The Greek people represent Ancient Greece, an Antiquity Age civilization in Civilization VII.
The Greeks' civilization ability is Demokratia, which increases 
Influence per turn from the Palace. Their associated 
Wonder is the Oracle, and their unique assets are as follows:
| Asset | Description |
|---|---|
 Hoplite
|
+2  Combat Strength if adjacent to another Hoplite.
|
 Logios
|
Great Person. |
 Acropolis
|
+2  Gold on the Parthenon for each  City-State you are Suzerain of.
|
 Odeon
|
+3  Happiness.+1  Culture per adjacent  Quarter or Wonder.
|
 Parthenon
|
+3 Culture. +2 Influence if built on  Rough Terrain.+1 Culture per adjacent Wonder.
|
 Ekklesia II
|
+2 Culture per turn for active  Endeavors,  Sanctions, and  Projects you started or supported.
|
| Agoge II
|
+1 Combat Strength for Hoplites for each City-State you are Suzerain of.
|
 Symmachia
|
+2 Culture for each City-State you are Suzerain of. +1  Settlement Limit.
|
 Xenia
|
+50% Influence towards the initiating and progressing the Befriend Independent project.
|
| Strategoi
|
+25%  Army Commander experience.
|
| Delian League
|
+30% Influence towards initiating Endeavors.
|
| Peloponnesian League
|
+30% Influence towards initiating Sanctions.
|
Intro[]
Out of many sources – militaristic Sparta, erudite Athens, wealthy Corinth – comes the rich bounty of Greece. Wielding poetry sharper than a hoplite’s spear, the writers and thinkers of Greece describe the beauty and nature of the world, even as the phalanx begins its march. Guide them in their quest for glory and fame.
Tips and hints[]
Use the Xenia Tradition to turn Independent Powers into City-States. Each one makes the Hoplite stronger with the Agoge Civic and grants Culture with the Symmachia Civic.
Strategy[]
Don't let Greece's Cultural/Diplomatic attributes fool you - they are a versatile civ, who can take any route the player wants to victory. However, their optimum path to victory is often determined by your leader, and which city states you can find early, so be prepared to adapt to your start location. Try to mismatch your chosen victory path to the city states you can befriend, and you risk spreading yourself too thin.
Civ Ability - Demokratia[]
While there are very few characters in the description for this ability, don't mistake that for weakness - +3 influence per month is an extra 30% at the start of the game for most leaders, and synergises very nicely with their unique traditions. Most civs who want to play around city states have to neglect alliances with other civs to befriend city states early, and risk worsening relations. Greece can more easily afford both, which can buy you some more time to get critical buildings for your game plan established.
Military Unit - Hoplite[]
Hoplites are a fairly underwhelming unique unit right at the start of the game, but they can become very powerful as you befriend more city states. Greek unique civics give them +1 combat strength per city state suzerained, and this can be stacked with a militaristic city state suzerainty buff to give you +2 combat strength per suzerainty. With the right leader, you can make a very powerful military push with this, and Greece's start bias towards rough territory means you will likely have the production to churn hoplites out at a good speed too. Don't neglect ranged units to just run Hoplites though - Damage that enemies can't respond to is still worthwhile.
For the most part however, Hoplites are defensive units. Stacking strength for being next to other Hoplites is more easily and consistently achieved by having a defensive formation, with fortifications, ahead of time
Infrastructure - Parthenon[]
Parthenons give twice the amount of base culture as monuments, and twice the amount of influence as well when placed on rough terrain. Given that having high culture adjacency is often out of your control (mountains and natural wonders could spawn far away), Parthenons are a nice consistent source of culture and influence to get your feet off the ground. Be careful not to prioritise Parthenons too soon - if your city lacks a lot of productive tiles, losing a rough tile to build a parthenon on too soon could cost you too much tempo.
Where Parthenons are WORSE than monuments is their adjacency - they can only receive adjacency from wonders. While their higher base yield makes up for this, it can make them worse buildings to place specialists unless you have a lot of wonders nearby, in which case they're only matching monuments.
