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The Australian people represent a civilization in Civilization VI. They are led by John Curtin, under whom their default colors are dark green and yellow. They are available with the Australia Civilization & Scenario Pack, which was released on February 21, 2017.

The Australians' civilization ability is Land Down Under, which provides +3 Housing Housing in coastal cities, allows Pastures to trigger a Culture Bomb, and increases yields from Campuses, Commercial Hubs, Holy Sites, and Theater Squares by 1 in tiles with Charming Appeal (or 3 with Breathtaking Appeal). Their unique unit is the Digger (which replaces the Infantry), and their unique tile improvement is the Outback Station.

Strategy[]

Starting bias: Tier 2 towards Coast, tier 5 towards Cattle Cattle, Horses Horses, and Sheep Sheep

With their first entry into the Civilization franchise, Australia led by John Curtin is already a solid civilization that needs to be watched out for. With high adjacency bonuses to districts and a defensive nature borne from their leader ability and unique unit, not many can stop Australia's charge towards victory.

Land Down Under[]

The Australians' civilization ability and unique components give them the flexibility to pursue almost any victory condition. They benefit most from founding coastal cities (whose Housing Housing capacity can be further boosted if they become the Suzerain of Mohenjo-Daro) near Cattle Cattle, Sheep Sheep, and Horses Horses so that they can build Pastures and quickly expand their empire's borders. Once they discover Guilds, they can surround their Pastures with Outback Stations to improve their Food Food and Production Production output. Moreover, since Outback Stations can be built in deserts, the Australians can create thriving cities in lands that will not be nearly as interesting or valuable to other civilizations (and will probably give them access to lots of Oil Oil and Aluminum Aluminum in the later eras of the game).

While the Australians will be tirelessly building tile improvements around their cities, they will need to carefully consider where to place their districts. They should build Industrial Zones on low-Appeal tiles to improve their cities' Production Production potential, and reserve high-Appeal tiles for districts that will support their path to victory. The Housing Housing bonus for coastal cities will allow them to support a larger Citizen Population and more districts, and if they plan to make use of religion, God of the Open Sky and Desert Folklore are both excellent pantheons for them to choose. In addition, once they discover Conservation, they can plant Woods in the tiles around their districts to increase their Appeal (and yields).

Since the Australians can make use of Desert tiles and will need Builders to fill them with Outback Stations, they should try to build the Pyramids and Petra in the early stages of the game. Great Zimbabwe will be helpful to them if one of their cities is surrounded by herds of Cattle Cattle and Sheep Sheep (and/or water-based bonus resources), and the Eiffel Tower is a wonder they'll want to make every effort to build. Getting multiple districts with +4 or greater adjacency bonuses is a relatively doable feat for Australia even without the Eiffel Tower, and with it, it can be quite normal for a district to have an adjacency bonus of +7 or more.

Citadel of Civilization[]

John Curtin's leader ability gives the Australians the potential to be the world's police force, and rewards them well for doing so. Their best option is to be reactive rather than proactive, since their Production Production bonuses only take effect if they're the target of a declaration of war or they liberate another player's city. Signing Defensive Pacts with one or more friendly civilizations or going after warmongers and liberating the cities and city-states they capture will give Australia extra Production Production at crucial moments, and if an aggressive civilization starts causing problems late in the game, their Diggers can take the fight to the enemy's doorstep. Furthermore, the Australians' tendency to have an abundance of coastal cities encourages them to maintain a strong navy, which they can use for defense or offense as needed.

Unfortunately, this ability is notoriously unreliable because in some games, entire eras will pass without a player declaring war on Australia or a city changing hands. In the expansions, however, there are two strategies that can be used to manufacture a liberation. The first is to capture a foreign city, allow it to rebel, recapture the Free City, and then turn it back over to its founder. The second works in reverse: Australia induces a foreign city to rebel (possibly with a well-placed Spy, or Cultists in Secret Societies), captures the ensuing Free City, and then liberates it. Both strategies align well with a Science Victory and the late-game technological dominance that Australia tends to achieve. It should be noted, however, that Free Cities often have relatively high Strength Combat Strength, so capturing them requires a strong military.

