Districts are an integral part of Civilization 6 in which you can build certain categories of buildings. Those buildings fall into military, cultural, economic (gold), industrial, scientific, entertainment (amenity), and religious district categories. Building cultural, economic, religious, and science districts increases your civilization’s yields for their respective specialities, especially if you make the most of their district adjacency bonuses by optimally placing them. This is how you can boost gold, cultural, science, or religious output with a Civilization 6 district placement strategy.
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What Are the District Adjacency Bonuses?
Civilization 6 district adjacency bonuses are placement bonuses primarily offered for Campus, Theater Square, Harbor, Commercial Hub, Industrial Zone, and Holy Site districts. These bonuses increase the science, culture, production, faith, or gold yields received from districts placed beside map tiles that include certain things. The adjacent things are quite variable and can potentially increase yields for an optimally placed speciality district by +3 to +5. These are the Civilization 6 district tile adjacency bonuses in the base game:
- Industrial Zone: +1 production for adjacent quarry, +1 production for adjacent mine, and +1 production for two adjacent districts
- Campus: +1 science for an adjacent mountain, +1 science for two adjacent rainforest tiles, +2 science for an adjacent barrier reef, and +1 science for two adjacent districts
- Harbor: +1 gold for an adjacent coastal resource, +2 gold for an adjacent city center, and +1 gold for two adjacent districts
- Theater Square: +2 culture for an adjacent wonder and +1 culture for every two adjacent districts
- Holy Site: +2 faith for an adjacent natural wonder, +1 for an adjacent mountain, +1 faith for every two adjacent districts
- Commercial Hub: +2 gold for an adjacent harbor, +2 gold for an adjacent river, and +1 gold for every two adjacent districts
There are a few important things to note about those Civilization 6 district adjacency bonuses. Firstly, all districts have a bonus for placing them beside two others. However, a city center also counts as a district. So, you’ll get a bonus for placing a district on a tile in between a city center and one other built district. Thus, placing districts beside or within one tile of a city center makes it easier to capitalize on that bonus because you’ll only need to build two rather than three districts.
A district adjacency bonus
As the city center is a district, it also has a kind of adjacency bonus. You’ll receive 5-housing for establishing a settlement by a river, oasis, or lake. Establishing a city center adjacent to a coastline gives you three houses to start with. Inland city centers with no adjacency bonuses only start with two houses.
Another thing to note is that adjacency bonuses are dynamic, not static. The game shows you what adjacency bonuses you’ll get for placing a district on a specific tile at a given time. However, that bonus can be increased in the future after you’ve built the district. For example, adding a mine to a hill tile next to an already-built Industrial Zone will give that district a +1 production bonus. An Industrial Zone will also lose its +1-adjacency bonus if you remove a mine from a tile adjacent to it.
With that in mind, it’s worth considering how you may be able to increase a district’s adjacency bonus in the future when choosing where to place it. For example, placing an Industrial Zone beside three unmined hill tiles will be better than putting it beside a couple of already-built districts after you’ve mined the tiles with Builders. So, remember that the game doesn’t show you potential future adjacency bonuses when placing a Civilization 6 district.
Hill terrain tiles
Purchase New Tiles to Enhance Your District Adjacency Bonuses
Also, consider what geographical features for boosting Civilization 6 district bonuses lie in tiles just beyond a city’s borders. For example, there might be nearby mountains or hills that aren’t within your city’s tiles. However, you can purchase nearby mountain, rainforest, and hill tiles with gold that will enable you to increase Campus, Holy Site, and Industrial Zone adjacency bonuses.
Purchase tile options
Avoid Placing Districts on City Tiles With Good Yields
The existing city tile yields are another thing to consider for your Civilization 6 district placement strategy. Remember, you’ll lose the yields generated by a tile improvement on which you place a district. Only the base yield of a tile you place a district on is preserved. Avoid placing districts on bonus resource tiles because it’s not usually worth losing them for adjacency bonuses.
Another thing to note is whether an adjacency bonus will be better than a yield generated by the tile improvement you place it one. For example, would it be worth placing an Industrial Zone district over a terrain tile improvement that generates four production yields? Not if the adjacency bonus for placing the district only amounts to +2 production. Then you’ll lose +4 production yields generated by the tile improvement for a +2 production Civilization 6 district adjacency bonus, which amounts to a -2 loss!
A forest tile with +3 production yields
So, the important thing to remember here is that you’ll lose whatever yields a tile generates when you stick a district on it. With that in mind, it’s often better not to stick districts on your cities’ highest-yield tiles for the sake of small adjacency bonuses. Sometimes, it can be better to place districts on desert or snow tiles that don’t have any yields. Thus, a certain amount of cost-benefit analysis comes into play for a Civilization 6 district placement strategy.
Enhance District Adjacency Bonuses With Policy Cards
Some economic policy cards increase Civilization 6 district adjacency bonuses when selected. I recommend selecting at least one of these policy cards that will mostly benefit your target victory condition because they all provide substantial 100 percent adjacency bonuses for different districts. Selecting such policies gives you a quick and easy way to double all your civilization’s district adjacency bonuses. These are the district adjacency policy cards you can select when you’ve unlocked their required civics:
- Aesthetics: Offers a 100 percent adjacency bonus for Theater Squares
- Town Charters: Offers a 100 percent adjacency bonus for Commercial Hubs
- Natural Philosophy: Offers a 100 percent adjacency bonus for Campus districts
- Scripture: Offers a 100 percent adjacency bonus for Holy Sites
- Naval Infrastructure: Offers a 100 percent adjacency bonus for Harbors
- Craftsmen: Offers a 100 percent adjacency bonus for Industrial Zones
- Economic Union: 100 percent Harbor and Commercial Hub district adjacency bonuses
- Five-Year Plan: 100 percent Industrial Zone and Campus district adjacency bonuses
- Sports Media: 100 percent Theater District adjacency bonus along with a +1-amenity bonus for Stadiums built
District adjacency policy cards
Play With Japan for Better District Adjacency Bonuses
If you want even better Civilization 6 district placement bonuses, try playing some games with Japan. Japan has a unique Meiji Restoration civ ability that doubles its adjacency bonus for building districts beside each from 0.5 to 1.0. For example, placing districts next to each other in a triangle of three will give you a +2-adjacency bonus for each one, amounting to a combined +6 bonus, when playing with Japan. This Japanese double bonus for adjacent districts can be a significant advantage for players with effective Civilization 6 district placement strategies, particularly when combined with policy cards like the Five-Year Plan and Economic Union.
The Japanese leader’s description
So, adjacency bonuses can considerably enhance your civilization’s cultural, scientific, faith, gold, and production yields with an effective Civilization 6 district placement strategy. A bit more planning for where you establish settlements and place districts can make a big difference to your adjacency bonuses. Bigger district adjacency bonuses will give you a better chance of securing scientific, cultural, and religious victories in Civilization 6.
