Civilization 6 pantheon beliefs are special religious-oriented bonuses. You get a chance to select one of those pantheon bonuses during the early game when your civilization’s faith total eclipses 25. A pantheon screen appears that presents a selection of pantheon beliefs for you to choose from. There are about 25 pantheons in Civilization 6 with a variety of bonuses. So, which ones should you choose? These are six of the best Civilization 6 pantheon belief bonuses to select in your games.
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Religious Settlements
Religious Settlements is a Civilization 6 pantheon that benefits all players irrespective of target victory condition. This pantheon increases your civilization’s border expansion rate by 15 percent. Thus, your cities will gain additional tiles more quickly with this pantheon belief. This will increase the general yields of your settlements for food, production, and gold. More tiles amount to better settlements, which is something every player needs.
Religious Settlements is an even better pantheon in Gathering Storm since it gives you a free settler in your capital. An extra settler during the early game is especially valuable when there’s more open territory to establish new settlements. One free settler amounts to one free city.
The Religious Settlements pantheon
God of the Open Sky
God of the Open Sky is one of the best Civilization 6 pantheon beliefs for players pursuing a Culture Victory. This pantheon gives all improved pasture tiles a +1 culture yield. Pasture tiles are common, even though there are only three different resources. So, this pantheon’s bonus gives you a pretty good way to increase culture yields for unlocking civics quicker.
God of the Open Sky also turns your pastures into tourist attractions with the Flight tech unlocked. All tile improvements with culture yields generate tourism when you have the Flight technology. So, multiple pastures will attract foreign visitors to your civilization later in a game with God of the Open Sky selected.
The God of the Open Sky pantheon
Goddess of Festivals (Gathering Storm)
Goddess of Festivals is one of the best Civilization 6 pantheon beliefs in the Gathering Storm DLC. In Gathering Storm, this pantheon provides an extra +1 food yield for wine, incense, cocoa, tobacco, coffee, and tea resource plantations. However, I recommend it primarily because of the additional +1 culture yield bonus it adds to luxury resource plantations. This can amount to a substantial combined culture yield bonus in larger civilizations because luxury resources are quite prevalent.
Goddess of Festivals incorporates the Oral Tradition pantheon from the vanilla Civilization 6 game, which isn’t available in the DLC. Thus, it is two pantheon beliefs wrapped into one in Gathering Storm. If you don’t have the GS expansion, select Oral Tradition for the cultural bonus, which is more highly recommended over the basic Goddess of Festivals pantheon.
A luxury resource with a culture yield bonus
Divine Spark
Divine Spark is one of the few Civilization 6 pantheon beliefs that’s useful for securing scientific, cultural, and religious victory conditions. This pantheon gives you a +1 great person point bonus for Holy Sites, Campuses, and Theater Squares. The great person point bonus is particularly useful for the Religious Victory condition since it enables you to obtain a prophet for founding a religion more quickly. However, players seeking science and cultural victories will obtain great scientists and authors quicker from the Campus and Theater Square districts. No other pantheon offers such victory condition versatility.
The Divine Spark Civilization 6 pantheon is slightly modified in Gathering Storm. Your Theater Square and Campus Districts must include Library and Amphitheater buildings for this pantheon’s +1 great person point bonus to take effect. However, that’s only a minor difference from the vanilla Civ 6 game that doesn’t degrade this pantheon too much.
The Divine Spark pantheon
God of the Forge
God of the Forge is one of the best Civilization 6 pantheon beliefs for players seeking a Domination Victory. It offers a 25% production bonus for recruiting Ancient and Classical Era military units. This is a significant production increase for early-game units that will enable you to expand your military for wars somewhat faster for quick victories. It’s especially good civilizations with strong unique early game units, like Sumeria, Aztecs, and Rome.
The only drawback of God of the Forge is that it’s a short-term pantheon with a bonus that doesn’t last throughout a whole game. I prefer selecting more permanent Civilization 6 pantheon belief bonuses. However, this pantheon is still ideal for players who adopt early-game military rush tactics to defeat neighbouring civilizations for faster expansion.
Sacred Path
The Sacred Path Civilization 6 pantheon is among the best for players pursuing a Religious Victory. It offers +1 faith yields for all rainforest tiles adjacent to your Holy Site districts. Rainforest tiles are prevalent within the central (equatorial) areas of maps. This makes it quite easy to maximize Sacred Path’s faith bonus by placing Holy Sites within jungle areas. Sacred Path is especially recommended for Brazil because of that civilization’s Amazon jungle adjacency bonus.
Sacred Path is comparable to the Desert Folklore and Dance of the Aurora Civilization 6 pantheons. Those pantheons offer the same +1 faith yield bonus for desert or tundra tiles adjacent to your Holy Sites. I rate Sacred Path slightly better because Jungle tiles on plains and grassland have better yields than desert and tundra. Flat desert tiles are something to avoid because they don’t offer any yield, and the tundra only has +1 food yield. So, it’s better to settle near a jungle, but Dance of the Aurora is a preferable alternative pantheon for players starting near the north or south of maps.
The Sacred Path pantheon
Selecting those Civilization 6 pantheon beliefs will give you some of the best bonuses in games. However, the most important thing is that you have the widest pantheon choice since they’re only available on a first-come, first-serve basis. So, build a Holy Site ASAP to accumulate the 25-faith needed and grab the one you want most.
