Celtic strategy

[crdvis16]

Last update! I ended up winning my immortal/standard/standard game on turn 390 with a culture victory.

Early game I conquered/vassalized my Korean neighbor via Authority and Picts. I also eventually took several Swedish cities as we were in and out of wars throughout the game. My last neighbor was Rome who also Dow'd me throughout mid/late game but by then I was going mostly peaceful/defensive while pursuing culture.

My religion pretty easily dominated my continent, overtaking and eradicating the Swedish and Korean religions and converting Rome as well. The extra votes from religious authority were very helpful in getting world religion, passports, etc passed.

I generated a TON of great musicians via my abundant faith and great musician points. All those great work's tourism getting multiplied by hotel/stadium/airport/national visitor center/CN tower became huge. Broadcast towers seemed particularly strong for the Celts to house all the music and get theming bonuses. The free social policy from the ideological wonders seem especially important now to the culture victory and getting that 2nd tier 3 policy. The worst part of the game was finally getting influential with everyone and grabbing that 2nd tier3 policy only to then see a 14 turn production time for the culture victory wonder... I knew my victory was in the bag at that point as no one else was close to a victory of their own but I was stubborn and played those last 14 turns to make it official.

Overall a fun game though! In hindsight I probably would have stayed less wide and maybe could have won sooner but w/e.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Didnt want to start a new thread when this exists but does anyone have up-to-date advice on how to play the celts? I know I will choose authority, and that I will play aggressively early. Build order? early strategy? Pantheon choice?

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Heinz, can you share your starting location as the Celts?

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Sure, I will take screens this evening when I play again

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

I played some and chose Cernunnos even though he was recently nerfed. I have killed 3 or 4 babylonian settlers, and have expanded to contain him as to give myself huge areas to expand to. I now have a monopoly on babylons lavender, but not on my own (salt) lol. I like claiming territory in a greedy way, although I nearly paid dearly for my aggression towards babylon when he hit both his UUs that are quite strong, and even my picts couldn't really hold their own against that annoying bowman with indirect fire and high defensive CS. Luckily he peaced out with me when he was about to break the back of my little army.

I built the pyramids, statue of zeus and the terracotta army. I am not sure the pyramids was correct, and the statue of zeus was definitely a mistake - should have just gone for max military ASAP instead. As you can see my army is much weaker than it should be, partly because of that. I plan to go to max supply soon and maybe mess with China a bit. That might be really hard though since she is 8 (22 to my 14, quite typical for me against deity) techs ahead of me, so maybe I'll skip on that. I havent really tributed because the CSs are to the south and my main target except for barb camps have been Babylon.

So things I've learned: Less greedy with the wonders, try to hit max supply of pictish warriors and bully your neighbours, kill barbs and tribute as much as possible. I think Cernunnos (?) was the right choice here, as I was going to expand to the north where there are forests/jungles a plenty.





The pics are there to show my start, I settled on the spot because I wanted to settle by the river. Had I known about the horses at that point I would have gone a bit more to the SW to get them and an additional salt.

Feedback/comments would be appreciated!

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Heinz, that's an interesting start to the game!

My 2 cents: The trick to playing on Deity is to not expand too much early on or be too aggressive early on, but to take the game as a marathon. Start a bit more slowly and then slowly work on expanding, focusing on religion and slowly buffing your army through experience and gathering great generals. That's a big reason why I prefer a progress start over authority start for non-warmonger civs. I think the Celts aren't a good pick for authority, the pictish warriors are great for tributing, barbarians, early religion and early attack against a capital/expansion city of an AI, but they're not great for sustained early aggression, unlike Sweden, Songhai,... In your start, I wouldn't DoW anyone but would have instead focused on getting a core of 5-6 cities and a very early religion through my Pictish warriors and early reformation (for the crusader spirit), take Divine Inheritance or Holy Law (Hero Worship is a garbage founder imho when it comes to Celts), Zealotry and Orders, with focusing on Terracota army (Statute of Zeus is best for early warmonger civs such as Persia or Sweden so you can skip military science), while beelining Chivalry or Steel. Then would I start farming a nearby AI for kills and XPs, and once my armies would have gathered enough experience (the key is getting "range" on ranged and siege units and parthian tactics on skirmish units), I would slowly start pushing towards capturing AI cities.

