Playing as Philip II’s Spain in Civilization VI is an exercise in divine fury. You are not merely a proselytizer spreading a peaceful message; you are a crusader king, mandated by heaven to purge the world of heresy and unite it under a single, true faith. This isn’t a passive, turtle-style religious game. It’s an aggressive, expansionist, and incredibly rewarding path to victory that blends theological combat with overwhelming military might. Forget simply converting cities—with Spain, you will conquer them, converting them by the sword as your Conquistadors march alongside your Apostles.
This guide provides a definitive roadmap to achieving a Religious Victory with Philip II. We will dissect his unique abilities, outline a phase-by-phase strategy from the Ancient to the Modern era, and reveal the advanced tactics that will make your Spanish empire an unstoppable religious juggernaut. Prepare to build a fleet of gold, raise an army of the faithful, and bring holy war to the doorsteps of your rivals.
Philip II’s Divine Mandate: Understanding Spain’s Abilities
Spain’s power comes from a holy trinity of interconnected abilities that create a perfect storm for religious warfare. Mastering how they synergize is the first step toward victory.
Leader Ability: El Escorial
Philip’s personal ability, El Escorial, is the engine of your crusade. It has two distinct but equally powerful components:
- Combat Bonus: Your military and religious units receive a massive +5 Combat Strength bonus when fighting units from a civilization that follows a different religion.
- Stronger Inquisition: Your Inquisitors can use their Remove Heresy charge one extra time.
This ability fundamentally changes how you play. The combat bonus is not a minor buff; it’s game-changing. It means that from the moment a rival founds a religion different from yours, your lands become a fortress. Any invader will find your units mysteriously tougher. More importantly, when you go on the offensive, your armies are divinely inspired, hitting harder and surviving longer against heretical foes.
The Inquisitor bonus is your internal security system. Inquisitors are cheap to purchase with Faith and are essential for keeping your empire pure. With an extra charge, each Inquisitor becomes radically more efficient, allowing you to easily stamp out any foreign religious pressure without draining your Faith reserves, which are better spent on Apostles for the offensive.
Civilization Ability: Treasure Fleet
This ability enhances your economy and naval power, fueling your global ambitions.
- Intercontinental Trade: You can form Fleets and Armadas earlier than other civilizations, with the Mercantilism civic instead of Nationalism and Mobilization, respectively.1 Furthermore, trade routes between different continents receive bonus yields: +3 Gold, +2 Faith, and +1 Production.
- Extra Trade Route: Creating an intercontinental trade route builds a trading post at the destination, and if a city has a trading post, it provides an additional trade route.
Treasure Fleet is your economic powerhouse. The goal is to settle or conquer a city on another continent as early as possible. Once you establish trade routes between your home continent and your new colony, your economy will explode. The influx of Gold allows you to purchase units, buildings, and Great People. The bonus Faith directly funds your religious units, while the Production helps your cities grow. The earlier access to Fleets and Armadas allows you to project military power across the seas long before your opponents can match you.2
Unique Unit: Conquistador
The Conquistador is the lynchpin of your mid-game strategy. This Musketman replacement is where your military and religious goals converge into a single, devastating unit.
- Inherent Combat Bonus: It has a base Combat Strength of 55, plus an additional +10 Combat Strength when there is a religious unit (Apostle, Missionary, Inquisitor, Guru) on the same hex.
- Auto-Conversion: If a Conquistador captures a city or is adjacent to a city when it is captured, that city automatically converts to your majority religion.
This unit is absurdly powerful. With the religious unit bonus and Philip’s El Escorial bonus, a Conquistador attacking a heretic’s unit can have a staggering 70 Combat Strength (55 base + 10 religious unit + 5 El Escorial). This makes them capable of overwhelming contemporary units with ease. The auto-conversion ability is the real killer. It completely bypasses the need for lengthy theological debates. You don’t need to spend charges converting a city; you simply take it, and it instantly joins your faith. This saves immense amounts of Faith and allows you to snowball your religious pressure across the map.
Unique Improvement: Mission
The Mission is your tool for supercharging new settlements, especially those on other continents.
- Base Yields: Provides +2 Faith. If built on a different continent from your capital, it also provides +2 Science. It also grants +1 Loyalty per turn for the city it’s in.
- Adjacency Bonus: Gains an additional +2 Science if adjacent to a Campus district.
The Mission is a versatile improvement. In the early game, a few Missions on your home continent can provide a solid Faith foundation. However, their true power is unlocked overseas. When you settle on a new continent, immediately start building Missions. The combination of Faith and Science will accelerate both your religious and technological progress, ensuring you don’t fall behind while pursuing your divine quest. The bonus loyalty is crucial for securing the allegiance of newly conquered cities.
