Most people, I'm sure, are familiar that the most optimal way to maximize winning chances in vanilla Civ 5* is the four-city Tradition build, where you build four cities including your capital, go down Tradition, and then in the Renaissance, get Rationalism as quickly as possible, followed by Ideology. If you play things right, you will get so ahead in tech of the AI that you will be able to either win a simple Spaceship victory or you could dominate the world with Bombers, Nukes, and XComms.

However, you have to admit: doing the same thing over and over again gets boring, pretty quickly, especially when that same thing involves limiting your expansion in an empire-building game. Furthermore, there is a massive chasm between the S tier civilizations like Poland, Babylon, and Maya, and even the B tier ones like America or Siam, to say nothing about the bottom of the barrel like the Ottomans and the Iroquois.

Many have turned to Vox Populi, the brainchild of the Community Balance Project, and indeed its balance changes and AI improvements have been a spectacular success, a primary factor in Civ 5's current and future relevance long after its initial release.

Vox Populi, however, certainly is not my cup of tea. It is just too much of a dramatic overhaul, a completely different game from the Civ 5 I had grown to love. I truly believe that base game itself had the potential to be a masterpiece, and that there was a mod that finished what Firaxis started while still keeping the elements of Civ 5 that made it magical and making Immortal and Deity levels more challenging.

Enter Lekmod, which did all of these for me and more. Lekmod renders all of the four openers viable, and all of the secondary policy trees have their uses - in some Deity games I have not even touched Rationalism. In the thumbnail of this post, you can see a screenshot of someone who had completed the Piety and Aesthetics trees, something that would have been completely insane in vanilla Civ 5 unless you were playing as Poland. The number of civilization choices was more than doubled - there are more than 100 now for you to play, the vast majority of which have something that makes them fun. There are still a few crazy overpowered civilizations, like Columbia, Belgium, Macedonia, and Babylon (still!), and some awful clunkers (looking at you Boers, UAE, and Lithuania), but overall, the civilizations are far more balanced and fun to play. Finally, although there are not any changes made to the AI, Deity is a lot more challenging both due to the corresponding map, Lekmap, offering far more in the way of resources (and thus much greater snowball potential from Deity bonuses), and due to Honor and Piety not being viable trees that do not punish the AI.

This introductory guide is for those who want a more balanced Civ 5 experience without having to learn a completely different game. I think such players would be quite interested in Lekmod. The next few sections will give an overview of Lekmod and how it came to be, the changes it made, and give tips on how to setup and how to best use this mod.

*Note that by "vanilla", I mean the final official form of Civ 5, that being unmodded BNW, not the original Civ 5 without DLCs.

Right now, Lekmod is primarily used for multiplayer. In fact, it is THE Civ 5 MP meta, as the vanilla MP scene is pretty much dead. Safe to say, this is for good reason. You can only play so many six hour long 4-city Tradition fests in which the winner is probably going to be whoever rolled Inca on a Salt or Gems start.

Before Lekmod, there was NQMod, named after the "No Quitters" Steam MP group*. NQMod was the brainchild of Civ 5 player Fruitstrike, a.k.a Fruity. The main priority of NQMod was to balance the social policies, and indeed, it did a good job at this. Most of FilthyRobot's later games are played using NQMod, and he played a major role in its conception*. If you want a well balanced mod without all the new civilizations and luxuries and such, I highly recommend that you download NQMod v10 or v11, which you can download here:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ghxesdrddauzhqytmqgxp/AIQKXwY7ZX4roF9KbchwNq8/Older%20Versions?dl=0&rlkey=0a0ro9g89fymjm0kj1605vu7v&subfolder_nav_tracking=1

You may have seen that the last version of NQMod was v12.4, but I do not recommend v12 of NQMod at all, as that was where it began to stray from its original intention. Fruity got a little bit too change happy and made some questionable decisions, including making Order extremely overpowered, giving Universities only one Science specialist, and making plans for a 3rd unique, similar to Vox Populi's rather controversial 3rd and 4th unique features. (Seriously, when everything is unique, nothing is.)

