Religion

*Wars of Liberty* remade the Church entirely. Now it's available for all civilizations in the game and lets you select a religion, enabling a new resource: Faith.

With Faith, you can train priests, which are now much more strategic, and research new religious technologies with amazing and game-twisting effects. Currently, there are 19 different religions, by default each civilization has access to two choices plus Laicism (No state religion).

## Overview

The main core feature of religion has been overhauled from the original *Age of Empires III*. In the original game, each civilization, excluding Native Americans, has either a church or monastery. These buildings have upgrades which can aid the civilizations. However, these upgrades don't actually represent a religion or have religious upgrades. Therefore in *Wars of Liberty*, a new representation of religion was implemented. Each civilization has a set of religions they can choose from and each religion has different techs which can offer unique twists on gameplay. There is also an option to opt-out of religion by choosing the secular Laicism, which still provides techs to research but does not require Faith.

## What are religons in *Wars of Liberty*?

The Church building for the Europeans in *Age of Empires III* served the purpose of training healers and providing improvements for a civilization. In *Wars of Liberty*, the Church has been renamed to Temple as the default name (after choosing a religion the Temple will be renamed, such as a Mosque for Islam) and serves a much more significant role.

Each civilization has a choice of three religions based on the historical background of that civilization. One choice is always Laicism (no religion, with scientific improvements to research instead), and two other religions based on that civilization's history. After reaching Age II and constructing a Temple you can select a religion: it costs 50 Coin to research a religion, and 100 Coin for Laicism. Note that all previous functions of the Church (and Monastery, for Asians) are still enabled, such as researching improvements (Europeans) and training mercenaries (Asians).

After the initial religion tech is researched, the Temple becomes a gathering building for a new resource, Faith (similar to Favor from *Age of Mythology*), and it is gathered mainly by having villagers pray at the Temple as if it was a Mill or Plantation (except for Laicism, which does not use Faith). Native Americans have alternate buildings, with the Totem for the North American Natives (which trickles Faith instead of needing villagers to pray, along with having a build limit of five Totems), and the Monument for the South American Natives (which allows the player to use God Powers, similar to those in *Age of Mythology*).

There are always six unique improvements provided by each religion, and they offer varying levels of tech for upgrading Healers and the Faith gathering rate of villagers. Other gathering rates are also increased by these Faith upgrades. If the Advanced Religion card is sent from your Home City, then the Temple can also train Inquisitors (a Spy-Priest hybrid, able to condemn faster than Priests), which enables you to start the Inquisition, and also increases the hitpoints of your Priests.

By default every civilization is restricted to one Temple, unless they select the Catholic religion which can have two Abbeys, or are the Egyptians who can manage to get two Temple Caravans by building one, and then researching the 3rd Civil Tech at the Library Caravan.

## Religion Upgrades

### Civilization features

* **Bolivians**. Gain a Faith trickle by researching native technologies and Religious technologies increase the bounties of Native Warriors.
* **Brazilians**. Religion choices are 3 plus Laicism.
* **Haitians**. Villagers can be revived once by using Faith.
* **Mexicans**. Religious techs are avaible 1 age before.
* **Italians**. Start with Catholicism already chosen, and replaces the church with the Basilica, to exchange Coin for Faith and vice-versa.

### Cards

* **General:**
	+ **Marianism**. Trickles 1.25 Faith each second. (I)

* **Unique:**
	+ **Guadalupana**. Trickles 2.35 Faith each second. Mexicans (II)

## Trivia

* Different from the usual tech progression, each Faith upgrade costs more than the previous one but gives less bonus.
* Together, all Faith techs improve Villagers gather rates by **+60%**.
* Aside from Laicism, Shinto is the weakest religion for priest and faith upgrade purposes.
* There are only four religions with all four priest upgrades, and those are Baptist, Islam, Judaism, and Voodoo.
* Only six religions have all four Faith upgrades, and those are Animism, Catholic, Heliolatry, Hinduism, Judaism and Voodoo.
* Judaism and Voodoo are the only religions to have all priest and faith upgrades.

## Portals

* Civilizations
* Minor Allies
* Religions