Gaul...Random Thoughts

[Eagle Pursuit]

If "C" is average capacity to pursue a specific victory condition, then the Gauls are not getting C+ in Religious Victory, that's for sure. To found a Religion on higher difficulties, you need to rush Astronomy, which means giving up Archer death balls, giving up early Mining tech for Culture, giving up an Oppidum rush - giving up basically all of Gaul's early advantages. You might get Oppidums slightly faster than other Civs reach Industrial Zones still, but you've delayed going Oppidums to do so enough it's not really a massive dealbreaker any more and I don't think is helping you lock down Wonders, especially if you got bad terrain.

I'm also pretty skeptical the Gauls are C+ for Cultural Victories, because Cultural Victories need a good Faith economy and for the reasons set out above, the Gauls are quite heavily discouraged from that.

I don't think they're generalists. They can do Religion, in the same sense that any Civ except Kongo can do Religion, but doing so means up giving more advantages than most other Civs have to give up.

They can have a fine although not amazing Faith economy by quickly building Holy Sites once their oppidae are built. Yeah, there's a population restriction, but they overcome it in time, especially if you are clever enough with city placement not to go into solid Hills. And all those dicey RV wonders that take forever with RV civs are easy peasy with them. Notably Hagia and Meenakshi. So they have reduced opportunity cost there.

I'm not saying they are good at it, but better than a civ with no inherent bonus toward religion. C+ is above average, but not a good as Good.

 

[CrabHelmet]

They can have a fine although not amazing Faith economy by quickly building Holy Sites once their oppidae are built. Yeah, there's a population restriction, but they overcome it in time, especially if you are clever enough with city placement not to go into solid Hills. And all those dicey RV wonders that take forever with RV civs are easy peasy with them. Notably Hagia and Meenakshi. So they have reduced opportunity cost there.

I'm not saying they are good at it, but better than a civ with no inherent bonus toward religion. C+ is above average, but not a good as Good.

On higher difficulties, if you don't start building Holy Sites until after Oppidums, then you're not getting a Religion. They might be able to do this on lower difficulties, but on higher difficulties, the Gauls have to go Astronomy either first or second tech to reliably get a Religion, which stalls your progress on Mining and Archery, which are faaar more important to them. In addition, if you're building Oppidums then Holy Sites in each City, you're really district-stretched and your Science and Gold will basically die because you're not getting a Campus or Commercial Hub until you have 7-pop cities. It just doesn't work. You have a choice of Holy Sites or Oppidums, running both is just a really inefficient use of resources, and of those, the Gauls obviously benefit far more from the latter.

You can play a religious game as the Gauls, it's just such an incredibly sub-par use of their kit I don't know why you ever would except for giggles. All the Gauls' bonuses are front-loaded, they are really strong in the Ancient Age and early Classical then drop off hard. If you delay those bonuses, well... you're just playing that Civ badly.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I'm also pretty skeptical the Gauls are C+ for Cultural Victories, because Cultural Victories need a good Faith economy and for the reasons set out above, the Gauls are quite heavily discouraged from that.

I think they are rather underwhelming for cultural victories too, but for slightly different reasons.
Early on, faith doesn't really matter, and in a recent Deity game I first started building Holy sites with Gorgo in the medieval/renaissance era, but at that point I quickly started getting enough faith to get the naturalists out in a timely fashion.

What ruins Gauls for me however is that you are encouraged to spam mines, but this on the other hand ruins your appeal, making you have to either restrict yourself on placing said mines, or remove the improvements once you start getting ready for natural parks/seaside resorts.
Either way, the bonus culture from mines is counterproductive towards Gauls end game goals, and that part just ruins any CV for me as Gaul.
I certainly do not want to micro manage my appeal game (or shuffle around 10+ workers in the late game to remove improvements) just in order to make it work.

Personally I think Gaul are only good for SV or domination, where they use the "free culture" to give them a needed leg up without having to invest in other culture sources like most civs have to eventually.

 

[CrabHelmet]

I think they are rather underwhelming for cultural victories too, but for slightly different reasons.
Early on, faith doesn't really matter, and in a recent Deity game I first started building Holy sites with Gorgo in the medieval/renaissance era, but at that point I quickly started getting enough faith to get the naturalists out in a timely fashion.

What ruins Gauls for me however is that you are encouraged to spam mines, but this on the other hand ruins your appeal, making you have to either restrict yourself on placing said mines, or remove the improvements once you start getting ready for natural parks/seaside resorts.
Either way, the bonus culture from mines is counterproductive towards Gauls end game goals, and that part just ruins any CV for me as Gaul.
I certainly do not want to micro manage my appeal game (or shuffle around 10+ workers in the late game to remove improvements) just in order to make it work.