Although these changes sadly killed NQMod and the ensuing backlash sent Fruity into Civ 5 retirement, Lekmod thankfully sprung from the ashes of NQMod. Lekmod, named for its original creator Lek10, was based around the best features of NQMod v10 and v11, and it has not looked back since . Now, the lead developer of Lekmod is EnormousApplePie, and under his direction, the mod has continued to thrive. It currently is in v33.10(!), although players should instead play v33.8 as subsequent releases have some gamebreaking instabilities that need to be resolved.

*It is no accident that NQMod started to go off the rails once FilthyRobot quit Civ 5.

I will go into far more detail about the balance changes in later guides, but for now, I will just summarize the key changes, particularly those to social policies.


For obvious reasons, Tradition was not significantly altered. The only significant change was that Legalism, the free Culture building policy, was made into a Trad 1* instead of the Trad 2 policy it was in vanilla BNW. This was definitely needed to keep Tradition as viable as the other three early-game policy trees. Other than that, the Tradition playstyle remains pretty much the same. Play Tall, prioritize growth, build lots of National and World Wonders, and leverage your few but high quality cities into a strong game.

*Policy Tree 0 = opener, Policy Tree 5 = finisher, hopefully you get the gist


The Liberty buff is probably the most vital part in the mod. After all, empire expansion has always been a hallmark of the Civilization series, and this mod ensures that Liberty is the best opening tree for expansion. A lot of elements combine to make Liberty the default tree in Lekmod, which, in my opinion, is how it should be. There were significant buffs, especially to the Liberty finisher, which had the effect of turning your large empire into a production powerhouse. The corresponding Lekmap has more luxuries and better quality land, giving you more incentive to settle many cities. Changes to how scientists work and military changes add additional flexibility, giving your Wide empire more opportunities to take advantage of its decentralized production. With Liberty, you can take advantage of Collective Rule to churn out Settlers and snowball off of a massive and flourishing empire. I have had monster 11 city games using Liberty on Lekmod before.


The other two openers are much more situational, but they are almost always worth considering and can garner you a very strong game. Honor has been completely overhauled so that it can do what it always should have done: help you kill someone early. RamkhamTrollFace foward settled you one too many times? You have a lot more leeway to punish him now, with policies that help you recover much quicker than you normally would be able to. You can also use Honor to kill City States, although that is a lot riskier in SP due to diplomatic ramifications. Among the many helpful changes: a policy that gives you two free Warriors and the old Honor finisher of getting gold from kills, the finisher pretty much giving you vanilla Temple Of Artemis-like growth (Lekmod Temple of Artemis is completely different, and is in fact the Honor wonder instead of Statue of Zeus), and, the key to Honor's viability: super Courthouses, that allow you to incorporate conquered cities into your empire that much quicker.

Not only is Honor a strong opener, but it also makes a fantastic secondary tree. Its finisher growth synergizes very well with Tradition (and you often want to kill someone with Xbows or Trebuchets as Tradiiton), while its military bonuses and happiness-generating human monuments pair very well with Liberty.

Note though, that Honor is not for the faint of heart. It is not easy to play, especially on Deity, and if you are new to Lekmod, I strongly recommend that you opt for the other three openers in your first games unless situations in which it is absolutely necessary, like having Shaka as a neighbor or playing a civilization like Jerusalem, which has a unique Courthouse. (Jan 2025 edit: my example was Golden Horde but that civ has been altered and no longer has unique Courthouses)


Piety was also pretty significantly overhauled, although it still retains many aspects from vanilla. There are quite a few reasons why Piety is now viable. First, religion has become much stronger. For example, the Apostolic Palace Reformation Belief gives you a mega-capital that you could only dream of with Tradition. Other strategies include the "cancer religion" (spreading your religion far and wide and reaping benefits), religions based around Holy Sites, and religions based around super-Temples. You can even base your religion around pantheons like Sun God, Goddess of the Hunt, and Ocean's Bounty, in which you would choose Piety in order to keep those Pantheons long term. Secondly, and related to the first item, Piety is extremely versatile, in that it allows you to opt for Tall strategies, like Holy Sites and Sun God, or Wide Strategies, like Guruship and Sacred Sites. Finally, Piety scales extremely well in the lategame, due to guaranteeing you a mini-National College through the Grand Temple and allowing you to buy lots of Great People with Faith later on.

