Torre de Belém (Civ6)

Torre de Belém
World wonder of the Renaissance Era
Introduced in Portugal Pack
Unlocked by	Mercantilism
Production cost	920
Removed if game started after	Modern Era
Effects
International Trade Routes from this city receive +2 Gold for every luxury resource at the destination. When the Torre de Belém is constructed, cities not on your home continent receive the lowest Production cost building they can currently construct. +5 Gold +1 Great Admiral point per turn

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 "No vessel could pass these guns without being seriously assailed."
– Laure Junot Abrantes

The Torre de Belém is a Renaissance Era wonder in Civilization VI. It must be built on Coast adjacent to land and a Harbor. It cannot be built on a Lake.

• Effects:
  • International Trade Routes from this city receive +2 Gold for every luxury resource at the destination.
  • When the Torre de Belém is constructed, cities not on your home continent receive the lowest Production cost building they can currently construct.
  • +5 Gold
  • +1 Great Admiral point per turn

Strategy

Generally speaking, the Torre de Belém is an unreliable wonder. It has two main bonuses: one is dependent on your trading partners to be effective, and the other is borderline impossible to properly plan for.

The main bonus of the Torre de Belém is extra Gold for international Trade Routes. Now, there are cases where this bonus will add a massive amount of Gold to your international Trade Routes. All you have to do is to find one foreign city with many luxury resources (they don't have to be unique ones; duplicates work just as well) that is within range of your Trade Routes, and then send all of your Trade Routes to that one city. The problem here is having to count the number of luxuries each city has is a laborious task that hardly anyone does. Even in cases where you can find a city with at least four luxuries (which is rare, but possible), sending all Trade Routes there means you will have to sacrifice Tourism pressure to other civilizations, and that doesn't even consider that some of your cities may not be able to reach this ideal destination through Trade Routes. Even when your end goal is Gold only, there are better, more efficient and reliable ways to do it.

The second bonus is definitely more interesting and unique, but even less reliable than the first one. It gives every city that isn't on your home continent the cheapest building that city can build for free. The huge problem with this bonus is that you cannot plan for it to give you what you want. Your cities will constantly have to produce something, so the chances of the building you need being the cheapest one you can get for free upon completing the Torre de Belém are extremely small. Most of the time, you will be building this wonder when you accidentally realize you can actually make use of this second bonus, so to attempt to make the best use of this ability, construct your City Center buildings ASAP, as these are the cheapest and hopefully when the Torre de Belém is complete, you will receive more valuable buildings such as Libraries or Markets. Try to construct those City Center buildings with the World Congress resolution that grants +100% Production to a certain District, as the AI is likely to agree with a City Center vote in these early eras where cities are still being settled.

Overall, since the first bonus grants mostly inconsequential amounts of Gold for an absurd amount of Production and the second bonus is too random and unreliable to be worked into a general strategy, there is no main reason why you should build the Torre de Belém. Trade-focused civilizations with a lot of Trade Route, including Phoenicia, Portugal, the Netherlands, Mali, and England, can pay attention to this wonder, as well as anyone with map generation lucky enough to have a second continent. However, these aforementioned civilizations tend not to have trouble generating Gold from their dense trade network, so this wonder's economic bonuses are but a drop in the bucket.

Civilopedia entry

The Torre de Belém is one of Portugal’s most recognizable structures and serves a monument to the Age of Discovery. The tower stands defensively in Lisbon’s harbor and acted as the starting point for many explorers setting off into the Atlantic. King Manuel I commissioned Francisco de Arruda in the 16th century to design and build the structure. The tower is made from limestone and is designed in the ornate Manueline style. The grand stonework is visible from a distance. If someone were to give the tower a closer look, they would see sculptures and most curiously, a rhinoceros head carved into the stone. Even with its exterior grandeur and beauty, it was functional and served as an active defense for the region.

Trivia

• There are two unused quotes for this wonder in the game files:
  •  "Situated where the river mouth is at its narrowest, it is natural that it was chosen as the site of one of the forts built to defend the capital."
    – Unknown
  •  "Here, then, on a sand bank washed once by every high tide, but now joined to the mainland as so unromantic a feature as the gas works, a tower."
    – Walter Crum Watson

Gallery

Torre de Belém completed

Torre de Belém in-game