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Like its real-world counterpart, religion inCivilization 6can be a source of revelatory inspiration or catastrophic bloodshed. Founding and developing your empire’s faith can shape the way you play the game, providing powerful bonuses and even outlining a path to victory - provided that the priests of other civilizations don’t lead your people astray.
While it’s possible to win a game of Civ 6 without interacting with the religion mechanics at all, it’s a good idea to know how they work and use them to your advantage whenever you can. Read on to find out everything you need to know about religion in Civilization 6.
How To Found A Religion
Before you can start a major world religion, your civilization first needs to develop aPantheon- a set of early beliefs that will guide them through the dawn of history. You get a Pantheon when your civilizationreaches 25 total Faithfor the first time. Once that threshold is reached, you can select from any of the Pantheons thathaven’t already been chosen by another player; that means that the sooner you can get to 25 Faith, the more options you’ll have.
The most common way to gain Faith early in the game is byconstructing a Holy Site, unlocked via the Astrology technology. More rarely, you can get Faith from tile yields, usually via Natural Wonders. Finding a Natural Wonder also provides a boost for researching Astrology, so send your Scouts out to look for them early!
Starting a religion takes a bit more work - you need torecruit a Great Prophetby building one or more Holy Sites. Each Holy Site contributesone point per turntowards a Great Prophet, and adds another point if it has aShrine.You can recruit a Great Prophet once you havesixty Great Prophet pointson Standard game speed. You can also speed up recruitment in the following ways:
Once recruited, a Great Prophet must bestanding on one of your Holy Sites or Stonehengeto activate their ability and start a religion.
Maximum Number Of Religions
Each map has a limited number of Great Prophets - and therefore, a limited number of religions - available. If they’re all gone by the time you would be able to recruit one, you’re out of luck. Each player can only recruit one Great Prophet.
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In general, the larger the map, the more competition there will be for Prophets.
Choosing Beliefs
Upon activating your Great Prophet, you’ll be able tochoose a name and symbol for your religion, as well as twoBeliefs.Like Pantheons, Beliefs are first-come, first-served - the faster you’re able to start a religion, the more likely it is that you’ll get the Beliefs you want.
Your first Belief is always yourFounder Belief, which provides a larger bonus themore cities or Citizensare following your religion.This means that it’salways beneficial to spread your faith as far and wide as possible, or at the very least to make sure that your own cities are large, numerous, and pious.
Your second Belief, as well as later Beliefs gained throughApostles, can be from one of three categories:Follower Beliefs, Worship Buildings,andEnhancer Beliefs.By the time your religion is complete, you’ll haveone of each, for a total of four beliefs.
Apostles can be recruited byspending Faith in any city where you’ve built a Templeafter researchingTheology. They are excellent at spreading their religion in other cities, or they can be sacrificed toadd a Belieforstart an Inquisition, allowing you to recruitInquisitorsfor the remainder of the game.
How To Convert Cities
Once a religion is founded, the city where the Great Prophet was activated becomes that faith’sHoly Cityand begins exertingReligious Pressureon nearby cities. This pressureslowly converts citizens over time.Multiple religions can exert pressure on the same city, which usually results inmultiple religions being presentthere. If more than half of a city’s population follows a single religion, that becomes the city’sMajority Religion, and it gains the effects of that faith’s Follower Beliefs.
You can increase the Religious Pressure on a city by:
Converting cities via pressure isextremely slow, especially if there are competing faiths exerting pressure at the same time.Missionaries and Apostlesadd a large amount of Religious Pressure to an adjacent city by spending charges, speeding up the process. They need to be recruited with Faith, so be sure to generate lots of it by keeping your Holy Sites up-to-date.
The amount of Pressure applied by a Missionary or Apostle isproportional to their remaining health, so if they’ve fought in Theological Combat with an enemy proselytizer, you may want toheal them with a Guruor send them to a Holy Site at home to rest up before spending charges.
Inquisitors
If another civilization is trying to convert your cities, it’s better tolaunch an Inquisitionthan to spend Missionaries trying to re-convert your wayward citizens. Inquisitorsremove three-quarters of religious presence other than their ownin a city when activated, allowing Religious Pressure from nearby Holy Sites to convert the citizens back.Philip of Spain’s leader ability causes Inquisitors tofully remove other faiths from cities.
How To Win A Religious Victory
A player wins a game of Civilization 6 via a Religious Victory isevery player still in the game has more than half their cities following that player’s founded religion.That’s a lot easier said than done, as every player that founded a religion will at the very least be fighting to keep their faith alive at home, to say nothing of spreading it abroad. Winning this way requiresan inordinate expenditure of Faithand in most cases a fair amount of military conquest.
While each game is different, here are some tried-and-true tips that will help you unite the world under your One True Faith:
