Civilization V – Religious Culture Victory Tips

Tips to Religious Culture Victory

Fastest religious culture victories I have got with bunch of luck. Getting sacred sites can be tricky, but you with one or two holy mountains that can be easy.

Another must better way to get a religion than shrines/temples+stonehenge is to use faith producing pantheon. I like the ones that give culture and faith from either wine/incense or gold/silver most in my wide religious games. Those have double benefit, you get lots of faith to get the religion, but you also get more culture to fill Liberty+Piety pair faster.

On religiously competitive starts you might need to get first one or two policies from Piety first, then go to the Liberty. You get religion faster, but expansion is slower (not that much with a good pantheon).

Sacred Sites is also harder on harder difficulty settings as all AIs get free Pottery starting from King difficulty level. You can remove that benefit from XML-files if you wish, many have done that (including me, I play on Emperor, but without free pottery). You could also manually pick non-religious civs for your game.

Important notes

The Sacred Sites belief is a Reformation Belief.

The Reformation beliefs are unlocked by selecting the Reformation policy in the Piety social policy tree.

Hence, you will get to it faster by having good culture generation, rather than faith generation.

Hence, if you want to maximise the probability of obtaining it, you need to beeline it straight away at the start of the game. Unlock piety, then Organised Religion, then Religious Tolerance, then Reformation.

I do not know whether you need to have actually founded a religion before being able to select a Reformation Belief. Or, if you select your Reformation Belief before you have founded a religion, it then becomes part of your religion upon founding it at a later point.