Weak (?) pantheons
- Thread starter Edaka
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PurpleMentat
Videographer
These two statements are directly contradictory. In the first, you say you don't like the idea of having a Pantheon that is weak early but powerful late game. In the second, you talk about how you like it.
It's a trade-off. Do you want a Pantheon that provides good immediate benefits, or one that provides great late-game benefits?
I would guess no, religious settlements like the policies and other things probably only works on natural bordergrowth, which the shoshone thing isn't.
I would be game for some rework of Ancestor worship and similar pantheons actually. I mean I pick it now, and it isn't terrible at all. But it could be better balanced, I mean it is close to useless if you're not India (because the +3 culture is rather weak if you get the pantheon later)
I don't see the point of overwriting them, though. I think Edaka's whole thread points to why it SHOULD be there - all the "weak" Pantheons whereby we can't find a reason to pick them would suddenly have purpose in virtue of the fact that long-term effects would be worthwhile. Yes, some of them would not produce a religion - but they'd produce faith or whatever else in the long-term that would be a benefit. At the very least, it would greatly widen my perspective in terms of what I pick.
They exist for the yolo-factor, as well as a payoff for civs with great faith uniques. They are able to pick stronger long-term pantheons and still have a shot at religion. At least as far as I know.
I'm afraid you got me wrong. First off, I'm not sure if I like the idea of pantheons that do nothing early and become strong late at all, but I guess I haven't made up my mind about that yet. What baffles me about this kind of pantheons is that they're almost never able to get you a religion no matter how hard you try, so the long-term doesn't even have a chance to shine. Secondly, I said I liked the secondary effects (one, to be precise) Funak listed - I never said I liked the pantheons that come with them as a whole.
I'm sorry, but I will just repeat myself: all the late-game pantheons right now have extremely weak faith generation, which means that you won't found a religion with them. You will lose them without a chance to reap the late-game benefits.
PurpleMentat
Videographer
You won't found a religion with them alone. You can still found a religion with them. If you find yourself in a position where you don't need fast faith from your pantheon to found a religion, they can be a fantastic boon. Some civs can do this with their unique bonuses, sometimes you get the right map state to do this with any civ, (Religious city-states and Natural Wonders), sometimes you dump a bunch of hammers into Shrines and Temples and get your religion anyway because there are no religion bonus civs in the game.
If all pantheons are high faith with static secondary bonuses, then what pantheons favor Spain, Ethiopia, Maya, Aztec, Byzantium, and Egypt? They all have mechanics that allow them to establish a religion without needing a lot of faith from their Pantheon. Should they put in a position where they simple always found faster, and can't make the choice between early picks of Founder, Follower and Enhancer beliefs vs late-game power? Not every Pantheon is equally useful to everyone (Arabia is to Sacred Path as Hiawatha is to Desert Folklore), this is just one more way they can be unique and interesting choices.
The biggest offenders, in terms of 'low faith,' are God King and Polytheism. Polytheism is clearly intended to be the "I'm never getting a religion" pick to try to make something of your early investment in Faith. If it's not powerful enough, then that needs addressing, but it does not need to be changed so that it can grant a religion. God King needs significant outside faith (Maya or Ethiopia WITH a Religious city-state), but if you can pull it off it's SO worth it. High-risk high-reward choices should exist, they make the game fun for many.
My 'theme' thought, and the reason that I don't think God-King should change. Someone, one ruler in the whole world, decides that they are a god. The boldness of that claim means that they are going to have to work really hard to convince people to follow them towards a true religion which is, ultimately, still centered around them being a god-king.
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Well, I tried to abstract these specific circumstances from this argument, since they are very specific, RNG-ish and unreliable. Very often you will find a wonder, meet and befriend/ally a religious city state or find faith from ancient ruins after you've chosen your pantheon. Most of the time you can't plan these things to happen in advance, so you either go for the risk and get mad at RNGesus for not making it work, or you go for a more safe option (much more often than not) and then maybe grin ironically when you discover Sri Pada a couple of turns later. Yes, risk-and-reward choices can be fun, but in this case it's too big of a gamble and isn't any more fun than it is frustrating.