I also agree with this. They're not a Cultural Civ. They might look like it at first, because a very strong early Culture game can drive Cultural Victories even without Tourism aids (see: Pericles), but the Gauls just have too many obstacles. Mines everywhere ruins Appeal, you can't get a Faith economy going until quite late unless you're willing to throw away all your early bonuses, if you're building Campuses and Commercial Hubs and Oppidums, it takes ages to start getting to Theatre Squares in large enough numbers to matter - there's just a lot going on that makes Cultural Victories awkward, much as Religious ones.

I think people are thinking they're generalist because, being blunt, I don't think the Gauls are actually that good unless you get very specific circumstances, and because they don't obviously excel at any one thing people just pass them off as generalist. But they're not. They're a Dom/Science Civ, just... a pretty mediocre one. They're not like, Maya bad or whatever but I think they float pretty comfortably somewhere around the bottom third of Civs.

That said, they do suffer from a bit of the Aztec problem where Civs that are super strong in the Ancient Era aren't necessarily appreciated in SP on higher difficulties because the AI has the most advantage relative to the player early on. I think the Gauls are much better in MP; the Archer Balls of Death are scary when people are on otherwise equal terms.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I think people are thinking they're generalist because, being blunt, I don't think the Gauls are actually that good unless you get very specific circumstances, and because they don't obviously excel at any one thing people just pass them off as generalist. But they're not. They're a Dom/Science Civ, just... a pretty mediocre one. They're not like, Maya bad or whatever but I think they float pretty comfortably somewhere around the bottom third of Civs.

Yup, I edited that into my post right before your reply as well.
Science/dom is where they shine, and to be frank here, I personally don't think they are top candidates for those either (not bad, just somewhat above average).

Gaul seems to be a science/dom civ that heavily relies on early archer rushes to secure a foothold, and then taking it from there with their bonuses (which somewhat fall off during the middle game) but at the same time not having to worry about culture..
This unlike, say, Germany/Korea, who can set up a peaceful expansion phase on their own, but have to catch up with culture for their SV later on, while having somewhat superior tools on their own to sustain the science game to make up for it.

Gaul isn't bad, but they need to leverage that early rush in order to get a leg up for the late game.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

You can play a religious game as the Gauls, it's just such an incredibly sub-par use of their kit I don't know why you ever would except for giggles.

What other reason is there to play ANY civ towards any victory?

 

[CrabHelmet]

What other reason is there to play ANY civ towards any victory?

To win or have a higher chance of winning? The whole point of this conversation was to discuss what the Gauls are good at and what they aren't good at. If we're ranking Civs by what play-styles they can pull off if you're just playing for giggles and don't care about how likely you are to win or how quickly you can do it, then all Civs are all equally the same except Kongo. Hooray, everyone's a generalist (except Kongo).

 

[nzcamel]

I do think the harbor and diplomatic quarter should get exceptions to the no-city-adjacency rules but apart from that, my first gaul game was quite fun.

Nah, it's just part of the challenge.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

Gaul are generalist in the sense that they have high production and early culture and these translate well to most victory types (aside from religion or certain culture victories.) Gaul will also typically have enough land to expand, because it is so easy to take out an early neighbor with them, while also keeping up with culture. Even walls don't stop Gallic archer hordes. They are therefore very reliable at planting enough cities to leverage their good production, and with ancestral hall, most of their cities have better starts than Trajan (because they can build the monument on top of the free culture they get).

Early culture translates to quicker science boosts than anything else in the game. It means you get to political philosophy faster, and then to tier 2 governments faster. You get to rationalism faster, you tend to have more envoys than other civs to put into scientific city states. And the production also builds your campus buildings faster. Gaul snowball to big science extremely quickly.

They also have very good early domination and solid post medieval domination, thanks to getting tech leads faster and having lots of production to build units. They can take out a neighbor easily to secure land, but also do well just playing peacefully. They are good at diplo games as well, since production actually helps a lot there.

They suck at religion and at appeal based tourism or rock band based tourism. This means that they can't do one particular type of culture victory. But you can still win culture games via Great Writers, they build Wonders more easily, and if Rapa Nui or La Venta are in the game, they can easily win a flight based tourism game. They also tend to be better than other civs at spamming improvements since they have more production for builders. Gaul aren't that bad at culture victory. National parks are overrated imo and Gaul can still settle cities just for seaside resorts in the mid game, and have decent appeal on these tiles.

Any civ that can do 3 victory types at a solid above average level and 1 at a decent level deserves to be called a good generalist civ. There are very few civs in this game that can do all 5 victory types well. I can't see any big malus Gaul have compared to Rome for example, aside from Legions being better at classical war, and Rome is the classic generalist civ.

Gaul's main value is reliability, you'll have a good game no matter what scenario you get thrown in as long as you're not on a small island. They won't be winning awards for speed, and maybe reliability is overrated in single player, since the AI sucks at the game. But try them in multiplayer and see how much value you get from just having more early production, strength and culture than opponents.