Ashoka, World Renounceris a growth and happiness power house inCiv 7. Much of the fun of playing this variation of Ashoka (compared to his World Conqueror counterpart) is about stacking rolling celebration bonuses throughout the game, allowing you to make the most of those science, culture, and production boosts available via yourGovernment.
Due to Ashoka, World Renouncer’s fantastic10 percent extra food during a celebration,you can start to see how this leader might get out of control if handled correctly: massive cities, loads of happiness, constant celebrations. Let’s get into it.
Ashoka, World Renouncer Overview
Ashoka is an interesting leader that focuses on high city growth and lots of happiness. His base bonuses are:
+10% Food in all settlements during a celebration.
All buildings receive +1 Happiness adjacency for all improvements.
As you’re able to see, Ashoka is geared towards a happy empire with somemassivecities and towns. The base adjacency bonus for Happiness is actually a pretty sizable boost to your happiness, particularly early on, and the general strategy you should follow for the World Renouncer is to keep your empire as happy as possible.
It’s a simple bonus, but it can get really, really out of hand.
+1 Food in Cities for every 5 excess Happiness
While this bonus starts out small at the beginning of the game, it all starts to ramp up once you begin to hit some of the most important Happiness buildings in the game, like theAltar and Arena.Start to really stack these bonuses later on with happiness wonders like theSanchi Stupaand you’ll have plenty of excess happiness by the end of the game.
+10% Food in all settlements during a celebration
10% food is a massive boost to food, and if you start to play around with some other bonuses, you’ll begin to see ways of achieving30 percentor40 percent(or more) bonus food. You can get huge cities with Ashoka.
All buildings receive +1 Happiness adjacency for all improvements
Much of this is made possible by the World Renouncer’s excellent adjacency buff for Happiness, and it’s one of the simplest in the game: all improvements provide adjacency.
Ashoka, World Renouncer Strategy In Civ 7
As you begin your new empire as Ashoka, the World Renouncer, there are a few things you can doimmediatelyto set yourself up for a strongAntiquity Age.
Starting Scouts
Like all great civilizations, yours must begin with a scout.Twoorthreescouts if you’re lucky. Use them to explore nearby lands, grab someDiscoveries(we like to prioritise gold on our Discoveries as Ashoka, just to help develop infrastructure faster, but you could also grab anyCulture rewardsfor a boost towardsMysticism) and find some spots to settle future towns.
Early Tech And Civics
We’re going to make a beeline forMysticismto pick up earlyAltars.Try to developProductionin your capital if possible, and grab any greatearly game resourceslikeCottonorSheepto boost food and production.
We want to grab theAltarbecause it provides some excellentHappinesswhich works with the World Renouncer’s bonuses.
Your choice ofPotteryorAnimal Husbandry really depends on your starting resources, butwe do like to make a push for theHanging Gardensearly as Ashoka to secure its brilliant+10 percent growth ratein all settlements (which stacks with your leader bonus!) You pick up this tech via Pottery - Irrigation.
Pantheon
Ideally, you want to grabMysticismquickly so you’re able to grab theFertility RitesPantheon. This provides another10 percent growthin cities with an Altar. We are already starting to stack those growth bonuses from turn five or six. We also want to build anAltarbeforewe build a Granary.
Best Civilizations For Ashoka, World Renouncer
Ashoka is quite versatile when it comes to civilization choice, but you should ideally pick civilizations that also provide their own food bonuses, happiness bonuses, or bonuses during celebrations.
Khmer
The Khmer are one of our favorite starting civilizations in the game regardless of leader, although they particularly favor Ashoka’s growth and happiness playstyle.
Districts on rivers do not remove the tile yield.
30% production towards constructing the Angkor Wat.
While these bonuses might seem inconsequential, but rivers often have food - both regular rivers and navigable rivers.You get an instant food bonus with the Khmer here.
TheAngkor Watis a happiness/specialist-focused Wonder that is great to rush on Ashoka, World Renouncer, because your cities are going to be massive and filled with specialists - hopefully.
The unique building,the Baray, provides a base of +3 food and +1 Food onallFloodplains tiles in the settlement. This bonus stacks with multipleBarays.you’re able to start to really scale food very early on with this civ.
However, where things start to get fascinating is in theKhmer Civic Tree.
Chakravarti Civic
This civic is one of the best in the game for Ashoka and one of the best for growth leaders and civilizations.
Let’s explain these bonuses. You can get amassive 50 percentextra growth in your capital city that stacks with every other bonus we’ve accrued so far. Worried about happiness in other cities?Here’s the catch.Ashoka is more than capable of playing a fullyone-city challengerun where you just have otherfeeder townsnear your capital. No city upgrades required.
The 100% Food and Happiness towards maintaining Specialists is a little misleading in its phrasing. This doesn’t mean you get the Specialists for free, but rather you getan extra Specialist for free for the same cost as the other Specialists.I.e, if aSpecialist costsx Foodyou will get 10 rather than 9 Specialists forx.
Basically, with this civic, you can create a truly mammoth capital city, pumped full of Specialists generating culture, science, gold, production, however you’ve arranged your adjacencies.