As for building shrines - everyone can do that, including those who pick the strong faith pantheons, so that's certainly not a way to secure a faith lead. Temples come too late to factor into founding a religion.
Faith/religion oriented civs will naturally have an advantage over others in the religion field. Being among the first to found a pantheon or a religion allows you to pick the most suitable beliefs depending on the circumstances, meaning that you'll be able to pick the strongest beliefs for the moment. You'll also start spreading your religion faster, which is a pretty big advantage. I've said before that founders (and religious civs will almost always found) have pretty big advantages over non-founders already, so I don't think there is a need to further consolidate these advantages by having strong late-game pantheons that only they can afford picking.
PurpleMentat
Videographer
My experiences are different than yours. I frequently find out what the local city-states, natural wonders, and resource majorities are before my pantheon pops. I imagine this is mainly a difference in game speed. After having experienced Quick, Standard, and Epic speeds, I feel that CBP plays best at Epic, and spend the majority of my game time at that speed.
That's also kind of the point of high risk, high reward. In my most recent start, I found Mt Sinai 9 tiles away, sent my first Settler to it, and missed out on the Earth Mother pantheon I needed to consolidate into a really strong religion with Germany by 1 turn. I ended up founding the last religion, using Stone Circles, and had to take my second choice founder and follower beliefs. Dems the breaks - I rolled the dice and crapped out.
Everyone can, but not everyone will. This same game, 150 turns in, my closest neighbors China, Sweden, and the Netherlands did not even have Pantheons. Prioritizing Shrines, researching towards Temples ASAP, can get you a religion sometimes. This is the one I would consider the 'not enough information, too big a gamble' play, as even one or two faith bonus civs will shut you out.
The thing is, the faith-oriented civs are not guaranteed a religion and probably miss a good religion if they take a late-game power pantheon. If I grab Goddess of Wisdom or God King as Ethiopia, I'm mostly relying on 3 per city (2 Stele, 1 Shrines) to get that religion. Throw Celts, Aztecs, someone who gets lucky with a Faith wonder, and someone who gets lucky with Religious city-state quests into the mix, and I'm last to pick or maybe don't pick at all. Risk and reward.
Right now, when picking a pantheon, there is rarely a guaranteed right answer (barring Open Sky, which I feel more and more needs adjusting). What you are asking for is to change Pantheons so there is always a correct answer. If every pantheon can get you a religion, the right answer becomes the ones that don't rely on improvements, and mesh with whatever you are researching earliest. That removes fun in my opinion.
I would much rather see the pantheons examined as a whole and worked on. Maybe some of them need less or zero faith. Maybe some of them need greater secondary bonuses. What they solidly do not need, IMO, is to be homogenized so that any pantheon has equal chance of getting you first religion.
You have some good points, even though our opinions seem to differ for the most part. However, the more I think about it, the more I feel that not everyone pantheon should be able to net you a religion myself. As I've said, though, these patnheons should give powerful enough bonuses for the short time you'll be able to keep them, so I'm glad we seem to agree that the weaker pantheons need adjusting upwards.
By the way, there was a bug in God of the Open Skies that generated way too much culture than it was supposed to. Have you tried it in the latest beta version?
PurpleMentat
Videographer
It's actually the faith generation of Open Skies. If you are in a Plains heavy area, you likely have Plains and Grassland, little Forest, and hills of the same terrain. Your potential Pastures are Horses, Cattle, and Sheep. They are all revealed and improved with a first-tier tech that EVERYONE will want to research early, and they all provide food-neutral high-production, food-positive moderate-production tiles, or food-high low-production tiles. That is, if you have a lot of them, they are probably the first thing you want to improve anyway, behind only Salt. Horse is a Strategic, Cattle and Sheep are bonus luxuries. This means that all three can spawn next to each other, and do so with fair frequency. Outside of capital sites, you rarely see Luxury resources spawn adjacent to each other, but you'll often find bonus resources stuck next to them. The bonus resources that can appear on unforested Plains and Grassland are Wheat, Bison, Cattle, Sheep, and Stone. 2 of the 5 fit our criteria. Horses are also relatively abundant and tend to be found in small amounts per tile. Having 200 horses spread across nearly 100 tiles is not uncommon on a large map. Strategics also happily spawn next to luxury and bonus resources.
