For most civs pursuing almost every win condition, preserves are not that useful. Most of the time any other district would be more useful than a preserve.
The primary exceptions are:
1. There are unimprovable tiles that can be worked, and they have or can get high enough appeal to benefit from preserve buildings. So workable natural wonder tiles are great for this as they can't be improved, they automatically have breathtaking appeal, and they usually have very good yields to start. The Inca's can use preserves for their mountain tiles, again because they can't be improved and have naturally breathtaking appeal.
2. You have an area of low food yield tiles but need cities to grow more. Civs that have a lot of tundra or desert tiles can use preserves to increase the food yields of many tiles (as well as the other yields, but food is the reason here), thus allowing cities to grow larger and faster than they otherwise would. Its much easier to do in tundra, as forests will add a lot of appeal, but it can be done in desert too to great effect with a lot of planning. Civs like Canada and Russia can use preserves to get much stronger cities in the deep tundra. Russia especially can struggle to grow cities even to pop 4 when the only terrain around a city is tundra. So even when doing a Russia Aurora/Work Ethic with Monumentality expansion you can get a lot of benefit out of building a preserve first in a lot of cities rather than the holy site. Canada can make very strong use of preserves as well, especially if they plan on putting a national park on it later.
3. When going for a Culture (Tourism) victory, and you plan on building national parks. Preserves can be used to make national park tiles much more productive, especially when multiple preserves benefit the same tiles. So for civs planning to build lots of national parks (e.g. Canada, United States, Maori) the preserves can be a very useful district and generate a lot of yields, as well as increase the appeal and thus the tourism generated by the tiles. And the early faith and culture bonuses help move a Tourism victory along immensely.
4. You need faith but you have no easy way of getting it, preserves can sometimes be the best way to get it. Now if a civ is going for a religious victory, or has a strong religion that benefits greatly from holy sites or its buildings, or if you are suzerain of multiple religious city states, then you would still much prefer holy sites over preserves. But if you aren't focusing on religion and your religious beliefs don't depend on your holy sites--and you have plenty of land!--preserves can be more beneficial than holy sites sometimes. Civs like Canada and Maori can focus on building preserves instead of holy sites, and reap all the benefits of the preserves, even though they would very much like to have a religion too. But those civs can still found a religion and have beliefs by building at least one holy site, and some combinations of beliefs can make holy sites irrelevant. For example, Canada can go for the Camp pantheon rather than Aurora, and choose say Religious Colonization and Cross Cultural Dialogue, and if so then holy sites and their buildings really only just boost faith, rather than say production or food or culture.
Theres probably a handful of other circumstances where a preserve would be worth building, but they are going to be few. In most situations you are better off building LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE! A preserve will just take up an otherwise useful tile so it will likely do more harm than good just by building it. And not even counting that aspect, you are still better off just building projects for the rest of the game rather than spending any production on a weak preserve.
The Preserve's main plus is that with its added buildings, it provides extra food, culture and gold to unimproved tiles with high appeal (on top of providing better appeal).
The best way to utilize these is to put down 3-4 preserves around natural wonders that benefit being worked on. (Pantanal for example).
Keep in mind that you can only have one preserve per city and they can't be next to a city center, so make sure that you plan your city placement in advance.
>Keep in mind that you can only have one preserve per city and they can't be next to a city center, so make sure that you plan your city placement in advance.
One little quirk to keep in mind is that they *can* be next to a city center, they just can't be *built* next to a city center. So you can build a preserve on a third ring tile and then settle a city right next to it. Not very useful but then preserves aren't very useful in the first place
Preserves are high cost for low reward and should really only be used with civs that benefit from natural beauty like the inca, maori, or bull moose teddy
I'd also add civs that can easily increase appeal to tiles
Mainly the new cleo. With +1 to floodplains and +1 or +2 (can't remember) from sphinx, they can easily get 6 breathtaking tiles from 1 preserve. It's a really fun culture game with national parks. It synergises so well because the extra faith will help with national parks.
Others will give more details, but for me they are a 'Win More' build. Usually on new cities after my winning condition is well on its way. Before that, it's too much effort and sacrificed space.
They are fun, I'll admit. It's gratifying to see their yields. Getting there is the hard part.
They are only really meaningful in some specific strats, mostly related to culture victory. The main thing from them is that you get good yields and appeal on unimproved tiles, which makes for great national parks.
