Obviously bad or obviously good pantheon/religious beliefs

[Acken]

Well you'll get culture and happiness with my mod too And a better version of Religious Tolerance !

But let's get back to the topic. I could use some help discussing pantheon in their globality since v2 of the mod will focus on religion beliefs (on top of changing stuff after feedback). So shoot some ideas about a pantheon you think is way too awful and if you have an idea about how you would redisign it while trying to stick with its theme. Here are a starting list of crappy ones

Ancestor Worship +1 Culture from Shrines
Could you a +2 or give another yield
Dance of the Aurora +1 Faith from Tundra tiles without Forest
I'd remove the forest restriction
Faith Healers +30HP healed per turn if adjacent to a Friendly City
No Idea, maybe boost the range
God of Craftsmen +1 Production in Cities with 3+ Population
+2 or +1 of another yield
Goddess of Protection 30% increase in city Ranged Combat Strength
No idea
Religious Settlements +15% faster Border Growth
No idea, maybe simply making it a lot stronger

I think these need love.

 

[Redaxe]

Ok for buffing weak pantheons. Remember though that they have to be comparable to the other Pantheons otherwise they all need changing. Well let's see

Ancestor Worship: + 1 culture from Shrines and +1 faith from monuments (thought being that Monuments could be statues of ancestors? Or does that overlap with Ethiopia too much)

Dance of the Aurora: Removing forest restriction sounds ok although possibly another Desert Folklore craziness which I'm not overfond of.

Faith Healers: No idea lol

God of Craftsmen: + 1 production and +1 gold from cities with a size of 2+

Goddess of Protection: Maybe cities can repair hitpoints faster as well? Or + 1 faith from CityWalls and Castles? +25% production towards CityWalls and Castles?

Religious Settlements: Well maybe +25% border growth and/or +2 faith from cities with a population of 2 or less. This Pantheon clearly is reminiscent of the spread of Orthodox Christianity though medieval Russia where monks would leave larger towns and settle monasteries into the Wilderness and then as a town eventually grew up around the Monastery monks would leave and travel to a more remote area. And this essentially is how Russia was settled

Also a couple others you forgot

Monument to the Gods:
+1 faith from ancient and classical world wonders in the ancient and classical era.

God King: +1 faith from Palace now +2 faith. Also add +1 food.

 

[claudiupb]

Actually Faith Healers is not that bad, it also works for units inside the city, and makes airplanes with air repair heal at least 55 HP per turn. You can station a medic outside the city and almost always your airplanes will be at full health the next turn.

On lower difficulty I pulled off a rush on the other continent in late era with this strategy. Get one city, and either have a prophet with you, or buy one in that city after the resistance period. This can work well on Deity, if you can get a religion (so maybe with Uluru, or something like that)

 

[HeliosDisciple]

Dance of the Aurora omits forests because of the Celts, and Divine Inspiration already gives +2 Faith for World Wonders.

 

[Acken]

Well having a crappy pantheon because some civ could double the bonus is not good design.

 

[Redaxe]

Dance of the Aurora omits forests because of the Celts, and Divine Inspiration already gives +2 Faith for World Wonders.

Well my Pantheon had extra faith from World Wonders extinct once you reach the medieval era. Sorta reminiscent of how the ancient temples of Greece were abandoned in the middle ages.
But anyway monument to the gods is a pretty terrible belief and needs some help.

 

[Mesix]

I guess I would like to see +1 culture for shrines and temples on the Piety opener. That’s a good observation about the happiness in Honor not being free -- so that means the only obvious deficit in Piety (as compared to the other three) is culture.

It's not a deficit, it's a strategic choice. If you want culture or happiness, go for one of the other policy trees. If you want faith and other religious benefits, go for piety. Making all of the policy trees provide similar bonuses doesn't make them balanced, it reduces the designed strategic choices built into social policies. If Piety is lacking, the buffs to fix it ought to be something different than adding culture and happiness. I think that having a UU (like the Landsknechts for Commerce) or a UB which can be purchased with faith would be appropriate (and perhaps both).

