- "O ye who tread the Narrow Way, by Tophet-flare to Judgment Day, be gentle when ‘the heathen’ pray, to Buddha at Kamakura!"
– Rudyard Kipling
Kotoku-in is a Medieval Era wonder in Civilization VI: Rise and Fall. It must be built adjacent to a Holy Site with a Temple.
- Effects:
- +20% Faith in this city.
- Grants 4 Warrior Monks (if player has founded a religion or if there is a majority religion for this player or city).
Strategy[]
Kotoku-in is, along with Broadway, Oxford University, and Ruhr Valley, one of four wonders in Civilization VI and its expansions that grant their parent city a 20% bonus to one type of yield along with a secondary bonus. Oxford University and Ruhr Valley are excellent wonders and Broadway somewhat less so, but Kotoku-in is absolutely underwhelming and almost never worth building.
The main bonus of Kotoku-in is 20% extra Faith for the parent city, which is underwhelming if you really break it down. Compared to Science, Culture and Production, sources of Faith are a lot rarer. Outside of unique bonuses, cities are likely to be dependent on Holy Sites and their buildings to generate Faith, and not much else. In the Medieval Era, no one except Ethiopia is guaranteed to have a city that can generate 50+ Faith per turn, which is necessary to get 10 extra Faith per turn out of this wonder. Also, considering the escalating cost of a lot of Faith purchases while Faith from Holy Sites and their buildings barely scale outside of certain policy cards, the Faith from this wonder will never be meaningful enough to make up for it.
Kotoku-in's secondary bonus is four free Warrior Monks, which are underpowered by the time you get them. You may be better off using them for non-combat purposes, such as garrisoning cities to get extra Amenities from the Retainers policy or maintaining visibility over an area to prevent Barbarians from spawning there.
The bottom line is that most civilizations shouldn't waste 710 Production on building Kotoku-in without a compelling reason. Its only usable bonus is the extra Faith, so the city to build this must have good Faith generation with scaling potential. Ethiopia has the easiest time satisfying this condition: once they've built Kotoku-in, they can turn its parent city into a trading hub and focus on expanding its borders to claim and improve nearby resources and increase their Trade Routes' Faith yield. Moreover, their Faith translates to extra Science and Culture, making it a 3-in-1 bonus. Certain civilizations with the proper pantheons - like Russia with Dance of the Aurora, Mali with Desert Folklore, or Brazil with Sacred Path - can generate a large amount of Faith very early, but since they almost exclusively rely on terrain and well-placed, well-developed Holy Sites, their Faith generation per city won't scale and this wonder's impact will be short-lived.
Civilopedia entry[]
Serene, enduring, and somewhat mysterious, the Buddha statue known as the Daibutsu sits outside of Kamakura’s Kōtoku-in. Towering over the Buddhist temple’s visitors, the Daibutsu patiently greets both faithful and tourist alike. An unknown artist cast the Great Buddha of Kamakura out of bronze, which has since oxidized into a muted green color through natural weathering.
However, the Kōtoku-in’s artist clearly built it to last. It survived an earthquake and two typhoons, one of which destroyed the building that used to surround it. The statue remains unfazed by nature’s attempts to unseat its 750-year meditation.