Pantheon Adjustment Brainstorm

[Stalker0]

I am considering some proposals to adjust a few of the pantheons, and so I'll post my thoughts here for initial adjustment and tweaking based on feedback. My goal is to nerf a few top performing pantheons and add a little spice to some of the lowest performing ones.

Ancestor Worship - Remove the +1 faith per 5 pop.
Rationale: AW is one of the most rock solid pantheons, it is just good no matter the circumstance. Removing the extra faith means it is now a solid baseline, a good pantheon that always performs well but won't ever be a major faith scaler, just a solid good to have.

God of Commerce - Increase Great Merchant points to +3.
Rationale: Commerce is relatively ok pantheon but there is nothing particularly sexy about it. I personally would love to give it an extra TR slot but i just can't think of how to balance that, there are too many civs that would consider that a no-brainer. Look at the GPP points, the problem is Beauty and Wisdom both do this....and do it better. By making this +3, we at least give commerce a new niche at being the "Fastest" to generate their GP through the extra bonus.

God of Craftsman - Capital gains a free stone works
Rationale: Craftsman has its niche but its a very brittle pantheon. You have to have a near laser focus to make it work, and if you actually do that focus and find out the pantheon was taken...your really screwed. With this change it gives the capital both a little bit of hammer refund and gets teh faith moving just a bit quicker, as that is one of craftsmen's biggest pain points.

God of the Expanse - Replace +25% border growth with "Gain +2 Border Growth Points in each city".
Rationale: Its not that the pantheon is super bad, but its always questionable to go this over other pantheons that give hammers and faith. With this change, it front-loads the pantheon more. Now you actually can expand your borders before your monument (which is a nice niche that actually puts border growth more front and center for the pantheon). It gets borders going quicker, ensure you get that faith when you actually need it. The tradeoff is borders won't expand as fast in the late game, but getting an earlier push will overall make this a stronger pantheon without scaling it out of control.

God of the Sea - Holding
Rationale: Currently there is a proposal to remove work boats in favor of workers doing sea resources. If this passes it will be a soft nerf to sea already, so I'm waiting to see. I think with a soft nerf Sea will be just fine.

God of the Stars and Skies - Remove "+1 culture from tundra and snow resources". Add "+1 culture from improved tundra and snow resources".
Rationale: A klondike start with Stars and Skies is frankly the best terrain in the game. You have everything you need, lots of deer pumping you up with food AND culture, founding is practically a gimme, and you don't have to lift a finger...which to me is the problem. I don't mind that you get these bonuses, but they come online too quickly. By forcing the culture to come online only with improved resources, it slows down the curve just a bit, making you actually work for this pantheon's power.

God of the Sun - Completely changed to "Farms gain +1 faith. Farms on resources gain +3 food."
Rationale: Sun is unfortunately just a bad pantheon. If you go granary first, you get no culture. If you go granary 2nd or 3rd, your not really getting any faith benefit, making it a very hard pantheon to found with. And lastly, food just isn't all that needed past the early game. With this change we shift Sun into a faith heavy pantheon, but at the cost of working farms (which is often non-optimal).

God of War - Add "Gain +2 supply"
Rationale: With the new barb changes, War might actually be respectable now. This little boost just helps you actually build the units you want to make this pantheon work.

Goddess of Festivals - Gain one copy of a luxury not found on the map (similar to the Great Admiral ability).
Rationale: Festivals has good yields but can be very difficulty to work with, as you need to not only have a good variety of resources, but you need a number of early trade partners and/or very easy to work resources to get the bonuses online quickly enough to work. This change gives you a little happiness (which only purity has so its fairly unique) and gets your bonuses going a bit sooner.

