Pantheons - Second Edition

[Funak]

There is one big difference between these two pantheons. Spirit of the Desert gives you food, God of the Stars and Sky doesn't. We all know that lack of food is a major issue on tundra and desert (although flood plains can help counter this), so the +2 food on every improved resource is extremely powerful on Spirit of the Desert and it's harder to make Stars and Sky work, as it will be hard to to grow your cities and work many improved tiles. In addition to that, I feel that there are more resource tiles on desert than there are on tundra and a flood plains start in itself can easily be stronger than a grassland/plains/forest start, while a tundra start is almost always a reroll bad. While both are too strong from my point of view, Spirit of the Desert is much stronger.

I'm going to go ahead and call you out on this one. The yields from Stars and Sky are far superior to the ones from Spirit of the desert. Food and Production are in my experience pretty evenly matched early on with production definitely taking the lead later on. Sure, growing your cities is nice, but you know what's also nice? Not falling behind on infrastructure. Getting Culture over Gold however is such a massive advantage that the entire discussion of food/production doesn't even matter. I personally really like the idea of early-game gold, it can translate into pretty much anything, but policy acquisition tends to snowball quite a bit so getting a cultural headstart on it is priceless.

When it comes desert versus tundra I'm a bit more split, sure desert have floodplains, but floodplains doesn't really spawn that many resources outside of wheat. Most of your resources are probably going to land either in flat desert or in desert hills, making them a lot less workable than you'd like.
Tundra on the other hand pretty much only ever spawns resources in the forest, deer and fur, those tiles are really food-heavy either way so you're really not really starving yourself to work them.

God of Commerce is great. If I play Carthage or the Iroquois, I always pick this. +4 gold and faith from the start is great. I'd say this is borderline overpowered but since it doesn't give you any culture, I'm not so sure about that and there sure are pantheons that are stronger than Commerce. Just look at Spirit of the Desert (that isn't even as strong as Festivals), which gives you the same +2 faith and gold on each improved desert resource but in addition to that, you'll get +2 food too.

The +1 faith for every 20 gold per turn you make doesn't make a big difference, the main point about this pantheon is the faith and gold you get from city connections. When you actually start to get lots of gold per turn, the value of faith has significantly decreased.

If you have enough forest to auto-connect with iroquois you're probably better off picking goddess of renewal, especially since it also buffs your UB, which you're probably rushing either way.

 

[Gidoza]

Goddess of Festivals needs a big nerf. -1 faith and -1 culture sounds like a sufficient one. It would be better than it was when it got some complaints but it wouldn't be as broken as it now is.

God of All Creation seems somewhat impossible to balance. I wouldn't mind if the pantheon was removed altogether. If it has to stay, I'd probably try removing faith from it and just leaving it with culture and happiness, although it might still be too strong considering how important early culture and happiness are. If it was still too powerful, taking away the scaler from culture and setting it to around +2 should do the trick.

The yields of Spirit of the Desert should be something like +1 food, +1 faith, +2 gold per improved resource tile. With yields like this it should still be a good choice for a flood plains start but you wouldn't want to settle a new city on a riverless flatland desert tile, which is something you can do nowadays, if there are enough resources around. On the other hand, it the pantheon is supposed to give you access to settling on such locations on desert, where you wouldn't usually have almost any food, then it needs +2 food and should only have +1 gold.

I'd also nerf the faith of God of the Stars and Sky to 1 per improved resource tile to prevent it's faith generation from becoming too strong. I'm not so sure about the rest of the yields. +2 culture seems too much due to the massive importance of early culture. I also believe Stars and Sky should give you food, since you need it on tundra much more than you need it on desert. Perhaps it could provide something like +1 faith, +2 food, +1 culture on improved tundra resource? Would it be too much?

I'd start with these changes. Once the strongest pantheons get nerfed, it could be a good time to see if there are pantheons that are still too weak and if some of the pantheons still are too powerful.

Regarding Goddess of Festivals - I could agree with you there, and perhaps something like the Circus or something could serve with +1 or +2 Faith and maybe Culture to make up for what will be being lost in the long-term.