This ability is indirectly buffed in the Dramatic Ages game mode, where Free Cities are much more common. In this mode, it is fairly easy for the Australians to liberate cities that revolt during a Dark Age, and then do it again and again for a permanent boost.

Outback Station[]

With the Outback Station, the Australians can change even barren deserts into rich and productive land. While its Food Food and Production Production bonuses are initially small, the adjacency bonuses it earns from Pastures, Steam Power, and Rapid Deployment can eventually make its yields quite impressive. To maximize these yields, found cities near Cattle Cattle, Sheep Sheep, and Horses Horses. After improving these resources with Pastures, encircle them with Outback Stations and watch your cities grow into sprawling metropolises.

The late game rewards building Outback Stations in clusters, similar to Farm clusters. Each Outback Station in a cluster of three will eventually receive +1 Food Food and Production Production bonuses, which only grow larger as the cluster expands.

Digger[]

The Digger is a great replacement for the Infantry, with bonuses that allow the Australians to take a more active role in global conflicts in the Modern Era and beyond. With +15 Strength Combat Strength on a coastal tile outside its home territory, the Digger can reinforce Australia's naval forces as they attack enemy cities located along or near the coast, or even spearhead assaults on its own. It also provides the Australians with a strong defense against enemies who try to launch land-based assaults against their cities, which will often be located on coastal tiles to take advantage of the Housing Housing bonus.

The really strong aspect of Diggers, however, may be the lack of Oil Oil requirement. Infantry are weak units in Civilization VI: Gathering Storm because the resource they require is unlocked at Refining - and then you're one tech away from Tanks, a faster and stronger unit than Infantry. Australia, though, doesn't need to take this detour, so they can beeline Replaceable Parts. Combine that with their potential Science Science output from high Campus adjacency bonuses, and there is the potential for a devastating timing push!

When facing Diggers, the best option is to outrange them or intercept them on the ocean. Diggers are tough on offense, but can easily fall prey to well-placed Machine Guns or fighter strikes. Just remember to keep them away from your AT Crews!

Unlike Civilization V, in Civilization VI, the site of the battle is actually the tile of the defender, not the attacker. Therefore, similar to other bonuses that grant extra Strength Combat Strength when "fighting on" certain terrain, the Digger will receive extra Strength Combat Strength when it attacks a unit standing on a coastal tile or on a tile outside of Australian territory, regardless of where the Digger stands.

Victory Types[]

The bonuses the Australians receive make them particularly well-suited for a Science Victory, since they can rapidly fill their cities with people and generate the Science Science and Production Production needed to start and finish the required projects (especially if they attain Suzerain status with city-states such as Geneva, Hong Kong, and Mitla). Campuses gain major adjacency bonuses from Mountains and Reefs; the former grant extra Appeal to surrounding tiles by default, and the latter can only be found on Coast, which is where Australia will want to settle anyway.

All other win conditions are viable. For Religious and Culture Victories, focus on choosing appropriate religious beliefs and building and developing the proper kinds of districts in proper places. A Domination Victory will typically hinge on a well-timed Digger rush and calculating use of diplomacy. Speaking of which, if you're going for Diplomatic Victory as Australia, look to control and/or liberate city-states for Diplomatic Favor Diplomatic Favor and build the Statue of Liberty in one of the productive coastal cities you're sure to have.

Counter Strategy[]

Australia can be one of the most difficult civs in the game to counter, especially if you spawn far away from them. As John Curtin grants all Australian cities an extra 100% Production Production in a defensive war, a declaration of war can sometimes be more trouble than it is worth. Nevertheless, there are a few things players can do to counter Australia. The first is to simply declare war and never make peace to diplomatically isolate Australia (although even if you declare a Joint War, you won't be able to stop your ally from making peace). During war, pillage as much as possible, as pillaged tiles reduce adjacent tiles' Appeal by 1 and thus make Land Down Under less effective. Naval raiders and light cavalry such as Privateers and Horsemen are the most effective at doing this.

