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Buildings in the City Center are shown on the map towards the center of the tile.

A building is a permanent structure that can be built in a city to provide a bonus. In Civilization VI buildings are less centralized, as some can be built in the City Center, but most are built in a specific District District. In this way, during war, the enemy may Pillage districts and disable some of the buildings in a city without actually conquering it. It also means that in Gathering Storm, disasters may devastate whole groups of buildings when they hit the district they're situated in.

Constructing buildings can be accelerated via Industrial city-states. The Capital Capital gains a +2 Production Production bonus from every such City-State where you have at least 1 Envoy Envoy. All other cities which have an Industrial Zone (including the Capital Capital, if it has one) will gain a +2 Production Production bonus from every such city-state where you have 3 Envoy Envoys, and another +2 Production Production if you have 6 Envoy Envoys. In Rise and Fall, however, these two bonuses are awarded only if the Industrial Zone contains a Workshop and a Factory (respectively).

Note that, once constructed, a building cannot be removed from a city. Unlike in Civilization V, buildings cannot be sold.


As in all Civilization games, all buildings need to meet specific requirements before they can be built in a city. These are:

  • Technologies or Civics - You need to research/develop a specific technology or civic to unlock each building. The only exception, as usual, is the Monument, which is available right from the start.
  • District - In Civilization VI most buildings can only be built within a certain district. Thus, you need to first build a specific district in a city before you can actually build certain buildings.
  • Other buildings - All buildings belonging to a certain district are organized in a hierarchical way. More advanced buildings require the more basic ones; the University, for example, requires a Library. The only exceptions are the buildings in the City Center, which can be built freely (except for the Walls upgrades, which need to be built in order: Ancient, then Medieval, and finally Renaissance), and the Sanctuary and Grove in the Preserve.
  • Religious Belief - A group of buildings (namely, all Tier 3 buildings of the Holy Site) each require the city to have the particular religion as its majority religion.
  • Mutually exclusive buildings - There are some district buildings which cannot reside together with another specific building in the same district (and thus in the same city). For example, you cannot have the Barracks and the Stable at the same time - you need to choose only one.
  • In Rise and Fall, Government Plaza buildings also require you to adopt a Tier 1, 2, or 3 government.


Every building in a city enhances its usefulness in some way. Most of the time this means increasing certain yields, such as Food Food or Culture Culture, but it may also mean extra Amenities Amenities, Housing Housing, or even extra defense for the city. But Civilization VI and its innovative territory use system adds some unique possibilities, such as for an inland city to access Ocean tiles via the Harbor, and be able to build ships there.

Buildings in specialty districts (such as the Commercial Hub and the Campus) also provide slots where Citizen Citizens may work as Specialists, producing rare yields independently of what terrain there is nearby. This is especially useful in the early game, when producing yields like Science Science and Culture Culture is more difficult. Note that, unlike in Civilization V, Specialists don't contribute to Great Person Great People generation, but that hardly matters because buildings themselves already contribute to that, without the need to assign Specialists to work in them.

Another interesting feature is some building effects now extend not only to the parent city, but also to all other cities within a certain range, as is the case with the Production Production bonus of the Factory, or the Amenities Amenities bonus of the Zoo. Buildings of this type can only be found in the Industrial Zone and Entertainment Complex, so it is beneficial to build those districts in locations within 6 tiles of as many City Centers as possible.

Finally, most of the slots for Great Works, Relic Relics, and Artifact Artifacts are found within buildings.

Buildings with regional effects[]

As mentioned above, Tier 2 and 3 buildings of the Industrial Zone, Entertainment Complex and Water Park (in Rise and Fall) can have their effects extended to every city within a radius (6-tile radius for the Industrial Zone and Entertainment Complex, 9-tile radius for the Water Park). The radius is counted from the District District where the building is situated to City Centers of adjacent cities. Effects of multiple copies of the same buildings do not stack, with the exception of the city which has Magnus with Vertical Integration.

Since regional building bonuses do not normally stack you should lay out where you want your regional districts to go early on with map pins. This is important because it can prevent overlap on the semi-useful districts that provide Amenities Amenities and you may only need 1 Entertainment Complex to reach 4 or more cities. Water Parks can be harder to plan for, because they must be placed on Coast tiles, but they reach 9 tiles away to compensate.

While choosing for regional bonuses can be extremely helpful with entertainment districts, its not so simple for the Industrial Zone. You don't want to neglect early adjacency bonuses for your Industrial Zone while deciding if your Factory will eventually hit as many cities as possible. The adjacency bonuses tend to be top priority and building additional factories doesn't hurt so bad if they don't reach as far as you'd like.

Holy Sites act as a sort of Regional building as well, spreading your Religious Pressure to any city within 9 tiles of the district. If it is your Holy City then the amount of pressure is multiplied by 4. In Rise and Fall the religious Governor Moksha is very helpful for increasing the spread of religious pressure and reducing pressure received.

Once Power Power becomes involved in Gathering Storm, things get even trickier as climate change becomes a real issue and running even a couple of Coal Power Plants can have drastic consequences from environmental effects like drought and hurricanes or sea levels rising to swallow up coastal lowland tiles completely. This is where the adjacency bonus needs to be weighed more carefully to ensure you have a smooth transition into safer resources/renewable energy. Maybe you've gotten lucky and have Geothermal Fissures and Dams to take the stress off of your Coal Plants before you unlock Solar Farms and Wind Farms. Either way, you will want to limit the amount of Coal Power Plants that you build unless you're going for a mid-game win or can upgrade them to cleaner plants as increased global temperature can hurt cities in all locations. Read more on the Power Power page.

Below is the list of all buildings with regional effects:

Industrial Zone[]

Entertainment Complex[]

Water Park R&F-Only.png[]

City-state bonuses[]

  • Toronto/Mexico City
    • As long as you are Suzerain of Toronto (or Mexico City in rulesets where Canada is a playable civilization), regional buildings in all of your Industrial Zones and Entertainment Complexes will reach cities with City Centers that are 9 tiles away instead of the regular 6, while regional buildings of your Water Parks will reach 12 tiles away.

Great People bonuses[]

Currently only 3 Great Engineers are useful for providing bonuses to regional buildings.

  • Nikola Tesla
  • James Watt
    • Activated ability can be used to instantly build a Workshop and a Factory in an Industrial Zone, and give all Factories in the empire +2 Production Production. This bonus extends to 6 tiles around the Factory (or 9 tiles if you also used Nikola Tesla on the same tile).
      • With a second activation, James Watt gives all factories an additional +2 Production Production (4 Production Production in total), which can be extended to nearby cities.
  • Joseph Paxton
    • This Entertainment Complex's regional buildings reach 3 tiles farther. This district's regional buildings provide +1 Amenity Amenity.
      • Can only be used on an Entertainment Complex, not an Industrial Zone.
      • The extra Amenity Amenity provided can also be extended to nearby cities.
Civilization VI [edit]
Rise and FallGathering StormNew Frontier Pass



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