Regarding God of All Creation - Check out my suggestions within my initial analysis and tell me what you think of the 2nd possibility.

Regarding God of the Stars and Sky and Spirit of the Desert - I agree with you on the food issue as far as Desert goes because of Floodplains/Oasis as Tundra has no such equivalent, but for everything else I think Funak is quite right, particularly about the Culture. Given that these are mostly clone Pantheons of one another, what if we just didn't think too much about having "different" values and instead tried to make them even within their zones.

God of Stars and Sky - +1 Faith, +2 Food, +1 Production, +1 Culture
Spirit of the Desert - +1 Faith, +1 Food, +1 Production, +1 Culture, +1 Gold

Perhaps Spirit of the Desert could swap the Gold for another production, but in the interest of *some* differentiation, that's my idea. It addresses all the key points: Culture is even between the two and not overkill on any, Tundra gets the food it needs, and Desert gets enough food to make up for where deficits may be, and neither one has their production hampered.

Thoughts?

Regarding God of Commerce - Funak, can you confirm whether Forest/Jungles that are NOT within city sphere of influence also count towards the city connection? (and likewise for Askia and Rivers)

Anyways, after thinking about it - perhaps this can mirror the Science God in a way without losing its essence. Rather than offering Faith/Gold for City Connections, we could change the bonus to +1 Faith and +1 Gold in every city; +2 Gold in cities with City Connections. This way, anyone who builds cities will automatically benefit from Faith that is lower; but the Gold from City Connections is higher and will contribute to the Gold-for-Faith sooner. I think this would be a good way to go. Again - thoughts?

Regarding Goddess of Beauty - Fair point on your original comment about it. It offers too much Faith in my opinion, yet you're right about the minimal Culture. What if we made it 2 Faith, 2 Culture, 1 Gold per Wonder?

Regarding God of War - I can see your point about its weakness in not having any non-Faith yields, however I don't think that that's a bad thing, and I disagree with you that it can't be strong. God of War is quite amazing later on in the game, I find - and there's nothing wrong with having a Pantheon that only offers Faith - it's a payoff between early-game bonuses and late-game bonuses, and having LOTS of Faith can be quite great. However, if it's a concern - what if we gave the Heroic Epic a +5 Culture bonus, or offered some kind of bonus to Arenas?




Finally - I haven't heard anyone comment about my small "scaling" ideas for the Resource Pantheons - +1 on the Faith yield at certain times, or a mid-game building that provides extra Faith, just so it "keeps up" in Faith a little more. Obviously, the power in these Pantheons mainly comes from the non-Faith yields; however, the purely Faith-based Pantheons can surpass them greatly if there isn't a check of some kind, so this was my idea and I'm curious what you all think of it.

 

[Forsti]

I'm going to go ahead and call you out on this one. The yields from Stars and Sky are far superior to the ones from Spirit of the desert. Food and Production are in my experience pretty evenly matched early on with production definitely taking the lead later on. Sure, growing your cities is nice, but you know what's also nice? Not falling behind on infrastructure. Getting Culture over Gold however is such a massive advantage that the entire discussion of food/production doesn't even matter. I personally really like the idea of early-game gold, it can translate into pretty much anything, but policy acquisition tends to snowball quite a bit so getting a cultural headstart on it is priceless.

Usually, I'd agree with the bolded part. It's also easy to agree that culture is much more important than gold. However, tundra starts are usually lacking in food and tundra resources that are improved by mine or quarry only have 0 or 1 food yields on them. While it is easy to work and a tile like a flat desert stone or iron with Spirit of the Desert due to the +2 food, it's much more difficult to work a flat tundra stone or iron with God of the Stars and Sky and therefore it's much harder to gain full advantage of God of the Stars and Sky. On desert you don't need to worry about ending up in negative food, while on tundra it can be a genuine problem. Most improved desert tiles give you lots of production and +2 food on each of them means that you can easily work all of them. You won't fall behind on infrastructure.

When it comes desert versus tundra I'm a bit more split, sure desert have floodplains, but floodplains doesn't really spawn that many resources outside of wheat. Most of your resources are probably going to land either in flat desert or in desert hills, making them a lot less workable than you'd like.

