Let's test some Pantheons!
- Thread starter Gidoza
- Start date
Okay, after testing a bit more, I think I am in agreement with Funak with something (although a present bug with the negative Culture for Garrisons in the Authority Tree is skewing some of the numbers).
The God of the Expanse is awesomely powerful in Tradition and makes for a good if not guaranteed chance at a Religion - I suppose the payoff there is whether you need all the extra tiles when Tradition is already giving plenty.
On the other hand, God of the Expanse is pretty underwhelming with the other trees, and I have a hard time getting past 250 Faith in those cases before all Religions are founded, unless using some Civ with good natural expansion. I suppose there's nothing wrong with a Pantheon favoring certain Civs, though really one would think Pantheons should be about surroundings, and not about the Civ, which is where I think the difficulty is.
In any case, it makes for a Pantheon with a decent long-term bonus of Faith, where its primary bonus fades out gradually in usefulness, which seems OK, I guess. Blends well with the Authority bonus for taking tiles.
Secondly, regarding change to God of Protection - still seems super artificial with Faith generation only coming from Barracks/Walls. I mean, who constructs their Civ based on acquisition of fast Barracks and Walls? It just doesn't make sense. It would make sense if you're being assaulted early, need to turtle, and thus use Garrisons, with Walls as backup - I'm thinking +3 Faith from a Garrison, and +1 Culture for all defensive structures/wonders makes more sense in terms of theme here.
The God of the Expanse is awesomely powerful in Tradition and makes for a good if not guaranteed chance at a Religion - I suppose the payoff there is whether you need all the extra tiles when Tradition is already giving plenty.
On the other hand, God of the Expanse is pretty underwhelming with the other trees, and I have a hard time getting past 250 Faith in those cases before all Religions are founded, unless using some Civ with good natural expansion. I suppose there's nothing wrong with a Pantheon favoring certain Civs, though really one would think Pantheons should be about surroundings, and not about the Civ, which is where I think the difficulty is.
In any case, it makes for a Pantheon with a decent long-term bonus of Faith, where its primary bonus fades out gradually in usefulness, which seems OK, I guess. Blends well with the Authority bonus for taking tiles.
Secondly, regarding change to God of Protection - still seems super artificial with Faith generation only coming from Barracks/Walls. I mean, who constructs their Civ based on acquisition of fast Barracks and Walls? It just doesn't make sense. It would make sense if you're being assaulted early, need to turtle, and thus use Garrisons, with Walls as backup - I'm thinking +3 Faith from a Garrison, and +1 Culture for all defensive structures/wonders makes more sense in terms of theme here.
Yields from garrisons would be new code. Most pantheons are centered around buildings with an extra yield. Walls + Barraccks = protection (biggest crime reducers in early game).
G
OK, no new code, then, but still...
I agree with you that most Pantheons are centred around buildings with an extra yield - but that extra yield always comes apart from the primary Faith generation, which is generally population or improvements. Apart from Goddess of Fertility - which buffs a building you START with - and Monument to the Gods - which requires Wonders, and the bonus is awesome - none of the other Pantheons depend for their Faith generation on a particular building.
In this particular scenario, both the buildings in question take at least a couple techs to research, and not necessarily techs that are intuitive starting points, besides the fact that if you were heading for those techs, it would imply a different Pantheon entirely on account of taking that path. The bonus that the Barracks/Walls are offering is going to need to be a heck of alot more impressive to justify such an odd decision.
Even with the huge Faith buff, I find it difficult to get a Religion with God of War without some external source of Faith (which usually implies not even using Authority). In any case, the Healing bonus is just awesome for so many reasons, and the long-term Faith generation is something to be reckoned with.
Der_Zorn_gottes
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I forced the plantation one (springtime?) for a couple of games.
In my best run, I had three plantation luxes (even at flat terrain) at my capitol, and lots of them nearby. I beelined for plantations, took Tradition for court chapel, and just barely got one of the last religions.