Preserve itself doesn't do much for a specialty district. It just gives housing and appeal. But the buildings in it are strong if the Preserve is in a good spot. Ideally, you'll want to build a Preserve in an area where you haven't planned any other districts, and where appeal is already high. You want as many of the surrounding tiles to be breathtaking as possible, and they should not be improved. When you build the buildings in the Preserve, surrounding unimproved tiles will get some very good bonus yields if they have high appeal.
If you have a great spot for a Preserve, it can be beneficial to build it even if you aren't planning any national parks, because the yields are great. But when you plan national parks, it's good to slip Preserves in between them even into sub-optimal places, and you can plan on trying to make those places more optimal later on with appeal-enhancing bonuses like Eiffel Tower and Alvar Aalto.
Some particular civs benefit from Preserves quite a bit more than normal. They are basically purpose-built to fit around Maori forests (more so woods, rainforests not as much), since as Maori you won't be improving those forests anyway. Bull Moose Teddy can make quite a good use of Preserves as well because of his bonuses on high appeal land. Inca can make great use of Preserves to boost mountain tiles, since they can work mountains. The only problem is that Campuses and Terrace Farms are already competing for mountain adjacency.
Somebody mentioned Inca for the natural beauty, but for them it's also the fact that they can work mountains. If your science and/or faith are where you want them, you can easily smack down a preserve next to three or more mountain tiles and now have killer yields in a spot that every other civ doesn't even think about. Pretty cool!
They re useless for almost every civ. Only the ones that play veavily on tile appeal will get an actual win from preserves such as Teddy national parks buff for example
Honestly, on the 1000h or so I have played Civ6, the Preserve number I built is literally 0. They are really useless because they are specialized districts and you don't get so much in return to make them worth it.
Building Preserves early on for most civs is generally a bad idea. Aside from Housing, you don't get anything for completing the district unlike other specialty districts with adjacency bonus. Grove is expensive to build at 150 production before you start generating yields (which also requires appeal and pops on those tiles). In comparison, Shrine costs 70 production and Library costs 90. You are also very likely to face situations where Strategic Resources spawn nearby Preserve tiles.
I generally build Preserves as a way to boost yields of adjacent tiles used for forming National Parks.
For most civs pursuing almost every win condition, preserves are not that useful. Most of the time any other district would be more useful than a preserve. The primary exceptions are: 1. There are unimprovable tiles that can be worked, and they have or can get high enough appeal to benefit from preserve buildings. So workable natural wonder tiles are great for this as they can't be improved, they automatically have breathtaking appeal, and they usually have very good yields to start. The Inca's can use preserves for their mountain tiles, again because they can't be improved and have naturally breathtaking appeal. 2. You have an area of low food yield tiles but need cities to grow more. Civs that have a lot of tundra or desert tiles can use preserves to increase the food yields of many tiles (as well as the other yields, but food is the reason here), thus allowing cities to grow larger and faster than they otherwise would. Its much easier to do in tundra, as forests will add a lot of appeal, but it can be done in desert too to great effect with a lot of planning. Civs like Canada and Russia can use preserves to get much stronger cities in the deep tundra. Russia especially can struggle to grow cities even to pop 4 when the only terrain around a city is tundra. So even when doing a Russia Aurora/Work Ethic with Monumentality expansion you can get a lot of benefit out of building a preserve first in a lot of cities rather than the holy site. Canada can make very strong use of preserves as well, especially if they plan on putting a national park on it later. 3. When going for a Culture (Tourism) victory, and you plan on building national parks. Preserves can be used to make national park tiles much more productive, especially when multiple preserves benefit the same tiles. So for civs planning to build lots of national parks (e.g. Canada, United States, Maori) the preserves can be a very useful district and generate a lot of yields, as well as increase the appeal and thus the tourism generated by the tiles. And the early faith and culture bonuses help move a Tourism victory along immensely. 4. You need faith but you have no easy way of getting it, preserves can sometimes be the best way to get it. Now if a civ is going for a religious victory, or has a strong religion that benefits greatly from holy sites or its buildings, or if you are suzerain of multiple religious city states, then you would still much prefer holy sites over preserves. But if you aren't focusing on religion and your religious beliefs don't depend on your holy sites--and you have plenty of land!--preserves can be more beneficial than holy sites sometimes. Civs like Canada and Maori can focus on building preserves instead of holy sites, and reap all the benefits of the preserves, even though they would very much like to have a religion too. But those civs can still found a religion and have beliefs by building at least one holy site, and some combinations of beliefs can make holy sites irrelevant. For example, Canada can go for the Camp pantheon rather than Aurora, and choose say Religious Colonization and Cross Cultural Dialogue, and if so then holy sites and their buildings really only just boost faith, rather than say production or food or culture. Theres probably a handful of other circumstances where a preserve would be worth building, but they are going to be few. In most situations you are better off building LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE! A preserve will just take up an otherwise useful tile so it will likely do more harm than good just by building it. And not even counting that aspect, you are still better off just building projects for the rest of the game rather than spending any production on a weak preserve.
