Is tundra faith pantheon underrated?

Better yet, is tundra spawn in general underrated? Hear my case.

Dance of the Aurora has just as much potential for faith-yields as Desert Folklore. The question is does it compensate for the tundra start? Well a tundra hill is just like any other hill, and tundra stone and deer tiles are perfectly legitimate tiles. Also tundra spawns tend to include some plains tiles as well so it is not a complete handicap to spawn in tundra.

Well, tundra starts can be terrible for economy and you'll have to work your ways towards the more fertile lands for better economy.

Not sure on how to elaborate on this since I have to go quickly. Why did I even make this post. Just where is the delete button?

IIRC plain tundra tiles are only 1 whereas plains tiles are 11 and grasslands are 2. Sure you can make some of that up with forests, deer, rivers, and hills but plains and grassland starts get those things too plus the extra or .

Dance of the Aurora is a decent pick if you really want a religion and have a tundra start, but imo it's better to just grab a pantheon that will increase your early game food or production and ignoring religion altogether.

A few reasons why I(and I think some others) disdain tundra starts:

1.) base tundra yield is 1F. While desert base yield is 0, floodplain base yield is 2F, equivalent of grassland. While not all tiles will be floodplain (or wet hills), the map generator often sets up areas where there's a substantial amount of these tiles, 8-16 (it almost seems that the map generator "compensates" for the desert areas whereas the tundra is just areas that you shouldn't expand to and are penalized by starting there.) The point is - I'd rather have 1/2 the tiles unusable but the rest having twice the yield than having the majority of the tiles having a lower base yield.
2.) no stoneworks. As you mentioned, there's often plains tiles in tundra - this is because they usually change all riverside tundra tiles to plains (but rarely this doesn't happen - not sure what the mechanic is there.) Since you'll want the city to be placed riverside, it will often be on a plains tile, and since stone is common in the tundra, you lose the ability to build SW by making your city riverside (and on plains.)
3.) can always farm flat desert, and while 2food (post-fertilizer) is a useless tile 2food/1faith are substandard but useable filler tiles after you're using the better tiles and specialists. all you can do with bare dry tundra is TP it, farming is not allowed.

The map often creates some great city sites on the tundra, usually I look for a score of 8 or more using a system of deer/sheep/wet-hill=1 and seafood=2. also they throw quite a bit of late game strategics there, particularly oil and uranium. So there's often reason to expand there, especially if you're getting beaten to potential city sites I'll often prefer to expand there as opposed to warring over land. BUT, starting there is often a case where I consider re-rolling: the game takes many hours and I don't want to invest that much of my time into something that doesn't look as fun.

Tundra tiles (base yield 1 food) are unambiguously inferior to every other terrain type, other than naked desert tiles (no base yield). Desert hills and tundra hills have the same base (2 hammers) and improved yield (mine +1 hammer or, if riverside, +1 food with farm), while desert flood plains have the same yield as grasslands (2 food base and +1 food with farm) and tundra forests (there are no desert forests or tundra flood plains!) have the same yield (1 food and 1 hammer) as other forests, BUT the tundra faith pantheon requires that the tundra tiles not have forest, so, to get tundra faith from those tiles, the camps need to be deforested (dropping 1 hammer from their yield). No such restriction applies to Desert Folklore[EDIT: , whose only "defect" is that no faith is generated from flood plains tiles] <Thanks to docbud for pointing out this error>

On the odd occasion I've been forced to settle an expo on tundra it's actually worked out way better than I could have ever expected. Deer, furs, pearls/crab/whale and fish can fairly add up.

Seem to turn into production powerhouses. Make them coastal and supply with food cargo.

Never tried DotA faith-wise but in principle it should offer the same benefits as DF?

@Browd: I thought Desert Foklore also applied to flood plain tiles. And that it was Petra that didn't give anything additional to those tiles.

Derp! You're right.

^^That's a relief. I'd hate to think I was imagining things.

But you're right the other 99.999999 percent of the time

Athenaeum said:

Dance of the Aurora has just as much potential for faith-yields as Desert Folklore.

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While this is true, the tiles are generally less ideal for working with citizens, which you'd need to do in order to reap the faith. You mentioned Deer and Stone, which are lackluster compared to their non-tundra counterparts. Finally, if you're stuck in the tundra, you're not looking to get more of it. Whereas with DF, settling/conquering more desert cities is usually perfectly viable.

You raise an interesting question. But I think it comes down to whether you'd want to work the tiles with your citizens. This is why Goddess of Festivals and even Religious Idols to a lesser extent is relatively bad also.