An underrated tactic is setting closely to an enemy capital (or an enemy city) and then buying up a tile that's 2 tiles away from the AI's city, and then using a great general there to expand to grab a tile adjacent to the city. Then, you create a network of roads there and when you're at war with that AI, you just rotate 5-6 skirmish units slowly whittling down the city and units adjacent to it, grinding out a lot of xp, promotions and great generals, with basically impunity from enemy counter-attacks. So I think I would have used the settler from Pyramids to immediately settle very close to the Babylonian capital.

Cernunnos was a good pick imho given your location to expand to, but I probably would have picked the one that gives yields on kills, given your intent to go Genghis-Khan on the world.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Thank you for your feedback

I was going to pick the yields on kills one but I read that the yields werent that good and that people didnt like it that much so I avoided it for that reason.

I guess I should mention that I never play a game from start to end as I really just like playing the first half of the game. So my strategy isn't intended to give me the best possible chances to actually reach the wincons in the end, but to be in a good enough position that I feel confident that I would have won if I would've gone through the second half of the game.

Authority and going aggressive was non-negotiable, I think the celts are a good civ for early aggression and I just like playing that way.

Can you explain why you think expanding slowly is better? I feel like the current version rewards having many cities and a lot of "real estate", and I like claiming the prime spots asap.

I got the terracotta army as I see that as the most important wonder if you go authority.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I understand. In that case I'd recommend you pick pyramids (to get the settler), rush Terracota and Iron Working, then use the army of Pictish warriors, Swordsmen and Catapults to take out one of your neighbours. You'll get a settler from the Imperium policy, so you'll settle three cities, which is, together with Terracota, enough to field a strong enough army to take out a neighbour early on, puppeting his cities until you get Courthouses. After rushing Iron Working and Masonry, I would have rushed Steel to upgrade your Pictish warriors and Swordsmen. Also, I would have gone to war against China instead in that case, 'cause China doesn't get an early UU while Babylon does, so it would have been easier to wage a long-term war against them. I agree that if you're rushing an early warmongering spree, Cernunnos is also good because you'll get lots of gold immediately which you'll need for your army.

For early warmongering it's crucial you get on the offensive as soon as possible and you're better off building two or three additional units instead of another settler, you don't need to settle a lot of cities because you'll be capturing the AIs cities instead. By not building settler you also avoid the need to research Pottery, allowing you to get to Iron Working much sooner. And by having fewer cities settled your cultural and science needs don't increase and having fewer cities helps with happiness because underdeveloped later cities are a drain.

As for expanding slowly, most of my aggressive games on Deity are played with non-warmongering civs, so I don't pick the likes of Songhai, Sweden, Persia,..., but instead I pick Portugal, Germany, Morocco, so the civs where you can't rely on your UU or UA to overwhelm the AI militarily, but you have to have technological superiority or better promoted units. And on Deity I usually play catch-up for a long-time, meaning that without a strong early UU/UA I can't hope to wage a successful offensive war in the medieval era. That's why I try to keep a fairly small empire, 5-7 cities, so it's easier to defend than a larger one (and again, having more cities means they're underdeveloped and are holding you back for a long time), while building up my army. I cannot stress how much easier it is to wage an offensive war with three siege/ranged units with the range promotions and 4-5 skirmisher units with parthian tactics, because at that point all you need are a few extra meat-shield melee infantry units and two medic scout units and you can slowly grind your way against even the likes of Sweden, Songhai etc. I'll post a few screenshots from one of my recent games to show what I mean.