Question: aka 'Pantheons Founders and Followers! OH MY!'

I was searching the threads for an updated copy of what would be considered the best Pantheons, Founder Beliefs and Follower Beliefs, but I can't seem to find anything since the G&K expansion (2012).

Yes - I know the most straightforward answer is that they are pretty much situation-based, I'm looking for more granular stuff... What would be considered the most coveted to go after besides the most obvious scenarios (i.e.if you have wine or incense, stones and marble, camps.)

Any tips or information is greatly appreciated.

God-King is considered the go-to pantheon if you don't have a situational advantage. +1 gold, culture, faith, science, food is pretty nice.

Pantheon is pretty-much always situation based for me. Most of the are +something to certain types of tiles so that one is almost always situation based.

For founder, I like tithe (+1 gold / 2 followers), and the one that give +100g per city that converts.

For follower, the religious building are popular, probably with Pagodas being the best. If you're playing a pretty peaceful game, Swords into Plowshares is nice for the +15% food. I like Divine Inspiration (+2 faith per wonder) if I'm building several. Interfaith Dialogue (+ science when spreading religion) might be nice for a science victory, but I've never tried it. I always seem to miss out.

For enhancer, Religious Texts (religion spreads 50% faster) and Itinerant Preachers (+50% range of religious spread) are nice. If you want to spread your religion around a lot, you might benefit from one that reduces the cost of missionaries or prophets.

On Deity the rules for picking beliefs changes quite a bit. The AI will grab many things before the player can and you can only reasonable target getting the 5th religion. The following is good for sub-Deity play. Some of it carries over to Deity but not all of it.

Pantheon:
When picking a Pantheon your top priority is almost always to generate faith. This greatly narrows down what beliefs you have to consider. You want to pick which ever belief will get you more faith over the next 50-100 turns.

Good faith generating Pantheons in order from strongest to average are:

• Desert Folklore: (+1 faith from desert tiles) - head and shoulders the strongest belief if you started on a desert (or maybe even near one).
• Stone Circles/Tears of God: (+2 faith from quarries/+2 faith from Gems and Pearls) - Grab if you're in a geographical cluster of the resource.
• Religious Idols/Goddess of Festivals: (+1 faith +1 culture from Silver and Gold/+1 faith +1 culture from Wine and Incense) - Grab if you're in a geographical cluster of the resource.
• Earth Mother: (+1 faith from Salt, Copper, Iron) - Grab if you're in a geographical cluster of the luxury resource.
• One with Nature: (+4 faith from natural wonders) - usually inefficient unless you can get 2 natural wonders, but you can take it with only one if you're desperate (or Spain).
• Dance of the Aurora: (+1 faith from Tundra tiles) - Much much weaker than Desert Folklore and rarely worth grabbing. Usually the only tundra tiles worth working are deer and luxury resources (Desert Folklore can get floodplains and oasis).

If you can't make use of one of those than reasonable fall back pantheons are:

• God King: (+stuff in your capital) - Get stuff for no extra effort.
• Messenger Gods: (+2 science per city connection) - Science is a valuable yield and city connections are easy to make.
• God of Craftsmen: (+1 prod in cities of 3 pop or more) - If messenger is gone.

A few other pantheons can be reasonable fall backs in certain situations.

Founder
There are only a few good founder beliefs and the default grab should usually be Tithes. If you need Happiness than Ceremonial Burial can be worth it. After those two it gets into niche strategies. For example, Interfaith Dialogue can be combined with cheap missionaries to become an effective Science generator.

Follower
Follower beliefs can be clumped into a few categories:

• Faith bought buildings: (mosques, pagodas, cathedrals) - They are good but require a strong faith engine to make use of and probably mean less of a faith stockpile to buy great people with during the industrial era.
• Happiness sources: (+1 hap from shrines/+2 hap from temples) - If you need happiness these beliefs are pretty much the best way available in the game.
• Situation beliefs: This includes Religious Centers (+1% prod per follower, max 15) and Swords to Plowshares if you don't need happiness. Monasteries (+faith and +culture from Wine and Incense) if you're in a geographical cluster of Wine and Incense.
• Everything else: The dregs. Rarely worth taking.

