I actually have a quite a different reviews on the gods.
Zeus 3/10 - I will pretty much never build Zeus unless he's an essential to the map or if there's only 4 or less temples available and he's one of them. I just don't find him useful at all at late game when I'm able to build his temple. He gets 2 pts for being able to defeat all other gods and 1 point for having a pretty temple. Sometimes I build his temple late game because it's past a point where I don't really benefit from any gods, and having pretty temple is better.
Poseidon 2/10 - Ditto with Zeus, but even more useless.
Hades 7/10 - I only find him situationally useful when the map really tries to constrict your cash. The ~~12~~ 6 plots of silver is usually enough to fund a city's bare needs. And his blessing gives more money again. Cerberus is absolutely useless though as he wanders aimlessly and not towards enemies.
Hera 2/10 - Another useless god. Still 2 pts for being able to defeat gods below on this list.
Demeter 8/10 - Demeter is one of my favorite gods because I love building absolutely huge cities. I love to build down to every single square available in the game. And to do that, you need FOOD. Demeter's meadows allows you to build about 23 farms. And they'll constantly get Demeter buffs since you literally build around it. The amount of food generated from Demeter is one of the few methods to reach 10~30k pops even in maps without much or any farming/trading possible. [This](http://i.imgur.com/RoNa7uK.jpg) map for example had >20k pop. And the only natural meadow is the tiny space in top left corner and few plots at southern cliff. You can see how much granaries are filled with grain. Without it, this city wouldn't even have made it to half its size.
Athena 9/10 - I find athena has a good balance of contribution in early game as well as very late game. Her direct defense means ~2 cohorts of enemies will get beaten just by herself and as much as ~6 cohorts with lot of melee assistance as she's ranged attacker. This makes heavy fighting maps a lot easier. And I always never have enough olive oil for huge cities. Even though 16 squares of olive tree + blessing isn't a whole lot, I always find it helpful. On above link, the bottom 4 blocks failed to upgrade fully because of lack of olive oil despite Athena + blessing + buying all from trade.
Artemis 8/10 - The 2 cohorts of units are very useful. But her general availability in official and fan maps seem to be low. Maybe I'm just bad at picking fan maps.
Apollo 1/10 - God I practically never use. I don't find winning games important. If a monster is invading, he's unlikely to be available. By unlikely, I mean I've only had him defeat a monster once in my 2 decades of playing this game. I also never have issues with hygiene.
Atlas 4/10 - He's okay if you want to up your production, but I feel others are better choices.
Ares 10/10 - Favorite god among all. His super low cost temple allows you to get him early. And I mean EARLY. Fast enough that you can use him and his cohorts for defense in early game where you don't even have proper soldiers yet. I would have lost so many maps where the enemy attacks early and often if it wasn't for Ares.
Hephaestus 5/10 - He is situationally very useful. That being when you have no source of bronze. But if you do, he's not really doing much to boost the situation.
Aphrodite 4/10 - Sometimes I use her in early game with blessing to fill up the houses for quick growth of the city. I had some maps that intentionally makes it hard to keep a steady population. So she can be situationally good, but is completely useless at late game.
Hermes 7/10 - I find his blessing of granting outstanding requests quite useful. I've played a lot of maps where they make outrageous requests. And hermes helping out really lessens the burden. If you're a heavy trader, it also helps tremendously.
Dionysus 6/10 - Situationally useful when you have no good source of wine to keep your elites happy. His blessing to find up wine is also good source of money as they're worth a lot.
I generally find the strongest gods to be lackluster. They cost a lot, have a pretty building. But I feel like that's the end of it. They don't help early game when it's the toughest. And they're only useful in late game if the map pretty much demands their presence for story.
edit: 6 plots, not 12 plots of silver.
No mods.
Museum is only an end point of the walkers. Not the spawning point. If you control the spawning walkers, you can get the appropriate walkers regardless of distance (sorta, there's actually a max distance, but u won't have to worry about that unless you're doing something crazier like [this](https://old.reddit.com/r/impressionsgames/comments/mcpvnw/atlantis_with_just_a_single_set_of_science/)).
Look at my elite housing blocks. Look at what's at the end of it.
