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 Huns!

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.

The Huns have a Plains/Grasslands start bias. This might push you slightly away from the center of the map, but it is perfect for every Hunnic unique.


Friendly and enemy War Weariness reduced by 50%

Your mounted melee and armor units can capture defeated enemy units

Your Cities claim adjacent unowned land tiles when they earn a tile of the same type.




A mounted ranged unit



Positive One-Off Changes

• Higher combat strength (13 instead of 12)
  
• Higher ranged strength (11 instead of 10)
  
• Obsoletes at Metallurgy rather than Physics
  
• Does not require horses

Positive Stay on Upgrade Changes

• +10% Combat Strength, additional +10% against units above 50% hp(Accuracy I)

*Since Eki's get adjacency bonuses, the potential maximum production is 3 points higher, although more realistically is 1 or 2

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


The Huns are best suited for a domination victory, their Horse Archers give the push needed to take out enemy units, and once the enemy army starts to crumble the Huns can turn that army against them. The odd extra unit can be useful to leave behind after a war for more conventional defensive units, and the Huns ability to grab lots of land makes it harder for enemy units to properly heal.
Ekis provide a pretty nice source of culture in the early game, but don't translate especially well to tourism, although it is still a small advantage
What's probably more important about Ekis though is the good amount of food and the large amount of production they give.
Ekis will give a small amount of gold when you unlock economics, but it's small in the grand scheme of things, and won't make a large difference.
Finally, like most early warmongers, the Huns can't really afford to take the detour to get a religion going, they're better off stealing one by conquering an enemy Holy City.

The first part of the Hunnic UA is different in that it is the only UA, in fact the only unique period, that has a benefit for other civs. War Weariness for both you, your allies, and your enemies is reduced by 50%. War Weariness is a form of unhappiness that occurs and builds the longer you're at war, and is often one of the biggest walls for a warmonger to continue a long war, especially in the early game. Ultimately having less is still a benefit to you regardless of if it also applies to your enemies, because it doesn't matter a lot if they're less unhappy if you're still pummeling their armies into the ground.

The second part of the UA is much more important.


The Danish have made a grave mistake attacking me

Your mounted melee and armor units can capture defeated units, similarly to the Prize Ships promotion for naval units. It works basically the same way, as the capture chance is based on your combat strength relative to the enemy unit's combat strength, which is good considering mounted melee/armor units usually have higher combat strength then any unit of the same era. Whenever possible you should always try to get the last hit with a mounted melee unit for the chance at a free unit. Of course that unit will have very low health, so don't be surprised if it dies before your next turn. However this is not a bad thing. That is a hit that would've otherwise likely hit one of your actual units. While you might get the odd surviving unit, don't expect to build an army this way. Treat the units you gain more as meat shields. Even if you manage to get a turn to use them don't feel bad if you just throw them right back into the enemy units, they likely won't add anything too important to your army with perhaps the exception of a unique unit, which just like with Prize Ships you can capture.


Above: Kabah gained the silver tile, and then immediately grabbed the two adjacent tundra tiles

The last part of the UA can be a bit confusing when you first read it. How it works is when a city naturally gains a land tile, it will immediately gain all adjacent tiles of the same type(that aren't already owned by anyone else of course, you have armies to steal that land). The tile type refers to if it is a Plains, Grasslands, Desert, Tundra, or Snow tile. Whether it has hills, forest, marsh, or a resource doesn't matter, those are just features. This gives the Huns insane land grabbing potential, rivaled only by the Shoshone. The interesting thing about this is that it will grab land outside of the 3 tile workable range of the city, so Hunnic cities will quickly expand to territories not seen by most civs until at least the Modern era.

Eki refers to grazing land, so in all technicality unimproved plains and grasslands are Eki, but I won't say no to the yields

The Eki is one of the most spammable improvements in the game, having fairly lax placement requirements, Ekis can be built on all flat plains and grasslands without hills or fresh water(being next to a lake, river, or oasis). For being so spammable, it has very good yields right from the start, with the culture actually probably being the best of the 3. Assuming you go authority, without these you're very reliant on killing barbarians for early culture, which isn't always reliable. The Eki is very reliable though, and makes sure borders are expanding, and policies are being unlocked. Later on it will get better yields and the culture won't be important, but it is nice at the start.

Later on the most important yield is production, largely due to having base production not much lower then mines, but also in the fact they gain adjacency bonuses like farms. For every two adjacent Eki, the Eki gains 1 production. Although the improvement description suggests this only happens once, 4 eki will result in +2 production, and 6 will give +3. This is easier said then done as there usually tends to be that one obnoxious river or hill, but +2 is reliable


Above: At this point I have Chivalry, making the base production 2, or technically 3 given it's on a plains tile.

