When it comes to Civilization VI‘s different types of functional units, it can be hard to pick what’s best to promote. The ancient skill trees of the military and religious bonuses can seem endless. Fear not, however, because in this forest lies infinite opportunity! Promoting your units will depend highly on the situation with the map you’re discovering. Generally, these promotions align with one strategy or another, but each is effective in its way! Units of both military and religious origin become vastly more potent through proper advertisements.
The aspect of these promotions dictates their specific effectiveness on the battlefield. A military unit that is well-trained for fast and heavy assaults can be built by promoting your favorite armies. Vice versa, your forces can become defensive guardians of your empire similarly. The essential part of any military is its experience, Civilization VI rewards experience with promotions. Promoting your points not only makes them more powerful but can be used to enhance terrain and add unique bonuses. From extra attacks per turn to more conversions, promoting your forces should be a top priority!
Looking for more Civilization VI content? Find more at KeenGamer:
- Civilization VI | Ground Warfare Guide
- Civilization VI | City State Guide
- Civilization VI | Missionary Guide
- Civilization VI Guide Diplomatic Victory Tips
- Civilization VI Population Guide
What Are Promotions?
Promotions in Civilization VI are a bonus granted to units that survive battles. Through gaining experience and building up their kill count, a team can become progressively more powerful. Adding promotions to your teams allows up to six additional bonuses to come to their overall force. These promotions can range in ability and purpose, but each should be reviewed for what you need in your current game. No matter the win type, there should be a solid adherence to upgrading your military forces.
How to Gain Promotions
Civilization VI allows players to engage in multiple activities to gain experience for their units. Each of these methods is meant to enable a player to exist on any map, making their troops more effective through their chosen victory type. Primarily, military units will gain experience whenever they deal damage to units, or fight other cities. This goes both ways as defending from attackers and defending cities grants a unit equal experience. Besides these combative methods, there are scouts who gain experience in discovering new wonders and tribal villages. Religious units gain experience through their actions as well with their own unique promotional list available.
Promoting Advantages
By including promotions to your units, you make them constructively more useful, and more survivable. Acting as units above the standard grade, it’s a lot like adding enhanced parts inside of a sports car. The stock fighting unit will already get civic and government bonuses, making them powerful in their own right. When adding promotions to the mix, you make highly individualized forces, more effective than standard soldiers. In a sense, promoting your troops will create elite armies that work similarly to real-life special forces!
Unit promotion Trees
Some of the more immediate bonuses you’ll find from promoting units come to health, damage, and movement. These bonuses often come in situational events that will help your armies overcome certain unit types or hazards. As part of certain promotions, you can traverse certain types of terrain more easily, as well as additional damage to these types of terrain. In religious units, theological combat bonuses as well as faith points can be extended. Each has its own merits and requires a bit of thought before initially starting. As a unit progresses it can eventually receive all available promotions for its class type!
Limitations
Promoting units can be one of the most powerful means of bettering your military, however, there are some limitations. For instance, save one specific leader, militaries take up an entire turn when promoting. Promotions do not allow your units to move or engage in combat, however, will gain health back for the upgrade. Another limitation of these promotions is that once a unit is lost, its benefits from promotions are gone forever. For this reason, you’ll have to upgrade them consistently and make more unique troops over time. These specialized forces can become a catch-22 that leads to harder group movements. Instead, branch out with these specializations to make as many possible combinations as you can think of!
General Experience
When a unit engages in a conflict, they gain experience every time they engage in the conflict. By placing your land units in encampments or other unique fortifications, you can gain a great deal more experience. By gaining experience, units can promote themselves, which will make them more powerful as they gain more experience. A unit that is killed, captured, or traded loses experience when it is killed, captured, or traded, which is why it makes no sense to capture enemy units. Remember that the more experience a unit gains, the more powerful it becomes, so stay aware of its health points!
Simon Bolivar is great for promoting units
War Experience
Units will gain experience for the number of battles they participate in so long as they survive. For this reason, large-scale conflicts between large armies can prove to be a beneficial means of promoting your troops quickly. Experience gained from defeating a unit depends entirely on the classification of the unit it is, along with how powerful it was. For instance, a warrior and a spearman have a .75 experience difference due to the fact spearmen are more deadly than basic warriors. Added experience comes from ranged versus non-ranged conflict, and additional experience for initiating a combative situation. Bonuses can come from individual leaders and civics which can boost these war gains substantially; making your armies grow quickly and aggressively.
