Golf Course (Civ6)

Golf Course
Introduced in Rise and Fall
Unique to	Scottish
Built by	Builder
Unlocked by	Reformed Church
Plunder	Health
Effects
+1 Amenity ( +2 Amenities) +2 Gold +1 Appeal to adjacent tiles +1 Culture if adjacent to a City Center +1 Culture for each adjacent Entertainment Complex +1 Housing (Req. Globalization) Provides Tourism equal to its Culture output (Req. Flight)
Improves
Terrain	Grassland  Grassland (Hills)  Plains  Plains (Hills)  Tundra  Tundra (Hills)  Snow  Snow (Hills)
Notes
Tiles with Golf Courses cannot be swapped.

Back to List of improvements in Civ6

The Golf Course is a unique tile improvement of the Scottish civilization in Civilization VI: Rise and Fall.

• Effects:
  • +1 Amenity ( +2 Amenities)
  • +2 Gold
  • +1 Appeal to adjacent tiles
  • +1 Culture if adjacent to a City Center
  • +1 Culture for each adjacent Entertainment Complex
  • +1 Housing (with Globalization)
• Restrictions:
  • Cannot be built on Desert or Desert Hills tiles.
  • Limit of one per city.
  • Tiles with Golf Courses cannot be swapped.

Strategy

Golf Courses bring revenue and happiness to the cities in which they're built, as well as Housing in the Information Era. For maximum Culture bonuses, build them next to City Centers and Entertainment Complexes. Golf Courses raise the Appeal of adjacent tiles and can even be built on Tundra and Snow, which tend to have higher Appeal than other types of terrain. This can help the Scots create places for National Parks if they need Tourism or additional Amenities.

The main selling point of the Golf Course, however, is the Amenities bonus. Even at its highest, the Culture bonus is way too insignificant at this point of the game, so think carefully before investing your Production and a district slot on an Entertainment Complex. Tiles adjacent to the City Center are often very valuable as well, because powerful wonders such as the Forbidden City can be built there. In order to maximize the number of tiles that receive the Appeal bonus, it's often advisable to just forget about the Culture bonus and build Golf Courses away from the City Center. Doing so allows them to supply Amenities without requiring citizens to work them, which is what Scotland cares about the most.

The biggest downside of this improvement is its civic requirement. Reformed Church is a leaf civic, meaning it is the last civic of its branch and not required to unlock later civics, so most civilizations with no religious tendency will ignore it along with Theology and Divine Right. Scotland, however, has to discover all three in order to unlock their unique improvement. In your game, if you get lucky with multiple types of luxury resources, are able to build the all-important Colosseum, and your empire is not too wide, all your cities can reach Ecstatic status even without the extra Amenities from Golf Courses. Remember to constantly check City Status to see your Amenity level, so that you can decide for yourself when to unlock the Golf Course. If your Amenity is already at Ecstatic, there's no point in wasting your Culture on discovering the three religious civics - you can leave it until later in the game when luxury resources and the Colosseum are no longer enough to keep your cities Ecstatic.

In Gathering Storm, the number of bonus Amenities goes up from 1 to 2 (1 higher); however, the Amenity thresholds go up by 2 (Happy now requires 3 Amenities, which used to be 1, and Ecstatic requires 5 Amenities, which used to 3). This change to the Amenity threshold necessitates the use of Golf Courses a little bit more, since now it is harder to reach Ecstatic without Golf Courses. However, since the Amenity threshold is raised by 2, more than the buff given to the Golf Course (increased by only 1 Amenity), this makes the Golf Course even less effective at what it is supposed to do. Undoubtedly, this is the worst unique improvement in the game, and were it not for the Aztec Tlachtli, it would have been the worst piece of unique infrastructure as well. Think of this similarly to the civilization ability of Korea: it serves only as an extension of your strongest ability, and should never be your focus in any situation.

Civilopedia entry

There is one singular, undeniable historical constant: people have always enjoyed hitting balls with sticks. Scotland’s turf happened to be a perfect place to hit balls with sticks across large stretches of land. Thus “golf,” which means, “hitting a ball with a stick across a large stretch of land.” Golf courses became the stretches of land in question, frustrating generations of golfers with sand traps, lakes, the rough, and drops from highlands.

Golf (as played today) managed to survive and thrive despite various attempts at banning the sport, by people such as King James II (who the Scots rightly ignored) and even the Scottish Church, who did not want it played during holy days. The Church’s larger complaint was with golfers playing in churchyards, which were a very particular sort of hazard.

Gallery

Golf Course in game

Golf Course adjacency bonuses from 3 Entertainment Complexes

Historic Moment for building the Golf Course

Related achievements

Mulligan Build a Golf Course in a tile where you had previously attempted to build a Wonder, but got beaten to the Wonder by another Civ. A reference to the call in golf to redo a poor shot and not have it count on the score card.