Infrastructure - Odeon[]
Odeons provide +3 happiness, 1 more than an altar, and get culture adjacency from quarters and wonders. The extra happiness can help to either sustain a wide empire/fight war weariness, or to support a specialist in the city, and quarter adjacency is something you can consistently stack fairly high, making Odeons good buildings to build around and place specialists
Infrastructure - Acropolis[]
Acropolises can provide you with an extra sum of cash to support more military units, buildings or city conversions, while having no access to currency. They are also necessary to build Logios units - however these are fairly unreliable to play around for the most part. The biggest problem with this district is that Parthenons only having wonder adjacency, and Odeons having both Wonder and Quarter adjacency makes Acropolis very demanding districts to build around to get good specialists. You may consider that it is better to place the Odeon in the Palace of your capital city, so you can stack the quarter adjacency buffs to get an especially powerful specialist on the palace, and have a Parthenon built separately for flat culture and influence. Acropolis also keep their special benefit past the antiquity era, but enemy civs will often aggressively kill independents at the start of a new era, making it hard to stack the gold bonus high. Additionally, it will often be a small benefit relative to the economy you have in the exploration era. You still want to have at least one built in a high production city so that you can produce Logios units, as while they are inconsistent while production is lacking, being able to get a large number at once is often more helpful.
Great People - Logios[]
Logios provide an array of benefits that buff your science buildings, Palace/city halls, and can be activated on your Acropolis for citywide buffs or bursts of resources. The inconsistent nature of these benefits make Logios ideal to build when there's nothing left to build that will directly aid your strategy (lest you produce Aristotle and he's unable to do anything for a long time) Notable Logios include:
- Sappho - Needing to find one less codex to reach crucial milestones for Great Library can alleviate the stresses of not being especially science focused. Alternatively, you might be playing a heavy science game and this codex allows you to ignore an unhelpful mastery research to push for other things.
- Pythagoras - A Celebration on demand means you have 1 more social policy slot, or you can time it to maximise its benefits (e.g. by starting a Classical Republic celebration right as you start building a bunch of wonders across your cities).
- Xenophon - 2 Hoplites with extra combat strength can make for an especially hard to break defense, or a very powerful front-line for an offense.
Associated Wonder - Oracle[]
Unfortunately for Greece, Oracle is quite possibly the worst wonder in the entire game. Requiring rough terrain to be built on doesn't help either, as Greece already needs to use these for Parthenons and they will need other rough tiles for production. At the very least, having a tradition that makes befriending city states easier means you are more likely to squeeze more culture out of Oracle in the later ages than other civs can, as befriending lots of city states is a consistent way of getting many narrative events. It can not be overstated just how irrelevant this benefit is. Ignore, unless it makes the difference between reaching a Cultural Legacy milestone and missing one.
Civics and Traditions[]
Greek unique civics unlock traditions which make it cheaper to befriend city states and engage in endeavours/impose sanctions on others. These are things you can do in waves, making them very useful social policies you can swap in temporarily on turns where a civic is finished while you have influence to spend. +25% army commander exp and Greeces associated Wonder pushes Greek towards the bottom end of the regular civics tree to get their commander up and running sooner, to farm commander exp on independent peoples. Note, you do not have to disperse independents to farm exp from them. A commander with a few levels behind them and the possibility of having Gate of All Nations makes you a lot harder to fight on defense, and with combat bonuses to Hoplites can make you a force to be reckoned with on offense.
Note that if you are going for 7 world wonders that the AI is often quick to build wonders on the bottom end of the civics tree, and slow to build wonders on the top end of the civics tree. As such you are likely to miss a lot of the bottom wonders, and being later to research the wonders on the top means you might end up missing those as well. In short, you need to pick a priority and commit to it - if you're pushing for war and a military legacy, progress the bottom branch. If you want to push towards building world wonders, the middle and top branches are a better investment.
Recommended Leaders[]
- Machiavelli also starts with +3 influence per turn, which allows you to grab city state suzerainty even faster. While this might seem like a point of anti-synergy, since Machiavelli can levy units from city states owned by others, he can still benefit from spending less influence to propose sanctions/endeavours.
