A starting strategy for the Celts?

I'm trying to do something different to my usual playstyle (building and turtling) and that means playing a civilization like the Celts. I'm asking for feasible starting strategies. Particular problem areas include:

I'll be first to found a religion, which means there are more options than with many other civilizations, since being early means not only that you have more options left, but also that beliefs have a more profound effect on the way your civilization develops.

First, social policies. I know I'll be going with Liberty and Piety but I don't really know in which order. If I start with Liberty for the free settler, should I then switch to piety and follow it down in order to get a good reformation belief, or should I finish Liberty and then switch to Piety, or should I go for the free worker and settler and then switch to Piety?

Then, the Pantheon belief. Of course, if you have the prerequisites the terrain-based beliefs might be good, since in my experience if you have one patch of a resource around it's likely there are more. Nonetheless, my intuitive choice for the Pantheon belief would be "Fertility rites" since it affects population and population is really at the basis of all development. Also, "God King" looks great - equal to up to five instances of a resource that provides a bonus - but culture is always hard to come by in the early and mid-game so I consider Ancestor Worship or one of the resource-dependent culture bonuses - +1 per city sounds good. On the other hand, if you choose a resource-dependent belief you may have the bad luck of not finding any more of a particular resource. Then since I hate getting behind in tech, and the celts are focused elsewhere, Messenger of the Gods looks nice, but it only comes in once you have roads which you won't have for a few dozen turns more. I just don't know.

The founding beliefs are more straightforward since I'll try to get Tithe and Pagodas since those are universally useful and not playstyle-dependent.

The one problem I've found in the test game I tried was that I tend to lag behind in technology as the Celts, and that plainly sucks since it restricts my selection of wonders. Also, you tend to start in a forest (In that test game, I started in what appeared to be a continent-sized forest) which means it tends to take forever to get anywhere, including the enemies you need to fight to boost your faith with your Pictish Warriors. And lastly, one question: is the Pictish Warrior's special ability retained after you upgrade them?

I'd like to know how people here play the Celts. I'm relatively new to CivV, returning back to the roots, so to say, after Civ2 a decade and more ago...

Celts are a good civ to go wide, though that is reasnonably unfashionable in BNW. You could go Piety to unlock reformation belief, sacred sites and go cultural victory early. Beware your very slow tech rate. (as you pointed out)
Regarding pantheon belief, I find if I am a strong religion civ that you should still pick a pantheon for more faith. Bear in mind also that you will probably chop a lot of those forest so you won't be keeping that faith generation from them for too long. This also answers another point, get a few workers chopping those forests and you'll add quite a few hammers which will compensate somewhat for the delay to hooking up luxes.
The Pictish warriors do keep their abilities as far as I remember but because BNW penalises early conquest, you'll find they are mainly used for barb hunting or non-conquest wars.
What difficulty are you playing BTW?

I feel like you pick the Celts because you want to try to snowball your religious growth. First pick at a pantheon is nice, but you don't spread until you found a religion, so your pantheon belief should be the best faith generating one. You're going to be surrounded by forests, so unless you get lucky with tundra, god-king might be the best. I am also a sucker for pilgrimage when going for rapid spreading.

I would go liberty first. You can get a free great prophet upon finishing the tree, and you get extra faith if your second city is surrounded by forests. If you go straight through piety, your growth is going to seriously hurt. Also, I find that liberty starts looking a lot less worthwhile when you adopt it late. I think the only reason to go for piety first is if you absolutely must have a specific reformation belief, like for a sacred sites culture victory. You should also consider which great people you want to faith-buy and plan your social policies around this. With aethetics full, for example, you can turn that faith into a huge advantage.

A lot depends on your difficulty. At the highest difficulty, even as the Celts you can fall behind, and you'll find that for some reason, the AI loves to go piety and will fight your best efforts to spread.

INB4 Tommy says play them just like every other civ and any strategy tailored to a specific Civ is dumb and only apes would do it.

