Civ 6: Best Luxury Resource for Each Victory Type

Civilization VI is as dense of a game as you can find, and there are loads of different pieces on the map to take advantage of in this strategic colossus.

If you’re looking to take advantage of the land around your Civilization, it can help to get a better idea of each Luxury Resource and which ones work best for your chosen Victory Type. 

There are three different kinds of Resources in Civ 6: Strategic, Luxury, and Artifacts. The final one, Artifacts, is a special resource that only comes into play once you have an Archaeologist. Then, you can harvest them to be placed in the Archaeological Museum within the Theater Square District. 

Here, we’re delving into everything that you need to know about finding and acquiring the best luxury resource for each victory type in Civ 6.

What are Luxury Resources? 

There are a total of 34 different Luxury Resources available in Civ 6, with 28 existing on the map and populating at random with each newly generated map. The final six are only available through other unique methods, such as Great Merchants or specific City-States. 

These each provide unique benefits to each resource if you improve the tile that they’re on, and they’re a key way of providing Amenities to keep your cities operating at their best. They’re also tradeable, allowing you to negotiate with other Civilizations through the use of your Luxury Resources. 

There’s also an additional piece of the puzzle now, if you’re playing with the recently released Monopolies and Corporations game-mode. This will allow you to really beef-up the benefits that you’re getting from these individual Luxury Resources and duplicates of them. 

What do Luxury Resources do, and why do you need them? 

As mentioned above, one of the primary benefits of having Luxury Resources is to gain Amenities. Amenities are a mechanic introduced in Civ 6, and it works a bit like the Happiness mechanic used in previous versions of the series. 

As you improve your Amenities in a given city, it will help promote growth and boost the Population of that city. If you can increase your Population and create a larger city, it will often help you move towards any Victory Type and improve the yields that you’re getting of Gold, Faith, and Culture for that particular city. 

Luxury Resources also provide a specific per-tile yield of Food, Gold, Culture, Science, or Faith after you’ve placed the applicable improvement on the tile with a Builder. 

How to see and get more Luxury Resources and build on them

One of the biggest challenges of really taking advantage of Luxury Resources is that they populate differently in every game and are in different places on every map. As such, you’ll need to start exploring the map to see where they are. 

The faster that you can explore the map, the better the chances are that you’ll have to settle new cities in locations bustling with other Luxury Resources. Once you have located Luxury Resources and have a city settled near them, you’ll need to use a Builder to place a tile improvement on them. 

Different Luxury Resources require different tile improvements, so it could be a Plantation, Mine, Camp, Quarry, or Fishing Boats that are placed with the Luxury Resource on its tile. 

Trading Luxury Resources

If you have duplicates of Luxury Resources that you don’t need – or simply have one that you don’t care to keep – you also have the ability to trade them with other Civilizations. You’ll often get trade requests from other Leaders without even having to make these offers yourself. 

Other Civilizations also desire Luxury Resources due to the Amenities bonuses on offer: this is something that you can also use if you try to get them from other Civilizations to boost your own Amenities. Whether you want to trade them or keep them is ultimately a call you’ll have to make in each game. 

Completing these trades can help improve relationships with other Leaders and give you more visibility to their goals and plans. That said, it can also be beneficial to keep Luxury Resources from rival Civilizations if they’re pursuing a similar path to you, or if they’re close to victory. 

Can you harvest or remove Luxury Resources? 

There isn’t a standard method to harvesting or removing Luxury Resources in Civ 6. However, the addition of the Heroes & Legends game mode through the Babylon Pack DLC has introduced a way to pull it off. 

In order to take advantage of this new method, you’ll need to unlock Anansi. You discover new Heroes by: becoming the Suzerain of a city-state; discovering a natural wonder or continent; visiting a Tribal Village; or by sending an Envoy to a city-state. The one that you discover is chosen at random, so it may take a few discoveries to see Anansi. 

Once discovered, you’ll need to have a Monument in a city and complete the Dedication to Anansi project. This will summon him, and Anansi’s special ability is to use one of his six charges to consume any Bonus or Luxury Resource he’s on a tile for. 

You can do this in the wild to keep them from others, in your own city to clear space, or you could even travel into other Civilizations to take away their Luxury Resources. When you use Anansi’s Tricks ability to remove them, you will also earn Science and Culture. 

Using Luxury Resources in Monopolies & Corporations

The new Monopolies & Corporations game mode was released as a part of the Vietnam & Kublai Khan Pack, and is also available to players that have purchased the New Frontier Pass. This new addition really takes Luxury Resources up a notch and incentivizes the search for duplicates. 

In general, your goal in Monopolies & Corporations will first be to acquire either two or three duplicates of a given Luxury Resource. Once you have two, you can use a Builder to create an Industry on the tile of a given Luxury Resource, but you can only have one Industry per city. 

Creating an Industry provides a specific unique bonus to the city, depending on which Luxury Resource is being utilized. There are eight potential bonuses spread between the 28 on-map Luxury Resources to be found. 

If you get a third copy of a certain Luxury Resource, you can then use a Great Merchant to create a Corporation on your already established Industry. Once you’ve started to acquire a significant amount of the given copies of a Luxury Resource on an entire map, you can build a Monopoly. 

