On Towards the Stars: Selecting a Religion
[This post is part of a larger strategy guide for Civilization 6]
So you've managed to recruit a Great Prophet. Great! You now have less than a minute to figure out which beliefs you want to choose for your religion. Good luck.
The first thing to be aware of when selecting a religion is the different kinds of beliefs available. There are 4 categories; you can only choose one of each category over the course of the game; and if someone else chooses a particular belief before you, you can no longer choose that belief. Yep, even selecting your religious beliefs is a race.
The 4 categories are:
Founder
Enhancer
Follower
Worship
Founder and Enhancer beliefs only apply to the person who founded the religion. Follower and Worship beliefs apply to every city with that religion as the majority. Every religion must have a follower belief, and the rest are optional. The Civ 6 wiki has a lot of the basics — take a look there for a high level overview. And if you are playing BBG, check the changelog for differences from the baseline beliefs.
So you've got the basics down, but how do you actually decide what to pick?
At a high level, you want to think about your faith generation as a zero-sum resource. If you are spending faith on getting a military with Grand Master's Chapel, you can't spend faith on building districts with Moksha. If you're spending faith on pumping a golden age with builders and settlers, you can't spend faith on getting buildings or spreading your religion.
Ideally, you spend your faith on one thing. If your strategy is going to revolve around spreading your religion a lot, you want to put your faith into a ton of missionaries and apostles. If your strategy is going to revolve around culture and science, you want to put all of your faith into buildings for those districts, and so on. The more you split your faith, the less benefit you'll get overall.
Religion in multiplayer games also plays very differently than against the AI. Human players will gladly surprise war you for converting their cities. Opponent military units can kill religious units just by being on the same tile, with basically no cost. And losing a religious unit will reduce your religious pressure in many nearby cities, making each loss risky.
As a result, I tend to evaluate beliefs based on my own cities and goals — that is, I don't consider or depend on what my opponents might be doing when trying to figure out how much long term benefit a belief will give me. For example, Lay Ministry gives the founder +2 Faith and +2 Culture for cities with holy sites and theater squares. If I'm planning to build holy sites and theater squares in all of my cities, I'll go for this belief. But I don't generally evaluate what my nearby neighbors might do; it's too variable, and I may not be able to convert them anyway.
Also, having a religion encourages a really wide play style, for the same reason. If you get bonuses for number of cities converted or number of followers, you want a lot of cities and a lot of followers! Both of which happen when you play very wide.
With that out of the way, let's start with follower beliefs.
Follower Beliefs
These are the only beliefs that you have to choose, and will be the first option on the religious belief screen. Here's a flow chart that roughly describes my decision making:
Most of the time, you should be picking up choral music or work ethic if you can, even if you do have some other synergy. They are both very solid beliefs that give you a lot of flexibility.
You should basically never take the following:
Religious community (international trade routes provide +2 gold per holy site and building in the destination city). International trade routes are strong for some civs (e.g. Portugal) but you cannot rely on your opponents creating holy sites.
Reliquaries (triple tourism from relics). I've tried to make this work for a culture victory so many times. It seems like it would be great for Poland and Kongo, especially with Mont St. Michel, Religious Isolation, and Kandy in the game. But trying to pursue a heavy relic game has never worked for me personally.
Warrior monks (you can purchase warrior monks with faith). They're slightly stronger and faster than swordsmen, but come out at a time when most people have men-at-arms. And their strength scales based on promotions, which are tricky to get for a melee unit. Another one that I've tried to make work and just couldn't.
Zen meditation (any city with a district gets +1 amenity). A single amenity is also pretty useless.
Once you've got your follower belief, you have to select one of the other beliefs — an enhancer, worship, or founder belief.
In reality, there are two competing decisions you have to make. The first is obvious: which beliefs do you want? But the second is more tricky. You need to decide what order you're going to take your beliefs, with the understanding that someone else might grab a belief you don't take (especially since the best beliefs are often equally valuable for all civs).
In my opinion, there's only a few valid options for each belief selection.
Enhancer Beliefs
Enhancer beliefs can be the most valuable in multiplayer games. Crusade (+5 combat strength against enemy cities following your religion), Defenders of the Faith (+3 defense strength in friendly cities following your religion), and Holy Water (+20 healing in any city following your religion) all make your military conquest or your defense much easier. Since multiplayer games often hinge on military, these beliefs can be a big deal, and often go very quickly. As a result, if you know you need one on these, consider grabbing it as your second belief (i.e ASAP).
Generally, I'll pick crusade1, unless I know an enemy is about to rush me immediately, in which case I'll take Defenders or Holy Water.
The rest of the Enhancer beliefs are fine. Nothing to write home about, and not required to grab immediately. Monastic Isolation (religious pressure does not drop when you lose a missionary/apostle) is probably the next best option, if you're planning to spread your religion around at all. See more in the religious conversion section of this guide (upcoming post).
