Which Pantheons are not useless?

[KrikkitTwo]

The pantheons overall seem pretty lackluster to me. A sprinkle of +1 food or production bonuses, measly culture bonuses, or a little bit of bonus faith that you won't be able to use for 100 turns. Am I missing something? Are any of the pantheon choices actually useful?

You use it for your entire game, your pantheon is always with you, even when a major religion is in your city.

 

[Seabastian Civ]

I find religion useless generally. I'd rather spend those holy site hammers on archers and com districts. Having said that, there are 3 pantheons I like to get...

1. Divine Spark. Useful for all game types.
2. Hammers from the sea resources. Useful for horsehockey coastal starts.
3. Marshes and Reeds. Useful for desert... If you decide not to go desert folklore.

If those are all taken I'm going with +% growth. Housing isn't usually too tough to come by until mid-late.

 

[eris23]

@Sogno di Volare
Yes, it really does depends on where you start. But I'd like to point out, that early boosts are stronger than late boosts. At the beginning of the game those 2 or 3 will get you to your first government in double the speed which is gonna be huge advantage, because it will help with establishing your early expands, help you create an army to not be contested by other players or barbarians and generally improve your resources.
If you have the proper surroundings this is the best one to pick, because they are tiles you want to work anyway. Grassland horses start with 3/1, cows and sheep with 3/0 and pastures give +1 production, which makes them aside from hill jungle peppers, some of the best tiles.

And culture is not generally something you want to invest heavily in, as when it comes to expanding borders they are fairly cheap (or rather money is abundant) and in higher difficulties at least you'll have other things to contend with, which makes your hammers (or district limits) too valuable to be spending them on culture. But culture is generally more valuable than faith.

 

[Sogno di Volare]

@Sogno di Volare
Yes, it really does depends on where you start. But I'd like to point out, that early boosts are stronger than late boosts. At the beginning of the game those 2 or 3 will get you to your first government in double the speed which is gonna be huge advantage, because it will help with establishing your early expands, help you create an army to not be contested by other players or barbarians and generally improve your resources.
If you have the proper surroundings this is the best one to pick, because they are tiles you want to work anyway. Grassland horses start with 3/1, cows and sheep with 3/0 and pastures give +1 production, which makes them aside from hill jungle peppers, some of the best tiles.

And culture is not generally something you want to invest heavily in, as when it comes to expanding borders they are fairly cheap (or rather money is abundant) and in higher difficulties at least you'll have other things to contend with, which makes your hammers (or district limits) too valuable to be spending them on culture. But culture is generally more valuable than faith.

Yeah totally it is a net better deal. It's just border growth feels SO SLOW and granted it is as much tied to gold now as I'm buying tiles more often.... just make me want to pick up that 15% for everyone so much.

 

[ansa]

@Sogno di Volare
Yes, it really does depends on where you start. But I'd like to point out, that early boosts are stronger than late boosts. At the beginning of the game those 2 or 3 will get you to your first government in double the speed which is gonna be huge advantage, because it will help with establishing your early expands, help you create an army to not be contested by other players or barbarians and generally improve your resources.
If you have the proper surroundings this is the best one to pick, because they are tiles you want to work anyway. Grassland horses start with 3/1, cows and sheep with 3/0 and pastures give +1 production, which makes them aside from hill jungle peppers, some of the best tiles.

And culture is not generally something you want to invest heavily in, as when it comes to expanding borders they are fairly cheap (or rather money is abundant) and in higher difficulties at least you'll have other things to contend with, which makes your hammers (or district limits) too valuable to be spending them on culture. But culture is generally more valuable than faith.

No way man, not in my books. You cannot buy land units with culture... but you can with faith.
In general having a religion helps as it is, but Theocracy is so awesome. Someone looks at you funny? You slap 2k faith into armada and wipe them off the face of the earth.

I always feel like science is lagging ways behind culture somehow, especially if I pick God of the Open sky pantheon and have a few pastures.
Maybe I should switch my build orders around.

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

when in doubt, take border expansion

I've been tempted to take this but not knowing the expansion rate of your next tile as is makes it tough to actually grasp the usefulness. I love Divine Spark btw.

 

[Sansa_Stark]

I really enjoy reading your strategy and pointing what seems exploitable, so i will share with you an exploit with pantheon i met myself (probably even not mentioned enywhere else)

The best pantheon is ...

Goddess of the Harvest.

Harvesting in later ares (when you advance with tech tree) is giving you massive amount of faith. Beware of multiplayer, when sm1 picking it becouse simply harvest cow in renesnas or later gives you amount of faith enough for faith buy great person.

Is this really working? I took it once since I figured that it will be pretty powerful, but I didn't get single faith from it. I posted it in bug section, and thought it was just not working at all.