I’ve been thinking about how we all play Civilization, and it feels like we often fall into the same patterns. We know the drill: race to space, spread your culture or religion, or just build a giant army and steamroll everyone. Those are the classic ways to win, and they’re great, but the real magic of this game is in the weird, unexpected strategies.
I wanted to share three unconventional ways to play that completely change the game. These aren’t just slight changes to the usual victory types; they’re totally different ways of thinking about how to win. They take some cunning and a bit of patience, but trust me, they will redefine what victory means to you.
The Velvet Glove: Win with Loyalty and Peaceful Conquest
What if you could conquer an empire not with armies, but with art and poetry? A world where cities just… join you, not because they’re scared, but because your culture is just that cool. This is the Subversive Loyalty victory, and it’s all about weaponizing influence with one of the most unique leaders in the game: Eleanor of Aquitaine.
The Architect of Defection: Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor’s “Court of Love” ability is the key. Every Great Work in her cities puts out -1 Loyalty per turn to all foreign cities within nine tiles. This stacks. If you have a city near an opponent that’s in range of three of your own cities, and each of those has four Great Works, you’re hitting that poor enemy city with a massive -12 Loyalty pressure. The best part? When a city’s loyalty hits zero, instead of becoming a Free City, it just flips and joins your empire. No sieges, no warmonger penalties. Your empire just grows, peacefully and beautifully.
Laying the Foundation: Early Game Strategy
In the early game, you have to balance expanding your borders with building up your culture. You need to get close to your target neighbor while also getting your Great Person engine running.
- Settlement and Spacing: Where you place your first few cities is everything. You need to be close enough to your neighbors to exert that loyalty pressure, but not so close they see you as a threat and declare an early war. Aim for a gap of about six to eight tiles between your border city and theirs.
- The Theatre Square Imperative: This should be the first specialty district you build in almost every city. The sooner you start generating points for Great Writers, Artists, and Musicians, the sooner your loyalty engine starts humming. Build Amphitheaters first to house those Great Works of Writing.
- Embrace the Voidsingers: If you’re playing with Secret Societies, the Voidsingers are a must-pick. Their Old God Obelisks give you Faith, Culture, and a precious Great Work slot. Later on, their Cultists can be used to directly reduce enemy city loyalty, which is a huge boost.
- Faith as a Secondary Engine: Don’t sleep on Faith. It lets you buy Great People outright. If you found a religion, you can pick beliefs that boost culture or add even more loyalty pressure. The Cathedral building gives you another slot for a Great Work of Art, and Jesuit Education lets you buy Theatre Square buildings with Faith, which is a massive help.
The Mid-Game Snowball: Turning a Trickle into a Flood
This is where the fun begins. As you fill up your Great Work slots, you’ll see the loyalty of your neighbor’s border cities start to drop.
- The Great Work Shuffle: You’ll need to micromanage a bit. Keep moving your Great Works from your inner cities to your frontier cities to focus the pressure where it matters most.
- Amani, the Loyalty Guru: Governor Amani is your MVP. Her “Prestige” promotion adds another -2 Loyalty per turn to nearby cities. Stick her in your main border city to really crank up the pressure.
- Bread and Circuses: When you see an enemy city starting to waver, run the “Bread and Circuses” project in your nearby Entertainment Complex. It’s the final push they need to give up.
- The First Flip and the Domino Effect: The moment that first city flips is a game-changer. It immediately starts putting out its own loyalty pressure on the next city in line. As soon as you get a new city, get a Theatre Square in there and move a Great Work into it to turn it into a new forward base for your cultural invasion.
Late Game and Sealing the Deal: The Peaceful Domination
By the late game, your loyalty pressure can become an unstoppable wave. You’ll be flipping multiple cities every few turns.
- Disable Cultural Victory: This is a critical setup step. You’ll be generating so much tourism from your Great Works that you’ll probably win a Cultural Victory by accident before you can convert the whole map. Turn it off before you start.
- Managing a Diverse Empire: You’ll have a sprawling, diverse empire to manage. Keep an eye on amenities to keep everyone happy. Your massive income will let you buy builders to quickly improve all your new territories.
- Psychological Warfare: The AI does not handle this well. It will get desperate and likely declare war on you. Keep a small, modern defensive army ready. You don’t need to attack, just hold the line while their empire crumbles from the inside out.
This strategy is a masterclass in soft power. It takes planning and patience, but watching a massive empire fall apart and join you without a single battle is one of the most satisfying things you can do in Civ.
The Gilded Fist: Economic Hegemony and the Late-Game Blitz
In Civilization, gold isn’t just for buying buildings; it’s potential energy. The “Gilded Fist” strategy is all about building a massive war chest for most of the game, intentionally falling behind in military, and then, in one shocking turn, converting all that gold into an instant, unstoppable army. The best leader for this has to be the king of cash, Mansa Musa of Mali.
The Sultan of Gold: Mansa Musa’s Economic Engine
Mali is built for one thing: making money. Their abilities are all about generating insane amounts of gold, but it comes at the cost of production.
- Songs of the Jeli: Your City Centers get +1 Food and +1 Faith for every adjacent Desert tile. This means you want to settle in the desert. The catch? Your Mines give you -1 Production but +4 Gold. This trade-off is the heart of the strategy.
- Sahel Merchants: Your international Trade Routes get +1 Gold for every flat Desert tile in the city they start from. Combine this with the “City of Gold” Golden Age dedication, and you’ll have trade routes pulling in mind-boggling amounts of gold.
