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The second age in Civilization 7, called the Exploration Age, focuses on discovering new territories, gathering fresh resources, and establishing your own religion. When the game transitions to this age, many things reset: cities turn into towns, armies are downsized and moved back to your city and town tiles, and all currently existing wars are forgotten. However, relationships with AI civilizations continue to persist between ages.
Exploring the oceans and uncovering Distant Lands—any area beyond your starting continent—is always beneficial. New resources can lead to powerful advantages for new settlements, and some civilizations thrive by focusing on this approach.
Win Conditions
Similar to the Antiquity Age, four primary win conditions exist in the Exploration Age: cultural, scientific, economic, and military.
Cultural Victory – Toshakhana
Showcase 12 relics within your empire.
A cultural victory requires collecting and showcasing relics, usually obtained through converting other religions. You may also receive relics through story events or by becoming the suzerain of city-states. Building Temples and wonders is essential to create enough slots for displaying these relics.
If you successfully display 12 relics by the end of the age, you’ll enter a Cultural Golden Age, allowing you to carry your religion’s foundational beliefs into the next era.
This win condition centers on creating missionaries to spread your religion. To succeed, you might need to prioritize exploring Distant Lands less and focus on acquiring the early Piety civic to promptly establish your Temples. Combining this with the boost in wonder construction from the Inspiration civic will help you set up your relic wonders quickly.
Economic Victory – Treasure Fleet
Accumulate 30 Treasure Fleet Points by returning treasures from Distant Lands.
This victory is centered on establishing new towns and cities in Distant Lands—essentially, any islands or continents that differ from your initial settlements.
You can settle in areas where you discover resources like Sugar and Cocoa. Once you’ve researched Shipbuilding, Treasure Fleets will begin to appear. Returning these treasures to your homeland’s coast not only nets you gold but also boosts your Treasure Fleet points.
If you gather 30 points worth of Treasure Fleets, you will achieve an Economic Golden Age, ensuring all towns remain as cities and adding two extra population to any cities in Distant Lands during the new age.
Preparation is essential for an economic victory. Construct several naval units to begin exploring the islands swiftly, and have Settlers ready to leave the coastline once you’ve researched Cartography. Speed is crucial, as the AI (especially on higher difficulties) may settle new islands quickly.
As you explore, you’ll encounter city-states on nearby islands. You must decide whether to become their suzerain to incorporate them into your empire for access to Treasure Fleet resources or destroy them and settle in their stead.
Military Victory – Non Sufficit Orbis
Earn 12 points from settlements in Distant Lands—1 point for each settlement (double the points if conquered or if they follow your religion, quadruple if both apply).
If you succeed in reaching the Golden Age for this victory, all your Distant Land settlements will gain an extra Infantry and Ranged unit in the Modern Age.
Scientific Victory – Enlightenment
Establish five districts (not including the City Center) that yield at least 40 total resources.
The Scientific Victory focuses on maximizing the number of specialists and their slots in your cities. Specialists provide substantial extra yields from tiles in addition to the base yield, helping you achieve that 40 yield target. Researching Education is crucial to increase the number of specialists allowed per tile. Growth and scientific advancement are vital for this victory condition.
Successfully reaching a 40 yield in five distinct districts will grant you a Scientific Golden Age, turning universities into Golden Age institutions in the Modern Age.
Exploring Distant Lands
The Exploration Age emphasizes the importance of venturing beyond your home continent. To facilitate this, you should prioritize researching Astronomy and Cartography.
If you aim for a strong economic strategy to claim new territories, focusing on Exploration Age resources like Sugar, Cocoa, and Tea means that researching Cartography first is essential, enabling your Settlers to navigate Deep Ocean tiles.
Deep Ocean refers to any ocean tile that isn’t near the coast. Prior to researching Shipbuilding, any units that end their turn in Deep Ocean will take damage. It’s wise to plot your course to new islands by staying close to the shore as much as possible—you risk losing units that attempt long voyages over the ocean.
Your goal should be to quickly reach Shipbuilding. To do so, research the first three techs (Machinery, Astronomy, and Cartography), along with Heraldry and Feudalism.
Securing access to Shipbuilding early gives you a significant edge in naval exploration, allowing units to avoid damage when crossing Deep Ocean tiles. This also unlocks the first advanced ship, the Carrack, providing vital advantages in upcoming naval conflicts.
Shipbuilding also opens the door to Treasure Fleets, which are essential for achieving an Economic victory in the Exploration Age.
New Resources And Treasure Fleets
During the Exploration Age, several new resources become available, including Incense (which offers additional production for religious buildings and units but isn’t a Treasure Fleet resource), Cocoa, Tea, Sugar, and Spices.
These resources will only trigger Treasure Fleets once you have researched Shipbuilding, and then they’re on a turn timer. The points earned for each fleet are directly based on the number of Treasure Fleet resources the settlement possesses. For instance, if you have a town that produces two Cocoa and one Sugar, you will receive three points each time you return that fleet to your homeland.
Religion
Religion undergoes a transformation in the Exploration Age. Instead of merely granting benefits through your Pantheon, you can actively spread your faith to other settlements by training missionaries.
Religion can offer powerful advantages for your entire civilization—beliefs such as Tithe can generate +4 gold per settlement adhering to your faith, while Holy Ecumene does the same for Culture.
Selecting your religion is a critical aspect of the Exploration Age, even if you don’t intend to pursue a religion-centric strategy.
This is important because turmoil and discontent can lead to revolts in Settlements, favoring whoever holds a religious majority. Allowing religious settlements to remain unhappy can lead to chaos during the Wars of Religion crisis, which may occur in the later stages of this age.
While managing religion isn’t overly complex, it should still be on your radar. Keeping your settlements aligned with your own faith is generally a wise strategy, but various strategies, narrative events, and unique civilization traits may influence your approach.
Exploration Age Crises
As the Exploration Age draws to a close and more players achieve victory conditions, a worldwide crisis will emerge. Typically, this will be a Plague or a religious war.
Plague
The Plague can be extremely harmful to your empire, especially if you neglect infected settlements. Discontent amongst citizens can lead to riots that destroy buildings, and if serious enough, revolts can shift allegiance to other nearby civilizations.
Fortunately, a new unit—the Physician—will appear to help your settlements recover from the plague faster. This unit activates as soon as the Plague crisis starts. Shifting production to create Physicians right away is generally a good move.
Similar to other crises, the Plague Crisis can hold potential benefits if handled correctly—certain crisis cards may offer extra culture when a Physician is assigned to a Hospital tile. Even during dire times, clever choices can help you gain the upper hand in Civilization 7.
Religious War
In contrast to the Plague, the Religious War crisis can creep up on you quietly. Depending on your crisis card choices, having settlements aligned with different religions can be detrimental. You’ll also face several narrative choices involving religious tolerance or isolation.
Your strategy here largely depends on how well you’ve managed your religious affairs thus far. Embracing tolerance may weaken your religion’s dominance and helpfulness. Choosing isolation, however, requires that your faith is prevalent in your settlements, or you’ll run the risk of significant discontent and uprisings.
Choose Your End-of-Age Government
As the age concludes, you’ll have the opportunity to select from three potential new governments, each offering various bonuses to your win conditions, such as increased science and culture, enhanced military production, and other benefits.
