Vox Populi Pantheon Comparison (Religion Race)

[pza]

It took me some hours to compile this list. It's basically a rough estimate on how much faith to expect from each pantheon in an optimistic scenario before the religions are founded. THIS IS NOT AN ESTIMATE OF HOW GOOD A PANTHEON IS, since it doesn't take into accounts other bonuses than faith!
All details on how i estimated and why i assumed the numbers are in the sheet. I tried to be as scientific and neutral as possible.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...MlV_-Tnd940iiD12o_467Z3cQcxdSlLzqW2-c/pubhtml

Since all of these values are rough estimates, it has to be taken with a grain of salt, but you can see tendencies on which pantheons provide significant amounts of faith towards the religion race, and which do less so.

Goddess of Craftsmen and Goddess of Festivals are outliers here. they provide about a forth of the amount of faith some other pantheons provide and one third of most pantheons.
On the other hand, in the right hands, god of commerce provide huge amounts of faith.

Please feel free to leave your comments, questions and suggestions.

edit: updated February, 20th 2018

 

[ElliotS]

My biggest problem is the assumption of expansion. I'll often have 6-8 cities by turn 100, and it doesn't take 20 turns between settling cities. (More like 10.)

This ruins a lot of the math, because for some pantheons this heavily influences the amount of faith you get.

 

[pza]

do you play with barbs? Not even the AI has more than 5 cities by turn 100 with barbs.

but if you have some evidence and more people agree, i can adapt the sheet, no problem.

 

[Grabbl]

Elliot is right that your assumption of city founding seems rather conservative, many strategies will (need to) expand faster. But I don't think this invalidates your whole comparison, as you write, it is more of a rough estimate.

I stumbled a bit over the immediate city connections (especially as you write that they are easily obtainable by Iroquois etc which shouldn't be the measure), but after some thinking, I think the general idea of your faith comparison remains true.

As for what to draw out of this image: I would take it as a basis only to modify perhaps the extreme low faith pantheon (e.g. Craftsmen and Luxury, where I have no intuition about it because I genuinely never took it.). For the rest, it more or less confirms my feeling that pantheon influence on founding is not that central. The pantheon accumulates perhaps 1/3 of the faith needed for religion (750, right? I play on epic... However, from standard), the rest is Shrines, natural wonders, city states etc. Given the high fluctuation in pantheon yields, this seems like a good balance. In my games, if I'm able to found, it's always due to fast expansion & enough money to invest in Shrines, a natural wonder or some monopoly.

 

[ElliotS]

do you play with barbs? Not even the AI has more than 5 cities by turn 100 with barbs.

but if you have some evidence and more people agree, i can adapt the sheet, no problem.

I play deity with barbs.

Also I would say that some depend on more cities more than others. Wisdom for example is better with more cities.

 

[Txurce]

do you play with barbs? Not even the AI has more than 5 cities by turn 100 with barbs.

but if you have some evidence and more people agree, i can adapt the sheet, no problem.

I also play with barbs on Immortal, and have 5 cities built roughly around t70 if my founding strategy calls for it. By t100, some AI civs have more than 5 cities.

 

[Rekk]

I play deity with barbs.

Also I would say that some depend on more cities more than others. Wisdom for example is better with more cities.

Are AI civs still super efficient at clearing barbarians at deity?

 

[Stalker0]

I also think the settling speed is on the conservative side. But I love the detail of the sheet!

 

[Gidoza]

I agree - this is wonderfully laid out!

I can't give exact numbers at the moment - but I CAN say that when lucky with accessibility of units to kill, I've been able to found FIRST with God of War while only having a single city. Only is really manageable by going Horsemen first, though - then you just go killing everything in sight, and it's wonderful.

 

[ElliotS]

Are AI civs still super efficient at clearing barbarians at deity?

Not really, especially as I took away all starting units for city states.

 

[DarkZero]

Not really, especially as I took away all starting units for city states.

In my shallow observations the city state starting army is more responsible for clearing barbarian encampments than the major civ ai starting units, do you observe the same thing?

 

[ElliotS]

In my shallow observations the city state starting army is more responsible for clearing barbarian encampments than the major civ ai starting units, do you observe the same thing?

Yeah, honestly that was the best change I personally made. It's not like they have other stuff to build lol.

 

[Gazebo]

Yeah, honestly that was the best change I personally made. It's not like they have other stuff to build lol.

CSs only get one military unit to start, IIRC. And it largely exists to protect the settler from turn 0 rompings.

G

 

[ElliotS]

CSs only get one military unit to start, IIRC. And it largely exists to protect the settler from turn 0 rompings.

G

If a CS manages to lose their settler they deserve it.

 

[pza]

thanks for your input guys! what would you say, what would be a good settling pattern for say, 6 cities?

turn 1 capital
turn 30 city2
turn 55 city3
turn 70 city4
turn 80 city5
turn 90 city6

does this sound reasonable to you?

 

[Owlbebach]

I've been read-only mode for the past two months, since i haven't played civ since November and too much things have changed. I can't comment on almost any part of the game now, cause everything is upside down, i need to try it first. But this assumptions are totally broken and all numbers are wrong for sure.

Really, please do not make any decisions based on current numbers, i appreciate the effort, and the approach is right, i used it for more than two years to compare the pantheons. But there are too many mistakes.

You can't compare pantheons without taking playstyle into consideration. For example you take Expanse ONLY if you play Tradition, otherwise it is just a bad choice (no, you do not take Expanse with Authority, it does not make any sense), and you can't compare bad choices with good choices.
You take Commerce only for Carthage/Songhai/Hiawatha or if you play Progress.
You take Festivals only when you have high gold income an resources that are easy to improve (typically mining resources only) - and i think that Festivals is one of the strongest pantheons faith-wise, with Willie you are guaranteed to get a religion no matter what.

And there are a lot of things like this

 

[randomnub]

You take Festivals only when you have high gold income an resources that are easy to improve (typically mining resources only) - and i think that Festivals is one of the strongest pantheons faith-wise, with Willie you are guaranteed to get a religion no matter what.

I swear Festival used to be good in such situation, after some edits imports don't matter anymore and it's Dutch-only.

https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/3873

 

[Owlbebach]

I swear Festival used to be good in such situation, after some edits imports don't matter anymore and it's Dutch-only.

https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/3873

Well as i said it is literally impossible to catch all the changes without playing. This means that Festivals are now really a Dutch-only pantheon, for any other civ it doesn't make any sense to take it. This is sad, Festivals were really unique and strong in right situation

 

[CrazyG]

Well as i said it is literally impossible to catch all the changes without playing. This means that Festivals are now really a Dutch-only pantheon, for any other civ it doesn't make any sense to take it. This is sad, Festivals were really unique and strong in right situation

This is dumb, why do the dutch basically get their own pantheon? Also the AI takes this really often as not the Dutch and still pays a lot more for imports when it has it

 

[randomnub]

Where were the pitchforks when I spot it the first time Yea I really liked the mini-game behind that pantheon.