- Suguba: This is Mali’s unique Commercial Hub. It’s cheaper, gives you a discount on anything you buy with Gold or Faith in that city, and gets huge adjacency bonuses.
The Age of Accumulation: Early and Mid-Game Strategy
For the first 200 turns or so, you’re not a conqueror. You’re a banker. Your only goal is to build the biggest treasury the world has ever seen.
- Desert Bloom: You need a desert start. Settle your cities to get as many desert tiles as possible for those City Center and trade route bonuses.
- The Suguba-Holy Site Nexus: In every city, you should build a Suguba right next to a Holy Site. This combo will be your economic and faith-generating core. Taking the “Work Ethic” belief for your religion is a great way to make up for your production penalty.
- A Golden Age Focus: You need Golden Ages. Each one gives you an extra Trader, and traders are your lifeblood. Focus on getting Era Score however you can.
- Reyna, the Gilded Governor: Governor Reyna is essential. Her promotions let you buy entire districts with gold, which is how you’ll build your cities without any production.
- Defensive Prudence: You’ll look like a tempting target. Keep a small but modern defensive force (archers, anti-cavalry) just to make potential invaders think twice. Use your gold to keep them upgraded.
The Pivot: Unleashing the Gilded Fist
Around the late Industrial or early Modern Era, it’s time to flip the switch. You should have tens of thousands of gold saved up. Your opponents will have bigger armies and better tech, but they have no idea what’s about to hit them.
- The Buying Spree: In a single turn, you’re going to build an army.
- Purchase a Modern Army: Use that massive treasury to buy a huge, modern army. Go for high-impact units like Artillery and Tanks.
- Instant Infrastructure: Use Reyna to instantly buy Encampments and military buildings in your border cities. Buy an Airport to move your new army to the front lines immediately.
- Levy City-State Armies: If you’re the suzerain of any militaristic city-states, levy their armies for extra firepower.
- The Blitz: Your attack needs to be fast and brutal. They might have better individual units, but you have numbers they can’t possibly match.
- Overwhelm and Conquer: Throw your units at them. Don’t worry about losses; you can literally buy more next turn.
- Targeted Strikes: Go straight for their capital and major cities to cripple their ability to fight back.
- Maintaining Momentum: As you take cities, use your gold to repair them instantly, turning their own infrastructure against them.
This is a high-stakes gamble. You have to be disciplined enough to just sit on your pile of gold for most of the game. But the payoff is incredible. A sudden, shocking conquest that your opponents never saw coming.
The Architect of Ruin: Existential Annihilation
This is probably the most brutal and unconventional strategy of all. It’s not about winning; it’s about making sure everyone else loses. The goal is to be the last one standing, not by conquering cities, but by systematically tearing down your opponents’ empires until they collapse. For this to work, you have to go into the custom game setup and disable the Domination victory.
The Philosophy of Collapse
The idea here is to wage a war of total attrition. You won’t be capturing cities until the very end. Instead, you’re going to bleed your opponents dry, ruin their economies, sabotage their science, and stir up rebellions until their empires just fall apart.
The Tools of Disruption: Early and Mid-Game Harassment
From the very start of the game, your goal is to be an absolute menace to your neighbors.
- Pillaging as a Way of Life: You’re going to live by the “Raid” and “Total War” policy cards. A few fast-moving cavalry units can completely wreck an opponent’s lands. Pillage everything. You’ll weaken them while funding your own growth.
- The Spy Network: Spies are your main weapon. They aren’t just for stealing things; they’re for creating chaos.
- Sabotage Production: Constantly sabotage their Industrial Zones to grind their production to a halt.
- Foment Unrest: Use this mission to lower loyalty and spark rebellions that they’ll have to waste time and resources putting down.
- Neutralize Governors: Taking out their governors removes key bonuses and makes their cities even more unstable.
- Economic Warfare: Strangle them with your economic power.
- Buy Their Luxuries: Buy up all of their extra luxury resources. This will crash their amenities, making their cities unhappy and unproductive.
- Embargoes and Trade Disruption: Use the World Congress to pass resolutions that hurt your rivals.
The Art of the “Non-Conquest” War
You’ll be at war a lot, but you’re not fighting to conquer.
- Hit and Run: Declare war, pillage every tile you can reach, and then make peace. Don’t take any cities. You get all the benefits of pillaging without the warmonger penalties.
- Target Civilian Units: This is a truly ruthless tactic. Declare war specifically to hunt down their builders and settlers. This will stop their expansion in its tracks.
- Proxy Wars: Pay other civs to declare war on your main target. This forces them to fight on multiple fronts and drains their resources even faster.
The Endgame: Sweeping Up the Ashes
By the late game, your opponents will be broken. Their lands will be ruined, their people rebellious, and their progress completely stalled. Only now do you prepare for the final move.
- The Final March: While they were falling apart, you were getting rich and strong off the spoils. Now you can build a modern army and just sweep away the hollowed-out remains of their civilizations. They won’t be able to put up a fight.
- The Last Man Standing: Once you eliminate the final opponent, the game will end. Since no one can meet any other victory condition, you’ll be declared the winner by default.
This path is not for the faint of heart. It’s a slow, cruel, and methodical way to play. But if you love seeing a complex plan come together and enjoy watching your enemies crumble, this is one of the most unique and rewarding ways to win.
So, the next time you’re setting up a game, think about taking the road less traveled. You might find that the most satisfying victories are the ones nobody, not even the game itself, saw coming.