Goddess of Protection - Reduce healing from +10 to +5. Change bonus to +3 faith and +2 culture from Palace and Walls.
Rationale: Protection has a really good bonus in its healing (which can be abused in some cases), but its yields are too spread out to be generally useful. Only very niche circumstances or civ like Japan can leverage the bonuses quickly enough to make it effectively. In this change, we weaken the healing but make it where building Walls is now a meaty culture and faith option (similar to councils for Ancestor Worship) which now allows a player to build walls as their first building without slowing your culture progress down. We do trade some longer term faith scaling but we get the faith up quicker, making this a more flexible pantheon that is now usable by more civs.

Goddess of Springtime - Add "worker speed +25% when building plantations"
Rationale: Plantations are a tough improvement to have early bonuses on, as they can take quite a long time to make operational, right when that faith clock is ticking. The cheaper herbalist does give a little back to this pantheon, but it needs just a touch more. By speeding up plantations creation, we get those bonuses online quicker, and provide a little more uniqueness to this pantheon.

 

[balparmak]

I like pretty much all suggestions, especially God of War&Protection. Protection has always felt like by far the better pantheon for warring

 

[Legen]

The proposed change to Goddess of Protection makes it look broken for India, who gets a pantheon on turn 1. That's a lot of valuable yields to the palace on a pantheon that doesn't have a terrain or improvement requirement, I can see them picking it every time and consistently snowball with it. I don't think it is a good idea.

My experience with Goddess of Protection is that its main issue is both Barracks and Walls having a 1 gold maintenance cost; you need to also go for Markets in order to not go bankrupt with this pantheon. In other words, the pantheon requires three expensive Ancient Era techs in practice, this is what actually slows it down. Protection also adding +1 gold to both Barracks and Walls would be enough to make it practical, no other change required.

On God of War, why not add either a combat bonus vs barbarians, or a bonus heal when killing a military unit? What slows down your hunt isn't so much supply, but having to wait your melee units heal after combat. Both suggestions mitigate this issue.

On Craftsman and Festivals, can they actually get a free building/luxury? If the matter is about yields coming too late, you can buff the yields they give to the palace. Craftsman has an improvement requirement, so India can't get away with picking it on turn 1 unconditionally, and Festivals currently has weak yields on the palace, with room for more without being broken in India's hands.

Overall agree on the rest of the pantheon proposals.

 

[Stalker0]

The proposed change to Goddess of Protection makes it look broken for India, who gets a pantheon on turn 1. That's a lot of valuable yields to the palace on a pantheon that doesn't have a terrain or improvement requirement, I can see them picking it every time and consistently snowball with it. I don't think it is a good idea.

A good point. Lets take a look at India specifically. So what good pantheons for India right now?

• Ancestor Worship: Its not as good for India as it for other civs, but still decent.
• Craftsman: The bonus starts a bit earlier than AW but only have that strong quarry land AW quickly outscales this one. Would the free stoneworks idea get this to the short list...uh I think the terrain would have to be really quarry heavy to make the cut compared to the power scaling of some other pantheons like god-king for india.
• Expanse: At the end of the day I would rather take Tutelary for a hammer heavy pantheon that helps me start the party.
• Stars and Sky: On a tundra start its probably the best you could take as India, giving you faster faith, food, and culture than almost anything else. If we went with my change it would still have fast faith but with the culture slow down would definately not be as optimum for India.
• God-King: India is commonly noted as one of the best for God-King. With their high pressure and large population, they can get massive bonuses off this, but it does take a bit of time to ramp up.
• Protection: Not that great for India at the moment, but with an extra +1 faith and +1 culture (so 2 culture off the bat), yep that's pretty good.
• Renewal: On a heavy forest/jungle start, always an option
• Tutelary: Capable of giving India a very fast production start, as its trivial to get to 3 pop in your capital early game.

So does the new protection concept blow the others away....I don't think so. Now is it really good, absolutely, I would say it makes the Indian short list of good pantheons to take. But would I take it over renewal if I had a heavy forest start...no getting both culture AND science from my terrain is too good. Would I take it over God-King....maybe if I was going super tall and not fealty, but off a slightly wider fealty play God-King scales REALLY well. I would probably take it over AW, a sacrifice a bit of science but gain slightly better faith, and of course the healing will be useful all game. Would I take it over stars and skies in the klondike....no way, even with the slower culture those free yields on a klondike scale very very quickly.

