Lenses

The map in Civilization 6 provides a variety of lenses that change your view of the map to give you useful information. There is an automatic lens that comes up whenever you select a District or a Wonder for your Build queue, and that tells you which tiles are allowable, and how it will affect Food, Production, etc. Another automatic lens comes up when you have a Settler to move, and it is called the Settler lens. It displays different tiles in colors. Green means fresh water is available, which is good for housing. Gray means no fresh water, so housing is limited. Red means the tile cannot be settled. It is either too close to another city, or the terrain is forbidden, such as Mountains. You can also open this lens Manually, which makes for nice trick in the early game when much of the map is unexplored. You can open the Settler lens manually and look for Red tiles, and if the terrain seems otherwise OK you know there is a city nearby in the unexplored area of the map.

The Appeal lens is useful for finding tiles with particular appeal, such as for National Parks and Seaside Resorts, good for generating Tourism. The Continent lens tells you where the different contginents are, which can be helpful with a leader whose abilities change on different continents, such as Teddy Rooosevelt. The Government lens and the Political lens are not very useful. Th Religion lens colors each city according to the majority religion, if any. The Tourism lens will show how much tourism each tile in your Empire is generating. This is important for Culture victories, since it is actually Tourism that gets counted. Use this to determine the best place to put Pingala for a Culture victory. The Empire lens shows the districts, Wonders, and city borders for your Empire, along with adjacency bonuses. The Loyalty lens shows the loyalty status of each city, and where the loyalty pressure is flowing to and from. Finally, the Power lens shows where power is generated, where it is used, and can help in planning your power supply in the Industrial Era and beyond.

In the lower left of the screen is the Map options, and the very first one is Lenses. You can select any lens there and see the result on the Map. Take a moment to check out your Lenses and other Map Options.

Housing

Your people need to have places to live, and it is up to you to provide Housing for them. This is important for the growth of your cities because if you lack housing your growth rate will slow down even if you have plenty of food available. Initially this is determined by the fresh water available. When you produce a Settler, when it is the Settler’s turn to move the map changes to show this because it is so important. Green tiles are best, they have a lot of fresh water and can get your city off to a good start. So you should look for them as the best places to put down a city center. Light green is OK for Coastal cities, but gray is problematic. You can build your water resources by constructing an Aqueduct. This is a District, which means you have to place it on a tile, but it is not a Specialty District, so it does not count towards the limit of Districts you can place. You gain the ability to create Aqueducts when you discover Engineering, a Classical Era technology.

Aqueducts connect your City Center to a source of fresh water, which can be a river, a lake, or mountains. It increases your housing by making more water available. You get a small increase if your City Center is on a tile that has a good water supply already, but it is probably not enough to make building an Aqueduct there much of a priority. But if you are on a tile that does not have much if any water, it becomes much more important. It is not critical if housing falls behind for a few turns, and you will be notified as this is one of the messages you get on the right of the screen. When Housing falls behind, your city cannot grow any further, even if you have abundant food otherwise. And since city growth is what increases your output and allows you to construct more specialty districts, you don’t want to just ignore that.

Buildings and Improvements can also add Housing. Granary and Sewer each add +2 Housing, and Barracks, University, and Lighthouse each add +1. Late in the game the Neighborhood District provides additional Housing, but how much depends on the Appeal of the tile. Farms, Pastures, Camps, Plantations, and Fishing Boats all provide +0.5 Housing. In additon, certain leaders and Empires can get bonus Housing, certain Policy Cards provide additional Housing (but watch out if you change Policies). And some Wonders confer added Housing. So you can get this in a lot of ways, and I think the main takeaway is you shouldn’t panic if you get a warning about Housing lacking in a city, but you should plan to take steps to rectify it.

Amenities

Amenities in Civilization VI replace the Happiness metric in Civlilization V. But where Happiness applied to your overall Empire, the Amenities metric applies to individual cities and has individual effects. Each city has a requirement for Amenities based on its population. If the minimum is just reached, or up to 2 additional Amenities, the city is Content, and there is no effect on the city’s output. If there are 3-4 more than the minimum, the people are Happy, and all yeilds increase by 10%. If at least 5 more than the minimum, the people are Ecstatic, and all yields increase by 20%. So keeping your Amenities up can have very positive effects on your cities and your Empire. But what happens if they drop? Well, as you might expect there are penalties. When Amenities are 1-2 less than required, all non-food yields decrease by 10%, and population growth decreases by 15%. At 3-4 below the required level, all non-food yields decrease by 20%, and population growth decreases by 30%. These penalties are bad enough, but if you don’t take action and let it slip even more, it gets worse. At 5-6 below the required level, all non-food yields decrease by 30%, as does population growth, but now there is a chance of Rebel units appearing in the territory of the city. And at 7 or more below requirements all non-food yields decrease by 40%, population growth is 30% reduced, and the probability of Rebel units gets much higher and they appear in higher numbers.

Rebel units represent the rioting mobs of the dissatisfied citizens, and they can be very destructive. They look just like Barbarian units, and will generally pillage tile improvements to add to your problems. They not only look like Barbarians, but they use the same code, so under the hood they are Barbarians. And they also appear if one of your cities rebels, such as through Loyalty pressure. This Amenity problem with Rebel units is not new, something similar happened in Civilization V, though there it was an Empire-wide problem, not a city-specific problem.

So, how you get Amenities. First of all, through Luxury resources. Examples of these include Citrus, Furs, and Ivory, among many others, and in the early game these are most of what is available. But in the early game, your cities are smaller, so these Luxury resources should be enough. But as the population grows you need more. Having Luxury resources in your territory is great, and can be a factor in deciding where to place your cities. But note that only the first copy of the Luxury resource gives you Amenities. Any additional copies you may have (and you probably will have duplicates) should be traded with other players to get Luxury resources you don’t have. This will help both players, but remember if you don’t trade, someone else will, and then they get the benefit instead of you. And trade is good for building relationships.

As the game progresses you will get the opportunity to construct the Entertainment District, which can hold buildings like the Arena, Zoo, and Stadium. These all add Amenities, and in a large city you will probably need to build these fairly often. An alternative is the Water Park, a District which can contain the Aquarium and the Aquatics Center. These provide similar amenities, but you cannot construct both in any one city. A nice feature of the Water Park is that the Amenities from the buildings apply to any city whose City Center is within 9 tiles, so if you build one choose the site carefully. And if a city within 9 tiles has an Entertainment District, the Amenities stack, so it is all good. Some Wonders provide Amenities. The Estádio do Maracaña, for instance, provides +2 Amenities and +6 Culture to every city in your Empire, though it comes late in the game. And as usual your Government choice and your Policies can add Amenities, some Great People can provide Amenities, and so on.

There are also sources of negative Amenities. One of the biggest is War Weariness, so you need to be careful managing this if you like to go to war. And this is why getting a Casus Belli matters so much if you are going to war, it reduces the War Weariness penalty. If your Treasury falls to 0 and you go bankrupt, that will cause negative Amenities. And certain Policies (e.g. Police State) will generate negative Amenities.

If you have a city in Amenities trouble you will get a notification on the right of the screen. How you respond will depend on circumstances. If a city is -2 on Amenities, or even -3, it is not a disaster yet. You should take some action s soon as you can, but if an enemy is attacking you might have bigger priorities than gaining Amenities. But you should really try to avoid getting to the point where Rebel units appear. As in all aspects of the game, balanced development is important