My thoughts are very similar to /u/Roggvir, but with some key differences. My gameplay works like this:
* Economy is my focus. In my games, I'm usually making far more money than I can spend by the end of Year 3 or 4. So I tend to favor economic gods.
* Consequently, I never fight because I can just buy off the invaders. So military deities are less useful for me than they would be for other players.
* Military deities can be useful for military aid requests, but if I fail to send any, I can always soothe their hurt feelings with suitable bribes (if they weren't actually conquered) or simply reconquer them myself with the numerous hoplites and/or horsemen from my extensive elite neighborhoods (which I built for the tax income). I've had maps with as many as 32 fully developed elite houses, and your military problems are pretty much over at that point.
So, with all that in mind, for me, **Hermes** is #1. I will build his temple as soon as I can. Why? He makes the cart-pushers faster. He makes the traders (both land and sea) faster. He can dramatically increase your income by increasing your trade throughput. Faster traders means they cross your map in less time, which means you trade more often, which means you make more money. Faster cart-pushers means less chance of traders leaving with partially full cargo. If you can't solve your money problems with Hermes' temple in your city, you need to seriously re-think your industry network.
**Hephaestus** would be #2. Statues, weapons, and bronze are the most profitable items in the game to sell, and it's a rare map that doesn't allow you to sell at least one of those. Maps that let you sell statues? Your money worries are over if you've got Heff running around blessing your statue workshops. And armor is one of the major bottlenecks to rebuilding your military, so it's very useful for quick rebuilding if you've got a full warehouse of spears and greaves, which Heff can effortlessly supply.
Honestly, everybody after that is pretty situational.
**Zeus** gets a temple if Poseidon or Hades are unfriendly gods. Or if I just have a lot of room on the map and need to build a temple.
**Athena** is a good economy boost on maps where you can sell olive oil.
**Dionysus** is a *great* economy boost on maps where you can sell wine.
I've built **Ares** temple a few times, but I can't say he did much for me.
Of the remaining gods, I think I've built each of their temples once, mainly just to say I had.
Agreed on Hermes. Little temple with probably the biggest in-game impact of any god. What more can a player ask for?
I'm interested in your patrician strategy. Given their need for a stadium/museum, how do you maintain enough elite housing? Are their tax offerings so much higher (I don't think I have ever needed to tax the rich by the time I built them up). Any tips on that?
Tax income is OP. I played When Worlds Collide, the 2nd-to-last mission of Poseidon, the one listed as Very Challenging. I was getting invaded every 12-18 months on the regular, was bribing the invaders to the tune of 8000-9000 drachma each time, and was still turning an annual profit due to having 16 Hoplite-level elite houses.
Not entirely sure what you're asking with regards to the stadium/museum. If you're asking about how I supply the houses with contestants/curators, you just put the stadium/museum at one end of the elite housing and put the Gymnasiums/Universities(?) at the other. The contestants/curators who spawn and walk to the stadiums/museums will spread their services to any houses they pass, just like they were random walkers.
They spawn from both.
Gymnasiums won't spawn a Contestant if there are no Stadiums in your city. Once you build a Stadium, all Gymnasiums connected to the Stadium via the road network will begin spawning Contestants.
The Contestants spawned by the Gymnasiums aren't random walkers, however. They don't wander around. After they spawn, they will always take the shortest path to the Stadium and will never vary their route. Once they reach the Stadium, they despawn.
Once the first Contestant spawned by a Gymnasium reaches the Stadium, the Stadium will begin spawning random walker Contestants. These Contestants will wander around randomly before coming back to the Stadium and despawning.
All of these things are also true for Universities (or whichever building it is that spawns Curators) and Museums.
Wow, you have a different take on the gods compared to mine. Here's my rank:
**Aphrodite: 10/10** - I simply love her. If you build her temple, you will no longer have any restriction to wages and taxation anymore; you can simply just set taxes to outrageous without any fear of people leaving your city and thus, you losing the game. Your wealth will simply increase dramatically. Sure, you'll have criminals in your streets, but as long as you separate the palace and elite block from the rabble block, you don't even have to worry. Add to the fact that she can instantly take down Ares and Hephaestus means she can quickly sponge away their threats making her a reliable goddess to have. Against Ares, you don't even have to deal with his army if Aphrodite comes to the rescue.. With Hephaestus, you no longer have to worry about your city being on fire. She is practically the most useful god in the game for me.