So my sense is India with the new protection would be a great choice, but not an automatic one. I think India still has several competitive options here.

 

[XSamatan]

it front-loads the pantheon more

Any change of pantheons in this direction will get my vote, IMHO that is all a pantheon should do, later boni are already covered by religions.

Regards
XSamatan

 

[Legen]

The main issue with your proposal is simply the extra yields on the palace. It is too much of such high priority yields too early, and it isn't counteracted by a proper disadvantage somewhere else. What currently keeps Goddess of Protection from being used by India (and most civs) is that building Barracks and Walls for the pantheon's yields is inefficient in terms of production and incur maintenance costs; unless your civ has incentives to focus on those buildings, you're taking this pantheon for the healing, sacrificing short term yields. Which is ok, not every pantheon needs to be ideal for founding, as long as it provides something strong elsewhere. Your suggestion flips all of that and then puts extra yields on the palace, which India can exploit to an extreme.

The thing about India is that the civ has to pick a pantheon long before the civ can have proper information of the map. Not only your starting units haven't had time to explore, you also don't have any tech unlock to reveal resources. Moreover, the civ's starting bias is near rivers, for which the only pantheon that targets it is Goddess of Purity. Yet, river starts are not actually guaranteed to provide the abundance of lakes and marshes that the pantheon needs to shine. As such, terrain or improvement based pantheons carry a lot of uncertainty on whether they will actually scale well, or at all. Pantheons that do not rely on either are naturally preferable for India because of that, such as Ancestral Worship. Here, Craftsman, Renewal and many others suffer from this point for India, Protection doesn't.

I think there are better ways to address it. For instance:

• Alternative 1: "+10 HP healed per turn in friendly territory. +2 Faith and +2 Culture from Walls and Barracks, +2 Faith from Palace." - Still costly due to maintenance costs, but at least worth considering over Monuments and Shrines.
• Alternative 2: "+10 HP healed per turn in friendly territory. +3 Faith and +2 Culture from Walls and Barracks." - No palace, both buildings are worth prioritizing over Monuments and Shrines (like Japan currently does), but comes with a hefty tech requirement (Military Strategy, Construction, plus Trade for Markets to not go bankrupt).
• Alternative 3: "+10 HP healed per turn in friendly territory. +2 Faith and +1 Culture from Palace. +2 Faith, +1 Culture and +1 Gold from Walls and Barracks." - Small buff that alleviates the need for researching Trade. While still inefficient in terms of yields vs production, it can work for civs with an abundance of production.

 

[CrazyG]

Overall I like the changes proposed, but to be honest I feel like only about 8 pantheons actually 'exist' in the sense that a select few are just so much stronger than the others, no matter what terrain you have or strategy you pursue. That doesn't mean you can't win/ have fun with the bad picks but they are just so inferior.

For example, God of Commerce is really bad (and is still bad with +1 Great Merchant point). Even if you play as progress and will have city connections built immediately to all cities, something like ancestor worship (which requires no terrain or planning to use) is just much stronger.

I'd rather nerf ancestor worship (and I'd nerf it more than Stalker's proposal does) than buff Goddess of protection to its status. I'd say that ancestor is the top choice available on like 70% of all starts, and in the other 30% its easily still a top 5 pick. And we shouldn't buff everythign else to this level, I would strongly oppose protection giving any more culture (you shouldn't get 4 culture per city from a pantheon, barring crazy lucky terrain, because its game warping).

