The Gilded Vault is an advanced economic building in Civilization VI. It is exclusive to the Owls of Minerva secret society in the Secret Societies game mode, introduced in the Ethiopia Pack. It is built in the Commercial Hub district and replaces the Bank.
- Effects:
- +5
Gold (boosted by Free Market policy card) - +1 Citizen slot
- +2 Great Merchant point per turn
- Grants Culture equal to the adjacency bonus of the district.
- Having a Harbor in this city provides +1 Trade Route capacity
- +5
Strategy[]
In the early stages of Civilization VI, you could actually have up to 2 
Trade Routes per city if you had both a Commercial Hub and a Harbor. However, the developers soon realized how powerful and important Trade Routes were to an empire and lowered this maximum to 1 Trade Route per city only. This alone gives you an idea of how amazing the Gilded Vault is to any civilization, especially those with a unique Harbor or Commercial Hub (England, Phoenicia, and Mali) or a heavy focus on trade (Portugal, the Cree, the Netherlands, and Egypt). Even cultural civilizations love this building, since having twice as many Trade Routes as they normally would allows them to have a smaller and more compact empire that they can effectively defend with a smaller army, but still have enough Trade Routes to send to every civilization in the game.
The extra 
Culture from the Commercial Hub's adjacency bonus is also a nice and welcome extra touch. In order to unlock its respective Historic Moment, you will need a Commercial Hub with a starting adjacency bonus of +4. Besides the minor bonus from adjacent districts, Commercial Hubs can only gain bonuses from rivers (which is easy to do) and Harbors (which no one wants to do since you cannot have Trade Routes from both districts), so it's difficult to get an adjacency bonus this high. However, with the Gilded Vault, you have strong incentives to build both districts in every city, increasing the chances of Commercial Hubs having a high adjacency bonus and providing a lot of Culture as a consequence.
The ability to construct the Gilded Vault will supersede all other Bank replacements, so those playing as the Ottomans should avoid this society so they don't lose out on the bonuses from the Grand Bazaar. It should also be noted that despite Ritual being available from the Medieval Era onward, the Gilded Vault still requires Banking, which is a Renaissance Era technology.
Civilopedia entry[]
The secret societies of the 18th and 19th centuries always had a secret base – a place where the members could gather in robes and masks for clandestine ceremonies (or, more likely, gather in funny hats for watered-down beer). Here, around a sumptuous table, decisions were alleged to be made about what countries rose and fell, and who would hold the reins of power. This is an image cribbed from popular culture, but certain societies did and still do play upon such tropes for fun or to expand their own mystique. Yale’s secret societies, for instance, still meet in elaborate, Orientalist-themed vaults for what outsiders would have you believe to be world-defining meetings (but which are more likely the wearing of funny hats and drinking of watered-down beer). In these “gilded vaults,” money and power, noble titles and authority, are traded freely. Or so they say.
Gallery[]
| Civilization VI Secret Societies [edit] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Titles | Special Unlocks | |
| Hermetic Order | Neophyte • Adept • Magus • Aiwass | Alchemical Society • Ley Line • Occult Research |
| Owls of Minerva | Initiation • Ritual • Indoctrination • Master Plan | Gilded Vault |
| Sanguine Pact | Taste • Rising Hunger • Voivode • Endless Night | Vampire • Vampire Castle |
| Voidsingers | Melody • Chorus • Canticle • Symphony | Cultist • Dark Summoning • Old God Obelisk • Relic of the Void |
