Going Wide with the Celts

isau

Deity
Joined
Jan 15, 2007
Messages
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I don't often see the Celts talked about. One thing I've noticed about them is that they seem particularly well suited to going wide.
- Free early faith based on number of cities provides a good chance to earn the first religion. This gives you a big chance to grab religious buildings that provide Happiness
- The Ceilidh Hall grants +3 Happy per city

Taken together, and the Celts have a good chance of having an additional +5 or +6 Happy for each city over and above other the base number (depending on how may religious buildings they score).

I've tried it and the technique seems to pan out. Particularly by adding some aggression to the mix and taking enemy capitals. Really takes the bite out of going so wide, and has made Boudicca one of my go-to civs (since I prefer playing wide).

Anyone else have other experiences?
 
Yes, but what you've done (mid game conquest) is actually attach a wide empire to a tall core, so this is actually a tradition strategy.

Liberty wide is when you self found a lot a cities.

But everybody gets some religious happiness bonuses. Even if you don't found a religion at all, you get the follower beliefs the neighboring AI has and should be able to on average get 1 per city. (Use trade routes for religious purposes to get better ones in BNW)

So the Celtic happiness religious bonus is 3 - 1 = 2 per city and then add their UB to get 5.
 
Yeah I guess there is the issue of on tougher difficulties religion being a bad deal for the player. I usually play on Emperor because I hate how the game plays at the highest difficulties. Going wide isn't an "optimal" strategy even on the lower/mid difficulties, but at least a religion is attainable.

FWIW I use Liberty for my Domination games (which I've always thought of as "wide" regardless of the size of the first few cities). .
 
Yeah I guess there is the issue of on tougher difficulties religion being a bad deal for the player. I usually play on Emperor because I hate how the game plays at the highest difficulties. Going wide isn't an "optimal" strategy even on the lower/mid difficulties, but at least a religion is attainable.

FWIW I use Liberty for my Domination games (which I've always thought of as "wide" regardless of the size of the first few cities). .

While you can use that, Tradition works better unless you are razing a lot of the AIs cities and refounding them a few hexes away from where the AI did in their correct locations. (The primary benefit to Liberty is the faster settlers.)

For leaving the conquered cities in place instead of relocating them, Tradition's Monarchy (50% pop unhappiness from the capital) helps with empire stability more than Liberty.
 
Working on huge maps, I find a lot of acreage that older AI cities with 4+ tile radius to be wasted, and, given the AI way of going after a capital, if there's room for a 'filler' city, I like to put a couple of them in place; to :
1) thicken a belt of cities between AI's and MY Capital,
2) better my chances for later resource spawning,
3) build up a truly powerful religious and production base; in case I have to fight a 2 front war,and,
4) win the races for the WFair and Int'l.Games.


I use a mix of Tradition, Librety, and Honor for my first 3 trees, then get most of the other openers for SPolicies.
 
Working on huge maps, I find a lot of acreage that older AI cities with 4+ tile radius to be wasted, and, given the AI way of going after a capital, if there's room for a 'filler' city, I like to put a couple of them in place; to :
1) thicken a belt of cities between AI's and MY Capital,
2) better my chances for later resource spawning,
3) build up a truly powerful religious and production base; in case I have to fight a 2 front war,and,
4) win the races for the WFair and Int'l.Games.

I use a mix of Tradition, Librety, and Honor for my first 3 trees, then get most of the other openers for SPolicies.

Actually my approach is to thin down the AI too tightly settled placement by removing some and NOT replacing them.

The 100% requirement of cities (puppets excluded) to have several buildings to build the national wonders really punishes the building "filler" cities.

Both Tradition & Liberty would better if you finish the entire tree before doing anything else. This is especially the case post last weeks patch for Tradition.
(Tradition's 4 free aqueducts even if you don't have Engineering yet, & Liberty's free Great Person of any type)
 
While you can use that, Tradition works better unless you are razing a lot of the AIs cities and refounding them a few hexes away from where the AI did in their correct locations. (The primary benefit to Liberty is the faster settlers.)

For leaving the conquered cities in place instead of relocating them, Tradition's Monarchy (50% pop unhappiness from the capital) helps with empire stability more than Liberty.