It's true that flood plains don't have lots of resources. Only incense comes to my mind aside from wheat. On the other hand, they give you 3 food even if they didn't have improved resources or farms, which means that each flood plains tile gives you more food than one citizen consumes even when unimproved. Therefore, they allow you to work the desert hills, from which you get the production you need. If we also take Spirit of the Desert into account, even a tile like improved flat desert stone becomes a solid tile, as it will give you 2 food, 2 gold and 2 faith in addition to the 3 production you'd usually get. On a hill you'd get 2 production in addition to that. Any improved desert tile produces enough food to sustain itself if you have Spirit of the Desert. This doesn't happen on tundra even with God of the Stars and Sky.

Tundra on the other hand pretty much only ever spawns resources in the forest, deer and fur, those tiles are really food-heavy either way so you're really not really starving yourself to work them.

Tundra fur only has 1 food until industrial era. It's as food-heavy as flat tundra until rifling. Tundra deer is indeed a food-heavy tile but considering that a deer is the only tile on tundra that gives you more than 1 food, I think it's fair to say that tundra starts have a major problem with food. Even with a granary, an improved tundra deer produces just 4 food.

Anyway, I think we are only talking about semantics here. As I said before, I find God of the Stars and Sky also too powerful as it too guarantees a religion with a tundra start and gives you too much culture.

If you have enough forest to auto-connect with iroquois you're probably better off picking goddess of renewal, especially since it also buffs your UB, which you're probably rushing either way.

That is correct, I was generalizing too much there. I was actually thinking of the Iroquois as I wrote about Goddess of Renewal having its niche if we forget about Goddess of Festivals.

 

[Funak]

Usually, I'd agree with the bolded part. It's also easy to agree that culture is much more important than gold. However, tundra starts are usually lacking in food and tundra resources that are improved by mine or quarry only have 0 or 1 food yields on them. While it is easy to work and a tile like a flat desert stone or iron with Spirit of the Desert due to the +2 food, it's much more difficult to work a flat tundra stone or iron with God of the Stars and Sky and therefore it's much harder to gain full advantage of God of the Stars and Sky. On desert you don't need to worry about ending up in negative food, while on tundra it can be a genuine problem. Most improved desert tiles give you lots of production and +2 food on each of them means that you can easily work all of them. You won't fall behind on infrastructure.

Actually being production-starved in the desert is a serious problem, that's what happens with most of those god-like flood-plain starts actually, you end up not having anywhere near enough production to without slapping down a ton of manufactures.

It's true that flood plains don't have lots of resources. Only incense comes to my mind aside from wheat. On the other hand, they give you 3 food even if they didn't have improved resources or farms, which means that each flood plains tile gives you more food than one citizen consumes even when unimproved. Therefore, they allow you to work the desert hills, from which you get the production you need. If we also take Spirit of the Desert into account, even a tile like improved flat desert stone becomes a solid tile, as it will give you 2 food, 2 gold and 2 faith in addition to the 3 production you'd usually get. On a hill you'd get 2 production in addition to that. Any improved desert tile produces enough food to sustain itself if you have Spirit of the Desert. This doesn't happen on tundra even with God of the Stars and Sky.

Geography heavily favors tundra over desert however, deserts aren't usually that big, but the tundra is pretty much guaranteed to be there in the shape of a belt across the planet.

Tundra fur only has 1 food until industrial era. It's as food-heavy as flat tundra until rifling. Tundra deer is indeed a food-heavy tile but considering that a deer is the only tile on tundra that gives you more than 1 food, I think it's fair to say that tundra starts have a major problem with food. Even with a granary, an improved tundra deer produces just 4 food.

You're forgetting that both deer and fur spawns on forest a heavy majority of the time, which adds another point of food (with herbalist)

Anyway, I think we are only talking about semantics here. As I said before, I find God of the Stars and Sky also too powerful as it too guarantees a religion with a tundra start and gives you too much culture.

The problem is that tundrastarts and to lesser extent floodplain starts(true desert-starts are rare) without these pantheons are a nightmare. And considering how terrible the old sotd/gsas were, I am somewhat worried about over-nerfing them.
It would be nice if these pantheons could support tundra/desert settling without being crazy snowballing tools.

