Religious Settlements

[acluewithout]

I certainly don’t think RS needs a nerf. OP or not, it’s quite fun when you get it, it’s a good one for new players, and at the end of the day no one has to take it if they want to play with other mechanics.

To me, while which Pantheon can be looked at as a strategic choice, the other thing Pantheons add to the game is provide another way to tweak the rules you’re playing under, much like the choice of Civ you play. The one that gives housing and amenities for holy sites is a good example of that too - great pantheon if you’re playing silly games where you grow fat and plump cities. Earth Goddess is another one that really changes how you play (although it is very powerful too).

I think FXS did the right thing getting rid of Goddess of the Harvest, which was crazy powerful and must have been unbalanced for multiplayer. But it was also a distinctive way to play, and I’m sorry we lost the ability to play the game that way. Hopefully it’ll come back as a Civ ability.

Anyway. Purely strategically, RS will mostly be the best move, but not always. It depends on what you’re doing to get it (eg do you need god king to secure if), when you get it, and fundamentally how good the city you settle with it actually is. But if you get an early pantheon without much effort and it’s available, yes can be hard to pass up.

 

[hr_oskar]

The one that gives housing and amenities for holy sites is a good example of that too - great pantheon if you’re playing silly games where you grow fat and plump cities.

I actually took River Goddess in my current game (which is still in its early stage). To be clear, Religious Settlements was not available. I'm thinking that River Goddess is a great pantheon if the maps is right and I'm going to build holy sites reasonably early. My reasoning is not that I want to grow fat and plump cities but rather that with the pantheon I can grow to size 10 or so while building something I'm going to build anyway and entirely avoiding the bad stuff that only improves housing and amenities.

 

[LMT]

RS isn't always available to me. I usually play on Emperor.

I always take it when available, but I can live without it. Divine Spark is always a nice backup.

 

[Hokie Fan]

Does anyone actually get RS by using God King? I usually play on Deity and it seems very rare that RS is available unless I can pick up a pantheon by approximately turn 15 (I could be exaggerating this in my head, but RS seems to go really early since the September patch I think). I recall a recent game where I picked up a relic within the first few turns and still got beat to it.

Also, really appreciate the analysis, Victoria. Seems really spot on when analyzing this.

 

[tedhebert]

Does anyone actually get RS by using God King? I usually play on Deity and it seems very rare that RS is available unless I can pick up a pantheon by approximately turn 15 (I could be exaggerating this in my head, but RS seems to go really early since the September patch I think). I recall a recent game where I picked up a relic within the first few turns and still got beat to it.

Also, really appreciate the analysis, Victoria. Seems really spot on when analyzing this.

I play Immortal mostly, and even then with only GK it's almost never available !

 

[Chefofrats]

I play on King on standard size maps and in my recent games RS was available one single time, but I cannot recall if it was after I found a relic in the first goodie hut or settled on faith-rich terrain. Either of the two, anyway. In my experience (which is too small a sample size to infer a generalized conclusion) it is never available when relying solely on the God King policy for faith generation.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Does anyone actually get RS by using God King? I usually play on Deity and it seems very rare that RS is available unless I can pick up a pantheon by approximately turn 15 (I could be exaggerating this in my head, but RS seems to go really early since the September patch I think). I recall a recent game where I picked up a relic within the first few turns and still got beat to it.

Also, really appreciate the analysis, Victoria. Seems really spot on when analyzing this.

I use God King and it feels like I get RS about 50% of the time.
Maybe 40% but it just feels like I get it a good bit on Deity/Standard.
Depends on the Civ, CS and land of course.

 

[schondette]

Your not wrong about RS being powerful. But nerfing it doesnt make the game better or more fun. The inverse needs to happen. Other pantheons need to be elevated. So the choice is more meaningful. Id love to pick a different pantheon like stone circles or hunt but the map is limited by how much of those nodes it will spawn so its always crap. So why would I pick them ever. The return is so minimal it has no strategic value and thus boring

 

[hr_oskar]

Yeah I can also confirm getting RS occasionally jst with God King. Most recently in a game with 9 AI civs. It is however rare enough that I never count on it. RS and Earth Goddess seem to be picked most often by the AI, while I find that God King can reliably get me Fertility Rites or sometimes a good situational pantheon.

I’m trying not to argue the immersive at all. Not sure any of my points were immersive. I 100% blame @Sostratus

In this case I wasn't actually replying to you, you're completely not guilty of that.