 

[HeliosDisciple]

It's not really much of a strategic choice when you can't finish the Piety tree because it gives no culture.

 

[reddishrecue]

I'm guessing the programmers were giving you their culture from the religion and its beliefs and be able to choose culture since you most often can choose the beliefs in religion. After that, that doesn't happen if the culture beliefs are taken, if you were unable to make a religion since there were faith generating pantheons that were taken by others that matched with the natural setting or simply civilization faith increase uniqueness that got others to somehow make more faith than you. That's not an issue because a religion with a good cultural belief could still spread but i still see the demand here and it is culture in the piety social policy.

 

[Kriogen]

Personally I find all about pantheons and religion to be total epic fail and at the same time the most interesting thing in Civ 5.

Epic fail, because its a exclusive, not balanced, even makes no sense, but it also makes no game the same.

Each time I play the game, it's different. Its what makes it fun.

 

[Erebras]

I enjoy the Faith aspect of , and yet I've all but abandoned devoting policies to Piety. If I found a religion, I prefer to go with Papal Primacy (knowing I'm pursuing a Patronage strategy to keep my empire alive) and the ability to purchase buildings with faith, preferably pagodas (for the happiness) but whatever is still available works for me. In a recent game as Indonesia, I founded a religion like this, and before too long there were scores of foreign missionaries running across my lands. I even rescued a Great Prophet in a barbarian camp (no, I did not return it to the original owner). What ended up happening, ultimately, after all this proselytizing and conversions is that EACH of my cities had a mosque, pagoda, cathedral, and monastery (loads of culture, loads of happiness, loads of more faith to purchase industrial great people). Some cities were able to purchase pre-industrial units with faith (not a core belief of the religion I had founded). Some were generating extra faith in the desert flood plains. And every city had three religions being followed, so my candis were generating even more faith than usual.

Faith is seemingly underrated by many on this forum, but the ability to affect city-states with papal-primacy patronage or by simply gifting a city-state units you don't pay a single gold for (using faith, instead, remember?) every three turns or the ability to quick-build five trebuchets in five turns (because Napoleon had been eyeing my lands recently) or acquiring a social policy several turns earlier (because of all the culture being produced by the maintenance-free religious buildings or using faith to purchase a Great Writer's political treatise)....well, I believe you begin to see my point.

 

[Acken]

Faith is not underrated. The critism is toward Piety. If you can get faith and a strong religion nobody will argue you shouldn't.

 

[reddishrecue]

Piety seems like another hot dog social policy that players like to take because they think theyre that good that they dont need to use everyday social policies like liberty and particularly tradition.

 

[Erebras]

As for the pantheon beliefs, certainly one takes into account what your empire is shaping up to be when they are chosen. I found out how powerful Desert Folklore was when I settled on a flood plain as Morocco. If I'm settling near Mt. Generic Holy Mountain, then One With Nature will virtually guarantee an early seat at the Religion Founders Conference Table. I personally find the resource-bonus pantheon beliefs a bit limited in scope, and the Religious Settlements I do tend to pick, since expansion keeps the things that go bump in the night (and steal my workers) at bay.

Since my playstyle tends to have combats with barbarians within four tiles of one of my cities pretty regularly (and I always unlock Honor early on), getting God of War works well, as every victory will net me faith and culture, more if I'm playing a civ that gives additional bonuses (like the Aztecs, for instance).

I find the least favorite pantheon belief is Dance of the Aurora, where undeveloped tundra grants faith. Who would devote a worker to a low-yield tile for the sake of a single faith point, when that worker would be better deployed in at least a nearby water tile to feed the cold and hungry citizenry or helping out in the marketplace to generate a Great Merchant?

