A 4UC Vox Populi Guide: Korea

These are an updated set of guides for the Vox Populi mod meant to help players learn the details and how to play each civ in the game. Whether new to civ entirely, experienced in civ but new to Vox Populi, or even well experienced with the mod and just looking for a refresher, these guides are designed to be useful to all. These guides were inspired by Zigzagzigal's guides, as they helped me learn a lot about the game when I first started playing it over a decade ago, and I wanted to provide a similar experience for the Vox Populi mod, which has become my go to way to play civ v, and is my favorite strategy game. For those looking for the download for the mod, it can be found here[forums.civfanatics.com]

With that out of the way, onto the Koreans!

Before getting into the specifics of the civ, a few terms that I may be using during this guide will be defined here

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. All Naval and Air units gaining a promotion increasing their strength as they take damage from Imperialism.)
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% GWAM generation, +10% culture generation during golden ages and +100% construction of guilds in Artistry)
Scaling with Era - Any trait scaling with era will double in the medieval era, then increase by the same amount every era afterwards (For example, a +1 bonus scaling with era would increase to +2 in the medieval, +3 in the renaissance, etc. until a max of +7 in the information era)
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.
UGP - Unique Great Person - A replacement for a great person that only one civilization can generate
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.
WLTKD - We love the king day.
XP - Experience Points - Get enough and you'll level up your unit, giving you the ability to heal your unit or get a promotion.
ZOC - Stands for "Zone of Control" which is the effect that causes units to use all their movement if they move from a space adjacent to an enemy unit to another space still adjacent to that same unit

Korea does not have a start bias. While they might appreciate a coastal start having a naval UU, it isn't a major deal.
+1 from all specialists, increasing by 1 in the medieval, industrial and atomic eras. +20% during golden ages +50 golden age points when a great person is born, scaling with era

A siege unit

Negative Changes

• No bonus against cities(Down from 100%)

Positive One-Off Changes

• Higher combat strength (15 instead of 8)
  
• Higher sight(2 instead of 1)
  
• No penalty against land units
  
• Obsoletes at Rifling rather than Gunpowder

Positive Stay on Upgrade Changes

• +25% combat strength when in or adjacent to a city center. Deals 5 hp damage to targets adjacent to the target within range(Singijeon)
  
• Deals 5 hp damage to targets adjacent to the target within range(Splash I)

A naval melee unit

Negative Changes

• Higher production cost (185 vs 160)
  
• Half movement in ocean(Shallow Draft)

Positive One-Off Changes

• Higher combat strength (32 instead of 25)
  
• Obsoletes at Industrialization rather than Navigation

Positive Stay on Upgrade Changes

• +25% combat strength vs naval melee units(Deck Spikes)

Positive Changes

• +2
  
• +1& to all great person tile improvements
  
• +1& to all great works
  
• When a citizen is born in the city, gain equal to 50% of the city's output(up from 25%)

*Chaebols being a stock exchange replacement receive this bonus Positive Changes

• +5 & +4 (Up from +3)
  
• -25% cost for purchasing or investing(Up from 20%)
  
• +4 to factory
  
• +2 +2 & +2 to stock exchange in all cities*

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


Both UUs are very strong on defense. Situationally Turtle Ships can also do well offensively, but Korea's military leans much more defensive
Between the extra golden ages and both of Korea's UBs, they get decent culture. However, none of it translates to tourism, even if Korea is slightly encouraged to generate great works
Science is Korea's bread and butter, mostly carried by their UA but also the Seowon. The Seowon, UA and Chaebol all contribute to solid production bonuses as well
Extra golden ages from the UA and the Chaebol give Korea a solid economy, especially late game. They do lack any bonuses to diplomacy however
Korea also lacks any benefit to religion

All Korean specialists give +1 science, increasing by 1 every other era (medieval, industrial, and atomic). This is going to be Korea's primary scientific power, especially in the early and mid game. Build up your specialist buildings, work lots of farms/high food tiles, and you'll be generating a ton of science

Even though the text of the UA implies it gives a 20% boost to your global science, it actually boosts every city individually, and as such, is only viewable on the city screen

Korea's other major science boost is a 20% bonus science generation during golden ages. Since Korea also gets golden age points whenever a great person is born, simply by working all the specialists they want to be anyways, they generate a lot of great people, which gets a lot of golden ages which gets them even more science. Do your best to also keep yourself happy and get other sources of golden age bonuses and no one else will be able to even get close to your science output.