Civilopedia entry[]

Settled in turn by Aboriginals, convicts, paupers, prospectors, and bushrangers, the land “down under” was first occupied by people around 45 thousand years ago when some managed to migrate through the Indonesian islands and reach the northern shore of the continent. There these hunter-gathers prospered in isolation, with a rich oral and spiritual culture, until 1770 AD when James Cook sailed along the coast and claimed the whole place for Great Britain. Captain Cook wasn’t the first to bump into Australia—the Dutchman Willem Janszoon and Englishman William Dampier had done so far earlier—but he was the first to see opportunity in a remote and dangerous land.

When the newly formed nation of America refused to accept boatloads of English prisoners originally slated for a penal colony, English authorities reconsidered their plans. As was the prevailing thinking at the time, "what better place to dump our unwanted riff-raff than the opposite end of the world?" And so Commodore Arthur Phillip departed England on the First Fleet, comprising 11 ships (two naval escorts, six convict transports and three cargo ships) bound for New South Wales. Arriving in Botany Bay in January 1788, Phillip soon decided the surrounding swampland was too unhealthy for a colony and relocated the settlement north to the fine natural harbor of Port Jackson—better known today as Sydney Harbour.

The first years were tough for the tiny frontier town of Sydney. Late 18th century professional (and petty) criminals did not make competent farmers, and supply ships were few. Between 1788 and 1792 another 3,546 male and 766 female convicts arrived—most too sick or unfit for hard labor. When the Second Fleet arrived in 1790, more than a quarter of its passengers had died en route, and the conditions of the new arrivals with the Third Fleet appalled even the first arrivals. But Phillip proved to be fair dinkum in his concerns for the success of the colony, and the well-being of the colonists … no matter that most were convicts. He dispatched exploration parties to search for better farmland, welcomed trading ships, promoted public health initiatives, established several small satellite settlements to ease overcrowding, and ignored many of the irrelevant and outdated orders from England. When Governor Phillip returned to England at the end of 1792, the colony was finally stable enough to welcome settlers who arrived of their own free will.

The colonials initially paid little attention to the indigenous Aboriginals, who lived in a timeless, magical realm of the Dreamtime. In the late 18th Century there were roughly a million natives, scattered about in 300 clans and speaking 250 languages with about 700 dialects. Each clan had a spiritual connection with a specific piece of land—bits of desert or tropical rainforest or mountain. According to the Aboriginals, totemic spirit ancestors had forged all aspects of life during the Dreamtime of the world’s creation and wove the past, present, and future together.

Although the Dutch laid claim to the western portion of the continent, the British founded settlements along the coasts of Australia in the form of passive-aggressive disagreement practiced by nation states. Van Diemen’s Land (now known as Tasmania) was settled in 1803, one Captain Bremer founded the short-lived colony Fort Dundas in 1824, a new penal colony was established on the mouth of the Brisbane River in 1824, and Major Lockyer planted a settlement on King George Sound in 1826. Thus, that same year Great Britain claimed the whole of the continent for its very own.

Colonial populations boomed as an influx of people arrived, looking for either a new life or easy pickings. Ex-soldiers and convicts displaced the Yuggera clan and claimed their land near present-day Brisbane. Perth was settled by English gentlefolk in 1829. Squatters sailed into Port Phillip Bay and arguably founded Melbourne in 1835. Meanwhile, the South Australian Company, licensed by the British Crown, established Adelaide.