Like Honor, Piety makes a great secondary tree as well. In particular, it pairs well with Liberty, as there are a variety of beliefs that benefit Wide play. It does not pair as well with Tradition, as there are fewer Tall Piety beliefs, but it can greatly enhance a strong Liberty or Honor game.


In vanilla MP, the vast majority of games would end in Domination or through conceding to the obvious game winner. A big factor in this was that both Diplomatic and Tourism victories were pretty much impossible, a sany competent player would either peace-block* or just murder all the City States to prevent the former, and accumulate enough Culture and join coalitions to prevent the latter. Of course, there was the big scepter of Rationalism, making it pointless to ever consider going deep down the Patronage and Aesthetics trees.

*When a player declares war to prevent an opponent from allying the player's City States

A big emphasis on the MP mods was to ensure that Diplomatic and Tourism victories were, at the very least, a non-negligible threat that all players had to consider. Through this, the mod instituted changes that not only made these victory types much easier, but also boosted the policy trees towards them for other sim purposes.

For example, Patronage gets a few massive buffs. First, it makes external trade routes to City States viable. Before, the food benefits from internal trade routes were too much to pass up, but with Patronage 1 (Merchant Confederacy), external trade routes become really powerful provided that you have enough City States nearby. Second, the tree gives you more happiness and science bonuses from allying City States; in the base game such effects were negligible. Finally, the Patronage finisher makes it a lot easier to win a Diplomatic Victory and control the World Congress. Patronage got so buffed that Greece has become a lower tier civilization, because it is so easy to pursue a City State related strategy that slower influence decaying is kind of just extra filler. On the other hand, many civilizations, like Morocco, Austria, and Germany especially, are that much stronger from the Patronage buff. Patronage is also a great tree to splash for general purpose simming. I sometimes open Patronage just to be able to build Forbidden Palace, for example, or in combination with Commerce.

Aesthetics is also quite a bit stronger, especially for Tourism and Science victories. In the base game, Aesthetics provided too little in the way of Production and Science to be competitive. However, Aesthetics is now a great tree if you want to win by Science, as it gives the culture necessary to be able to finish Rationalism AND get 3rd tier Freedom or Order tenets. It of course makes Tourism a lot easier, both due to providing more science, but also by just giving better Tourism boosts and with its finisher revealing Archaeology sites. Aesthetics is not very good for Domination unless you are Persia or Italy, as it does not provide enough production or gold, but it has a worthwhile niche, which is far more than you could say about vanilla, in which it was probably the weakest tree in the game.

The other social policies are discussed in Part 2.

Commerce did not get as many buffs as Patronage and Aesthetics. It did not need them as much, as Commerce was decent in vanilla, sometimes decent enough that it was worth delaying Rationalism for. The gist of Commerce remains the same: Gold, gold, and more gold. Nevertheless, there are some factors that have made Commerce extremely strong. First, there is a policy that straight up gives you two Trade Routes. That is incredible no matter what strategy you are pursuing. Second, it helps the East India Trade Company, a National Wonder that has been majorly buffed (it now gives an extra trade route of its own), enhance your capital. Some other boosts include the implicit boost from the Rationalism nerf as well as the fact that Great Merchants do not alter your Great Scientist or Great Engineer timers, meaning that there is absolutely no detriment to spawning them.

Commerce pairs incredibly well with Domination victories. In particular, it is useful for upgrading Cavalry into Landships or immediately giving yourself a scary Great War Bomber air force. Even for other victories, it remains a flexible tree, great for splashing or completing, both due to the sim bonuses you receive from extra trade routes and its synergy with Patronage. All in all, it is one of the more fun secondary trees to play with.