Our first engineer. A true sign of our ongoing prosperity

Truly the first invention capable of blacking out the sky all on its own

The Hwach'a sacrifices the offensive city busting power of the trebuchet and instead becomes a defensive, unit destroying monster. As long as the Hwach'a is next to or in a city (not just your own city, any city counts) it gets a 25% strength boost. Offensively giving it 25 ranged strength, stronger then a renaissance cuirassier, but almost as importantly it also gets stronger defensively too. Hwach'as have a base combat strength of 15, only 2 lower then a pikeman, so they can actually take a melee hit or two without dying instantly, and next to a city this goes up to 18.75, higher then even a field gun meaning that if you leave a Hwach'a unprotected or a unit slips past, the Hwach'a should be alright.

The other nice thing is that the Hwach'a deals 10 damage to any units adjacent to its target and also within range. 10 hp isn't a massive amount on it's own, but softening up nearby units is nice, and if you had two Hwach'as attacking the same target, suddenly all the nearby units are down 20 hp, and vulnerable to attacks from other full health units.

While they lose some effectiveness against land units when upgraded, they are absolute monsters at defending cities from naval attacks

• +25% combat strength when in or adjacent to a city center. Deals 5 hp damage to targets adjacent to the target within range(Singijeon)
  
• Deals 5 hp damage to targets adjacent to the target within range(Splash I)

Now those are some real yields, those academy students are putting in work

Seowon's give all great person improvements 1 science and production. Given you want to generate lots of great people for your UA anyways, you'll likely have a lot of great person improvements even when you first build your Seowons, let alone later on in the game.

Can't have the GWAMs feeling left out can we now?

The Seowon gives the same boost to great works as it does to great person improvements, so there is no reason to prioritize one type of great person over the other, at least because of Koreas uniques at any rate.

Now some people may or may not have noticed that I order the sections of the guide about the uniques in order of when they show up in gameplay. Hwach'as and Seowons both arrive in the early medieval, but I believe you should go for Physics first instead of Education. This is for two reasons. One is that at this point in the game, your neighbors are likely looking at you as a potential conquest target, if they haven't already been warring you. Hwach'as serve as an excellent defense and deterrent. The second reason is that due to Korea's excellent science just off their UA, they can easily end up researching Education before they actually have the infrastructure to reasonably build Seowons in most/all of their cities. So while I would normally advocate going for science bonuses earlier rather then later, Korea isn't exactly lacking in that area, so they can afford to delay Seowons slightly in favor of other things, like stronger defense

If you aren't aware of the story behind Turtle Ships, and more specifically Admiral Yi, I'd highly recommend doing so. Extra History's video series on Admiral Yi is very good

Continuing the Korean trend of units that are ludicrously strong but come with some downside enters the Turtle ship. It has a massive 32 combat strength compared to the caravels 25, and combined with the deck spikes promotion they have a disgusting 40 strength when fighting other naval melee units, the same strength of a corvette.

While they dominate as a combat unit, Turtle Ships are much worse at the other, arguably primary role of the caravel; exploration. While they can end their turn in deep ocean, they retain the shallow draft of older ships, causing deep ocean to cost double movement. This means Korea is much slower at discovering new lands and other civs and city states that spawned on other continents.

