Civilization VI City Layout guide will help you figure out the best placements for districts, planning wonders, understanding districts, tile placements and bonuses associated with placing the right buildings, improvements to make sure you don’t want screw up in the city planning and development phase and get the max out of the tiles.
Civilization VI City Layout Guide
Before we discuss how you should take care of tiles placements to plan the city layout, let’s understand the importance of districts and how they work in Civilization VI.
How Districts Work in Civ VI
Each district can have up to three buildings and as your city grows, you will gain access to even more districts. Each district is placed on an individual tile and they created around the city center.
The city center itself is treated as a district; in the beginning, you will have access to basic building types and adjacent bonuses for districts build next to the City Center.
Building wonders will help boost population for each district. Keep in mind that you will lose bonus resources if you build districts on top of them. Building every type of district available to know is not recommended, it depends on the type of game you wish to play.
Last but not the least, terrain type is important when building new districts. For example, the Holy Site should be around the mountains.
Civilization VI Best Placements for Districts and Wonders
In civilization 6 there are districts that are placed outside of your city center. Meanwhile, your wonders take up a tile outside the city center as well.
You need to keep in mind that everything you build has some sort of adjacent bonuses. It also matters what they next too, you can somewhat explain this with Unique Ability for Roman Empire – All Roads Lead to Rome: Cities start with a Trading Post and those near your Capital with get a free road going to them.
Certain building and structures and only be build at certain places in Civilization 6 so keep limitations in mind.
Now, the first thing you need to do is place your city center close to your water source. The question “how are you going to get water?” should be in your head while placing your city center.
If you are adjacent to a source of fresh water, you are good! However, if not, make sure you have access to an aqueduct. Water is the primary source of life, even in Civ 6, so it is crucial if you wish to let your city grow. Your fresh water source needs to be at least 2 tiles away.
This will allow you to put an aqueduct in the middle tile to bridge the gap.
Moreover, different districts have adjacent bonuses for nearby districts, city center is also considered as a district in the game so to get the best out of them you need to place more districts close to the city center.
Keep an eye on the empty spaces next to your cities that lack sources. They are spots to build districts so they would get the adjacency bonuses from the city center and nearby districts.
Make sure your city center has two blanks titles next to it, at least, to build districts and wonders that must be adjacent to the city center.
The next thing you need to figure out is whether you wish to build a holy site or a campus, you can both of course. Keep in mind that both of them come with a decent amount of adjacency bonus for mountains. If you wish to develop a holy center, it is best that you build it next to your wonder that can only be built on woods.
The holy site also gets a bonus for being next to two wooden tiles, so keep that in mind. Meanwhile, Campus gets a bonus for being close to two rainforests.
Moving on, if you have access to a harbor location you surely need to build a harbor. What you need to keep in mind that is that harbors get bonuses for all coastal resources. There are three wonders that must be built adjacent to the harbor but you can not build all three.
Industrial area gets a bonus if it is next to a mine so think about its placements carefully. Once again, there must be a wonder build next to this district but what’ to note here is that it must be near a river or a coast.
Leave at least one tile in between the industrial district and a river or a coast.
Furthermore, keep your commercial hub next to a river or a harbor. The adjacency bonus is +2 Gold. You need to build the commercial hub next to a river and if building a Big Ben as a wonder, it also needs to be close to a river.
If you go with the great zimbabwe wonder it needs to be build next to a commercial hub and next to a cattle. This means that you need to have an empty space that is adjacent to commercial hub and cattle.
Promoting culture is achieved by building Theather Square. You need to have two world wonders built on flat land adjacent to Theater Square.
The good news is that things aren’t as complex with encampments. The only thing you need to know is that build is far from city center in a strategic position for the military.
There is also no adjacent bonus to Entertainment complex, the only thing they need is flat land. Build them far from the districts to avoid taking up space for those who give bonuses.
Civilization VI City Layout Adjacency Bonuses
- City Center – None
- Holy Site – Faith: +2 Natural Wonders; +1 Mountain; +½ Woods, Districts
- Campus – Science: +1 Mountain; +½ Rainforest, Districts
- Encampment – None
- Harbor – Gold: +1 Coastal resource, +½ District
- Industrial – Production: +1 Mine, Quarry; +½ District
- Commercial Hub – Gold: +2 Harbor, River; +½ District
- Theater Square – Culture: +1 Wonders; +½ Districts
- Space Port – None
- Aqueduct – None
- Aerodrome – None
Civilization VI Best Tile Placements and Tips
Some districts yield more bonuses when placed correctly in relation to other tiles. For example, we already discussed how the industrial zone can generate bonus when placed next to the mines, but if also do better placed next to multiple mines.
The same goes for your commercial but The Holy Site’s Natural wonder bonus is far and in between so it comes into play rarely.
Work on Encampment district to help boost your attack and defense against the enemy. This will also make sure units more durable. There is no bonus to you can build these on unwanted tiles away from the city center.
Use multiple tiles to build encampments for a balanced army.
Another thing to keep in mind that building districts can often become a matter of choice. You can do one thing while losing the other. For example, Encampments can support both barracks for melee soldiers and a stable for mounted men.
Take to the comments if you have any questions regarding Civilization VI City Layout Guide.
