Scottish (Civ6)

Scotland
Introduced in Rise and Fall
Leaders	Robert the Bruce
Civ ability - Scottish Enlightenment
Happy cities gain +5% Science and +5% Production, and generate +1 Great Scientist points in their Campuses and +1 Great Engineer points in their Industrial Zones. Ecstatic cities double these bonuses.
Unique
Unit	Highlander
Infrastructure	Golf Course
Geography & Social Data
Empire Name	Scottish Empire
Demonym	Scottish
Location	Northwest Europe
Size	30,090 square miles (77,933 square kilometers)
Population	Est. 5.4 Million in the present day. (300,000 in 12th Century)
Capital	Edinburgh

Back to Civilizations (Civ6)

The Scottish people (or Scots) represent a civilization in Civilization VI: Rise and Fall. Their colors are white (#F6FBFF) and blue (#516FAB), and they are led by Robert the Bruce.

The Scots' civilization ability is Scottish Enlightenment, which provides Happy cities with +5% Science and Production and +1 Great Scientist and Great Engineer point in the appropriate Districts (and doubles these bonuses in Ecstatic cities). Their unique unit is the Highlander (which replaces the Ranger), and their unique tile improvement is the Golf Course.

Strategy

Scotland is a Production and Science powerhouse that is geared towards a Science Victory, with a Domination Victory backup, thanks to their technological advantage. Their entire gameplay spins around their civilization ability while the other three are rather underwhelming or just clearly supplementary to the civilization bonus.

Scottish Enlightenment

Early in the game, scout wide for valuable Luxury resources and the other major civilizations for the boost for Writing. Unless you start in an amazing location with multiple Luxuries nearby, you will want to beeline for Games and Recreation to start building an Entertainment Complex that can help your next few cities.

From there, Scotland can potentially go in any direction, but you should try to build Campuses and Industrial Zones in all of your cities. If you are aiming for a more aggressive playstyle, build some Encampments to pump out strong units with a technological advantage. Use Wars of Liberation to keep the Production costs and the warmongering penalties at a minimum, but space out your wars to keep your citizens happy without war weariness penalties.

Although Scotland is not a civ geared for building large amounts of Wonders, there are some that they might like to try to build. The Colosseum and the Alhambra grant 2 Amenities each, with the former granting Culture and Loyalty and the latter granting a free Military Policy slot and Great General points. However, if they have a good setup for it, the Temple of Artemis may be all they need in terms of Amenities for quite some time. Other useful wonders that may be particularly good for the Scottish include the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Ruhr Valley, Oxford University, and Amundsen-Scott Research Station. Kilwa Kisiwani, although does not combo well directly with Scotland, is just too powerful of a Wonder to pass on, especially when you have discovered at least 2 Scientific City-states or playing on a Standard size map or above.

Scotland should place her Envoys in, as one might guess, Scientific, Industrial, and possibly Militaristic city-states. Geneva and Stockholm/Bologna are the most preferable Scientific city-states if Scotland is not at war and is not looking to be at war soon, Palenque is useful if Scotland has spawned in a Food-poor area, and Hattusa is quite good if you are looking to conquer other cities. For Industrial city-states, Buenos Aires is uncontested as the most powerful city-state for Scotland to control: pretty much as long as you control Buenos Aires and don't remove your bonus resources, Scotland's cities will always be Ecstatic. Otherwise, Hong Kong is very useful if you are trying to win a Science Victory. None of the Militaristic city-states give Scotland any synergistic bonuses; you want the production bonus towards units more than the actual Suzerain status. The final two city-states that Scotland should make efforts to befriend are Muscat and Zanzibar, both of which grant Amenities for being their Suzerain.

Scotland is flexible with all kinds of governments, although they should try to go for Classical Republic for a Tier 1, Merchant Republic for a Tier 2 (although Monarchy isn't bad either), and Communism for a Tier 3 (although Democracy isn't bad either).

Out of the two districts that grant Trade Route Trade Routes, Commercial Hubs are definitely the preference here, since Great Merchants are just straight-up more beneficial to Scotland than Great Admirals. There are 4 Great Merchants that grant exclusive Luxury Resources, they are, in order from the least powerful to the most, John Spilsbury (creates 1 copy of Toys, provides Amenities to 4 cities), Levi Strauss (creates 2 copies of Jeans, provides Amenities to 4 cities), Helena Rubinstein (creates 2 copies of Cosmetics, provides Amenities to 4 cities) and Estée Lauder (creates 2 copies of Perfume, provides Amenities to 6 cities). They should be a high priority for Scotland.

