A Vox Populi(CBP) Guide: Carthage

Overview

A guide on how to play Carthage with the Vox Populi(Community Balance Patch) mod. Money makes the world go round, and no civ emphasizes that more then Carthage.

Introduction

These guides are designed to help players who are new to Civ but still interested in Vox Populi, familiar with Civ but new to Vox Populi, or even those well versed in Vox Populi who just want to see if there’s anything they didn’t know about a particular civilization. I am actually a big fan of Zigzagzigal’s Civ guide series, and it really helped me learn a lot about the game, and I wanted to bring a similar experience for fans of the Vox Populi or Community Balance Patch modpack. For those interested in the modpack it can be downloaded here[forums.civfanatics.com]

Anyways, without further ado, onto the Carthaginians!

Before I go into depth with this guide, here’s an explanation of some terminology I’ll be using throughout for the sake of newer players.

Beelining – Focusing on obtaining a technology early by only researching technologies needed to research it and no others. For example, to beeline Bronze Working, you’d research Mining and Bronze Working and nothing else until Bronze Working was finished.
Finisher – The bonus for completing a Social Policy tree (e.g. +33% Great Scientist rate and +25% growth in all cities from rationalism.)
GWAM – Great Writers, Artists and Musicians. These are the three types of Great People who can make Great Works, a major source of tourism for cultural Civs.
Opener – The bonus for unlocking a Social Policy tree (e.g. +25% Great Person Rate and +100% construction of guilds in Artistry)
Tall Empire – A low number of cities with a high population each.
UA – Unique Ability – the unique thing a Civilization has which doesn’t need to be built.
UB – Unique Building – A replacement for a normal building that can only be built and used by one Civilization.
UI – Unique Improvement – A tile improvement that can be made by workers that doesn’t replace any other improvement that can only be made by a single civilization
UU – Unique Unit – A replacement for a normal unit that can only be built by one Civilization or provided by militaristic City-States when allied.
Uniques – Collective name for Unique Abilities, Units, Buildings, Tile Improvements and Great People
Wide Empire – A high number of cities with a low population each.
XP – Experience Points – Get enough and you’ll level up your unit, giving you the ability to heal your unit or get a promotion.

Brief Unique Summary

Carthage has a coastal start bias. This is great as they are one of the most coastal reliant civs in the game, with their UA, UU and arguably even their UB relying on it

+125 when you found a city, scaling with era

All owned coastal cities receive a free lighthouse

The trade route diversity modifier is either doubled if positive, or halved if it is negative.

A naval melee unit

Positive One-Off Changes

• Unlocks at Fishing instead of Sailing
• +25% combat strength when attacking. +25% combat strength when attacking cities(Heavy Assault)
• Obsoletes at Astronomy rather than Compass

Positive Stay on Upgrade Changes
Gains xp from revealing tiles(Reconnaissance)*

*The description of the Quinquereme claims both promotions are lost on upgrade, but my testing found that to be untrue

Positive Changes

• Unlocks at Currency(instead of Guilds)
• Requires a market to be built instead of a customs house
• Incoming trade routes generate +5 for the city(up from 4), and +3 for the trade route owner(up from 2)
• Resource diversity modifiers for the city increase by 25% if positive, or decrease by 25% if negative
• Grants 2 additional trade routes
• All harbors gain +3
• All lighthouses gain +2

Strategies and Victory Routes

These scores are merely my personal opinions from playing and examining this Civ, you may find other uses for Carthage’s uniques that make you disagree with a certain ranking

The Quinquereme is a powerful offensive option in the early game, but it doesn’t upgrade well, and Carthage lacks any other military bonus, offensively or defensively.
The Great Cothon actually gives Carthage a very solid amount of culture, although it doesn’t translate well to tourism
Carthage also gets a bit of a production bonus from the Great Cothon due to harbors, and arguably having more trade routes allows for more internal trading. However they do lack any science bonus.
Carthage is arguably the strongest gold generating civ in the game, throughout the entire game, with gold on city founding helping the early game, while the extra and better trade routes keep them going in the mid and late game.
Finally, Carthage does have a somewhat busy early game, so they might have some trouble founding a religion, but with how wide they build, if Carthage does found they can usually get a strong religion going.

Most civs you can get an idea of what victory types they are good at just by seeing what their bonuses apply too, but Carthage’s strongest bonuses are to gold, and they lack anything pushing them extremely towards any one victory type. Gold is at least somewhat useful for any victory type, but I would argue it is most useful for Domination and Diplomatic victories. You can either use your large amount of gold to support a large army, or use you trade routes to gain city state influence, and your gold to buy diplomatic units.