I really want to like this pantheon, but it seems that as soon as the resources are on a wooded tile, you have no chance to found.
I think the faith from plantations should be increased to three, to make up for the time and sometimes suboptimal research order you need to get them online.
In my best run, I had three plantation luxes (even at flat terrain) at my capitol, and lots of them nearby. I beelined for plantations, took Tradition for court chapel, and just barely got one of the last religions.
I really want to like this pantheon, but it seems that as soon as the resources are on a wooded tile, you have no chance to found.
I think the faith from plantations should be increased to three, to make up for the time and sometimes suboptimal research order you need to get them online.
Der_Zorn_gottes
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tried god of war. Despite raging barbarians and attacking three civs in the ancient age, i didn`t even come close to found.
supracseduch
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What other resources can you improve with a farm, aside from wheat? Sun God could use a slight rework.
Edit: Nevermind, it's fine as it is.
Edit: Nevermind, it's fine as it is.
TheUnholyPotato
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Tried God of War on multiple difficulties (King-Immortal) and in Multiplayer (only 5 players on small, so theoretically better odds for a religion). Never scored a religion.
Gazebo, any possible alternatives or additions to Faith on kill? Faith per unit owned? Scaling with Era (1/era)?
While you're at it, could you remove the era-scaling of God of the Expanse? As people have mentioned before it gets pretty ridiculous later on (and is still really strong early on)
TheUnholyPotato
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As an alternative, could you remove the scaling, and make it a flat lump? Conflicts will be larger as eras go on, innately scaling the belief, and 10-20 instances of 10-20 faith is not enough to beat powerhouses like Goddess of Renewal, Goddess of Fertility, etc.
To keep it competitive with more "consistent" pantheons, it'll need to be flat quantities of like 20-40 (or even higher). Unless it's restricted to raging barbs Large+ maps only. Killing 30+ units before the rest of the regular yield pantheons get their acts together is not a reasonable goal, in my opinion.
It'd require a rewrite of the yield from kills code to do that. Blegh. I'd rather just keep buffing it.
G
If you don't want to keep buffing the percentage converter you could let the belief add some flat faith per turn in the capital as well. I personally don't think a belief necessarily needs to lead to a religion every time but this pantheon doesn't really give you that fantastic of a long-term effect either.
TheUnholyPotato
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Well, it needs to be an enormous yield buff, then. On the order of 300-500%.
We can't do math to determine what it will accomplish, but we can figure out what it needs to accomplish.
Let's assume that it's competing with the aforementioned high-power early faith-gen pantheons I described.
Standard speed requires, what, 400 faith for a prophet?
For parity, let's assume 1 city on found, 2 by 10 turns, and 3 by 15 turns. Never expanding beyond that.
Renewal: Being conservative, and assuming some forest bias/luck (not a totally useless pick on all desert/grassland/whatever). 3f/3c per city, averaging out (maybe some with 5, some with 2, etc.)?
Turns to prophet: ~50 turns. 90 faith by turn 15; another 34.4 turns required. This decreases as Herbalists are built (high priority) or additional cities are settled. Also receives 3 culture/city.
Fertility: Being slightly generous, and assuming Shrine + Well on found. Also assume that each city gets 1 building 5 turns after its founding (in reality, by the time a patheon is founded, I try to have a couple of cities down and working on improving themselves, but I'm trying to keep it simple).
Time to prophet: ~62 turns. 70 faith at turn 20, when the third city completes its single building. It then requires another 41.25 turns to hit a religion.
Also gets bonus food and growth in all cities.
War: Cities, infrastructure, and yields are irrelevant. Must kill 200 CS of units before [Civ#/2] civs get their religions. At 200% CS, this means:
- 25 Warriors/Brutes
- 28 Archers
- 18 Spearmen/Handaxes
- 13 Horsemen
- 14 Swordsmen
In reality, it'll be some combination thereof. But given that early fights will require a lot of trekking around with speed 2 units, hitting this goal will be extremely challenging on anything other than Raging Barbs/Large-Huge/Epic-Marathon. To be balanced against other pantheons, the belief needs to scale inversely with game speed, as the flat yields become more powerful, while it loses time to score its individual points.