Exploration was actually halfway decent for coastal civilizations in the base game, due to the difference it made in naval wars and the policy that gives your coastal cities three hammers each. However, the rest of the policy tree was not only weak, but also trying to do too much by being both a coastal oriented and a Tourism oriented policy tree*. It needed a redesign so that it would not get relegated to pure splasher status, and it got one: it is THE coastal policy tree in Lekmod. Although other policy trees also pair well with coastals, particularly Commerce, Exploration has to be in the back of your mind if you are playing a coastal.

Exploration is now refactored to do two things. First, it just flat out makes every coastal city that much stronger. In addition to the +3 production per coastal city, there is a policy that gives you happiness, culture, and gold from the coastal buildings (Lighthouses, Harbors, and Seaports) and Treasure Fleets, which makes every single water tile in your borders have three food, one gold, and one production, turning your coastal cities into absolute powerhouses. Secondly, it makes it viable to settle cities in the midgame, particularly island cities, with a policy that allows newly settled coastal cities to start with extra population, happiness, and a worker. This means that coastal play is designed around late game scaling, in which you snowball out of control by Turn 150 or so. One of the most fun games I have ever played was as Carthage, a civ far stronger in Lekmod than in the base game, in which I ended up settling twenty cities on Immortal difficulty and was literally gaining happiness from settling cities. Overall though, Exploration has become a great way to make coastal play fun, even on Pangaea (where the map is setup to have islands for settling).

*Although the Louvre is still the Exploration wonder, the Hidden Antiquity Sites finisher has been moved to Aesthetics.


Finally, we get to the only policy tree that got nerfed. Of course, it had to be. In vanilla, Rationalism was so vital that it pretty much killed all of the other policy trees. Nowadays, Rationalism is not that necessary anymore, and there are a few reasons for this.

First, there are the direct nerfs. The best aspects (specialist science and the 10% science boost) were moved to the end of the tree. In particular, the 10% science boost has now become the finisher, and the ability to Faith purchase scientists was removed**. There is one new and interesting policy, however: Humanism now makes science buildings 50% cheaper, and it is something that should always be considered if your game is going to go late.

Then, there are some indirect nerfs. There is no good reason to save your Great Scientists anymore, as they will only be worth their value from the turn they spawned, without that value updating.*** (Jan 2025 update: Now players can configure their game options to allow GS saving if they so wish, but this is not recommended as the game was balanced with no science saving in mind) This slows down science enough that Rationalism is not always necessary, as you will not always be basing your game on winning the Space Race or starting your wars at XComms.

The biggest indirect nerf to Rationalism, in my opinion, is the fact that other victory types have become a lot more feasible. You can win the game or have the game essentially won before Turn 200 with Artillery, Landships, or Tourism. For Diplomatic victories, you only need to beeline Globalism. Even for Science victories, if your empire is large enough, Rationalism is not as crucial as it used to be; you will spawn a ton of Great Scientists, and Order offers a lot of powerful Science benefits for Wide play.

Thus, in Lekmod, Rationalism serves as more of a niche social policy tree, useful either for games that you believe will go late or in really touch situations in which you need to catch up in tech as fast as possible. There is also a great dilemma that will make your games more interesting: you can either go deep into Rationalism or go deep into ideologies, and it is hard to do both before the game has gone so late that it does not matter anymore.

Although much is said about how the opening policy trees are far better balanced, and I wholeheartedly agree with this assertion, I truly believe that the best changes Lekmod made was to the midgame social policy trees. The middle and late game have become far more interesting and enjoyable for me to play due to the smattering of choices available to me, now that I know that it is not Rationalism or bust anymore.

**In fact, the only way to get Great Scientists in Lekmod without using science specialists or Rationalism is to from regular science buildings is to get the Liberty finisher, or be Babylon or Maya. It is no surprise that these two civs are still absolute top tier.

***Do not quote me on this, but I legitimately think this was an oversight that the creators of Civ 5 did not intend to do.


In general, ideologies were not altered to nearly the same degree as regular social policies. The biggest changes to ideologies were:

• Making the viability of Freedom not so dependent on getting Statue of Liberty by instead making the SoL specialist production effect to a Level 3 tenet (which also added gold from specialists). Instead, Statue of Liberty just straight up gives the city that built it six free population, still an incredibly strong wonder but not to the point that a player could not get Freedom without SoL.
  
