Civilization 7: Confucius Leader Guide

Confucius is an expansionist and scientific leader in Civilization 7. He excels at building large cities with a large population, then using that population to support a host of specialists, generating gold, culture, and science per turn. He is very flexible when it comes to the victory conditions as science generation opens up a lot of buildings and paths. You'll want to focus a lot on expansion of feeder towns to make your capital as large as possible.

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A work-in-progress leader tier list for Civilization 7.

This guide covers an overview of Confucius, some early game Antiquity Age strategies, and the best civilizations and mementos.

This guide is based on singleplayer Deity difficulty AI, not multiplayer. Strategies may differ.

Confucius Overview

Confucius is a powerful scientific leader in Civilization 7 with significant bonuses for Specialists.

You will want to focus on Production primarily as the base growth rate is already improved to the point that buildings like the Granary and, to some extent, the Bath and Garden can be considered secondary to useful Wonders and production buildings.

This gives Confucius a big advantage over other leaders: you can focus on Production without worrying about compromising the growth of your capital and other cities.

+25% Growth Rate in Cities.

+2 Science from Specialists.

Bonus Growth Rate

Confucius has cities that grow quickly. That flat bonus growth rate stacks with other bonuses in the game, like the boost from the Hanging Gardens wonder or the Fertility Rites Pantheon. Combine all of these, and you can have a capital that reaches 20 population by turn 100.

Scientific Specialists

Confucius' enormous cities will make the most out of their specialist slots, with an extra +2 science per specialist. This is on top of the science and culture generation specialists already provide.

You will want to focus on planning out good specialist tiles on your Libary, Monument, Production buildings, and more. You can read more about adjacency here.

The absolute trickiest part of playing Confucius is about balancing specialists with happiness, and having good adjacency planning.

Read more about adjacency in Civ 7 here.

Specialists cost happiness, which could be detrimental in the Antiquity and Exploration Age. As you reach the modern age, you should have enough happiness and policy cards that reduce the impact of specialist happiness, but early on you should only use specialists on your best tiles.

Confucius Strategy In the Antiquity Age

Confucius has quite a unique approach to the Antiquity Age. You'll want to get your Production buildings up quickly and then head straight towards any tech and civics that improve your specialists, hopefully setting you up for an easy Science victory in the Exploration Age with 40+ yield tiles.

Confucius is all about setting yourself up nicely in the Antiquity Age to reap the benefits later down the line. You might not feel the full force of Confucius' specialist focus until the Modern Age, but the wait is worth it for the excellent science production towards the end of the game.

The AI will likely get annoyed with you, so you'll likely need to play fairly defensively. We'll cover some of the best early game strategies for Confucius below, including where to settle, which civics and research to grab first, and how to properly plan your cities for maximum specialist adjacency.

Let's take a look.

Early Scouting And Discoveries

Early scouts are unbelievably powerful in Civ 7. We recommend at least two Scouts to start with, though we often triple up for maximum scouting.

This is because we want to grab as many Discoveries as possible, and as you are racing against the AI for these, the more Scouts the better.

You want to prioritize Science and Culture from Discoveries, pushing for your early important technologies like Pottery and Animal Husbandry to boost production in your capital; and your early civics, like Mysticism, to attempt to grab the Fertility Rites Pantheon, which is S-tier for Confucius.

Early Buildings

Confucius gets an excellent growth bonus which makes building the Granary first a much worse choice overall. Instead, focus on production buildings, like the Saw Pit and Brickyard.

Use your first towns to feed your main settlement rather than focus on food in your capital. Produce three settlers immediately after your first two production buildings, i.e the Pit and Brickyard.

Plant those settlers on good tiles with plenty of resources that aren't too far from your city. Food will be sent back to your capital to help it grow while you focus on production.

Once your towns reach seven population, you can set them to Urban Center Focus to generate Culture and Science on every Quarter. A Quarter is any tile that has two completed districts on it, i.e the Granary and Brickyard.

The Urban Center focus will generate more science per turn than a Library, which means you don't need to rush Writing - instead, use the production for troops, settlers, and production buildings.

Tech And Civics

We tend to pick up either Pottery or Animal Husbandry first. This depends on what starting tiles you have. Pottery for clay pits and mines, animal husbandry for pastures.

Then you want to grab Masonry, and Masonry II, then Irrigation, then Writing. This will give Confucius a very powerful production start without skimping on science in the long-run. You can easily catch up with your boosted science yields, anyway.

In terms of civics, you almost always want to pick Mysticism first, as this will allow you to get an early Pantheon.

Unfortunately, Confucius' best Pantheon is Fertility Rites which provides +10 percent growth rate in the settlement.

As you can see from the image above, the AI really loves to grab this one before you - and this was an image from a decently-strong Confucius start, too.

As an alternative, we really like Stone Circles for the extra production on Mines, Quarries and Clay Pits. Obviously, this is only applicable if you actually have those tiles in your city. It does apply to every settlement with an altar, so even if your capital doesn't have the tiles it can still be a good pickup.

When Should You Place Your First Specialists?

As Confucius, it can be a bit difficult to understand when to place your first specialists.

However, there are some yields that are just too good to pass up on. Let's take a look at this early game Confucius city.

As you can see, even early on we've opened up some great specialist slots. There's a +6 Science and +2 Culture tile, or a +1.5 Food, 1.5 Gold, +4 Science and +2 Culture tile. These are better than the majority of open rural tiles in the city.