Unique Ability: Phoenician Heritage

It’s anyone’s guess as to where this gold is coming from. But then again that’s pretty much modern economics

While the gold you get from founding cities scales with era (increasing to 250 in the medieval era, and then by 125 every era after) it is most important early on in the game before your economy gets going. There’s a lot you could do with this gold early on. You could buy a unit, invest in a building, or save it for future use, such as for a worker. My personal recommendation is to buy a pathfinder with the money you get founding your capital. This will help make sure you get territory scouted fast for future city spots, and gives you a much better chance of getting ruins before your neighbors. Do note that you only get gold for founding cities, you get no gold from your UA for conquering a city.

My queen, we have absolutely no idea how to traverse the seas, but just in case we ever figure it out, we have set up these structures which will allow any “sea traversing contraptions” to better find the shore

The moment you found any city on the coast it gets a lighthouse, regardless of whether or not you even have sailing. The lighthouse holds 2 major benefits. The first benefit is that it gives all coastal tiles +1 food and gold. 3 food 1 gold is better then most unimproved tiles, so this helps ensure that your city will have good workable tiles right from the start. The other major benefit of lighthouses is that (once you research the wheel) it will form city connections if there is an uninterrupted line of water between the two cities. As long as you found all your cities coastal, you won’t really need to build roads for city connections, as this already does that job. This saves you money, generates money, and even reduces unhappiness without you having to do anything special.

The first 2 parts of Carthage’s UA are short term benefits, the last part gives Carthage a more tangible long term strength.

Above: For any other civ the resource diversity modifier would be 30%

Resource Diversity works a bit differently in Vox Populi then the base game. For other civs, when sending an international trade route, for each luxury resource that one city has but not the other, the value of the trade route increases by 10%, or 20% if the city owner that has a resource has a monopoly on it. For Carthage all of these values are doubled. This means that overall Carthage can make a lot of money from trade routes, especially if they get some monopolies.

Unique Unit: Quinquereme

Ah I see you’ve figured out sailing there Carthage. Oh, you haven’t? You’ve only gotten to Fishing? Well then what’s that on your boat? Yeah, a large piece of cloth used to catch the wind and provide movement is called a sail. What do you mean you don’t understand the question?

The Quinquereme may just be one of the hardest hitting units relative to its era, coming in with 3 important features that make it really strong. The first, and arguably most important, is that it comes at fishing. Fishing only requires 1 tech to get to it, trapping. Sailing on the other hand, which is required for other civs to unlock the trireme, takes 4 techs. This means you can get out Quinqueremes super early, and no one will have pretty much any counter to it for a long time.

Above: Managed to snag the Statue of Zeus, bringing the bonus against cities up to 40%

The Quinquereme comes with what may just be the strongest unique promotion in the game, Heavy Assault. This gives +25% combat strength when attacking, and an additional 25% when attacking cities. This brings the Quinquereme up to a massive 21 strength attacking a city, which is just 1 point shy of a longswordsmen, in the ancient era!

The final promotion, while less important then the other two, is still very useful. The Quinquereme gets xp from revealing tiles, just as if it was a recon unit. While the Quinquereme is definitely too strong to be just sent out scouting once you find a target to conquer, most likely even your closest target will be some distance away on the sea, or maybe you will need to scout with your Quinqueremes to find a target. Either way, your first couple of ships should be able to get enough xp for one or two promotions before you even declare war, giving them a further leg up.

So the Quinquereme comes earlier then the trireme, is stronger then the trireme by a large margin, and most likely has more promotions from leveling up. What’s the catch? Well…

Gains xp from revealing tiles(Reconnaissance)

While arriving very early makes the Quinquereme strong in its time it doesn’t matter in the long run. Heavy Assault is really strong, but once upgraded to a caravel it is lost. This just leaves Carthage with caravels that have the ability to gain a bit of xp from exploring. You need to utilize Quinqueremes as early as possible, because they offer almost nothing once they have passed their prime.

Unique Building: Great Cothon

The Great Cothon builds upon Carthage’s two major strengths. Trade routes and coastal cities.

Above: 5 trade routes should be about the amount you expect to have when you build the Great Cothon. Most other civs would have 3.

Carthage’s trade routes are already better then everyone else’s, the only thing they needed was more of them, and the Great Cothon provides. Further building on that, it also increases the trade diversity modifier by a further 25%. The Great Cothon already retains the East India Company’s bonus of giving free copies of nearby luxuries, so this further incentivizes you to build it in a city with lots of luxuries.

Free lighthouses was already a great bonus for Carthage, but the Great Cothon pretty much turns them into a free monument as well. Considering at this point you are probably both still founding cities, as well as possibly not building many other culture buildings, this is a massive boost to culture. Later on, once you build harbors(because why wouldn’t you be anyways) they will also give you a good amount of production. I would argue the production isn’t as important since you have to build the harbor first, but it is still a very useful bonus.

