Choosing your civilization in Rise of Kingdoms has quite some effect on your whole game experience as each civilization has an individual bonus that will help you, some do more, some do less.
After all there’s not a single answer and the civilization you should choose depends heavily on your play style and also if you’re in the early, mid or late stages in Rise of Kingdoms.
If you look at my list below I’m sure you’ll find some really helpful hints that will help you choose your civilization.
Update! Updated with the new Greece civilization settled in the game
Important! Don’t miss out on free Gems, Keys, Boosters and Speedups and frequently check my list of active gift codes for Rise of Kingdoms here.
Changing Your Civilization? Yes, That’s Possible
By the time you’re reading this, you probably already have chosen your civilization, right?
Well, you can change your civilization after you’ve chosen it but it will cost you 10,000 Gems or a token for changing your civilization – so if you haven’t played that long (few hours or days), you might want to think about starting instead of wasting that amount of Gems for that.
It’s important to have the right civilization, but just think about how much you can get with 10,000 Gems or how long it takes to get that many Gems in Rise of Kingdoms.
You can do it in your profile by using the arrows next to your civilization.
But now let’s get back to the original question, what is the best civilization to choose?
One thing to mention here, if you change your civilization everything will change (but not get reset!), only your starting commander will remain the same!
If you also want to check out which commanders are really good in Rise of Kingdoms, you might want to check out my guide here.
Rise of Kingdoms Civilizations – Which Is The Best?
I have tried to put them in a tier list to give you an indication how well (or bad) they are, so you will the great civilizations to choose, the okay civilizations and the civilizations that I think are not really useful.
TLDR; if you don’t want to read the full guide below, here’s the key takeaways:
Best Started Civilization choose either China (faster action points and building speed), Britain (great training speed increase and larger marches) or Spain (resource production speed and additional experience from neutral units). The way the game evolved recently I highly recommend China as your starting civilization
Best Economy Germany is a great pick mid-game with great units and other traits like training speed and action point recovery along with cavalry. For a farming mini account, Japan is also working great (march speed, scouting and gathering speed). Korea is also interesting for the faster research speed.
Best Open Field If you are interested in open field combat (and you should), the best civilization here is Ottoman (more march speed and skill damage), but also France is interesting (with faster healing).
Best Rally For rallying in Rise of Kingdoms you should take a closer look at either Egypt (for archer rally) or Arabia (for cavalry rally). Please mind, always have the current best marches in mind to see what troop type works best, I frequently update the meta marches here. Also the new Greece have a good rally bonus so they might become a contestant here.
The Civilizations To Choose
Before reading the table, please mind that the Starting Commander is only useful for starting as you can use any commander with any civilization later in the game! Never switch your civilization because of the starting commander, it won’t be affected by switching anyway.
Also, a ranked “S” Starting Commander means how useful a commander is at starting in Rise of Kingdoms, not how strong he is later in the game (refer to the commander tier list here to see what commanders are really strong).
Here’s an overview (sorted alphabetically) to give you main benefits. Below the table you will find a more detailed guide what civilizations I recommend:
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Starting Civilization
If you’re starting you will use mixed armies a lot so specialized units aren’t that important. Your main focus is getting a good start and also boost researching and building as much as you can.
For that reason I recommend using China as starting civilization with their additional action points, building speed and with Sun Tzu you will get a great starting commander as well.
Mid-Game Civilization
When you have your T4 units unlocked and start specialization, there are multiple options for you:
- Rome, France or Vikings for Infantry
- Britain or Ottoman for Archery
- Germany for Cavarly
Switching your civilization here makes sense and although 10k Gems is a lot, it will help you in the long run and you have saved a lot of time if you picked the right starting civilization.
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