Are Some Pantheons Insanely OP?

holywar

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I am playing as Arabia on Middle East SC map and by stepping on the faith ruins was able to get the desert folklore pantheon. Understand that my entire empire (12 cities) is 95% desert. I founded first religion (Islam), built mosques and temples in every city, chose pilgrimage belief, and "Glory of God" reformation belief. I proceeded to convert every non-religious civilization and city state and passed Islam as world religion in the World Congress. Now I am producing over 400 faith per turn, and buying great people like candy (in addition to those I produce). I have zero holy sites.

This seems just a tad bit overpowered to me. Desert tiles are not that bad. Desert hills act just like normal hills, we have luxes, plenty of resources, plenty of flood plains and lots of oasises and wheat. My people are not suffering in the desert.

Yet I am still generating enough faith from the desert tiles to dominate the religious aspect of the game. I'm not really complaining, but the only other pantheon that can do that is dance with the aurora. Are these pantheons too powerful compared to the rest?

They sure beat +30% ranged combat strength, that's for sure.
 
Religion is designed as a race where the players that get there first get the best benefits. In that way it kind of makes sense that some beliefs would just be better than others.

Which would be fine if the AI didn't start with Pottery on high difficulties or Great Prophets were on a random counter...
 
Imo there needs to be more Pantheons that give Faith from the environment. Something like +3 Faith from Lakes or +2 Faith from forested Hills or +1 Faith from River tiles would be very nice to have. Take out some of the more useless ones to make space for them. And DotA (heh) should definitely be +1 Faith from ALL Tundra tiles, not only barren ones. It's only good for Hills right now and strictly inferior to DF.
 
Religion is designed as a race where the players that get there first get the best benefits. In that way it kind of makes sense that some beliefs would just be better than others.

Which would be fine if the AI didn't start with Pottery on high difficulties or Great Prophets were on a random counter...

the person that gets there first get first choice not best choice. all the choices should cover different areas yet be balanced in how much benefit they give.
 
Well, some of them will seem overpowered because they are so situational. Of course the Pantheon belief "Desert Folklore" will seem overpowered if the area you've settled is 95% desert. And, as already pointed out, it is a first-come, first-serve basis. The start biases make it so that you should be going after certain pantheons anyway, and in that sense jasper has hit the nail on the head. Denmark may not get the first pic of Pantheon beliefs on a map with Ethiopia and The Celts, but, arguably (again, these are so situational), the best Pantheon belief for them is going to be "Dance of the Aurora" or "Fertility Rights."

I don't think there are any I can pick off the top of my head that are overpowered. When they are working really well, that simply means that they are doing what they were designed to do. It sounds like your situation was a perfect-storm scenario, if you will. I mean, wouldn't you concede that there were a number of things that happened and that you reacted to correctly to get you to the point your at in the first place?
 
Religion is designed as a race where the players that get there first get the best benefits. In that way it kind of makes sense that some beliefs would just be better than others.

I only partially agree with this. The Beliefs don't have to be created equal, but there are a few total losers out there... if I founded a religion with them, I'd be kind of happy to have a better one roll in. Religious Art comes to mind as a truly godawful one. Most of the others are of varying power, but I could see most of them fitting in somewhere.

Which would be fine if the AI didn't start with Pottery on high difficulties or Great Prophets were on a random counter...

Totally agree here. There's nothing worse than sitting on 250+ (or 350+) Faith waiting for your prophet, and seeing all the other beliefs go in that agonizing period where you're over 200.
 
Now to the OP: I do agree that Desert Folklore is by far and away the best of the lot. I've tried both it and its tundra counterpart Dance of the Aurora, and I think the biggest difference is that Desert Folklore applies to your main food tiles (Flood Plains). In the Tundra your best food tiles are Deer, which often come with Forests... so you'll have to give up a permanent +1 Production on that tile to get the +1 Faith. Bare Tundra without fresh water is hardly worth a Citizen and can't even be improved until Guilds, and even THEN there's a real shortage of 2+ Food tiles. 7
 
Totally agree here. There's nothing worse than sitting on 250+ (or 350+) Faith waiting for your prophet, and seeing all the other beliefs go in that agonizing period where you're over 200.

That's a save & reload moment for me right there. I *hate* how prophets spawn on a random turn after you get the necessary faith, so I'll just save & reload until I get the prophet when I'm supposed to: the turn after I hit 200.

What a stupid game mechanic.
 
No, because they're only OP if you can figure out how to put them together properly.

Just because you're better at chess than someone else does not mean your pieces are overpowered, it's just you're better at the game.

OP imo falls on civ's themselves. In CIV III there was some seriously OP'd civs ... CIV (4) also had that problem albeit to a lesser degree.

Civ V (BNW) really balanced things out.
 
That's a save & reload moment for me right there. I *hate* how prophets spawn on a random turn after you get the necessary faith, so I'll just save & reload until I get the prophet when I'm supposed to: the turn after I hit 200.

What a stupid game mechanic.

Agreed. I can never be bothered to reload, though that's out of sheer laziness more than anything. I've had to wait until 280 before!

I don't see what purpose the random counter serves - it adds absolutely nothing to the game but frustration. Prophets should spawn upon reaching 200 faith.
 
Agreed. I can never be bothered to reload, though that's out of sheer laziness more than anything. I've had to wait until 280 before!

I don't see what purpose the random counter serves - it adds absolutely nothing to the game but frustration. Prophets should spawn upon reaching 200 faith.

wow, 280 is insane! I've hit 265 before and i want to punch the display. For me a bit randomness is okay, but there should be a benchmark where the GP is 100% born, say at 240 or so.
 
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