What is your Top 3 Strongest Pantheons?

Stalker0

Baller Magnus
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Thinking about Pantheons at the moment. What would you consider your top 3 strongest pantheons? Not necessarily ones you would take every single game, but when the time is right to take them, you just feel incredibly powerful.

For me I generally consider the following criteria:

1) Fast bonuses: These are bonuses that kick in fast, often as soon as the pantheon is selected, and doesn't require a lot of work to ramp up. Yields Now are much stronger than Yields Later.
2) Scaling Bonuses: Often a pantheon gets fast bonuses, or bonuses that tend to get better and better with time. But the combination of both together creates a really powerful play.
3) Important Yields: At the end of the day, culture is king. So pantheons that provide culture always get a look to me.

So with these criteria in mind, my top 3 (in no particularly order).

God of the Sea
When you have the right coastal start with good sea resources, this pantheon is insane. Its power lies in the fast setup. Once you start to expand, your original cities can build your work boats, meaning that the second a new city is founded, its already going to work. The production bonuses directly address the weakness with sea heavy play, turning what is normally just a food heavy location into an industrial powerhouse. further, the extra yields and the fact that many sea monopolies give extra yields on top, means that even with fast growth happiness is often under control. Founding is basically automatic if you play this pantheon correctly, and it has the added bonus of letting certain island locations that would normally be garbage turn into solid settle locations. The fact that this one gives no science or culture and still makes my top 3 just shows how good it is.

Goddess of the Hunt / God of Stars and Skies
Might be a bit of a cheat, but the reason I am including these two together is I use them for pretty much the exact same purpose. Communitas_79 loves the northern "klondike", the tundra filled with resources like deer. Playing into this terrain with one of these pantheons is a turbo boost. They give very quick faith, but also culture! Which one is better amounts to a few factors. Stars gets going a little quicker, but Hunt is no slouch as camps are easy to spam out early. Hunt is a little more flexible as you can move off of tundra, but on pure tundra Skies is probably better. Though the new +2 food from the lodge on hunt is also a question mark. Again so close its basically a tie to me, I would use either on the klondike and feel absolutely golden.

Ancestor Worship
I laugh now because I used to not take this, I didn't realize the sleeping dragon I was ignoring. This pantheon is both a culture AND science boost. It pushes councils to the front of your build order, so not only are you getting faith faster, but you are getting science faster too. It is very easy to found with it, it's extremely flexible, usable on most plays, but obviously favors wide. This pantheon has become a default for me, if nothing else is optimal, this one is always just rock solid.


Honorable Mention - Goddess of Nature
With the right mountain starts, and especially if you get a natural wonder thrown in, this pantheon is just awesome. The reason it doesn't hit the top for me, the mountains that help you early tend to be a weakness later on, so the scalability isn't as high as the others I've mentioned, not to mention the lack of science/culture yields.

Honorable Mention - Goddess of Renewal
If you really get the right situation, Renewal can be an exceptional pantheon, giving immediate yields and exceptional scaling. The reason for its drop is that Renewal tends to war within itself. The market is not a great building early, so shoving into your build order can be tricky. If you have luxs where you need to chop down trees, your compromising one yield for another. Renewal can be a little tough to found with in some cases depending on your exact forest situation. When its great, its amazing, but I find its not the "easy street" power than my top 3 provide.
 
I think I tend to favor production as well as culture a lot of the time, it feels nice when you can sneak in some extra hammers for new cities.

Earth Mother
Mines are a T1 unlock, they give culture with the pantheon, and adding a mini-well and mini-shrine to the building you want to build first is pretty good. God of Craftsmen would be my runner up, since it gives you the science and culture immediately, though it doesn't scale and the unlock is later, so unless your pantheon is slow you don't get maximum immediate payoff.

Ancestor Worship
I agree completely. I think I shrugged it off a lot until I saw that India was taking it so often whenever they were in my games, so I thought I'd give it a try, and it definitely feels good getting a little of everything from your first building in a new city.

I think I'll just use my 3rd to say all of the hyper-specific terrain options feel great when they're good, but they also seem a little civ-dependant in addition to location (Goddess of Nature loses its non-scaling if you're Inca, for example). In addition to your nods, Goddess of Renewal feels really nice with Iroquois or Maya and a heavy forest/jungle start, especially since you don't plan to knock them down with UA/UI. Spirit of the Desert is nice because it provides the hammers wether you improve the resource or not, but it lacks culture or science, so it can be a flop if you can't make those up with your luxuries.

Finally, I feel like God-King is theoretically good if you plan to conquer a religion, but I don't have any experience with that as a strategy so I can't say for sure if it works.
 
I have been inactive for 4-5 months so this might be a bit outdated for the current version, but here's mine:
  • Spirit of the Desert / God of the Stars and Sky - I tend to randomize which Civ I play 8/10 times so these two feels decent at least, and dominant when the stars align :cooool: regardless of my familiarity with any Civ's unique trait and/or terrain preference. I usually perform well when I pick them on a suitable occasion.
  • God of the Sea - I'm always a bit leery about picking this one because I abhor coastal cities, but I have to agree it feels very reliable when you end up near coastal areas. It nets (heh) you a decent production/faith generation, sea resources usually give a decent amount of food, and it goes online faster than pantheons for land resources because of work boats.
 