• +25% combat strength vs naval melee units(Deck Spikes)

While they don't the raw base combat strength advantage after upgrade, upgraded Turtle Ships should still allow Korea control of the waves if they so choose.
Case in point

Currently there are 4 Chaebols built across the empire

Chaebols give a bit more reduction to gold purchasing costs then stock exchanges, and they also give factories more production, but the real reason Chaebols are worth building, is that they give 2 gold, science and culture for every Chaebol in your empire. Build these quickly in every city and they will start giving stupid yields. This game for example, I ended up having a pretty tall empire, only 7 cities, but with a Chaebol in all of them, that's 14 of all of those yields, times seven for each city giving 98 culture, science and gold. Accounting for yield multipliers for policies and other buildings, this means Chaebols were accounting for around 10% of my science and culture, and a much higher percentage of my income given the other standard stock exchange bonuses. Long story short, get these going as soon as you can and enjoy a sizable increase to 3 of your most important yields, especially if you've been able to expand a fair bit.

Korea should start with Tradition in order to maximize their specialist usage early, then Artistry for more great people and more golden ages. Finally Rationalism is best for more science, and boosts from specialists and golden ages

Opener: The extra population you need to start working specialists for science

Justice: Extra production with which you can help get your infrastructure and wonders going quicker

Ceremony: A bit of happiness but more importantly a good amount of science.

Splendor: Extra culture to go with all the great people you want to generate

Sovereignty: Faster border growth and a bit of faith. Pretty nice

Majesty: You're likely to be working a ton of specialists especially in the capital, so this helps assure your capital is still growing.

Finisher: Even better yields for your capital, and also better yields on all the great person tile improvements you're almost certainly placing down

Opener: Faster GWAMs for more golden age points.

Refinement: You'll be working more then a fair few specialists. This makes it easier and more profitable

National Treasure: A free great person for more golden ages, and some gold to add on top of the yield pile generating great people gives. I'd recommend a great diplomat to help out a bit for the world congress

Humanism: Arguably the most important policy in Artistry for Korea. Makes it so you can much more easily stay in a golden age, hopefully permanently

Heritage: You might as well get more yields out of your great works and theming even if you aren't strictly going for a tourism win

Cultural Exchange: Nice bit of production, culture and even happiness, all quite welcome

Finisher: A bit more science and tourism, plus the potential for even more landmarks and artifacts

Opener: Extra food is always welcome on Korea, plus better scientist specialists is nice

Employment Law: Makes it even easier to work more specialists, exactly what Korea wants

Liberalism: Better specialists, and more great people during golden ages, which lets you get even more golden ages. Literally what else could you ask for on Korea?

Mass Education: Feel free to take this earlier if you have an opportunity to grab an expensive ahead of time tech and/or are ready to start building public schools en masse

Emancipation: Bit more food, plus some other yields, not bad

Secularism: All those academies you probably have are really gonna be amazing now

Finisher: Makes it a bit harder for spies to steal your stuff.

As a specialist, golden age focused civ, Freedom is a no brainer for Korea

Universal Suffrage: Longer golden ages plus a free one on top. Perfect, should all but guarantee you a permanent golden age for the rest of the game, and all the extra yields that come with it

Avant Garde: More great people is more golden ages is more science.

Civil Society: More food, for more specialists for more great people yada yada you know why you're here by now

New Deal: You already have pretty much the best great person tiles in the game as Korea, might as well keep building on that

Capitalism: Insert sentence about Korea's specialist gameplay loop here.

Space Procurements: If you've really been able to get your Chaebols going you should have the economy needed to easily blow through building spaceship parts

Terrain/resource specific pantheons are not listed here unless they have some other synergy with a civ's uniques, however they can often be a great choice if the terrain/resources you start with favors them

Goddess of Wisdom: With this you'll absolutely rocket through the early tech tree

Goddess of the Home: Should give you the food you need to pretty much never have to worry about being able to work your early specialists

Divine Inheritance: Makes your capital even more of a beast during all your golden ages

Ceremonial Burials: Since you want lots of great people, might as well get even more yields out of them

Revelation: Since you're blitzing through the tech tree so fast, this could become a huge amount of early yields, but it doesn't have the long term potential of the two options above

Mastery: Your specialists already give lots of science, now they can give you golden age points so you can get even more science!

Cooperation: A little bit extra out of your specialists, plus some more incentive towards internal trade

Asceticism: Lots more food for even more specialists

Sacred Calendar: Great people may already equate to golden ages for you, but what if golden ages now equated to more great people?