- Tecumseh gains combat strength from befriending city states, stacking with Hoplite buffs to push for a very strong offensive.
- Friedrich (Baroque) gains free infantry units from building Parthenons, and a free great work from taking settlements helps you push for Science legacy, even while neglecting science in favour of culture
- Harriet Tubman can run a skeleton crew military to emphasize peaceful development, and then punish enemies who try to attack her with insane war support and Hoplite buffs. Extra influence from Demokratia and Parthenons helps her with espionage too.
- Catherine the Greats Tundra Bias means you're less likely to be interrupted by warfare, and your culture buffs become science buffs too.
Recommended Mementos[]
- Wampum Belt: +1 production per age in settlements for each City State you are Suzerain of.
- Warclub: +1 Combat Strength to all units for every City State you are Suzerain of.
- Bifocals: Gain 50 Influence after researching a Tech or Civic Mastery.
- Shisa Necklace: Gain 100 Influence when you become Suzerain of a City State.
- Treaty of Kadesh: +1 Diplomatic Attribute Point.
Victory Conditions[]
The victory condition Greece should chase will be heavily directed by 2 things - the leader playing them, and the city states you find early. Don't open a game as Greece with a single minded culture focus if most of the city states on the map are militaristic and economic - that's the games way of telling you your warmonger arc is about to begin. Likewise, if there's 3 culture city states, a single minded wonder building focus is probably the best play. No matter what though, befriend as many city states as you can and build your unique buildings, and you will be generating a lot of culture - so at the very least you will want to build a few wonders to keep a modern era culture victory on the cards, even if you only go for the 2nd milestone and not all the way.
Civilopedia entry[]
Unlike Rome and Egypt, Greece was only rarely a unified polity. Instead, it was composed of a series of independent city-states (poleis) that shared a common cultural and linguistic heritage and sometimes allied in leagues or clashed in bitter wars. Greece only existed as an empire under Alexander. As a shared template of cultural and technological patterns, Greece created one of the bright spots of thought and creativity in the ancient world. Important regions in ancient Greece, such as Halicarnassus, Syracuse, Thrace, and Macedon, are now parts of neighboring, modern-day countries (e.g., Italy, Turkey, and North Macedonia).
Homer’s Greece is perhaps the most famous – the world of the Odyssey and the Iliad, of the cyclops and the Trojan Horse. These tales come from before recorded history, during the archaic period, around 2800 years ago. Compared to other civilizations, this is not so old; at the Iliad’s composition, the Pyramids of Giza were already nearing 2000 years old. This is the period of the oldest Greek writing, a period when states were exploring novel political formations: tyranny (the seizure of power by unconventional means), total mobilization (e.g. the Spartan war machine), and democracy. These were variations on older themes. Athens may have written about democracy, but it certainly wasn't the first democratic government (nor would its system be recognized as a true democracy by modern politicians).
The fifth century BCE was the height of Greek civilization. After Persia's dramatic failed invasion of Greece – which included the naval battle at Salamis and the famous episode where 300 Spartan soldiers withstood the Persian army at Thermopylae – Greece began to flourish. Scholars such as the historian Herodotus and the philosophers Plato and Socrates charted the political systems of the world and debated the nature of consciousness, reality, and the ideal forms of the state. These proved inspirational for present-day philosophy. Indeed, even words such as philosophy itself stem from this time (the Greek “philosophia” means “love of wisdom”).
However, this was not a period of peace. Athens and other city-states fought wars against threats both foreign and domestic. Sparta and Athens, with their radically different outlooks on life and the state, warred for dominance while Carthage and other neighbors posed a constant threat. By the fourth century BCE, the Greek peninsula was exhausted by constant battle. The northern power of Macedon was not. Alexander the Great rose from Macedonia to lead a united Greece on a world-spanning conquest that extended the empire's borders to India and beyond (but not westward into nascent Rome). After he divided his realm between his generals, however, this united Greece quickly fell into disunity and its successor states soon fell to other powers. The mainland was subsumed in 146 BCE by its western neighbor, Rome.
