[GS] New Pathenons

[Lily_Lancer]

I know Civs whose strength mainly lies on free initial faith to guarantee Goddess of Harvest get strictly nerfed.
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Indonesia dropped from maybe tier 1 or 2 to something in the middle, like tier 4 or 5.

Oh, wait?
They can choose religious settlement to get a free settler very early!

Okay, so they are still tier 2~3.

It seems like Goddess of Festivals and Goddess of Sky is the new way to go for most other Civs. (Don't forget religious settlement, seriously it is the best if you get Pathenon before T30.)

 

[Minou]

Lily I am glad this patch brought you back to the message board. I always enjoyed your posts, especially your scored ranking of all the Civs abilities (a true classic). And, I always liked watching people complain about your rankings and argue in favor of very weak abilities! I hope the (kind of) fixing of pillaging and the elimination of Goddess of the Harvest might encourage you to start posting again.

 

[Ziad]

Time to stare at the pantheon selection screen for a good 10 minutes cause I can't decide.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

It seems like Goddess of Festivals and Goddess of Sky is the new way to go for most other Civs. (Don't forget religious settlement, seriously it is the best if you get Pathenon before T30.)

Well yeah, it doesn't take a "numbers" type player to see that a pantheon that basically says "double the size of your civilization" is probably the best one.

 

[Softly]

Time to stare at the pantheon selection screen for a good 10 minutes cause I can't decide.

This is the true measure of good game design. Surprised I haven't seen anyone on the forums talking about the changes to Divine Spark. On the one hand obviously a huge huge nerf on the campus and theater square front, but with great prophet points now granting faith actually a nice buff to civs who build holy sites.

 

[Ziad]

This is the true measure of good game design. Surprised I haven't seen anyone on the forums talking about the changes to Divine Spark. On the one hand obviously a huge huge nerf on the campus and theater square front, but with great prophet points now granting faith actually a nice buff to civs who build holy sites.

I agree!

Holy Sites are strictly better for all civilizations. Faith is already a really powerful resource. Holy Sites now generate 3 additional faith as baseline once you get a GP (or it maxes out), and since T3 buildings arrive more quickly you can get faith specialists to generate 3 faith each early on (good for religious spread or monumentalism). This will also make it so that Faith is a lot more useful for Great People purchases.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

That said I would have given Goddess of Fire the absolute #1 priority if it had allowed you to throw people into the volcano.

 

[Ziad]

That said I would have given Goddess of Fire the absolute #1 priority if it had allowed you to throw people into the volcano.

Goddess of Fire: +2 faith on Volcanic soil and Geothermal vents. Allows units to walk into volcanoes. Units that walk into volcanoes are killed, but immediately grant 100 faith.

 

[Minou]

Just getting rid of Goddess of the Harvest is amazing (though waaaaaaaaay overdue).

Religious Settlements seems like the new clear best, but nowhere near as game breaking. And, honestly it is fine if one Pantheon is significantly better than the others (but not better than all combine with Harvest) as it can be a reward for an early faith push. The modifications of the others are very nice - for the first time there seems like some actual decision making if the top one is gone. Divine Spark is nerved enough to make it much less easy to take second. A few like Initiation Rights are still pretty bad but overall this is an A+ change. Now, I wonder it the AI will still always take Earth Goddess first or if we will have a chance to actually get it (think I have seen it available in 3 out of 100 games).

My favorite change is actually making Great Works of Writing yield 2c/2t. Fast Cultural Victory was getting pretty boring with Great Writers grossly overpowering other sources of tourism, and this change should up the relative value of Wonders, Artifacts, and Parks. Art and Music still suck in my opinion - Art because it is so difficult to theme (which would be fine if the base value was not so low) and Music because it comes so late and there are STILL no slots for it. I am really looking forward to trying out a China Cultural game and seeing if Wonders can make up for the halving of book tourism under the new patch.

Some of the other changes were a little funny - Renaissance Walls: 300 (was 305), wow!

1 extra production is also not going to lure me into building a Workshop but at least it is a step i the right direction.

It would be nice to at some point increase production so that it has a better value compared to chopping, but I'm happy with this for now. Genuinely excited to play for the first time in a few months.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Zod of Craftsman still seems like a tough one to take unless you already see your iron.

