Earlier this week, a fire broke out at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, destroying the historic building’s spire, and much of its roof and internal woodwork. In tribute, a Civilization modder has added the church as a build-able Wonder in Civilization VI.
The mod was posted to the Steam Workshop yesterday. According to its creator, Windfly, the model and icon have simply been lifted from Civilization V (the building is a Wonder in the series’ two previous outings) and ported to the most recent game.
The mod does, however, change the Wonder’s effects to make it a better fit for Civ VI’s mechanics. Whereas it provided happiness and faith in previous games, this time out it offers faith and amenities to its home city and all cities within ten tiles. It also offers +2 Great Artist points per turn, and three Great Works of Art slots. Responses to the mod on Reddit suggest that it could be tweaked to add Relic slots or Great Writer points, referencing Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
There are a criteria you’ll need to fulfill before you can build your version of Notre Dame. There’s the production cost to take into account (although that’s the same as all other Medieval Wonders) and you’ll have to build it next to a river, matching the real-life Cathedral’s placement on an island in the middle of the Seine in Paris. You’ll also need the Divine Right civic unlocked before you can build.
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More than 700 million euros ($791.8 million) has already been pledged by some of France’s richest families to help with the restoration of the Cathedral. An unlikely ally in that project might come in the form of Ubisoft – the painstaking work put into Assassin’s Creed Unity’s version of Notre Dame could provide a detailed look at some hard-to-reach parts of the structure that were damaged in the fire.