Actually, I find that Liberty's Meritocracy actually provides as much happiness, if not more, in a wide conquered empire. For one, you're probably not focused as much on capital growth, and the number of cities you must necessarily acquire when conquering is fairly high, even if you only capture original capitals; so that +1 happy per city is pretty high. In my most recent domination game, Meritocracy was giving me upwards of 10 happiness, while Monarchy would have been only giving me 6-7 at the time.
 
Actually, I find that Liberty's Meritocracy actually provides as much happiness, if not more, in a wide conquered empire. For one, you're probably not focused as much on capital growth, and the number of cities you must necessarily acquire when conquering is fairly high, even if you only capture original capitals; so that +1 happy per city is pretty high. In my most recent domination game, Meritocracy was giving me upwards of 10 happiness, while Monarchy would have been only giving me 6-7 at the time.

Not directly comparable since going Tradition also would have given you a +2 food & 15% extra growth in the capital. The free aqueducts would also greatly increase growth. So even without trying your capital would have been significantly bigger.
 
I got VERY lucky this game, 2nd city settled by the GBReef, 3rd city beside Barrenger Crater, and had the NCollage by T65 !
This on a huge map, tiny islands, and Raging Barbarians .
I am using the Caravan Buff mod .
With slow, careful, timed, constructions;
new cities have building order : harbor, caravansary, walls, monument, library, market;
barracks, armory, shrine, temple, university, lighthouse, seaport, and happy buildings get bought.
After setting up a tight group of islands, bee-lining Astronomy, my Galeass fleet clears a Barbie island, I settle it, bless it with 2 or 4 cargo ships, and soon, Barbcity#( ) can spew cargo ships to continue the process !
Now, it is T195, and I'm up to 15 cities, and no one has DoW'd me, yet .
 
I got VERY lucky this game, 2nd city settled by the GBReef, 3rd city beside Barrenger Crater, and had the NCollage by T65 !
This on a huge map, tiny islands, and Raging Barbarians .
I am using the Caravan Buff mod .
With slow, careful, timed, constructions;
new cities have building order : harbor, caravansary, walls, monument, library, market;
barracks, armory, shrine, temple, university, lighthouse, seaport, and happy buildings get bought.
After setting up a tight group of islands, bee-lining Astronomy, my Galeass fleet clears a Barbie island, I settle it, bless it with 2 or 4 cargo ships, and soon, Barbcity#( ) can spew cargo ships to continue the process !
Now, it is T195, and I'm up to 15 cities, and no one has DoW'd me, yet .

Judging by your description, I'm assuming you have port cities on a bunch of different islands, and if so, is there a reason you're building caravansaries, especially as the second build in each city? All your trade routes should be cargo ships and I'd have to think your caravansaries are a bunch of wasted hammers when your cities could be relatively skyrocketing with a different build order.
 
I got VERY lucky this game, 2nd city settled by the GBReef, 3rd city beside Barrenger Crater, and had the NCollage by T65 !
This on a huge map, tiny islands, and Raging Barbarians .
I am using the Caravan Buff mod .
With slow, careful, timed, constructions;
new cities have building order : harbor, caravansary, walls, monument, library, market;
barracks, armory, shrine, temple, university, lighthouse, seaport, and happy buildings get bought.
After setting up a tight group of islands, bee-lining Astronomy, my Galeass fleet clears a Barbie island, I settle it, bless it with 2 or 4 cargo ships, and soon, Barbcity#( ) can spew cargo ships to continue the process !
Now, it is T195, and I'm up to 15 cities, and no one has DoW'd me, yet .

Judging by your description, I'm assuming you have port cities on a bunch of different islands, and if so, is there a reason you're building caravansaries, especially as the second build in each city? All your trade routes should be cargo ships and I'd have to think your caravansaries are a bunch of wasted hammers when your cities could be relatively skyrocketing with a different build order.

He's using a mod. I bet that is a mod that adds 1 trade route per Caravansary.

This may be getting off topic though, I think OP was posting about playing the Celts in the standard game with a wide empire instead of with a mod that has a bonus for a wide empire.
 
He's using a mod. I bet that is a mod that adds 1 trade route per Caravansary.

This may be getting off topic though, I think OP was posting about playing the Celts in the standard game with a wide empire instead of with a mod that has a bonus for a wide empire.

Ahhhhh, good old reading comprehension...

Back to the point of the thread though, yeah, I've enjoyed the Celts for wide empires for the reasons stated, and now I'm inspired to fire up a new game with them. For whatever reason, the RNG has almost always put me on an island by myself whenever I've played as the Celts, which I dislike because I like me some early warfare... nice to put those Pictish warriors to use before their faith bonus goes obsolete (though it is handy to have a continent to yourself for barbarian-killing purposes).
 
Actually, I find that Liberty's Meritocracy actually provides as much happiness, if not more, in a wide conquered empire. For one, you're probably not focused as much on capital growth, and the number of cities you must necessarily acquire when conquering is fairly high, even if you only capture original capitals; so that +1 happy per city is pretty high. In my most recent domination game, Meritocracy was giving me upwards of 10 happiness, while Monarchy would have been only giving me 6-7 at the time.

Meritocracy is a late game policy. The 5% reduction in unhappiness really adds up as your total pop increases. Liberty is good if you are planning a late game domination using tanks and bombers, but suffers if you are planning to conquer cities to your empire before ideologies. I find that liberty works best if you self found a wide empire and just develop it, occasionally pushing into a few neighbours for living space but never going too far.

Both Tradition and Honor are good for early game conquest. While both suffers compared to liberty in the production department, you gain in science and happiness (Tradition) and combat effectiveness (Honor). Honor is still a gimmicky tree for me. It takes a lot of effort to make it work, but when it works it is really fun to use. If only Honor gives production bonus to All units then it will be a very powerful tree.
 
Oh, YES !!, I am using Ryika's Caravansary mod; and all my (this game) trade routes are cargo ships on a Tiny Islands map, polishing up my act, on Prince .

Now working on T205, with Time and Diplo-VC's disabled; having 15 cities and 3 settlers cruising to 2 islands to nail down another 12 iron and 7 coal; this to feed my navy, and factories !

On the left side of the map, I have DoF'd Shoshone and Venice; to my right are China, Babylon, and the Ottomans; whom I have NOT .

Current idea is to use Winfred Scott's 'Anaconda' strategy from 1861; aiming for a Domination VC, with Science VC as a backup position .

Next 3 settlers will go to THE jungle island (17 jungle tiles !!) next door to Babylon .
Here, timing the settler and worker fleet surge depends on newly available trade routes, to pump up the Jungle Island with 2 food and 2 hammer convoys EACH !!
So I will, over the next30-ish turns take a -24 happy hit; but with enough happy buildings up my sleeve to cover that hit, ready to build ... I can afford rapid expansion; now sitting on 54 happy !!
 
Honor is still a gimmicky tree for me. It takes a lot of effort to make it work, but when it works it is really fun to use. If only Honor gives production bonus to All units then it will be a very powerful tree.

Agreed, honor is very fun. I had to drop down a difficulty level though. Are you able to open and finish it (neglecting both Tradition and Liberty) and still play at Immortal or Deity? Can you point me to some threads on the Strategy and Tips forum?
 
RATS!!!, China and Babylon beat me to Jungle Island; well, they just moved up on my target list .
To ease my rage, I'm settling on all the oil islands; got 54 oil stockpiled already !
BB's, CV's, and bombers coming soon .
'Tis T220, and nobody has DW'd me yet; I may have to blitz somebody soon .
 
The Celts are so lousy as a Civ. Undeveloped forests are a huge liability, the faith is pretty small, and the UU is way too early and upgrades to pikeman (the AI barely uses horses so its main purpose is useless, also with the AI head start you'll need to wait until Spearman are obsolete to get a safe attack).

If think that their goal for the the Celts was to guarantee you first choice at the religious beliefs, but I'm rarely in conflict with the AI anyway as I almost always choose gold per hour citizens, and the AI never chooses that. I like getting first crack at the buildings but that alone isn't enough for a decent UA.
 
I think the Celts are okay. Agree, UU is mostly about barb hunting, but I usually play raging barbs, so that works out. I think they keep the faith kill special as they upgrade, so that is a nice perk. Forest starting bias works out as early chops are OP, so I think it is a liability (slower start than usual) only until you get your first worker. It is tricky as UA only works on unimproved forest, so the value of that is strictly early game. But UA lets you found early, so it did its job. There are many UA with narrow windows of opportunity, so I don't mind that aspect. I think Ceilidh Hall is one of the best UB, and you get its benefits from mid-game on, just as the UA is over-and-done, so good balance there.
 
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