Ziggurat (Civ6)

The Ziggurat is a unique of the civilization in Civilization VI. It is available without any technological research.
*Effects:
**+2 
**+1 if placed adjacent to a River
**+1 (with Natural History)
*Restrictions:
**Cannot be built on Hills tiles.
==Strategy==
As a rule of thumb, early and are immensely valuable, and the Ziggurat provides both yields right from the beginning of the game without any technological requirement. Since Sumeria almost certainly will devote all of its in War-Carts in the Ancient Era, the main purpose of the Ziggurat is to keep Sumeria from falling behind in research. As expected, it is very impactful in the Ancient Era, much less so in the Classical Era, and becomes more and more trivial as the game progresses. The Ziggurat has almost no potential of scaling, beside one extra point of with Natural History, which is too late to matter. It runs into the same problem as the Kurgan, another improvement with almost no placement restriction but provides no , , and : placing down too few and its effect will be negligible, but too many Ziggurats will stunt the growth and productivity of their parent cities. Finding the sweet spot of balance for this improvement is another conundrum, as it is available at the same time as your strong but expensive unique unit, both of which need to be immediately put into work, otherwise, your civilization will progress as if they were a vanilla civilization without any meaningful bonus. To make a problem harder, the point of availability is right from the beginning of the game, when you have no infrastructure to support the training of War-Carts, Builders, Settlers and building s at the same time. 
The easiest way to use the Ziggurat is to build one next to a river whenever you train or capture a Builder in the Ancient Era. Using 1 out 3 build charge is recommended because it is not too overboard, and and at this point are crucial to keep you competitive during your early conquest. After the Ancient Era, you should capitalize on the vast empire the War-Cart is able to secure and try to generate and efficiently from s and not waste too much space on Ziggurats. Also, since riverside tiles are ideal sites for a lot of s, feel free to replace Ziggurats with high adjacency s later. 
You can add a bit more mileage to this improvement by trying to obtain as many percentage based modifiers as you can. The most significant and obvious source is from Pingala, who provides 15% extra and to his host city, a bonus that goes very well with the early availability of the Ziggurat. Later in the game, other more powerful modifiers such as Kilwa Kisiwani, Oxford University, Broadway, etc. also become available, but of course, at this point, the yields from the Ziggurat are almost negligible, so these wonders are only meaningful if you have a vast empire with good placement. In summary, just like the rest of the Sumerian toolkit, the sole purpose of the Ziggurat is to lay a sound foundation upon which you can build your empire, it is not the kind of improvements that have long lasting effects that you can rely on after Classical Era. 
==Civilopedia entry ==
==Gallery==
File:Ziggurat civ6.jpg|Ziggurat in game
File:Historic Moment Ziggurat (Civ6).png|Historic Moment for building the Ziggurat
Category:Sumerian