Back on track - Pitchish warriors lose their faith per kill ability when upgraded but you can use them to farm early game and that will help establish a religion.

I'm going to assume you are playing on deity and are on a standard map. If so, I'm not really sold on Reformation beliefs because the AI love Piety and to me there are only 2 really good reformation beliefs; Jesuit Education and GttGs.

Since you are going to be generating lots of early game faith, I'd open Liberty and grab land with a 1 city per 1 unique resource. I'd also make a run at the pyramids and use CBs to clear space or defend. As far as pantheons pick one that benefits you the most prioritizing Faith. Don't worry about culture so much as you don't want too many in the gap between liberty and Rationalism.

God King is bad for Civs that are going to establish a religion; you want to use God King on a civ that doesn't or won't get religion fertility Rites are also one of the Pantheons you'll use when you don't expect to get a religion. I don't have much experience with Messenger of the Gods; I typically use that with Carthage since they get free connections at Wheel but it doesn't help the religion game. You want Faith on tiles or Culture on Tiles barring that hammers and or food on tiles. Tithe/Patagonia/Divine Inspiration(Swords into Plowshears or Religious Community)/IP is a pretty standard set.

My most recent game with them I went liberty/wide. I made sure every city I founded early on had at least one forest near for faith. I was able to take a non faith pantheon and still had no problem founding, no Ethiopia/Mayans on that map though. They'd probably screw that up. I took Goddess of the Hunt because truffles was my main local resource but I also got lucky and found fur to my SW and ivory to the East. It just seemed logical.

The UA basically is a faith pantheon and as long as you're building shrines and temples I don't think wasting your pantheon on faith is that great of an idea because founding is pretty easy. Taking Goddess of the Hunt allowed me to easily keep my capital's growth on par with the AIs who went tradition despite my going liberty/wide. I got pagodas for my first belief but there wasn't a whole lot left when I enhanced. I ended up taking liturgical drama, normally not a great belief but my UB meant there would also be an amphitheater in every city and that helped my faith generation quite a bit. I think the Celts are better served by a nonfaith pantheon based on their locale. That's just my opinion though.

The UU is good for early wars that don't involve taking cities. I use it to pillage and steal workers and generally mess up the AI. You can really put a damper on their growth and expansion without getting stuck with a massive warmonger penalty. A lot of the time once you've screwed them up enough the AI will offer extravagant tribute for peace deals and the hate wears away in 50 turns or so as long as you didn't cap a city. Then you can be peaceful if you like.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

My most recent game with them I went liberty/wide. I made sure every city I founded early on had at least one forest near for faith. I was able to take a non faith pantheon and still had no problem founding, no Ethiopia/Mayans on that map though. They'd probably screw that up. I took Goddess of the Hunt because truffles was my main local resource but I also got lucky and found fur to my SW and ivory to the East. It just seemed logical.

The UA basically is a faith pantheon and as long as you're building shrines and temples I don't think wasting your pantheon on faith is that great of an idea because founding is pretty easy. Taking Goddess of the Hunt allowed me to easily keep my capital's growth on par with the AIs who went tradition despite my going liberty/wide. I got pagodas for my first belief but there wasn't a whole lot left when I enhanced. I ended up taking liturgical drama, normally not a great belief but my UB meant there would also be an amphitheater in every city and that helped my faith generation quite a bit. I think the Celts are better served by a nonfaith pantheon based on their locale. That's just my opinion though.

The UU is good for early wars that don't involve taking cities. I use it to pillage and steal workers and generally mess up the AI. You can really put a damper on their growth and expansion without getting stuck with a massive warmonger penalty. A lot of the time once you've screwed them up enough the AI will offer extravagant tribute for peace deals and the hate wears away in 50 turns or so as long as you didn't cap a city. Then you can be peaceful if you like.

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Taking goddess of the hunt was good in that particular situation but faith (if you have faith bearing tiles) is nearly always the best pick if you are planning on founding and spreading a religion.

