A starting strategy for the Celts?

Ieldra said:

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.

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What difficulty are you playing on?- That's going to Influence a majority of decisions regarding religion. The majority of your early game faith at immortal and more so on deity should be spent on Missionaries.

Ieldra said:

+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.

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You are playing on Marathon you could have generated more faith on Marathon by investing the hammers you put into Stonehenge into Pictish Warriors.

Could you provide your starting save, please?

Difficulty is King, Small Continents map. I'm at the forested end of a large peninsula, with an expanse of desert separating me from the isthmus where the Hunnic capital sits. There are two city states on the peninsula and nobody else. I supposed I could've rushed the Huns, but the number of units I spied put me off, and fighting an early war twenty hexes from any mobilization point doesn't look like a promising venture.

As for the Pictish Warriors: I thought so, too, but it appears that the barbarian spawn is balanced to occur more slowly as well in Marathon games. I fought disappointingly few of them, and there aren''t nearly enough spawn points for a faith output that would equal the 5 per turn that you get from Stonehenge. An early barbarian gives you +4 faith, which means you'd need to kill 1.25 barbarians per turn on average.

I think I could move up in difficulty one, maybe two steps, the one thing that prevents me from doing so is how much I hate getting behind in tech. I wonder: is it possible to play the exact same map, from the same starting location, in a higher difficulty?

Barb camps spawn at the same frequency on Marathon as Standard. Songhai with honor opener is pretty OP on Marathon maps.

No its not possible just play a new map.

Ieldra said:

I think I could move up in difficulty one, maybe two steps, the one thing that prevents me from doing so is how much I hate getting behind in tech. I wonder: is it possible to play the exact same map, from the same starting location, in a higher difficulty?

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Not really... (not EXACTLY with the same locations for everything, i.e. other civs and CS), but you can save the map and then start a game with it and keep rerolling (it helps if your civ has a start bias so your chances are not completely random) until you spawn somewhere near where you were.

Here's a tidbit for those who thought I couldn't have a good Faith output with my strategy: I am at the start of the Industrial Era and I have nine cities and 100 Faith per turn.

The point about needing the faith for missionaries is valid but at the time when that becomes a concern almost all of the religious buildings are done.

Ieldra said:

Here's a tidbit for those who thought I couldn't have a good Faith output with my strategy: I am at the start of the Industrial Era and I have nine cities and 100 Faith per turn.

The point about needing the faith for missionaries is valid but at the time when that becomes a concern almost all of the religious buildings are done.

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That's because you are king difficulty and the AI isn't spreading religion much or at all. Not being smug but if you play on higher levels you have to spend your early faith on spreading religion not religious buildings. Otherwise your non capital cities are going to not have your religion.

EDIt: to be clear you want to spread religion to the CS near you cities not your own cities right away.

Yeah, I did that, too.... the thing is, before I got Navigation I couldn't see many CS or other civs at all, so there weren't many targets to convert, and I didn't need to protect anyone much either. I think this has less to do with the difficulty than with my relative isolation and the fact that there is only one other religion-focused civilization in this game. Nobody is spamming missionaries but me, unlike in my other recent games, and those were on the same difficulty.

I've been working on a strategy for the Celts. I think it'd viable for all difficulty levels.
1) Found your city.
2) Pick the city ranged strength pantheon by turn 10.