How to Spawn Treasure Fleets

By Matt Goodsell , Marloes Valentina Stella , Jen Rothery

Updated: Feb 8, 2025 6:23pm UTC

Treasure Fleets in Civilization 7 are used to gather Treasure Resources from Distant Lands and turn them into gold rewards. They are exclusive to the Exploration Age, a.k.a. the second age (following Antiquity), and are needed to complete the Economic Legacy Path in that age. If you’re trying to achieve an Economic Victory in the Exploration Age, spawning Treasure Fleets is incredibly helpful.

In short, spawning Treasure Fleets requires a trade route to Distant Lands, sturdy ships, a Fishing Quay, and the right Resource tiles. That may sound quite complex, but this guide will help you out. Here’s how to spawn Treasure Fleets in Civilization 7.

How to Spawn Treasure Fleets

First things first, you must unlock better ships and the ability to cross ‘deep ocean’ tiles without taking damage. We have a guide on how to cross oceans that explains this in more detail, but in short, you must research Cartography followed by the Shipbuilding Technology (this requires Heraldry and Feudalism as well).

You can already try to find Distant Lands before you’ve finished researching Shipbuilding, but there’s a risk of losing ships if there are too many open ocean tiles between the Distant Land and the point of departure - whether you want to take that risk is up to you!

Next, you must leave the continent you spawned on and cross the ocean in search of Distant Lands. Just sail east or west until you discover new territory. Once there, be sure to check if the newfound land really qualifies as a Distant Land by using the ‘Continents’ lens: click on the lens option just above the mini-map and choose ‘Continent’. If the legend on the left states that the continent has ‘Treasure Resources available’ , you're in the right place.

In the example below, the first few islands belong to the old continent (yellow), but the purple one contains Treasure Resources.

Look around for Treasure Resources by hovering over the Resource pictures - if it counts as a Treasure Resource, you will see a text that says ‘Creates Treasure Fleets when connected to a coastal settlement’ below the Resource name.

Here’s a list of all the Treasure Resources you may find:

Tea
Sugar
Cocoa
Spices
Silver
Gold

Now it's time to build a new settlement in the Distant Land - it’s important to build it in close proximity to the Treasure Resources and make sure you have coastal tiles within your settlement limit. You can use population growth events to add tiles with Treasure Resources to this new settlement. Meanwhile, start building a Fishing Quay on one of the coastal tiles in your new settlement as you can’t spawn treasure Fleets without them.

Once you’ve done all of this, Treasure Fleets will automatically spawn in your new settlement, so be on the lookout for new ships. Direct these ships back to your old settlements (any will do) - when they’ve arrived, click on the Treasure Fleet and choose ‘unload cargo’ to claim gold and Treasure Fleet points (which counts towards the Treasure Fleet Legacy Path progress).

If you open the Resource Allocation menu, you will see the available Treasure Resources next to the applicable settlements. The number behind the Treasure Resource will tell you how many points you get; if the settlement has three Treasure Resource tiles, it generate +3 points. The text below the Resource icon will tell you how many turns you must wait for the next Treasure Fleet to spawn.