HUMANKIND – Religion Mechanics Guide

This guide will explain how religion works and how to manage it in Humankind. لا تتردد في ترك تعليق أدناه إذا كان لديك أي اقتراحات لتحسين هذا الدليل.

Religion Development Process

Religion development follows this process:

• You start a religion when you have a population of 10+ this including units and population in towns and outposts.
• At religion creation, you choose a religion type, Polytheism (+6 Faith per town) or Shamanism (+2 Faith per territory that aren’t outposts)
• This religion becomes the state religion.
• Then you can build your first holy site that will produce more faith for your religion.
• Faith spreading will increase followers of your religion.
• Once you have enough followers you can choose the first Tenet for your religion.
• هناك 3 more tenets to choose from, each requires more followers than the previous tenet.
• بعد ذلك, you can only increase the number of followers of the religion including in other Empires, the number of territories where the religion is the majority, and including in other Empires, the number of Empires that choose your religion as their state religion.

Change Religion Name

Once you have created a religion it has a default name based on the religion type and the culture name.

You can change its name, and open the religion global view with the button at the bottom left. This opens a religion menu, at top of this menu is the religion name, and at its left is a pencil icon, click it then change the religion name, and validate (button at right).

Choose Historical Religion

At religion creation, you can’t choose other religions than Polytheism or Shamanism. The religion chosen defines the icon and holy site graphic and name. But you can change the name of the religion you created at any time.

When you obtain a new Tenet, in the screen to choose the Tenet you can choose before among the historical religions included in the game and not already selected by another Empire, and then choose the tenet, and validate your selection.

You can’t do it after having chosen the Tenet and have validated the selection. But you can do it at the next Tenet. علاوة على ذلك, بدلاً من, you can just change the name of the religion you created.

Change State Religion

You can choose as your state religion a religion created by another Empire.

Open the religion global view with the button at the bottom left. This opens a religion menu, in it, you have an option to change state religion.

After have selected another state religion, there’s a period of instability, and after the new religion is selected as your state religion.

But this won’t change religious followers, this will happen only through the mechanism of faith spreading. It can still be a good option to pick a good set of Tenets that have the religion.

Develop You Religion

This is done by increasing the number of followers of your religion. This is a global count, it can be followers of your religion in other Empires.

Increasing the number of followers is done by spreading the faith of your religion.

The base mechanics to spread the Faith of your religion:

• Faith production.
• Spreading mechanics.
• Spreading block mechanics.

There are different tools to produce more Faith:

• Holy sites: They are created for a specific religion, and will always spread the faith in this religion, even if you change your state religion, or if the territory’s majority religion changes to another religion.
• Civics: Some civics allow produce more faith in the state religion per territory including outposts, Divine Mandate, Religious Hostility, and Literalism.
• Wonders: Many wonders will produce faith but they’ll produce faith in the state religion.
• Emblematic buildings: Many cultures have emblematic buildings producing faith in the state religion.
• Prayer building action: It is increasing faith production of all Faith sites of the town, it’s permanent but for the town not each site.

The spreading of faith is mainly based on:

• Borders and roads between territories.
• Trade roads, but only from the seller to the buyer.
• Open frontier treaties.

Faith spreading can be fully blocked or lowered:

• Full mountains and water borders can avoid there’s any road between the territories, then faith spreading is blocked.
• Sea trade roads not going through Harbors built by the empires don’t spread any Faith. This can happen with Trade ports that are automatically created for sea trades when there’s no Harbor.
• Distance is a reduction factor of faith power spread.
• War blocks any Faith spreading between the two Empires.

Have A Dominating Religion Is Optional

It’s totally optional to develop a religion that will dominate other religions:

• You can instead change the state religion to choose a religion created and developed by another Empire. This can be rather effective if the religion has a good set of Tenets.
• Once your religion obtains the 4 مبادئ, you can choose to skip developing more of the religion, the Tenets bonuses are applied to all territories, no matter the dominant religion in the territory.

Struggle For Religion Domination

The best way to know if you are on a good track is to check the amount of followers of your religion, if it increases that’s a very good sign. Alas, you’ll need to quote or remind yourself of the numbers along with the turns.