The Horse Archer may seem simple, and not much stronger then the base skirmisher, but it forms the backbone of the early Hunnic army


Cheers love! Cavalry's 'ere

An army of Horse Archers with a few horsemen can devastate almost any early defense. Two Horse Archer attacks should be enough damage to bring any unit to low enough health to be killed by a horsemen, possibly converting it to your side. Starting with Accuracy I may seem a small bonus, but it assures that they can reliably be a promotion ahead of the enemy, who likely hasn't done much fighting, and may not have even bothered to build barracks. What may be surprising though is that Horse Archers are actually pretty effective at taking out walled cities. Catapults and even composite bowmen may deal more damage, but are vulnerable to counterattack. Horse Archers can largely avoid this, using any rough terrain next to the city to great advantage, moving in, taking a shot, and using the last movement point to get behind the rough terrain, out of range of a counterattack. It may not be the fastest way to take down a city, but it works surprisingly well. It won't be as effective once the enemy builds castles and clears more of the rough terrain, but right when Horse Archers come around it works quite effectively.

Now it may seem a stretch that you will have enough horse resources to support mounted melee and ranged units, but Horse Archers seem to have forgotten the need for the horse in their name, and don't take up any resources. Most of the mounted replacements that don't require the resource usually don't because they aren't a horse, and yet here are these strange "Horse" Archers riding donkeys or something. It works though, and you'll be all the stronger for it.

• +10% Combat Strength, additional +10% against units above 50% hp(Accuracy I)

The Huns take a standard warmonger approach of Authority into Fealty and finishing with Imperialism.


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

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

Tribute: You're already incentivized to grow your borders as the Huns, so you might as well get some extra yields from it. Note that even if you grab extra tiles from the UA, it only counts as one for the purpose of this ability

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

Discipline: Some help on the maintenance of all the units you'll have, built or captured.

Honor: Because you need more ways to make units pop up out of thin air

Finisher: Quick units to grab in a pinch, but they aren't that great for the Huns


Opener: Monasteries are a solid building, definitely build them where you can, but it's going to be hard to build them in every city considering how much you're likely to conquer

Nobility: The Huns will likely have good enough production to not have too much trouble building these, but might as well make it easier.

Divine Right: Reduces unhappiness by a very large amount, plus if you actually manage to keep your happiness up for any length of time, enjoy a nice bit of culture

Serfdom: You're bound to have plenty of pastures somewhere at this point, especially given your plains start bias. Make them better

Burghers: You're bound to be conquering lots of resources and getting plenty of We Love the King Days, so get some production out of them.

Organized Religion: Not very useful if you didn't found a religion, but is still somewhat useful to get monasteries and industrial era great people a bit faster.

Finisher: Whether you've founded your own religion or had one spread to you, some extra yields never hurt


Opener: Your Great Generals can do a bit better job keeping up with your mounted units now. Plus if you need to conquer someone overseas, faster navies can help with that.

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: This isn't superb on the Huns given most tiles that could have farms will have Ekis instead, but it still will help make some tiles better, especially on the sea.

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

Finisher: A stronger navy, and a new way to use air units to help manage unhappiness.

The Huns should take the normal warmonger path of Autocracy


Elite Forces: New units start better, old units get better quicker, all you could want for a world-conquering horde

Military-Industrial Complex: The Huns are likely to have a large, eclectic army, so cheaper upgrades are a must. The extra science on Ekis will actually add up to a good chunk as well.

New World Order: Warmongers need every bonus they can get to reduce unhappiness, and the Huns are no exception


Lightning Warfare: Your generals actually can keep up with your armor units now, not to mention that they are also fighting better

Third Alternative: Extra resources for your armor army. Plus you don't want a captured unit to overload your resources and make your entire army worse


Air Supremacy: Free Airports in every city means that you almost don't need a navy as long as you have a city on every continent. Also makes air units quicker to build if you need to.

Statue of Zeus: Horse Archers may be good at avoiding city fire but they're kinda slow at actually taking it down. This will speed them up a lot


Terracotta Army: You'll be killing lots of units, so some extra culture on top of Authority's is welcome


Alhambra(Authority Only): Add another promotion to the newly built unit pile


Chichen Itza: Reduces empire wide unhappiness by a good amount.

Red Fort(Fealty Only): Put this in a city that you're worried might get some warfare brought to it, and laugh at its invincibility.


Brandenburg Gate: While it only applies to one city, units coming out of that city will have a lot of promotions

Neuschawnstein: A bit hard to build given it has terrain requirements, but it'll give lots of happiness from your already cheaper castles


Prora(Autocracy only): A very high amount of culture, might not entirely get rid of your unhappiness issues on its own, but it goes a long way.


Pentagon(Imperialism only): Some free air units, and get them out faster in the future. Solid if you need the air support


CERN: Two free techs to clean up your last units.

Hubble Space Telescope Similar to CERN, you'll most likely only need one of them to clean up your final units

The Huns are a fairly simple civ, but there can definitely be problems that arise while playing them


Horse Archers are a great unit, who can dominate classical warfare. However, the Hunnic UA affects mounted melee units, and making an army solely of Horse Archers and their upgraded versions is wasting part of your UA. Also, Horse Archers can't take cities on their own, and mounted melee units do well at taking out a low health city.