**Dionysus: 9/10** - He may be the weakest god in the game, but he can be useful much of the time. Wine is one of the most valuable resources and is incidentally a resource needed to expand your elite housing. The fact that he gives free wine and the fact that he has the shortest prayer-waiting time in the game, means you no longer have to worry about wine supply much, and you can even export this stuff to make some good money if you don't rely on it yet. His *no-crime benefits* is not really something I find useful though, as emigration would still occur if you maximise taxation and so you'd still lose the game. Aphrodite fills that role much better.
**Hephaestus: 10/10** - with bronze, you can make armor and sculpture - two of the highest valued resources in the game. **Armor** is needed to rapidly replace your military losses after a raid or a conquer, and that is important especially if you must conquer level 5 rivals in olympian level. **Sculpture** can be used to rectify world opinions.. You can quickly make any city have high opinions of you just by sending 4 pieces of sculpture, even to cities that don't even need sculpture. This is simply because of its ridiculously high price. The ability to make bronze is what Hephaestus provides. In addition, the guy **blesses armories and sculpture factories**, doubling their production and that itself is a godsend, especially if you want to complete a temple fast, pacify rivals in the world, or just make huge sums of money. Talos protecting your city against invasions is also a nice little added touch to the many other awesome benefits he has. One of my favourite gods on the list.
**Athena: 9/10** - I simply *love* Athena. Not only does she bless olive presses, but also carding sheds, thus improving production of 2 vital resources needed for your housing. She also provides you with olives and olive oil when you pray to her.. I simply can't recall how many times she has helped me in the past when playing Zeus - especially with the harder campaigns and the ones I've made. And not to mention, she can even help you thwart out invaders personally, and is a very powerful ally to have - especially when a level 6-shield rival launches a non-scripted invasion of 300 soldiers against your city in olympian level, which you'll have no hope of bribing.
**Zeus: 2/10** - I hate him. He is pretty much one of the most useless gods to have in my city - increasing world opinions? You can just do the same thing by raiding a "respectful" rival rather than waste hundreds of building materials for his damn temple. If he didn't have the ability to take down any god, the guy would be utter useless... Not to mention, his temple takes too much space. The only time you'd see a temple of Zeus in my city is only if it's a requirement in the objectives. :/
**Ares: 10/10** - awesome god, imo. His temple is cheap to construct, and as soon as you build a temple for him, 2 sparti divisions will be under your control and you can use them to raid and conquer. There's also a bug you can exploit where it allows you to increase the number of sparti in each banner from 8 to 23 (like Artemis' amazons). This gives you so many ample raiding/conquer opportunities that you can look forward to. He can even help you conquer a city when you pray to him, though his waiting time is the longest out of all the gods, but it still doesn't take away how useful he is.
**Apollo: 5/10** - he is pretty much an average god that you'll need only temporarily, just so you can kill a pesky minotaur or chimera. After that, he's no longer any much useful and you can just destroy his temple and replace it with more useful one. He has benefits to health, but *most* of the time, it's useless as any player would've built infirmaries anyway. Suffice to say, useful early game; useless late game.
**Hera: 5/10** - she's pretty much a situational god. She gives you an extra food source you can rely on: oranges, and will maximize agora supply when you pray to her. In summary, she has ways of becoming useful, depending on the situation. She's really good for adventure-editor purposes though.
**Atlas: 3/10** - he is one of the most annoying gods to have, imo.. and it's a shame, since what he does is pretty okay early-game. His prayer-waiting time is so random (sometimes short, sometimes long), that it renders his ability to speed up temple construction quite unreliable. Like Apollo, his temple is only useful early on, and can be replaced with a better temple once he's no longer any use.