I like to use the Celts' inherent faith to choose a non-faith pantheon. The 15% wonder bonus can help you grab an early wonder that fits your goal, or if the terrain is right you can grab a culture or border pantheon to offset going Liberty. If your worried about tech, grab the +2 science pantheon. Since you get a pantheon so early, and will be getting faith bonuses from the Picts, you get to shop around for more options at the pantheon stage IMHO

Tamir Lenk said:

I like to use the Celts' inherent faith to choose a non-faith pantheon. The 15% wonder bonus can help you grab an early wonder that fits your goal, or if the terrain is right you can grab a culture or border pantheon to offset going Liberty. If your worried about tech, grab the +2 science pantheon. Since you get a pantheon so early, and will be getting faith bonuses from the Picts, you get to shop around for more options at the pantheon stage IMHO

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Take a look at what the new (post BNW fall patch) God-King pantheon does and do the math for 15% of you're basic early production when building an early wonder and you won't take that 15% early wonder pantheon again. Note that for Tradition players, that 1 extra pp from God King will really be +1.15 pp since it will be multiplied by the bonus from Aristocracy, whereas the 15% pantheon won't be.

Assuming 8 ppt from the cap at the time where you're rushing for an early wonder and aristocracy and monuments to the Gods, you'll be generating 8 x 1.3=11.4 ppt for that wonder. With God-King the cap is generating 9 ppt x 1.15= 11.35 ppt for that wonder and getting +1 of 4 others things that are nice to have, especially early. God King lasts all game whereas that poor wonder pantheon is only good for ancient and classical wonders.

.. neilkaz ..

Resipsa said:

Taking goddess of the hunt was good in that particular situation but faith (if you have faith bearing tiles) is nearly always the best pick if you are planning on founding and spreading a religion.

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The Celts really don't need that extra faith when played wide though. A faith pantheon (other than dance of the aurora or desert folklore) will generally only offer an average of 1 or 2 faith per city for another civ, your UA already gives that. You can be better than other civs that found because you're using that pantheon to give a boost in another aspect of the game, you know an aspect that will actually help you win, growth, science or production. Your religion has a bonus that other civs don't normally have. I think Sun God or Goddess of the Hunt are no brainers when the right tiles are near but God of the Sea, Faith Healers or Messenger of the Gods are going to help more in the long run too. If you're planning on going commerce instead of rationalism you could even go for a culture pantheon to help blast through it before ideologies, maybe even be able to drop a couple points into rationalism if your output is really good.

I suppose if you're playing tall you would be better served by a faith pantheon but the UA and UB kind of scream wide to me.

Ieldra said:

And lastly, one question: is the Pictish Warrior's special ability retained after you upgrade them?

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The faith/kill bonus is lost, but the foreign lands bonus and the free pillaging are both retained.

I agree with those suggesting that you don't necessarily have to pick a faith pantheon or even try to get a religion. IMO the strength of the UA is the fact that you automatically get an early pantheon without any investment needed - and usually the first pantheon too, allowing you to pick anything whatsoever.

God-king from turn 10-12 onwards is very strong in terms of snowball-effects. I think I would prefer a pantheon like that, which is not dependent on any kind of improvement (unlike Goddess of the Hunt, Oral Tradition, etc), meaning you get benefits ~20 turns earlier right when it's most needed.

I think the UA is a lot stronger if you recognize its flexibility and don't let it pigeon-hole you into a religion-strategy (which can be questionable if you're playing deity). I'd rather just see it as a great early bonus supporting any kind of ambitious early-game strategies.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

The Celts really don't need that extra faith when played wide though. A faith pantheon (other than dance of the aurora or desert folklore) will generally only offer an average of 1 or 2 faith per city for another civ, your UA already gives that. You can be better than other civs that found because you're using that pantheon to give a boost in another aspect of the game, you know an aspect that will actually help you win, growth, science or production. Your religion has a bonus that other civs don't normally have. I think Sun God or Goddess of the Hunt are no brainers when the right tiles are near but God of the Sea, Faith Healers or Messenger of the Gods are going to help more in the long run too. If you're planning on going commerce instead of rationalism you could even go for a culture pantheon to help blast through it before ideologies, maybe even be able to drop a couple points into rationalism if your output is really good.

