Samarkand

Strategy guide

Trading Domes are gold improvements that scale with adjacent luxuries, and every dome in a route's origin city adds +1 Gold to its international routes. Cluster domes in your trade hub next to luxury tiles and each outgoing route gets permanently richer.

Best civs & plans

Trade-empire kits — Portugal, Mali, Persia — stack it with their route bonuses; luxury-rich starts get the biggest domes.

Envoy plan

Trade city-states are the most fought-over category on the AI side, and Samarkand is no exception, so decide early whether it or Zanzibar is your trade target and put three envoys here in one push instead of drifting toward it. The trade-type rewards are strong on their own — gold in the capital and every Market or Lighthouse at one envoy, in every Bank and Shipyard at three — and they pair with the Domes, since a Commercial Hub city is where luxuries and Trading Domes both cluster. Six envoys is worthwhile for a route-heavy empire once Stock Exchanges and Seaports exist. Amani is a good way to hold the margin.

Value by era

A Trading Dome in the classical era is a flat gold improvement that outperforms most early tiles once a luxury or two sits beside it, which makes an early suzerainty a quiet economic edge rather than a spike. The bonus grows with the number of international routes leaving the Dome city: in the medieval era that is two or three routes, but by the Renaissance and industrial eras a trade capital running eight or nine outgoing routes with several Domes beside it adds a substantial per-turn sum on top of the tile gold. Late in the game the tile gold matters less but the route bonus still scales, so a modern-era suzerainty is worth a few Builder charges in the one city that sends most of your routes.

Pitfalls and how to protect it

The route bonus only counts Domes in the origin city of an international route, so Domes scattered across five cities that each send one route are far weaker than the same Domes stacked in the single city that sends most of them — and domestic routes earn nothing from them. The Dome goes next to a luxury, never on it, and the no-adjacency rule means alternating Domes with plantations and mines rather than lining them up. Like any improvement they can be pillaged, so a raided trade capital loses both the tiles and the route bonus until Builders repair them. Samarkand often sits inland near AI trade rivals; if it is captured, existing Domes keep their yields but no new ones appear, so weigh a liberation war against simply switching envoys to Zanzibar.

Envoy bonuses

• 1 envoy+2 Gold in your capital and in each Market or Lighthouse you own.
• 3 envoys+4 Gold in each Bank, Shipyard and Consulate you own.
• 6 envoys+6 Gold in each Stock Exchange, Seaport and Chancery you own.

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

Other Trade city-states

• Venice
• Cahokia
• Hunza
• Jakarta
• Mogadishu
• Muscat
• Zanzibar

Related guides

• City-States and Envoys: Where Your Influence Should GoWhere envoys come from, how to spend the first handful, which city-state types match each victory plan, how to win and keep suzerainty against the AI, and when conquering a city-state is the right call.Last reviewed: 2026-10-03
• Diplomatic Victory: Earning and Spending FavorA working plan for the Gathering Storm diplomatic victory: where Diplomatic Favor actually comes from, how World Congress sessions and votes turn into victory points, which emergencies, competitions and wonders matter, how to keep alliances alive, and when to spend favor versus hold it against a rival's lead.Last reviewed: 2026-10-03
• Early District Planning: The First 100 TurnsHow to read city sites for future adjacency, decide between settling for yields now or reserving tile clusters, and know when a planned layout should be abandoned.Last reviewed: 2026-10-03