On Towards the Stars: Getting a religion
[This post is part of a larger strategy guide for Civilization 6]
In basically every game you're going to get a pantheon. Religions are much more rare. There are roughly half as many available religions as there are players, which means the start of every game is a race to get those few religion slots. And getting a religion fast can be expensive — it can seriously set back getting early settlers up, and delay your early military focused tech research (primarily archery, but the impact can be felt through swordsmen and horsemen).
So the first thing you need to do is decide if you even need a religion, and whether it's likely for you to get one. A few steps you should take:
Figure out how a religion plays into your broader strategy. Are you using it to augment your troops? Trying to turn faith into culture and science? Have a goal in mind to motivate how important the religion is to you.
Calculate the number of religions available (number of standard players for the map size / 2 + 11).
Check how many AI are in the game that are immortal or higher — most of these AI have so many early game boosts that they can get a religion easily if they want one.
Determine how many civs in the game get direct or indirect boosts to Great Prophet Points. That includes Japan and Russia (cheaper holy sites), Byzantium (+1 Great Prophet), and Arabia (outright gets a Great Prophet for free).
Determine how many civs in the game need a religion for their general strategy — such as Poland or Spain — or have very strong religious synergies, like India and Khmer.
Try and project how much faith generation you can do. Do you have capacity for a lot of +4 to +7 holy sites? Do you have special builder improvements that generate faith? Etc.
Try and figure out if you can get a very early golden age.
Once I have all that information gathered2, I'll gut check: how much do I need a religion? If I'm playing one of the civs that gets a bonus for having a religion, or can get one more easily than everyone else, I'll almost always go for it. If I have the ability to generate faith rapidly, and there aren't too many other civs going for a religion, I'll try and pick one up. But if I don't have any particular reason to go for a religion beyond "it would be nice to have", I'll invest in production, food, and coin instead.
If you do decide to go for a religion, there are a bunch of small things that you can do that will help you win a Great Prophet.
Keep an eye on the Great People tab. Every few turns, check how many other civs are generating points to figure out if you still have a shot. Use that information to adjust course quickly. If you can't win a Great Prophet, shift to building settlers and builders — no reason to waste valuable time and resources on a race you can't win. Also, try and keep an eye out for someone building Stonehenge. The AI will often build Stonehenge AND invest in Great Prophet Points, but human players don't do that as much. As a result, there may be a secret dark horse in the Prophet race that won't show up on the Great People tab.
Beeline astrology. Build at least two scouts and try and find a natural wonder. Go out of your way to buy and work nearby science tiles to move a bit faster.
Try and get at least one other city online so you can get two holy sites with shrines up. I'll generally build scout-scout-settler-holy site-shrine in my capital, and holy site-shrine in the second city.
Once you have at least one holy site up, figure out if you should run the Holy Site Prayers project. Completion of the project will generally net ~5 Great Prophet points. If you’re behind, but can catch up or win with a 5 point delta, spend some production to get over the line (including chopping trees with a builder).
If you desperately need a religion — e.g. you're a civ that depends on religion for your bonuses to kick in — pick up the Divine Spark pantheon (+1 to Great People points in holy sites, campuses, and theater squares).
Similarly, if you're desperate, slot in Pingala and try and get to his second level Grants promotion (+100% production to great people points in the city) ASAP.
Pick up Exodus of the Evangelists (+4 Great Prophet Points) if you've managed to get a Golden Age. You should pretty much always pick this up if you know the 4 point delta will result in you losing the religion race; it's better to assume that your opponents will take the boost, than to assume they won't and not get a religion at the last minute.
See if you can spend faith to pick up the Great Prophet when you're one or two turns away from winning it outright. Sometimes shaving off even one turn can make a big difference.
If you are behind on getting a Great Prophet, see if you can race ahead with a Holy Site Prayer project. It costs about 25 production (which should be somewhere between 3-4 turns) and nets somewhere between 5-6 Great Person points.
There is one thing I didn't mention above: building Stonehenge yourself. Stonehenge is a wonder that gives you a free Great Prophet if there are any left. Because it's a wonder, it works very differently than other strategies to get a Great Prophet — there's more focus on production instead of great people points. Generally, I don't recommend going for Stonehenge.
Look, it's definitely possible for you to do it. Maybe you have a lot of things to harvest and you got a builder from a goodie hut? But building Stonehenge is probably the highest risk way of going for a religion. If you don't succeed, you only get back 50% of the production you spent, and it can only be used on the very next thing you build in that city. Stonehenge costs 180 production to build. In the early game, when your city may only have 10 production per turn, you might lose out on 9 turns! If you chop a bunch of tiles and still lose the wonder, you've sacrificed tiles that could give you production throughout the entire game. And, worst of all, you might succeed in building it, only to realize all the Prophets were taken the normal route already. I think in all of my hours of Civ, I've built Stonehenge once — I was playing China (builders get an extra charge, builders can contribute 15% production to any wonder automatically) and had scouted around a fair bit to see no one else was going for it. It's not impossible, just risky.
Fuck I didn’t get a religion, now what?
If this was base civ, spending a lot of effort to get a religion and failing would really suck. Back in 2016 when Civ 6 came out, faith was a really weak resource. But we’re in 2024 now (!) and faith has been significantly buffed, to the point where it can often make sense to generate faith even without a religion.
A few options that are directly under your control:
Spend faith during a golden age. A classical era golden age when you have a lot of faith is game winning, because you can pump out builders and settlers for free.
Get Grand Master’s Chapel in your government plaza and go for a massive medieval era military timing push. This works really well if you have a medieval unique unit, like Shaka’s Impi or Georgia’s Khevsur.
Upgrade governor Moksha 3x, to let you outright buy districts with faith.
Finally, a bit more situational:
Try and get a city state that lets you spend faith (e.g. Valetta, on city center buildings).
Get someone else’s religion in your cities that let you spend faith (e.g. Jesuit Education, which allows you to buy campus/theater square buildings with faith).
I generally play with 8 people on a small map. Small maps normally have 6 players. 6 / 2 + 1 = 4
To the best extent possible! You may not meet everyone in the game before you need to decide to commit to the religion race.