Social Policies

Carthage should start with Authority to support their early wide expansion and to get more benefits out of Quinquereme conquest. They should then go Statecraft to help build on trade routes. What policy tree they choose last depends on their victory type. Industry for diplomacy, and Imperialism for domination

Opener: Little bit of production to help early unit and building construction, plus easier barbarians and some culture out of them and any other units you kill to boot

Tribute: Some extra yields for your cities here and there never hurt

Imperium: You’re bound to be conquering a lot of cities, so this will probably add up to several techs and a few policies

Dominance: Get some science out of your kills too, plus the healing will allow your units to stand a bit of a chance at surviving a followup attack after defeating another unit

Discipline: Carthage doesn’t have to worry about gold but happiness could be a problem. This will help that.

Honor: Some extra units here and there, fairly likely to be a Quinquereme early on, which is pretty nice

Finisher: Being able to rapidly purchase units to defend territory across the sea is pretty nice

Opener: Small bit of gold and a few extra yields in the capital can’t hurt

Trade Confederacy: Yay better trade routes!

Foreign Service: A nice collection of misc. bonuses

Shadow Networks: A good boost to science that you definitely need

Exchange Markets: An extra trade route that is superior to basically everyone else, and some happiness from your trade routes on top.

Consulates: Helps give an early leg up in the world congress.

Finisher: A few yields every world congress session, not too shabby

Opener: Seaports and Train Stations are normally expensive buildings, but now they are in line with other buildings

Free Trade: Extra gold from trade routes is always nice

Division of Labor: A large boost to your production and gold outputs

Entrepreneurship: Gold and production, the industry tree knows what it wants, and you do too.

Mercantilism: A good bit of extra science and culture. Who ever said Industry was just gold and production? Wait a minute…

Protectionism: Why else are you even here anyways? Two trade routes that’s why!

Finisher: You’re bound to have specialists somewhere, so this is definitely helpful

Opener: You probably have a solid navy leftover from Quinquereme conquests, and now it just got a lot better.

Colonialism: You’ll have lots of monopolies by now, get some more use out of them.

Regimental Tradition: Faster Great General and Admiral generation, as well as making them stronger, good to have on the land or on the sea

Martial Law: You’ll definitely have plenty of puppet cities, and conquered ones too. Both of them will be less of a burden now.

Exploitation: A good bit of yields across the empire, especially if most of your cities are coastal, which they presumably are.

Civilizing Mission: Gold from conquering cities, and production in said conquered cities, everything you need to push the front line.

Finisher: Now your navy defends better, and you can use air units to help better defend and stabilize your empire.

Ideology

A diplomatic Carthage should go Freedom due to their trade focus, but a domination Carthage should go Autocracy

Economic Union: 2 trade routes, 2 more City States getting influence.

Covert Action: Makes your spies better at getting those tricky city states your diplomatic rivals don’t want to give up.

Avant Garde: Some more great people, and a bit less unhappiness

Universal Healthcare: A free hospital in every city, possibly before you even have biology researched, is amazing.

Arsenal of Democracy: Get a bit more out of your great people with extra influence whenever you use them.

Treaty Organization: Save your trade routes for City States and you should be able to keep them loyal

Elite Forces: Need some new units? They’re better. Have lots of old units? They upgrade faster

New World Order: Carthage needs every help they can get with unhappiness, and here it is.

Military-Industrial Complex: You may have tons of money but cheaper upgrades never hurt

Commerce Raiders: A little bit of production is nice, but you mainly want this for the better ships, the extra resources is decent if you are keeping up city state allies too.

Martial Spirit: An amazing bonus to clean up your last conquest or two, but it is a temporary boost. If you still have more then two civs to conquer, it might be better to postpone this, but it is always worth getting when the moment is right.

Air Supremacy: You’ll probably need some land units, and while you’ll probably have a solid navy, air travel will still be faster.

Wonders

Petra: Might be a bit hard due to terrain requirements, but the extra trade route is nice

Pyramids: The faster you can get a city out the more gold you can get.

Statue of Zeus: The faster you can kill a city with your Quinqueremes the better.

Colossus: Much easier to get then Petra, probably just as valuable to Carthage.

Great Lighthouse: Your Quinqueremes aren’t quite obsolete yet, so this will still help them out, and it’s a nice boon to your future navy.

Alhambra(Authority Only): A good bit of culture, plus some promotions for mounted units if you feel like doing that

Summer Palace(Diplomacy): A major help to your diplomatic game, should really help make sure you can compete with strong diplomatic civs.

Palace of Westminster(Statecraft Only): Will help you either win the world congress for a diplomatic game, or keep a solid stance to prevent bad decisions from passing in a domination game

Neuschwanstein: A bit hard to get due to terrain, but will help unhappiness a ton

Broadway(Industry Only): Should give you a solid amount of culture

Prora(Autocracy Only): Should almost eliminate your happiness problems.

