Civilization VI is this week’s free game on the Epic Store, after last week’s publicity explosion from GTA5. Civ 6 is riding that wave and getting a new group of interested players. Here’s what newcomers need to know about Amenities in Civilization 6.

Civilization 6: How to Get Amenities

In past Civilization games, your population’s satisfaction with your rule was measured with a stat called Happiness. In Civilization 6, this has been made into Amenities: features of the cities of your nation that keep your citizens happy with your rule. For every 2 Population you have, starting at 3, you’ll need 1 Amenity to keep your population content. Fewer Amenities lead to displeasure, and eventually unrest, which will penalize and eventually stop your growth and non-food yields. Once there’s unrest in the general population, you can expect to see actual barbarians at your gates, as well as the start of revolutionary movements against you.

On the flip side, having more Amenities than you technically need will give you bonuses to your citizen growth rate and non-food yields, topping out at +20% and +10% respectively at the Ecstatic level. You’ve plowed so much effort into making your nation a lovely place to live that your population is working harder than ever.

You can get Amenities from Luxury Resources, Civics, Entertainment, Great People, Religion, and National Parks. Notably, War Weariness and Bankruptcy can both count for negative Amenities, penalizing your final score; nobody’s going to be all that happy if they’re broke and tired, no matter how much booze or entertainment you throw at them. (Who says video games don’t teach life lessons?)

In general, a Luxury Resource that you work or produce, such as Tea, Toys, Sugar, or Wine, will provide Amenities as a bonus to your empire. You don’t get more Amenities for doubling up on a single Resource, although you can trade your extras away to other civilizations. Each Luxury Resource provides a base of up to 4 Amenities, which are distributed at +1 per city, to the cities most in need of them. You can also produce Amenities via Wonders, such as Alhambra (+2) or the Colosseum (+1, and +1 again to all cities within 6 tiles of it), and building entertainment centers like the Arena.

To avoid taking a penalty to Amenities, don’t fight too many wars at once, or at least prepare for the Amenity hit ahead of time by bumping your population up to Ecstatic. A distracted populace is a happy one. You’ll also take an Amenities hit if you don’t have enough Gold on hand to cover your expenses in a single turn, which also forces some of your active military units to disband.

Welcome back to the stage of history, everyone. If you’re interested in more Civilization tips, check out our game hub; if you’re looking for more information about Firaxis’s other titles like XCOM, we’ve got some of that too.

• Here are our tips on how to make Gold
• Have you checked out Firaxis’s latest release XCOM: Chimera Squad yet?
• Take the alien fight on the go with XCOM on the Switch

Civilization VI‘s getting a big bump off the GTA5 frenzy from last week, and why not? It’s a notoriously addictive game for a reason. It is funny, though, that Epic followed a free game about burning a city down with one about building a civilization back up. I wonder if they did that on purpose. Comment on the contrast via our official Twitter, @PrimaGames.