Think Salt is most OP of all?

[budweiser]

Think again.

God of the Sea.

Gives and extra hammer with a boat. That's exactly like a salt tile but much more because of all the fish.

 

[guczy]

Still want salt with earth mother

 

[KrikkitTwo]

No because you could take the Earth mother pantheon and the salt then gives a faith.

 

[joncnunn]

In addition, boat starts are SLOW due to number of hammers needed to build them all. (God of the Sea requires work boats; unlike some of the other pantheons which work without the improvement)

 

[anthropophage]

GotS is powerful but the power of a salt start kicks in earlier. You just need a worker and mining to to exploit salt, and you can trade it for gold too. Exploiting GotS requires getting sailing, getting the pantheon and building/buying a fishing boat for each and every marine resource tile.

 

[Browd]

Salt's extra food and production does require mining, but you don't need to have mining to get the Earth Mother benefits from salt.

For God of the Sea, you not only need the pantheon and sailing, you also need to have built the workboats. It's like Stone Circles -- +2 faith is great, but it doesn't come until you have quarries -- just takes too long. God of the Sea was more compelling before they changed Lighthouses to provide 1 hammer.

 

[Buccaneer]

and plus it is easier to get a 3-4 Salt start than a 3-4 Fish spot, I believe.

 

[Light Cleric]

God of the Seas is pretty underwhelming, you're putting in 50 hammers/240 gold to get 1 hammer out and you have to keep that pantheon/religion around. Fish also suck to work until you get a Lighthouse.

Salt is just...there. Even unimproved it's a great tile to work, improved it's just ridiculous. It has one more total yield than any other luxury.

and plus it is easier to get a 3-4 Salt start than a 3-4 Fish spot, I believe.

In my experience yes, though you do sometimes get weird spots, there's a spot in an LP I'm trying to work on where there's like SEVEN fish all bunched up
Sadly I don't think they could all be worked by the same city, I'll have to go look at it, it would be such a sick city location if you could

There we go:

Spoiler :

Not a starting location, yeah, but can you imagine if you could work ALL those fish with a Lighthouse + Work Boats + God of the Seas? If that Hill went out one more tile you could get six of them.

 

[Tinker]

Speaking of ridiculous yields, Goddess of Festivals and then Monasteries is the coolest

 

[budweiser]

Salt is good, but I'm telling you, the last couple times I took God of the Sea, I finished the build queue in my cap no problem.

 

[anthropophage]

Yeah, and how was your capital build queue last time you were on 3+ salt?

 

[Resipsa]

Salt is the best but Diamonds is a close second.

Diamonds make up for those Jungle starts where you can take tears of the gods and you don't even have to improve the tile its straight 2 food 3gold 2 faith

 

[kb27787]

For 5-6 sea resource starts, your build/tech order is different...
There will be starts where both your luxes are sailing luxes (best is whales + crabs)
But even without pantheon, these are really strong, and early midgame is where you'll see your cap shoot up in pop while still having loads of production with just a lighthouse. Add in a seaport and these become the best non-NW non-GP tiles in the game.

God of the sea is nice, but does not generate faith... and you'll be going for optics before philosophy. Which means later theology. Really hard to get Hagia on deity if you don't beeline.
Even if you do get that pantheon though, chances are you're going to miss out on religion (unless Maya) and hence your pantheon probably won't survive the whole game.

 

[vivalamexico]

Speaking of ridiculous yields, Goddess of Festivals and then Monasteries is the coolest

Holy mother of wine....

 

[klaskeren]

well, i think that +4 happiness from salt is better than +0 from fish

 

[joncnunn]

and plus it is easier to get a 3-4 Salt start than a 3-4 Fish spot, I believe.

If you rolled a sea start; actually you will have God of the Sea starts a lot more frequently than Salt. Each primary luxury is equally likely and there are two of them for the sea. (It does however tend to suck to have to build workboats for luxaries)
Fish itself as a bonus one competes with things like Wheat / Cattle / Sheep etc.

 

[Buccaneer]

What would be a 'sea start'? Picking a water-centric map?

 

[anthropophage]

There are three sailing luxuries, not two. Crabs, whales and pearls.

 

[kb27787]

There are three sailing luxuries, not two. Crabs, whales and pearls.

pearls suck and you'd be taking tears of the gods if you spawn with them as main lux anyway.

 

[joncnunn]

What would be a 'sea start'? Picking a water-centric map?

Anytime the RNG places your starting settler directly on the coast (as opposed to one tile away from it)
On a water map it would happen 100% of the time, but on standard map size it happens a lot (other than on Pangaea)