Celtic Strategies

[MadHatter]

I am embarking upon a game as the Celts (Regent PTW) and was wondering what tips anyone had. In particular:

1. Thoughts on Ancient Era wars.
2. Avoiding the Despotic GA (good idea? or is early conquest more important?)
3. How many Gallic Swordsmen to produce with respect to other units.
4. Any other thoughts

 

[Renata]

It's actually a little difficult to get a despotic GA with gallic swords if the tech pace is fast, due to their cost. (Hard to build up enough shields to get a substantial number of them, hard to come up with enough cash for upgrades (they're 80g each) while still keeping up in tech.) If you want to get the most out of them, you're best off following strategies which slow down the tech rate.

Despotic GAs aren't the worst thing in the world; it depends on how much of an advantage you can leverage out of it. If you have 20 gallic swords and a couple of weak neighbors and republic/monarchy are still a ways off, there's no real point hanging around waiting for your neighbors to get tougher.

If you want to see what a number of people did with gallic swords you might want to check out the game of the month forum and look up the threads on GOTM18 - that was a Pangaea game using the Celts on Monarch level, and a whole lot of people did a whole lot of war-mongering. (I was personally going for fast-tech, so upgraded only a couple of swords and did most of my early conquest with the more cost-effective, if less powerful, horsemen.)

Renata

 

[newbiebad]

I recently randomed and got the Celts and it was interesting to try and see how their UU would fare. There is an AU thread on another board and I had gotten a lot of ideas from it. How I see it, the Gallic Swordsman can't be compared to the Mounted Warrior aka that other 2 move 3 attack UU. The MW is clearly one of the most dominant UU's in the game, despite the Iroquis lack of warmonger traits. There is the catch for me at least.

The Celts have better early war traits in combination with a strong UU. If not for the cost I would say that the Gallic Swordsman would be a complete no brainer to build. The thing with Gallic Warriors is that they are very hardy. No matter how you look at it at least in values they are slightly better than MW. The extra defense DOES help me survive those few times I fail to capture a base due to RNG. Also IF you can get them out they are VERY easy to get to elite status. With your militaristic trait, you get cheap barracks and faster promotions. GS take forever to build but if you can get them out into the battlefield in sufficient number they will be extremely useful. For me, unit per unit they seem to have the highest survival rate out of any of the ancient attacking UU's. This could possibly mean potential great leaders. That chance is often a game winning occurence in close contests, but I wouldn't count on it.

Of course there is the whole problem of them costing 50 shields each... and thats a HUGE problem.
One method of circumventing this is a warrior ===> GS upgrade. It is expensive at 80 gold a pop but I refuse to believe that its not possible with a few turns at 100% taxes and human ingenuity. In addition, if you plan on using Gallics then early GA is what you are going to get. Give up trying to have it any other way. Use that extra production to either pump out more GS or get more cash for another massive upgrade. It's not hard for an army of 5-10 GS to quickly double in number simply because they don't die as often as other units.

In conclusion, while I don't think the GS is a dominant UU, in combination with all the other factors (GA, Militaristic) the Celts are actually quite good at ancient wars. Like I said, if you compare GS with MW its a pretty obvious loss. However, if you look at the Celts as a whole and try them out... you will find they can be very decent. Ancient war isn't required for the Celts but with their traits I find it hard to resist.

 

[MadHatter]

I'm resisting a despotic war in favor of a build-up to war as soon as I get Monarchy. Being religious will help with the government change (LOVE that 1-turn anarchy) and I'll position myself to unleash all the Gallic Swordsmen I've made to that point upon the obnoxious Germans.

 

[Rabid Pop Tart]

I recently played a game as the Celts, and I eventually won a domination victory in regent. Keys to success:

1) Build barracks early. They're expensive, so you want them to last by being veteran right off the bat. Barracks are really cheap anyways, it shouldn't be a problem.
2) Tech order goes as follows: Bronze Working, Iron Working. After that it really doesn't matter.
3) Get the iron hooked up quickly and start cranking them out. Being a man of culture it hurt to build Gallic Swordsmen instead of improvements, but it's necessary.
4) As for cities, have 5. That way you can 5 cities building GS's while other civs are building cities close to you. You're going to conquer them anyways, so let them build the cities for you.
5) When you have a decent stack of units, attack for all it's worth. If you're looking to capture cities, wait until the population exceeds one.
6) If you get a little behind, stockpile until you can do the free upgrade to Medieval Infantry. Get the extra attack and go for it! I found that Gallic Swordsmen armies are incredible as they can attack twice, and in all my wars using the GS UU I only lost about three units out of possibly 20, all of which had fought many battles.

Hope that helped!

 

[amirsan]

Before iron I suggest getting like 15 warriors together already and upgrade all of them for 600 gold. That is the best strategy I ever done with Swordsmen. Get the iron before your niehbores and they'll never have as much as you.