• Order had really strong Tier 1 and Tier 2 tenets but rather shoddy Tier 3 ones in vanilla. The Lekmod Tier 3 tenets are far, far better. Kremlin is also much better by virtue of Landships.
  
• Changing up Autocracy happiness tenets so that they do not feel too similar to Order happiness tenets

However, the fundamental gist of ideologies has always remained the same. Go Freedom for more peaceful Tall oriented victory conditions, Order is a general-purpose Wide ideology, while Autocracy is still the go-to for world domination. (Jan 2025 update: Order is not in the best place right now, and is only recommended for wide space victories).

Although social policy changes are the heart of Lekmod, there are many other changes created in order to give players a more enjoyable and balanced experience. Here, I list some of the most important ones.


As I alluded to in the first section, the civilizations are far more balanced in Lekmod. For example, America, which was a bit of a Dollar Store Shoshone in vanilla, has become a versatile expansion civilization due to its unique Settler that moves like a Scout and can run un-escorted. Most of the mediocre or worse civs from vanilla are not only much stronger, but also much more fun to play. Some of my favorite changes include: Denmark, which has Longships that enable a Viking-style of play, Byzantium, which is a lot more enjoyable due to the religious overhaul (more on that later), and Assyria, which not only enables fast Tradition or Honor starts but also has become a scary Artillery civ.


As I had previously stated, there are over a hundred civilizations, the vast majority of which have something about them which makes them special. Although there are some stupidly overpowered singleplayer civs like Columbia, Brunei, or Belgium with a Plantation unique, as well as some clunkers like the unplayable Lithuania or the good but rather boring Burma, in general, Enormous Apple Pie has done an incredible job of both balancing and making all of these civilizations fun to play.


The Lekmap is an essential component of the mod. Based off of Hellblazer's Map Script, which was used for NQMod, the Lekmap is tailored towards maximizing one's Lekmod experience. This map script is non-optional, as a lot of the changes in this game not only rely on the additional luxuries but also on how rich the map is in general. For example, one of the key ways in which Liberty and wide Piety was buffed was in making sure that players had land that could support such builds and make rapid expansion worthwhile. Some important changes made by the Lekmap include:

• As I alluded to, there are additional luxuries. They are: (Mining) Jade, Amber, Lapis Lazuli; (Plantation) Coffee, Tea, Tobacco, Coconut, Olives, Perfume, Rubber (note that these last two cannot be regionals unless you allow "unbalanced regionals"); (Coastal) Coral; (City State) Glass; (Quarry) Obsidian, which also is not a balanced regional.
  
• A good vanilla start would be a pretty poor Lekmap start. There are frankly just so many more resources.
  
• Attempts to boost coastal play, especially around islands. (Jan 2025 update) There have been attempts to not allow coastal players to be too isolated from the rest of the civs, but I think in v33.8 the map is in a pretty good place considering the coastal meta.
  
• Preventing massive mountain ranges, both to prevent overly-ridiculous Inca games and to prevent overreliance on turtling
  
• Balanced regionals option. If you want, you can play with unbalanced regionals (which can lead to situations like Salt, Marble, or Rubber regional starts), but with Balanced regionals the following luxes cannot be regionals: Salt, quarry luxes, Gems, Spices, (the previous two give more gold compared to their counterparts), Perfume, Rubber
  
• Even Tundra or Jungle bias civs will never get the horrific Tundra/Jungle starts that made those biases so reviled in vanilla.
  
• Allows much more customization of your map and your game, and for singleplayer, there are also Lekmap scripts for Continents, Archipelago, and pretty much any map script you could think of. (Jan 2025 update: Note that nowadays only the "Fractal" map is being updated)
  
• Guaranteeing you strategic resources so that you are not in for an unwelcome surprise if you were planning to attack at Landships, for example.

