Best Civilization 5 Mods

Searching for a list of the best Civ 5 mods? Join us as we showcase the best Civilization 5 mods for improving the game.

Despite not being the most recent entry in the series, Civ 5 can still be a ton of fun to play in 2025 with the best Civilization 5 mods.

From adding new civs to total conversions and a host of tools for improving the game’s quality of life, there are many approaches to modding Civ 5.

In this list, we’ll showcase the best Civilization 5 mods for improving the game by adding new features and content from the Civ community.

Make sure to stick around till the end to see our full list of the top Civ 5 mods!

Related:Best Civilization 6 ModsBest Games Like CivilizationBest 4X Games On PC 2025

Table of ContentsShow

How to Install Civilization 5 Mods

Install Civilization 5 Mods In-Game

  1. Start the game and select ‘Mods’ from the main menu.
  2. Select ‘Get Mods,’ to browse through a list of currently supported mods.
  3. Once you find the desired mod, hit ‘Install Mod.’
  4. Start playing.

Install Civilization 5 Mods Manually

  1. Download a mod from a reputable mod hosting site, such as Nexus Mods.
  2. Windows – Place the downloaded folder in “C:UsersDocumentsMy GamesSid Meier’s Civilization 5MODS folder”
  3. You can either leave it and let the game install the mod for you, or manually unzip the .civ5mod file yourself.
  4. Restart Civilization 5 to reload the new items.
  5. Navigate to the Mods menu to enable the new mods.

Install Civilization 5 Mods Using Steam Workshop

  1. Locate the desired mod on the Steam Workshop page for Civilization 5.
  2. Click “Subscribe” (Make sure you’re logged in).
  3. Keep the Steam app open until all files are downloaded.
  4. Restart Civilization 5 to reload the new items.
  5. Navigate to the Mods menu to enable the new mods.

One of the most beneficial Civ 5 mods for tailoring just about any part of the game to your liking is the Ingame Editor.

This mod gives you the power to change a wide array of map and gameplay features, including terrain, resources, city religions, units, and much more.

As such, its applications are quite extensive, providing the versatility of both a cheat engine and custom scenario builder that’s compatible with all Civ 5 DLC.

Throughout the years, we’ve seen Civ’s art style swap back and forth between realistic and more stylized cartoony visuals.

If you prefer the former, then the R.E.D. Modpack is an essential must-have for your next session as it makes some significant adjustments to Civ 5 units.

This includes rescaling units to look more authentically sized as well as adding more diverse unit models for various civs.

Serving as a spiritual successor to Yet Another Giant Earth Map, the Play the World Extended mod lets you conquer other civs on a global scale, specifically 180×94.

Of course, there are some caveats to having such power, most notably a minimum of 4GB of RAM to play the game smoothly.

Additionally, you’ll find some civs won’t always line up with their proper locations, so make sure to take your time setting everything up before starting a fresh session.

If you’re looking to go beyond Civ 5’s timeline past the Information Age, a mod like Future Worlds is the greatest instrument to do so.

This is because it adds a multitude of new tech (31 to be exact), along with a novel “Nanomaterial” resource, 31 units, 52 buildings, and other “distant future” content.

The sole downside is that the AI can end the game early before you get a chance to explore everything; to counter this, it’s recommended you switch off cultural and diplomatic victories.

Anyone who played Civ 4 will recall having the ability to grow cottages into fully-formed towns over time.

With the Trading Posts Grow Into Towns mod, you can bring the feature to Civ 5 and have your trading posts slowly turn into villages with better yields.

Although these villages will still pale in comparison to full-fledged cities, their value is increased overall.

If you’re looking to squeeze as much personalization out of Civ 5 as you can, the Really Advanced Setup mod is one of the finest ways to do so.

On top of the existing choices afforded by the game, this mod gives you the ability to set active civilizations, starting biases and bonuses, as well as adjust map visibility.

There’s even an “Always War” mode that will let you wage conflict with every other civ you encounter throughout your game.

Like many of the best urban development games, Civ 5 significantly benefits from being able to see how much area you have to work with.

That’s where a mod like City Limits comes in handy, allowing you to see the visible limits for expanding a given city.

Not too much of a game-changer but definitely the kind of mod you won’t ever want to play without once you have it.

Some of the combat animations in Civ 5 can feel extended and protracted, particularly those of aircraft in the game.

To get back some of that precious time wasted, we suggest installing the Faster Aircraft Animations mod.

As its name implies, this mod accelerates aircraft combat animations X2 by default but can be increased further by editing the included .sql file.

If you’re looking for more viable diplomatic ways to play Civ 5, the City-State Diplomacy Mod is an absolute must-have.

Once installed, it adds a multitude of new diplomatic units, buildings, and city-state quests that reward you with influence for completing.

In addition, the mod encourages you to explore diplomatic measures whenever possible, changing the way you approach the game.

Seeing as most of your time in Civilization is spent navigating menus, the UI should be readable, efficient, and easy to navigate.

In this aspect, Civ 5 could stand to improve with a mod like Enhanced User Interface, which adds a few improvements to the game’s interface.

The outcome is a more efficient and structured UI that needs fewer clicks to accomplish tasks while exhibiting more icons and mouse-over tooltips.

Players who enjoy diving into the nitty gritty of their civ’s growth, performance, and other stats will immensely benefit from using the InfoAddict mod.