On top of this, the healing bonus, while cool, isn't nearly as powerful in the early game as the growth or culture bonuses offered by the other two pantheons.
It also scales worse than many of the bonuses (Fertility is probably the best one, scaling-wise), unless you're taking a VERY aggressive warmongering approach. Unfortunately, the scenarios in which the heal bonus will be beneficial in the late game are also hurt by the lower happiness inflation relative to Vanilla, meaning that lighting conquest will often lead to rebellions and bankruptcy, unless one can conquer the world in a handful of turns.
This is a strange position to hold. In my opinion, "has no (read: extremely minimal) chance of getting a religion" is synonymous with "useless" when it comes to Pantheons. It's like taking a bet that's guaranteed not to pay off, when there are other bets available.
Math! I was aiming for 300% conversion on CS. Pantheons should rarely gain a religion in a vacuum, so you'll have at least +1-2 faith from shrines. So, let's say you have 100 turns and +1 faith from shrines, leaving 100 faith from kills. That's half your values above, and even less at 300%.
G
I don't understand why I need to bring this up every time. But there are certain civs that can usually get a religion anyways, they can pick pantheons with worse faith generation and stronger lategame effects. There is also a wonder that pretty much guarantees a religion, meaning you have more wiggle-room when it comes to pantheons, and you're able to pick something up that's stronger lategame but which by itself has no chance of grabbing a religion, like God-king or Goddess of Fertility/Love.
I'm also not a fan of your Goddess of renewal example, as Goddess of renewal either completely drops off during the midgame or forces you to run sub-optimal cities with lumbermills instead of farms. It is an example of a pantheon that is completely frontloaded and does not have any real lasting benefit.
Also if you're planning on averaging out on 3 c/f per city, you have to either start in the rainforest, or settle all of your cities suboptimal. I also see no way you could possibly settle two cities by turn 10 and even less so 3 cities by turn 15. How are you supposed to build a settler, move it to a location and then settle it in 5 turns, that's madness.
TheUnholyPotato
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Some civilizations (Maya, Celts - though they don't count for this discussion, definitionally Byzantium, India, possibly Ethiopia, etc.) will absolutely have better odds of getting a religion. I do not personally believe in balancing pantheons entirely around this. If you disagree, that is fine.
As you said, that doesn't
The point of my example was to provide a mathematically simple explanation of how weak God of War truly is.
For Goddess of Renewal, let's get more explicit.
The player starts Shrine, Scout, Worker, Settler, likely hitting 4-5 population (depending on bonus resources) before producing the Settler. This is somewhat generous, assuming relatively low barbarian pressure, but not truly unfair.
Normal requires 30 faith for a Panetheon. Settling 1 city in that period is almost a guarantee with the moderate production provided by a forest biome.
A 3-tile radius is workable 35 tiles, meaning that approximately 4 in 10 tiles need to be forested (15/35=42%) to get 5 f/c per turn from the Pantheon. This is almost guaranteed with a forest bias, and quite doable with even a moderately forested start Though not always centralized, it is likely that you can settle another city to receive 3-5 culture.
In doing so, you are likely to be the Faith and Culture leader for at least a good 50 turns, as you have a passive bonus which can even outweigh the (faith only) bonus provided by improvement beliefs. This is further boosted by the fact that your building boosts Faith, not Culture, Production, etc.
Adding to this, Herbalist'd forests and jungles are strictly superior to Farms unless you can produce proper pods (3) or megafarm sprawls until Civil Service. After that point, I agree that Farms (particularly with Imperialism, Freedom, and/or Cathedrals) become superior.
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