Greek society was hierarchical and granted full rights to men as well as foreigners, enslaved people, and women (whose status was not as free as that of some of Greece’s neighbors). Even in democracies like Athens, only certain men could fully participate. These groups united around the agora, the public forum and market where ideas were exchanged.
The Greek world was not isolated. Buddhists in India and in the Indo-Greek kingdoms that were included in Alexander’s conquest developed a fusion of Greek and Indian thought. This is unsurprising as Greek and Sanskrit shared certain vocabularies, Greek and Indian myths about thunder-throwing god kings (Indra or Zeus) often overlap, and their heroic folk tales about quests to win back a stolen bride (Sita or Helen) share some similarities. Danish traders, centuries before the Viking Age, sailed down the Rhine to do business with Greek merchants, and Greek markets carried goods across the Red Sea.
The legacy of ancient Greece traveled to Rome where Roman writers adopted some Greek heritage. Greek became the language of the eastern Mediterranean. The Romans fragmented into East and West, but the East’s culture was largely Greek in nature. In the Middle Ages, Greek learning was embraced by Arab scholars who built the foundations of modern-day math and astronomy in dialogue with antiquity.
Cities[]
Citizens[]
| Males | Females |
|---|---|
| Agapetos | Apollonia |
| Alcibiades | Chloe |
| Demokritos | Eudoxia |
| Diogenes | Hypatia |
| Heracleitos | Kallisto |
| Hippolytos | Ligeia |
| Nereus | Lysistrate |
| Phaidros | Pelagia |
| Sosigenes | Sappho |
| Zotikos | Xanthe |
Age Transition Quotes[]
When age progress reaches 100% or player gets eliminated/retires, one of these quotes will be read depending on the last legacy path completed:
- Culture: "Greece's monuments graced its lands as a crown adorns its king. May the crown pass to worthy successors."
- Economic: "Strong trade came of strong relations, and Greece flourished because it chose its partners well."
- Military: "Cities fortified Greece's domain as hoplites in a phalanx. Thus, for a time, Greece prevailed."
- Science: "Countless discoveries sprung from the intellectual rigor of Greek philosophers. Their records kept safe, their legacy was assured."
- Defeat: "In the end, no policy brought victory--yet Greek wisdom and knowledge would be a gift to the new age."
Trivia[]
- The Greek civilization's symbol is a capital omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet.
- The Greek civilization ability is the Greek word for democracy (δημοκρατία), the form of government first developed among Greek city-states such as Athens, which combines the words people (dêmos) and power (krátos).
- The Greek background art depicts the ascent to the Propýlaia, the gates of the Athenian Acropolis, with the bronze statue of Athenâ Prómachos visible in the background. The depiction seems inspired by the painting Akropolis by the German painter Leo von Klenze.
Soundtrack[]
| Original Track | № | Based on | Credits | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Ancient Greece (Antiquity Age)" | 9 | Katolophyromai Second Delphic Hymn to Apollo |
Composed by Roland Rizzo Performed by FILMharmonic Choir, Prague; Sandro Friedrich |
5:02 |
The Greek theme is based on two compositions. The first is a fragment (corresponding to lines 339-344) from the first stásimon (choral ode) of the ancient tragedy "Orestes" by the Classical Athenian playwright Euripides; the musical notation of the fragment is known thanks to the Orestes Papyrus, dated to the III century BCE. The second is the Second Delphic Hymn, dedicated to the god Apollo, by Hellenistic Athenian composer Limenius, a composition originally for the Pythaid religious festival of 128 BCE; this piece and the First Delphic Hymn to Apollo, likely from the same year, are the oldest recorded standalone pieces of European music.
Gallery[]
.jpg "Greek city in-game (Civ7).jpg (1.54 MB)")
.png "Hoplite in-game (Civ7).png (1.2 MB)")
.png "Acropolis in-game (Civ7).png (976 KB)")
.png "Oracle in-game (Civ7).png (3.48 MB)")
.png "Greek Background (Civ7).png (1.41 MB)")
Videos[]
See also[]
- Greek in other games
External links[]
| Civilization VII Civilizations [edit] | |
|---|---|
| Antiquity | |
| Exploration | |
| Modern | |
| 1 Requires DLC | |