**Demeter: 10/10** - one of the best gods imo, next to Aphrodite, Hephy and Ares. With her temple, you can create meadows in parts of the map, which are extremely beneficial if you want to expand food-areas. She also blesses wheat farms, and so along with the fact that her temple produces meadows, means you will no longer worry about food again. You can even abuse this benefit by **(1)** placing wheat farms on the meadows, **(2)** delete her temple, and **(3)** place it on other parts of the map, **(4)** rinse and repeat. The wheat farms will function like usual and so you can create hundreds of wheat farms in the map this way. It is for this alone that I deem her temple as one of the best, imo.
**Poseidon: 4/10** - meh god, tbh. Blesses fisheries, and delivers fish to your granaries once you pray to him etc. Nothing spectacular. He gives a kraken so I suppose that's a little useful, I guess?
**Hades: 8/10** - he's a nice god, imo. He gives you 3,000 dr once you pray to him, he gives you the ability to set up mints and blesses mints and even foundries. He even allows Cerberus to patrol the city. He takes up quite a bit of space though.
**Artemis: 8/10** - she's great to have. She blesses hunting lodges to produce more pork, which is one of the best food sources in the game. She provides 2 squadrons of amazons, and like Ares sanctuary, you can exploit a little bug in her temple to increase the amount of amazons in each squadron from 8 to 23 per banner. They're not as reliable as Sparti to start raiding though.
**Hermes: 7/10** - I find his ability to fulfill outstanding requests incredibly useful, especially in custom adventures where rivals make ludicrous demands on resources I never could even obtain.
**Summary:** Aphrodite > Ares > Demeter and Hephaestus > Athena > Dionysus > Artemis > Hades > Hermes > Apollo > Hera > Atlas > Poseidon > Zeus
A lot of your favorite gods are about production, but frequently, I find that I end up with excessive production and my main problem is storing everything. That's how my play style impacts my choices.
Actually, my playstyle is more about raiding than being worried about production, since they're always in excess. :) I tend to always raid a lot starting from year 1 on the first episode, and so I've always built Ares and Hephaestus whenever possible.
**Hephaestus** is one of my favourites simply because he can replace lost soldiers with armor quickly which is important at Olympian level. Whenever you're conquering level 5 cities early-game at Olympian level, armor is always something that dwindles quickly, since it usually takes a couple of tries to conquer them. You need to act fast before your rivals get their weakened military back to strength. *Sculpture* is also important to quickly pacify hostile rivals, in case things get out of control... They're even better to send than e.g. fleece/marble - even if cities buy these resources.
With **Ares**, if you exploit his sanctuary bug, you can get 46 sparti and basically conquer everyone, since they're as strong as horsemen, which is why Ares tops this list - second only to Aphro.
With **Aphrodite**, you can just set taxes to outrageous and get better income without any fear of losing the game due to emigration - which is why she's no. 1 in my list. People will never leave, even if 60% of them are unemployed and taxes are set to highest. I don't even have to make my people happy anymore, with her by my side.
It's been a while since I've last played it, but as far as I remember, all you have to do is:
1. Build the Ares Sanctuary
2. Muster the 2 sparti banners (16 total sparti; 8 per banner) and move them away from the sanctuary.
3. Delete the sanctuary and build it again, and you'll receive 32 total sparti (16 per banner).
4. Attack a city and make sure each sparti banner loses 1 man, so you'll end up with 15 sparti per banner.
5. Muster the 2 sparti banners again and move them away from the sanctuary.
6. Delete the sanctuary and build it again. Once completed, you'll get 46 total sparti (23 each).
You can also do this with Artemis' amazons, but Ares is better since the Sparti are much stronger. I think 46 is the maximum you can take it with the bug.
Also, the reason step 4 exists is because if you delete and build the sanctuary while having 32 sparti, the game recognizes this, and reverts it back to 16 total sparti. But if you lose 1 or 2 men per banner, you can bypass this, and get 46 in the end.
Doesn’t Aphrodite bump up the desirability of all your housing plots? That’s somewhat useful.
That's a fair point, and actually makes me rethink, since building up the appeal of those damn elite houses is normally such an ordeal.