As mentioned above, Scotland is a solid and powerful civilization, not because their kits work well together, but because this ability alone makes up for the other three, so play around this one by trying to maximize Amenities from Luxury Resources and the Colosseum, combined with the Golf Course and you will not have to care about Amenities until late game, since all of your cities will likely be ecstatic all the time. Don't go out of your way to build Entertainment Complexes however, as this district is still the weakest specialty district of all, and you always have other priorities. One, with at least an Arena to get the Colosseum, should suffice for a while.

Bannockburn

Not much can be said about this ability, not because it is theoretically weak, but because the chance for this to come into play is too slim. In order to declare a Liberation War, you need to befriend a civilization and your friend needs to have at least one of his/her city taken away by a third civilization. Furthermore, if your friend has his/her cities taken away before you two become friends, that does not trigger the requirement for Liberation Wars, as it has to occur during your time of friendship. As you can see, there is a lot of requirements and setup for this, most of which lies beyond your control.

Nevertheless, +100% Production is really powerful, especially for a scientific empire. If you manage to meet the requirement to declare a Liberation War, the best advice is to declare it immediately when you can, use the Production bonus without actually liberating the taken city, make peace after 10 turns and repeat. By doing this, you can have 10 turns of double Production every 20 turns, which allows you to go for any Victory you want. You can try to weaken the enemy so that your friend stops getting bullied, as long as you do not actually take and return the lost city to your friend, this can be done indefinitely.

Highlander

In addition to being stronger than the Ranger it replaces, the Highlander receives combat bonuses in rough terrain. Since it replaces a unit that does not seem to have a lot of use, the Highlander also has every problem that the Ranger has. (Read more here). If you are playing Scotland for the first time and want a regular, most representative feel of the civilization, this unit should serve only as 4 Era Score and nothing else. If you are looking for a new and more challenging gameplay experience, continue reading.

Though it is possible, the Highlander can be used, yet very hard to do so effectively, in combat. Your goal is to gain the Tier III Promotion, Ambush, but since earlier recon units do not do a lot of combat because that is not their purpose, it is not possible to get a lot of pre-built Scouts to earn this and upgrade them later, even if you run Survey. Here is a few tips to earn the infamously hard to achieve promotion so your Highlander can actually have a purpose instead of mere 4 Era Scores:

1. Make sure every Tribal Village and Natural Wonder is discovered by a Scout. For Natural Wonders in particular, you can know if you are close to one without discovering it by turning on the tile yields. If you see uncommonly high yields, especially with irregular type of yields (like Science, Faith and Culture), on tiles that are not supposed to have those yields, stop going further and send a Scout that way. Make sure you have Survey policy card running before discovering either Tribal Villages or Natural Wonders.
2. If you are in a rather isolated region (like on an Island Plates or Archipelago map), make sure your Scout is level 2 by fighting Barbarians before letting them discover Tribal Villages. Since XP from fighting Barbarians after getting level 2 is drastically reduced, you can maximize your possible XP gain by doing this. However, if you know you are not alone, make sure to guard these Villages by patrolling other units next to them and remember to claim it, even not by Scouts, if you see other civs are close.
3. Terracotta Army gives a free promotion to every land unit. Make sure you amass a large army of Scouts and Highlanders before finishing this Wonder.
4. ( only) Victor with Embrasure promotion can give a free starting promotion, though it is not very helpful since you can always do that by carefully taking turn between fighting Barbarians and healing.
5. ( only) The Skirmisher is not really a useful unit since you do not need your Recon units fighting, but in the case of Scotland, this unit is a helpful stepping stone to gain XP for your future Highlanders.
6. Very important, but sometimes players forget: If you cannot gather enough XP for your Scouts to reach Ambush (which accounts for most, if not all, of your games), use your Highlanders to fight when running Survey. This works because Rangers are stronger than Musketmen with a Ranged attack and not too bad on defense either, and your Highlanders are even stronger than that with situational bonuses on top.

Very similar to the Ranger it replaces, the Highlander also does not seem to come into play too often, as scouting should definitely be demoted close to the bottom of your priority list in Industrial Era and it does not do a better job at scouting than your regular Scout, either. Worse than a regular combat unit at fighting and require too much, almost unrealistic, amount of setup for it to succeed, the Highlanders should never be the factor you rely on to carry you to victory, unless you are looking for something very, very unusual. 

