Civ 6 Wonder Placement Guide

Great Bath

Placement requirements

Must be built on: Floodplains, Grassland Floodplains, Plains Floodplains

Unlock & cost

Technology: Pottery
Production cost: 180

Wonders that compete for the same tiles

From the placement data: these wonders share a placement requirement with Great Bath. A city meant to hold both needs a separate qualifying tile for each.

Etemenanki — both allowed on Floodplains, Grassland Floodplains, Plains Floodplains
Mont St. Michel — both allowed on Floodplains, Grassland Floodplains, Plains Floodplains
Petra — both allowed on Floodplains
Pyramids — both allowed on Floodplains

Is it worth building?

Housing and faith, plus flood protection that removes the damage from floods. An early quality-of-life wonder for river empires — modest numbers, but it arrives when every point matters.

Placement & timing tips

Floodplains only — the very tiles it then protects. Best in a capital sitting on a big flood basin; elsewhere its opportunity cost usually beats its output.

When to build it — and when not to

Build it when: Build when your capital plans to grow tall on a flood basin it cannot afford to lose — the housing arrives before Aqueducts exist, and the flood protection insures your best farmland.
Skip it when: Skip when the same opening turns could produce a settler or scout pair — on most starts early expansion out-earns its modest yields. If you want ancient faith, Stonehenge's religion is the bigger prize.

Which city should build it

The Great Bath is a capital wonder almost by definition. It has to sit on a floodplain, and its housing and flood immunity only matter in a city that intends to work a lot of floodplain farms. Look for a capital whose river runs through three or more floodplain tiles with a hill or two behind them for production, and keep the Holy Site or Commercial Hub on the dry bank so the wonder does not eat a district slot. A satellite city can technically host it, but a small outpost gains little from extra housing, and the faith it produces when floods hit is too modest to justify moving it away from your core. A Holy Site in the same city keeps the flood faith and your pantheon working together.

Winning the race

Ancient wonders draw the AI like moths, but the Great Bath is one of the least fought over because so few AI capitals sit on floodplains and the AI usually spends its opening hammers on Stonehenge and the Pyramids. Being cheap and unlocked by Pottery, it is often still available in the classical era on lower difficulties; on Deity, expect a river-loving AI such as Egypt or Nubia to be your only real rival. Secure it by chopping one woods tile after the wonder is queued so the overflow lands on it, and slot Corvée once State Workforce is done if you are still building. The warning sign is gossip that another civ has started it while your first builder has not even spawned; at that point it is better to stop than to finish second.

If you lose it: alternatives

Nothing else in the ancient era protects floodplains, so the closest substitute for the insurance half is patience: floods pillage improvements but usually leave the tile richer, and a builder repairs a farm in a single turn. For the housing half, an early Granary and a river-side Aqueduct at Engineering do the same job in a city that never owned the wonder. If you skip it, put the hammers into a second settler toward another river or coastal site, since the population a whole new city adds outweighs a few housing points in one. Players who wanted the faith trickle should look at a Holy Site with a good river adjacency instead; it produces every turn rather than only when the river rises.

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

Other wonders of the same era

Related guides

Last reviewed: 2026-10-03