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 Iroquois!

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 Iroquois has a forest/jungle start bias, which is extremely important as every Iroquois unique relies on them.


Units move through forests and jungles as roads, and these tiles establish city connections

Land Units start with the Woodsman promotion(+10% when defending in rough terrain. Move through forests and jungles twice as fast)




A melee unit


*Mohawk Warriors owned by the Iroquois also have Woodsman and ignore terrain costs in forests/jungles, but this is due to the Iroquois UA and not intrinsic to the unit

Positive One-Off Changes

• Higher combat strength(17 instead of 16)
  
• Does Not Require Iron
  
• Obsoletes at Gunpowder rather than Steel

Positive Stay on Upgrade Changes

• +33% combat strength in forests/jungles

Positive Changes

• +2(up from 1) & +1
  
• +1& to all nearby forests and jungles(up from +1 from every 2 forests or jungles) as well as to plantations(up from +1)

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


The bulk of the Iroquois uniques assist a domination victory, and they are arguably the best early game rushing civ in the right conditions. They probably defend better then they attack in the long term though, as they can control if their own forests/jungles are cut down, but not other civs.
The Iroquois get some great early growth and production bonuses from their UB, but late game it isn't a massive boost.
The Iroquois have an extremely minor gold bonus having to build a few less roads, but it doesn't mean much for gold savings, and the Iroquois lack bonuses in any other category.

Arguably the strongest part of the Iroquois UA is that all their units start with woodsman, a promotion usually requiring 3 or 4 levels depending on the upgrade path. Another thing to note is it is on ALL of your land military units, whereas normally it can only be obtained by melee and gun units. This makes all your units move faster through forest and fight a bit better on all defensive terrain.

The other important part of the UA is that forests and jungles act like roads, and this can cause some slightly unexpected interaction between that and woodsman if you don't know exactly how roads work.


Above: The Mohawk Warrior started on the deer tile and moved onto the adjacent forest tile, and instead of costing 1 movement, it cost slightly less, the same as if it was a road

Being a road, just moving onto the tile from another non forest/jungle/road tile will give you no benefits, but moving onto another tile of the same type afterwords will give you the road bonus. This does mean that if you find a large swath of forest you can move quite fast, but that's pretty rare to find depending on your map type. Unlike the base game, moving from a road tile to a non road forest/jungle does properly count your movement as moving from one road to another, and vice versa, so if you can it is genuinely worth not building a few roads, especially since it works outside of your territory.

With the exception of a camp resource, and perhaps tundra, most civs will cut down most if not all of their forests/jungles for the production that will give, and while lumber camps are pretty good, they take a long time to get up as they are later on the tech tree, and mines do a better job of getting production anyways, so it's better for most to commit to food with a farm or production with a mine depending on what's under the forest/jungle. The Iroquois obviously want to keep them around for their military benefits, but the Longhouse makes them genuinely good tiles to work.


Above: The base yield of this forest should be 1 food 2 production. Also the Tobacco plantation gets the same boost. I also have Goddess of Springtime, which is great for the Iroquois, as it buffs the yields of Longhouses, as well as any plantations you have around.

So even though it will take a bit for lumber camps, and even longer for the jungle variant, your tiles will still be great in the early game.

Pretty sure the unit picture and model does in fact have a mohawk, 10/10

The Iroquois UA is decent, but ultimately doesn't give a major bonus to combat strength, even in forests/jungles. The Mohawk Warrior is why the Iroquois are an amazing rushing civ. Swordsmen are pretty strong units, but getting iron this early could be hard. The Mohawk Warrior requires no such resource, and you can make as many as you want. On top of the bonuses granted by the UA, they also get +33% strength when fighting in forest/jungles, basically putting their combat strength an era ahead.


Barbarian be gone!