For sure, if you quoted a dangerous foreign religion, it’s even better to also check its followers progression.

Another possibility is to use Religion global view (button at bottom left), but it is hard to exploit well, and anyway, it would be more to observe evolution which isn’t something that provides this view.

The different tools to struggle for religion domination

In theory, the tools you have are:

• Produce more Faith.
• Favor spreading of your religion.
• Block foreign faith spreading.
• Use wars to destroy foreign religions faith source or capture sources of faith production that can apply to your state religion.

Produce more Faith is the main way to develop your religion. It’s done with:

• Holy sites.
• Many Wonders.
• Divine Mandate, Religious Hostility and Literalism civics.
• Choose cultures allowing produce more faith, it’s mainly through their Emblematic buildings.
• Faith building prayer increasing faith production of any faith sites (holy sites and faith wonders) permanently for the town.
• Consider build all faith districts in one town so only one town need build prayers.

Favor spreading of your religion is very limited or by selling as many resources than possible, but you can’t force AIs to buy your resources. The only points you can take care of is:

• Ensure have trade treaties.
• Ensure have Harbors build for sea trades, but you can’t force an AI build Harbors and not use Trade Ports.

Block foreign faith spreading isn’t a right approach because it involves too much penalties:

• At first you can have empty territories between your territories other empires, but it’s quickly pointless because of trades spreading faith.
• You can consider not make trade of open frontiers at first, but it’s quickly pointless because of trades spreading faith.
• Giving up to buy resources to other Empires to block their Faith spreading is giving yourself a serious penalty, even in first era. I don’t advise use this tool.
• It’s possible to destroy an Harbor to block many trades going through it and then stop those spreading foreign religion. But it’s brutal, it’s not even about destroying the Harbor it’s about loosing suddenly many trades, so incomes lowdown from less trades, but also stability lowdown and many production lowdown from resources lost.

By making wars you can open options to destroy or capture sources of faith for foreign religions. There are various cases and possibilities:

• Holy districts are specials, they are build for a precise religion, hence they will always produce faith for this religion. You can ransak to destroy them, but in practice if you are capturing the territory you’ll get remove wonders and EB faith production to foreign religion to add it you for state religion, that’s often a blow big enough, and you as well keep the holy sites for the local stability bonus.
• Everything else produce faith of the state religion so they can be captured, it’s wonders, and Emblematic Buildings producing Faith.
• Most Empire strong on religion will have faith production per territory, so when you capture territories, the foreign religion lost faith production of the territories captured, and you get faith production of the territories from civics you selected.
• Use wars to use the opportunity to create empty territories between your Empire and a foreign empire. As there will be faith spreading by trades it won’t be major, but it’s still an option to lower foreign religion spreading.

Utility of Religion

The first utility of Religion is the bonuses brought by Tenets. But quote you just need have develop enough the religion to have select 4 مبادئ, and past it you don’t need your state religion dominates because the bonuses are applied on all territories you own, it’s not dependent of dominant religion.

But also you can choose a religion developed by another Empire to use the bonuses of the set of Tenets of this religion.

Generate grievances and demands

The main utility of religion domination is obtain grievances on other empires territories, you can transform them into demands and at next war, if you won you get those territories for free, no war point cost.

It will require make wars to benefit of your demands.

There are some possibilities to exploit a religion domination through some bonuses increasing with number of followers, number of territories where your religion is dominant, or number of empires that have your religion as their state religion:

• Stonehenge Wonder: Will provide food bonus based on number of empire having the same state religion that yours.
• Angkor Wat Wonder: Will provide food bonus based on the number of followers.
• Machu Picchu Wonder: It doesn’t provide a direct bonus from religion, but it can allow spread Stonehenge and Angkor Wat bonus to all your towns.
• Aksumites culture: Its Emblematic Building provides +1 Money per Territories under the Religion’s influence.
• Teuton culture: Its global bonus provides +1 Money and +1 Science per State Religion Followers.

But you can also exploit be dominated by foreign religions, you have two civics and can select one, both apply only when the main religion of a territory isn’t the state religion:

• Taxed Minorities: +10 Money on Territories where dominant religion isn’t state religion.
• Untaxed Minorities: +10 Stability on Territories where dominant religion isn’t state religion.