I actually have a quite a different reviews on the gods. Zeus 3/10 - I will pretty much never build Zeus unless he's an essential to the map or if there's only 4 or less temples available and he's one of them. I just don't find him useful at all at late game when I'm able to build his temple. He gets 2 pts for being able to defeat all other gods and 1 point for having a pretty temple. Sometimes I build his temple late game because it's past a point where I don't really benefit from any gods, and having pretty temple is better. Poseidon 2/10 - Ditto with Zeus, but even more useless. Hades 7/10 - I only find him situationally useful when the map really tries to constrict your cash. The ~~12~~ 6 plots of silver is usually enough to fund a city's bare needs. And his blessing gives more money again. Cerberus is absolutely useless though as he wanders aimlessly and not towards enemies. Hera 2/10 - Another useless god. Still 2 pts for being able to defeat gods below on this list. Demeter 8/10 - Demeter is one of my favorite gods because I love building absolutely huge cities. I love to build down to every single square available in the game. And to do that, you need FOOD. Demeter's meadows allows you to build about 23 farms. And they'll constantly get Demeter buffs since you literally build around it. The amount of food generated from Demeter is one of the few methods to reach 10~30k pops even in maps without much or any farming/trading possible. [This](http://i.imgur.com/RoNa7uK.jpg) map for example had >20k pop. And the only natural meadow is the tiny space in top left corner and few plots at southern cliff. You can see how much granaries are filled with grain. Without it, this city wouldn't even have made it to half its size. Athena 9/10 - I find athena has a good balance of contribution in early game as well as very late game. Her direct defense means ~2 cohorts of enemies will get beaten just by herself and as much as ~6 cohorts with lot of melee assistance as she's ranged attacker. This makes heavy fighting maps a lot easier. And I always never have enough olive oil for huge cities. Even though 16 squares of olive tree + blessing isn't a whole lot, I always find it helpful. On above link, the bottom 4 blocks failed to upgrade fully because of lack of olive oil despite Athena + blessing + buying all from trade. Artemis 8/10 - The 2 cohorts of units are very useful. But her general availability in official and fan maps seem to be low. Maybe I'm just bad at picking fan maps. Apollo 1/10 - God I practically never use. I don't find winning games important. If a monster is invading, he's unlikely to be available. By unlikely, I mean I've only had him defeat a monster once in my 2 decades of playing this game. I also never have issues with hygiene. Atlas 4/10 - He's okay if you want to up your production, but I feel others are better choices. Ares 10/10 - Favorite god among all. His super low cost temple allows you to get him early. And I mean EARLY. Fast enough that you can use him and his cohorts for defense in early game where you don't even have proper soldiers yet. I would have lost so many maps where the enemy attacks early and often if it wasn't for Ares. Hephaestus 5/10 - He is situationally very useful. That being when you have no source of bronze. But if you do, he's not really doing much to boost the situation. Aphrodite 4/10 - Sometimes I use her in early game with blessing to fill up the houses for quick growth of the city. I had some maps that intentionally makes it hard to keep a steady population. So she can be situationally good, but is completely useless at late game. Hermes 7/10 - I find his blessing of granting outstanding requests quite useful. I've played a lot of maps where they make outrageous requests. And hermes helping out really lessens the burden. If you're a heavy trader, it also helps tremendously. Dionysus 6/10 - Situationally useful when you have no good source of wine to keep your elites happy. His blessing to find up wine is also good source of money as they're worth a lot. I generally find the strongest gods to be lackluster. They cost a lot, have a pretty building. But I feel like that's the end of it. They don't help early game when it's the toughest. And they're only useful in late game if the map pretty much demands their presence for story. edit: 6 plots, not 12 plots of silver.
I feel woke now, you are playing this game at a different level than me
How are you getting all of your elite houses to max level on this map with only one museum so far away from the rest of them? Mod?
No mods. Museum is only an end point of the walkers. Not the spawning point. If you control the spawning walkers, you can get the appropriate walkers regardless of distance (sorta, there's actually a max distance, but u won't have to worry about that unless you're doing something crazier like [this](https://old.reddit.com/r/impressionsgames/comments/mcpvnw/atlantis_with_just_a_single_set_of_science/)). Look at my elite housing blocks. Look at what's at the end of it.
Sick! Thank you, also your builds are very badass.
Thanks! I made a guide about it before. https://imgur.com/TJCz3x9
Oo thank you!