The purpose of it is to emphasize every significant aspect of a given civilization in an easily digestible way using time-based graphics.

Several sections will track each civ’s historical data over time in regard to demographics, global relationships, etc.

Like many Civ mechanics, natural disasters have come and gone throughout the series, with Civ 5 removing them entirely.

However, since some players love the extra challenge, a mod like Real Natural Disasters was created to bring the system back.

With it installed, you’ll find yourself having to scramble to recover after parts of the map become damaged due to earthquakes, floods, meteors, and other random events.

Next up on our list of the best Civilization 5 mods is a rather grim one, the Health & Plague mod.

With it, you’ll be charged with overseeing the overall health of your cities to avoid widespread contagious diseases and other ailments.

These can trickle into your cities through various means, most prominently water and tourism, requiring you to keep a watchful eye over travelers and international relations.

In addition to the Natural Disasters mod, we suggest Civ 5 players add the Global Warming mod to spice up their impending session.

The goal of this mod is to throw climate change into the mix of obstacles you’ll have to navigate to ensure your civ’s continued survival.

As ice and snow melt around the world, land tiles may be negatively impacted, resulting in drier terrain with fewer resources to go around.

To counter any harmful ecological effects from your civ’s ongoing growth, a mod like Reforestation comes in handy.

This is done with a straightforward ingenious system that lets you plant entire forests after discovering fertilizer in the game.

From there, you’re free to plant trees for lumber, grow dense forests to keep enemies at bay or help Mother Nature just for the sake of it.

Speaking of nature, the PerfectWorld3 mod is an incredibly useful tool for expanding the potential of Civ 5’s world generation.

With it, you’ll be able to create more genuine terrain with mountains, deserts, forests, and rivers appearing as they would in real life.

This includes elevated rivers that run down mountains to create large bodies of water, jungles springing up near water sources and many other features.

If you’d like to expand Civ 5’s religious offerings in a playful yet significant way, check out Strange Religions.

Admittedly, one of the goofier items on this list, it introduces many novel beliefs about spirituality to the potential religions in Civ 5.

This includes both conventional and familiar belief systems as well as more whacky ones like Nike Philosophy and the Triforce Cult.

Those looking for an alternative to the finest Civ 5 map mods like PerfectWorld3 are welcome to pick up the Communitas Map mod.

The main features of this mod are adding continents and offshore islands to every map, opening up new possibilities for exploration, and expanding your empire.

To keep things balanced, the mod also introduces several gameplay changes to account for new geographical features like ocean rifts, which greatly benefit Astronomy.

Emigration is another distinctive mechanic that can add some variety to any Civ session as it introduces new challenges for players to consider.

The most notable addition with the Emigration mod is prosperity, a novel resource that considers your civ’s overall contentment when determining citizen migration.

There are different ways to gain or lose prosperity depending on your civ’s social policies and productivity in relation to neighboring cities.

There are plenty of ways to increase the difficulty in Civ 5 but changing the way the AI makes decisions is by far the most captivating.

With the Smart AI mod, you’ll start to see the AI make smarter moves each turn to optimize their civ’s performance and growth.

As such, you can expect it to put up more of a fight than the standard AI, making this mod great for your next single-player session.

Prehistoric Era Reborn is one of the best civ mods for Civilization 5 as it lets you start your adventure much earlier than the vanilla game.

Instead of the ancient era, sessions begin in 20,000 BC when primitive humans still struggle to survive against dangerous wildlife and have yet to discover fire.

This adds an interesting twist to Civ 5’s progression complete with new, albeit primitive, technologies and units.

If cavemen aren’t really your cup of tea, perhaps you’d prefer sailing across the open seas as a thieving band of buccaneers?

With MC’s Buccaneers mod, you can follow a group of pirates led by Henry Morgan on a conquest to dominate the ocean’s waters.

This includes new naval units, Rum Distilleries, and the option to issue a Letter of Marque and gain uninterrupted access to enemy waters.

One of many great Civilization 5 era mods, Enlightenment Era transports players to the period of fervent cultural change between the Renaissance and Industrial eras.

With this comes a host of new tech, units, buildings, and wonders based on concepts like economics, humanism, and imperialism.

As such, there’s a substantial emphasis on exploration and navigation via warships, anthropology by the way of museums, and cultural enrichment from salons, theaters, and the like.

Without a doubt one of the most ambitious Civilization 5 mods ever developed, Vox Populi is a collaborative effort that builds upon the Community Patch Project.

The primary goal of this mod is to take real player comments, suggestions, and feedback into consideration when making changes to Civ 5.

To this point, it features a wide array of gameplay rebalances and updates that affect leadership and civ abilities with the intended goal of improving the experience.

Rounding out our list of the best Civilization 5 mods, we have Civilization Nights, a complete overhaul mod that extensively reimagines Civ’s gameplay.

Among its highlights is a revamped happiness system in which citizens now generate happiness and military units and cities generate unhappiness.

This provides a new layer of complexity to Civ 5 progression that forces you to carefully weigh decisions that may tip the scales in either direction.

You Will Love These Too

Best Games Like Call of Duty
Best Games Like Call of Duty
Justin Fernandez

As a fan of both indie and triple-A games, Justin finds joy in discovering and sharing hidden gems with other passionate gamers. In addition to reporting on the latest and greatest titles, he manages GamingScan’s social media channels.

More About Justin Fernandez