In general, the most optimal military timings are pretty similar. XBows, Artillery, Bombers (although I would say Great War Bombers are better in this mod), Nukes, and XComms are all viable pushes. However, a few alterations have allowed for more flexible military timings. These include:

• In vanilla, pre-artillery Siege units were horrible. In this mod, all Siege units get indirect fire, making them viable components of your army. In some cases, they are even essential in order to deal with rough terrain.[
  
• All civilizations get Assyria's vanilla UA, in that they get an opponent's technology if they capture that opponent's city. Playing this mod will likely make you realize why vanilla Assyria was such a garbage civ - this ability does not do much. Nevertheless, civs do get a bit more flexibility to beeline military techs, especially for Honor games.
  
• Frigates were heavily nerfed, and they are now support units for Privateer pushes rather than an actual timing.
  
• Bomber class units require three promotions before Air Repair rather than two. This has been enough to make Bombers a suboptimal initial timing. Instead, Great War Bombers are much better, as you have more time to promote them into super strong Bombers.
  
• Atomic bombs were completely removed - they are just too overpowered and had been shadowbanned from both singleplayer and multiplayer games for years.
  
• The key change: Armor units were given +50% against other Land units. This has given rise to the best unit in Lekmod: the Landship, which for all intents and purposes has become a 90 Strength unit that upgrades from a 34 Strength Cavalry. I would say that at least half of my Immortal or Deity games are won with Landships.

Vanilla religion was quite boring, honestly. Similar to social policies, there was pretty much only one really good religion: get Tithe, get Pagodas or Mosques, then get Religious Community, then faith purchase Great Scientists and Engineers in the lategame. Worse yet, Reformation beliefs were generally inaccessible as it was usually not worth delaying Rationalism to go that far down Piety.

In Lekmod, the possibilities are far greater. You could build a religion around Apostalic Palace, which gives your Capital +5 of every yield. You could use Sun God and Swords Into Plowshares to have a game with Tradition-esque growth. You can play with Holy Sites, or Sacred Sites, or have a nine city Guruship empire, or a "cancer religion" strategy where you spam missionaries into everyone's lands and reap all the benefits (and piss the AI off). All in all, religion has become a source of enrichment rather than yet another unbalanced feature of the game that is just there.


Some other noteworthy changes:

• Settling flatland or hilled cities now includes a tradeoff between food (flatland cities get 3F1H) and production (hill cities get 2F2H), whereas in vanilla you always wanted to settle on a hill if possible.
  
• The bad vanilla luxuries, like Incense, Pearls, and Dyes, are buffed by a combination of boosted base yields and additional buildings.
  
• Whether or not you settle next to a Mountain is irrelevant unless for wonder building purposes, as Observatories can now be built on any city and have become quite non-essential (Jan 2025 update: Observatories have been buffed and mountain starts are much better than they used to be)
  
• Bison are granary resources now. Cows are more production focused, with the Lekmap allowing for plains cow tiles.

You can find installation instructions for both Lekmod and its corresponding Lekmap in this video, made by current Lekmod Civ 5 MP Youtuber Ry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBVa3FqBdRs

(By the way, I highly recommend you watch Ry's guides, as even though they are more geared towards MP, they contain core concepts that will help SP focused players. I will post some more SP focused guides onto Steam later).

The above video will help you install the latest version (v.33.8), but if you wish to install an earlier version, go to this github page that contains some older versions:

https://github.com/EnormousApplePie/Lekmod/releases

To install these older versions, first download and unzip the Zip file. Afterwards, take the LEKMOD folder and place it into the following folder:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\DLC"

You should then take the Lekmap folder and place it into:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\Maps"

Then, upon loading Civilization V the next time, you should be able to play Lekmod.

• YOU MUST USE THE LEGACY VERSION OF ENHANCED USER INTERFACE, v.1.28. Do not use v.1.29. Unfortunately, v1.29 ended up messing with the DLL a bit too much, causing lots of mods to completely break, including Lekmod, and the creator of EUI is no longer updating, so this bug will not be fixed.
  
• I will reiterate this: make sure you also download Lekmap. Your experience will be far more limited without the map script.
  
• If your game constantly crashes, which it sometimes can, follow these steps in order: 1) Clear your cache, 2) Find your "My Games" folder and delete Civ 5, and 3) uninstall then reinstall Civilization V.