b) God choice, or the Joys of Polytheism

Personnally when I created my cult I started with Cthulhu worship as He was the first god I discovered, soon made a temple with his statue and used Orbital Insanity Wave many times to (sometimes) get useful items while "levelling" my sacrifier (at this time I had one designated preacher and sacrifier, I tried to give the maximum bonus from sacrifices before trying more diffucult spells, so I casted OIW 20+ times before using anything else).

Only around year 4, I switched to polytheism, made a bigger temple with all Great Old Ones statues and started to worship the other gods and use their spells.

It was in fact a rather bad choice as
- my colony wealth skyrocketed with all the items I got (many of them being high value items I couldn't even use at the time like endgame brain surgery bionics from exotic ship crashes) ; Orbital Insanity looks like a very good investment before you realise most of the things you get mostly increase raiders interest in your colony
- as a result I got many massive raids I couln't handle and my colony was near to be destroyed several times (I was even reduced to 4 colonists at some point in year 3, as raiders kidnapped the other half of my colony and I had to completely rebuild my cult)
- also my colonists not being psychopaths, they all had huge mood debuffs and regular mental breaks and hated my priest for the sacrifices

If I had to restart a game with optimization in mind I'd rather start with either Nyarlathotep (to make every colonist psychopaths asap) either Tsagotthuah (for Sleeper of Nkai spell allowing to make more prisoners, which can easily snowball into huge power in this mod), keeping items summoning gods like Cthulhu or Dagon for later as these spells increase your weath too fast. And I would directly make a big temple with room for the 6 gods statues (even if all wouldn't be made before some time, temple size also gives a bonus to casting chance) and alternate worship so I can use all the low level spells as soon as possible.

To resume :

- Nyarlathotep is an excellent early game god because psychopathy is extremely usefull, while giving it to all colonists won't increase your colony wealth, and his other powers allow you to buff your research or make your pawns more polyvalent, things you mostly need in early game, but he isn't very interesting out of that (once you have a good team and good researcher, you likely won't use his powers out of the first one)

- Tsagotthuah is an excellent god for any stage of the game because Sleeper of Nkai allow you to easily make prisoners and keep them (frog idols near prison entrances solving the escapes problem). His high level spells are a bit less interesting, looking like inferior versions of the ones Shub Niggurath and Cthulhu get but unlike Dark Youngs Formless Spawn do reproduce often if you can get a male and a female and don't have insane food needs, and the Elixir of Power beats Cthulhu gifts as a buff for pure melee pawns (if this one is not permanent).

- Shub Niggurath 2 first spells are mostly usefull if you play in hard biomes and need help to feed your colony. Then She allows to summon Dark Youngs (and will often give several per cast, if the Womb between worlds is not destroyed), and finally has the ultimate spell for combat pets lovers, Transmogrify (allowing to create really insanely tough creatures if you cast it on summons, or even better use it on Genetic Rim Eldritch crossbreeds). So I'd say she may be very interesting or meh in early game but is always a good goddess for mid/late.

- Cthulhu is an excellent midgame god, mostly interesting for his ability to mutate your colonists (Aspect of Cthulhu), getting free equivalent of bionics (but slightly inferior to them for most parts and giving no control about the limb to replace -so mutations risk to replace already installed bionic parts-, so mutations tend to lose interest in endgame -except for odontophobes as they allow to replace their limbs avoiding the malus coming with bionics parts), or give psionic powers to your priests. He also has a very potent anti-siegers spell with terrestrial insanity wave (but you need to face an human raid taking his time to attack to have the time to use it). As mentionned above his first power is powerful too for summoning items, but too random to be always usefull and dangerously increasing colony wealth if you cast Orbital Wave too often in early game.

- The spell Defenders of the Brood being currently bugged and seeming impossible to cast more than one time per colony (in addition of giving you uncontrollable allies that will likely end fighting caravaners or travellers and damage your relations with friendly factions) Dagon is currently the weakest god, mostly interesting for summoning rare materials to build higher quality statues in your temples (with the same disadvantage as Cthulhu's orbital wave in early game : if you use summoning spells too often you'll end with too fast wealth evolution and facing raids you can't handle).

- Hastur is to be seen as a secundary god, not in the sense he's weak, but because you won't have to use his powers often for them to be effective, so you can take full advantage of his powers and still have many sacrifices left for other gods. His first spell give you a permanent reusable artefact allowing you to raise cult mindedness of a colonist for a sanity cost, so you basically won't have to cast it more than one time per game. Then he allows to make you an air force of byakhees working like living transport pods and also being half decent combat pets (inferior to the other options the mod give), but you likely won't need to have more than 2 or 3 except if you play with many colonies or spend your time attacking outposts. King in Yellow act 2 gives a season long mood buff to most of your colonists, and so won't be used more than one time per season and per colony. His final power may allow your preachers to revive, but you obviously won't need to cast it more than one time per sacrifier until they die (in addition the spell is currently bugged and will likely make an infinite number of clones spawn from their corpses instead of one, so don't use it).

c) Bonus tips

- All the summons eat meat and corpses but only Dark Youngs are predators. A formless spawn, black goat or byakhee may be in a zone with a lot of game they'll starve rather than hunting.

- While it's not stated in spell description Terrestrial Insanity Wave will also affect several of your colonists and cause severe sanity losses.

- Sleeper of Nkai will be triggered by any pawn of hostile faction in range, including prisoners just wandering in their room, or released ones. It's even triggered by sacrified prisoners if your altar is in range. As the idol only work once every few hours it may make it inactive for the real threats.

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