Siege Experience
Both sides gain experience when attacking and defending cities. By capturing or successfully defending a city, you gain more than by attacking it. However, these bonuses are substantially better in nature than simply attacking ground units. In short, those who attack and defend a city will gain experience far quicker than conventionally attacking another army. For this reason, it’s important to remember that though a siege may take a long time, your forces may just gain direct benefit from it. Experience can also be gained in rare circumstances through plundering nearby defensive fortifications, making the most out of certain classes like the cavalry!
Promotional Strategy
Using promotions on units can be a major tool for gaining advantages early on. These bonuses can help you overcome environmental hazards, barbarians, and enemy units. The most important aspect of any promotional strategy is to get a road map of how you think these units may be useful. Military or religious, they have a purpose at large that you should focus on making easier. Keep your considerations open to changing events, and remember units can receive every promotion eventually. The best way to gain promotions is to keep a unit alive, if it’s losing, retreat, if it’s winning, finish the job. By surviving, your units will gain passive experience that will make them superior to the enemy!
Open warfare is great for the experience gained!
Military
When dealing with military promotions, a lot can be said about how you choose to go about it. The importance lies primarily in maintaining a good flow of being in battle, and healing. If a unit goes below half of its health you should remove it to heal. Otherwise, keeping your armies in as many active conflicts as possible is a good method of gaining these promotions. Once acquired, think about how these units could better assist you on the battlefield. Most promotions will give you the choice between two initial options; of them usually one will assist you better than the other in your play style. For instance, a defensive upgrade and an offensive upgrade may be available, see how you could use this unit more effectively with either.
Remember that every unit you get can have its own promotions, allowing for quick and easy access to diverse militaries. No matter how you choose to go about your unit diversification, these promotions can help you decide which fighting force is better for what. Generally, it’s good to have forces dedicated to attacking, defending, and maneuverability. In this way, each unit can focus on one path or another before moving on to being well-rounded! Survivability is key, so make sure you keep these upgraded units towards what they’re good at and avoid weaknesses. Choosing when to fight and when to retreat is key to gaining promotions!
Offensive Units
For creating the best-maximized shock troops out of your military, focus on movement and attack bonuses; generally, you’ll have to decide whether you want these shock troops to work better against normal units or cities. For the most part, these benefits apply to naval, land, and air units as each can be promoted. Using these shock troops you can either quickly mow down an army, or topple a city with ease. Make sure they hold the ability to traverse through as many environments as possible and stay coordinated. This, and troop cohesion will allow your nation to defeat as many foes as possible with as few forces as can be stretched.
Apostle’s theological combat
Defensive Units
creating units for defensive measures such as garrisons or border troops can be made better with promotions. Focusing on the idea of garrison bonuses, or heavy defense against certain unit types allows for these units to survive longer. There are certain attack bonuses capable of being made through being garrisoned to a town or fortification. Effective defensive promotions lie with withstanding as much damage as possible. Keeping this in mind these units don’t need lots of movement speed but should focus on defense and attack.
Plundering Units
Amongst promotions you might find for cavalry units, plundering-based ones serve your empire best. Focusing on terrain navigation, and extra turns, your forces can easily plunder and attack the same turn. The most important aspect of a plundering army is the ability of these units to stay mobile. Mobility has the ability to keep these units from harassing opposing cities and avoiding counterattackers. The effects of a plundering army are less about hurting the military, than the nation’s resource gathering. Plundering is a powerful tool in sieges as it reduces the production of enemy defenders. Effective use of these plundering armies can make for a quick end to any powerful enemy!
-source PotatoMcWhiskey
Religion
When it comes to promoting religious troops, we are mainly talking about apostles. These unique units are able to not only build up your religious beliefs but also your faith in other cities. Acting as one of the most powerful religious units in the game, apostles gain promotions upon certain conditions being met. One of the main uses of these promotions is to increase their conversion rate, and bonuses during an inquisition. The apostle is only able to do these promotions once, and they do not carry over to any other creations. It is up to you which bonuses you would like to choose based on your religious or conquering needs. These apostles are potent means of keeping your religion spreading but require more faith points than other units. Consider them and their promotions for situations where missionaries aren’t going to assist you!
Warrior Monks
It is interesting to see how some religions have capitalized on warrior monks as a religious unit. Moreover, they are also able to be promoted because they are powerful scouts and religious units. These promotions can mix scouting and religion as they traverse areas with ease, and gain extra benefits to conversion. Additionally, these warrior Monks are capable of receiving flanking bonuses that can assist other military units. These religious units are extremely potent, and should be considered for any powerful nation!
The potency of promotions allows for a smaller military force to overcome one of larger value. It is impossible to underestimate the power of well-trained elite troops in defeating your enemies. Whether you need a powerful defensive force or an aggressive one, consider promotions as an added edge to your gameplay! Through proper strategy, training, and trial and error, you can master the world of Civilization VI with these powerful upgrades!