The Grand Strategy: An Era-by-Era Crusade
Your path to victory is a meticulously planned crusade that escalates in intensity, culminating in a mid-game military and religious explosion.
Early Game (Ancient to Classical Era): Forging the Faith
Your primary goal in the opening eras is singular: found a powerful religion and build the infrastructure to support it. Everything else is secondary.
1. Initial Priorities & Settling:
Your starting bias is towards geothermal fissures, which are good for science later but not an immediate priority.3 Your first few turns should be dedicated to aggressive scouting to find a natural wonder for the Era Score and, more importantly, high-adjacency locations for your first Holy Site. Look for mountain ranges or multiple woods/stone tiles. Settle your first two or three cities in locations that can support strong Holy Sites.
2. Technology and Civics Path:
- Tech: Bee-line Astrology. This is non-negotiable as it unlocks Holy Sites. After that, pivot to foundational techs like Writing (for Campuses and Science), Mining, and Bronze Working.
- Civics: Go directly for Code of Laws to unlock policy cards. Your first priority is Mysticism to unlock the Great Prophet points policy card, followed by Craftsmanship for production boosts. Then, push towards Theology to unlock your first worship building and enhance your Holy Sites.
3. Securing a Pantheon and Religion:
- Pantheon: Religious Settlements is the absolute best-case scenario, granting a free Settler to accelerate your expansion. If it’s taken, Divine Spark (+1 Great Person points from districts) is an excellent second choice to help you secure that Great Prophet. God of the Forge can also be useful for an early military rush if you have an aggressive neighbor.
- Founding Your Religion: Slot in the Revelation policy card (+2 Great Prophet points per turn) as soon as you unlock it.4 Build your Holy Site and its Shrine immediately. Start running the Holy Site Prayers project if you are falling behind in the Great Prophet race. When you found your religion, choose your beliefs carefully:
- Follower Belief: Choral Music (Shrines and Temples provide Culture equal to their Faith output) is phenomenal for keeping up in civics. Feed the World (Shrines and Temples provide Food and Housing) is a strong alternative for growth.
- Worship Building: The Wat is arguably the best, providing +3 Faith and +2 Science. This science boost is invaluable. The Dar-e Mehr (+3 Faith and +1 Faith for each era since constructed or repaired) is a great long-term Faith generator.
- Founder Belief: Papal Primacy (+15% Faith in cities with your religion and a suzerainty bonus) is excellent if you plan on interacting with city-states. Otherwise, Lay Ministry (+1 Faith and +1 Culture from each Holy Site and Theater Square respectively) is a solid, reliable choice.
- Enhancer Belief: Holy Order makes your Missionaries and Apostles 30% cheaper, allowing you to build a massive religious army. Defender of the Faith (+5 Combat Strength for units within friendly cities following this Religion) is a powerful defensive choice that stacks with El Escorial, making your cities nearly impregnable.
By the end of the Classical Era, you should have a religion with two or three beliefs, several cities with Holy Sites, and a stable foundation of Faith generation.
Mid Game (Medieval to Renaissance Era): The Crusade Unleashed
This is where Spain awakens. Your unique units and abilities come online, and you transition from a peaceful faith-builder to an aggressive crusader.
1. The Theocratic Push:
Your primary civic goal is Theology, which unlocks the Theocracy government. This government is tailor-made for you, offering bonuses to Faith generation and allowing you to purchase military units with Faith using the Grand Master’s Chapel. Equip policy cards like Scripture (+100% Holy Site adjacency bonuses) and Simultaneum (+50% production towards Holy Site buildings).
2. The Conquistador Power Spike:
Your main technology goal is Gunpowder. Once you unlock it, immediately upgrade any existing military units to Conquistadors and start producing more. This is your moment. Identify the biggest religious rival on your continent—the civilization that is actively competing with you for converts. This is your first target.
3. Executing the Holy War:
The strategy is simple but brutally effective:
- Step 1: Position Your Forces: Move a small army of Conquistadors toward your target’s border. Crucially, stack each Conquistador (or a group of them) with an Apostle or Guru. This activates their +10 Combat Strength bonus.
- Step 2: Declare War: A Formal War is fine; a Holy War casus belli is even better if you have it. Your goal isn’t necessarily to wipe them out, but to capture their key religious cities.
- Step 3: Capture and Convert: Attack their cities. With a base of 55 strength, +10 from the religious unit, and +5 from El Escorial, your Conquistadors will hit like a truck. When you capture a city, it will instantly convert to your religion. This simultaneously cripples their religious pressure and boosts your own.