Statue of Liberty(Freedom Only): A good amount of production, but you mostly want the free policy

Pentagon(Imperialism Only): If you need air units, they come out faster and with more xp

CERN: 2 free techs, and a ton of influence. This is all you could ever want.

Pitfalls to Avoid

Carthage may seem a bit simple on paper but they require an unorthodox and aggressive playstyle, which can lead to some mistakes.

If you don’t found a city on the coast, it doesn’t get a free lighthouse. And as land trade routes are inferior to sea routes, you are arguably losing out on the better trade routes, so you effectively are wasting 2/3rds of your UA by not founding on the sea. If a city spot is genuinely good enough inland to warrant it do it, but if you have the option of founding on the coast you should do it.

Assuming all your cities are coastal, you won’t need to build roads to get city connections, but that isn’t the only use of roads. Without roads all of your troops move slower, and if you are being invaded your units can’t retreat effectively. You don’t necessarily have to build roads directly between cities, but having some is still useful.

If you are properly utilizing the Quinquereme this shouldn’t be an issue, but one barbarian ship, or enemy civ parking a boat outside of your capital can completely wreck your city connections if you aren’t properly defended. One way to avoid this is to build a road between your capital and at least one other city. It is unlikely, especially from barbarians that both cities will be blockaded.

While early game you will have lots of money through many sources, mid and late game trade routes are pretty much all you have. You need to be sending out as many as you can to keep making money.

Crashing Carthage: Counter Strategies

Carthage has a metric ton of gold, and they have a scary early naval rush. However they are a bit unfocused, and gold can’t solve every problem.

Carthage gets gold from founding cities, but not from conquering them. So take potential city spots from Carthage, and you deny them their gold. This also somewhat prevents them from getting as many free lighthouses, although that isn’t necessarily any better or worse if you have less cities.

As for their better trade routes, you can always just try and make sure to pillage them whenever you have the opportunity. Later on, an embargo will really cripple Carthage, so keep that in mind.

The Quinquereme is an absolutely terrifying force. My best recommendation against them is to just not have any cities on the coast. However if that isn’t an option, probably because your capital was founded coastal, all hope isn’t lost. Walls are going to be your best defense. I’ve found cities do an oddly large amount of damage to Quinqueremes with their ranged attack. Naval units will struggle to heal, especially this early on, so get a unit weak enough and you probably won’t even have to bother killing it. Getting to sailing will be helpful as well. Triremes and dromons of your own will probably still lose to Quinqueremes, but they will slow them down and deal some damage. The longer it takes for Quinqueremes to start really attacking, the worse off they will be. Once you can get castles and especially once you get caravels and galleass’s the Quinquereme holds no threat, and doesn’t upgrade into anything special.

The Great Cothon mostly builds on Carthage’s trading strengths, so just keep doing what you were already doing. There isn’t a ton you can do about the bonuses they get to lighthouses and harbors, but while certainly helpful doesn’t give Carthage a massive advantage anyways, so you shouldn’t worry about it much.

Early-Game Warmongers: If you aren’t coastal, Carthage shouldn’t prove too tough, as they will focus most of their efforts on ships, making them an easy conquest. However if you are on the sea, even if you aren’t an early naval power like Denmark or England, you will need to worry. You could try to conquer Carthage faster then they can conquer you, but that is likely a losing fight. I would stay on the defense if Quinqueremes are going to be an issue

Mid/Late-Game Warmongers: At this point Carthage might have a somewhat large navy but it won’t be anything special. Just know that Carthage can purchase and support a large army, so while it won’t be anything special, be prepared for a fight.

Diplomatic Players: An embargo will destroy Carthage. Once Quinqueremes obsolete trade is practically all they have.

Scientific Players: Use your tech lead to get to medieval defenses fast, and then Carthage should prove absolutely no issue.

Cultural Players: Just do your best to get through the early game, and Carthage shouldn’t prove any direct competition.

Other Guides

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• Austria (Diplomacy/Culture)
• Babylon (Science)
• Brazil (Culture)
• Byzantium (All)
• China (Domination/Culture)
• Denmark (Domination)
• Egypt (Culture)
• England (Domination/Diplomacy)
• Ethiopia (Science)
• Germany (Diplomacy/Science)
• Greece (Domination/Diplomacy/Culture)
• The Huns (Domination)
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• India (Science/Culture)
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• The Iroquois (Domination)
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• Korea (Science/Domination)
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• The Netherlands (Diplomacy/Domination)
• The Ottomans (Domination/Science)
• Poland (Domination)
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• Russia (Science/Domination)
• The Shoshone (Domination/Science/Culture)
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