I suppose if you're playing tall you would be better served by a faith pantheon but the UA and UB kind of scream wide to me.

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I've never been able to go more than 7-8 cities on deity without conquest on a standard map, if you're going wider than that you'll need a happiness pantheon not a food pantheon.

I value faith at 3/1 so one quarry per city would be equal to three camps per city by my evaluation.

The UA is for fast pantheon and fast religion you'll eventually chop those woods as you can't even put a lumber yard on them. When Will you ever find the hammers to build 8 Opera Houses?

Resipsa said:

I've never been able to go more than 7-8 cities on deity without conquest on a standard map, if you're going wider than that you'll need a happiness pantheon not a food pantheon.

I value faith at 3/1 so one quarry per city would be equal to three camps per city by my evaluation.

The UA is for fast pantheon and fast religion you'll eventually chop those woods as you can't even put a lumber yard on them. When Will you ever find the hammers to build 8 Opera Houses?

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How often do you actually need that tile? Maybe in the capital at the tail end of the game but even then you're working specialist slots before you run out of tiles, even if you'd gone tradition/tall. You also get that faith without being pigeonholed into what tiles you have to work. You can go the entire game never needing to improve that tile. Leave it unimproved, it's free faith. I do admit I will improve ones where there was 3 forests eventually but will always leave at least one. It's not like you can't build shrines and temples to replace it. They're cheap midgame.

It's also easy to build those opera houses when you're building them for happiness instead of zoos. The only peaceful VC going wide really helps is CV so my question is what are you building that's more important than an Opera house that gives 3 happiness? Even if you're going dom the happiness is worth the effort to get.

Quite a few interesting answers, thank you. I am in the interesting position of having started in a small patch of forest - maybe enough for three or four +2-faith bonus cities if I settle at its borders and the coast, but apart from that the only direction to expand is a desert expanse, so I'm actually wondering if I should take "Desert Folklore" even if it wouldn't affect my starting city. There's enough flood plain with wheat for two big cities to work, the only disadvantage is that those places don't provide much in the way of production, and if I place my second city there it's going to be nine tiles away from my capital.

Two questions here: flood plains do count for Desert Folklore, right (as opposed to some other desert bonus I recall)? And does the city itself count if placed on a desert tile?

I'm also wondering about city spacing. So far my guideline has been to allow for minimum workable territory overlap where feasible, but you don't really need all that space unless there's a fair amount of useless terrain, and too-wide spacing makes roads expensive. Any recommendations?

Edit:
Just in case you're wondering how I know so much about my starting position at the time when I select my pantheon: this is a Marathon game so this happens in turn 14. I also already know I have the Mongols and the Huns for neighbors. I guess I won't have any problems getting into a war without diplomatic penalties...

I don't like piety for the Celts.

I use piety only as a last resort for games that I absolutely must found a religion early (which is few) AND I have no other faith "outs" to go with- no religious mountains, no nearby CSs, no civ bonus, SH not an option, and if you play with huts on, missing there too (which is considerably fewer).

Granted, the aspect of piety that I cherish the most is the holy site super tiles, which the Celts would be more able to capitalize on.

The one thing that I found the most helpful while playing the Celts is to not become married to the unimproved forest bonus. It's there to get the ball rolling early, but don't keep a tile (or 3) almost unusable all game for a 1FPT bonus. My rule of thumb is to chop them once the city has a shrine.

Ieldra said:

Quite a few interesting answers, thank you. I am in the interesting position of having started in a small patch of forest - maybe enough for three or four +2-faith bonus cities if I settle at its borders and the coast, but apart from that the only direction to expand is a desert expanse, so I'm actually wondering if I should take "Desert Folklore" even if it wouldn't affect my starting city. There's enough flood plain with wheat for two big cities to work, the only disadvantage is that those places don't provide much in the way of production, and if I place my second city there it's going to be nine tiles away from my capital.

Two questions here: flood plains do count for Desert Folklore, right (as opposed to some other desert bonus I recall)? And does the city itself count if placed on a desert tile?

I'm also wondering about city spacing. So far my guideline has been to allow for minimum workable territory overlap where feasible, but you don't really need all that space unless there's a fair amount of useless terrain, and too-wide spacing makes roads expensive. Any recommendations?

Edit:
Just in case you're wondering how I know so much about my starting position at the time when I select my pantheon: this is a Marathon game so this happens in turn 14. I also already know I have the Mongols and the Huns for neighbors. I guess I won't have any problems getting into a war without diplomatic penalties...

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looks like good plan DF works on desert flood plains Petra does not. 9 tiles is okay as long as you can fill in your borders and defend your second. Put all your guilds in that second city as it's low production but high food and faith. GLHF

Oh you'll get a faith tile on your desert city tile btw

Social policies; Both Liberty & Piety are designed to be the first policy tree and really suffer if delayed until another tree already completed.
Just choose one of them for a given game and let the other go.
But, in most games I'd go standard full Tradition as them.

Celts will normally be first to pantheon, but unless that pantheon produces faith, won't be first to found a religion.

Pagodas: This is really for Piety only. If choosing Tradition, you are much better off with the boring policy that gives +2 happiness to a regular temple as you can build a full set of Temples much faster than full priced Pagodas.

So...I had a feeling that the option with the God-King pantheon belief would turn out better, but I was curious so I played both variants through to 700 BC.

Well...it *is* superior. So much that the alternative doesn't deserve the remotest consideration whatsoever. Turns out that if you get the God-King bonus as early as turn 14 (turn 5 in standard pacing I guess), the jump-start this gives you overrides any other possible benefit which only starts to accrue later.

I'd say if you are the Celts, and you have two or three reasonably good locations for cities with 3 forest tiles, selecting a faith-per-tile pantheon belief will only turn out superior if you have multiple tiles of that kind in your starting city - and maybe not even then since God-King adds +1 faith as well.

So, here's my recommendation for others: If you're the Celts, unless you know very well what you're doing, choose God-King for your pantheon belief!

Also about the religious building options (Pagoda/Monastery etc) in the follower beliefs of a religion: I most emphatically do not agree that they're only for those who use the Piety tree. These buildings mean you get a bonus in culture, faith and happiness (!!!) for no maintenance cost in gold (the same boni would cost about 6 gold per turn with other buildings, were there additional buildings of the kind), and since their price doesn't go up as with missionaries and prophets, you get a lot of "bang for the buck", especially if you expand more later in the game. Also, every such building increases your faith output so every one you build makes the next one cheaper in comparison.

What this means for my current game - I only played the God-King path beyond 700BC of course: I don't think I ever had a civilization this powerful as early in the game. I was lucky in that the other players were slow to found their religions, so I could enhance mine before others founded any, and I grabbed both the pagoda and the mosque. This means every city has a bonus of +4 culture, +5 faith and +3 happiness at no maintenance cost, and since I had enhanced my religion before I finished the Liberty tree I could affort to get a great scientist as the finisher option, which means that I caught up in technology fast.

As a general consideration, it turns out that expanding beyond five cities early comes at a prohibitive cost in happiness, so I wouldn't have done it even had there been the territory for it. Now in the renaissance, with the Ceilidh Halls coming up, likely I'll be able to expand overseas early. My gold surplus is high enough to support a very big fleet.

I have two regrets only: one, that I couldn't get the Great Lighthouse - sea travel on huge maps takes a long time, and I'm spoiled from my time with England - and since I didn't choose Tradition, I won't be able to purchase Great Engineers with faith - which really sucks since due to the comparative lack of strategic resources in my territory, production is my weak point. I have enough dye to paint the world Pictish-blue, but only two sources of iron...