- Step 4: The Follow-Up: After capturing a city, use your accompanying Apostle to start converting the surrounding cities manually. If the Apostle has the Protestant Ethic promotion (can remove 75% of other religions’ pressure), use it to cleanse the newly captured territory.
4. Economic and Imperial Expansion:
While your armies are marching, your economy needs to keep up. Use the Treasure Fleet ability by settling a city on a new continent. Even a small, remote city is fine. Immediately send a Trader from your capital to this new city. This intercontinental route will pour Gold, Faith, and Production into your core, funding your war effort. Build Missions in your new colony to accelerate your Science and Faith even further.
Late Game (Industrial to Information Era): Sealing the Divine Victory
Your mid-game crusade should have converted most of your home continent and crippled at least one religious rival. The late game is about leveraging this dominant position to convert the rest of the world.
1. Transitioning Beyond the Conquistador:
The Conquistador’s advantage will eventually fade as other civilizations unlock more advanced units. Your goal now is to use the immense Faith and Gold engine you’ve built to win.
- Military: Upgrade your Conquistadors to Infantry and continue to use your military as a credible threat. If a civilization is resistant to conversion, eliminating their religious units with military force is a viable and often necessary tactic.
- Religious Units: This is the time to mass-produce Apostles. With the Holy Order belief and the Theocracy government, they will be incredibly cheap. Send them out in waves of 4-5 at a time, always accompanied by a Guru for healing.
2. The Apostle Game: Promotions are Key:
When you create an Apostle, you get to choose from a list of promotions. Hunt for the most powerful ones:
- Debater: Provides +20 Theological Combat Strength, making your Apostle a religious super-soldier. This is essential for defeating enemy Apostles and Inquisitors.
- Translator: Spreads your religion to nearby cities at 3x the normal strength. Excellent for converting dense clusters of cities.
- Proselytizer: Removes all pressure from other religions in the target city when you use a charge. This is a one-shot cleanse, perfect for flipping a stubborn holy city.
3. The Final Conversion Tools:
- Rock Bands: In the late game, Rock Bands become an incredibly powerful tool for religious victory. If you can get one with the Religious Rock promotion, you can convert a massive percentage of a city’s population in a single concert.
- Great People: Don’t neglect Great People. Great Merchants and Engineers can provide economic boosts, while Great Generals will continue to buff your army, making your “peaceful” conversion efforts much more persuasive.
Your final push will involve identifying the last 1-2 civilizations that have not embraced your faith. Send your Apostle waves and Debater-led death squads to engage them in theological combat. If they resist, bring your modern army to their borders. Often, the mere threat of annihilation is enough to make them see the light.
Advanced Tactics and Key Synergies
- Suzerain Is Your Friend: Becoming the Suzerain of key religious city-states can be a massive advantage. Yerevan allows you to choose any promotion for your Apostles, which is the most brokenly powerful religious bonus in the game.5 Vatican City makes your religious pressure spread to any city you send a trade route to. Kandy gives you a free Relic every time you discover a new natural wonder, fueling your Faith and Tourism.6
- Map Choice Matters: Spain excels on maps with multiple continents, like Continents, Fractal, or Seven Seas. These maps maximize the effectiveness of your Treasure Fleet and Mission improvements.
- The Inquisitorial Fortress: Don’t forget the defensive power of El Escorial. Keep a few Inquisitors with their bonus charges at home. If an enemy sends a wave of Missionaries to your lands, you can erase their efforts instantly and cheaply, all while your main Apostle force is on the other side of the world.
- The Golden Crusade: Don’t be afraid to use your gold. The Treasure Fleet will make you rich. Use that wealth to buy settlers, builders, districts, and even military units in emergencies. A healthy treasury is the fuel for your holy fire.
Conclusion: The Inevitable Theocracy
Leading Spain to a Religious Victory is one of the most proactive and engaging experiences in Civilization VI. Philip II is not a leader who sits back and waits. Your path is one of righteous conquest, where faith is spread not just by preachers, but by the barrels of your Conquistadors’ muskets.
Your strategy is a crescendo: begin by building a solid religious foundation, then explode onto the world stage in the Medieval and Renaissance eras with an unstoppable crusade. Use the Conquistador to break the will of your rivals, capturing their cities and converting them in a single stroke. Fuel this holy war with a powerful intercontinental trade empire, and secure your holdings with a zealous inquisition. By combining theological might, military supremacy, and economic power, you will ensure that your faith is the one, true faith, and that your name is praised for all time. The world will be converted—either by the book or by the sword.