I want to share a powerful strategy for Civilization VI that a lot of players overlook. It’s about generating a massive amount of faith, enough to compete with the most devout civs, but without ever founding your own religion. I’m not talking about a niche trick; this is a deep dive into the game’s mechanics to use faith as a weapon for cultural, diplomatic, or even domination victories.
This guide will show you how to turn your non-religious empire into a faith-generating powerhouse. We’ll cover everything from early pantheon choices to late-game wonders, giving you a complete blueprint to get faith yields that will shock your opponents.
Getting Started: Your Early Game Faith Engine
Your journey to a huge faith income starts right from the beginning. While everyone else is racing for a Great Prophet, you’ll be setting up a different kind of spiritual empire.
Choosing Your Pantheon: The First Big Step
Even if you’re not founding a religion, your pantheon choice is critical. It sets the stage for your entire faith economy. You want to look for pantheons that give you direct faith yields or powerful early-game advantages without needing a full religion.
- God of the Forge: This gives you a +25% production boost for ancient and classical military units. It’s not direct faith, but a strong early army lets you conquer city-states or even a rival. If you capture a city that already has a Holy Site, you get an instant faith boost. Imagine starting next to a religious city-state like Yerevan—an early conquest can put you way ahead.
- Religious Settlements: A free settler right away is a massive advantage for expansion. The 15% faster border growth is also great for grabbing high-appeal tiles or land near natural wonders, which you’ll need for faith later.
- Stone Circles: If you start near quarries, this is a simple and effective pick. You get a steady +2 faith from each quarry, which adds up quickly.
- Goddess of the Hunt: If you have a lot of camps, the +1 food and +1 production from this pantheon will speed up your growth, letting you build faith-generating districts and wonders faster.
The goal is to pick a pantheon that works with your starting location and your long-term plan. Be opportunistic; a strong start is everything.
The Power of Nature: Natural Wonders
Natural wonders are a huge source of faith early on, so try to settle near one. They provide faith on their own and give great adjacency bonuses to your Holy Sites.
- Crater Lake: This single tile gives you a flat +5 faith and +1 science. A city next to it with an adjacent Holy Site will give you a strong, early faith income.
- Mount Everest: It grants +1 faith to all adjacent tiles. A well-placed Holy Site here can be very profitable.
- Uluru: This wonder provides +2 faith and +2 culture to adjacent tiles, giving you a great boost to both your spiritual and civic progress.
Don’t forget that the tiles around natural wonders usually have high appeal, which is perfect for creating National Parks later in the game.
Friends in High Places: Leveraging City-States
Becoming the suzerain of the right city-states can give you a steady flow of faith that grows over time.
- Yerevan: Its suzerain bonus lets you choose any promotion for your Apostles. This is amazing even without your own religion. You can adopt another civ’s religion and use your faith to buy specialized Apostles to defend your cities or even spread your adopted faith for diplomatic or cultural points.
- Jerusalem: As suzerain, your cities automatically exert +2 religious pressure. You can use this defensively to keep a specific, helpful religion dominant in your territory.
- Kandy: You get a relic every time you discover a new natural wonder. Relics generate both faith and tourism, so a few of these in your temples can create a surprising amount of early-game faith.
Ramping It Up: Mid-Game Faith Explosion
As you move into the classical, medieval, and renaissance eras, you’ll find more and more ways to boost your faith. This is when you need to be smart about district placement, wonder construction, and policy cards.
The Voidsingers: A Deal with the Unknown
If you’re playing with the Secret Societies mode, you have to join the Voidsingers. This society is practically designed for a non-religious faith game and offers incredible bonuses.
- Old God Obelisk: This replacement for the monument gives you +4 faith and a Great Work slot. Building one in every city is the foundation of your faith engine.
- Chorus: In the medieval era, this promotion gives your cities science, culture, and gold equal to 20% of their faith output. This is where your faith generation starts to snowball, directly boosting your other yields. A city making 50 faith per turn will now also generate 10 science, 10 culture, and 10 gold.
- Canticle: In the industrial era, you can buy Cultists with faith. These units can lower the loyalty of foreign cities, which can help you expand peacefully.
- Dark Summoning: In the atomic era, you can run a city project that turns 30% of a city’s production into faith. In your best production cities, this can mean hundreds of faith per turn.
