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Wonders are mega-buildings that are unique in the world and provide potent bonuses to a civilization. All wonders are inspired by, and named after, famous real-world buildings or landmarks that have stood the test of time and changed the world forever. Wonders require time, energy, and effort to complete, but once constructed, they provide your civilization with many benefits.
Civilization VI adds a feature known as "wonder movies," which allows you to watch a wonder being constructed from scratch in less than 30 seconds (somewhat similar to the wonder movies from Civilization IV). This replaces the announcement screen you see in Civilization V when you complete a wonder.
Building a wonder[]
Building a wonder is an important achievement for a civilization. Each specific wonder may exist only once in the whole world, so their construction is, in fact, a race between civilizations. Players should plan their progression well if they want to be able to build the wonders they covet! Note that, unlike in Civilization V, the "consolation prize" for failing to complete a wonder before another player is not Gold, but 50% of the Production invested in it (which is arguably much more useful, since it allows the players who didn't complete the wonder to catch up on lost construction opportunities).
In relation to previous games, Civilization VI adds a revolutionary new feature: wonders are now constructed not inside a city (that is, in the City Center), but on a separate tile near a city (like a Planetary Wonder in Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth). This is part of the overall de-centralization drive of the game, which seeks to spread various city features to the surrounding land, so wonders will now have to compete for space with both Districts and tile improvements. What's more, there are now a slew of specific requirements for almost all wonders, which can encompass terrain type, adjacency, or other game elements. Finally, many wonders are now unlocked via the new civics tree, instead of the normal tech tree.
Wonders can only be built on valid land tiles (or Coast tiles, in some cases) that don't contain a district, a luxury resource, or a strategic resource. You'll only be able to build a wonder on a Marsh if you have Irrigation or on a Rainforest if you have Bronze Working (because these are the techs which enable you to remove such features from the terrain). Also, any other existing improvements and bonus resources will be removed from the tile, so it is advisable to build them on flat land or Hills tiles with no resources or features (like Woods). Flat Desert tiles with no resources are perfect for constructing wonders since they don't provide any yield normally anyway. Note that, since you cannot "work" a wonder (that is, you cannot assign Citizens to its tile), you will be unable to use the yields of its tile anymore; however, the tile will continue providing adjacency bonuses. This is important for wonders which are constructed on terrain features without removing them (such as Chichen Itza or the Mahabodhi Temple).
Since wonders are placed on tiles owned by cities, a city cannot begin constructing a wonder unless it owns all of the requisite improvements (such as a Camp for the Temple of Artemis), Districts, and buildings (or their unique replacements). If a wonder must be adjacent to a specific type of terrain or resource (such as Stone for Stonehenge or Cattle for Great Zimbabwe), those in neutral territory or territory owned by another city will satisfy this condition. Once a city has broken ground for a wonder (i.e., moved it to the front of its production queue), none of that player's other cities can attempt to build that same wonder - the city that broke ground for the wonder first is the only one that can work on it until that player (or one of their opponents) completes the wonder.
Wonder construction can be accelerated via industrial city-states. The Capital gains a +2 Production bonus from every such city-state where you have at least 1 Envoy. All other cities which have an Industrial Zone (including the Capital, if it has one) will gain +2 Production from every such city-state where you have 3 Envoys, and another +2 Production if you have 6 Envoys. Note that in Rise and Fall, these additional bonuses are tied to the presence of a Workshop and a Factory (respectively) and with the Ethiopia Pack, they are also tied to the Diplomatic Quarter and its buildings.
With these new mechanics it becomes much more difficult to construct wonders because, depending on their specific starting location and available nearby terrain (as well as their general development), players have access to far fewer wonders than before. However, this can also work to the players' advantage: each wonder is less likely to be snatched up by whoever managed to research the tech that unlocks it first, allowing you to have a chance to construct it even if you aren't leading in Science or Culture. One can also expect to see much more strategy-specific wonder construction, where each particular civ will construct only wonders which suit its overall strategy and/or terrain availability.
Breaking ground for a land-based wonder also builds a road in (but not to) that tile, and unlike most natural wonder tiles your units can move across them. Even if you fail to complete the wonder, the road still stays; however, without roads on adjacent tiles, the road left by the incomplete wonder will be drawn as a circle. The borders of a city that completes a wonder will immediately expand by two tiles, provided there are tiles within range for the city to claim.
If a city is razed after completing a wonder, the wonder is lost forever and cannot be rebuilt elsewhere. Any wonders caught in the blast radius of a nuclear weapon will be pillaged and cease to function until repaired.[1]
All wonders have the base Tourism yield of 2, which increases by 1 every time you enter a new era through technology or civic research (irrespective of the current World Era), so early wonders always have higher Tourism potential than later wonders. For example, the Great Bath, an Ancient Era wonder, will start generating 2 Tourism per turn when built; however, after you research the first technology or civic of the Classical Era, it will generate 3 Tourism per turn instead, increasing to 4 Tourism per turn when a Medieval technology or civic is researched, and so on. If you successfully build a wonder from a past era, this has no effect on its Tourism yield, so if the Great Bath is built when you have already researched a Classical Era technology or civic, it still generates 3 Tourism per turn like normal.
List of wonders in Civ6[]
Videos[]
References[]
See also[]
- Wonder in other games