All of this is anecdotal, I don't have hard date to back it up. However, the Pasture resources just feel too dense in their areas and too tempting to improve without the Faith. That said, I don't know that reducing the Faith to 1 per Pasture will solve it without making the pantheon too weak. Someone smarter with game design than I might know a solution, but at the moment it seems to be in the same boat as Desert Folklore: if you can make use of it, it's almost certainly your best option.
Side note: I'm trying to test Religious Settlements with Pedro right now, and keep spawning in the desert or at the poles! y4uno Jungle, Pedro?
PurpleMentat
Videographer
Did a test run of Goddess of Love with Ghandi. It's probably in a decent place. With 3 cities, 3 shrines, and Tradition, I took the 3rd religion on a Standard size, Standard pace map, behind Inca and Byzantium. If I had focused harder on Faith I could have made more of it. Goddess of Love provided about half of the 400 Faith I needed. I was halfway through building my first Temple (beelined Writing) when the Prophet popped. Other Pantheons would have gotten me a religion faster, but now I get 5 Golden Age Points per citizen born, scaling with Era. I think you'll want to be a growth bonus civ to take this, but there are plenty of those IIRC.
Back to trying Religious Settlements with a Culture bonus civ.
As in, two faith per three Plains, and 1 Culture per Pasture?
Back to trying Religious Settlements with a Culture bonus civ.
As in, two faith per three Plains, and 1 Culture per Pasture?
PurpleMentat
Videographer
Sounds good. More thematically appropriate, too. Cultures are built around livestock, belief systems on the vast expanse of the open sky over the plains.
Not really a huge fan to be honest, I think open skies is fine the way it is.
PurpleMentat
Videographer
Religious Settlements needs something. It was granting 12 Faith per border expansion. Playing Portugal with a Tradition start, on Epic speed, 3rd Pantheon, 5 cities quickly, Shrine in every city, and a number of Brazilwood Camps (I had South America to myself on Y(n)AEMP), I was 40 faith short of a Religion on Turn 135 Epic speed Emperor. The 20% border growth is neat, but doesn't seem significant enough to outweigh missing a religion under absolutely ideal circumstances for the Pantheon.
Religions were founded by Spain, Mongolia, the Huns, Ottomans, Iroquois, and England. None of the faith-granting natural wonders were claimed. Elizabeth took Faith Healers, Genghis took Sun God, Hiawatha took Sacred Path, Suleiman took God of the Open Sky, Isabella too Earth Mother, and Atilla took Desert Folklore. Spain and India were allied to religious city-states.
Religions were founded by Spain, Mongolia, the Huns, Ottomans, Iroquois, and England. None of the faith-granting natural wonders were claimed. Elizabeth took Faith Healers, Genghis took Sun God, Hiawatha took Sacred Path, Suleiman took God of the Open Sky, Isabella too Earth Mother, and Atilla took Desert Folklore. Spain and India were allied to religious city-states.
It's not possible to - for example - make the number of one's own Pantheon in a city be equal to the number of citizens in that city's majority religion?
I really DO want to emphasize this point because I think it's important and the critical detail we're looking for. Funak's points are good: Pantheons aren't made equal and I have no reason to think they should be. But Edaka's points are good, too: toi many Pantheons are pointless, especially in virtue of the fact that you need a religion in the long-term to use them.
What I REALLY see about the matter is the following: a religion with it's bonuses will indeed help someone to whom you spread it, but those bonuses are in the end always tailored to you and NOT them, and these bonuses can be huge, especially the ones for which others do not receive a benefit. It really IS a balance issue. Whereas in some games, we restart because of a crappy start location that would kill us, in it's own lesser way, a start location that doesn't produce a religion is also a crappy start location, but you just don't know this to be the case until150 turns after the game has started. If there were a way to keep one's own Pantheon alongside that of a foreign religion, there would be enough self-tailoring in that part of your Civ's design such that you can reap meaningful benefits without falling toi far behind from not having a religion. At this point, Religion really is an earned BONUS, instead of being a feature that not merely benefits oneself, but also wipes away another Civ's potential plans of development.
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