I like the term "immersive" you use there. I've also been reflecting on how to describe my playstyle. I used the terms "competitive" and "power gamer" but now think those are misleading. I don't really care about competing per se. A better term might be "analytic". I just like to explore and analyze the game's mechanics, balance and strategy. My focus is less on individual playthroughs but rather the whole experience of multiple games where I gradually gain better understanding of the game. If I were entirely true to this I should perhaps not care at all about something being "too powerful" but somehow it does bother me because I feel it makes the game "smaller" when there one or a few options are so much better than the rest.

Your not wrong about RS being powerful. But nerfing it doesnt make the game better or more fun. The inverse needs to happen. Other pantheons need to be elevated. So the choice is more meaningful. Id love to pick a different pantheon like stone circles or hunt but the map is limited by how much of those nodes it will spawn so its always crap. So why would I pick them ever. The return is so minimal it has no strategic value and thus boring

So without RS pantheons as a whole would be bad? Do you mean that if it were removed, you'd never slot God King or care about early faith? Even the other pantheons offer an excellent return on investment if you compare them to the majority of other stuff in this game, simply because the investment needed is so minimal. Most of the wonders and about half the districts and buildings offer a very poor return on investment.

 

[Victoria]

Does anyone actually get RS by using God King?

I will slot it when I get an envoy in a religious CS because that alone is no guarantee, also when I settle a faith lux.

A better term might be "analytic".

I play half analytic, half immersive depending on mood but I play very fast so would never be a good micro

you'd never slot God King

Before harvest goddess was buffed few took god king. It seems like if they add a stronger pantheon people have to compete for it gives more choice which I believe is their intent with the general mechanics of this version. V seemed the opposite, 1 tried and tested path.

 

[Sostratus]

I’m trying not to argue the immersive at all. Not sure any of my points were immersive. I 100% blame @Sostratus

I am completely innocent and blameless of these charges

I play half analytic, half immersive depending on mood

This is usually what i fall into. I want to play to a civ's design theme, like taking river goddess for khmer, but I want to get every last point of yield when I do it.
I wouldn't mind RS so much if you really felt a trade off with the passive compared to other pantheons. Pantheons in general have too many choices focused on religion & faith generation, which allows players to slot God King, grab the meta pantheon, and slot into urban planning or whatever.
The ol' "Pious Pump 'n' Dump."
It encourages abusing the freedom of the policy card system in a way i find quite distasteful. Fertility rites and RS and clearly geared towards building your empire and are consistent, and if more were like that conceptually- with RS being really front loaded and others having much stronger passives- then it might make a more interesting story.

 

[hr_oskar]

This is usually what i fall into. I want to play to a civ's design theme, like taking river goddess for khmer, but I want to get every last point of yield when I do it.
I wouldn't mind RS so much if you really felt a trade off with the passive compared to other pantheons. Pantheons in general have too many choices focused on religion & faith generation, which allows players to slot God King, grab the meta pantheon, and slot into urban planning or whatever.
The ol' "Pious Pump 'n' Dump."
It encourages abusing the freedom of the policy card system in a way i find quite distasteful. Fertility rites and RS and clearly geared towards building your empire and are consistent, and if more were like that conceptually- with RS being really front loaded and others having much stronger passives- then it might make a more interesting story.

Good points. The pantheon designs show a clear desire to emphasize districts since a bunch of them are tied to holy sites in some way. A few end up really weak (e.g. God of War) because of this.

I feel like there are some themes that are neglected in the pantheon design. Notably trade and exploration -- you could have a trade pantheon that gave a free trader and +1 trade route, or an exploration pantheon that would boost recon units and/or give rewards for discovering stuff.

 

[Bangau]

I feel that the Pantheon mechanic is 'close to being good'. The choice you make has a small, but meaningful, impact on your overall strategy. For me, it's always a fun moment in game when I get to pick my pantheon, so they definitely designed something right there. Like others, I play 'fun/roleplay' half of the time and 'fast/analytic' for the other half. In the former I almost always find a pantheon that suits the specific style of play I've chosen, for the later I agree that (if you can get it, for me it's about 40/50% of the time on deity) RS is just too good compared to the rest. If you are planning for a fast game an 'extra city' early on is a huge boost for the snowball you are trying to set in motion. And yes, like always 'it depends': if I have first meet on two military CS I might pass on it and hard build all my settlers.

I think if I'd make a 'tier list' for pantheons I'd place RS alone in S tier, and there would only be a few in A tier. For pantheons I'd like to see no choices in S tier, I'd rather have a few more that are A tier and the rest 'circumstantially good'. There shouldn't be any that are plain bad in ALL circumstances that you would never pick, and I think there are a few of those now.

