Religion Inc. is a strategy game from GameFirst Mobile, that’s similar to Plague Inc. Except instead of spreading disease and death, you spread faith and joy to the world, and only occasionally death, specifically to Atheists. Or at least, have a nice polite conversation with them about the nature of science, religion and faith, depends on your Religion’s stance on violence.
With many religious archetypes to choose from such as adaptable Monotheism, fickle Spiritualism, the secretive and hostile Totalitarian Sect, or the comically deranged Destructive Cult, you’re guaranteed a fun, tactical time.
If you want to unite the world under one faith you will need some help along the way. That’s where we come in, as our Religion Inc. beginner’s guide features loads of useful tips, tricks and strategies to spread religion all over the world. So without further ado, let’s get started with our Religion Inc. beginner’s guide!
GENERAL TIPS AND TRICKS
Here are some tips and tricks for Religion Inc., that will make your faith spread a bit more smoothly during a playthrough. If you’ve played Plague Inc. before, you might find a couple of these familiar.
Take It Slow
In the harder difficulties, you will need to spend Religion points wisely. Provided you got the Preaching upgrades all the way to both Missionary Outreach and either Reliquary or Holy Place, your people will happily spread everywhere, given enough time.
You usually need to stockpile Religion points to get upgrades just in time to counter nations that have rejected your Religion, and being caught with an empty wallet while that happens can be a death sentence for your faith, particularly if it happens in the lategame.
Which Treasures To Pick
Once in a while, a treasure chest will pop out of the ocean, allowing you to pick between two treasures for the small price of an advertisement to watch. Picking which treasures to get generally depends on the situation. Usually, you want to pick either the free 15 Religion Points, the Fascination Of Other Peoples and any New Knowledge treasure over stuff like enlightening a nation you already have believers in.
There are some situations where the others are better choices though: If you have a big Atheism problem and the Enlighten Everyone In So-And-So Region power just happens to be for that nation full of Atheists, then that doubles as an immediate Atheism-shutdown for that nation! Reduction of Atheism by 15% should be taken sparingly (usually if it will buy you time to solve the problem, but otherwise you might be better off with something else).
And anytime you get the Manuscripts To Convince Unbelievers treasure, that’s usually a good pick as it saves you precious Religion points that you might have spent on either a new node or an Active Power. You always want cyan Atheist regions do disperse as fast as possible.
Keep An Eye On World News
Events happening in Religion Inc. can give you opportunity to spread your religion early, and more often than not, these events are fairly predictable after a couple of runs… Unless you’re playing Spiritualism, in which case the spirits can and will happily flush your careful preparation down the toilet.
That being said, getting to know which events happen often (There is almost always going to be a king somewhere looking for a religion matching their Regional Traits extremely early in the game, you will almost always make it to the Theological Discus I event, and for Monotheism, Spiritualism, Paganism and Shamanism, Materialist philosophers often ask for the Reliquary upgrade in the Preaching tab, which you want anyway for the prayer boost and Popularity increase) lets you nip these in the bud either by hoarding Religion points or buying the nodes for expected events early while they’re cheap.
Popularity Above All
The most important stat to rush in the game is the green Popularity bar. You’ve got two jobs in this game: fight Atheism and spread your religion. A high Popularity stat helps with both: Popularity determines how fast a Religion spreads within a nation, and a nation fully converted into Believers cannot generate Atheism.
Thankfully, you get a lot of nodes for raising the Popularity stat in the Preaching tab of your holy book, and certain religions also come with powerful popularity boosts in their Ideology tabs.
SPREADING THE WORD: RELIGION GROWTH
You must maintain a healthy balance between spreading far and wide across the world, and spreading quickly within nations you are already in. While your people may be eager to travel new lands, others may not be so accepting, and as such you must make your Religion popular to all nations. Here are some tips and notes concerning the spread of your faith:
One Faith, Many Cultures
Each region and nation in the world has 2 out of 8 Regional Traits, determining their stance towards violence and war, the general wealth of the average person, their propensity to superstition and how organized their current religion is. As such, you can build your Religion to cater to these traits. These Regional Traits determine two things: How likely your people are to move to that nation to spread the faith, and how likely they are to be accepted once they do so.
Making your Religion better cater to these Regional Traits by upgrading your Holy Book’s Ideology Page increases the likelihood of moving into nations with such traits, and reduces the likelihood your people get rejected for it. If your people move to a new region successfully but are then rejected, likely from committing a cultural faux-pas, the region declares itself an enemy of your faith. They follow the cyan glow of Atheism (while in real life this means having no religion at all, in-game this simply means overall dislike of your religion) and massively increase the speed at which the Atheism meter grows.
