(6-CP) God of the Stars and Sky - Nerf to Food

[ma_kuh]

Summary:
Remove the scaling food component from this tundra pantheon. Having tall tundra cities is counterintuitive, and the culture for a resource-heavy location is already strong. The capital maintains some of the food component to keep the early game flowing.

Pantheon	Current	Proposed	Reasoning
God of the Stars and Sky	+1 Faith, Food and Culture from Tundra and Snow resources.	+1 Faith, Food and Culture from Tundra and Snow resources. +2 in the Capital/Holy City.	Remove the food from the scaling portion of this pantheon to solidify it as the "exotic yields" option compared to Goddess of the Hunt. Give the capital a little food boost so it can be more competitive, but still tune the pantheon down slightly.

Database Changes

 

[rkkn]

also note that this proposal makes Hunt below par on faith generation
(no longer applies)

 

[ma_kuh]

Do you think there's enough power budget to accommodate an extra +2 faith on the palace? I'm trying to keep yield creep low, but it's true that founding becomes a lot less reliable with this version of Hunt.

EDIT: Okay, going to amend by swapping the Smokehouse gold with adding the faith to Palace as well. God of Protection has +3 faith on palace and +2 from walls, and although Protection is one of the known strong pantheons, it's hard to justify keeping Hunt so low on founding possibility.

 

[dostillevi]

Is God of the Stars and Sky viable for a tundra start without providing a food boost? I used to lean towards this pantheon slightly over goddess of the hunt, but I think with the proposed changes I would take Hunt 4/5 times, or more.

Is there a list of civs eligible to spawn in Tundra? I know the Inuit modded civ does intentionally, and several civs have no specific placement requirements - reviewing those civs that are likely to start in tundra might help determine of Stars and Sky would be desirable for them.

It's also hard for me to place it in the context of playstyles - it doesn't fit well with tall civs who need food for growth. It helps wide civs a bit with culture and science compensating for early city founding, but without extra food or production it'll be challenging to go wide early when that culture matters. Warmongers will almost certainly prefer Hunt. Peaceful wide is not that common in my experience, and I don't think there are many civs that prefer that approach.

Thinking it over more, the science portion might be the most potent part of the kit, especially since it applies outside of tundra/snow.

 

[ma_kuh]

My theory is that the culture from all those deer will help trigger more border expansion, which in turn will trigger your Smokehouse, and that's where you're expecting to receive your food. Maybe we can consider putting an extra +1 food on the Council itself, or doubling the value of the border growth food trigger (by adding it to Council). I don't just want to duplicate God of the Expanse though...

What do you think of these drafts:

A:

• +1 Faith, Food and Culture from Tundra and Snow resources.
• +1 Faith and Food from Council.
• Councils give 5 Science when borders expand, scaling with era.

B:

• +1 Faith, Food and Culture from Tundra and Snow resources.
• +1 Faith from Council.
• Councils give 5 Food and Science when borders expand, scaling with era.

 

[rkkn]

My theory is that the culture from all those deer will help trigger more border expansion, which in turn will trigger your Smokehouse

this means you're expect to have two buildings besides the monument+shrine. Smokehouse and council. ie 4 buildings. which is a tall order early in general, but doubly so for a city that is struggling with food

 

[dostillevi]

Good point regarding the smokehouse, but that means both pantheons still demand smokehouses early (and we'd build them anyway because of the deer). Seems like Stars and Sky would want to get monument, shrine, smokehouse, council, and to a lesser extent granary online ASAP, but fortunately it doesn't need to improve resources to benefit from them and isn't a wonder focused pantheon so that's probably fine.

So some thoughts in general:
-Tundra starts are pretty rare; there are likely only 1-3 civs starting on tundra even on huge maps. The competition for these pantheons will therefore be somewhat low, but it's critical in the current meta for any tundra start to get one of these two pantheons quickly in order to be competitive. That's a real problem if there's a third tundra start - they'll struggle with most other pantheons due to scarce food.
-Hunt is applicable outside of tundra. While unlikely with current map spawn settings, it might be desirable for a non-tundra start. This will be more true if my elephants expansion proposal passes. This will make the odds of a tundra civ getting it even lower.
-Tundra-start civs that are AI controlled still tend to avoid settling in tundra due to poor general resources. Player city recommendations also avoid tundra, even with the right pantheons taken. Could changes to the pantheons, especially Stars and Sky, help the AI choose city locations in tundra? Otherwise the AI treats a tundra start as a handicap.
-I don't generally like the idea that a civ must get one of two pantheons and also found in order to succeed in tundra. It just feels odd that "faith" is what makes tundra livable, but partly this is just the way the game mechanics work. We don't want tundra civs to be underpowered, we don't want maps that exclude tundra, and we don't want tundra terrain to be inherently just as good as far more livable temperate parts of the map. This is just an observation really, not sure it's actionable in a pantheon adjustment.
-With all the above said, I think Stars and Sky, as long as it remains a dedicated tundra pantheon, has to address the core weaknesses of a tundra start without pushing the civ that takes it toward any particular playstyle. I think what this means is that the AI should be able to look at the pantheon benefits and choose to settle a tundra site over choosing to settle a similar non-tundra site. Frankly the current version of it does this reasonably well, although I'm not sure how the AI reads the resource bonuses. It simply makes living in the tundra possible, which means having territory to expand into that no one else really wants.

 

[ma_kuh]

this means you're expect to have two buildings besides the monument+shrine. Smokehouse and council. ie 4 buildings. which is a tall order early in general, but doubly so for a city that is struggling with food

I would make the argument that the pantheon covers your faith and culture needs from Tundra and Snow resources (which need not be improved by the way, similar to Spirit of the Desert), so you in theory should be starting with Council and Smokehouse.