An important part of the Iroquois early game is to scout your neighbors's land as much as possible. If you know a civ has a jungle/forest start bias, such as Siam or Brazil, focus your scouting on them the most, but otherwise just try to look for cities that are near forest/jungles. These will be your first targets. There is almost nothing in the classical era that can beat a unit with about the same strength as a longswordsman, so use your Mohawk Warriors to crush the enemy units, and to protect your siege that will bring down the enemy cities. You'll need to be fast in your conquests, the longer you take the more forests/jungles are cut down and the less effective your armies become. Even if you have to leave the trees, swordsmen are still stronger then anything of their era, and you can field more then anyone else, so don't be afraid to take a risk with them, they are ultimately fairly disposable, as not only should you have a lot, your production base from Longhouses should mean rebuilding them isn't too hard.

+33% Combat Strength in Forests/Jungles

Vox Populi does a great job of making every civ's uniques feel different from each other, and even when one unique is similar the other two are usually significantly different. The Aztecs however, have an early melee UU focused on forest/jungle combat, and an early UB that focuses on growth and production, just like the Iroquois, so I think it's fair if a quick second is taken to compare the two.


The Jaguar Warrior replaces the basic warrior, meaning the Aztecs start the game with it. The Jaguar has the same combat boost in forests/jungles that Mohawk Warriors do, as well as woodsmen and healing 25hp whenever they kill an enemy unit.

The Mohawk Warrior comes a bit later, replacing the swordsmen, and has both woodsmen and the forest/jungle combat boost. It doesn't have the healing bonus, but does have one major strength over the Jaguar. Mohawk Warriors go down the swordsmen line, which has high combat strength and starts with cover. The Jaguar Warrior instead goes down the spear line, having a weaker combat strength, but also having formation, making them do better against mounted units. Normally the downside of the swordsmen is requiring iron, but Mohawks don't, making them overall a stronger unit until tercios come along and the upgrade lines merge.


The Floating Gardens provides mostly additional growth bonuses, while still retaining the production boosts the water mill gives. Extra food per citizen, and during golden ages, as well as giving food to lakes and river tiles.

Longhouses don't provide amazing yields on it's own, but gives extra food and production to all forest, jungle and plantation tiles. The Longhouse does try to better build on the strengths of the Iroquois in forests, and does a good job of it, but the Floating Gardens does probably give stronger bonuses overall, in exchange for having somewhat stricter placement requirements.


I think the Iroquois and the Aztecs both are designed off of a similar concept. Units that excel in forests/jungles with a domestic focus on growth. Both civs however take a different approach to the concept. The Aztecs are overall more flexible, only their unique unit requires this terrain to be used effectively, they have things that encourage them to go to war, if not strictly make them better at it, with a UB that gives them strong cities to support any route. The Iroquois take this concept to it's extreme. Every unique focuses on terrain, and while they require it to do well, they are nigh unstoppable if the cards are laid right. This makes the Iroquois much more focused on domination, and their strengths don't translate well to much else.

While it is worth comparing the two, it is cool that even two civs similar on the surface play very different from each other.

The Iroquois should take the standard warmonger path of Authority into Fealty and then 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 units to stand a bit of a chance at surviving a followup attack after defeating another unit

Tribute: Some extra yields when gaining tiles and bullying city states, both nice to have.

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: The Iroquois will likely struggle with both happiness and unit maintenance, so this should help a lot

Honor: A free unit every once and a while plus some extra unit strength is great to see.

Finisher: If you need some units in a pinch or just like their promotions, now you can get Free Companies, Foreign Legions, and Mercenaries as long as you've got the tech for it.


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: Armories and castles are solid buildings for warmongers but can be a drain on production and money. Now they aren't

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, so make them better.

Burghers: You're going 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 are faster, which is always useful whether you need to push or retreat, plus if you need to do some overseas conquering faster boats is very useful.

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: You should have plenty of deer in your core cities, and definitely some plantations somewhere, so this will give a good bit of yields.

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 Iroquois should go Autocracy to make sure your military still has bonuses to their combat ability.


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

New World Order: The Iroquois need every bonus they can get to reduce unhappiness, and this is a big one

Military-Industrial Complex: Cheaper unit upgrades are nice for those last expensive, bulk upgrades


Lightning Warfare: If you've still got some upgraded Mohawk Warriors around this will make them better, but if you don't, the Iroquois can benefit from either the gun or armor bonus, they aren't tied to a particular unit type.