The only time I would recommend buying a tile as the Huns is when you are worried another civs city might take it. Any tile buying won't trigger your UA, missing out on up to 6 more tiles later on.


Horse Archers may not require horses, but Heavy Skirmishers do, and so do your mounted melee units. Hopefully your first conquest should have enough horses that this won't be an issue, but just keep in mind you will need a lot of horses come the medieval era.

The Huns have the production to build an army fast, and may very well turn your own army against you. However, they lack anything to directly make their units stronger, and may have trouble economically supporting their horde


The Huns may suffer less war exhaustion when fighting, but so will you, and if the Huns are on the offensive, they'll still likely suffer more then you will.

Try to keep your units well packed, and be ready to pull any low health units out of the fight fast. If the Huns do manage to turn one of your units, they'll be very low health and likely unable to do much damage. Try to still focus your fire on the Hunnic mounted units if you still have them in range, you're not doing much damage taking out the unit the Huns just gained, but it will hurt if you can at least force their mounted units to retreat. In addition, this ability means that the Huns might have a larger army then most, and might struggle to actually keep it funded. Pillage their trade routes, any major gold producing tiles, and even try to embargo them and the Huns will struggle to keep afloat.

There isn't a lot you can do to stop the Huns from gaining all of their land, just prepare to buy pretty much every good tile in range of a forward settled Hunnic city, as they'll grab it faster then you might think


There isn't much you can do to stop the Huns from building lots of Eki, forward settling them isn't a great idea considering how fast they can grab land. The volume of Ekis provide a good opportunity though. If you were to invade the Huns, you can be assured no shortage of pillageble tiles, even outside of a cities workable range.


Horse Archers don't appear much stronger then Skirmishers, but can be surprisingly effective combined with Hunnic horsemen. Having a combination of ranged and anti-cav units will do in a pinch, but their best counter is probably mounted melee units of your own. Flank Horse Archers with a few horsemen of your own and you can do a good bit of damage.


Early-game Warmongers: The Huns are actually a decent target to declare your first war on, given you'll suffer less War Weariness. The Huns likely have delayed walls longer then most civs, so rushing their cities could work well while they are in another war, and while their mounted units can retreat to defend quickly, they're easier to deal with when they're locked having to defend their territory.

Mid-game Warmongers: The Huns will have lost the strength of Horse Archers at this point, but keep an eye out for highly upgraded mounted ranged units, and try to take them out quickly. Ekis should provide you no shortage of pillaging, but note that normal healing will be hard given the Huns will likely own more territory then most, and you'll have to move farther to get out of their territory

Late-game Warmongers Air units are your best bet against their armor and mounted ranged units, attacking from the sea is also a good bet.

Scientific players: If you have a Hunnic neighbor, try to get to chivalry as fast as possible, Knights are a great counter to Horse Archers. Also making sure all your cities are walled will slow down their ability to take out your city.

Diplomatic players: The Huns like to field a large army but lack a good economy to support this. Embargoing them, and city states if you yourself can afford to will hit them hard, so will Global Peace Accords

Cultural Players: Early game you may need to forgo wonders to actually build a solid defense, once you get to the mid-game though the Hunnic prime will have passed, and while you'll need to be vigilant, especially on building your defensive buildings, the Huns will have some trouble trying to take you down.

These guide cover every civ in the game, and can be used as a quick reference

• Civ Summaries

• America (Domination/Science/Culture)
  
• Arabia (Culture/Science)
  
• Assyria (Science/Domination)
  
• Austria (Diplomacy/Culture)
  
• The Aztecs (Domination/Science)
  
• Babylon (Science)
  
• Brazil (Culture)
  
• Byzantium (All)
  
• Carthage (Domination/Diplomacy)
  
• The Celts (Domination/Culture/Science)
  
• China (Domination/Culture)
  
• Denmark (Domination)
  
• Egypt (Culture)
  
• England (Domination/Diplomacy)
  
• Ethiopia (Science)
  
• France (Domination/Culture)
  
• Germany (Diplomacy/Science)
  
• Greece (Domination/Diplomacy/Culture)
  
• The Inca (Science/Domination)
  
• India (Science/Culture)
  
• Indonesia (Domination/Culture/Science)
  
• The Iroquois (Domination)
  
• Japan (Domination/Culture)
  
• Korea (Science/Domination)
  
• The Maya (Science/Domination)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Morocco (Culture/Diplomacy)
  
• The Netherlands (Diplomacy/Domination)
  
• The Ottomans (Domination/Science)
  
• Persia(Domination/Culture)
  
• Poland (Domination)
  
• Polynesia (Culture)
  
• Portugal (Science/Diplomacy)
  
• Rome (Domination/Science)
  
• Russia (Science/Domination)
  
• The Shoshone (Domination/Science/Culture)
  
• Siam (Diplomacy/Science/Culture)
  
• Songhai (Domination)
  
• Spain (Domination/Culture)
  
• Sweden (Domination)
  
• Venice (Diplomacy/Culture/Domination)
  
• The Zulus (Domination)