Scientific

Anshan

Suzerain and envoy bonuses summarised in our own words from the game data.

Suzerain bonus

+2 Science from each Great Work of Writing you have, and +1 Science from each Relic and Artifact.

Game data traceMINOR_CIV_BABYLON_ARTIFACT_BONUS, MINOR_CIV_BABYLON_RELIC_BONUS, MINOR_CIV_BABYLON_WRITING_BONUS

Strategy guide

Great Works of Writing become +2 Science each and artifacts +1, turning your culture collection into a research engine. Grab Great Writers even off-plan, run archaeologists aggressively, and the bonus can rival a Campus building by the late game.

Best civs & plans

Ideal for culture-science hybrid games — Sweden and Russia fill writing slots fast, and archaeology-heavy civs double-dip tourism and science from the same museums.

Envoy plan

Send the third envoy as soon as your first Great Writer is close, because the value starts the moment a Great Work of Writing sits in a slot. Anshan is scientific, so the ladder rewards Libraries at one envoy and Universities at three — buildings a science player already has — which means even a failed suzerainty bid returns something. Six envoys is a good target here since Research Labs benefit at the top tier and the same cities hold your museums. AI competition for scientific city-states is intense from the classical era onward; expect to need four or five envoys to hold it, and use Amani's two-envoy weight to avoid draining your pool. Envoys from Archaeology-era quests and the Great Writer patronage that this bonus encourages tend to arrive together, so bank them for Anshan.

Value by era

Nothing happens until you own a Great Work, so ancient-era suzerainty is pure preparation. The Classical and Medieval eras are when the first Writers arrive and two works in an Amphitheater already match a Library's output — a real edge that early. The Renaissance is the ramp: Great Writers come faster, Art Museums fill with paintings that do not count but Archaeological Museums fill with artifacts that do, and each dig site is worth a point of Science forever. The bonus peaks in the Industrial and Modern eras, when a culture-science hybrid holds a dozen writings and a few museums of artifacts, and it never declines because works are never lost. Grabbing Anshan late is sensible only if you already hold a large collection; otherwise the runway is too short.

Pitfalls and how to protect it

The easiest mistake is trading Great Works away for Gold or swapping writings to theme a museum without noticing that each one leaving your inventory removes Science; keep writings and artifacts, trade paintings and sculptures instead. Relics count too, so a Reliquary Holy Site or a few martyred Apostles are quiet Science if you are suzerain. Building Archaeological Museums but never producing Archaeologists is another way to waste the bonus — each dig is cheap relative to what it returns over a hundred turns. Because the value rests entirely on suzerainty, an AI with a large Great Person output can strip it away in a single envoy dump; keep one envoy in reserve during the Renaissance. If Anshan is captured, the Science vanishes instantly while your collection remains, so liberation is unusually rewarding: everything returns the turn you retake it.

Envoy bonuses

  • 1 envoy+1 Science in your capital and in each Library you own.
  • 3 envoys+2 Science in each University and each Consulate you own.
  • 6 envoys+3 Science in each Research Lab and each Chancery you own.

Envoy bonuses are shared by every city-state of the same type.

Plan your districts in the adjacency calculator →

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Last reviewed: 2026-10-03