Best utility pantheonons

Sun God and God of the Open Sky are clearly the strongest if those ressources are present since Sun God doesn't need an improvement and GotOS relies on Pastures, usually the first tiles you upgrade after your luxuries.

Sacred Path and God King are strong. Especially God King is an all-around solid choice in just about any situation. Sacred Path is good with a lot of Bananas/Lemons/Gems in Jungle (as an example). Jungle starts usually blow therefore it is important to make the most out of it. Sacred Path tiles will be incredibly strong after Education, even without Trade Posts.

God of Craftsmen is one Pantheon I consider very lackluster since I almost never invest in Workboats early, it's just not worth it at all. Especially in the capital. You are delaying your Granary, your Water Mill, your Library, your Caravans, your Stable, your Stone Works, in some extreme cases even your Oracle or National College. You never want to delay those. Rushing a Lighthouse is fine, rushing Working Boats is just bad. That being said, once it gets going it's actually very strong. If you have an expo that can provide Work Boats for your Capital because it has strong production then this is a solid option.

People have already explained why Fertility Rites is a horrible Pantheon and should almost never be picked. Maybe if you are Gandhi or Mentezuma and have a double river system with Plenty of Cows yet not a single Wheat. Even then I prefer God King.

Messenger of the Gods is only useful as Carthage or when going Liberty with Pyramids, period. Admittedly the early Beakers are great and make a huge difference, but getting roads up with Pop 2 - 5 Cities will cripple your Gold, you will get important Improvements like Pastures, Mines and River Farms up much alter and your entire game will be delayed. Not worth it.

I also think Culture from Shrines is pretty lackluster since once again you have to delay Granaries, Libraries, Monuments et cetera in your expos. You could make a point for it being decent with Piety, but why go Piety when you only have access to a bad Pantheon?

Goddess of the Hunt is solid. I like it. Goddess of protection is good.. if you're the AI. Oral Tradition is bad for the same reason that Goddess of Festivals is bad: You really do not want to work those Plantation tiles early, you want Food and Hammers. I do take those every now and then, though.

The thing about God of the Sea, is that if you're coastal that extra production can really be make-or-break once you're passing into Medieval. Even with the coast of work boats you break even on production quite quickly, and I've played plenty of coastal games where production is my bottleneck.

It's rarely the best choice, but it has a place.

I have a hard time judging when Sun God is worth taking. Does it pay off when the first 4 city sites you have your eye on (including the capital) have 1 food source? 2 food sources? 3? etc. I know, I know, it's impossible to say that the pantheon "pays off" at a particular cut-off: Sun King's value will always be in comparison to the other pantheons you could pick. (e.g. If you're in the middle of good desert terrain, it would be almost impossible for Sun God to outweigh Desert Folklore.) But still... how highly *do* y'all value the pantheon?

I will echo God-king as a very solid choice - I pick it often if I'm a bit late and miss a Pantheon I really wanted, or if the terrain doesn't have a lot of useful Pantheon tiles. If you found late, and/or have a lot of pressure from the AI, you will still keep it in your capital.

Plumfairy said:

I have a hard time judging when Sun God is worth taking. Does it pay off when the first 4 city sites you have your eye on (including the capital) have 1 food source? 2 food sources? 3? etc. I know, I know, it's impossible to say that the pantheon "pays off" at a particular cut-off: Sun King's value will always be in comparison to the other pantheons you could pick. (e.g. If you're in the middle of good desert terrain, it would be almost impossible for Sun God to outweigh Desert Folklore.) But still... how highly *do* y'all value the pantheon?

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It's all relative, so hard to say. If you have 6 Desert Floodplains and 2-3 Wheat, I think it's a clear Desert Folklore choice. If you have 3 Wheat and 2-3 Desert Floodplains it's a bit of a harder choice.

I value the ability to get an early (or any) religion above any of the utility pantheons. This means on SP I'm going for faith generation to keep up with the AI. If I'm playing MP and think I have a good chance at getting a religion otherwise, I might prefer the utility pantheon if it offers me a clear benefit.

Here's an example of a Multiplayer game I had recently. I started as France and had amazing early-game production (i.e. 2 Horse (didn't know till a bit later), 1 Cow, 1-2 Sheep), but no good Faith Pantheon (could have picked up Religious Idols). I lucked out with Mining from a ruin and rushed Calendar after pottery, build order was something like Scout, Scout, Worker. I started building Stonehenge as quickly as I could (and skipped the Shrine all-together). I was sacrificing quite a bit to get Stonehenge but that was my plan (and of course checking my production level in demographics before committing to the wonder). Having an addition +5 Culture from God of the Open Sky for me outweighed the benefit of the extra +2 Faith +2 Culture from Religious Idols so I went with that because I was expecting to have early religion anyway.

If I'm late to the faith game I might prefer utility as that faith won't have much value if I can't convert it to a religion (and you can pick up temples later anyway), and you get to keep your pantheon for quite a while.

Basically to me it's all about immediate utility and what can I use to push myself into a better game. Keep in mind that some pantheons are instantaneous, some require an improvement, and anything that works on a tile requires that tile to be in your borders and worth working (so things like Oral Tradition are awful). There's also (although rarer) cases where you need to deny somebody a pantheon. I played another (also MP) game recently where my next door neighbor had amazing desert terrain. I had two desert tiles (and one was a hill), but I didn't want a religious run-away next to me, so I picked Desert Folklore to deny my opponent an amazing pantheon. That's a bit less common but also something to keep in mind.

Plumfairy said:

I have a hard time judging when Sun God is worth taking. Does it pay off when the first 4 city sites you have your eye on (including the capital) have 1 food source? 2 food sources? 3? etc. I know, I know, it's impossible to say that the pantheon "pays off" at a particular cut-off: Sun King's value will always be in comparison to the other pantheons you could pick. (e.g. If you're in the middle of good desert terrain, it would be almost impossible for Sun God to outweigh Desert Folklore.) But still... how highly *do* y'all value the pantheon?

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It's more about your capital then about your expos really. In Deity games you will often lose your Pantheon if you pick a utility one, especially if your neighbours are Ethiopia, Byzantium, or started with Piety.

A good rule of thumb is that if you have more than two Wheat/Banana/Citrus in your capital then it's a solid choice. However take into consideration whether or not the tiles are acquired easily. If they are in your 3rd ring that makes them a little less valuable.

Of course something like 2 Wheat in the capital, 2 Wheat in your first expo would still be a solid Sun God pick, at that point you're going to have to decide for yourself.

Personally I don't often go Sun God if I have two Wheat (Sun God Ressources) in my cap, I will get a Faith Pantheon even if it is one of the "bad" ones.

Policy Choice is also important. I seldom go Sun God when going Liberty, Tradition on the other hand encourages it. Piety encourages Sun God, but Piety also encourages Wide play, which is why I would only go Sun God if I was doing a strat like Small Piety.

Wouldn't say sun god is useless for wide though. You can grow faster and work more non-food tiles. It's not a huge benefit but having two applicable tiles means you can sustain a whole citizen to work something making production or gold.


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Sun God is still good for wide, just not as good. Mostly because even without Sun God I usually grow to 1 or 0 smiles in no time. Especially early game where Sun God is the most useful. You make a very valid point about working a Sun God Wheat/Banana and a mine, it helps getting critical infrastructure like Colloseums and Aqueducts a lot faster.