Humankind’s Religion system comes into play very early on, but the relationship between it and Faith may not be immediately clear, especially if wars and district management also require your attention.
At the start of any game, Humankind assigns all players the Animism Religion. But, as soon as you found your first city and gain enough population, you start down the path of creating your very own, choosing between either Shamanism or Polytheism. Examining their tooltips, you’ll notice that each has a different approach to yielding Faith.
Where Polytheism grants +5 Faith per number of attached territories, Shamanism grants +1 Faith per population. While neither sounds like something you’ll immediately be able to exploit, it’s good to think ahead about the long-term direction of your empire, since matching it with your Religion type will make gaining Faith easier.
Each pop in every territory follows one of the available Religions. The one that has the majority following gains Faith from the territory. If the amount of Faith produced is higher than that in adjacent territories, it will start converting them to your Religion, increasing its number of followers.
The impact of your Faith decreases when dealing with distant territories, reducing its conversion power, but establishing trade routes seems to act as a counter.
Converting territories that used to follow a different Religion grants their owners a grievance against you. As the number of followers increases, you can unlock Tenets that grant various bonuses to your Religion.
There are four tiers of Tenets in Humankind and you can only pick one from each tier before moving on. If other players beat you to it, you may find your preferred Tenet already taken. You can only select Tenets if you’re the Religious Leader – the player producing the most Faith for said Religion.
Faith production is increased by building Holy Districts, which usually have a cap that can be raised as the game progresses. Some of Humankind’s Cultural Wonders also increase Faith production, acting as Holy Sites without counting towards the cap, as do certain Civics and emblematic districts.
Later on, Humankind also gives you the option of renouncing your Religion and going down the path of Secularism or Atheism, should you choose to do so.
A detailed breakdown of your current number of followers in every territory, as well as the available tenets, is accessed by selecting the Religion button in the lower-left corner of the screen. For more help with the game, drop by our guides on vassalage and forced surrender.
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