Golf Course

Golf Courses bring revenue and happiness to the cities in which they're built, as well as Housing Housing in the Information Era. For maximum Culture bonuses, build them next to City Centers and Entertainment Complexes. Golf Courses raise the Appeal of adjacent tiles and can even be built on Tundra and Snow, which tend to have higher Appeal than other types of terrain. This can help the Scots create places for National Parks if they need Tourism or additional Amenities Amenities. However, remember the main selling point of the Golf Course is the Amenities Amenity, and because its (up to) 2 Culture per city is way too insignificant at this point of the game, don't go out of your way to build Entertainment Complexes, as they are often not worth your production and a district slot just for 1 extra Culture. Also, City Center adjacent tiles are also often very valuable, because they are the site for many powerful Wonders, most notably the Forbidden City, and in order to maximize the number of tiles receiving the Appeal bonus, it is often advised to just ignore the Culture bonus and build Golf Courses away from the City Center. By doing that, the Golf Courses still fulfill their sole purpose that Scotland cares about: supplying Amenities Amenities without requiring citizens to work their tiles.

The biggest downside of this improvement is its Civic requirement. Reformed Church is the last civic on the religious (bottom) branch of the Civic tree. Since this is a leaf Civic, meaning it is the last civic of its branch and not required to unlock later Civics, most civilizations with no religious tendency will ignore all three religious civics: Theology, Divine Right and Reformed Church. Scotland, however, has to unlock all three civics that they have no interest in, just to unlock their unique improvement, and the improvement is underwhelming to say the least. In your game, if you get lucky with multiple types of Luxury Resources, are able to build the all-important Colosseum and your empire is not too wide, all your cities can reach Ecstatic status even without the extra Amenities Amenity from the Golf Course. Remember to constantly check City Status to see your Amenities Amenity level, so that you can decide for yourself when to unlock the Golf Course. If your Amenities Amenity is already at Ecstatic, there is no point in wasting your Culture on unlocking the three religious Civics, you can leave it until later in the game when your cities cannot reach Ecstatic just on Luxury Resources and the Colosseum alone. 

Victory Types

Scotland is clearly geared towards a Scientific Victory, and you can achieve this really easily. Domination Victory is not out of the question, due to the technological advantage you will most certainly have over your enemies. A Cultural Victory is a bit harder, but not impossible. Although the Golf Courses provide a low and very conditional Culture yields, it does give you Appeal for National Parks and Seaside Resorts, plus all the bonus Production you will have for constructing Theatre Squares and Wonders.

Counter Strategy

When playing against Scotland, you want to defeat them early. If you spawn beside them in the Ancient Era, it is a good idea to just run up to them and take one or more cities if possible to put them far behind everyone else. Alternatively, you can piggyback off their success with a Research Alliance, but you can be certain Scotland will not attack you as long as you have a city close by due to Robert the Bruce's agenda. In the mid-game, if Scotland has gotten ahead, try using light cavalry units to pillage Scotland's luxuries, Entertainment Complexes, Campuses and Golf Courses. Since all of their might revolves around their civilization ability, the more Amenity sources you can deny from them, the better. Suzerainty of Muscat and Zanzibar, the Colosseum, the 4 Great Merchants that grant Luxuries, these are the top contenders that Scotland wants in every game. They are not bad for other civilizations, so there is no harm done going a bit out of your way to snatch them from the hands of Scotland.

Once you have unlocked aerial units, if you still haven't put Scotland behind, use them to target the same areas as listed above. Regardless of era, if you notice that Scotland has placed Envoys in Militaristic or Scientific city-states, it might be worth your while sending Spies to remove them. Finally, whether you are playing as them or not, Scotland's unique unit, the Highlander, is not great. They won't be a priority target on the battlefield, or a unit that you'll want to produce more than once for the Era Score.

Civilopedia entry

Occupying the northernmost reaches of the island of Great Britain, Scotland’s history has long been intertwined with that of its formidable neighbor to the south. Having fought repeatedly for independence throughout its history, the nation of Scotland often found itself the object of desire for invading forces from across the world.

Some of Scotland’s earliest recorded history comes from the conquests and travels of the Roman Empire, who seized large portions of England and Scotland at the turn of the 1st Century. At the time, Scotland was inhabited by various indigenous tribes known to the Romans as the “Caledonians.” Frequent skirmishes between the Romans and these local tribes are said to have inspired the construction of Hadrian’s famous wall to isolate the natives from the burgeoning empire (with debatable effectiveness).

By the mid-4th Century, the Romans had all but abandoned their attempts to control the British Isles, and over the next millennia the local kingdoms grew in strength and coordination. Among them were the Gaels and their kingdom of Dal Riata in the west, and the Picts and their kingdom to the east.

Although the Gaelic language (and much of their culture) prevailed over that of the Picts, by most accounts it was the Gaels who were slowly absorbed as the Pictish kingdom itself evolved into what became the Kingdom of Alba. In the Gaelic language the Kingdom of Alba translates as the Kingdom of Scotland, and over time all who inhabited their lands came to be known as Scots.