For each Monopoly, you will gain bonus Gold depending on the percentage of control that you have over a given Luxury Resource, compared to other Civilizations. Having at least 60 percent of the Luxury Resource nodes provides +5 Gold, 75 percent provides +10 Gold, and 100 percent provides +25 Gold. 

Having a Monopoly will also boost Tourism to Civilizations which don’t have any copies of the Luxury Resource, making this a crucial boost that can help you towards a challenging Culture Victory. 

All Industry bonuses for Luxury Resources in Monopolies & Corporations

The following table details each of the eight available city bonuses for various Luxury Resources when you create an Industry. As noted above, the bonuses double once you’ve founded a Corporation. 

Best Luxury Resources for each Victory Type

The base resource yields and benefits that you’ll get from each Luxury Resource are pretty standard across the board. All of them provide valuable bonuses, but which one you want will depend on the Civilization that you’re playing with and exactly what Victory Type you’re pursuing. 

Certain resources are versatile for all Victory Types, especially those that provide Food, Production, or Gold. If you’re playing in Monopolies & Corporations, you also have to take into account what the ultimate bonuses of an Industry or Corporation. 

Best Luxury Resources for Gold

If you’re trying to boost your Gold output, the best ones to keep an eye out for are Cocoa, Cotton, Diamonds, Silver, and Truffles. All of these provide +3 Gold each, and that can stack fast on a per-turn output. 

In Monopolies & Corporations, you’ll want to watch for Diamonds, Jade, Silver, and Truffles, specifically. Creating an Industry on any of these will boost the Gold output of the Industry’s city by 25 percent. So, you’ll likely want a Commercial Hub in a city with this Industry. 

Best Luxury Resources for Culture

If you’re looking to improve your Culture output for a Culture Victory or any other reason, you’ll want to watch for Amber, Coffee, Jade, Marble, and Silk. Each of these provides +1 to Culture for a tile, which may seem small but adds up quickly. 

In Monopolies & Corporations, you specifically want Coffee, Silk, Spices, and Wine. If an Industry is created on them, it’ll boost the Culture output of that city by +20 percent, making a huge impact if that’s already a Culture-rich city with a Theater Square. 

Best Luxury Resources for Faith

If you want to improve your Faith in order to pursue a Religious Victory or utilize Religious Units or Faith for some other purpose, you’ll need to be looking for Dyes and Tobacco. These are the only two that provide Faith, and each gives +1 Faith for the tile. 

In Monopolies & Corporations, you can look for Amber, Dyes, Incense, and Pearls. Creating an Industry on any of these four will provide a significant +25 percent Faith output for the city, so you probably want to pair that with a Holy Site and maybe even Faith-specific World Wonders. 

Best Luxury Resources for Science

There are only two Luxury Resources that provide Science as a resource yield: Mercury and Turtles. They’re scarce, but spotting either can be helpful to increase your Science output on the path to a Science Victory. 

In Monopolies & Corporations, you’ll have a little more to watch for as Mercury, Tea, and Turtles will all provide +15 percent Science output for the Industry’s city. Keep this in mind and make sure that you’ve got a Campus in a city with one of these Industries. 

Best Luxury Resources for Production

If you’re looking to boost Production, you are going to need Olives, Gypsum, or Ivory. Each provides a +1 to Production in addition to a +1 to Gold, making these versatile additions to your city. 

In Monopolies & Corporations, there are three different ways to boost Production. If you want to increase the Production of military units, form an Industry of Citrus, Cotton, Ivory, Tobacco, or Whales. To boost the Production of civilian units, form an Industry on Furs or Olives. To increase Production towards buildings, form an Industry on Gypsum or Marble. 

Best Luxury Resources for Food and growth

Finally, you may be looking to improve your overall Food for a city and provoke Population growth. You will get Food from tiles of Citrus, Furs, Honey, Salt, Spices, Sugar, Whales, and Wine. 

In Monopolies & Corporations, you really want to form an Industry on Cocoa, Honey, Salt, or Sugar. Doing so on any of these will boost Population growth and additional Housing for the host city of that Industry. 

All off-map Luxury Resources and how to get them

There are six Luxury Resources that are not acquired by the usual method of settling a city nearby and then taking control of the tile. Instead, these are found through special Great Merchants, or by being the Suzerain of a certain City-State. 

Cinnamon and Cloves are two Luxury Resources acquired only by being the Suzerain of the City-State of Zanzibar. If you have enough Envoys to earn Suzerain status for Zanzibar, you’ll receive each of these, and they provide six Amenities each. 

The other four are acquired by using Great Merchants. The following table shows which Great Merchant provides each Luxury Resource, which era they appear in, and what benefits they provide. 

All Luxury Resources, resource yields, and tile improvements

The following table details all 28 on-map Luxury Resources that you can find and take advantage of in Civ 6. The resource yields of each and the necessary tile improvement that you’ll have to use on them are also noted.

If there is an R&F next to the name, it indicates that the Luxury Resource is only available in the Rise & Fall expansion. 

Now you know which Civ 6 Luxury Resources to target when seeking each Victory Type.

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