines are in the city.
Best Civilizations for the Hermetic Order
- Scotland: Robert the Bruce’s ability to get extra Science and Production in happy cities, combined with high-yield Ley Lines, can lead to a ridiculously fast science victory.
- Sweden (Kristina): Sweden is already focused on generating Great People, so they can empower their Ley Lines very quickly.
- Brazil (Pedro II): Pedro gets back some of the Great Person point cost after recruiting one, which feeds perfectly into the Hermetic Order’s need for a constant stream of Great People.
The Voidsingers: The Faith of a New Age
The Voidsingers are for players who love a strong faith game but want to give it a dark, insidious twist. They are a mysterious, nihilistic cult that worships ancient, otherworldly beings, and their path to victory is through faith, loyalty pressure, and subverting their enemies from the inside out.
The Old God Obelisk: A Better Monument
The first thing the Voidsingers give you is the Old God Obelisk, which replaces the Monument. It’s a major upgrade, providing not just Culture and Loyalty, but also a good amount of Faith. The best part is that it comes with a Great Work slot that can hold any type of Great Work.
This early and steady source of Faith can give you a huge head start on founding a Pantheon and a Religion. That flexible Great Work slot is also incredibly useful for housing Relics or anything else you pick up, boosting your Culture and Tourism right from the start.
The Chorus of Madness: Turning Faith into Everything
In the Medieval Era, the Voidsingers unlock the ‘Chorus’ promotion, a game-changing ability that passively converts 20% of your empire-wide Faith per turn into Gold, Science, and Culture. This is an incredibly powerful bonus that lets you turn your religious output into real progress across your empire.
With this promotion, a strong Faith economy becomes the engine for everything you do. You can focus on generating Faith from Holy Sites, wonders, and city-states, and just watch your science, culture, and treasury grow right alongside it. This makes the Voidsingers surprisingly versatile, able to pivot to different victory types.
The Cultist: Spreading Dissent for Fun and Profit
The Industrial Era brings the Voidsingers’ coolest and most powerful tool, in my opinion: the Cultist. This is a unique unit you can buy with Faith. You can send it into foreign territory and use its charges to crush the Loyalty of enemy cities. A few well-placed Cultists can be enough to flip a city to your side without you ever having to declare war.
When a Cultist uses up all its charges, it’s consumed and generates a Relic of the Void. These special relics provide Faith, Culture, and Gold, and you can slot them into your Old God Obelisks to generate a ton of Tourism. This creates a perfect synergy: using Cultists to weaken your enemies also directly helps you win a Cultural Victory. Their final promotion, ‘Dark Summoning’, is a city project that makes your Cultists even better at destroying enemy loyalty.
Best Civilizations for the Voidsingers
- Ethiopia: Menelik II generates Science and Culture from cities on Hills, and when you combine that with the Voidsingers’ Faith-to-yields conversion, you get a civ that can excel at everything.
- Russia (Peter): With their Lavra district and their ability to generate massive amounts of Faith from Tundra, Russia and the Voidsingers are a match made in heaven (or maybe the void).
- Khmer: The Khmer can build Aqueducts that provide both Food and Faith, making them a natural fit for the Voidsingers’ faith-based strategy.
The Sanguine Pact: For the Love of the Hunt
If you just want to watch the world burn and lead an army of unkillable warriors, the Sanguine Pact is calling your name. This is a society of immortal, bloodthirsty fighters who live for the chaos of battle. They offer a direct and aggressive path to victory by giving you powerful Vampire units that just won’t die.
The Immortal Vampire
As soon as you join the Sanguine Pact, you get a Vampire unit. This isn’t your average soldier. Vampires are immortal. When they’re defeated, they don’t die; they just retreat to your capital (or the nearest Vampire Castle) to heal up. This makes them an incredibly tough and reusable military unit.
Vampires also get stronger as the game goes on. They gain Combat Strength every time an adjacent enemy unit dies. This bonus is capped against barbarians, but against other civs, there’s no limit. A veteran Vampire can become one of the strongest units on the entire map. Plus, a Vampire’s base Combat Strength always matches your strongest unit, so they never become obsolete.
Vampire Castles: Forts and Yield Boosters
In the Medieval Era, the Sanguine Pact lets you build Vampire Castles. These unique tile improvements are built by your Vampires and act as powerful forts that you can even airlift units to later on.
But their real strength is how they can supercharge your capital. A Vampire Castle gives your capital the yields of all adjacent tiles. This means a well-placed Vampire Castle surrounded by high-yield tiles like mines, farms, or even districts can provide a massive boost to your capital’s food, production, and other resources. You can turn your capital into a hyper-productive engine for your war machine.
Here’s how to use it: Find a tile that’s surrounded by hills and improve them all with mines. Then, build a Vampire Castle on that central tile. Your capital will now get all the production from those adjacent mines, which will dramatically speed up your unit production and wonder building.
A Growing Army of Immortals
As you move through the eras and promote your Sanguine Pact governor, you’ll get more Vampires, up to a total of four. Each new Vampire can be used to push your military advantage or to build another yield-boosting Vampire Castle. Their final promotion even lets Vampires build a second castle.
The Sanguine Pact playstyle is all about relentless aggression and smart expansion. Your immortal Vampires can lead the charge, soaking up damage and weakening enemy defenses, while your regular army follows behind to clean up. The Vampire Castles give you strategic strongpoints and the economic backbone to support your conquests.
Best Civilizations for the Sanguine Pact
- Aztec (Montezuma): The Aztecs can use builder charges to rush districts, which works well with the Sanguine Pact’s aggressive expansion.
- Scythia (Tomyris): Tomyris’s ability to heal units after a kill and produce extra cavalry creates a fast, formidable army that’s perfectly complemented by immortal Vampires.
- Gran Colombia (Simón Bolívar): Bolívar gives all his units extra movement, making his armies, including the Vampires, incredibly fast and deadly for lightning-quick attacks.
The Final Choice: Which Path Will You Take?
The Secret Societies in Civilization 6 offer four totally different and compelling ways to play the game. The Owls of Minerva use gold and influence, the Hermetic Order seeks to unlock the secrets of the map, the Voidsingers spread a dark faith, and the Sanguine Pact lives for endless war. The right choice for you will depend on your favorite way to play, the civilization you pick, and the map you’re on. By understanding how each society works, you can add a whole new level of depth and excitement to your next game. So choose your allegiance, embrace the shadows, and lead your civilization to an unforgettable victory.