Civ 6 Wonder Placement Guide

Casa de Contratación

Required neighbors are shown on the map — the remaining tiles can be anything.

Placement requirements

Must be adjacent to: Government Plaza

Unlock & cost

Technology: Cartography
Production cost: 920

Is it worth building?

Governor titles plus big yields for cities on other continents. Made for colonial empires — Spain and Victoria's England effectively get a second capital's worth of value overseas.

Placement & timing tips

Needs a tile next to your Government Plaza, so reserve one when you place that district — but the payoff lives abroad: only build it once you actually hold (or plan to hold) off-continent cities.

When to build it — and when not to

Build it when: Build once a real colonial footprint exists — a cluster of cities across the ocean that a promoted governor can anchor — ideally right as those colonies enter their growth phase.
Skip it when: Skip while your empire still sits on one continent — the bonus has nothing to touch. Ship settlers overseas first, or spend the production on Harbors that make the crossing profitable.

Which city should build it

It must touch the Government Plaza, and there is only one of those, so in practice this is a capital wonder unless you deliberately put the plaza elsewhere. The plaza gives neighboring districts a bonus, so its six surrounding tiles are among the most valuable in the empire; the Casa should take the one that no district wants, typically a flat tile facing away from the river. Terrain and production of the capital hardly matter, because the payoff is delivered in colonial cities on other continents through governors. What matters is having the Government Plaza built early and Cartography researched while overseas cities are still young enough to grow into the bonus.

Winning the race

Low contest. The AI rarely prioritizes Cartography for its own sake and even more rarely has a spare tile beside its Government Plaza, so this wonder often sits unbuilt into the industrial era. The practical risk is your own timeline: the longer you wait, the fewer turns the colonial bonus has to compound. Build it with ordinary capital production and a couple of chops the moment your first overseas city is founded; a Great Engineer is not worth spending here. The only rival to watch is a fellow colonizer such as Spain or Portugal whose settlers are crossing the same ocean, and even then the wonder tracker will give you many turns of warning.

If you lose it: alternatives

The governor titles are the quiet half of the value, and they come from civics on their own schedule, so losing the wonder simply delays your next promotion or two. Colonial yields are replaced by giving those cities a Harbor with Lighthouse and Shipyard, a Commercial Hub, and Reyna or Liang assigned there, which together do more for a young overseas city than a percentage bonus. Spend the freed production on the Harbor buildings and on a Shipyard-era navy that protects the crossing. If your colonies are mostly on your own continent by accident of geography, the wonder never applied to them anyway and nothing has been lost.

Planning a district next to this wonder? Check its adjacency bonus →

Other wonders of the same era

Related guides

Last reviewed: 2026-10-03