Alright, with this thread coming to a timely close, what are the lessons learned?
First are the changes I have already made. Removing the Mediterranean resources definitely made their game more difficult, but I think that is in line with what the Celtic game should be like. Before that, Nemessos simply had too many good resources to work with. Same with the required three cities in Gaul - it never occurred to me to use the starting settlers for the UHV goal, but obviously that is a valid choice. It's also not intended to be that easy, so the new UHV goal prevents that workaround.
Playing against Rome felt a bit one dimensional in this game. I don't like that Rome forces you into the war due to their conqueror spawn, it would be more fun to have agency in that decision. It's fine if it happens sometimes, but I would dislike if it was every game. An early war depends very little on your strategy and mostly on your combat luck (of course smart unit positioning also plays a role). You either end up in a place where you can capture the required cities early or you don't. Maybe it is more interesting if you fail and have to try later, but not sure if that would be a valid path. The Roman conquerors are currently unbeatable. I also think it would be more fun if you could fight back. In my initial Celtic test games I often managed to defend against them and then got worn down by the endless stream of legions coming from other parts of their empire. That was a lot of fun and something I would like to occur in more games.
What is left to do with the conclusions from this playthrough?
First are the changes I have already made. Removing the Mediterranean resources definitely made their game more difficult, but I think that is in line with what the Celtic game should be like. Before that, Nemessos simply had too many good resources to work with. Same with the required three cities in Gaul - it never occurred to me to use the starting settlers for the UHV goal, but obviously that is a valid choice. It's also not intended to be that easy, so the new UHV goal prevents that workaround.
Playing against Rome felt a bit one dimensional in this game. I don't like that Rome forces you into the war due to their conqueror spawn, it would be more fun to have agency in that decision. It's fine if it happens sometimes, but I would dislike if it was every game. An early war depends very little on your strategy and mostly on your combat luck (of course smart unit positioning also plays a role). You either end up in a place where you can capture the required cities early or you don't. Maybe it is more interesting if you fail and have to try later, but not sure if that would be a valid path. The Roman conquerors are currently unbeatable. I also think it would be more fun if you could fight back. In my initial Celtic test games I often managed to defend against them and then got worn down by the endless stream of legions coming from other parts of their empire. That was a lot of fun and something I would like to occur in more games.
What is left to do with the conclusions from this playthrough?
- I will probably nerf the Celtic maintenance modifier to make research a little harder for them, and force them to be more picky about cities
- Roman conquerors against the Celts should be weaker, they should succeed against the AI even with fewer units. Maybe I can lower the amount of conqueror units generally to reduce those huge power spikes.
- Some of China's recent nerfs can probably be scaled back.