 

[Upopy1990]

This is good thought that work

 

[Deadly Dog]

Funny I've just got back to playing CivVI this week and been trying some starts with Kongo. When you automatically elimnate all pantheons that rely on HS, RS really does shine. Times it was not available I felt my pantheon added very little.

I choose things like God of the Sea (Kupe, Gitarja) and Earth Goddess (Persia, Inca) often enough to see the really powerful instances where these choices shine. They can be lacklustre though, no argument there, and an extra settler is still almost TGTBT......remember earlier civ versions where you could get a settler or even a city from a goodie hut? Or even start the game with 2 settlers? (think that was only civ2) Those broke the whole difficulty system.

The problem I find in all games where I pick RS is then I really never get anywhere with a monumentality GA. Pantheon choice usually ties into my strategy for generating faith for a GA either classical or ME. I rarely find the free 2nd or 3rd settler from RS gives me another high adjacency HS to work with. Granted things like God of the Sea don't help directly, but I can use that kind of choice to get HS up faster, and I'm choosing there for synergy with a specific civ or map.

So for folks who almost always take RS when its available, do you also take Monumentality for early GA's, and are you still getting multiple settlers from it? I know this must come up with many maps and pantheon choices, not having enough faith/gold to make for an exciting GA, but choosing RS seems to really work against this esp if you're building HS as part of your strategy. Enough to choose a Free Inquiry GA or something else?

 

[Victoria]

Great post. Kupe earth goddess really works well with Reyna’s Forestry but it’s still hard to turn down free inquiry, especially with the 10% eureka bonus on top. Hence I end up with about 10-11 cities and still finish below 200.
Not at all convinced the whole game is settlers, to me it feels as much to do with tree management.
I do not build a holy site until late for the inspiration. You are far better off with 2 early commercial hubs despite having a few harbours.

 

[steveg700]

I actually took River Goddess in my current game (which is still in its early stage). To be clear, Religious Settlements was not available. I'm thinking that River Goddess is a great pantheon if the maps is right and I'm going to build holy sites reasonably early. My reasoning is not that I want to grow fat and plump cities but rather that with the pantheon I can grow to size 10 or so while building something I'm going to build anyway and entirely avoiding the bad stuff that only improves housing and amenities.

River Goddess is decent now that it gives housing, but you don't get a faith boost for your HS. So, are you now in some dichotomy where you build a +0 HS because it's next to a river versus putting it somewhere it gets adjacency? Or even in situations where the terrain doesn't even make the latter a good choice?

Rather than nerf RS, let's talk about how existing might be boosted. Remember, RS didn't always grant a free setter and was considered one of the worst pantheons. So, what's at the bottom now? I don't know that I feel like it really makes or breaks my game to get +2 faith from quarries even if I will eventually have ten of them.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Sometimes River Goddess is good if your start lacks mountains and amenities. There also isn't much practical difference in +0 and +1/+2 holy sites except for maybe for your first holy sites.

Obviously still no match for Religious Settlements, but I'd rather take it over Divine Spark sometimes.

Also, Khmer, though yes nobody cares about that.

 

[hr_oskar]

River Goddess is decent now that it gives housing, but you don't get a faith boost for your HS. So, are you now in some dichotomy where you build a +0 HS because it's next to a river versus putting it somewhere it gets adjacency? Or even in situations where the terrain doesn't even make the latter a good choice?

I'm not sure why a river would mean less holy site adjacency... that kind of assumes you have a start with lots of mountains and no rivers nearby. Like other HS adjacency pantheons the value is going to depend on the map and you will usually be able to decide based on what the map offers you. I'm making it work quite well in my current game at least (not playing Japan). The way I evaluate it, the bonus housing and amenities can be leveraged to delay granary and skip some of the bad stuff entirely (aqueducts, dams, entertainment complexes). That can in turn allow me to build holy site buildings faster with minimal impact on my growth, which can result in an indirect faith gain.

 

[jasper]

Maybe not a popular idea but i think some of the blame has to fall on the players and their over analysis of this poor game.

Some of other pantheons suck? Maybe. But maybe some of it is players not playing a game anymore and playing some min max mini game where they must squeek out the best of everything.

Im a simple player and dont play diety xtreme but i also get a kick out of all the pantheons. If i try for a religious win then i get the faith pantheon. Im playing china then i get the world wonder pantheon no questions asked.

Im not saying theres something wrong with playing the min max diety difficulty game. Its just a lot of these pantheons are not as shtty as people are saying.

If i analyze a girl hard enough, im going to find something wrong with her.