Building for Belief: Wonders of Faith
Several world wonders give you a lot of faith. Try to build these to get a permanent boost to your income.
- Mahabodhi Temple: This wonder gives +4 faith and two Apostles. You can use the Apostles to heal your units or get combat bonuses.
- Hagia Sophia: While its main bonus is for religious units, it also provides a solid +4 faith.
- Kotoku-in: This is an often-underestimated wonder. It gives +20% faith in its city and a warrior monk for every wonder in that city. These monks are strong fighters with their own promotion tree.
Policies for Piety: Scripting Your Faith
Your government and policy cards are key to maximizing your faith.
- Theocracy: This government gives you a +15% faith bonus in all cities and lets you buy land units with faith. It’s a crucial choice for this strategy, turning your faith directly into an army.
- Scripture: This policy card doubles your adjacency bonus for Holy Sites. With good planning, you can get a huge amount of faith from your districts.
- Simultaneum: This card gives another +50% adjacency bonus for Holy Sites. It stacks with Scripture for a massive 150% total bonus.
- Raj: This diplomatic card gives you +2 science, culture, gold, and faith for every city-state you are suzerain of. If you focus on diplomacy, this can be a major source of income.
The Governor of Faith: Moksha
Putting Moksha in a key city and promoting him can seriously boost its faith output.
- Bishop: This promotion gives +2 faith for every specialty district in the city. In a developed city, this is a big bonus.
- Grand Inquisitor: You can use this promotion defensively to remove other religions from your cities.
- Patron Saint: This promotion lets you buy civilian units like settlers and builders with faith, which is an incredibly powerful way to expand and improve your empire.
Going Supernova: Late-Game Faith Dominance
By the late game, your faith generation should be off the charts. Now it’s time to use that spiritual wealth to win the game.
Born to Believe: Civilizations of Faith
Some civilizations are naturally great for a non-religious faith strategy.
- Kongo: Mvemba a Nzinga can’t found a religion, but he gets all the beliefs of any religion that’s dominant in one of his cities. This lets you “shop” for the best beliefs without any of the work. Kongo also gets a free Apostle every time they build a Mbanza or Theater Square.
- Ethiopia: Menelik II’s ability gives him science and culture equal to 15% of the faith generated in his cities. This is incredibly powerful with high faith, letting you fly through the tech and civic trees. Ethiopia’s Rock-Hewn Church also provides +1 faith for each adjacent mountain or hill.
- Mali: Mansa Musa is a gold and faith powerhouse. While often used for religious victory, his abilities are just as good for this strategy. The Suguba district gives a discount on all faith purchases.
Nature’s Churches: National Parks
In the modern era, you can use faith to buy Naturalists, who create National Parks. These parks generate a lot of tourism and amenities, and they also give you a one-time faith bonus when created. To make one, you need four vertical tiles owned by the same city, with “Charming” appeal or better, and no improvements on them. If you plan your cities with National Parks in mind, especially around mountains and natural wonders, you can get a huge tourism and faith boost in the late game.
The Ultimate Faith Engine: A Quick Example
Let me show you how crazy this can get. Imagine you’re playing as Ethiopia with the Voidsingers and a fully promoted Moksha in one city.
- The city has a Holy Site with a +8 adjacency bonus from mountains.
- With the Scripture (+100%) and Simultaneum (+50%) policy cards, that bonus becomes +20 faith.
- The Holy Site has a temple, adding +4 faith.
- You’ve built the Mahabodhi Temple (+4 faith) and Hagia Sophia (+4 faith).
- The city has six specialty districts, so Moksha’s Bishop promotion adds +12 faith.
- You are suzerain of six city-states, so the Raj policy card adds another +12 faith.
That’s a total of 56 faith per turn from just one city, and that’s not even counting the faith from your Old God Obelisks. With an empire of cities like this, you could be making hundreds, or even thousands, of faith per turn. You can use that faith to buy a huge army with Theocracy, purchase great people to speed up your victory, or spam Naturalists to win a cultural victory.
The Unbeliever’s Victory
By now, you should see that you don’t need to be a religious fanatic to master the power of faith in Civilization VI. By taking this non-traditional approach, you unlock a flexible and powerful strategy that uses faith as a universal currency for progress. From a smart pantheon choice to a massive late-game faith engine, the path to insane faith yields is open to anyone. Go give it a try, and let your faith (or lack of it) lead you to victory.