Meanwhile, a speech bubble appears marking the trait your religion falls short in, slowing your people’s ability to convert the people of that nation. Taking any one new Ideology upgrade of that Regional Trait color will allow your faith to convert them at your current full speed, but the rapid Atheism growth will remain until the nation is fully converted to Believers, Fanatics or Enlightened.
Once that’s done, that nation’s contribution to the Atheism meter will drop fairly rapidly, and the meter will return to the current global Atheism level. You can tap the World button to check where your religion is lacking in terms of cultural acceptance. Not to mention Regional Traits that match your Religion can help certain nations spread your religion within them faster, in addition to the overall speed provided by your Popularity stat.
Active Expansion
You can also check if a Religion has any Active Powers useful for expansion in the Intervention tab of your holy book, which you access by tapping your Religion meter. Some Religions have very direct ways of doing this, such as the Pagans’ Invasion skill, the Pantheon’s Sanctuaries skill, and the Destructive Cult’s Monolith skill.
Other Religions are more scattershot, with Spiritualism’s Gliding of Spirit randomly kidnapping a priest and dumping him in an unknown land, and Astral Projection for the Shamanists increasing the natural spread of their religion for a short period. Either way, these abilities allow your religion to spread where they might normally not.
Spreading From Within
So now you’ve got a good amount of land under your Religion, now you have three stats to worry about: Popularity, Asceticism and Fanaticism. The green Popularity bar determines the speed with which your Religion spreads through a nation’s population, and keeping this high is a great way to combat Atheism: Once a population bar has been fully converted from neutral grey to Believer Beige, Fanatical Dark Blue or Enlightened White, any Atheism in the land will dissipate, reducing the Atheism orb’s progress rapidly while saving you some Religion points on using an Ideology node to combat it instead, though this is riskier in higher difficulties.
Asceticism and Fanaticism increase the growth of Enlightened and Fanatics respectively within those you have already converted to your faith. While Fanatics are simply fully-converted Believers, Enlightened are special in that their prayers are worth 2 Religion points instead of one.
CIVILIZED DISCUSSION, FIERY DEBATE, OR SHARPENED DAGGER? DEALING WITH ATHEISM
At some point during a run, certain nations may declare your faith to be their enemy. Such a nation will stop producing Religion points and generate Atheism much faster than normal. You will notice this once a nation starts glowing cyan and a speech bubble appears with one of their traits on them.
And on top of this, as long as there are nations that don’t have your faithful in them, Atheism will be on a very, very slow rise wvwn without direct foes to deal with. Whether combating them via polite discussion, heated debate, or a sword through the skull, here are some tips to prevent the unbelievers from tainting the minds of your faithful.
Faith in Numbers
There are two ways Atheism is raised: Normal time spent while any country does not have your believers in it, and a massive increase due to the existence of nations hostile to your belief, marked by a cyan glow and a speech bubble marking one of their Regional Traits.
Scattering wide across multiple nations will help slow down the normal spread of Atheism, but can also increase the likelihood of a hostile nation appearing, making the Atheism pace shoot up for as long as said nation is hostile to your Religion.
Such hostile nations can only be hostile once your Believers already exist in it. Once again, a high Popularity stat helps: High Popularity allows your people to convert a nation’s population to Believers at a rapid pace, allowing Atheism to die out quickly in that region.
While a hostile nation will try to slow this down, a high enough Popularity stat can simply brute force its way to stopping a nation’s heresy given enough time, negating the need to spend points on a new Ideology node if overall Atheism levels are low enough to wait it out. Again, the easiest way to raise the Popularity stat is the Preaching page, but certain Ideology nodes can raise this too.
Early Intervention
While the Ideology tab is your main way to combat regional Atheism, the Intervention tab gives you ways to combat both regional and global Atheism: The Theological Discus (sic) nodes, the Intervention in Education node, and depending on the religion, the Active Powers page. Common to all faiths, each tier of Theological Discus immediately reduces Atheism count by about 30%, and each Intervention in Education node slows down global Atheism growth.
You want Intervention in Education very early to maximize its usefulness, while you may want to get Theological Discus later once your Atheism level has risen to about 30%, or early if you want to nip the Theological Discus events (you are guaranteed to make it to at least the Theological Discus I event with how long most Prophet-difficulty games take) in the bud.
Proper use of your active powers can also help, as most Religions have at least one Active Power dedicated to combating Atheism. In the long term, the pen is mightier than the sword, but sometimes you just need a sword right this second. Just remember that everytime you use an Active Power, its cost increases, so try and save Atheism-combating powers for emergencies.