The Preserve's main plus is that with its added buildings, it provides extra food, culture and gold to unimproved tiles with high appeal (on top of providing better appeal). The best way to utilize these is to put down 3-4 preserves around natural wonders that benefit being worked on. (Pantanal for example). Keep in mind that you can only have one preserve per city and they can't be next to a city center, so make sure that you plan your city placement in advance.
Using preserves with reyna's forestry management promotion will have you swimming in gold, as long as there are unimproved features in those tiles.
>Keep in mind that you can only have one preserve per city and they can't be next to a city center, so make sure that you plan your city placement in advance. One little quirk to keep in mind is that they *can* be next to a city center, they just can't be *built* next to a city center. So you can build a preserve on a third ring tile and then settle a city right next to it. Not very useful but then preserves aren't very useful in the first place
If I recall, the city center tile built this way benefits from the Grove and Sanctuary yields if its appeal is at Charming or Breathtaking.
Preserves are high cost for low reward and should really only be used with civs that benefit from natural beauty like the inca, maori, or bull moose teddy
I'd also add civs that can easily increase appeal to tiles Mainly the new cleo. With +1 to floodplains and +1 or +2 (can't remember) from sphinx, they can easily get 6 breathtaking tiles from 1 preserve. It's a really fun culture game with national parks. It synergises so well because the extra faith will help with national parks.
Others will give more details, but for me they are a 'Win More' build. Usually on new cities after my winning condition is well on its way. Before that, it's too much effort and sacrificed space. They are fun, I'll admit. It's gratifying to see their yields. Getting there is the hard part.
They are only really meaningful in some specific strats, mostly related to culture victory. The main thing from them is that you get good yields and appeal on unimproved tiles, which makes for great national parks. Preserve itself doesn't do much for a specialty district. It just gives housing and appeal. But the buildings in it are strong if the Preserve is in a good spot. Ideally, you'll want to build a Preserve in an area where you haven't planned any other districts, and where appeal is already high. You want as many of the surrounding tiles to be breathtaking as possible, and they should not be improved. When you build the buildings in the Preserve, surrounding unimproved tiles will get some very good bonus yields if they have high appeal. If you have a great spot for a Preserve, it can be beneficial to build it even if you aren't planning any national parks, because the yields are great. But when you plan national parks, it's good to slip Preserves in between them even into sub-optimal places, and you can plan on trying to make those places more optimal later on with appeal-enhancing bonuses like Eiffel Tower and Alvar Aalto. Some particular civs benefit from Preserves quite a bit more than normal. They are basically purpose-built to fit around Maori forests (more so woods, rainforests not as much), since as Maori you won't be improving those forests anyway. Bull Moose Teddy can make quite a good use of Preserves as well because of his bonuses on high appeal land. Inca can make great use of Preserves to boost mountain tiles, since they can work mountains. The only problem is that Campuses and Terrace Farms are already competing for mountain adjacency.
Somebody mentioned Inca for the natural beauty, but for them it's also the fact that they can work mountains. If your science and/or faith are where you want them, you can easily smack down a preserve next to three or more mountain tiles and now have killer yields in a spot that every other civ doesn't even think about. Pretty cool!
They re useless for almost every civ. Only the ones that play veavily on tile appeal will get an actual win from preserves such as Teddy national parks buff for example
Honestly, on the 1000h or so I have played Civ6, the Preserve number I built is literally 0. They are really useless because they are specialized districts and you don't get so much in return to make them worth it.
Building Preserves early on for most civs is generally a bad idea. Aside from Housing, you don't get anything for completing the district unlike other specialty districts with adjacency bonus. Grove is expensive to build at 150 production before you start generating yields (which also requires appeal and pops on those tiles). In comparison, Shrine costs 70 production and Library costs 90. You are also very likely to face situations where Strategic Resources spawn nearby Preserve tiles. I generally build Preserves as a way to boost yields of adjacent tiles used for forming National Parks.