✨ Religion & Great Works
Religion and Great Works are two systems that meet in the Exploration Age and otherwise run side by side. Religion is a Pantheon in Antiquity, then a founded faith with Beliefs and Missionaries in Exploration: it produces Happiness, Gold, Science, Combat Strength, or Relics, depending on the Beliefs you choose. Great Works are three collectibles, one per Age – Codices, Relics, Artifacts – displayed in buildings for Science, Culture, and Tourism. The one place they join is a Reliquary Belief, which turns your religion into a Relic supply. This page walks both systems Age by Age, lists the Beliefs, then the leaders and civilizations that change the rules.
🏺 Antiquity – Pantheon, Altars, Codices
Antiquity is positioning: claim a Pantheon before the pool thins, build the Altars that match it, and bank the Civic progress that decides how early you found next Age.
Pantheons unlock with Mysticism, the earliest Civic in the game. You pick one from a global pool – and most Pantheons can only be taken by one civilization, so the pool shrinks as rivals choose. Only Trickster God and God of Revelry can be shared.
A Pantheon is Antiquity-only and does nothing on its own. Its bonuses apply to Settlements that build an Altar, a Happiness building tied to your Pantheon choice. Depending on which you took, the Altar may act as a Warehouse building (raising the yield of specific improvements), grant yields directly, or provide a unique effect like faster growth or unit Production.
Examples of the shape: Stone Circles gives +1 Production on Clay Pits, Mines, and Quarries in Settlements with an Altar – a Warehouse bonus in all but name. Others key off Rivers, Deserts, Coast, or Tropical terrain.
Because the pool is exclusive and first-come, delaying Mysticism can cost you the Pantheon your terrain was built for. Choose against the civilization path you intend to play, not just your current tiles – a mountain Pantheon taken in Antiquity is waiting for you when Inca's mountain adjacencies come online in Exploration. See Playing Time-Tested.
You cannot found a Religion yet – that comes next Age – but Antiquity still runs the first Great Works game.
📘 Codices – the Science player's collection
The first Great Work has nothing to do with religion. Codices come from Tech Masteries and Science milestones, display in Academies and the Palace, and pay +2 Science each plus Innovation – the Scientific victory score. They score no Tourism at all, so a Culture player can ignore them and a Science player cannot.
The payoff is a Triumph: Library of Ashurbanipal (first to display 12 Codices) adds a Great Work slot to every Science Building and +2 Science from every displayed Great Work. Of the 12 Codices it requires, only 10 are in the Technology tree; the twelfth comes from the Civic tree, so a plan built only around Tech Masteries finishes short. Take Masteries you would otherwise skip if a Codex is the reward; display capacity is the constraint, so build Academies early.
⛵ Exploration – found, believe, convert
Exploration is the religious Age: you found, choose Beliefs, and send Missionaries, and broad conversion doubles as Plague defense. See Crises & Natural Disasters.
A Pantheon is not a Religion. Founding an actual Religion happens in the Exploration Age, and takes two steps:
- Complete the Piety Civic.
- Build a Temple. The first Temple you build becomes your Holy City, which formally establishes the Religion.
The number of Religions is limited and settlements are contested, so founding early matters twice over – you get access to the stronger Beliefs before rivals claim them, and you start converting while the map is still unconverted.
📿 Beliefs – the three types
On founding you immediately choose one Reliquary Belief and one Founder Belief. Later you unlock one Enhancer Belief (via the Theology Civic tree) and up to two additional Founder Beliefs, which are rare and usually come from Narrative Events or from converting entire regions.
| Type | How many | What it governs |
|---|---|---|
| Reliquary | Exactly 1 – permanent | How you earn Relics. Chosen at founding and fixed for the rest of the game, so it decides which settlements are worth converting |
| Founder | 1 at founding, up to 3 total | Empire-wide yields, scaling with how many Settlements follow your religion |
| Enhancer | Exactly 1 | How your religion spreads |
The full Reliquary, Founder, and Enhancer tables live in Belief reference below.
These are the Beliefs that let religion ride along with something you were doing anyway. If you are running a trade empire, Dawah converts settlements for free every time you open a route. If you are conquering, Millenarianism converts every city you take. If you are sailing to Distant Lands, Conversion and Stella Maris do the work. Do not build a separate religious game – attach religion to your existing one.
🚶 Missionaries – the engine
Missionaries are the only way your religion moves. They can be produced or purchased with Gold in any Settlement, which matters more than it sounds: buying them means Towns can contribute to your religious game without a production queue.
Each Missionary carries a limited number of charges, and each charge converts one Settlement. Because your Reliquary Belief pays on first-time conversions, a Missionary's value is decided by where you send it, not how many charges it burns.
Under Theocracy, Temples and Missionaries gain +20% Production and Gold, displayed Relics generate +1 Happiness each, and Celebrations pay bonus Culture and Influence on displayed Relics. It is the natural government for any religion-heavy plan.
The instinct is to convert outward from home. Resist it. If your Reliquary Belief is Icons, every Missionary should be aimed at a City-State. If it is Apostolism, chase Wonders. Converting a settlement that does not match your Belief still spreads your religion and still feeds your Founder Beliefs – but it earns you zero Relics, and Relics are what you are here for.
