Pursuing a Culture victory in Civilization VI requires you to attract tourists from other empires. To do so, you need to give them a reason to visit your cities, something spectacular and beautiful that begs for attention. Wonders go a long way in this endeavor, but you’re never guaranteed to complete them considering that once one is built, you’re locked out of it yourself for the rest of the game.

That’s where artifacts and relics come into play. These are housed in exhibits in museums and theaters, and, if you’ve built your empire correctly, will be the primary source of tourism in the mid to late game. The in-game explanation of the Culture victory condition is a bit convoluted, but the short of it is this: you need more tourists visiting from other civs than any of those civs have domestically. To that end, you’re going to want to build lots of museums, train Archaeologists, and set them to hunting down artifacts. This guide will tell you how to do just that.

Civ 6 Museum Types

There are two types of museums in Civilization VI: art museums and archaeological museums. Art museums hold great works of art, which are produced by Great Artists earned with Great People Points. To build art museums, you need to meed the following requirements:

Have a Theater Square specialty district.
Build an amphitheater in the district, which itself requires the Drama and Poetry civic.
Research the Humanism civic.

From there, it’s a matter of attracting Great Writers through culture buildings.

The other major type of museum, and the one this guide is more concerned with, is the archaeological museum. The requirements for building one are the same as the art museums; the Humanism civic unlocks them both. However, in order to fill an archaeological museum with artifacts, you’ll need to employ the services of an Archaeologist.

Civ 6 Training and Using an Archaeologist

In order to train an Archaeologist, you need to meet the following conditions:

Research the Natural History civic.
Build an archaeological museum.

From there, you need to send your Archaeologist out to actually collect artifacts from Antiquity Sites. Antiquity Sites are revealed on the map once you research the Natural History civic. Functionally, they behave similarly to other resource tiles: you need to send your unit there and then activate them. Once you do, you’ll often have a choice to make. You can either dig up an artifact from an ancient barbarian tribe, or search for something culturally important to the civilization that owns the land in which you’re digging. For the most part, these two options don’t differ all that much, but there are diplomatic implications related to choosing a civilization artifact.

Once you’ve gotten your hands on the artifact, you can slot it into your archaeological museum. It’s important to place like-themed artifacts together in one museum, such as keeping all Ancient Artifacts in one museum, and Renaissance Artifacts together in another. Doing so will result in a theme bonus that doubles you Culture output, and, subsequently, your tourism numbers. Additionally, you can also use artifacts as trade fodder in order to build up relations with other civs.

And those are the basics of archaeology in Civilization VI! Did this information help you out at all? Let us know in the comments section.

Civilization 6 Archaeology Guide - How to Train and Use Archaeologists

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