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Jose Rizalis a fantastic leader inCiv 7as he makes the most of the new Celebrations mechanic added to the game. Celebrations allow you to choose from the bonus of your Government choiceandopen up a new social policy slot. Both of these are very powerful, especially during the Antiquity Age when you first establish your empire.
Rizal is able to generate plenty of Happiness and then maintain it throughout the game. He can quickly snowball, if you play the right strategy.
This guide is based on singleplayer against higher difficulty AIs, not multiplayer.
Jose Rizal Overview
Jose Rizal is the king of Happiness in Civilization 7. Thesnowballpower of the celebrations means that Rizal will often have unbeatable boosts throughout the entire game, scaling from the Antiquity Age celebrations into almost-constant celebrations by the Modern Age. If used correctly, these can put you at a massive advantage over the AI in the game.
When gaining rewards from a Narrative Event, you gain an additional 20 Culture and Gold per age. There are also additional Narrative Events.
+50% Happiness towards Celebrations.
Narrative Events
Narrative Events are the options and choices that appear while you complete the various Legacy Path quests - that is, the quests for each victory condition.
Rizal succeeds when you are essentially tackling all theLegacy Pathsto maximize your Narrative Event potential.
You should be thinking about the Antiquity Age holistically. You will want to buildWonders, constructscientific buildings,make friends with city-states,andattack and claim a few cities. The more you’re able to do in the Antiquity Age, the quicker Rizal snowballs out of control.
Celebrations
Celebrations play two major roles in Civ 7: they provide your entire empire with a powerful buff for a set duration of turns,andthey allow you to slot another policy.
Both Celebrations and extra policy slots are extremely powerful. Depending on which Government you pick with Rizal, you could be getting +20 percentCulture,Science, orFoodalmost constantly if everything goes to plan during the Antiquity Age.
The best aspect of Celebrations is that they’re also very flexible from Age to Age. Of course,once you choose one, you can’t modify it later in the Age, but you do get to make a choice at the beginning about how you’d like to play.
Will you opt for military production and send out waves of soldiers to conquer your enemies, or would you like to peacefully grow your cities with immense food bonuses?
Overall, we’ve found Rizal to be one of the stronger leaders in Civ 7, and certainly one of the best atachieving multiple Legacy Pathsduring the Antiquity Age.
Jose Rizal Strategy For The Antiquity Age
Much of your strategy will revolve around the civilization you choose - we’ll cover this below - but generally you want to focusHappinessas much as possible with Rizal, grabbing happiness wonders, buildings, and resources to maximize your celebration potential.
Rizal is excellent at aggressively settling lots of towns,often exceeding the Happiness limitto get an early advantage. With Rizal you might want to go over your Settlement limit by two or three cities, depending on your excess happiness available.
Ideally, you want to settleat leastfour settlements in total by around turn 50 onStandard Speed.On higher difficulties, the AI are very aggressive with their settling, so you need to be fast to grab the locations that you want to settle.
Scouting And Discoveries
You should producetwo or three Scoutsat the start of the game and start scouting immediately.
Scouting issoimportant in Civ 7, more so than in any other game in the series. The Scout’s newSightsystem allows you to cover large areas of the map quickly, finding Independent Powers, Discoveries, and your AI opponents.
You’re on the hunt forScienceprimarily, to get yourPottery and Animal Husbandryup as soon as possible. Culture is also good for the earlyMysticismrush intoPantheons.Lastly, you should grabGoldto help you buy buildings or units, if they’re needed in a pinch.
Early Tech And Civics
You should grab eitherPotteryorAnimal Husbandryfirst, depending on the tiles in your capital. Animal Husbandry for woodcutters and camps, Pottery for clay pits and plantations. A general tech order might look like this:
This will give you a big production boost at the start of the game and then transition into getting your science output up.
you may use theUrban Centertown specialization in your first expansion to generate some science and culture that you might lose by not building theMonumentorLibraryearly in your settlement.
You want to rushMysticismto get an early Pantheon. There are some great Altar Happiness adjacency Pantheons that you can get, or some extraProduction on mines(Stone Circles) that are also very useful.
Our general strategy has been to focus onProductionearly. The quicker you can get your key buildings online, the better.
Saw Pit and Brickyard
Three Settlers
Library
As the Antiquity Age progress, you may want to head down the military side of the tech tree to pick upThe WheelandMilitary Trainingeven if you’re not going for a military victory. This is because they unlock some good Happiness buildings.
Navigationis another great pick-up because of theLighthouse, which provides a bonusthreeslots for resources - enough to stack up some Happiness resources.
Government Choice
This is very important for Rizal, as these are the bonuses that you will be able to repeatconstantlywith yourCelebrations.
We often takeDemocracyfor that extra 20 percent food bonus, although bothOligarchyandClassical Republicoffer excellent science and Culture boosts respectively.
We like to take the food bonus because it means we can focussolely on productionin our capital. This will allow you to build Wonders and complete any essential buildings quickly.