Somme emblematic units have their power increased by religion elements, for example extra power when fighting units with another religion, extra power when fighting in territory where the state religion is dominant and this can be foreign territories, or extra move points when starting from a territory where the dominant religion is state religion.

Two Methods To Get Your Four Tenets

There are many ways to get all Tenets of your religion. There are two methods I found efficient globally, not only from the perspective of getting the Tenets asap:

• Balance focus between Religion, Influence points income, and global development.
• Focus on Religion development without to totally ignore influence and global development.

For a more balanced approach, an example of approach:

• During Neolithic choose outposts with a higher production sum of food and factory, and favor a bit food but if possible not too much. The point is to have a good good production base and increase pop faster.
• Exit with Neolithic with 10 population, this is the sum of scouts and population in outposts.
• Build your first town and pick Polytheism.
• Allocate a/the worker to science to avoid lost many turns of research.
• Micromanage workers during first era, particularly for a food culture.
• Focus on picking events choices favoring Tradition to increase Faith production. Any other ideology is less a priority. Second priority is Liberty but it should be longer to develop.
• Pick civic, Natural Right, for a more balanced approach, influence points income in first era is even more important.
• Don’t build more outposts nor attach any, ignore Wonders in first era, collect influence to get the second town asap. The point is get more faith production from Polytheism faster as it’s per town.
• Don’t bother on foreign faith influence and buy trades asap, and favor those increasing money income to buy even more trades.
• With two towns start soon build your first Holy Site.
• Then focus on building many outposts, attach one or not is a matter of context. Each outpost will produce faith from Tradition ideology and influence points from Natural Right civic and Liberty ideology if you achieved develop it.
• You should get you first Tenet before end of first era, pick the Tenet you prefer, but I suggest avoid Shelter the True Oracles that have been been recently more or less broken by not be applied to outposts. Also Hunt the Infidels and Smite Unbelievers aren’t bad, but are very specific to a war oriented play. All other first Tenets are quite powerful and along multiple eras.
• Then pick Civic Religious Hostility.
• At this point it’s very dependent of the context and the culture picked. But you should be on a good rail to get your second Tenet before end of first era or beginning of second era, have a solid development base and continue get more tenets in second era and eventually in third era if you didn’t get them all before. For sure it’s very approximate and an expensive AI very focused on Religion can bring a lot of troubles.

For an approach focused on getting first tenets asap but keep some focus on development and influence points income:

• During Neolithic choose outposts with a higher production sum of food and factory, and favor a bit factory but if possible not too much. The point is to pick Harappans and have a bit of extra factory and still focus on population.
• Exit Neolithic once you can to pick Harappans.
• Allocate a worker to science to avoid lost many turns of research.
• Focus on getting 10 pop, units included.
• Build your first town and pick Polytheism.
• Micromanage workers during first era, that’s important with Harappans.
• Focus on picking events choices favoring Tradition to increase Faith production. Any other ideology is less a priority. Second priority is Liberty but it should be longer to develop.
• Pick civic Divine Mandate for a faster faith production.
• Build more outposts to exploit more and sooner Divine Mandate, your also get more pop sooner thanks to the extra outposts.
• بعد 4 أو 5 outposts build consider get a second town depending of the context, but in general collect influence points to build it from outpost is simpler and faster.
• You should get your first Tenet even before the second town, I suggest consider pick the Tenet that favor factory except if the context doesn’t match. Other for some Tenets suggestions check the previous approach suggested.
• Then pick Civic Religious Hostility.
• Build more outposts after to have get your second town.
• At this point you should have followers grow fast enough to get second and third Tenet during first era, and the last more in second era. But to target a worldwide religion domination, there’s a long road, you can also stop bother on Religion and enjoy your four Tenets.

Many elements can require adapt both of those approach, and none are about achieving a worldwide domination of your Religion, it’s just about getting 4 Tenets for the religion you created, and for sure the second Method will allow have more Tenets choices because it is faster, but the negative is it won’t match the solid development that the first approach has.