The Antiquity Age in Civilization 7 serves as the foundational era of your civilization’s development. It’s a time for laying the groundwork, fostering economic growth, and positioning yourself for success in later ages. With its unique mechanics and focus on early expansion and resource management, the Antiquity Age is essential for setting the trajectory of your game.
Key Features of the Antiquity Age
- Legacy Paths Begin: The Legacy system is introduced, allowing you to establish a historical identity through military, scientific, cultural, or economic achievements.
- Resource Gathering and Management: Antiquity emphasizes collecting and improving bonus resources while preparing for future advancements in city and empire resources.
- Early Conflicts and Diplomacy: The diplomatic system starts to shape, with early rivalries and opportunities for alliances or territorial disputes.
- Unique Units and Districts: Early-game unique units and districts are crucial for building momentum and setting your civilization apart.
Key Mechanics in the Antiquity Age
The Antiquity Age introduces fundamental mechanics that will persist and evolve throughout the game. Here’s an overview of the core systems:
1. Exploration
Early exploration is critical in Antiquity. Use scouts to uncover:
- Potential City Locations: Identify prime areas for expansion, rich in resources, accessible to rivers, features and Natural Wonders.
- Goody Huts: Receive random rewards that boost your progress. These rewards can be quite significant early on, so going double scout is a given, but 3 or 4 might also be an option depending on the starting location and the map. Any unit can unlock a goody hut.
- Trade Routes: Once you establish a trade route, the unit will automatically explore the map along its path.
2. Resource Management
Resources are categorized into three types:
- Bonus Resources: Boost individual tiles with additional yields. You can reallocate resources that provide happiness between the cities to keep a balance. Bonus resources an be allocated to cities and towns.
- City Resources: Essential for the growth and productivity of individual cities. Can only be allocated to cities.
- Empire Resources: Impact your entire civilization’s capabilities. Global resources, allocated automatically.
In Antiquity, bonus resources dominate gameplay. You’ll want to prioritize settling near clusters of these resources and improving them quickly. Improvements like farms, mines, and quarries play a key role in maximizing yields.
Happiness is an important currency that triggers celebrations as well as increasing policy slots for the traditions. Therefore, happiness driven resources are extremely valuable.

3. Legacy Paths
Legacy paths are a hallmark of Civilization 7. In the Antiquity Age, they allow you to define your early historical and victory achievements. Legacy points provide bonuses, so the more you gain the better you will position your civilization for the next Age. Achieving a Golden Age should be the ultimate target, as it provides strong bonuses, like keeping your cities instead of all being converted back to towns.
- Military Legacy Path: Achieve milestones through battles and settlements conquests. Aggressive expansion through establishing new settlements or conquest
- Economic Legacy Path: Focus on resource collection and trade. Improving resource tiles and expanding resource allocation slots is essential.
- Scientific Legacy Path: Establish universities and explore early technologies to earn points toward a scientific legacy.
- Cultural Legacy Path: Build monuments and encourage cultural growth. This path involves constructing early wonders.

4. City Planning and Expansion
In Antiquity, careful city planning can set the stage for success in later ages. Pay attention to:
- City Placement: Prioritize locations with access to rivers, coastal tiles, and clusters of resources.
- Growth: Food is the driving force behind city expansion. The more tile a settlement can work the more production and other yields it can generate. So focus on food first.
- Town Focus: At population 7
- City Conversion
- Specialists: Once a city reaches population 10, you can assign specialists every time a city grows. Specialists can produce high yields of science, culture, gold or happiness, depending on the buildings and districts constructed.
- Unique Wonder: Build your civilization’s unique wonder that comes with 30% production discount.
5. Early Diplomacy
Diplomacy in Antiquity can shape your interactions with other civilizations for the rest of the game. Key elements include:
- First Impressions and Agreements: The first encounter with another civilization sets the tone. Choose your opening moves wisely.
- AI will come to you with agreements and if you do not have enough Influence, then you would either give them an advantage in corresponding yields or risk hurting the relationship.
- City-States:
- Gain influence with Independents to secure valuable suzerain bonuses. It takes 30 turns by default to befriend a city state. But it can be expedited at the cost of additional Influence. The first suzerain will receive a free tech or civic from a corresponding city-state type.
- While in befriending mode, an Independent will provide a gift of gold.
- Or destroy them to gain a one time bonus corresponding to its type.
- Trade Routes: Establish trade routes to gain gold and resources.
- Trade unit must be in the targeted city to establish a trade route.
- Trade Agreement increases number of trade routes you can send.
- Ensure you have enough city or town slots for the imported resources.
6. Combat and Defense
With limited technology and unit variety, early combat focuses on:
- Unit Production: Train a balanced mix of offensive and defensive units, such as warriors and slingers.
- City Defense: Fortify cities with garrisons and build walls if possible. City defense is relatively easy with a Commander stacked with units like slingers or even scouts.
- Territorial Control: Secure choke points and resource-rich areas to prevent rival civilizations from encroaching.
Transitioning Out of Antiquity
The Antiquity Age sets the stage for success in later ages. As you approach the end of this era, focus on:
- Expand: Build or conquer settlements, a good rule of thumb is to have 1:1 relationship between cities and towns.
- Building a Strong Economy: Ensure a steady income of gold and resources to support future development.
- Advancing Tech and Civics: Research key technologies to unlock early advantages and lift caps on settlements, resources, trade routes.
Key Milestones to Achieve Before Moving On:
- Secure at least 3 well-placed cities and as many or more towns.
- Establish a science, culture and economic base if pursuing those legacy paths.
- Ensure your military is strong enough to deter early aggression.
Tips for Success in Antiquity
- Scout Aggressively: Discover as much of the map as possible to gain an early advantage.
- Adapt to Your Surroundings: Tailor your strategy to the resources and terrain available in your starting location.
- Balance Growth and Expansion: Avoid overextending your empire, as maintenance and happiness costs can cripple your economy.
- Stay Flexible: Be ready to pivot strategies based on the actions of rival civilizations and opportunities that arise.
The Antiquity Age is a rich and rewarding period in Civilization 7. It challenges players to think critically about their early-game choices while offering plenty of opportunities to shine. By mastering the mechanics and strategies of this foundational era, you’ll position your civilization for greatness in the ages to come.