Galápagos Islands (Civ6)

Galápagos Islands
Introduced in Civilization VI
Size	2 tiles
Tile type	Coast
Stats
Movement cost	Impassable
Movement cost	Impassable
Appeal	+2
Appeal	+2
Yields
Adjacent tile bonus	+2 Science
Adjacent tile bonus	+2 Science
Found on
Terrain	Coast
Notes
Adjacency bonus stacks for each adjacent wonder tile

Back to the list of natural wonders in Civ6

 "The natural history of this archipelago is very remarkable: it seems to be a little world within itself."
– Charles Darwin

The Galápagos Islands are a two-tile impassable Natural Wonder in Civilization VI. The Islands may be found on Coast tiles. Each Wonder tile provides +2 Science and +2 Appeal to adjacent tiles.

In Civilization VI: Rise and Fall, discovering the Galápagos Islands grants +1 Era Score, or +3 Score if the player is the first to do so.

Strategy

An illustration of the Islands' bonuses

Each Galápagos Islands tile provides +2 Science to adjacent non-wonder tiles (see diagram). However, as with all impassable wonders, the individual wonder tiles offer no benefits, and cannot be developed or improved. The Islands are usually most effective when they are near the outskirts of a city (or even slightly beyond its borders), since the wonder tiles themselves are functionally dead space. If a city is strategically placed in this fashion, it receives the adjacency benefits of the wonder without sacrificing valuable space.

However, the Galápagos Islands themselves tend to spawn at least one tile away from the shore. In the rare case where it spawns adjacent to the Coast, it can still be incorporated into a National Park. It is therefore recommended to settle two cities within range of the Galápagos Islands to make use of all of its enhanced tiles, while not sacrificing one of those enhanced tiles for a Harbor if the player were to settle only one city that had control of all of the enhanced tiles.

Civilopedia entry

Islas Galapagos were first visited by a European when the Spanish Bishop of Panama, Fray Tomás de Berlanga, was blown off course on his way to Peru in 1535 AD. No one paid much attention again to the isolated equatorial archipelago until 1835 when the HMS Beagle, with a young naturalist named Charles Darwin aboard, happened by while charting approaches to Pacific harbors. Darwin wandered about Charles Island and noted that the tortoises there differed from those on other islands in the chain. Once he could cut them up, Darwin also found, despite distinct variations, a single species of finches on the islands. Thus originated the Origin of the Species … and mankind’s understanding of just about everything biological (not to mention spiritual) would never be the same afterward.

Trivia

• The Galápagos Islands can be found in their real-life location on the standard Earth and standard True Start Location Earth maps.

Gallery

The Galápagos Islands intro cinematic

The Galápagos Islands, as seen in-game

A civilization discovers the Galápagos Islands

Related achievements

The Origin of Species Activate Darwin adjacent to the Galapagos Islands On the Origin of Species is a book by Charles Darwin on the Galapagos Islands, and is considered the basis of evolutionary biology.