Cultural

Caguana

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

Suzerain bonus

Builders can construct the Batey: +1 Culture, +1 Culture per adjacent bonus resource and Entertainment Complex (doubled after Exploration), and Tourism after Flight. Cannot sit next to another Batey.

Game data traceMINOR_CIV_CAGUANA_UNIQUE_INFLUENCE_BONUS

Strategy guide

Bateys are builder-made culture tiles that scale with adjacent bonus resources and Entertainment Complexes, later adding Tourism. Cluster them around stadium cities and resource patches, and a handful of builders converts into a steady culture-and-tourism engine without extra districts.

Best civs & plans

A culture-victory accelerator for civs with spare builder charges — Aztecs, or anyone running Serfdom and Monumentality golden ages.

Envoy plan

Three envoys timed to your first spare builder charges is enough, with a push to six in a culture game because the cultural ladder feeds Amphitheaters and museums that host the Great Works the Batey's Tourism eventually complements. The AI rarely values Caguana highly — improvement-granting city-states are undervalued by most leaders — so suzerainty is often the cheapest of any cultural city-state on the map, and one envoy of margin holds it for a long time. That makes it the right place for leftovers: the second envoy from Diplomatic League, quest rewards you cannot use elsewhere, or the surplus after a scientific city-state is safely yours. A pure science or domination player can ignore it; the bonus only pays with builders and an Entertainment Complex or two, and those are not on that plan.

Value by era

A single Batey next to two bonus resources is worth about as much as a Monument in the ancient era, fine but not urgent. The Renaissance is when it starts to pull ahead: Entertainment Complexes are in place, the Exploration civic doubles the adjacency, and a Batey wedged between a stadium district and a pair of cattle tiles becomes one of the better Culture tiles a builder can create. Flight turns the same tiles into Tourism sources in the Modern era, which is precisely when a culture player is looking for anything that adds to the total. Its ceiling is fixed by land, so the bonus plateaus once every good tile is taken. Late suzerainty is still worth it for a culture player with idle builders, because the improvements can be placed in a handful of turns and count immediately.

Pitfalls and how to protect it

The no-adjacency rule catches anyone planning a Batey ring around a stadium — only every other tile can hold one, so lay them out in a checkerboard and fill the gaps with farms or pastures. Placing a Batey on a bonus resource tile itself is a mistake: it wants to sit next to resources, not on them, and it wastes the resource's own improvement. Harvest-happy Magnus play conflicts directly, since chopping the adjacent deer or stone removes the adjacency forever; decide which economy you are running before laying the first one. Existing Bateys keep working if suzerainty lapses but cannot be built, so a late-game AI envoy dump is a nuisance, not a disaster. If Caguana is captured, the improvements stay and the only loss is the ability to add more; a liberation war is almost never worth it.

Envoy bonuses

  • 1 envoy+1 Culture in your capital and in each Amphitheater you own.
  • 3 envoys+2 Culture in each Art Museum, Archaeological Museum and Consulate you own.
  • 6 envoys+3 Culture in each Broadcast Center and each Chancery you own.

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

Plan your districts in the adjacency calculator →

Other Cultural city-states

Related guides

Last reviewed: 2026-10-03