 

[Stalker0]

Finally - I haven't heard anyone comment about my small "scaling" ideas for the Resource Pantheons - +1 on the Faith yield at certain times, or a mid-game building that provides extra Faith, just so it "keeps up" in Faith a little more. Obviously, the power in these Pantheons mainly comes from the non-Faith yields; however, the purely Faith-based Pantheons can surpass them greatly if there isn't a check of some kind, so this was my idea and I'm curious what you all think of it.

I did comment, in a round about way. To me, pantheons faith balance is primarily a measure of whether you can get a religion out of it. But once you have a religion, the faith has served its primary purpose. Therefore, adding later faith scaling is not necessary.

Again, its fine to have faith focused pantheons for those who are gunning for faith, but general faith scaling for most pantheons is just not needed imo.

 

[Gidoza]

I did comment, in a round about way. To me, pantheons faith balance is primarily a measure of whether you can get a religion out of it. But once you have a religion, the faith has served its primary purpose. Therefore, adding later faith scaling is not necessary.

Again, its fine to have faith focused pantheons for those who are gunning for faith, but general faith scaling for most pantheons is just not needed imo.

I guess I do see your point, but it begs the question of if all Pantheons are balanced for getting a Religion - surely the latter part of the story is that some would outperform others in the long run: so if I had a choice of two Pantheons with equal chances of getting a Religion, but one will benefit me more in the long run, why would I ever pick the other one?


ALSO: I did a first update to my post in the previous thread in testing God-King. Yes, it's universal, it's powerful, but I'm not entirely sure what to think of it, yet. Honestly, I think the Pantheon would be fine if it only affected your own Civ without reference to anyone else.

 

[Stalker0]

so if I had a choice of two Pantheons with equal chances of getting a Religion, but one will benefit me more in the long run, why would I ever pick the other one?

Its not equal chance of getting a religion, timing is a factor. Being able to get first choice of religion is stronger than getting last choice of one....its just that both are significantly stronger than no religion.

Further, it all depends on what yields, and in what magnitude. If one pantheon gives me a long term benefit in faith, while another gives me a long term benefit in culture...than my choice depends on my desires in the game.

And short term vs long term is always a big factor in Civ. A pantheon that gives you a strong start may be more useful than one that gives more benefits but later overall...again its up to your style to gauge.

 

[Gazebo]

Some interesting points here.

Design rules worth mentioning (things I won't budge on):

1.) All Pantheons must provide Faith in some way.
2.) Pantheons should not affect normal buildings beyond the Ancient/Classical eras. Wonders are an exception (for G of Beauty).

G

 

[Funak]

G of Beauty

You wish.





Honestly wouldn't have that much of a problem with one or two pantheons that didn't generate any faith at all by themselves, but I don't imagine I'd ever pick them (unless I'm playing Theodora or something)

Are there currently any pantheons affecting classical era buildings? Thought they were all limited to ancient era now.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Very good discussion going on here.
My observations:
God of war:
God of war has the strange property that it scales with difficulty. The more units there are, the more faith it can generate. In my last violent deity games the faith I got from it was absurd - I easily founded, and got three GPs before industrial. It is situational, but in a very good place, I think.

God of stars and sky:
I tried half a dozen Ice Age maps as India trying to break this one - never succeeded. I'm not saying it sucks, it might have well been my mistake, but still - if even in such a rigged setup it doesn't shine, where does it?

Goddess of springtime:
In theory, my favourite pantheon. I just like plantations, and the dream scenario where you have two sorts of plantation luxes next to you, and then find the banana bonaza...
But the thing is, with this pantheon you can never ever found. Even as India, with 3 (flatland!) plantation luxes near cap and one at each expo, I failed to found. It just starts too late, and has never the chance to catch up with other terrain based pantheons. Compare it with sun god, for example: You need 1 first row tech, and have even better yields (2 culture/1 faith). Now for planatations, you need 2 first row techs, a second row tech at least - more likely you also need the chopping techs - to get 1 culture/1 faith bonus. I suggest upping the faith to 2, so that there is a chance to catch up.

 

[Gidoza]

Some interesting points here.

Design rules worth mentioning (things I won't budge on):

1.) All Pantheons must provide Faith in some way.
2.) Pantheons should not affect normal buildings beyond the Ancient/Classical eras. Wonders are an exception (for G of Beauty).

G

Okay, will keep that in mind.

Honestly wouldn't have that much of a problem with one or two pantheons that didn't generate any faith at all by themselves, but I don't imagine I'd ever pick them (unless I'm playing Theodora or something)

Are there currently any pantheons affecting classical era buildings? Thought they were all limited to ancient era now.

I think late Classical buildings would be fine for some of the "scaling" I'm suggesting without going overboard; as for Pantheons that don't generate Faith, we could just select a dummy building that provides 1 Faith per turn and leave it at that.

In theory, my favourite pantheon. I just like plantations, and the dream scenario where you have two sorts of plantation luxes next to you, and then find the banana bonaza...
But the thing is, with this pantheon you can never ever found. Even as India, with 3 (flatland!) plantation luxes near cap and one at each expo, I failed to found. It just starts too late, and has never the chance to catch up with other terrain based pantheons. Compare it with sun god, for example: You need 1 first row tech, and have even better yields (2 culture/1 faith). Now for planatations, you need 2 first row techs, a second row tech at least - more likely you also need the chopping techs - to get 1 culture/1 faith bonus. I suggest upping the faith to 2, so that there is a chance to catch up.

I wonder what the community thinks of raising the Faith to 2 for this? That's one option - another option which I wonder if it's possible is if picking this Pantheon automatically enabled you to make Plantations and cut down Trees+Jungles.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Dunno.
First, I don't like the idea of pantheos providing abilities - that's just not something pantheons do. And even if it would be possible, I figure it would be a pain for G. to implement.

Second, where do we draw the line? If we go this route, godness of protection will ask for the ability to build walls immediately, god of the sea will ask to reveal fish, and so on.

 

[Gidoza]

Dunno.
First, I don't like the idea of pantheos providing abilities - that's just not something pantheons do. And even if it would be possible, I figure it would be a pain for G. to implement.

Second, where do we draw the line? If we go this route, godness of protection will ask for the ability to build walls immediately, god of the sea will ask to reveal fish, and so on.

I wasn't proposing it as an idea to create a standard: I was proposing it as an exception that doesn't set a precedent. If there's no other way to balance something, then make an exception. None of those other Pantheons need such a thing.

In any case, I'll ponder some options when I get home.

 

[Gidoza]

Allright, guys - I finally played through my game with Spain enough to come to a definitive conclusion about God-King and how it works.

I did the analysis by conducting a conversion spree in the only way that seemed possible - build 70 Missionaries and 2 Great Prophets, get Open Borders with the big rival Religion, plant 3 or 4 Missionaries next to every city and the Prophets next to the biggest ones, and then convert the whole empire in 3 turns. This was the first stage - get total dominance on the world sphere for religion so the numbers of my yields from God-King are really high.

Secondly, I went and converted Venice (who had the religion of the big guy), who had only 4 cities. As soon as my religion became Venice's majority religion, I noticed an instant spike in his yields (Gold from Diplomacy Overview, and can view his Capital's yields via Spy). This demonstrates that God-King functions like any other Pantheon - if you have God-King, even if it's been spread to you, the pop from everywhere else in the world will be used for yields, which go directly to your CAPITAL.

This actually implies that God-King essentially is even-steven for anyone, but will ultimately favor a SMALL empire, as the Science/Culture in the Capital for a tiny Empire is going to be stronger than that of the same in a big Empire. Presumably, small Empires should have a harder time converting anyone as they have less Faith to go around - but my Empire *was* small and I didn't have any problems. So anyways, you can't just uniquely get yields to yourself with God-King, but the question I ask is whether we really want God-King to work this way - what do you guys think? We could leave it, or make it count only your own Civ's population, or make it function differently (my idea of removing the Faith and adding more other yields for other reasons to make it a super non-Faith Pantheon).


