'Civ 6' Amenities Guide: What Are Amenities? How To Get Amenities And Raise Your City's Happiness

By Nathalie Medina Published 10/25/16 EDT

Amenities aren’t exactly the most transparent aspect of Civ 6 , for all that they’re critical to the success of your empire. What are amenities, how do you get more of them and how do they work? How do luxury resources and war weariness affect the amenities of your empire in Civilization 6 ? Check out our guide to Amenities below.

Essentially, Civ 6 takes Civ 5 ’s empire-wide happiness mechanic and writes it small. Rather than letting new cities drag down the empire’s overall happiness, each city is responsible for their own happiness in the form of Amenities. Amenities are the new Happiness, and if your cities don’t have the Amenities required by their population size, they will be displeased.

1 Amenity is required for every 2 Population, starting at 3 Population. A city with 1 of 4 Amenities will be more displeased than a city with 3 of 4 Amenities - and your city’s growth and yields will be debuffed accordingly. A content city gets no bonus, but extra Amenities cause increased growth and yields.

Each Luxury resource contributes up to 4 Amenities to your empire, 1 per city, automatically allocated to the cities that need them most. The Luxury Resource must be improved before it generates Amenities. More than 1 copy of a Luxury Resource makes no difference to Amenity generation - the extra copies are only good for trade.

Trade is a good idea - you definitely want to trade for resources you don’t have. Some resources cannot be traded for and must be created through a Great Person or gotten through a City-State. For example, the City-State of Zanzibar’s Suzerain bonus offers Cinnamon and Clove resources that cannot be earned any other way in the game and provide 6 Amenities each.

The only District that improves your Amenities is the Entertainment Complex. The Arena provides +1 Amenity. The Zoo and Arena provide Amenities which extend to city centers within 6 tiles of their home city, a powerful bonus. (See our District guide here.)

To see which cities need more Amenities, go to View Reports > City Status. It will tell you how many Amenities that city has, how many they need and what the citizen happiness level is at.

To see the penalties or bonuses your city is affected by, select your city, then press the first button above its name, “Toggle City Details” (the icon looks like a scroll). Citizen growth and non-food yields are affected by Amenities.

Wonders that provide Amenities include:

Colosseum (Civics: Games and Recreation): +2 Culture, +3 Amenities from entertainment. Colosseum’s Culture and Amenities are extended to each city center within 6 tiles. Must be built on flat land adjacent to an Entertainment Complex district.
Estadio do Maracana (Civics: Professional Sports): +2 Amenities in each city in your civ. Must be built on flat land adjacent to an Entertainment Complex district with a Stadium. +6 Culture, +2 Amenities from entertainment.
Alhambra (Technology: Castles): +2 Amenities from entertainment. +2 Great General points per turn. Provides the same defensive bonuses as the Fort improvement. Must be built on Hills adjacent to an Encampment district. +1 Military policy slot.

Religious beliefs that provide Amenities include:

Pantheon: River Goddess: +1 Amenity to cities if they have a Holy Site district adjacent to a River.
Follower Belief: Zen Meditation: +1 Amenity in cities with 2 specialty districts.

Policies that provide Amenities or prevent you from losing them include:

Political Philosophy: Classical Republic (Government): Inherent bonus: All cities with a district receive +1 Amenity.
Civil Service: Retainers (Military): +1 Amenity for cities with a garrisoned unit.
The Enlightenment (Economic): +1 Amenity to all cities with at least 2 specialty districts.
Propaganda (Military): Accumulate 25% less war weariness than usual.
Levee en Masse (Military): Unit maintenance cost reduced by 2 gold per turn, per unit.
Suffrage: New Deal (Economic): +4 Housing, +2 Amenities, -8 Gold to all cities with at least 3 specialty districts.
Totalitarianism: Martial Law (Military): Accumulate 25% less war weariness than usual.
Class Struggle: Defense of the Motherland (Military): No war weariness from combat in your territory.

Great People who provide Amenities include:

(Great Merchant - Industrial Era) John Spilsbury: Provides 1 Toys luxury resource, which provides 4 Amenities.
(Great Merchant - Information Era) Estee Lauder: Grants 2 Perfume, which provides +6 Amenities.
(Great Merchant - Atomic Era) Helena Rubinstein: Grants 2 Cosmetics luxury resources, which provides +4 Amenities.
(Great Merchant - Atomic Era) Levi Strauss: Grants 2 Jeans luxury resources, which provides +4 Amenities.
(Great Engineer - Atomic Era) Jane Drew: +4 Housing for this city, +3 Amenities for this city.
(Great Engineer - Atomic Era) John Roebling: +2 Housing for this city, +1 Amenity for this city.
(Great Engineer - Information Era) Joseph Paxton: This district’s regional buildings reach 3 tiles farther. This district’s regional buildings provide +1 Amenity.
(Great Engineer - Renaissance Era) Mimar Sinan: +1 Housing for this city, +1 Amenity for this city.
(Great Engineer - Modern Era) Nikola Tesla: This district’s regional buildings reach 3 tiles farther (activate on an Entertainment Complex), this district’s regional buildings provide +2 Production.

War weariness and bankruptcy lower the Amenities in a city. Here’s how that works:

War weariness grows with every battle and is worse when those battles are in foreign territory or when your units are killed. It’s even worse if those units are killed by a nuclear weapon. The greatest source of war weariness is launching a nuclear weapon yourself. All war weariness is increased if you declare war without a Casus Belli. War weariness does slowly reduce while you’re at war, but reduces at a greatly increased rate when you’re not at war with anyone.

Bankruptcy means that your treasury is at zero and you’re running a negative budget. You’ll begin to receive a -1 penalty to your Amenities per every 10 gold you drop below 0. At every -10 gold, you’ll also automatically disband one unit, at -20 gold you’ll automatically disband two units, and so on. Yikes.

Having low Amenities causes rebel partisans to spawn in your cities. Functioning as domestic barbarians, these jerks attack your units, pillage your tiles and districts and generally cause a ruckus. So use the Wonders, Civics and Great People above to prevent your empire from crumbling from within.

Don’t forget to check out our other Civ 6 guides to help get the edge over your opponents no matter what your playstyle: