Fellowship of Leaves for non-elves

Is it ever worth sticking with leaves versus the other religions?

From what I can tell:

Benefits of keeping FoL as your state religion:

• It's an early game religion
• Two heroes; Kithra is fast, and Yvain has affinity
• Tiger spam, although once you've build your priests you can keep them and switch to a different religion.
• Satyrs have 9 attacking strength, which is quite high at their time of the game, and they make collecting animals very easy.
• Lots of health for your cities
• Treants spawning against attackers.
• The woodsman II promotion (again, doesn't require you to stay FoL)
• The Guardian of Nature civic (Less useful than it is for the elves though, as you can't just put ancient forests in every square in your empire (or maybe you can. Would this ever be economically viable?))

Ancient Forests are basically improvements that give 1 :food: 1 :hammers: and 1 :). If you build a lumbermill on a forest before it changes, or cut down the ancient forest, bloom it, then build a lumbermill on the new forest, it's 2 :hammers: and 1 :commerce: by rivers. How does that contend with other improvements? Less :food: than a sanitation farm, less :commerce: than an aristo farm, much less :commerce: than a cottage, equal :hammers: to a mine, one less than a blasting powder mine. I think it's better than a basic windmill, but not as good as a fully-teched windmill (I don't remember the exact windmill stats.)

Drawbacks:

• The fire I spell can turn an ancient forest into a burnt forest, and the water I spell only works on actual flames, not smoke. (Not sure if even Tholal's ai is smart enough to take advantage of this though.)
• Summon treant doesn't seem particularly impressive compared to the other high priest spells.
• Not a whole lot for the late-game.
• No particularly impressive units (and how many level 4 fawns do you usually get?)

What have I missed? And are there any particularly good FoL strategies?