Dance of the Aurora can be an excellent pantheon, but it's never going to match a strong Desert Folklore start. In both desert and tundra, resource tiles are usually worth working, and a mined hill will match up with any other mined hill. However, while Desert Folklore benefits riverside desert tiles (which still count as desert but suffer none of its disadvantages), Dance of the Aurora does not benefit riverside tundra tiles, as these tiles are converted to plains. So while a well placed desert city will have a large swath of desert tiles to work, a well placed tundra city will generally only be working actual tundra tiles when they contain resources. Even if you could ignore the low underlying yields of tundra tiles, the conversion to plains means that there simply aren't as many of them (and many of them are forested, which interferes with Dance of the Aurora, even if it's advantageous overall).

As for the strength of tundra starts in general, I think they tend to be underrated (I play a lot of Sweden, so I'm somewhat used to them). You can generally count on having a good supply of resources, particularly deer, which are good early game tiles in general and become even better with an early granary. Once you run out of resource tiles, you should have some forests or river-side plains, and before those run out, you should be getting specialist buildings up and running. You're really only at a disadvantage when it comes to working dry, flat, unforested tiles, and those aren't tiles you particularly want to be working in any start.

Dance of Aurora is crap because the only tiles you want to be working are the forested ones.

It's like having a Pantheon belief that says "+1 faith for every starving citizen"

tundra hills are not worse than any other hills
if you have 5-6 of those in the capital aurora is a no-brainer
tundra hilled starts can be very strong with some seafood or forested deer.
its situational right, you should have enough good tiles to make the best of it, but it is the case for all the pantheons except folklore which is simply broken.

If there was wonder that's a tundra equivalent of Petra, then I'd definitely support this theory. A tundra start is the absolute worst

One thing though is that you may only need to work three tiles to get a religion. So if are going to try and make Dance of the Aurora work, the cap needs to be on tundra. Then maybe a deer tile and a hill and that is three low-average-but-okay tiles. Maybe you have a lake or a river.

So yes, objectively worse than grassland or plains -- but neither of those will get you a religion.

The other small perk is that the AIs are less likely to covet your lands!

consentient said:

Dance of Aurora is crap because the only tiles you want to be working are the forested ones.

It's like having a Pantheon belief that says "+1 faith for every starving citizen"

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clearing the forests subtracts 1 production not food. Either way you are working with 1 base food from the tundra tiles. What keeps you from starving in a tundra start is the food resources. Usually they are heavy on deer or have plain/river tiles nearby to irrigate.

The issue is not that choosing the pantheon causes you to give up food, rather, that it causes you to choose between production and faith. It IS a strong faith start but it isn't free like the overpowered desert folklore. It doesn't add to the tiles you naturally prefer to work unless you already have some bare tundra luxuries or hills anyway that you had enough food to work.

Anyway, it isn't the fault of the pantheon, it's the fault of Desert Folklore which never should've allowed floodplains to count as desert. (they aren't). It makes all that faith free with no re-prioritization.

beetle said:

The other small perk is that the AIs are less likely to covet your lands!

Click to expand...

Tell that to a certain guy in the Sweden DCL

stormtrooper412 said:

Tell that to a certain guy in the Sweden DCL

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Alex and Shaka im pretty sure dont need any logical reason to covet your lands beyond the fact that they covet all the land period!

I have literally seen these two covet my lands from the other side of the map.

Yes, they covet your land as soon as they see it. So don't sell embassies until you see their scouts pass by.

stormtrooper412 said:

If there was wonder that's a tundra equivalent of Petra, then I'd definitely support this theory. A tundra start is the absolute worst

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This came up a few years ago. I forgot why everyone shot it down. But because of how handicapping tundra starts can be, I'd suggest a toned down version that applied empire-wide instead of a single city. Something like:

+1food to all non-forested tundra tiles (remember they're still not farmable; but it does make tundra-hills and particularly resource tundra-hills or wet-tundra hills powerhouse tiles, but so did Petra) -AND-
+1gold to all coastal tiles of tundra cities (admittedly, there's probably some difficulty defining "tundra cities," I'm not a modder so I don't know. Probably similar to Petra where it has to be on or adjacent to, but preferably not something the player can exploit by going to the very edge of that latitude. Maybe on with all 6 adjacent tiles?) This would be the part that I'd really like to see because 1.) it differentiates it from simply being "tundra-Petra" 2.)addresses one common player complaint (all the non resource water tiles are worthless!) and 3.) defines the "tundra start" as the "gold start." Grass is the "growth start," plains are the "production start" and desert is the "faith start." This would give tundra an interesting feel for the player.

of course for balancing purposes, since this applies to all cities and not just the city it's built in, none of the other goodies like petra (no engineer point, no 1culture now and 6culture later, no free trade route and unit)