Symbolism: A good backup to Sacred Calendar

Divine Teachings: The best reformation belief for any science civ

To the Glory of God: Lets your late game faith go towards an avalanche of great people, and even more yields to add to generating great people in the mean time

Inspired Works: Build up on what Seowons started and make your great works and great person improvements absolutely bursting with yields

Pyramids: You get golden age points when you get a great person, why not when you expend them too?

Temple of Artemis: More food and unhappiness reductions to work your capital specialists

Great Library: You'll likely have first crack at this given your huge early science, so extend that lead even further

Hanging Gardens: Build this, and that city can pretty much every specialist they want

Oracle: Almost a free tech and policy, any game benefits from the Oracle

Great Lighthouse: May or may not be slightly out of the way of your normal tech path, but your future Turtle Ships will thank you for nabbing this

University of Sankore(Tradition Only): Something something science and great people, Korea want
Chichen Itza: Longer golden ages, one of if not the highest priority wonder for Korea

Leaning Tower of Pisa: Almost as important as Chichen Itza, as the extra great people are a huge deal

Globe Theatre: Also a high value wonder for Korea due to the golden age points it can give

Porcelain Tower: Slap this in the capital for a sizable science boost

Taj Mahal: A free golden age plus a decent bit of extra golden age points from population

Soho Foundry: Korea tends to build tall, so sometimes they don't get a lot of coal. This gives you at least a bit extra to work with

Louvre(Artistry Only): A free artist is nice, plus the theming is actually quite a solid amount of culture if you can pull it off

Statue of Liberty(Freedom Only): A free social policy is excellent, the extra production on specialists is just the cherry on top

Empire State Building: Even more things to throw onto the specialist yields

Bletchley Park(Rationalism Only): Makes your own spying efforts quite a bit more effective
Hubble Space Telescope: A free scientist, and faster spaceship parts, both crucial to finishing out your science victory

Great Firewall: Makes it near impossible for anyone to spy on you and steal your tech lead

CERN: 2 free techs to wrap up the tech tree, plus some influence to hopefully get a little more sway in the congress

Korea has a pretty simple and effective gameplay loop, but that doesn't mean there aren't mistakes to be made

Specialists are your main method of generating science, especially early game, but they are extremely food hungry. If you don't have high food output in your cities, they won't be able to grow and expand their infrastructure, causing you to either fall behind, or forgo capitalizing on your most powerful bonus
The Hwach'a, and to some extent even the Turtle Ship sacrifice some conventional offensive traits for raw strength. Even if they lose some of the things that normally help offensively, such as city damage and mobility respectively, they are still VERY powerful units. Don't let their defensive leanings hold you back from an easy beneficial conquest. On the other hand certainly don't force a war you aren't ready for, Korea can play perfectly fine completely peacefully, they just don't have to.
Korea may have some incentive to go at least a bit wide due to the scaling nature of the Chaebol, but the benefits going tall give to specialists and golden ages are probably more beneficial to Korea, especially given how late Chaebols come online. Don't settle a terrible city just for one extra Chaebol.
I mentioned this in the Seowon section, but due to Koreas very high science output, they can end up getting to Seowons earlier then they strictly have the infrastructure to build them. That, along with the fact that just with their UA alone they have more science then almost anyone else, means that you shouldn't rush Seowon's until you get other essential ancient and classical infrastructure buildings up first, namely your production and food buildings.

Korea has probably the strongest science output in the game, along with a very strong defense, especially in the mid game. Outside of that though, Korea has very little going for them, and can therefore be overcome through other methods.

Korea gets tons of science right from the beginning of the game that only continues to grow as the eras move on. To maximize this however Korea is extremely dependent on one thing that they have no unique advantage to; food. If you can deny Korea high food areas, such as rivers, flood plains, and coastal resources, they will struggle to work the specialists they need, which will double hit their science by both reducing their raw science, and the amount of great people they generate therefore reducing the amount of golden ages for extra science they get. Yeah that's right, we're taking their apostrophe, what're they gonna do, cry about it?