The arrival of the first Vikings from Denmark and Norway to the shores of Scotland around the turn of the 9th Century brought a new threat to the fledgling kingdom. However, while coastal settlements across western Scotland suffered from a number of raids by these Norsemen, it was England that suffered the majority of their wrath.

In 1124, King David I was crowned King of Scots, ushering in an era of sweeping changes so vast that historians came to refer to the period as the "Davidian Revolution." The rise of feudalism changed the Scottish approach to land ownership, local governance, and military structure.

It was under King David that Scotland constructed the first towns by royal charter. Known as burghs, these officially-sanctioned settlements provided a crucial source of income for Scottish monarchs for centuries to come. The commerce (and subsequent tax revenue) created in the burghs proved to be a critical factor in Scotland's ongoing development throughout the Middle Ages.

Some 200 years after David's reign, Scotland faced the growing specter of English rule over its lands and people. What came to be known as the First War of Scottish Independence began during the reign of notorious English King Edward "Longshanks", whose brutal tactics and disdain for the Scots incited a conflict that would last more than 20 years.

It was during this revolution that two of Scotland's most famous heroes, Sir William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, first rose to prominence. Both would lead Scotland's armies into battle against the English Kings, first Longshanks, and later his son Edward II.

Under the rule of Robert, the Declaration of Arbroath was signed in 1320 and delivered to the pope. Considered by many to be the world's first declaration of independence, and the later inspiration for the United States Declaration of Independence, this document claimed Scotland's status as a sovereign state. And for a time, it held true.

Robert the Bruce was succeeded by his son, David II, who in turn died childless in 1371. This led to the throne passing to Robert II, the grandson of Robert the Bruce (through his daughter Marjorie) and the high steward of Scotland, Walter Stewart.

As the first king of the royal house of Stewart, Robert's reign marked the beginning of the Stewart Dynasty (later changed to Stuart), a continuous line of rulers who lead Scotland until the early 17th century. Among the Stuart monarchs was the famous Mary, Queen of Scots, who was notably imprisoned and later beheaded after being convicted of planning the assassination of Queen Elizabeth of England in an attempt to usurp her throne.

In 1706, Scotland and England entered into negotiations to unite the two kingdoms in an effort to avoid the possibility of another protracted conflict, and to improve the financial security and trade arrangements of both sides. The agreed upon Treaty of Union led to the Acts of Union that officially brought both nations together as the United Kingdom of Great Britain on May 1, 1707.

Coinciding with the Industrial Revolution, the 18th Century marked the dawn of a period known as the "Scottish Enlightenment" when Scottish culture flourished. Advances in architecture and engineering, literature, music, and medicine all brought Scotland esteem and influence across the world. It was during this time that Scotland became famous for its shipwrights, who contributed greatly to the transition from wooden sailing ships to steamships made of iron.

In the modern day, Scotland has moved away from its industrial past with a greater reliance on financial services and the banking industry to lead economic growth. Scotland still relies on a variety of manufactured goods, with Scotch whisky (not to be confused with Irish whiskey) being among the most famous of the nation's exports. Still, it could be the said that Scotland's ongoing contributions to the world's scientific and cultural pursuits are its greatest gift to the world.

Cities

Main article: Scottish cities (Civ6)

Citizens

Males	Females	Modern males	Modern females
Amer	Ada	Angus	Alison
Hamish	Burunild	Colin	Bonnie
Donnan	Deirdre	Douglas	Fiona
Ewan	Ellen	Edmund	Gillian
Giles	Ese	Harry	Heather
Hugh	Florie	Simon	Iona
Fergus	Ysabell	Mungo	Rhona
Ranald	Maggie	Kenneth	Jane
Dauid	Muriel	Ian	Mary
Maelcolm	Orabilia	Wallace	Kenna

Trivia

• The Scottish civilization's symbol is the thistle, which has been the national emblem of Scotland since the reign of Alexander III.
• The Scottish civilization ability references a period of Scottish history characterized by great intellectual and scientific accomplishments.

Gallery

The Highlander, Scotland's unique unit

The Golf Course, Scotland's unique improvement

Scottish capital in Medieval Era

Videos

Civilization VI- Rise and Fall – First Look- Scotland

Related achievements

Let gentle blood shew generous might Win a regular game as Robert the Bruce A reference to The Lord of the Isles, a narrative poem by Sir Walter Scott.

Mulligan Build a Golf Course in a tile where you had previously attempted to build a Wonder, but got beaten to the Wonder by another Civ. A reference to the call in golf to redo a poor shot and not have it count on the score card.

External links

• https://civilization.com/news/entries/civilization-vi-rise-and-fall-robert-the-bruce-leads-scotland/