Going for Gold: Pantheons

[Workerspam]

Not sure if this has been brought up before, but God of the Sea seems rather difficult to found with.

This is brought up every 4-5 months.There's a group who want to change it (usually by adding more/earlier faith as you suggest) because they struggle to found with it and there's another group that thinks it's fine as is. Crazy G can probably cut and paste his reply from the last time; he sums up the strengths quite nicely.

The big one that I think always gets overlooked is your capital can build most of the fishing boats for your secondary tiles. If you have to settle the opposite coast you can buy a fishing boat or two to jump start your secondary fishing boat factory. Your secondary cities will start with 3 food and one or two excellent tiles to work. You sacrifice building some useful early buildings but most of the time you go GotS it's due to a sea based monopoly resource, so you're gaining science, faith, culture, and/or production on each fishing boat.

I think the folk who struggle with GotS do so because they try to use their standard opening with GotS squeezed in. GotS changes my opening; I spam settlers and fishing boats with just enough military to protect myself. This gives my proto-empire a very strong base and I can then quickly catch up on all the things I delayed, whether buildings for a strong infrastructure or military for a conquering spree.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

Does the Worker build bonus work on Work Boats?

 

[Galbias]

Speaking of which, aside from making the Faith bonus on sea resources instead of fishing boats, having God of the Sea give a Production bonus to Work Boats might be a way to give it some extra appeal without affecting much past the early game. It always looked a little iffy to me due to the Faith bonus being dependent on a late Ancient improvement that you have to build a new unit for every time (and then again if it gets pillaged) but I've never really had a good situation for it so idk.

 

[CrazyG]

Does the Worker build bonus work on Work Boats?

Do you mean progress's +25% production?

I don't know, but it should in my opinion.

 

[Grabbl]

Do you mean progress's +25% production?

I don't know, but it should in my opinion.

I'm quite sure it does.

 

[Stalker0]

GotS doesn’t need more appeal, it’s a solid pantheon in the right conditions.

 

[tu_79]

GotS doesn’t need more appeal, it’s a solid pantheon in the right conditions.

Yes. Not using Communitas map script.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

Yes. Not using Communitas map script.

Communitas map has very little Fish.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

There is one thing that makes me very very sad:

There is no hill pantheon.

Every other terrain feature is represented, even the fricking marsh, but no love for poor hills.

 

[pineappledan]

Goddess of lumps and humps.

1 faith for every 2 unworked hill tiles within 3 tiles of the city (you can look but you can’t touch, cause if you touch were gonna start some drama)

 

[Stalker0]

There is one thing that makes me very very sad:

There is no hill pantheon.

Every other terrain feature is represented, even the fricking marsh, but no love for poor hills.

Because hills are awesome?

 

[Mad Madigan]

Yeah, I have to reiterate my past thoughts that GotS is doing just fine right now. It's a niche Pantheon, but it's really great in that niche as long as you change up your early build strategy to complement it. It's a shame that Communitas is light on the fishies, but editing map scripts is out of the scope of VP. I've given thought to working on a "Communitas VP Edition" modmod that tweaks it for optimal use with VP, but frankly I don't think it really needs much modification.

As for a hill-based Pantheon: Earth Mother and Goddess of Nature fill that niche. If you start in a "hilly" biome you are more likely to have mine/quarry luxuries, and/or enough mountains around to make either work.

 

[tu_79]

I've given thought to working on a "Communitas VP Edition" modmod that tweaks it for optimal use with VP, but frankly I don't think it really needs much modification.

I was told to use Really Advance Settings and gift a bunch of fishes to the map in the options.

 

[Galbias]

This might be just an isolated instance, but I tried Goddess of Fertility on 10/10 and had an absolutely terrible early game and went below -10 happiness for awhile on only four cities (Byzantines, Progress). Anyone else had anything similar happen?

I guess that might just be the niche of the pantheon with the AI growth bonuses removed, it's only worth choosing if you have a way to deal with the extra unhappiness caused by the growth somehow.

 

[Owlbebach]

This might be just an isolated instance, but I tried Goddess of Fertility on 10/10 and had an absolutely terrible early game and went below -10 happiness for awhile on only four cities (Byzantines, Progress). Anyone else had anything similar happen?

I guess that might just be the niche of the pantheon with the AI growth bonuses removed, it's only worth choosing if you have a way to deal with the extra unhappiness caused by the growth somehow.

How does it depend on AI growth bonuses?

 

[CppMaster]

This might be just an isolated instance, but I tried Goddess of Fertility on 10/10 and had an absolutely terrible early game and went below -10 happiness for awhile on only four cities (Byzantines, Progress). Anyone else had anything similar happen?

I guess it's expected to have less happiness if you choose a pantheon that gives food (more citizens means more unhappiness from all needs) instead of a pantheon that gives other yield (less unhappiness from a need). What is the happiness breakdown in your empire?

 

[Galbias]

How does it depend on AI growth bonuses?

Growth bonuses means that there's more population in AI cities, so the median yield per citizen is lower. With the growth bonuses reduced but the other bonuses increased as of 10/10, the median yield per citizen is going to be higher, which means more unhappiness. This just compounds with the food and growth bonuses from Fertility to send you into unhappiness overdrive.

I guess it's expected to have less happiness if you choose a pantheon that gives food (more citizens means more unhappiness from all needs) instead of a pantheon that gives other yield (less unhappiness from a need). What is the happiness breakdown in your empire?

I didn't take screenshots but it was a little bit of everything (though not much Distress), at a couple points I had secondary cities with 5-7 population generating unhappiness for every single citizen. I did decide to reload from my pantheon choice and pick something else (Protection) and avoided any serious unhappiness problems so it definitely had to do with Fertility.

I wanted to bring it up to see if anyone else had any games with the pantheon on 10/10, negative or otherwise. To me it seems like a belief that might be very difficult for a human player to make work in its current state (it did poorly for me early game, and it's not a strong belief for founding unless you avoid rivers so that limits its appeal a lot), but maybe I'm missing something.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Fertility is one of my favourite pantheons! If I can found with it (or if it's spread to me), I'm a very happy camper because that means that I'll have bigger cities than usual and it'll be easier for me to keep up with the AI. I do, however, have to limit growth in the early stages of the game with this pantheon, but it pays off in buttloads throughout the whole game.

 

[Owlbebach]

Growth bonuses means that there's more population in AI cities, so the median yield per citizen is lower. With the growth bonuses reduced but the other bonuses increased as of 10/10, the median yield per citizen is going to be higher, which means more unhappiness. This just compounds with the food and growth bonuses from Fertility to send you into unhappiness overdrive.

I see the point but it seems like thi sshould not be an issue. After all you can simply trade that food for more production - simply work couple of hills instead of farms

 

[tu_79]

I see the point but it seems like thi sshould not be an issue. After all you can simply trade that food for more production - simply work couple of hills instead of farms

Exactly what I think. Extra growth can be used for working on fewer food tiles.