Enhancers
It is common to just default into the passive spreaders, Itinerant and Religious Texts. Holy Order (cheaper Missionaries and Inquisitors) is part of the Interfaith Dialogue combo but end up consuming your faith which means less great people in Industrial and probably no faith-bought buildings.

Messiah and Just War have parts in some niche strategies but everything else is the dregs.

I'd only take Messiah as Sweden. Use those prophets three times then gift them for 90 influence.

It's also good for a Piety culture game but why are you playing a piety culture game

Arachnofiend said:

I'd only take Messiah as Sweden. Use those prophets three times then gift them for 90 influence.

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Really clever, synergistic idea. I'll def have to try this

I typically get the Tithe along with the other typical situational based religions, but I had started to wonder if perhaps i was missing out good opprotunties to fully capitalize on my religion. Seems like I was right. Thanks for some of the input, I am starting a game tonight and will definitely look at the tips noted.

If you got any more tips please keep posting!

Machiavelli24 said:

Enhancers
It is common to just default into the passive spreaders, Itinerant and Religious Texts. Holy Order (cheaper Missionaries and Inquisitors) is part of the Interfaith Dialogue combo but end up consuming your faith which means less great people in Industrial and probably no faith-bought buildings.

Messiah and Just War have parts in some niche strategies but everything else is the dregs.

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If on the higher difficulties you can only reasonably get 5th religion, then the passive spreading is IMO a waste of time. They won't be able to convert any foreign city and if they do, the AI will missionary spam anyways. Messiah at least still have some uses for CS quests.

The best pantheons are faith-generating ones. Desert Faith is king of them all, of course, but there's a few others that are decent if you don't have a desert start.

Without that, something that gives food is probably your next best bet; Sun God is typically the most powerful, though Goddess of the Hunt can be good. Fertility Rites is a decent fallback.

Tithe is the standard strong Founder belief, and the AI almost never takes it so there's no competition for it in SP. Some of the others are pretty situationally cool (Pilgrimage if your nearby neighbors aren't religionmongers, Church Property if trying ICS (Ceremonial Burial got nerfed bad)).

For follower beliefs, typical standbys are happiness buildings - specifically, Pagodas and Mosques are top noch generic beliefs. After those, your next best bets are happiness temples or happiness shrines. If they're all gone, Feed the World is at least okay, and Religious Centers and Swords to Plowshares both have uses too.

For enhancers, the most powerful generic beliefs are the extra pressure ones - Religious Texts and Itinerant Preachers. The AI basically never takes either so you're free to choose; you probably want Religious Texts. The others are more situational, and generally less powerful (though some of them have interesting uses).

Erneiz Hyde said:

If on the higher difficulties you can only reasonably get 5th religion, then the passive spreading is IMO a waste of time. They won't be able to convert any foreign city and if they do, the AI will missionary spam anyways. Messiah at least still have some uses for CS quests.

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Religious Texts is actually important for keeping religion up in your own cities, especially if you're growing very fast.

Nice write-up Machiavelli!

I have one question...

Machiavelli24 said:

Faith bought buildings ... are good but require a strong faith engine to make use of and probably mean less of a faith stockpile to buy great people with during the industrial era.

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I don’t get this. If you buy them early, don’t they pay back the faith cost in about 50 turns?

beetle said:

I don’t get this. If you buy them early, don’t they pay back the faith cost in about 50 turns?

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I think (correct me if I'm wrong) is that buying at 250 faith for each type of building and multiply that by the number of cities would be taking away from the bank of faith for each great person you could acquire

beetle said:

I don’t get this. If you buy them early, don’t they pay back the faith cost in about 50 turns?

