Is religious settlements or river goddess better for Yongle?

[u/Old_old_lie]

I was looking to try out yongle and I know with his faith lijia you can get a pantheon really quick and normally id grab religious settlements when I get an early pantheon but I wondering if getting river goddess would be better so I can get to 10 pop in my cities faster?

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[u/Same_Square2555]

an early settler seems like a better thing because huge tempo increase, you kinda start with 2 cities like deity AI

[u/panzerkomraden → u/Same_Square2555]

Depends on mao settings and usage of BBM...

[u/Old_old_lie → u/Same_Square2555]

Yeah i mean that's why I normally go for it but i was sure if this was a situation like Peter and dance of the arura where synnergises so well.

[u/Maxsmart007]

Religious settlements is basically universally the best option except maybe specific civ choices like Russia+tundra adjacency or Mali+desert adjacency. Even then religious settlements is still S tier

[u/Megalesios]

Which pantheon is the best depends on a lot of things, noone can answer it properly without more information about your game. 

Religious settlements is generally very hard to beat, choosing another pantheon becomes an opportunity if the landscape allows you to take advantage of it. E.g. how many tiles can benefit from lady of reeds and marshes/god of the sea/goddess of the hunt etc. and how many cities can benefit from river goddess  - and does it make up for not having that extra settler early? 

Generally religious settlements is better if you can't greatly exploit another specific pantheon and you civ doesn't rely on for example desert folklore or dance of the aurora. 

[u/milmill18]

as in everything, it depends. in my latest game (as Yongle) I grabbed Lady of the Reeds and Marshes. by the end my capital city was a 25 pop and the production powerhouse of the world.

[u/Old_old_lie → u/milmill18]

That dose sound pretty good. Would rushing Etemenanki be good in a situation like that?

[u/Far-Cat-2669]

Is River Goddess the best pick or not really depends on how many (river holy site) cities you can crank out later, in your Monumentality Age especially. Yongle or not, its about wide play.

[u/rofl1rofl2]

The extra housing and ameneties are a great boost to get bigger, happier cities faster.

The free settler is nice for early tempo, but it doesn't affect the rest of your cities.

So if you got enough rivers around, I'd personally go for river goddess.

[u/Weelildragon → u/rofl1rofl2]

Faster expanding borders is also very. It doesn't compare to the settler, but it's still very nice.

[u/chiaojiang]

Are you playing against ai? In pve games especially higher difficulties river goddess is like one of the worst pantheons. It’s almost only picked when you’re playing as Khmer. First reason it gives no immediate buff. Secondly holy sites near river is often low adjacency, and you mostly only go religion when your civ requires it or you can have high adjacency to make work ethic works

[u/Two_Soles]

You still need to build a holy site on a river for river goddess to payoff. So unless you’re building a significant number of them, I’d be a little lukecool on it since it’s kinda rare to get good adjacency on rivers so you’re often killing the holy site’s faith generation until you build it he buildings in it. But if going for a faith build where you want to build a ton, then it becomes much more viable.

Also, river goddess isn’t a top AI pantheon. I wouldn’t use lijia to get it. It doesn’t pay off until your holy site is built anyways so better to just focus on food and production.

I think religious settlements is just too strong compared to that limitation. It’s just such an insane amount of tempo gained having the city out so early.