As a rule, you want to get your adjacency set up nicely on your Library tile to maximize your science output.

Science buildings get adjacency from resources. As you can see, the library in this city is receiving adjacency from the Silver and the Horses.

You can read more about adjacency here and about how to maximize the yields in your cities here.

Because Confucius wants to utilize Specialists as soon as possible, you want to make sure that you are researching the right civics and techs to enable that.

• Currency - +1 Specialist in all cities. This is the first tech that allows you to actually place specialists on your tiles, and as a result, you want to head to this quickly while playing Confucius.
• Philosophy - This civic tech grants you a policy that can be enabled to provide an extra +1 Science per specialist.

Improving Your Specialists

Confucius is capable of getting some very powerful specialist tiles in his cities. This is all reliant on adjacency planning and grabbing Wonders and techs that improve your specialists.

Some civilizations provide extra specialist bonuses, and this is a useful way of deciding which civilization you want to play.

Civilization civics are not available from the main menu, so you'll actually need to start a game and investigate the tree yourself. Most of the specialist-focused improvements for civilizations are only available in their specific civic tree.

For example, the Han Civilization provides +1 Science per specialist on its Junzi civic tech research. While the Han don't completely complement Confucius' style of play, they might be worth playing just for that one single civic.

Best Wonders

There are a couple of really standout Wonders for Confucius.

• Angkor Wat - Possibly the best Wonder in the game, full stop. It provides Happiness and +1 Specialist limit which is a huge buff. It will allow you to make the most of those beautiful high adjacency tiles you've carefully planned out.
• Hanging Gardens - An excellent wonder for Confucius that provides +1 Food on Farms and +10% growth rate on all cities. It stacks with his bonus!

The Hanging Gardens are not that hard to get on Deity difficulty, but the Angkor Wat is a favorite of the AI. You will need to really rush to grab it from them.

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Best Civilizations For Confucius

Confucius has lots of versatility with civilization choice because his bonuses are pretty universal.

Maya

If you just want to go absolutely ballistic with science, then Maya are the civilization for you.

The Palace gains +0.5 Science for adjacent Vegetated Terrain.

+30% Production towards constructing Mundo Perdido.

The Maya are an excellent civilization for science, though that's not immediately apparent from their overall bonuses.

They do get a nice (but small) science bonus from vegetated terrain, and the K'uh Nah unique building also provides science, but it's in the civic tree that this civilization really takes off.

• The Rain Of Chaac provides a +1 Science adjacency on the Altar for any vegetated terrain. This can stack up quickly and applies to all settlements, even your towns.
• Calendar Round is a neat civic. Whenever you complete a Technology, you receive 10% of its cost in Culture. Whenever you complete a Civic, you receive 10% of its cost in Science. With Confucius' big science boosts, this can get very out of hand - and it applies across all three ages, as it's a tradition card rather than a policy card.

The Maya, however, provide no meaningful bonus to Specialists - which you might prefer as Confucius.

Khmer

Want to lean completely into Confucius' growth bonuses? Introducing the Khmer.

Districts on Rivers do not remove the natural yield of the tile.

30% production towards constructing the Angkor Wat.

The Khmer are all about growth. Their unique building, the Baray, provides a base bonus of +3 food when constructed. However, it also provides an extra +1 food on every floodplain tile in the settlement. With the right starting location, this is a lot of extra food.

However, it's the Khmer civics that really complement Confucius.

• Amnach - This civic has the Varna tradition, which provides +1 Gold per specialist. This just improves your Confucius specialists even more.
• Chakravarti - This is the best civic in the game for Confucius (probably). It provides +50% growth in the Capital and -5 happiness in every other city. It's tradition, the Kambu-Mera, which provides +100% Food and Happiness towards maintaining specialists, also makes your specialists much easier to sustain as you progress in the game.

The wording of the Kambu-Mera civic is important. It doesn't mean that your specialists are free but that you essentially get an extra specialist per specialist for no cost. This is just to make sure there's no way to imbalance the game by just having completely free specialists across the board.

Best Confucius Mementos

Confucius has lots of great Mementos, both on his own unlock tree and from other leaders.

• At level2, Confucius unlocks the Brush & Scroll. This is an extremely powerful Memento that increases the growth rate in cities by 5% for every specialist in the city. It maxes out at 25%. While this isn't the best Memento for Confucius during the Antiquity Age (you just don't get that many specialists), it's incredibly powerful during the latter stages of the game.
• Likewise, Confucius' level 5 Memento, the Altar Set, provides a sizable bonus to specialists: +1 Culture and Gold for each specialist.
• Lastly, Confucius' final Memento upgrade at level 9, is The Analects. This provides a further +1 Science per specialist.

In general, though, you want to adjust your Mementos as you play. You can change Mementos when the Age transitions.

We enjoy the Imago Mundi and Marco Polo scouting Mementos in the Antiquity, as you can quickly scan the map and gain gold as you do so. In Exploration, we may switch to Confucius' more specialist-specific Mementos.

Confucius In The Exploration and Modern Age

Confucius usually establishes himself with a powerful scientific lead in the Antiquity Age, followed up by profiting off of this in the Exploration Age.

A Religious style of play suits Confucius as there are some great social policies that improve science in settlements converted to your religion.

Specialists also become more impactful during the Modern Age and this is where all the work of adjacency planning and bonus-stacking really comes into their own. Ideology plays a big part in the Modern Age, and the government you choose will directly impact your specialists - either providing extra science, food, production, happiness, and other bonuses.

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