 

[Laz0r]

Ancestor worship should just be nerfed to 1 culture and 2 faith and keep the scaler at 5. 2 culture 2 faith and 1 science on a single 97 production tier building makes the pantheon way above every other pantheon in the game besides certain terrain dependent ones. also tutelary should be nerfed in some way, probably one less production because as it stands it's basically a no-investment better god of commerce

 

[InkAxis]

Goddess of Springtime - Add "worker speed +25% when building plantations

This bonus seems too oddly specific. I think something like a free worker or maybe something like +X Food every time you chop jungle would be cleaner.

 

[Stalker0]

Ancestor worship should just be nerfed to 1 culture and 2 faith and keep the scaler at 5.

So lets dig in a little bit into Ancestor Worship, why its so good, and why its so easy to nerf it into oblivion.

The standard build order for a new city is Monument followed by Shrine. This gives you the foundational culture you need (and compensates for the culture loss you are taking the second that new city is founded), the shrine then gives you the needed faith to found a religion. A pantheon's job is to augment these fundamental yields with additional ones.

What makes AW good is the +2 culture, because it means the council is now equivalent to a monument. My build order changes to Council -> Shrine -> Monument. The council ensures I am still on the culture train, getting the amount of culture I am expecting. However, now I have +2 faith right off the bat (not to mention the extra science). Though the total amount of faith AW creates is actually not that impressive (several pantheons can easily outscale it in faith), the fact that the faith comes so early in a new city's life is what allows it to be a good founder. So you have a belief that is a good founder, ultimately provides an extra +2 culture, gets you even faster science as well, and is very flexible and works with pretty much any start.

Ok so what if we made the council +1 faith, +2 culture? The council would still be our monument replacement, the build order doesn't change. The founder potential is definately weakened, but probably still intact. You might need to push your expansion a little harder, rush those councils a little quicker, etc, but it would likely work...maybe. It can be surprising how much faith you are giving up with such a small change.

So how about making the council +2 faith, +1 culture? Now things get tricky. If I go Council -> Shrine -> Monument, I am now behind in culture compared to a monument first opener, by a good bit. That's problematic, culture is king, especially in teh early game. Early culture is so valuable because early policies are very strong and formulative, and also because my production is so low. High science isn't that useful yet, because I have a dozen things I can't build due to production shortages. But culture tends to give me immediate bonuses with no work required, basically giving me "magic hammers" during that key early game. Giving that up is a MAJOR sacrifice. If I go Council -> Monument -> shrine, I can compensate for that loss early culture by pushing some extra culture. However....my faith is now ruined, instead of getting extra faith (which you need to found) I am actually getting less faith than the standard build order. That's not really viable.

Now people might make the argument that +1 faith and +1 science (with 5 more science per pop) for that council is worth the loss of +1 CPT early in teh game.... but its an uphill debate. Monument first is very tried and true, messing with that culture train is a recipe for disaster.


So in a nutshell, that is why nerfing AW's culture is tricky, you can easily go from "strongest pantheon in the game" to "why bother" in a heartbeat. I do think you could go to 2 culture, 1 faith councils and it would be workable....but 1 culture 2 faith council I don't know if its workable.

 

[CrazyG]

What makes AW good is the +2 culture, because it means the council is now equivalent to a monument. My build order changes to Council -> Shrine -> Monument. The council ensures I am still on the culture train, getting the amount of culture I am expecting. However, now I have +2 faith right off the bat (not to mention the extra science). Though the total amount of faith AW creates is actually not that impressive (several pantheons can easily outscale it in faith), the fact that the faith comes so early in a new city's life is what allows it to be a good founder. So you have a belief that is a good founder, ultimately provides an extra +2 culture, gets you even faster science as well, and is very flexible and works with pretty much any start.

I currently build council-monument-shrine. 2 faith on a cheap building is quite strong, compared to stuff like 1 faith on a tile improvement. What's really important about it is that you can expand extremely quickly, because settlers aren't costing you culture or science. You can just explode and claim territory like nuts and still have culture science like normal. Normally new cities slow you down in both. You also don't need workers or to purchase tiles with specific resources. It's just such an easy start.