Play around with the different Government choices and see which one reflects your style of play the most. That’s one of the reasons Rizal is such a fun leader:he’s totally versatile when it comes to how you want to play.
Settlement Expansion
Jose Rizal is able to exceed his settlement limit, as long as you are somewhat careful with your city placements.
In this image, the Fresh Water tiles are marked in light blue. This is a tricky spot, but we’d favor settling on the Silver and Wine rather than the Incense on this occasion.
Make sure to place settlements onFresh Waterwhere possible, as this will grant +5 Happiness to the settlement, essentially overwriting the -5 Happiness penalty you get for settling over your limit.
However, this penalty doesincreaseper city. If you encounter theHappiness Crisisat the end of the Age, things can quickly turn bad, with your settlements revolting to enemy players.
You can further increase your settling capacity by grabbing some goodHappiness Buildings- like theAltar,theVilla(which can be built in towns), and theArena(which can only be built in cities).
In general, you should be looking for these resources when settling:
Wine is the best resource in the game for Jose Rizal and if you see any, you should settle itas soon as possible.Not only is it an empire-wide resource (doesn’t require a slot in a town or city), it also provides amassive10 percent culture buff while in a celebration.
Best Wonders
If you can manage it, you want to grab the best Happiness Wonders on Rizal, like theColosseum,Sanchi Stupa, and theAngkor Wat.
The Mundo Perdido is unique in that you won’t want to build it unless you have multiple tropical tiles in your city.
Wonders canonly be built in cities.In some cases, it’s worth upgrading a town to a city to open up more slots to build Wonders, as viable terrain can be used up quickly by other buildings.
Wonder construction, like everything else in Civ 7, takes careful planning. You can read adjacency workshere.
Wonders are hugely important in Civ 7 as their bonuses are consistent across all three Ages.
While some buildings become redundant and require you to build over them in following Ages, Wonderskeep their adjacency bonusand powerful boosts throughout the game. They should be a priority where possible.
Trade And Warfare
Rizal likes to build a robust trading empire because of theHappinessboosts you can get from Imported Resources. Resources likeWinecan be great to get some extra happy points.
In terms of warfare, Rizal’s overall Happiness focus means that you will be able to claim more of your opponent’s cities.This will impact how quickly you can start celebrations, however,which means you might be missing out on some of the leader’s key bonuses.
Best Civilizations For Jose Rizal
Much like Rizal’s versatility with play style, this is represented by his wide choice of viable civilizations in the Antiquity Age.
Maurya
The Maurya are excellent for Jose Rizal, as they really go hard on the Happiness.
Youj can choose anadditional Pantheonafter unlocking Mysticism.
+30% Production towards constructingSanchi Stupa.
Nagarika- Unique settler that provides +2 happiness on new city halls.
Matha Unique Quarter- 10% extra happiness on the city it’s constructed in.
TheNagarikaprovides a flat boost of +2 Happiness to all new settlements you found, and the unique districts and quarters provideextra Happinessand aflat percentage increase of Happiness.
In terms of unique civics, theMauryaalso provide plenty for Rizal:
The Sanchi Stupa is one of the bestHappiness Wondersin the game. It offers +2 Happiness as a flat boostand+1 Culture for every 5 excess Happiness.
Maya
The Maya are an interesting choice for Rizal: they don’t quite have the same bonuses to Happiness as the Maurya, but they more than make up for it in theirexcellent Science generationin the Antiquity Age.
The Palace gains 0.5 Science for adjacent Vegetated terrain.
+30% production towards constructing Mundo Perdido.
The Maya excel at generating fantastic adjacency from their Altar and from vegetated terrain. TheJalawunique building also provides some base happiness.
Where the Maya really excel, however, is their Unique District - theUwaybil K’uh.This provides an awesome boost: every time you finish a technology, you get production equal to 15 percent of its cost. This means that you can essentially turnScience into buildings- a great way to get ahead early on as Rizal, especially if you can manage to get two or three cities online in the Antiquity Age.
Best Mementos For Jose Rizal
Jose Rizal has some brilliant Mementos unlocked down his own leader path.
Your choice of Memento is largely subjective as you play. You might have a favorite combination already locked in (we love theImago MundiandMarco Polocombo to get powerful scouting and gold early, for example.)
Remember:you can change your Mementos during the Age transition. This is really important as some of the early game Mementos start to drop off the further you progress in the game.
Jose Rizal In The Exploration Age And Modern Age
Jose Rizal is a great leader to carry you into the next Ages. During the Exploration Age you want to focus on generating a lot of gold, fully establishing yourself on your home continent, and make plans to head over into theDistant Lands.
There is nobestway to play these Ages - and, in the grand scheme of things, we think these two Ages are a little underbaked compared to the Antiquity Age. If you had a strong start in Antiquity you should be fine as Rizal to carry the game in the next Ages, largely down to your excellentCelebrationboosts.