I will grant you that Monument's border growth scaler is too good to pass up, but I feel like if that's getting in the way here, I feel like it's needlessly constricting our design space for cool mechanics.

So some thoughts in general:

It's possible I've overshot with the de-overlapping of the two pantheons. Maybe there needs to be a baseline food component just to make it possible to work the first few resources. I do feel like camps, especially with a relatively high number of deer in Communitas, actually do a lot for adding food and production to Tundra, especially with an early Smokehouse.

Let me think on it, and I'll post an amendment for you all to look at.

 

[ma_kuh]

Okay, for starters I'm going to move the Goddess of the Hunt stuff into its own proposal. It's not really contingent on God of the Stars and Sky changes, and if it passed by itself it would already be 90% of what I'm going for, in terms of making Hunt good for infrastructure and Stars&Sky good for culture.

I'll leave this thread as the discussion for Stars&Sky, since that's where the topic has mainly focused.

Amended:

• Changed the flat bonus: +1 Faith from Council. => +1 Faith and +2 Food in Cities in Tundra or Snow.
• Cut out the Council requirement for the base yields, model it after the food piece of God of the Sea. You get a bare minimum of food to work with, but you aren't just auto-solving the food situation with your pantheon. I think it's better design if Tundra Empires have this unique quality where they are far-reaching in tiles, but not necessarily that populous. Instead they get their value from roaming the polar regions they inhabit, growing their knowledge and living their unique ways.

 

[azum4roll]

This looks way too strong. I'd cut the Faith on city and also the Council part.

 

[adan_eslavo]

If you really want to push into border expansion, then why won't give Border Growth Points somewhere? I would pick cities. You can take either +1 Faith or +2 Food and give BGP instead. It would fit thematically, and compose well with the Councils bonus.

 

[ma_kuh]

Mostly yield bloat is why I didn't add BGPs. That and too much BGP from culture and yields means you might trigger your first 1-2 cheapest tiles before either smokehouse or council are built.

My changes are already reading as a huge buff compared to the current version, which isn't the intent at all. I just wanted to reduce Food and replace it with science. Maybe it's just getting too complicated, it should just be:

• +1 Faith, Food and Culture from Tundra and Snow resources.
• +1 Faith, Science and Culture from Tundra and Snow resources.

Sort of looks really good, but then you still have this food need that you have to solve with something other than a pantheon?

 

[KlHannibal2]

Tundra starts could be awful without the extra food.

 

[rkkn]

The idea is to take a different pantheon (hunt. and there are other food ones too) if you want extra food to shore up your weakness. I think this is a fine idea. The pantheon doesn't necessarily need to shore up a weakness. It can provide a unique strength instead.
Also, science is a "better" yield than food. I would definitely take this pantheon.

 

[ma_kuh]

I'm trying very hard to keep this proposal power-neutral, but if the food can't be removed, and the faith can't be removed, and my entire premise is that Stars and Sky = culture and/or science without infrastructure, I don't see what else can be done. Maybe this pantheon is perfect!

I still would argue that the subtle thing this pantheon allows is for you to go Monument => Smokehouse instead of Monument => Shrine, and for that reason it's interesting to me. It changes your build order, because it's covering both faith and science that you would normally try to rush council and shrine for.

 

[ma_kuh]

Hunt is applicable outside of tundra. While unlikely with current map spawn settings, it might be desirable for a non-tundra start. This will be more true if my elephants expansion proposal passes. This will make the odds of a tundra civ getting it even lower.

I meant to reply to this awhile ago. It's 100% intended that Hunt be cross-location. It breeds competition for the pantheon, and it lets it fix both tundra and jungles (at least in theory). So you're right that having pressure to pick Hunt will exist and be "worse". But it's also important to keep in mind that Hunt and Stars&Sky aren't the only "tundra" pantheons. Expanse and Home are both pretty good generalist pantheons that work just as well in polar regions.

 

[ma_kuh]

So, I'm not sure why I'm suddenly questioning this, but does anyone else have a problem with the God of Stars and Sky, which is basically astrology and constellation mapping, being so focused on "tundra"? Like, I'm not gearing up for a fight about this now or anything, but it's weird, right? Like maybe God of the Expanse should be the "tundra" pantheon or something?

Is it just me?

 

[rkkn]

I think it is a little weird, but only a little. Like a better name would be god of the aurora or something, but that doesn't sound as good.

Anyway, I, at least, am on board with it not giving food.

 

[ma_kuh]

I'm going to amend to Food => Science, and be done with it. I think there's a lot of cool ideas flying around, and a lot of valid arguments for why food should remain, and I'm just going to leave it to the populi to vote yes or no on it.

Just keep it simple.

Amended:

• +1 Faith, Food Culture, and Science from Tundra and Snow resources.
• +1 Faith and +2 Food in Cities on Tundra or Snow***.
• Councils give 5 Science when borders expand, scaling with era.

Updating rationale.

 

[dostillevi]

I think it is a little weird, but only a little. Like a better name would be god of the aurora or something, but that doesn't sound as good.

I think the challenge might be that OP is reading Stars and Sky as being astrology and science related, when in practice the pantheon was not built to be that. I thin the term Stars and Sky represent the long periods of day and night in the polar regions, which feels appropriate to me. I think the science tie-in is a misreading of the name, when really this is a pantheon that is specifically about living in polar regions. Is that good for a pantheon? I don't know, but it's the only method we have right now to make living in tundra a viable option.

Anyway, I, at least, am on board with it not giving food.

Without food, under what circumstances would you take the pantheon?