Sure there's stuff that outscales it in faith but that's not very relevant. I think pantheon scaling should be a lot more rare in general, its a noob trap. Getting 8 culture from your pantheon when your total is like 20 is a huge deal, getting 5 less faith when your per turn faith is 100+ barely matters.

I think 1 culture, 2 faith to councils, 1 faith per 4 citizens is a reasonable pantheon. I am picking it? Not often but not never. You should have to work to get strong culture from pantheons.

If someone is trying to move up a difficulty, seriously just skip even looking at any pantheon that doesn't have this icon: (I know the forum loves god of the sea right now but I regularly pick other pantheons over it, because on a crab start I want culture).

 

[Zakuzelo]

The Ancestor Worship nerf seems reasonable, and just about the only thing you could do to the pantheon without over-nerfing it or changing ti completely. It's a delicate little fella. I think people underestimate how much faith they're getting from the scaling half of it. It might not mean much once you're founded, enhanced, and making triple-digits of faith per turn, but when racing for a religion? Absolutely.

God of Commerce should absolutely be bumped up to +3 GPP, no idea why it wasn't that by default, but that would fix the issues it has, which is that gold and merchants simply aren't that great when compared to other yields and great people. Changing that would mean changing the whole pantheon's identity, though, so we can't do that either. Troubling. To just throw some ideas out there...maybe give you a free caravan as soon as you've got an open slot for one? Have it give faith and gold per city without connections, but also increase your income from connections you do make? Reduce maintenance or build time on roads? Increase trade route income, both for you and incoming routes? You get faith from incoming trade routes too, it'd be nice for the pantheon to attract those.

A free stone works from God of Craftsman is really intriguing. It's a good change for the pantheon itself, I wouldn't mind trying that on Springtime too, but it also opens the possibility of picking it with few or even any quarry resources just for access to production ITRs. Doing that would be miserable for faith, no doubt, and I dunno if it'd actually be a good idea, but it's an interesting one.

I'm not sure what you mean by Goddess of Protection not being effective. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you typically pick a pantheon to buff what you already plan to build, be those buildings or improvements. If you're not already planning to build barracks and walls, why would you pick Protection in the first place? Also, to be clear, are you talking about buffing the faith/culture on walls and the palace while removing it from barracks, or increasing it on those two buildings while leaving the barracks boost as-is?
And Legen's got the right idea with the point on maintenance. If you're looking to buff Protection then that's where you should look first. Wall maintenance hurts.

 

[Stalker0]

Ok another idea for Springtime. What if it was like a reverse Renewal....granting +25 hammers from clearing forest/jungles. So you get a little production cheddar for clearing cutting the land you need to build those plantations.

 

[CrazyG]

Ok another idea for Springtime. What if it was like a reverse Renewal....granting +25 hammers from clearing forest/jungles. So you get a little production cheddar for clearing cutting the land you need to build those plantations.

I view springtime as an option for the open-land plantations. Olives, incense, cotton, wine, many of which provide culture which makes a non-culture pantheon a lot more useable.

On that type of land, the extra for chopping would seem odd. I'm not sure I agree springtime needs a buff, its probably the best non-culture pantheon other than maybe god of the sea.

Playing on wine or incense is one of the few situations I will take a non-culture pantheon. That extra food is actually quite nice to pump out a settler, grow back to 4 pop, repeat and connect a strong plantation monopoly quickly. The main reason I don't use this often is because God of the Open Sky is so wicked strong (and would be even if it capped at just 2 or 3 culture)

I think the pantheons that need adjusting are the poor options. Commerce, Earth Mother, God of the Sun, being prime examples.