Worship Beliefs
Worship beliefs are highly synergy and strategy specific. I think basically all of them are somewhat reasonable?
If you need a lot of faith/want to spread your religion everywhere, get synagogues (+5 faith)2 or mosques (+3 faith, +1 spread religion charge for apostles and missionaries).
If you're going for a culture win and think you'll get a lot of great people, get cathedrals (+3 faith, +1 religious great work slot). If you're looking for a specific unlock on the civics tree, get Dar-e Mehrs (+3 faith, +2 culture).
If you're going for a very tall city strategy, or have a lot of tundra and desert and therefore no food, get gurdwaras (+3 faith, +2 food, +1 housing).
If you benefit a lot from having a ton of city states under your belt, get Pagodas (+3 faith, +1 influence points for city states).
And finally, if you're pivoting to science, pick up wats (+3 faith, +2 science) or meeting houses (+3 faith, +2 production).
The only one I basically would never take is the stupa (+3 faith, +1 amenity), unless I was Scotland maybe — a single amenity just don't matter that much.
Even though some worship beliefs can be quite strong, it's often not worth taking one of these as your second belief. You can't use these buildings until you unlock and build temples, which comes much later. It can be worth taking a worship building if you are racing for it, but otherwise it's better to grab one of the other belief options first.
Founder Beliefs
Founder beliefs turn your religious spread into other resources.
I almost always take tithe. The extra gold per turn is really flexible, and can be put towards basically anything you want. It triggers per converted city, regardless of what your opponents are doing. And it kicks in at a stage where you likely have ~10 cities converted, before you have a lot of districts (late classical, early medieval era). That means you'll be getting a guaranteed ~20 gold, potentially doubling your gold per turn.
(Pilgrimage works similarly, but faith is slightly less useful than coin. Great choice if you're Mali or have Jesuit Education as a belief already.)
Situationally, I'll pick up world church or cross cultural dialog. On face, 1 science/culture per 3 followers seems reasonable, but you have to think about when these benefits kick in and how high the population of converted cities might be. In the medieval era, I might have 5 cities of my own that are 100% converted, and maybe 5 other cities that have 60% conversion. On average, a city at that stage may only have 6 pop. So I'd expect to get 10-15 science or culture per turn. That's probably a 25% boost to my science at that time! But if most of my cities are pretty small, or if I just don't have that many of them, these beliefs may not be as worthwhile.
Other than that, I think stewardship is pretty good. If I'm not playing a coastal game (where most cities have harbors), I'll have commercial districts in basically every city anyway.
There's no hard and fast rules for when to pick up a Founder Belief. When you're choosing, it's worth evaluating how much upside you're going to see immediately. If you don't think you need any enhancer beliefs, it may even be worth picking up a Founder Belief as your second choice.
Religious Wonders
It’s worth briefly mentioning the few wonders that can change your religious game play. You’ll want to build these depending on your religious beliefs.
Obviously, Stonehenge.
Jebel Barkal (+4 iron, +4 faith per city in 6 tile range). This is a super underrated wonder. If you place this correctly, you can get ~30 faith per turn wayyyy early in the game — potentially tripling your faith generation. Very useful if you’re trying to pump out early missionaries. Synergizes well with anything that lets you spend faith, such as Jesuit Education and Warrior Monks, as well as anything that helps with missionaries/apostles, such as Holy Order or Mosques.
Mahabodhi Temple (2 apostles, 2 diplo victory points) is a great wonder to pick up for any religious civ. It gives two free apostles at a time when they may be expensive, which gives you a big leg up on conversion or on finishing your religious beliefs. The diplo points are also great if you want to pivot in that direction.
Hagia Sophia (+4 faith, missionaries and apostles get one extra spread). This wonder makes your faith go much farther, effectively making every religious spread 33% cheaper. When combined with Mosques or Holy Order, you’ll basically be uncontested in religious spread.
Mont St. Michel (all Apostles create relics if they die, has two relic spots). This is a must have if you are playing a relic game and expect your apostles to die a lot. Synergizes well with Reliquaries, Monastic Isolation, and Poland/Kongo. That said, I can never really get this wonder to work for me.
St. Basil’s Cathedral (+1 relic, acts as Petra for tundra tiles). Again, necessary for relics, also useful for tundra starts.
Cristo de Redentor (+1 relic, no loss of tourism for relics/holy cities from Enlightenment). Again, necessary for relics. This is most useful if you are playing a religious game with the intent to switch to culture, especially so if you’re playing a relic game.
Note that some civs functionally depend on Crusade to be viable, including Poland and Byzantium. If you're playing a civ with religious flavor that needs to go to war, pick up crusade ASAP.
Note that the AI does like to pick up synagogues early, which may influence whether you snipe this belief as your second choice.