 

[Minou]

I think it gives bonus to Horses too now? All improved strategic resources. Still not the greatest but much better than before.

 

[Phoenix1595]

I’m pleased with the pantheon changes. Things now feel more balanced out amongst several potentially good ones, as opposed to the same 2-3 pantheons being the same choice. I can see having to now critically analyzing the state of my map and game prior to pantheon selection, whereas before it was a beeline to my standard favs.

It will be interesting to see which pantheons the AI will gravitate towards, and whether they dogpile the same ones, like they did with Earth Goddess all of the time...

 

[UWHabs]

The only thing I really don't like about religious settlements is that now, if an AI gets there early, I might start seeing them with 4 or maybe even 5 cities settled before I can even get my 2nd one out. But yeah, at least now there looks to be a solid number of choices that even stuck with 4th place in choices isn't as bad. And with all plantations under the same roof, it's a slight bonus to jungle/plantation-heavy starts, since a culture each is a pretty solid fallback option.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I really like that there is a volcano/geothermal pantheon. But I just realized... a lot of the volcanic soil isn't there for a while, since the volcanoes have to erupt first. So it may not be that strong earlygame.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

If Mali starts completely surrounded by desert, they can get Religious Settlements in 5 turns. Having that extra settler so soon should help with their production malus.

Indonesia, Russia, and to a lesser extent, Rome and Gorgo also get early Pantheons so they will also benefit from that too. Or any other good Pantheon that fits the map.

Khmer and Hungary go great with River Goddess. Khmer would have 3 housing, 2 amenity, and 2 food with their holy site alone. Hungary gets the production bonus to holy sites and their buildings with 2 housing and 2 amenity on top of that.

Canada can go for the Camp Pantheon to make their already good camps even better.

A wonder-hungry China might get use out of the free worker Pantheon.

Edit: fixed Khmer.

 

[Minou]

Yeah, sadly the Volcanic one is great for flavor but really weak especially now that the others have been buffed. Unless the map is very odd you are probably best case working two Geothermal vents for 4fpt in your capital and then maybe getting a couple more volcanic soil tiles later in the game - almost like a worse version of Stone Circles.

I think they could buff this by giving a big bonus when a volcano within your borders erupts. Maybe 100f and 100c, since they are rare.

 

[Ziad]

Yeah Khmer with River Goddess looks hilarious, especially with all the buffs to Holy Sites as well. With all that food you'll be able to generate stupid amounts of faith with specialists as well.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah Khmer with River Goddess looks hilarious, especially with all the buffs to Holy Sites as well. With all that food you'll be able to generate stupid amounts of faith with specialists as well.

River Goddess before I only considered it as the Khmer, but it's good enough now that I might actually think about using it for other civs. If you start in an area with lots of rivers, it could be a sneaky good pantheon for a civ like Egypt or even Poland, or any civ that has an incentive to build holy sites (assuming the terrain lines up right for it). For a civ like Poland or Japan, you could now use it as a pseudo-aqueduct, since 2 housing there plus 2 housing from the granary gives you a pretty solid base to work with. It could even take on a new bonus with Harald, who would normally settle coastal cities and who may be more inclined to get his holy sites next to forests instead of mountains, or for the Inca who want to avoid putting districts mountain-side.

I mean, it's still very situational - I'd need to have a ton of rivers, but if I look at my starting area and see 3+ cities with an obvious holy site/river spot, then those amenities start looking really appealing.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

Another thing about the Khmer taking that Pantheon: it's a breeze to get to 10 housing. 5 from rivers, 2 from Pantheon, 1 from leader ability, and an additional 2 from aqueducts which you'll be building anyways. From there you can get a lot of the policy cards that give you bonuses to 10 pop cities.

 

[_hero_]

I would say the overall pantheon balance is far closer than it was before. Religious Settlements is obviously amazing, but it doesn't feel awful if you miss out on it.

Earth Goddess really seems like mostly an Inca pantheon now as they can get +2 faith on every mountain tile that no other civ will be able to even use. Obviously, if you get Eiffel Tower this just becomes an ungodly amount of faith in the late game but who cares about late game anyway?

Goddess of the Hunt can be really good with a camp heavy start. I could see Canada and Cree both loving this pantheon.