According to historian Lloyd Robson’s figures, in eighty years (1788-1868) some 161,700 convicts were shipped to the various Australian colonies. Roughly two-thirds of those were thieves from the booming, overcrowded industrial cities (particularly from the Midlands and the north), the majority of these new arrivals repeat offenders. Beyond this, ever-more-frequent ships brought tradesmen and educated sorts with skills (medical, religious, legal, engineering) needed for a growing bit of Jolly Ol’ Antipodean England.

From the early 1820s, increasing numbers of squatters ventured out and occupied land beyond the fringes of the established settlements. There they built extensive stations on which to raise sheep and crops of wheat and oat. With little overhead, they could make considerable profits, thus encouraging others to follow their lead. Wool production became Australia’s largest—and most profitable—export, most bound for English mills. By 1850 some 200 squatters claimed more than 115,830 square miles (300,000 square kilometers), forming a powerful and "respectable" segment of society on the continent.

Meanwhile, the British Colonial Office's Proclamation of Governor Burke declared the Australian continent to be 'terra nullius' (or "no man's land"). By stating that no nation or people owned Australian land but the Crown, the British quashed any chance of treaties with Aboriginal clans. The diseases imported by the Europeans made this more a legal nicety, for smallpox, influenza, measles, whooping cough, and tuberculosis ravaged the natives. Indeed, shortly after the colony in Sydney was established, a smallpox plague killed off half the Aboriginals in the area. Which is not to say that the colonists themselves weren’t taking an active hand in killing the first inhabitants as well—the Hawkesbury War (1795-1816), Pemulwuy’s War (1795-1802), Tedbury’s War (1808-1809), and Nepean War (1814-1816) further cemented the tone of European/Aboriginal relations.

The 1851 discovery of gold in New South Wales and central Victoria brought a massive influx of people, ultimately surpassing the population explosion of California's 1848 gold rush. Boatloads of young men (and a few adventurous young women) arrived from China, the goldfields of California, Ireland, Britain, and India—a chaotic carnival of entertainers, grifters, drifters, quacks, gamblers, and publicans mixed in with actual prospectors. The colony of Victoria grew at an unbelievable rate, from a trifling 76,000 in 1850 to over 530,000 in 1859. The government tried to impose order through licenses and heavy-handed troopers, but this quickly led to violence, culminating in the fight at Ballarat in late 1854 that left at least 30 “diggers” dead and many other wounded. But a few months later, a royal commission made sweeping reforms to the administration of the expanding gold fields, including the abolition of licenses, reorganization of the police, and voting rights to miners.

Despite the bloodshed in the goldfields and the Outback, the wealth from gold and wool brought investment and civilization to the likes of Melbourne, Victoria and Sydney. By the 1880s these were modern, cultured frontier cities where people being gunned down in the streets was an uncommon occurrence. At this point in time the majority of people living on the continent were born in Australia, and began to think of themselves in such a way. Distinctly Australian styles were fastening on the national literary and art movements. With all this progress and culture, it was inevitable that Australian colonists would start thinking about greater autonomy from a distant England.

In 1890, representatives of six colonies (and initially a few New Zealanders) met in Melbourne. They called for the various colonies to unify and elect representatives to a constitutional convention. The very next year the “National Australian Convention” was called to order in Sydney and, with much debate, a draft constitutional bill was hammered out. Despite much dithering, in March 1900 Aussie delegates headed for London with a bill. Parliament approved it in July, and Queen Victoria signed it shortly thereafter. A British lord was dispatched to Australia to create an interim cabinet, oversee the creation of a commonwealth, and hold the first elections. Thus, the Commonwealth of Australia came into being on 1 January 1901.

Even with devastating droughts and a plague of rabbits that permanently ravaged a good deal of Australian farmland, the new country prospered and led a quiet existence. The Australian Parliament passed laws (some of dubious distinction, such as the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901), the nation cobbled together a national army and navy from the remnants of the colonial armed forces, and Australia itself dipped its antipodal toe into the colonial business when British New Guinea became the Australian-administered Territory of Papua in 1906. All seemed relatively calm—until the new nation was dragged into a world war.

