Civ 6 Wonder Placement Guide

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

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

Placement requirements

Must be adjacent to: Harbor

Unlock & cost

Civic: Defensive Tactics
Production cost: 400

Wonders that compete for the same tiles

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

Colossus — both next to a Harbor
Great Lighthouse — both next to a Harbor
Statue of Liberty — both next to a Harbor
Sydney Opera House — both next to a Harbor
Torre de Belém — both next to a Harbor

Is it worth building?

Science, faith and culture on this city's coast tiles, plus an extra charge for every Great Engineer. A hybrid faith-and-sea wonder — strongest when your plan already mixes religion with the sea, as with Spain or Indonesia.

Placement & timing tips

Next to a Harbor. If you have both a faith engine and a coastline, it slots in naturally; lacking either half, let it go.

When to build it — and when not to

Build it when: Build when your plan leans on Great Engineers all game long — each one gains a charge, so the earlier your coastal city finishes it, the more engineers it quietly improves.
Skip it when: Skip when your port works few coast tiles and Great Engineers are not part of your plan — both halves of the Mausoleum then return little.

Which city should build it

Any tile next to a Harbor qualifies, but the yield half of the wonder only pays in a city that works a lot of coast, so pick a port whose land is thin and whose water is wide: a peninsula capital or a fishing town with several sea resources. The Harbor should already be planned next to the city center; the wonder then goes on one side of it, leaving another Harbor-adjacent coast tile free for the Great Lighthouse if you want both. The faith and culture on coast make this a surprisingly good match for a shoreline Holy Site or Theater Square city, since those tiles otherwise contribute nothing to either. Production is the only worry; a fishing city rarely has hills, so plan the chop or the Great Engineer from the start.

Winning the race

Lightly contested. Defensive Tactics is on everyone's path, yet the AI values the Mausoleum poorly and inland empires cannot place it, so it commonly sits unclaimed deep into the medieval era. The leaders who do take it are the coastal wonder-lovers, Qin, Pedro and Dido, and usually late. That gives you room to build it on your own schedule: after the port has its Lighthouse. Finish it with woods chops and a Corvée or Gothic Architecture slot rather than a Great Engineer, because its bonus to engineer charges makes every engineer recruited afterward worth more, and spending one on it defeats the point. The only real warning sign is gossip naming a coastal rival's start; unless that rival is Qin, you usually still have several turns.

If you lose it: alternatives

Its two effects have different stand-ins. For the coast yields, Auckland suzerainty and a Shipyard turn the same water tiles into production, which a growing port values more anyway. The extra Great Engineer charges have no substitute, so reshape wonder pushes around chops and Magnus, and use Pingala's Grants promotion to recruit engineers more often instead of working each one harder. Direct the freed hammers into the Shipyard first, then toward Kilwa Kisiwani at Machinery, which shares the coastal requirement and rewards the same city, or into a Harbor for your second port.

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

Other wonders of the same era

Related guides

Last reviewed: 2026-10-03