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Ancestor Worship, God of the Open Sky, Goddess of Renewal.
Basically these, they provide both culture and faith so if I'm not playing a faith heavy civ I want one of these to rush religion as well as policies. The latter two are also good because you don't need to improve luxuries hence they don't take time to start snowball. If my start is both coastal and with a sea monopoly then god of sea comes ahead, those starts are usually gold heavy hence gold bought fishing boats let you build faith quick enough.
 
I play wide authority pangea.

God of Nature (gold food faith without need to work specific tiles, so you can settle with only hills and still grow, natural wonders become obscene), Sprit of the Desert (production, gold, faith, unimproved floodplains wheat becomes 1.1.1.4 in yields), these two are in a league of their own, especially now that gold is hard to come by in early game.
Goddess of Beauty (no brainer tradition?), so strong for trad I put it here.

(good outside of top 3, God of the Sea (free faith from coastal, sea resource and atolls get extra faith gold and production), Open sky (culture faith and gold), God of Protection (more healing in homeland), Goddess of Renewal (faith science and culture), if plantations didnt remove forest/jungle I probably would like this more, Stars and sky (faith culture food on resource) amazing but rarely enough tundra on pangea.)

Edit: updated for @Valvts
 
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Can you all also list the exact bonuses these Pantheons give? Haha
 
Can you all also list the exact bonuses these Pantheons give? Haha
Sure, bud
 
I'm pretty sure on certain mapscripts and starts god of the sea is the strongest pantheon ever. Lots of early :c5food: and :c5production:, coupled with the fastest :c5faith: and immense :c5gold:inherent to the coastal starts. I was consistently able to get religion late 40s and early 50s turn. :c5culture: isn't hurting cause you can invest in monuments and complete them in 4-6 in a newly built city that has a 3 moves fishing boat already waiting or bough right after the city founding. You need to go straight pottery, fishing, then mining for wells, then trapping, trade, and then it's a decision if you can stand for a great lighthouse run or you can delay lighthouses a bit and get a wheel for revealing a stone for best locations while you spam settlers and fishing boats continuously from your capital. Build order for cities is monument, shrine, well, you can at least get two of them invested in any city, work boats as needed, then not invested market, and you want as much stone as you can get so you can get stone works and then cargo ships with production. Then, or even before at least two warship, one melee and one ranged, believe me, you'll need them sorely as this start needs a protection when barbarian ships comes in. You want milk those tiles and not lose your cargo ships. You should have around +80 :c5gold:, +40 :c5faith: by turn 70. Colossus is of great value but not essential if your cities are on mainland coast and have many mines and villages locations. If the are scattered on many island, it's quite essential to get another production trade route. And you need to get either religiously dominant with at least two AIs converted and you having lots of yields through religion or conquer one AI to get more solid cities for the later game, by the end of the renaissance. Preferable both.

God of starts and skies. No explanation needed, makes tundra the second best start after desert.

Goddess of the desert.
 
I agree with pretty well everyone's assessment. I find pantheon choice fairly straight forward after a little scouting.

For me I still have no clue for founder belief. I dont find any of them very powerful at all. Is that by design? Or, more likely, what am i missing? Which are the strong ones?
 
For me I still have no clue for founder belief. I dont find any of them very powerful at all. Is that by design? Or, more likely, what am i missing? Which are the strong ones?
  • I find Council of Elders pretty neat for hogging wonders in the Capital/Holy City, and for keeping a tech lead/catching up if you're behind. Very strong if you focus early on conversion.
  • Way of Noble Truths is ideal for Culture/Diplomatic Victory. You wouldn't have to do CS quests at all and still have a lot of allies, and I guess the extra :tourism: is good (?). Not sure since I don't usually go for CV.
  • Hero Worship for your typical Warmonger. I only pick this for the GG/GA points.
  • Divine Inheritance for Tradition/Artistry. Basically, if you want a super capital.
The remaining ones are pretty situational, I think. But personally, I just realized I haven't used Transcendent Thoughts at all. Does anyone pick this? It doesn't look good on paper.
 
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I had a ton of success once with Ceremonial Burial (gain :c5faith: when an owned unit is killed) + Orders (bonus XP for units) + Zealotry (purchase land units with :c5faith:). It basically enables full-attrition, you can trade very aggressively and just replace anything that dies. The orders means that everything comes out with two promos too. I was also playing Arabia though, so maybe they're just that good.
 
I agree with pretty well everyone's assessment. I find pantheon choice fairly straight forward after a little scouting.

For me I still have no clue for founder belief. I dont find any of them very powerful at all. Is that by design? Or, more likely, what am i missing? Which are the strong ones?
Founders are very strong. I think Holy Law is a good general purpose choice if you don't have obvious synergy.

The remaining ones are pretty situational, I think. But personally, I just realized I haven't used Transcendent Thoughts at all. Does anyone pick this? It doesn't look good on paper.
I've used it before and had success, but it is certainly weaker with the recent increases to the cost of techs.
 
