Playing with the Celts

[reason]

Hey guys! I'm moving from King to Emperor and play often with 2 friends as well, one is at Immortal level and the other is at King/Emperor.

I got interested by the Celts' UA and UU, can you guys sum up the most popular and most efficient strategies when using them? Thanks!

 

[Resipsa]

They get first pantheon and first religion regardless of social policies. Its better to have more cities than you typically would because of their UA and UB (provides happiness) but don't go overboard. I've been doing Piety and trying to get Jesuit Education and go after a SV but going Liberty is optimal.

 

[Doctor Doom]

You would think the Aztecs would get faith on kill if they're sacrificing them to their gods not the Celts....

 

[Dardis]

The main approach I use is to maximise early faith in order to get any benefits online at the earliest possible point (buildings, etc). Then I grab a reformation.

Some things are situational, but I always apply the following:
- Maximising your UA when placing the capital helps, but consider the early pantheon as well (i.e 2 salt & 1 forest tile beats 3 forest tiles if you pick earth mother)
- Build shrines (& temples after Philo) after monuments in all cities.
- Always pick a faith pantheon (desert folklore is very strong if you get a lucky desert/forest mix)
- Take liberty down to collective rule to found extra cities quickly. Again, maximise faith using the UA, pantheon bonus or a combination of the two. (Width helps a lot as faith costs don't scale with the number of cities). Then follow piety to reformation & pick whatever suits your preferred victory.
- If you have a choice open huts with the warrior at the start instead of the scout. Finding weapons will upgrade the warrior to a Pict.
- Use 2-3 Picts to deal with early barbs. Don't immediately destroy camps - they can be used to farm units that can be killed for extra faith. Keep the camp close to death so that if a better option appears (e.g. culture/faith city state quest) or the AI approach you can wipe it out & move on.

There's a reformation for all types of victory, but my favourite post patch is sacred sites for CV.

 

[Resipsa]

The main approach I use is to maximise early faith in order to get any benefits online at the earliest possible point (buildings, etc). Then I grab a reformation.
- Always pick a faith pantheon (desert folklore is very strong if you get a lucky desert/forest mix)
- Take liberty down to collective rule to found extra cities quickly. Again, maximise faith using the UA, pantheon bonus or a combination of the two. (Width helps a lot as faith costs don't scale with the number of cities). Then follow piety to reformation & pick whatever suits your preferred victory.

I don't normally prioritize a faith pantheon if I'm going piety with Boudicca you're going to get tons of faith via more efficient shrines and temples along with your UA plus when do you ever start in the desert with Boudicca? Maybe tundra but I hate working tundra tiles early. I like food pantheons for Boudicca it keeps her on a level playing field with Tradition powerhouses.

I also don't like going Lib before Piety sure you save hammers on the front end with settlers but AI are so piety happy you're likely to get stuck with heathen conversion if you delay reforming your religion.

 

[Soffacet]

I don't think I agree with Piety-first Celtic strategies. Rather, I support simply using the "normal" Tradition build order, with the perk of a free Religion. Such an approach is similar to, though probably a little bit worse on average than Ethiopia's usual strategy. But slightly worse than Ethiopia is still darn good.

 

[Memoryjar]

Two UU for Barbarian or Harrass AI.
UA for fast Pantheon and religion. After constructior don't care about forests.
Open tradition, playing Piety, bubble great prophet for landmarks, Freedom or Autocracy for cultural victory.
UB is my favorite. Hapinness !

Wish sometimes during initial load to have map with desert and forest. Never had it, snif.

 

[Plumfairy]

I don't normally prioritize a faith pantheon if I'm going piety with Boudicca you're going to get tons of faith via more efficient shrines and temples along with your UA

This reasoning doesn't seem very sound to me. Faith is like food in that you can never have enough. In fact, it's precisely when you have a good chunk of faith (or food) that you want even more. In food's case it's because the food multipliers are more effective the more food surplus you have. In faith's case it's because more faith early on allows you to enhance your religion faster (thus allowing you your pick of founder beliefs), it allows you to build the faith buildings (if you chose them) even faster, and you can start spreading your religion to the heathens that much faster... which usually means more gold, since Tithe is kind of the "standard" founding belief.

plus when do you ever start in the desert with Boudicca? Maybe tundra but I hate working tundra tiles early.

This seems much more relevant. I hate the tundra belief too, and desert doesn't happen too often for Fraulein Boudicca. However, if you get plenty of stone/marble near you, the Stone Quarry belief is awesome for the Celts.

 

[Dardis]

I don't normally prioritize a faith pantheon if I'm going piety with Boudicca you're going to get tons of faith via more efficient shrines and temples along with your UA plus when do you ever start in the desert with Boudicca? Maybe tundra but I hate working tundra tiles early. I like food pantheons for Boudicca it keeps her on a level playing field with Tradition powerhouses.

I also don't like going Lib before Piety sure you save hammers on the front end with settlers but AI are so piety happy you're likely to get stuck with heathen conversion if you delay reforming your religion.

I've had a few desert/forest starts, one very lucky one in particular where I settled on desert with 2 flood plains, 1 desert hill & 3 forest. But they're not the norm. I agree about Tundra - absolutely hate those tiles.