 

[Legen]

So how about making the council +2 faith, +1 culture? Now things get tricky. If I go Council -> Shrine -> Monument, I am now behind in culture compared to a monument first opener, by a good bit. That's problematic, culture is king, especially in teh early game. Early culture is so valuable because early policies are very strong and formulative, and also because my production is so low. High science isn't that useful yet, because I have a dozen things I can't build due to production shortages. But culture tends to give me immediate bonuses with no work required, basically giving me "magic hammers" during that key early game. Giving that up is a MAJOR sacrifice. If I go Council -> Monument -> shrine, I can compensate for that loss early culture by pushing some extra culture. However....my faith is now ruined, instead of getting extra faith (which you need to found) I am actually getting less faith than the standard build order. That's not really viable.

I disagree for three reasons. First, we already consider Ethiopia's 2 Stele to be a powerful building, enough that the civ can found with pantheons that have low faith output; Ancestor Worship makes the council an even stronger building than the Stele and sports a faith scaling effect on top of that. I don't think it is up to debate that Ethiopia has one of the strongest early game in VP and that the Stele plays a major role in it, so saying that AW Council going from 221 to 121 is a major sacrifice seems exaggerated. If anything, the comparison between AW Council and Stele makes you wonder why a pantheon should give you a stronger standard building than one of the best Ancient Era UBs.

Second, there's an UB in 34UC that highlights you can open with a 1 2 building and not fall behind (Tophet, Carthage's unique shrine). You can try different build orders with it and you don't end sacrificing as much as you make it seem so. You can even try to spend Carthage's gold into Quinqueremes as soon as you found the city (instead of investing in the UB and Monuments) and still get some solid development. There's reason to believe that removing a point of culture from AW won't overnerf it, as one could argue that AW Council is stronger than the Tophet.

The third reason is that a civ going Progress can treat Council's science as an alternative source of culture. Opening with 121 AW Council in a Progress build is not far from opening with a 22 building. So, even if toning down the AW Council from a 5-yield building to a 4-yield one has a bigger impact than foreseen, the pantheon would still have a role as a good Progress pantheon.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the pantheons that need adjusting are the poor options. Commerce, Earth Mother, God of the Sun, being prime examples.

So what if we did get nuts with commerce: +2 faith per trade route, capital gains +1 trade slot. So it becomes pretty faith poor, but you gain a really cool unique bonus. My gut says that giving an extra Trade slot is just too much, but then again if your not founding with it that's a pretty big deal.

Earth mother I've had reasonable success with. Mines build pretty quick, you get some quick faith off your monument. I think if AW was nerfed, EM is a reasonable pantheon with the right terrain. I have a lot more difficulty with craftsman than earth mother, quarries just take a long time to get online.

 

[Stalker0]

So let me narrow down to my short list:

Protection: Do people want to see changes on this one, or do people like it is as is? I basically never use it except for japan.

Springtime: I rarely make use of it, do other people like it and think its solid enough?

 

[InkAxis]

I think the gold buff to protection sounds reasonable.
I think spring time is good, but maybe a minor buff is fine. That's why I suggested food on chop, as food is a yield that quickly loses value compared to production.

 

[Legen]

Protection, I can see a buff simply because it is hard to think of a civ or circumstance in which you want it outside playing as Japan. However, I don't think it should be a drastic change; the pantheon has the merit of giving a strong and iconic effect (bonus healing) as a compensation for the difficulty of getting its yields. The pantheon shouldn't also be a good contender for founding with a generic civ, it is just about being too harsh at the moment. So, only a gold buff to help with maintenance.

I rarely use springtime as well and the latest patch helped it, I don't have much of an opinion at the moment.

 

[pineappledan]

I think most of these changes a step back.

Also, please amend the OP with the most current form of the proposed pantheon so I don't lose track.
In general I don't know what the problem is with scaling. Having some scaling pantheons is good fun, and diverse.

Ancestor Worship - Remove the +1 faith per 5 pop.

So the entire pantheon is a single building bonus? This is absolutely terrible. Even if it was balanced, it's deathly boring. I would never pick it because it has nothing of interest.