I will only add an important observation for founders to end the topic, because I'm sure many of you are asking yourself this as I was: when founding religion as India with Council of Elders you get science and production for each city that has an even number of citizens. You can use that to speed up important wonders and research key techs. Cities pop 1 or 3 will not get converted the same turn, but will on next pop, or after 100 pressure will be accumulated. Internal trade routes and roads matter a lot as India!
 
Honourable mentions:

Goddess of Protection
+4 Faith and +2 culture per city when Walls and Barracks are build
+6 Faith and +3 culture in capitol when Walls and Barracks are build
Faith pretty much ramp up very fast usually resulting in religion
Buildings arent usually a problem, since you usually rush walls for defence and Barracks for early science..
And additional 10HP heal is amazing in early game for barbarian hunts and end even more amazing in late game wars..
Like imagine, your Jet fighters have Air Repair..
Especially synergistic with Japan, since you want rush those defensive/military buildings any way..

Tulteary Gods
+3 prod/ 2 gold if city has 3 citizens.. Does not guarantee religion and late game scaling, but very solid production boost early game..
Watched some streamer that played on deity, and he took this quite often, just to survive.. You then just adapt the religion,
that gives u the most benefits, or try to take it from neighbour dead body :)

God of the Expanse
Border growth, Good synergy with Authority, scaling with era, almost always guarantee religion, early production.
Gives you more/faster early good working tiles..
Synergistic with Russia.

God of the Open Sky
culture per 2 grassland/plains. If terrain is right and you can get religion, this has very good endgame culture scaling
and early gold.

Goddess of Springtime
Faith from plantation, when you are Indonesia, is tempting, you have guaranteed 1 extra plantation from start and 2nd later.
If you have right monopoly resources and some bananas.. This is huge boost.. This could ramp up very fast if u rush calendar and workers

Goddess of Renewal
culture/science/faith per 2 forest/jungles.. i played this last game with Iroquois, that already gives +1 food/prod per forest and jungle
This made Immortal, almost easy, almost like cheating..

God of War
Faith from kills.. Not that good late game scaling, but the numbers are big, so it kinda almost guarantee religion.
In case we already know, we cant compete with other AIs, this can be a chance.. Synergistic with Aztec
 
No one mentioned God-King? +2 prod +2 faith in capital as solid fast bonus instantly and +1 faith,culture,science,gold,gapoint in capital/holy city for every 5 followers in all your cities ( far more better than just +1 faith for every 5 citizens from Ancestor Worship ) makes this pantheon best scaling and snowballing ever, that outperforms every other while you have your average city population around 8-10 pops or so.

I think it is best universal all circumstances pantheon, except those who useful in some special conditions, like God of the Sea, Goddess of Nature.

And if i know, that i cant get a good religion or cant get religion at all, then i pick God of All Creation. Temporarily +4 food +4 prod +4 science +4 gold +1 culture in capital helps to start a lot. And then later i pick some foreign religion with better-scaling pantheon.
 
No one mentioned God-King? +2 prod +2 faith in capital as solid fast bonus instantly and +1 faith,culture,science,gold,gapoint in capital/holy city for every 5 followers in all your cities ( far more better than just +1 faith for every 5 citizens from Ancestor Worship ) makes this pantheon best scaling and snowballing ever, that outperforms every other while you have your average city population around 8-10 pops or so.

I think it is best universal all circumstances pantheon, except those who useful in some special conditions, like God of the Sea, Goddess of Nature.

And if i know, that i cant get a good religion or cant get religion at all, then i pick God of All Creation. Temporarily +4 food +4 prod +4 science +4 gold +1 culture in capital helps to start a lot. And then later i pick some foreign religion with better-scaling pantheon.
God-King I find really weak honestly. Those base bonuses that seem so good, I can easily replicate that with other pantheons. And because building up followers is sloooow in the early game, god-king is surprisingly hard to found with.
 
No one mentioned God-King? +2 prod +2 faith in capital as solid fast bonus instantly and +1 faith,culture,science,gold,gapoint in capital/holy city for every 5 followers in all your cities ( far more better than just +1 faith for every 5 citizens from Ancestor Worship ) makes this pantheon best scaling and snowballing ever, that outperforms every other while you have your average city population around 8-10 pops or so.
God-King is the best scaling but its actually bad at snowballing because the yields are slow and by taking it you slow yourself down.

Usually when you pick your pantheon you still won't have 5 followers, you usually need 7 pop for 5 followers which means 2 cities. Even by 8 pop I don't think its clearly outperforming all others, ancestor worship in 8 pop city council gives 3 faith and 2 culture. The city probably has 5 followers, so that's just 1 faith/culture/science/gold/GAP in that city, plus a static bonus in the capital.

I do like God-King as Tradition India but its pretty niche. Little interesting tid bit, if you have a 6 pop tradition capital and take a pantheon, you'll only have 4 followers for most civs. But with India, you'll have 5 and can get the first bonus before your first settler lands. That 1 culture here makes a big difference.
 
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