Vilnius (Civ6)

Vilnius
Cultural City-state
Introduced in Civilization VI
Color	Purple
Envoy bonuses
1 Envoy	+2 Culture in the Capital.
3 Envoys	+2 Culture in every Theater Square district +2 Culture in every Amphitheater building.
6 Envoys	+4 Culture in every Theater Square district +2 Culture in every Art Museum and Archaeological Museum building.
Suzerain bonus	When you enter a new era, earn 1 random Inspiration from that era. For the highest active Alliance Level all your Theater Square districts receive +50% adjacency bonus.

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Vilnius is a cultural city-state in Civilization VI.

Strategy

Vanilla

As a rule of thumb, random Eurekas and Inspirations are not strong. They might be activated for technologies or civics which you're one turn away from discovering, or ones whose boosts can be easily triggered by you, or on leaf technologies or civics that you don't need to research to complete the game. The key word here is "random," as bonuses beyond your control are unreliable, and no strategy should be built upon such a foundation. Vilnius grants a random Inspiration every time you enter a new era, which is a pitiful bonus - if you lose Suzerainty of it right before you enter a new era, you miss out on an opportunity to benefit from its bonus. Even if you manage to remain Suzerain of Vilnius throughout the game, it can give you a maximum of 7 Inspirations, which isn't that impressive in light of the random factor. Under the vanilla ruleset, becoming the Suzerain of Vilnius should always be at the bottom of your priority list, as its bonus isn't very impactful.

Rise and Fall

The description of Vilnius' bonus makes it a bit hard to understand what it actually does. Basically, all of your Theater Squares receive a 50% bonus to their base adjacency bonus multiplied by the level of your highest active Alliance - 50% if it's at Level 1, 100% if it's at Level 2, and 150% if it's at Level 3. It sounds great on paper until you take into account that the Theater Square is the hardest specialty District on which to earn a high starting adjacency bonus. Besides the minor bonus from being adjacent to other Districts, it gains only from being adjacent to wonders. In Gathering Storm, it also gains a bonus from being next to Entertainment Complexes and Water Parks, which hardly anyone builds en masse. Besides, the time it takes to accrue enough points to reach Alliance Level 3 can be excruciatingly long, especially if your Ally is too far away for your Trade Routes to reach - by that point, you may be generating so much Culture per turn that Vilnius' Suzerain bonus will barely matter anymore.

Pericles is one of the few leaders who can take advantage of Vilnius: the Acropolis always has a high starting adjacency bonus, and his playstyle promotes forming Alliances with other players. Ludwig II can make great use of Vilnius' bonus since he turns the adjacency bonuses of Theater Squares into Tourism with Castles, ushering him towards an even faster Cultural Victory than normal. Japan and Brazil can vie for Vilnius' Suzerainty thanks to their enhanced Theater Squares if they choose to go down a cultural path. Technically, Australia and the Netherlands can as well since they have bonuses towards their Theater Squares, but these two skew more towards a Scientific Victory than a Cultural Victory. If you aren't playing as one of these civilizations, it's usually not necessary to invest more than 6 Envoys as the Suzerain bonus won't increase your Culture output that much.

Civilopedia entry

Lying at the junction of two navigable rivers, the Vilnia and the Neris, some 194 miles from the Baltic, Vilnius was settled as a trading post deep in the woodlands of Lithuania. The town is first mentioned in written records in 1323 AD, when German Jews were invited to relocate to the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by Duke Gediminas, who promised religious tolerance and commercial opportunities. Over the following decades under the ambitious duke and his sons, the duchy expanded until it encompassed most of modern Lithuania, Belarus, the Ukraine, Transnistria, and portions of Poland and northern Russia. With the Union of Lublin in 1569, the city became an important mercantile center in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

During this period, Vilnius changed dramatically from a backwater post to a cultural and political center. Migrants were welcomed by the authorities, and thousands of Slavs, Germans, and Jews moved into the booming city. In 1579, King Stefan Báthory founded the institution that would evolve into the 'Vilniaus universitetas,' the oldest university in the Baltic States, which quickly became one of the most important scientific and cultural centers in Europe. Artistic and craft guilds of various types were established, and the city served as the primary center for trade between Scandinavia and the interior of Poland and northern Russia.

All this ready coin meant that the inhabitants – when they weren’t fighting the Poles, Swedes, Russians, or Germans – could live the good life. Although labelled a “Baroque” city, Vilnius boosts a blend of architectural styles – Gothic, Renaissance, Neo-Classical, and so forth – in its well-preserved and unique Old Town (placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1994). Museums and monuments of all sorts dot the city. The Gediminas Tower, Cathedral Square, and stately Palace of the Grand Dukes, the House of the Signatories and national museums and libraries have managed to survive occupation by many enemies … and since independence in 1990, again form the heart of Lithuania.

Trivia

• Vilnius' city-state symbol is based on the Jagiellonian cross, a symbol commonly associated with Lithuania.

See also

• Vilnius in other games