🔬 Research: Technologies & Civics
Two trees run in parallel for the whole game. Technologies are bought with Science and build the physical empire; Civics are bought with Culture and build the political one. They are structurally similar and strategically very different, and the difference is worth understanding before you spend a single turn of either yield.
| 🔬 Technologies | 🎭 Civics | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid for with | Science | Culture |
| Unlocks | Buildings, Units, Wonders, Projects, Improvements | Governments, Social Policies, Traditions, Buildings, Wonders |
| Unique trees? | No – every civilization researches the same Technologies | Yes – every civilization has its own Unique Civic tree |
| Feeds | Innovation, and the physical capacity to act | Traditions, your Government, and your Ideology |
Because Technologies are identical for everyone, the tech tree is a pure race – it tells you plainly who is ahead. Civics are not: each civilization has its own Unique Civic tree, and what you find in there exists nowhere else. Tech is where you keep pace with the field. Civics are where you become a specific civilization rather than a generic one.
How research works
Each turn your empire's Science is automatically invested in your selected Technology, and your Culture in your selected Civic. When one completes you choose the next, and any overflow carries into it – so nothing is wasted by finishing a cheap item with a large yield.
Each Age has its own tree. At an Age Transition both trees are replaced with the new Age's, and progress does not carry across. What carries is what you built with them – buildings, units, Traditions, and the Masteries you completed. This is the same logic that governs everything else at a transition. See What carries over.
Because the trees reset, Culture and Science poured into a Civic or Technology you do not finish before the Age ends buys you nothing. As Age Progress climbs past 70%, stop starting expensive items you cannot complete and pick up cheap ones – or a Mastery you can actually finish. See Reading the Age Clock.
Masteries – the optional second layer
Every base Technology and Civic has a Mastery attached: a deeper specialization of the same idea, costing roughly 80% of the base item's cost.
Masteries behave unlike anything else in either tree:
- They are never prerequisites. Nothing downstream requires them, so they never gate your progress.
- They are therefore entirely optional – and that is the decision. Every Mastery you take is Science or Culture not spent advancing the tree.
- Their bonuses are situational rather than foundational. A Mastery rarely unlocks a building or unit; it sharpens something you already have.
Why you take them anyway. In the Antiquity Age, Tech Masteries are the main source of Codices – which count directly toward Innovation to power a Science victory. Mastery completion also feeds Innovation in its own right. For a Science game, Masteries are not a detour; they are the path. See Antiquity – Pantheon, Altars, Codices.
Ask one question: does this Age still have something I need? If a Building, Unit, or Government sits ahead of you in the tree, drive for it and skip Masteries. If you have already unlocked what this Age offers you – or the Age is ending – Masteries convert leftover yield into permanent value instead of a bar you will never fill.
🎭 Unique Civic trees
This is the part of the research system with the widest gap between effort and payoff.
Alongside the standard Civics tree, every civilization has a Unique Civic tree of its own. Working through it unlocks the things that make that civilization itself:
- Traditions – civ-specific Social Policies
- Unique Improvements, Buildings, and Wonders
- Civ-specific Masteries, which are usually stronger than standard ones and are often required to unlock the associated unique content
Aksum is a clean example: its Unique Civic tree carries the Hawilt improvement, the Great Stele Wonder, a Mastery granting Gold on Quarters adjacent to Coast, and three Traditions – Port of Nations, Throne of My Fathers, and May This Please the People. Traditions do not go obsolete at an Age Transition, which makes the Unique Civic tree the highest-value Culture spend in any Age. See Social Policies & Traditions.
Two special branches
Two parts of the Civics tree behave less like research and more like a commitment.
Most Wonders unlock through Civics rather than Technologies, which makes Culture the primary route to a Wonder-heavy empire – and your civilization's associated Wonder unlocks early through its Unique Civic tree. See Appendix C.
⛪ Theology Civics gate your religion. Completing Piety lets you found a Religion once you build a Temple, and the first Civic in the Theology tree unlocks your Enhancer Belief. If you intend to play a religious game, these are scheduled work, not opportunistic picks. See Founding a Religion.
🗳️ Ideology Civics appear in the Modern Age. Studying Political Theory opens the three Ideology panels, and studying the first Civic inside one of them locks you into that Ideology permanently. Each Ideology then opens its own branch of the Civics tree with its own Social Policies. See Modern Ideologies.
What to prioritize
Research order is personal, but four rules hold for almost every game:
- Chase unlocks, not completion. Neither tree needs to be finished. Identify the two or three things this Age actually gives you – a Government, a unique Building, a key Unit – and drive straight at them.
- Buy your Government early. Its passive runs from the moment you adopt it, so a Government reached at 20% Age Progress is worth far more than the same one at 60%. See The Government system.
- Unique Civics before standard Civics, for the Tradition reason above.
- Convert the tail end of an Age into Masteries rather than starting something you cannot finish.
Culture buys Civics and contributes to Tourism, so a Cultural victory and a fast Civics tree are the same investment viewed from two angles. Science has no equivalent second job – it buys Technologies and feeds Innovation, both pointed at the same place. That asymmetry is why Culture-focused empires so often find themselves accidentally competitive on two victory paths at once, while Science empires must commit. See The four Victories.
👑 Leaders & civilizations that bend the rules of research
If you like racing the tech tree
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| 👑 Ada Lovelace | Every Tech Mastery pays Culture and every Civic Mastery pays Science – the one leader for whom Masteries are never a detour |
If you like the Civics side
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| 👑 Lafayette | His Reform Endeavor grants him a Tradition slot; the other leader gets one by Supporting it, or a Social Policy slot otherwise. Every slotted Tradition gives his units +1 Combat Strength |
| 🏺 Rome | +1 Combat Strength on the Legion for every Tradition in your Government – a Civics tree that arms your infantry |
| 🏭 Mexico | Locked into the Revolución Government, which pays +6 Happiness in Cities per Tradition slotted – Traditions are the economy |
If you want research to come from somewhere else
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| 🏺 Assyria | Capturing a Settlement for the first time grants a free Technology and a Codex – but Codices stop coming from Technologies. Conquest replaces research |
| 👑 Trung Trac | Her Tropical Cities gain +10% Science, doubled during a Formal War she declared |
| 👑 Yi Sun-sin | Naval kills pay Science equal to the defeated unit's Combat Strength |
| 🏭 Meiji Japan | Earns Science from overbuilding equal to 25% of the replaced Building's Production cost, rewarding aggressive modernization over preservation |
| 🏭 Qing China | −6 Science per Trade Route – a wide trade network actively fights its own research |