Hwach'as are a very powerful defensive unit, one that is not nearly as vulnerable as a typical trebuchet. Of course they are less of a threat invading you, so it is actually much better to think of them not as a siege unit, but rather as a standard ranged unit. Specifically they compare decently well to a crossbow, albeit earlier and even then a little bit stronger even ignoring their promotion. Knights will still do well at taking them down, and siege units of your own should be used to break any Hwach'as that are hiding inside a city. It may be tempting to try and spread out your army to minimize splash damage, but you're inviting other Korean units the easier ability to sneak into your backlines to cause havoc to your own ranged units, so it's better to just do your best to tank the splash damage and take out Hwach'as as quick as you can

Just go to a community Seowon, the private ones are way too expensive anyways

Seowons simply amplify Korea's strengths, specifically their great people. If you can deny them the food they need to work specialists, plus maybe some valuable wonders such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Seowons won't be nearly as effective.

Turtle Ships are an absolute nightmare to try and fight. They hit pretty much an era ahead of what they should. No civ, not even the strongest naval civs can really hope to fight Korean Turtle Ships. Your best bet is to try and lure them into deep ocean, and then go around them to get to whatever target you want to actually get to, but if they refuse to move from the coast, there really isn't much you can do until you get renaissance era boats, and even then, if you somehow manage to beat Korea to Navigation, Turtle Ships are effectively as strong as corvettes, although they would be fairly vulnerable to frigates The one exception to fighting Korea with medieval ships is the Indonesian Djong. Being a Galleass replacement that doesn't have a deep ocean movement penalty, they can attack from where the Turtle Ship would somewhat struggle to get to. Now the Turtle Ship will still have enough movement to get to and attack them, but they'll have to actually venture into deep water, and with either multiple layers of ships or some meat shields to defend (that will inevitably die in their task) the Djong is the one thing that stands a chance at taking down the Turtle Ship
Chaebols come late enough that if Korea is already a threat for winning the game at the point they get access to Chaebols, no specific counterplay to Chaebols is going to make a difference. If you've constrained Korean expansion enough that Chaebols can't stack their yields very high, Korea is likely largely irrelevant to the game anyways. Just simply note that the late game Korean economy will actually be quite solid, so while a weakness in the early and mid game the Chaebol will cause that to no longer be the case
Early-Game Warmongers: By far Korea's weakest point. Overwhelm them with strength and even with a potential science edge they'll lack the infrastructure, economy or military advantages to pose any real resistance

Mid-Game Warmongers: By contrast, this is the hardest time to invade Korea. They aren't unbreakable on land, but you'll want both strong cavalry to catch any out of position Hwach'as, and strong siege to quickly take down any that are protected in cities. Do not attempt to navally invade Korea until you have renaissance era ships, with maybe the exception of Indonesia

Late-Game Warmongers: If you've managed to keep at least enough tech parity with Korea to ensure you have roughly the same unit tech, Korea lacks the bonuses to truly stand up to a dedicated warmonger. Just make sure your navy is extra strong, preferably focused more on ranged ships then melee

Scientific Players: In terms of raw science it is almost impossible to beat Korea. However, Korea only has minor infrastructure bonuses, and timing based defensive advantages. If you can snatch important wonders, or plan an invasion when their bonuses aren't at their best, you can minimize or even overtake Korea's raw science

Cultural Players: Korea has a bit of incentive to go for some normally cultural wonders, and with their science it's hard to compete. If you can manage an invasion though you may find you get a lot more great works then you would most non-cultural civs

Diplomatic Players: Endowment for the Arts doesn't hurt Korea as much as most scientific civs, however sanctions and targeted luxury bans can actually be pretty effective at killing Korea's economy and hurting their happiness and therefore ability to get golden ages

• Arabia (Culture/Science)
  
• The Huns (Domination)
  
• The Inca (Science/Domination)
  
• The Netherlands (Diplomacy/Domination/Culture)
  
• Portugal (Science/Diplomacy)
  
• Russia (Domination/Science)
  
• Siam (Diplomacy/Science/Culture)
  
• Songhai (Domination)
  
• Sweden (Domination/Diplomacy)