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VSorceress said:

I think (correct me if I'm wrong) is that buying at 250 faith for each type of building and multiply that by the number of cities would be taking away from the bank of faith for each great person you could acquire

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It depends on entirely when you buy them. If you get them early - when they're still 200 faith - they'll pay for themselves in time. Even delaying until they are 300 faith can make them lose a little faith - at 300 cost, a pagoda needs 150 turns to make it back up. Early Mosques can end up helping you in the long run. In general though, faith buildings are not very good sources of faith, but they are great sources of happiness and culture.

With respect to faith-bought-buildings, you (beetle, vsorceress, ravenmagus) are all correct. Their effectiveness depends on how many you can get before you enter the Renaissance era (and face the higher price). Usually a player is looking to enter the Renaissance ASAP to start getting Rationalism policies (for more science) so there isn't a big window of efficiency for faith-bought-buildings.

Faith-bought-buildings are something like a gravity well (or tipping point). If your faith generation is strong enough to get a bunch of them quickly you are able to escape the (faith-cost) gravity well and get tons of faith, happiness and culture out of it.

If your faith generation is good but not enough to escape the gravity well, faith bought buildings end up sucking up all your faith for most of the game as you try to get them out. In this case the end result is often less efficient than having gone for +1 Hap from Shrines and stockpiled the faith for Great People.

On Deity the AI guns for the faith-bought-building-beliefs, which often means they are gone by the time the player could get to them.

Machiavelli24 said:

Faith-bought-buildings are something like a gravity well (or tipping point). If your faith generation is strong enough to get a bunch of them quickly you are able to escape the (faith-cost) gravity well and get tons of faith, happiness and culture out of it.

If your fifth generation is good but not enough to escape the gravity well, faith bought buildings end up sucking up all your faith for most of the game as you try to get them out. In this case the end result is often less efficient than having gone for +1 Hap from Shrines and stockpiled the faith for Great People.

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I'm playing on King now, but IME this is a great point which shouldn't be lost. Basically, I either go all in for religion (presuming a good desert/stone/gems start) and form a base strategy around that, or just slouch for it the slow way, with shrines & temples & all that crap, and make the best of what's left. Going inbetween is like losing out on the Great Library when you're 2 turns from completion.

Country specific religion strategy

-Egypt, take religious centers
-take either pagoda/mosque/cathedral
- happiness +6 per city for low cost

BUT, I confess I would prefer only religious centers for the Egyptian civilization, followed by an actually useful bonus from second follower belief, such as religious community (percentage of extra hammers)

You'd still get +4 happy, from burial tombs.

Laurwin said:

Country specific religion strategy

-Egypt, take religious centers
-take either pagoda/mosque/cathedral
- happiness +6 per city for low cost

BUT, I confess I would prefer only religious centers for the Egyptian civilization, followed by an actually useful bonus from second follower belief, such as religious community (percentage of extra hammers)

You'd still get +4 happy, from burial tombs.

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Burial Tombs are amazing.

Try Choral Music sometime - you can get quite a lot of culture out of it.

For Celts, I suppose you could situationally get whatever pantheon is applicable (you do usually get the first pick)

Celts also get really nice UB Ceiladh Hall, opera house UB with +3 happy. So, you take cathedral, pagoda, mosque whatever, and you're pretty much set for mid-game happiness.

How exactly does the faith bonus for celt work though?

Do ALL the three forest tiles have to be INSIDE cultural borders?

Do ALL three forest tiles have to be adjacent to city tile?

All three forests have to be immediately adjacent to the city center tile (i.e., in 3 of the 6 tiles in ring 1).

Best religion on Deity: None.

1) If you can grab a great faith-generating pantheon, do so.
2) Watch the beliefs window to figure out who has Jesuit Education or Pagodas, etc.
3) Capture one of their missionaries. People will eventually forgive the DoW if you don't take a city.
4) Convert your cities and buy universities or pagodas with the faith you've built up.

The tricky part is losing your faith generation, so favor a religion that replaces your faith generation with another. (IE stone circles replacing DF is better than nothing)

This is my favorite way to handle religion. Allows me to think about other things.