Edit:
As for my religion, I had overlooked that you could name your religion. I like culturally fitting names, so I called my religion "Ffordd Myrddin" - which is "The Way of Merlin" in Welsh (of the still existing languages the one closest to what Boudicca would've spoken). Unsurprisingly, due to my neighbours religious indecision it is highly successful. At the start of the Renaissance are, every city I can see has adopted it, excepting one far-away capital I only see because of a treaty. The damned Huns had one of their own, but a few missionaries and a Great prophet took care of that. It doesn't exist any more.

Regarding God King; it provides 1 of each
-Faith is equivalent to Culture on a 1/1 ratio
-Faith is equivalent to 4 Gold (roughly you can buy an archer for 200 gold or 50 faith provided that you have holy warriors)
-Faith is equivalent to a Hammer (roughly on a 1 to 1 ratio)

That means that if you are working three faith bearing tiles you are getting the equivalent of God King. Most likely you where not working 3 faith bearing tiles at 700BC which is equivalent to like turn 50 on standard speed? (IDK) I think if you played an entire game I think DF would eclipse any benefit from GK around turn 70 on standard speed or around 210 on marathon.

Regarding religious buildings how are you able to afford religious buildings with only GK as a pantheon and +1 or +2 per city on 5 cities. that's only 11 additional on top of temples and shrines. On Marathon a Patagonia will cost 600 that seems unreliable.

@Resipsa:

Regarding my faith output:

I guess that Stonehenge helped in getting things started. Regarding the price, on Marathon, things are slower, so the fact that the buildings cost 600 faith instead of 200 is balanced by having more turns in the same time for that faith to accrue. Meanwhile, your faith output by turn remains constant. What do you think about waiting, say, 13 turns to construct a religious building in a game with standard pacing? Doesn't sound too bad given the results are +2 happiness, +2 culture and +2 faith, right? There are wonders that give you less of a boost! Then you'll need to wait a little less for the next one, since the previous one adds faith. It is really a nice snowball effect. And....the best thing is that all this comes on top of the benefits of standard buildings.

Let's say you have a religion with two building options and start with a faith output of 16:
+6 from forest cities
+1 from god-king
+4 from shrines (one city in the desert)
+5 from Stonehenge

In a game with standard pacing, you'll have to wait 13 turns to collect the necessary faith for the first religious building Then, if you start with the Mosque, the next one will become available only 10 turns later since you now have 19 faith per turn. And so on, until the eightth one becomes available after only 6 more turns. And you'll end up with a total faith output of 36 when everything is finished, as well as +3 happiness and +4 culture in every city. Oh, and since this is probably the time when you start building temples as well, things might go even faster.

The thing is, you don't really need your faith for anything else after you've enhanced your religion until the Industrial Era unless you're on the Piety track and can produce units. Getting more Great Prophets is nice but hardly essential compared to culture, happiness and of course more faith. Also, if you avoid producing Great Prophets at this time, they won't be as prohibitively expensive later, when you have contact with more other civs and occasionally want them to appear.

Regarding the value of tile-based faith boni: I don't discount them, no, but if you don't have them in your starting city that advantage will be more than balanced by the jump-start you get with God-King. Sure, you might end up with more faith in the long run if you create more cities with bonus tiles, but you'll have lost advantages in all other areas.

More specifically, the difference in the two approaches at 700 BC amounted to:

+Two ancient wonders vs. no wonders (I was lucky to get Stonehenge I admit, probably because there aren't any religion-focused civs in this game, but I have the time and production to build it, which I didn't on the alternative track).
+A medium sized army vs. a pitiable one
+A small gold surplus vs. being borderline deficitary
+Medium production value of cities vs. pitiable production value anywhere but the capital.
=comparable faith output
-a little less population since the desert cities have more fertile terrain.

So my estimation: "Desert Folklore" is probably worth it if you start near a desert, but any other tile-based faith bonus in a pantheon belief is going to depend on things you don't know at the time when you choose your pantheon belief as the Celts. Also, initially, faith is a resource that won't benefit you immediately, and a bonus which does counts for more since its effects snowball.