Missionary conversions are also how you earn Relics, the second Great Work.
🔗 Choosing Beliefs for the game you are already playing
What a religion is for depends on what you are playing. A Culture player wants Relics, so their Reliquary Belief is the whole decision. Everyone else is choosing a Founder Belief – an empire-wide yield that scales with every settlement following your religion: Science per foreign settlement (Interfaith Dialogue), Gold (Tithe), Happiness (Vipassana, Salat), Combat Strength at home (Defender of the Faith), free War Support (Crusade). And every path benefits from broad conversion in this Age specifically, because settlements following your religion resist the Plague – the Exploration Crisis with no other counterplay.
| If you want… | The chain that gets you there |
|---|---|
| Cultural victory | Reliquary Belief → Missionaries → Relics → Temple slots → Tourism |
| Science support | Interfaith Dialogue Founder Belief → Science per foreign settlement, plus Codices displayed in Academies |
| Happiness | Vipassana or Salat Founder Belief → Theocracy → +1 Happiness per displayed Relic |
| Gold | Tithe Founder Belief → +4 Gold per foreign settlement, scaling with conversions you were doing anyway |
| Plague resilience | Broad conversion → settlements following your religion have a lower infection chance during the Exploration Plague. See Crises & Natural Disasters |
| Military support | Millenarianism converts what you conquer; Defender of the Faith gives +5 Combat Strength at home; Crusade gives free War Support |
🏭 Modern – the collection scores
Modern is where Great Works stop being an investment and become a score – and that score is Tourism. If you are not playing for a Cultural victory, this Age's new mechanics matter less to you: Artifacts pay Culture and Tourism only, and Explorers have no other job. Two things still apply to every path. First, re-slot what you already own. New Modern buildings open display slots. Second, your religion is frozen, not gone. Settlements keep the religion they had when Exploration ended and nothing new spreads – there are no Missionaries. Unless you earned Toshakhana in Exploration (Display 20 Relics), your Founder Beliefs do not carry over, so do not plan Modern yields around them.
The game marks the shift itself: religion has no panel of its own in Modern, and the Great Works panel now shows only Artifacts.
For a Culture player, Modern is the third Great Work – the only one you go out and excavate – and then the Triumphs that multiply the whole collection.
Great Works only pay while displayed in a building with a free slot. Collecting Relics faster than you build Temples means Relics sitting idle, generating no Culture and no Tourism. Slot capacity is the real constraint on a Culture game, not acquisition – build the display buildings before the collection arrives.
🏺 Digging and displaying Artifacts
Archaeology Sites appear on the map in Modern – the remains of Antiquity and Exploration settlements, plus one at every Natural Wonder. An Explorer who reaches a site excavates an Artifact: +4 Culture displayed, and 5 Tourism (8 once you hold Geographic Society). A Museum full of Artifacts is the single largest Tourism source a Culture player builds in the Age, and there are only so many sites. So the chain below is a race against every rival Explorer on the map:
- Natural History – take it among your first Modern civics. It unlocks the Museum and the Explorer, and its Mastery lets Explorers dig sites from the Exploration Age. Nothing else on this list is possible without it.
- Museums and Explorers, together. Museums hold the Artifacts; Explorers find them. Build more than one Explorer – the AI sends several, and a site you reach second is a site you do not get.
- Dig the contested sites first. Archaeology Sites on the map are claimed by the first Explorer to excavate. Go for them before anything else.
- Save the Natural Wonders. An Explorer can excavate at any Natural Wonder once per Wonder per player – so nobody can take yours. They are the reserve you dig when the contested sites are gone.
- Hegemony – needs Globalism and Nationalism, so it arrives mid-Age. It opens the Antiquity-era sites, a second wave of digging on ground everyone thought was exhausted.
- Display everything. An Artifact in inventory scores nothing.
Then chase the Triumphs. All five Modern Cultural Triumphs pay Tourism directly, and the collection you have just built is what earns them: Geographic Society (first to display 15 Artifacts, +3 Tourism on every displayed Artifact), Wonderland (20 Wonders built, +3 Tourism on all of them), Wonders of the Modern World (six Modern Wonders, 36 Tourism), Manifesto (10 Policies slotted, +4 Tourism per Celebration from then on), and Zeitgeist (every generic Civic and Mastery, +2 Tourism per Unique Building and +1 per Unique Improvement). Treat them as one set, not five side quests – a Culture player who is digging, building, and celebrating anyway will be on the way to all of them. The set is laid out in Victory, Triumphs & Dedications.
What you built earlier is not lost. Tourism from Relics displayed in Exploration is banked when the Modern Age begins and stays in your Culture score, and Codices displayed in Antiquity have already paid their Innovation the same way. Plan Modern around what you can add – Artifacts, Wonders, Celebrations and the five Cultural Triumphs – on top of a collection that is already counted. Codices never score Tourism at any point; they are the Science player's Great Work.
