Celt Strategies

[Crimson Grog]

Hi everyone, I recently started playing this mod and I gotta say it's simply amazing. The balancing, the changes to make every leader distinct and interesting, it's just awesome and has revitalized my interest in Civ 5 (I love it but was starting to get bored).

Anyway, I've been trying to come up with some strategies involving the Celts. What I love about them is also what I hate: their flexibility. I'm trying to come up with ideas that make use out of all 3 of their uniques.

UA

• Pantheon is customizable to fit the rest of your strategy
  
• Lack of foreign pressure seems to suggest keeping a religion to yourself (limits choice of founder beliefs, could go well with Sacred Sites strategy)
• +3 faith in owned cities seems better for a wide playstyle, though it helps tall as well

UU

• One of the most powerful early UU in the game
• High strength early on lends itself to conquering neighbors and bullying city-states (Authority)
• Faith on kill also synergies with Authority and Morrigan pantheon, though it helps any strategy but helping found a religion (as long as you keep hunting barbs)

UB

• Yields (except for pantheon bonus) are useful for anyone
• Musician specialist lends itself for a more tourism-centric play style

Due to their flexibility there probably isn't a single best strategy that makes use of all of their uniques. However, here are some of my ideas:

1) Progress, Fealty, Industry, Order

• Build wide for +3 faith and Sacred Sites
• Use UU to defend against early aggression and help guarantee religion (barb hunting)

2) Tradition, Artistry, Rationalism, Freedom

• Choose a tall-oriented pantheon, go all out on specialists
• Use UU to defend against early aggression and help guarantee religion (barb hunting)

3) Authority, Artistry, Rationalism, Autocracy

• Use UU for early neighbor conquering, kill yields, and bullying CS
  
• Later, build pseudo-tall to make use of specialists (especially culture)
• Aggressive CV via Cult of Personality; use war for kill yields and to remove a few key culture cities but don't necessarily go for domination
• As a side effect, choosing Artistry + Rationalism gives you some solid Golden Age bonuses as well

4) Authority, ???, Imperialism, Autocracy

• Go all out on conquest, starting with UU and going from there
  
• Crusader Spirit synergizes well with keeping religion internal. Combine with Autocracy, Hero Worship, Morrigan. Kill and capture everything, earn all the yields!
• Could choose Statecraft since CS will probably be your only friends. All 4 trees would also improve CS bullying
• Could choose Artistry, play similar to strategy 3 but focus more on conquest (tourism supporting war instead of war supporting tourism)

I personally feel like 1 and 3 make the best use of all three uniques. 3 also seems like a fun, different than normal type of play style. You could fight wars of liberation and/or in support of allies without focusing exclusively on conquest.

2, though viable, seems like it would be done better by other civs. It also makes minimal use of the UU.

4 with Artistry seems like good synergy, but "kill everyone and everything" can risk ending up like real life Montezuma or Hitler (everyone allies against you). Also, constant war could (ironically) get boring.

Does anyone else have different strategies, or different ideas for the strategies I've listed here? Also, though these may originally be developed for Celts they can be applied to different civs as well. For example, strategy 3 seems like it could be interesting for Aztecs or Persia (focusing less on tourism and more on golden ages), while 4 (with Statecraft) could make for an interesting Greece game that focuses on Diplomacy and Domination.

EDIT: I just remembered the UU also comes with "No movement cost to pillage", which helps the "fight but don't conquer" playstyle (who wants to keep a city when all the tiles are a burning mess?). Though this is only a single unit so it doesn't necessarily dictate your whole strategy, unlike Denmark for example.

 

[tu_79]

They all sound sound. Have fun!

Barb hunting for faith involves not capturing their camps. Other than that, play a lower difficulty until you learn the novelties.

Edit. Flexibility means adapting to the circumstances, so read your situation (explore early) and decide best path.

 

[Legen]

I've taking a liking of playing Celts recently, I'm interested in learning more strategies that people come up with them.

My current game is a Progress/Artistry + Rhiannon pantheon. Rhiannon's +2 culture per city pretty much covers Progress's main weakness, and all that early production and gold let me wage war as if I were Authority; it's easy to find spots with 3-4 cattle/sheep/fish/stone/wheat/stuff, so +6 early production cities are common with this pantheon.

Artistry's new scaler + Rhiannon + Mosques means I have frequent Golden Ages giving +50% culture in my cities, while the Ceilith Hall ensures my base culture output is solid. I didn't go for Sacred Sites, but the game looks promising nonetheless for a cultural victory.

I've opened Industry just upon hitting Renaissance with this strategy, and I am now focusing more on the Progress + Industry synergy than the Golden Age one with Rationalism. Undecided about Ideology yet, I'm split between the two synergies (infrastructure vs strong golden ages) that have been working well together, let's see how the game will go.

Btw, I'm happy that the UA negates foreign religious pressure. I'm now next to India and Ethiopia, who also founded their own religions and have been trying to convert each other, denouncing each other and even going to war. They seem to be trying to convert me as well, thankfully my UA makes their effort pointless.

 

[CrazyG]

Another strategy for the Celts it to take Lugh and build market first in all cities. Basically you get to very quickly turn every new city into a really powerfull source of culture, gold, science and faith. The goal is to have a stronger economy than anyone else, then take zeaolotry and start slaughtering neighbors.

People see specialists and think tradition, but actually you want authority because the instant population growth helps this strategy a lot and because you go market first your cities really need production (use all your gold to invest in new markets). Your cities have really strong culture very early, which means plenty of border growth. The UU gives you a good start as Authority and is great if you need to knock down a city your enemy forward settled.

The celidh hall isn't all that important for this strategy, other than it provides culture for border growth yields. I use the musicians for happiness to allow me to expand more