Is it just me or are the Celts underrated?

It's usually far faster to ally some cultural CSs and bulb some Great Writers.

Bulb all GW/GA unless you're actually going for peaceful CV, which itself is difficult on deity.

I have my doubts that the Celts are actually underrated amongst advanced players. The issues with the Celts is that Ethiopia isn't much of a different play style and is simply better.

The main bonus of the Celts over Ethiopia is the +3 happiness building. But tbh, in BNW, I typically have less cities and therefore, less happiness problems.

The +3 happy building is great for late-game warmongering.

Sclb said:

Bulb all GW/GA unless you're actually going for peaceful CV, which itself is difficult on deity.

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I find it really helpful to create Great Works with my first two writers, regardless of my victory type. The Great Works can be moved to whichever cities need their borders expanded, which can be pretty handy. In addition, you'll have the theming bonus for Oxford taken care of, whenever you end up building it.

Plumfairy said:

I find it really helpful to create Great Works with my first two writers, regardless of my victory type. The Great Works can be moved to whichever cities need their borders expanded, which can be pretty handy. In addition, you'll have the theming bonus for Oxford taken care of, whenever you end up building it.

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I would rather spend the gold. If I think I have a shot at the WF I will hold on to them to use 20 turns after I win that or I will burn them during a golden age to get a free policy.

I don't think the gold saved and small culture gains with a free policy.

Iberian said:

I would rather spend the gold. If I think I have a shot at the WF I will hold on to them to use 20 turns after I win that or I will burn them during a golden age to get a free policy.

I don't think the gold saved and small culture gains with a free policy.

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Of course the most efficient thing is to save all GW till the end of a GA boosted by WF, and all GA until you have universal suffrage and Chichen Itza. Very likely you will have to bulb earlier to get through SP trees.

Creating GW with the first 2 GW requires you to actually build amphitheaters, or monuments if you're tradition, unless going CV, isn't worth it for the faster tiles. You're likely gonna have to buy tiles. One of the problem people have is placing cities too far apart when playing liberty.

I think they're good for a wide culture victory as opposed to an Ethiopian tall culture victory, although I actually think Ethiopia is better with more Steles than fewer Steles...

You get an early religion and overpower people with it throughout the game. It should spread everywhere if you focus on pumping out missionaries even f you don't for cathedrals and mosques and sacred sites (or pagodas and cathedrals). That bonus to tourism from shared religions as well as the trade routes bonus (and its ability to spread religion) mean I play them peacefully unless a rival is spamming thier religion or is very resistant to culture in which case attack them.

The difference between Ethiopia and the Celts is the Celts mid game is stronger because of opportunity for expansion with the Celidh hall and the establishment of your artists and musicians guild that comes slightly later. This favours a wide Empire because you have more slots (unless you get lucky with a lot of wonders which to be fair you can do with Ethiopia because your cities should be big and good with production of you can somehow get workshops and windmills built without sacrificing too much time to research the cultural techs you need also...as ever science is king...).

Fun civ to play though.

They're pretty good at wide culture. The fast religion allow them a fast pick of religion beliefs and the unique opera give happiness right at the moment where wide play struggles the most in happiness.

dpunk said:

The issues with the Celts is that Ethiopia isn't much of a different play style and is simply better.

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I am not following why people think Celts is like Ethiopia. Yes, both have easy early faith enough for your pick at a pantheon. That is about where the similarity ends though.

Celts is bad at faith generation later in the game, while Ethiopia has UB that helps later on. Celt is pretty much required to play wide to get good faith, and Ethiopia can choose to play tall, but IMO they're also good at wide due to their UB.

Athenaeum said:

And I mainly play multiplayer where building opera houses is a waste of time. The gold maintenance for opera houses and amphitheaters are just not worth it if you have not adopted that Aesthetics policy that reduces hammer cost (forgot what it's called).

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This is just wrong. Even top-tier MP players like Yoruus and FilthyRobot sometimes build the Hermitage. I would say the average would be around turn 130 to turn 150. It's an incredible National Wonder and arguably even better in MP than it is in SP, because in MP wonders like Parthenon, Globe Theatre, Uffizi and Sistine Chapel are much easier to build than in a regular Deity game. Especially Parthenon and Globe Theatre are often uncontested because Oracle and Leaning Tower of Pisa are that much more desirable. More flat culture means you get more out of your Hermitage.

In the unmodded game Aesthetics is just horrible, taking anything but Rationalism for your second tree is crippling yourself severely. It is much, much worse than in SP, because you're not going to win a cultural victory in MP nine out of ten times. The only trees with good filler policies are Commerce (unit purchasing, science and gpt), Honor (great generals, exp) and Piety (only for wide empires).

When playing with NQ Mod it's a completely different story however. Aesthetics is actually really good.

Athenaeum said:

Your type of philosophy seems to be obsessive-compulsive in that you feel obligated to tweak your gameplay to a considerable degree just to make use of a civ's special traits. If you watch expert players like FilthyRobot for example, there are some games where he gets the Huns and doesn't attack anyone until late-game. There are some games where he gets Ethiopia and completely nullifies their UA by building ten cities (albeit he probably does this to build more Steles, but still). In the same way, you shouldn't rush Gunpowder before Education just so you can get America's Minuteman, and you shouldn't build Chateau's on every single tile that you can, because that culture and gold comes at the expense of other resources such as hammers, etc.


When deciding your play style, there are more relevant factors to consider, such as your spawn, your neighbors, the terrain around you, city-states, etc., than what you are "supposed to do" with the civ that you are playing.

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Since you're aware of FilthyRobot your statement makes even less sense to me, since he actually does build the Hermitage every now and then.

Yes, you obviously don't ever want to build Amphis or Opera Houses when you're behind or when you did not get a single (cultural) Wonder, but that shouldn't even be needed to mention.

But Filthy pretty much exclusively plays with NQ Mod now, FWIW.

I watched most of his older videos until I decided it was time to give NQ mod a try - never went back. My statement was regarding his unmodded videos of course, both Hermitage and Aesthetics are very strong in NQ mod.

Is the NQ Mod, and/or the NQ map script, available on CFC or through Steam? (Yes, I have looked. No luck.)

I found the Reddit Civ 5 NQ Mod thread and see the Google Docs links in the sidebar. But I am actually more interested in learning more how both work for SP, and I don’t care to register for Reddit just to ask newb questions. Plus I strongly prefer to stick with managing mods through the game interface, rather than doing so manually. Thanks!

beetle said:

Is the NQ Mod, and/or the NQ map script, available on CFC or through Steam? (Yes, I have looked. No luck.)

I found the Reddit Civ 5 NQ Mod thread and see the Google Docs links in the sidebar. But I am actually more interested in learning more how both work for SP, and I don’t care to register for Reddit just to ask newb questions. Plus I strongly prefer to stick with managing mods through the game interface, rather than doing so manually. Thanks!

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Just download the singleplayer version of their mod and install it in the mods folder as usual. But iirc you use Mac and NQMod is not 100% Mac compatible (the mod uses a custom dll).
The NQMapscript is a different part, just download the mac version and put it in your mods folder.

^^ I am actually more interested in following the conversation about the mod and map than actually using them. But not interested enough to do so in different fora...

Well you can still read the conversations on r/nqmod . It's mostly a multiplayer thing though.

NQ mod makes SP slightly more challenging since every GP is on an individual counter, meaning the AI is not crippled by spawning early Engineers and Merchants. It also balances out units, which makes for far more interesting warfare. Since Research Agreements are banned it's much harder to keep up in Science on Deity, I'd say on average you catch up when you hit Public Schools.