Almost a tenth of the population of 4.9 million Aussies volunteered for military service during the First World War, during which more than 60,000 would die at Gallipoli, on the Western Front, and in the Middle East. In return for all this blood, Australian representatives sat at the Versailles peace conference and signed the resultant international treaty, a first for Australia. The nation also took a seat in the League of Nations, and for its trouble received a few German colonies—German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the tiny Nauru.

The 1920s brought labor troubles, rampant modernization, the Great Depression, and various political crises. Adding to this in the 1930s were growing international tensions, especially with increased Japanese expansion into the South Pacific enough so that both Liberal and Labour parties made raising defense spending a campaign issue in the 1937 elections. The government's emphasized cooperation with Great Britain in “a policy of imperial defense” inevitably pulled Australia into another world war in September 1939. Although Australian units distinguished themselves fighting in the Mediterranean and at sea, within two years they were facing a more immediate threat as Imperial Japan attacked across the vast expanse of the Pacific, in Southeast Asia, and through Indonesia and the Philippines. In February 1942, the port at Darwin suffered a devastating air raid—the first of over 100 on the Australian mainland.

Inspired by Prime Minister Curtin, Australia found itself engaged on numerous fronts … notably in the jungles of New Guinea to the north, stepping stone for any Japanese invasion. On the home front, the Curtin government put the nation on total war footing, instituting rationing, taking in refugees, building manufacturing plants and shipyards, and encouraging everyone to “stay the course.” By the time the struggle ended, Australia lost 27,000 soldiers, airmen, and sailors.

Australia enjoyed a post-war boom, marked by a thriving export economy, a massive government-sponsored program of European immigration, a suburban explosion, a "new nationalism" in the arts, the institution of civil rights for Aboriginals, and avoiding most of the Cold War's paranoid brinksmanship. The 21st Century promises even better things for the Aussies.

Cities[]

Citizens[]

Males Females Modern males Modern females
Anatjari Bindi James Nicole
Colebee Kalinda Luke Olivia
Djalu Kirra Jackson Zoe
Gurumarra Ellin Cody Holly
Jarli Jedda Mitch Paige
Mandawuy Lenah Blake Kathleen
Toba Marindah Hugo Louisa
Yarran Parara Brenden Michele
Warrin Tatali Jordan Elizabeth
Waku Wintjiya Michael Alicia

Trivia[]

Gallery[]

Videos[]

CIVILIZATION_VI_–_First_Look-_Australia

CIVILIZATION VI – First Look- Australia

First Look: Australia

Related achievements[]

A Smashing Victory
A Smashing Victory
Win a regular game as John Curtin
'Smashing' is Aussie slang meaing 'excellent'.
Wood for Sheep
Wood for Sheep
Playing as Australia, build a Pasture over Sheep and steal an adjacent player's Lumbermill
Refers to common actions in Settlers of Catan.

See also[]

External links[]

Civilization VI Civilizations [edit]
AmericanArabianAustralian1AztecBabylonian1BrazilianByzantine1Canadian GS-OnlyChineseCree R&F-OnlyDutch R&F-OnlyEgyptianEnglishEthiopian1FrenchGallic1Georgian R&F-OnlyGermanGran Colombian1GreekHungarian GS-OnlyIncan GS-OnlyIndianIndonesian1JapaneseKhmer1KongoleseKorean R&F-OnlyMacedonian1Malian GS-OnlyMāori GS-OnlyMapuche R&F-OnlyMayan1Mongolian R&F-OnlyNorwegianNubian1Ottoman GS-OnlyPersian1Phoenician GS-OnlyPolish1Portuguese1RomanRussianScottish R&F-OnlyScythianSpanishSumerianSwedish GS-OnlyVietnamese1Zulu R&F-Only
1 Requires DLC

R&F-Only Added in the Rise and Fall expansion pack.
GS-Only Added in the Gathering Storm expansion pack.

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