A Loose Ideology
Even with the methods mentioned above, Atheism will spread and people will be in doubt if the faith does not adapt itself to the times. Once a nation declares itself your foe, the usual solution to this is the use of an Active Power, or to take a look in the Ideology page.
In the Ideology page, you would do well to grab the first six colorless nodes available to you when you can, then just keep them there until a country declares themselves against your Religion, maybe taking some upgrades here and there that raise Popularity if you’ve accumulated a lot of Religion points.
You must always have access to nodes of all colors, and going too deep into one color trait too early without getting these first-level upgrades may result in a mad dash to get two upgrades when a country turns Atheist. Having this happen in endgame when nodes are expensive will likely make your religion trip at the finish line.
WHERE DOES YOUR FAITH LIE
There are many different religions to pick from, each providing subtle or overt differences in playstyle. While your overall strategy will generally be the same (For this writer, accumulate Popularity then save about 10-30 Religion points for emergency Ideology purchases at any given time), how each faith goes about it will differ thanks to their weird quirks.
Monotheism
Easy, Versartile, In The Almighty We Find Solace
Monotheism is exactly what it says on the tin: Mono for “One”, Theism for “God”. This is the vanilla game mode, as Monotheism is highly adaptable to many situations, and their Religion and Atheism meters run normally.
They have many active abilities which decrease Atheism, and a few that allow you to spread your religion further. You’ll learn quickly here that getting a high Popularity stat is important, and you should keep it in mind even when playing the more difficult Religions.
Spiritualism
High Randomness, Fast Spread, May The Winds Of Fate Bring Us Prosperity
A faith with many, many fickle spirits and deities, Spiritualism is all about letting the winds of fate take you wherever and rolling with the punches. In other words, hilarious RNG fun! Your faith spreads rapidly but chaotically, with your people travelling everywhere rather fast, and having certain passive abilities that give you lots of holy book nodes for free at random intervals.
Unfortunately, your people can occasionally forget tenets of their religion (no thanks to those crazy spirits everywhere), shown as a node suddenly being removed from your holy book. This can cause trouble when you have certain events happen like Theological Discussions, when Theological Discus I suddenly disappears right before its event happens, even though you specifically bought it in anticipation.
Or when your followers suddenly forget that they should build Orphanages, giving your Popularity stat a serious blow. Even their active powers are random: With a tap of the screen and some Religion points, spirits will kidnap some hapless priest (or priests if you unlock the more powerful version of this ability) and dump him in some random place, allowing them to spread the faith there. Oddly enough, you’ll catch yourself praying in real life most often if you play a Spiritualism run!
Pantheon
Very Easy, Controlled Spread, Counter-Atheism Heavy, Song And Poetry For The Heavens
A specific, more organized group of multiple deities compared to Spiritualism, the Pantheon’s philosophical priests are rather smug about their work and don’t actively look for new faithful, preferring new converts to come to them. You would think this means they spread slowly. Wrong!
While they build faithful slowly in nations the have already entered (which, the writer reiterates, can be helped with a high Popularity stat), they have a very powerful active ability which allows them to spread across the world extremely early AND fight Atheism during dire emergencies: the Sanctuaries ability allows you to place a monument anywhere you want, even in nations across the ocean your people haven’t even discovered yet.
Its upgrades allow each monument to flatten Atheist nations directly by plonking it right on top of them, or convert nations next to it to your religion via another active skill. Just plonk a few of these statues in strategic locations where they cover the most pieces of land then play normally, using either more Sanctuaries or Ideology nodes to combat Atheism where they may appear.
While Sanctuaries with upgrades are a powerful way to combat Atheism, their cost is enough that you should focus on using them to spread the religion instead, while combating Atheism with the usual Popularity rush and a decently flexible Ideology.
The only time you should use a Sanctuary to flatten an Atheist holdout is if the Sanctuary is currently cheaper than the Ideology node you need, AND your Atheism meter is at around 80% or higher, since you’ll need the instant dissipation effect it provides.
Paganism
Medium, Slow Religion Generation, Controlled Spread, Slow Atheism Generation, Event-Heavy, Glory To The Heroes Of Old
A religion for the methodical and tactical player, Paganism gives you a lot of time to think your moves through carefully. You’ll need it, because while Atheism generates slowly thanks to your religion’s ancient nature and the faith of its adherents (Rather than go home and reflect when they fail a Theological Discus event, they just battleaxe the scientists’ skulls instead, though this still increases Atheism), it also has a hard time adapting to new events, as evidenced by its equally slow Religion point generation.