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: 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: The Iroquois might be great at unit combat early on but they aren't any better at taking out cities. This will help that.


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 happiness, 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 Iroquois are very strong, if they are played properly. It is definitely easy to make mistakes here.


The majority of your settlements should be near forests/jungles, but a good city spot is still a good city spot. You shouldn't neglect a good spot even if it lacks forests/jungles


This should be obvious but it bears mentioning. Don't chop down forests or jungles unless it is for a resource of some kind. Your units rely on it, you UB boosts their yields, just don't do it.


Mohawk Warriors are very strong for little investment, and it is worth building lots of them. However, every land unit possessing Woodsman can allow the Iroquois to do some interesting things with non-melee units, so just keep that in mind. You army doesn't have to be solely melee units, especially once Mohawk Warriors obsolete.


Forests/Jungles are effectively roads, and connect with roads as if they were. Building a road on them is a waste of money. However, they don't act like railroads when you get the railroad tech, so building railroads on forests is probably still a good idea

The Iroquois are a terrifying threat to fight in forests or jungles, but offer almost nothing else outside of that.


The most important thing to know about the UA is that ALL Iroquois units get woodsmen. This means they move through forest/jungles better, and defend better in all rough terrain. Try to bait any melee units outside of the rough terrain. If they have ranged units sitting there, rushing them with mounted units still works, even if they can retreat better, you'll still be doing plenty of damage. If you have an Iroquois neighbor, make sure you cut down as many forests and jungles as you can and they will struggle to invade.


There isn't a lot you can do to stop the Iroquois from benefiting from the forest bonus. Their start bias means they'll have plenty nearby, and trying to forward settle them pretty much guarantees you'll be invaded come the classical era. However, cutting them off from getting to more forests/jungles by settling in a non forest area could definitely work well if the terrain allows it. Then you can settle the forest/jungle and cut it at your own leisure. Settling near plantation resources is also good to do, as you aren't giving them another advantage by doing so.


All the ways you counter the other Iroquois uniques applies to Mohawk Warriors. Avoid forests/jungles, cut down as many as you can, and these shouldn't prove a major threat. However, even regular swordsmen are a decent threat, and the Iroquois can always build them, so even outside of forests don't take them lightly in the classical era. Once you are in the medieval if the Iroquois lack iron, they shouldn't be any threat outside of forests/jungles, and even if they do have iron, knights should be able to handle longswordsmen


Early Game Warmongers: Invading the Iroquois right now is a bad idea, they will outmaneuver and most likely out strength you in their own territory. Whether you need to worry about them depends on your own territory. If you have lots of flat land the Iroquois probably won't bother with you, but if you have lots of forests/jungles you may need to postpone your conquests and focus on defense.

Mid-Game Warmongers: By this point you should be able to chop down most if not all of your forests/jungles, and the Mohawk Warrior will have gone obsolete. Try to kill any upgraded Mohawk Warriors, and even in forests/jungles, they won't have a major bonus. Bring along workers to your conquests, and once you conquer a city have them chop down any forests/jungles ASAP, making it much harder for the Iroquois to take it back.

Late-Game Warmongers: At this point the mobility provided by forests/jungles isn't a big deal, as armor and air units can largely ignore that, so the Iroquois shouldn't be too bad.

Scientific Players: If you have a lot of forests/jungles, rush to the medieval era as fast as possible, and Mohawk warriors will start to drop off. If you don't have much for forests/jungles, your tech advantage should be enough to hold off the Iroquois pretty easily

Cultural Players: Other then the basic Iroquois counter-strategies, there isn't anything really specific you can do to hurt the Iroquois

Diplomatic Players: Just like other warmongers, Global Peace Accords will hurt them a lot.

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 Huns (Domination)
  
• The Inca (Science/Domination)
  
• India (Science/Culture)
  
• Indonesia (Domination/Culture/Science)
  
• 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)