 

[reddishrecue]

Dance of aurora could be difficult to use because tundra tiles hardly have good resources. You could get it to work if you can get good bonus resources such as deer or sea resources that can make up for the little food that tundras have. If you could get tundra working with mine hills, a improved deer camp tundra with forest and 2 -3 food bonus resources then you could maybe get faith from tundra hills and production in addition to the faith from deer camp tundras.

 

[Erebras]

Spoiler :

Well, I'm relatively new to the Civ V forums. I've modded Civ III, and already I'm listing changes to tweak the default game (like making Satrap Courts and Water Mills classical-era).

Today I loaded up the Empires of the Smokey Skies scenario, and was taken aback that the Faith aspect was turned OFF. Not modified. Just turned off.

I think Faith and Piety are cornerstones of culture and human civilization, so eliminating it for the sake of a bunch of free-thinking "enlightened" atheist liberals would be short-sighted at best. Even during the French revolution when they wanted to tear down the cathedrals that were such symbols of religious oppression and tyranny, instead they rededicated Notre Dame to Rationalism, preserving its artistic value for many godless generations to come.

Taking a cue from Robespierre's minions of liberty and paragons of secular humanism, I intend to rededicate to civic virtue, nationalism, and social bonds of that sort. Great Prophets will become Great Statesmen, missionaries become diplomats, and inquisitors will be Wisconsin Senators who like to blackball Hollywood actors and falsely accuse people of being communists. It'll work. You'll see.

(This post is offtopic. Please disregard.)

 

[sixty4half]

Well, I'm relatively new to the Civ V forums. I've modded Civ III, and already I'm listing changes to tweak the default game (like making Satrap Courts and Water Mills classical-era).

Today I loaded up the Empires of the Smokey Skies scenario, and was taken aback that the Faith aspect was turned OFF. Not modified. Just turned off.

I think Faith and Piety are cornerstones of culture and human civilization, so eliminating it for the sake of a bunch of free-thinking "enlightened" atheist liberals would be short-sighted at best. Even during the French revolution when they wanted to tear down the cathedrals that were such symbols of religious oppression and tyranny, instead they rededicated Notre Dame to Rationalism, preserving its artistic value for many godless generations to come.

Taking a cue from Robespierre's minions of liberty and paragons of secular humanists, I intend to rededicate to civic virtue, nationalism, and social bonds of that sort. Great Prophets will become Great Statesmen, missionaries become diplomats, and inquisitors will be Wisconsin Senators who like to blackball Hollywood actors and falsely accuse people of being communists. It'll work. You'll see.

But that's just in one scenario. And a short scenario at that. Adding Faith options to a game that's only going to last 40 turns seems like a waste of effort.

Edit: Oh, I wrote that response only reading half your post. It seems to me, after reading all the post, you weren't really worried about Faith in a short scenario, you just needed a soap box to stand on while you promoted your own IRL beliefs instead of actually discussing anything relevant game wise. I'm sorry I wasted your time.

 

[Acken]

Okay. Not sure what that has to do with the thread sounds a bit like a random rant.

 

[Navelgazer]

To me, the "obviously best" is Religious Idols, but you need the terrain for it, as is the case with all of the best ones. The non-terrain ones are pretty specific to situations and civs.

Messenger of the Gods is good for Carthage, since you should be spamming coastal cities with free harbors like mad if you want any benefit from Carthage at all.

Monument to the Gods works for Egypt in doubling down on their strength in the early game, where a lot of those wonders are most worthwhile. (Desert Folklore might still be better, though.)

Goddess of Protection could work for Babylon or Korea, both of which are super-turtle-y Science civs.

God-King is perfect for Venice.

 

[reddishrecue]

The best pantheons could be the ones that make the most faith percity with pantheon in map with required resource for it.
If not, science focused pantheons could be better?
These could be the top 2 resource priorities that most people could aim for per pantheon and map resource adjacent to city tiles. Food also could be pantheon priority just as long as you get enough faith to keep your pantheon and religion going.