That tip about saving your Religion points for a rainy day is twice as important with Paganism, as they have a hard time recovering from bad decisions. If you do though, the Atheism meter will stay down pretty hard as you play.
They also have the ability to predict future random events, though you most likely won’t need this if you stay thrifty with your Religion meter. Thankfully, while their spread is naturally slow, the Invasion node can be unlocked early as an Active Power, allowing them to sail their faith to any one country via longboat and berserker violence.
Shamanism
Hard, Slow Development, Indirect Spread Methods, Trait-Changer, Mother Nature Nurtures Us
Dealing with animal spirits and the balance of nature, Shamanism takes things slowly in the game. Unlike Paganism, Spiritualism and Pantheon-based religions, they lack ways of dropping their belief into another nation directly.
Instead, they can use active skills like Adjust Balance to change a nation’s Regional Traits and make them more accepting, and Astral Projection to accelerate the natural spread of your religion, causing a nation or two to catch your followers if they’re next to one you already have believers in.
They even have an ability that allows them to change the Religion’s own Regional Traits! As nature lovers, they are a bit less likely to cause hostility when entering a new nation, but it still happens often enough that you should worry about it and raise that Popularity stat.
Totalitarian Sect
Medium, Cheap Anti-Atheism Attack, Slow Spread, Rapid Conversion, Hostile, The Hand Becomes The Fist
You know those fanatical car-slamming bomb-kissing radicals you hear about on the news? Or if not those, the weird sketchy neighborhood MLM selling dubious essential oils door-to-door while preaching about how awesome and amazing their company founder is? Here they are! The Totalitarian Sect are a mix between terrorists, a stealth cult, an MLM, and every bad dictatorial regime ever seen in both history and dystopian novels.
Less important to them is their religious dogma and even their deity, than the infallible word of their often contradictory Great Leader. While they spread slowly from nation to nation, they have Active Powers to improve growth within nations they already have Believers in, with Secret Worship converting a huge chunk of a nation’s population into Believers, Fanatics and Enlightened, depending on your current Asceticism and Fanaticism stats.
They also have Assassination, a fairly cheap skill which allows them to stab whoever just declared war on your cult in the eye socket. The stabbing turns their nation back from bright Atheist cyan to good ol’ Believer beige. And finally, they have Terror, where they reduce global Atheism count by setting the Atheists on fire in their own homes. After all, fire cleanses the sin from the soul.
Their weakness is their agonizingly slow spread: Even in Novice Difficulty it’s a bit likely for them to break the 1000 year (In-game years to be specific: Each in-game year is one second real time) mark on winning the game, and they lack any Active Powers to spread their religion elsewhere. No, their Secret Base power does not actually send them across the ocean into America if you plonk one there, unlike the Pantheon’s Sanctuaries or the Destructive Cult’s Monoliths.
Destructive Cult
Painful, Strong Active Powers, Slow Religion Generation, Rejoice For The End Is Near!
Whether they be baby-eating demon-worshipers, seafood-obsessed madmen or Kool-Aid-chugging apocalypse enthusiasts, the Destructive Cult hate all, and are hated by all in turn. As such, this is the most difficult mode to play. After all, how do you convince a sane, rational person to worship an evil 5-dimensional tentacle monster who wants to eat their brains for breakfast?
Suffering from a scrambled, madness-blighted Preaching page, their Preaching nodes get all their Regional Trait upgrades mixed up and narrowed rather than having the usual extremely wide Regional Trait buffs, but still do the job of raising general Popularity.
As a “reward” for their faith, they are cursed with horrifying Active Powers allowing them to move across the world: Monolith erects a giant eldritch statue anywhere, acting like a nerfed but extremely cheap version of the Pantheon’s Sanctuary statue, as it only has the ability to spread the madness to another nation, and cannot be upgraded.
They can also erect portals to other nations allowing their faithful to spread the insanity to any place connected by two portals. They also have active powers to either reduce Atheism, or directly shut down Atheism in nations that have it, by eating said Atheists with a tentacle-filled death fog.
In general, they tend to suffer earlygame because it’s very hard to pray when people with torches and pitchforks are dumping all your madmen into insane asylums and prisons, and as such they have a rather slow Religion generation.
If anyone needs their Popularity stat rushed the hardest, it’s the Destructive Cult, as their slow Religion Generation makes it hard for them to combat regional and global Atheism directly in spite of their strong Active Powers. This is not helped by Atheism seemingly lingering much longer than normal after a regional dispersion.
And this wraps up our Religion Inc. beginner’s guide. If you wish to share your own tips to your fellow initiates, leave a comment below! And yes, you’re an initiate now. You may not leave. Ever.