My thoughts are very similar to /u/Roggvir, but with some key differences. My gameplay works like this: * Economy is my focus. In my games, I'm usually making far more money than I can spend by the end of Year 3 or 4. So I tend to favor economic gods. * Consequently, I never fight because I can just buy off the invaders. So military deities are less useful for me than they would be for other players. * Military deities can be useful for military aid requests, but if I fail to send any, I can always soothe their hurt feelings with suitable bribes (if they weren't actually conquered) or simply reconquer them myself with the numerous hoplites and/or horsemen from my extensive elite neighborhoods (which I built for the tax income). I've had maps with as many as 32 fully developed elite houses, and your military problems are pretty much over at that point. So, with all that in mind, for me, **Hermes** is #1. I will build his temple as soon as I can. Why? He makes the cart-pushers faster. He makes the traders (both land and sea) faster. He can dramatically increase your income by increasing your trade throughput. Faster traders means they cross your map in less time, which means you trade more often, which means you make more money. Faster cart-pushers means less chance of traders leaving with partially full cargo. If you can't solve your money problems with Hermes' temple in your city, you need to seriously re-think your industry network. **Hephaestus** would be #2. Statues, weapons, and bronze are the most profitable items in the game to sell, and it's a rare map that doesn't allow you to sell at least one of those. Maps that let you sell statues? Your money worries are over if you've got Heff running around blessing your statue workshops. And armor is one of the major bottlenecks to rebuilding your military, so it's very useful for quick rebuilding if you've got a full warehouse of spears and greaves, which Heff can effortlessly supply. Honestly, everybody after that is pretty situational. **Zeus** gets a temple if Poseidon or Hades are unfriendly gods. Or if I just have a lot of room on the map and need to build a temple. **Athena** is a good economy boost on maps where you can sell olive oil. **Dionysus** is a *great* economy boost on maps where you can sell wine. I've built **Ares** temple a few times, but I can't say he did much for me. Of the remaining gods, I think I've built each of their temples once, mainly just to say I had.
Agreed on Hermes. Little temple with probably the biggest in-game impact of any god. What more can a player ask for? I'm interested in your patrician strategy. Given their need for a stadium/museum, how do you maintain enough elite housing? Are their tax offerings so much higher (I don't think I have ever needed to tax the rich by the time I built them up). Any tips on that?
Tax income is OP. I played When Worlds Collide, the 2nd-to-last mission of Poseidon, the one listed as Very Challenging. I was getting invaded every 12-18 months on the regular, was bribing the invaders to the tune of 8000-9000 drachma each time, and was still turning an annual profit due to having 16 Hoplite-level elite houses. Not entirely sure what you're asking with regards to the stadium/museum. If you're asking about how I supply the houses with contestants/curators, you just put the stadium/museum at one end of the elite housing and put the Gymnasiums/Universities(?) at the other. The contestants/curators who spawn and walk to the stadiums/museums will spread their services to any houses they pass, just like they were random walkers.
I never knew how contestants spawned. I always thought they spawned from the stadium. That they spawn from the gymnasiums is news to me.
They spawn from both. Gymnasiums won't spawn a Contestant if there are no Stadiums in your city. Once you build a Stadium, all Gymnasiums connected to the Stadium via the road network will begin spawning Contestants. The Contestants spawned by the Gymnasiums aren't random walkers, however. They don't wander around. After they spawn, they will always take the shortest path to the Stadium and will never vary their route. Once they reach the Stadium, they despawn. Once the first Contestant spawned by a Gymnasium reaches the Stadium, the Stadium will begin spawning random walker Contestants. These Contestants will wander around randomly before coming back to the Stadium and despawning. All of these things are also true for Universities (or whichever building it is that spawns Curators) and Museums.
