Sid Meier's Civilization VI Aqueducts: Placement Guide

Part 1: What Is The Aqueduct District?

The Aqueduct is the earliest population district that can be unlocked, easily identified by their green symbol, population districts provide additional housing to the city they are built on, and offer additional effects. Green districts are not specialty districts, as such, they do not decrease the amount of districts a city can build based on their population.

Aqueducts are unlocked at Engineering, so if you want Aqueducts fast, unlocking Masonry and building Ancient Walls will grant you the Eureka moment for Engineering, reducing the amount of Science required to unlock them.

HousingThe district provides +2 housing to the city it is built on if it already had a source of fresh water. Otherwise, it provides housing to the city it is built on as though as the city had both sea and fresh water. What this means is the following:

A city with no fresh water has 2 housing as a base, with an aqueduct, it will receive housing as though it was placed on a source of both sea and fresh water, increasing its housing by 4 (+1 from sea water, and +3 from fresh water), for a total of 6 housing.

A city with sea water has 2 housing as a base and +1 from the sea water, with an aqueduct, it will receive housing as though it was placed on a source of fresh water, increasing its housing by 3 (it already gets +1 from sea water, and a +3 from fresh water), for a total of 6 housing.

A city with fresh water has 2 housing as a base and +3 from fresh water, with an aqueduct, it will receive +2 housing, for a total of 7 housing.

Additional FeaturesAqueducts can become extremely useful because in addition to the minor adjacency (+0.5) bonus given to adjacent districts, Aqueducts provide a major adjacency (+2 ) bonus to Industrial Zones. This can easily snowball the production in certain cities that have the right conditions, as an Industrial Zone adjacent to both the City Center and an Aqueduct will immediately start with a +3 bonus, which can be increased further with improvements, strategic resources, other districts, and policy cards such as Craftsmen, leading to obscenely productive cities.

Finally, Aqueducts prevent food loss on tiles belonging to cities that have built them, and if adjacent to a Geothermal Fissure, Aqueducts also provide +1 Amenity to the city.

Part 2: How To Place The Aqueduct District?

A commonly confusing feature of Aqueducts, is the placement requirements necessary to build one. First and foremost, the Aqueduct must be built adjacent to the City Center, easy enough, however, it must also be built adjacent to a source of fresh water, i.e., a river, mountain or lake.

Often times, while browsing civilization forums and media, such as Reddit, I see people tend to plan the district around a river bend, and then wonder why it cannot be placed in a certain spot. Here I will explain how this works:

Let's think about this logically, what is an Aqueduct? In the simplest terms, it is a tube that carries water from one location to another. In game, the Aqueduct behaves just like that, a tube, it must grab water from one location, to the center of its tile, and then from there, carry that water to the City Center.

Look below, and see if you can tell why these Aqueducts work? And why the Red ones won't.

Black Lines are valid Aqueducts, Red lines are invalid after the removal of the Mountain, except for Red Line 3

In all cases, the water is taken from X side of a Hex, and then to the center of that Hex, then it is carried to another side of the Hex (side Y) which has to be adjacent to the City Center.

If we remove the mountain, the Aqueducts that used the Mountain as a source of Fresh Water will no longer meet the requirements for placement. Those would be Red Line 1 (the topmost), Red Line 2 (the middle), and what about Red Line 3 (the bottom one)?

The Common MistakeRed Line 3 is where most people fail to understand the nature of Aqueducts in-game. As a tube, the Aqueduct would have to carry water from the River side (West side of the hex), to the center of its tile, and then back to the closest side of the City Center hex (East side of the City Center). This would cause the Aqueduct to go over itself, which invalidates it.

To simplify further, drag a straight line from the source of Fresh Water, to the center of the tile you want to place the Aqueduct on, and then draw another straight line from the center of that tile, to the City Center. If the lines go over themselves, the game will not allow to place an Aqueduct in that tile.

TL:DRIn summary, the Aqueduct has to take water from side X of a hex to side Y of the same hex, where X has to touch a source of Fresh Water (or Mountain), and Y has to touch a City Center, without going over X.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2231544644

Aqueducts: Placement Guide

Part 1: What Is The Aqueduct District?

Part 2: How To Place The Aqueduct District?

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