You could give it +1 at 3 and 5 or something, and cap its scaling that way if you wanted it to be a strong early founder that plateaus, but then you'd have to scrap Tutelary. Personally I don't ever pick tutelary because it's boring.

God of Commerce - Increase Great Merchant points to +3.

Sure. Whatevs. It's fine as is.

On your conversation about a free trade route with a Pantheon: No. You're manufacturing another situation where players starting with Venice/Ottomans/Portugal/Morocco will reroll if the pantheon is picked before them. That ability won't be perceived as adding more fun; it will be perceived as having ruined someone's day.

God of Craftsman - Capital gains a free stone works

Nope. New code, boring ability. situationally too powerful on a quarry start. Overlaps with Halicarnassus.

God of the Expanse - Replace +25% border growth with "Gain +2 Border Growth Points in each city".

Celts' Epona does this already, and I would rather keep the dichotomy intact. I wouldn't want the BGPs to move to the base pantheons and then swap the 25% reduction to Epona, because the Celtic pantheon would end up looking like a carbon copy of Russia's UA.
Maybe that's not a terrific reason, but I don't want Epona, Expanse, and Russia bleeding into each other any more than they already do.

God of the Sea - Holding

I hope this does not pass, for the DLL modders' sake. Having to retrain worker AIs to build sea improvements on the whim of some players, probably just to revert it again is a bad use of modders' time.

God of the Stars and Skies - Remove "+1 culture from tundra and snow resources". Add "+1 culture from improved tundra and snow resources".

I would only sign onto this if the proposal was to also change Spirit of the desert, because these two pantheons use the same table.
This ought to be a proposal to change how that ability works, and not specific to Stars & Sky.

God of the Sun - Completely changed to "Farms gain +1 faith. Farms on resources gain +3 food."

You don't know what you're asking for with this.
Changing the relationship between resource on improvement vs resource off improvement would require reworking how all improvement bonuses from beliefs work. This table is hard coded, so this would involve creating 1 or 2 entirely new belief improvement tables for improvement bonuses and migrating all beliefs over to it. This is a big ask.

God of War - Add "Gain +2 supply"

A very minor bonus requiring new code. Lots of work for very little impact. DLL modder time is a precious resource
Your proposal to Goddess of protection involves dropping the bonus to Barracks. If you want to add something to War, why not move the barracks bonus here instead?

Goddess of Festivals - Gain one copy of a luxury not found on the map (similar to the Great Admiral ability).

New code. fairly little impact. I'm guessing it would be easier to just create a new luxury that only GoF gives and have it give that every time. Like an “Ambrosia” luxury or something.
I don't agree that this is needed. Festivals is situationally overpowered already, especially if you start on a continent with most of the players, or on a Pangea. It does not need this kind of help.

Goddess of Protection - Reduce healing from +10 to +5. Change bonus to +3 faith and +2 culture from Palace and Walls.

Needs to be massaged, but I like the idea of dropping barracks. Other pantheons only boost 1 other regular building, and I don't like how Protection is hogging.
This is new code, but you seem to be asking for a lot of new code anyways, so here's my suggestion for Protection:

Goddess of Protection - +5 Unit healing in your borders. +1 from Palace and Walls and for every 10 City Defense

This gets unit garrisons in on the action in an indirect way, and gives the pantheon some weak scaling.

Goddess of Springtime - Add "worker speed +25% when building plantations"

Extremely specific, low impact. Unlike anything in the game right now. We don't have improvement speed modifiers that are specific to improvement types. It might be easier to reduce the build "cost" of the plantation on that side. Might not even be doable, but even if it is the amount of work involved is wildly disproportionate to the game impact

Protection, I can see a buff simply because it is hard to think of a civ or circumstance in which you want it outside playing as Japan.

This seems to be a common sentiment, but one I don't share. 24 in all cities and 36 in the capital is quite good, even ignoring the healing. I pick it up quite often with any civ that has a unique barracks or wall, since I was probably aiming that tech anyways. It's a solid founder.