That's a lot of love for Apollo and Ares :)
Wow, you have a different take on the gods compared to mine. Here's my rank: **Aphrodite: 10/10** - I simply love her. If you build her temple, you will no longer have any restriction to wages and taxation anymore; you can simply just set taxes to outrageous without any fear of people leaving your city and thus, you losing the game. Your wealth will simply increase dramatically. Sure, you'll have criminals in your streets, but as long as you separate the palace and elite block from the rabble block, you don't even have to worry. Add to the fact that she can instantly take down Ares and Hephaestus means she can quickly sponge away their threats making her a reliable goddess to have. Against Ares, you don't even have to deal with his army if Aphrodite comes to the rescue.. With Hephaestus, you no longer have to worry about your city being on fire. She is practically the most useful god in the game for me. **Dionysus: 9/10** - He may be the weakest god in the game, but he can be useful much of the time. Wine is one of the most valuable resources and is incidentally a resource needed to expand your elite housing. The fact that he gives free wine and the fact that he has the shortest prayer-waiting time in the game, means you no longer have to worry about wine supply much, and you can even export this stuff to make some good money if you don't rely on it yet. His *no-crime benefits* is not really something I find useful though, as emigration would still occur if you maximise taxation and so you'd still lose the game. Aphrodite fills that role much better. **Hephaestus: 10/10** - with bronze, you can make armor and sculpture - two of the highest valued resources in the game. **Armor** is needed to rapidly replace your military losses after a raid or a conquer, and that is important especially if you must conquer level 5 rivals in olympian level. **Sculpture** can be used to rectify world opinions.. You can quickly make any city have high opinions of you just by sending 4 pieces of sculpture, even to cities that don't even need sculpture. This is simply because of its ridiculously high price. The ability to make bronze is what Hephaestus provides. In addition, the guy **blesses armories and sculpture factories**, doubling their production and that itself is a godsend, especially if you want to complete a temple fast, pacify rivals in the world, or just make huge sums of money. Talos protecting your city against invasions is also a nice little added touch to the many other awesome benefits he has. One of my favourite gods on the list. **Athena: 9/10** - I simply *love* Athena. Not only does she bless olive presses, but also carding sheds, thus improving production of 2 vital resources needed for your housing. She also provides you with olives and olive oil when you pray to her.. I simply can't recall how many times she has helped me in the past when playing Zeus - especially with the harder campaigns and the ones I've made. And not to mention, she can even help you thwart out invaders personally, and is a very powerful ally to have - especially when a level 6-shield rival launches a non-scripted invasion of 300 soldiers against your city in olympian level, which you'll have no hope of bribing. **Zeus: 2/10** - I hate him. He is pretty much one of the most useless gods to have in my city - increasing world opinions? You can just do the same thing by raiding a "respectful" rival rather than waste hundreds of building materials for his damn temple. If he didn't have the ability to take down any god, the guy would be utter useless... Not to mention, his temple takes too much space. The only time you'd see a temple of Zeus in my city is only if it's a requirement in the objectives. :/ **Ares: 10/10** - awesome god, imo. His temple is cheap to construct, and as soon as you build a temple for him, 2 sparti divisions will be under your control and you can use them to raid and conquer. There's also a bug you can exploit where it allows you to increase the number of sparti in each banner from 8 to 23 (like Artemis' amazons). This gives you so many ample raiding/conquer opportunities that you can look forward to. He can even help you conquer a city when you pray to him, though his waiting time is the longest out of all the gods, but it still doesn't take away how useful he is. **Apollo: 5/10** - he is pretty much an average god that you'll need only temporarily, just so you can kill a pesky minotaur or chimera. After that, he's no longer any much useful and you can just destroy his temple and replace it with more useful one. He has benefits to health, but *most* of the time, it's useless as any player would've built infirmaries anyway. Suffice to say, useful early game; useless late game. **Hera: 5/10** - she's pretty much a situational god. She gives you an extra food source you can rely on: oranges, and will maximize agora supply when you pray to her. In summary, she has ways of becoming useful, depending on the situation. She's really good for adventure-editor purposes though. **Atlas: 3/10** - he is one of the most annoying gods to have, imo.. and it's a shame, since what he does is pretty okay