Anyways, within the next couple days I'll generate a new Pantheon list that reflects some of our discussions so we can visualize some of the suggestions that have gone through and be able to comment on or adjust them more easily. Thanks.

 

[Gazebo]

Allright, guys - I finally played through my game with Spain enough to come to a definitive conclusion about God-King and how it works.

I did the analysis by conducting a conversion spree in the only way that seemed possible - build 70 Missionaries and 2 Great Prophets, get Open Borders with the big rival Religion, plant 3 or 4 Missionaries next to every city and the Prophets next to the biggest ones, and then convert the whole empire in 3 turns. This was the first stage - get total dominance on the world sphere for religion so the numbers of my yields from God-King are really high.

Secondly, I went and converted Venice (who had the religion of the big guy), who had only 4 cities. As soon as my religion became Venice's majority religion, I noticed an instant spike in his yields (Gold from Diplomacy Overview, and can view his Capital's yields via Spy). This demonstrates that God-King functions like any other Pantheon - if you have God-King, even if it's been spread to you, the pop from everywhere else in the world will be used for yields, which go directly to your CAPITAL.

This actually implies that God-King essentially is even-steven for anyone, but will ultimately favor a SMALL empire, as the Science/Culture in the Capital for a tiny Empire is going to be stronger than that of the same in a big Empire. Presumably, small Empires should have a harder time converting anyone as they have less Faith to go around - but my Empire *was* small and I didn't have any problems. So anyways, you can't just uniquely get yields to yourself with God-King, but the question I ask is whether we really want God-King to work this way - what do you guys think? We could leave it, or make it count only your own Civ's population, or make it function differently (my idea of removing the Faith and adding more other yields for other reasons to make it a super non-Faith Pantheon).


Anyways, within the next couple days I'll generate a new Pantheon list that reflects some of our discussions so we can visualize some of the suggestions that have gone through and be able to comment on or adjust them more easily. Thanks.

I fixed God King in the latest patch - it should only apply to owned city follower pops now.

G

 

[confus1on]

I fixed God King in the latest patch - it should only apply to owned city follower pops now.

G

Just so I understand it, but does the pantheon give the owner of it the bonuses in the capital or does it work everyone else as well?

 

[wobuffet]

Just so I understand it, but does the pantheon give the owner of it the bonuses in the capital or does it work everyone else as well?

Probably all, given that it's a Pantheon Belief and not a Founder Belief (which was probably the main problem with the old God-King; it felt like a category mistake to have a Pantheon that only benefited the founding Civ).

I like the change. Even as I'm enjoying +44 per turn in my current 07/07 game.

 

[Gazebo]

Just so I understand it, but does the pantheon give the owner of it the bonuses in the capital or does it work everyone else as well?

If god-king is your majority, it uses your population. Even if you founded it. So if two players follow god-king, they each get a bonus based on the # of followers in their respective empires, not all empires following it.

G

 

[Gidoza]

Yes. It's still an intriguing Pantheon as it gives all its yields to the Capital instead of for each city individually. I'd think this could encourage the use of Puppeted cities.

 

[Galbias]

God-King, for example, offers 4 yields for every 6 population; whereas Ancestor Worship is offering 1.5 yields for every 6 population.

Just wanted to mention that when comparing these two, it's important to note that Ancestor Worship scales with population, and God-King scales with followers. As far as my experience goes, you're pretty much never going to consistently have 100% followers of one religion in your cities, unless maybe you're so far ahead that you can squash all other religions, or unless you start on an island I guess. The actual percentage will vary heavily but I would hazard an average of around 70%, so it's more like 2.8 yields for every six population vs 1.5. God-King also doesn't have any counterpart to the +1 faith/culture for Councils that Ancestor Worship gets, so that's another flat +2 in Ancestor Worship's favor.

Even with those things kept in mind, God-King is probably a little bit stronger but I think they're reasonably close and different enough, Ancestor Worship lets you get a religion faster which is valuable since you can grab better beliefs and start getting your missionaries out faster so they'll run into less competition so I would say it has a reasonable niche, if anything maybe a very small buff like another +1 on the Council yields.