A Modern Wonder is worth 12 Tourism to an Antiquity Wonder's 4, so the Wonder race matters more here than it did earlier; the World's Fair is the standout, adding +2 Tourism to every Wonder you own.
📿 Belief reference
Reliquary Beliefs – how you actually get Relics
Every Reliquary Belief pays out on first-time conversion of a settlement matching a specific description. You get the Relics once per settlement, not repeatedly – so your Belief is really a description of which settlements on this map are worth converting.
| Belief | Relics | Trigger – first-time conversion of… |
|---|---|---|
| Icons | +2 | a City-State |
| Brahmanism | +2 | another civilization's Capital |
| Apostolism | +2 | a foreign settlement containing a Wonder from any Age |
| Charoen | +2 | a foreign settlement producing Treasure Convoys |
| Ecclesiasticism | +2 | a foreign settlement with at least 10 Urban Population |
| Sukha | +2 | a settlement with at least 3 Specialists |
| Reliquaries | +1 | a foreign settlement with a Temple or Altar |
| Lay Followers | +1 | a foreign settlement with at least 10 Rural Population |
| Evangelism | +1 | a foreign settlement in Distant Lands that is not a City-State |
Founder Beliefs – empire-wide yields
Founder Beliefs pay based on Settlements following your religion, and they scale with how widely you convert. The strongest ones count foreign settlements, which rewards aggressive missionary work rather than converting your own cities.
| Belief | Effect |
|---|---|
| Tithe | +4 Gold per foreign Settlement, +1 per your own |
| Interfaith Dialogue | +4 Science per foreign Settlement, +1 per your own |
| Holy Ecumene | +4 Culture per foreign Settlement, +1 per your own |
| Vipassana | +4 Happiness per foreign Settlement, +1 per your own |
| Tikkun Olam | +2 Influence per foreign Settlement, +1 per your own |
| Stewardship | +8 Culture, Gold, and Science per Natural Wonder tile in other civilizations' Settlements |
| Shrines of the Kami | +4 Culture, Gold, and Science per Wonder in other civilizations' Settlements |
| Feed the World | +6 Food in your Settlements |
| Chesed | +4 Production in your Settlements |
| Salat | All Buildings gain a +1 Happiness adjacency with the Temple |
| Covenant | +3 Science, Culture, Happiness, Influence, and Gold on your Holy City's Temple – and it transfers to your Palace in the Modern Age if you still hold the Belief at the end of Exploration |
Several more key off specific terrain in other civilizations' settlements – Desert Faith (Gold from Desert), Sacred Herds (Science from Grassland), Shamanism (Culture from Tundra), Sky Gods (Culture from Plains), Reincarnation (Science from Tropical), Holy Waters (Happiness from Marine), Pushkaram (Influence from Navigable Rivers). These are map-dependent: excellent when your neighbors sit on that terrain, near-worthless otherwise.
Enhancer Beliefs – how your religion travels
| Belief | Effect |
|---|---|
| Dawah | Establishing a Trade Route to a Settlement converts it |
| Millenarianism | Conquered Settlements convert automatically |
| Conversion | Newly founded Towns in Distant Lands start with your Religion already in place |
| Stella Maris | +2 Movement to embarked Missionaries |
| Divine Inspiration | Gain 2 Missionaries whenever you build a Wonder |
| Defender of the Faith | +5 Combat Strength for units in friendly Settlements following your Religion |
| Crusade | +1 free War Support against civilizations that have founded a Religion |
| Inter Caetera | Treasure Convoys gain +1 Movement and +5 Defense Strength |
| Parampara | +1 Great Work slot in Science Buildings in Cities |
👑 Leaders & civilizations that bend the rules of faith
Multiply the collection – Culture and Science
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| 👑 Catherine the Great | +2 Culture per Age on displayed Great Works plus an extra Great Work slot – the strongest multiplier on a collection in the game. Cities settled in Tundra also convert 25% of their Culture into Science |
| 🏭 Ottoman | Every Artifact excavated in Ottoman territory – even by another leader – generates an additional Artifact for the Ottomans |
Earn Relics without converting – Culture
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| ⛵ Iceland | A Relic for every Civic Mastery – the only civilization that earns Relics from research rather than conversion. Missionaries train at half speed and cost double Gold, so the Relic engine runs while the conversion engine does not |
Convert wide – Culture, Happiness, and Plague resilience
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| 👑 Ashoka (Renouncer) | Gains Food from all excess Happiness in Cities and +10% Food in all Settlements during a Celebration, turning broad religious coverage and stable Happiness into compounding growth |
| 👑 Himiko (High Shaman) | A Cultural/Diplomatic leader whose bonuses reward the same wide conversion your Founder Beliefs want |
Let another system do the converting – any path
| Pick | What changes |
|---|---|
| ⛵ Chola | A trade empire – take Dawah and every Trade Route you open converts a settlement for free |
| ⛵ Spain | +2 Food, Gold, and Production in Settlements adjacent to Coast and in Settlements following your own Religion – +4 where both are true, doubled in Distant Lands |
| 👑 Xerxes (King of Kings) | Conquest-focused – take Millenarianism and every captured city converts itself |