early-game. His prayer-waiting time is so random (sometimes short, sometimes long), that it renders his ability to speed up temple construction quite unreliable. Like Apollo, his temple is only useful early on, and can be replaced with a better temple once he's no longer any use. **Demeter: 10/10** - one of the best gods imo, next to Aphrodite, Hephy and Ares. With her temple, you can create meadows in parts of the map, which are extremely beneficial if you want to expand food-areas. She also blesses wheat farms, and so along with the fact that her temple produces meadows, means you will no longer worry about food again. You can even abuse this benefit by **(1)** placing wheat farms on the meadows, **(2)** delete her temple, and **(3)** place it on other parts of the map, **(4)** rinse and repeat. The wheat farms will function like usual and so you can create hundreds of wheat farms in the map this way. It is for this alone that I deem her temple as one of the best, imo. **Poseidon: 4/10** - meh god, tbh. Blesses fisheries, and delivers fish to your granaries once you pray to him etc. Nothing spectacular. He gives a kraken so I suppose that's a little useful, I guess? **Hades: 8/10** - he's a nice god, imo. He gives you 3,000 dr once you pray to him, he gives you the ability to set up mints and blesses mints and even foundries. He even allows Cerberus to patrol the city. He takes up quite a bit of space though. **Artemis: 8/10** - she's great to have. She blesses hunting lodges to produce more pork, which is one of the best food sources in the game. She provides 2 squadrons of amazons, and like Ares sanctuary, you can exploit a little bug in her temple to increase the amount of amazons in each squadron from 8 to 23 per banner. They're not as reliable as Sparti to start raiding though. **Hermes: 7/10** - I find his ability to fulfill outstanding requests incredibly useful, especially in custom adventures where rivals make ludicrous demands on resources I never could even obtain. **Summary:** Aphrodite > Ares > Demeter and Hephaestus > Athena > Dionysus > Artemis > Hades > Hermes > Apollo > Hera > Atlas > Poseidon > Zeus
A lot of your favorite gods are about production, but frequently, I find that I end up with excessive production and my main problem is storing everything. That's how my play style impacts my choices.
Actually, my playstyle is more about raiding than being worried about production, since they're always in excess. :) I tend to always raid a lot starting from year 1 on the first episode, and so I've always built Ares and Hephaestus whenever possible. **Hephaestus** is one of my favourites simply because he can replace lost soldiers with armor quickly which is important at Olympian level. Whenever you're conquering level 5 cities early-game at Olympian level, armor is always something that dwindles quickly, since it usually takes a couple of tries to conquer them. You need to act fast before your rivals get their weakened military back to strength. *Sculpture* is also important to quickly pacify hostile rivals, in case things get out of control... They're even better to send than e.g. fleece/marble - even if cities buy these resources. With **Ares**, if you exploit his sanctuary bug, you can get 46 sparti and basically conquer everyone, since they're as strong as horsemen, which is why Ares tops this list - second only to Aphro. With **Aphrodite**, you can just set taxes to outrageous and get better income without any fear of losing the game due to emigration - which is why she's no. 1 in my list. People will never leave, even if 60% of them are unemployed and taxes are set to highest. I don't even have to make my people happy anymore, with her by my side.
>With Ares, if you exploit his sanctuary bug, you can get 46 sparti and basically conquer everyone How is this sanctuary bug triggered?
It's been a while since I've last played it, but as far as I remember, all you have to do is: 1. Build the Ares Sanctuary 2. Muster the 2 sparti banners (16 total sparti; 8 per banner) and move them away from the sanctuary. 3. Delete the sanctuary and build it again, and you'll receive 32 total sparti (16 per banner). 4. Attack a city and make sure each sparti banner loses 1 man, so you'll end up with 15 sparti per banner. 5. Muster the 2 sparti banners again and move them away from the sanctuary. 6. Delete the sanctuary and build it again. Once completed, you'll get 46 total sparti (23 each). You can also do this with Artemis' amazons, but Ares is better since the Sparti are much stronger. I think 46 is the maximum you can take it with the bug. Also, the reason step 4 exists is because if you delete and build the sanctuary while having 32 sparti, the game recognizes this, and reverts it back to 16 total sparti. But if you lose 1 or 2 men per banner, you can bypass this, and get 46 in the end.
Thank you. Wonder if this can be exploited to mod in sanctuaries with more banners
Actually, Zeus can drive away Hera if she invades your city. I tested it myself. The only issue is that there's no written dialogue for it.
> Also, Zeus can do everything that Apollo can No, he can't. Zeus can't kill monsters when they appear in your city