My problem with opening piety is that after the opener & organised religion, you don't gain any benefit from the other policies for ages. A quick 3 city start generates loads of early faith, which only Ethiopia can match by going wide (not ideal with their UA). Getting the faith buildings online asap (after founding & enhancing) gives a nice early cultural boost per city, which in combination with chopping for Oracle, +1 culture per city & burning the first GW should get you to reformation with everyone else (on Emperor anyway). If you take all the liberty policies before piety then you will get a bad reformation, but three policies don't slow the charge for reformation that much.

Edit: By desert start I'm not talking a huge screen of sand, just a few tiles to settle on or work. Just trying deity for the 1st time & got this start + a warrior>pict hut upgrade. Should score a T40 religion, T65 enhance....then get ripped to pieces

 

[Sammydakid]

The celts are a bit of a gamble, even with forest bias I have discovered they still 1 in 3 or so games don't get a forest. If you get a turn 5 pantheon try god king. Having god king going that early is really good.

 

[Resipsa]

This reasoning doesn't seem very sound to me. Faith is like food in that you can never have enough. In fact, it's precisely when you have a good chunk of faith (or food) that you want even more. In food's case it's because the food multipliers are more effective the more food surplus you have. In faith's case it's because more faith early on allows you to enhance your religion faster (thus allowing you your pick of founder beliefs), it allows you to build the faith buildings (if you chose them) even faster, and you can start spreading your religion to the heathens that much faster... which usually means more gold, since Tithe is kind of the "standard" founding belief.


This seems much more relevant. I hate the tundra belief too, and desert doesn't happen too often for Fraulein Boudicca. However, if you get plenty of stone/marble near you, the Stone Quarry belief is awesome for the Celts.

I play on deity and going pity isn't optimal liberty is however if you're gonna try for a reformation you can't dip into liberty prior becuase yield get a hirrible reformation belief. The AI will always give you tithe a religiosity building and relugious texts. It really isn't a constraint. I like food over faith because I tend to play wide and need the extra food from camps to let me run specialists and production in smaller cities

 

[Frossa]

You would think the Aztecs would get faith on kill if they're sacrificing them to their gods not the Celts....

Well, Culture is used to counter tourism, and I think human sacrifice is good to counter Tourism too?

 

[black213]

Well, Culture is used to counter tourism, and I think human sacrifice is good to counter Tourism too?

Come and experience a mass sacrificing ritual! See our magnificent piles of heartless bodies! See the high priest wear the skin of a sacrificed person!

 

[Carl5872]

What victory conditions do you guys go for? I was thinking military because of the UU, and the building gives happiness, something military people usually lack. The encouragement of you to build the culture building combined with the religion boost would lead me to go for a culture win as a secondary option. Policy trees would probably be honor, piety, Autocracy, and if you have room maybe aesthetics.

With this does anyone consider opening honor and hoping to generate most culture through fighting, then go down piety? Im afraid doing this won't give you much culture, and you could stagnate though?

Thoughts?

 

[Resipsa]

What victory conditions do you guys go for? I was thinking military because of the UU, and the building gives happiness, something military people usually lack. The encouragement of you to build the culture building combined with the religion boost would lead me to go for a culture win as a secondary option. Policy trees would probably be honor, piety, Autocracy, and if you have room maybe aesthetics.

With this does anyone consider opening honor and hoping to generate most culture through fighting, then go down piety? Im afraid doing this won't give you much culture, and you could stagnate though?

Thoughts?

You can do it any number of ways TBH,

1) I'm still having fun doing wide 6-7 cities SV going straight piety Jesuit Education, one policy (if I get it before Renaissance) in Commerce and then Rationalism. If I don't get Jesuit Education I can try and get GttG and forgo finishing Aesthetics

2) Liberty Domination/CV game, Go into Commerce and then go Autocracy to buy cheap units. (Probably the best way to play them)

3) Go 3 or 4 city Tradition and play the normal game and don't really use any of your uniques. I think Rome and the Celts are the worst Civs to play tall but that just goes to show how powerful tradition is right now.

 

[phillipwyllie]

When you research Iron working pump out a few Pictish Warriors and don't clear any barb camps near your cities, rather focus on killing the units the camp spawns. It's possible to not found a religion using Boudicca so Stonehenge is a must. Bee-lining Theology for Hagia Sophia and Borobudur is prolly your next must. When you enhance your religion you can improve the forests adjacent to your cites as the loss in faith will now be minimal, unless you want every city on your civ converted.

 

[Browd]

Just need Bronze Working for Pictish Warriors, so you can do this much earlier than having to slog all the way to Iron Working.

 

[Cromagnus]

The celts are a bit of a gamble, even with forest bias I have discovered they still 1 in 3 or so games don't get a forest. If you get a turn 5 pantheon try god king. Having god king going that early is really good.

No. Just... no. The only reason you ever take god-king is when you can't find a better pantheon, can't found a religion, and/or you expect your cities to end up getting converted. None of these things apply to Boudicca.

The problem with Boudicca is that choosing a pantheon on turn 5 *sucks* because you don't know the terrain yet. You're choosing a pantheon based solely on your starting city, and the faith you get from your starting city is trivial *in the long run* after forests become irrelevant. It's almost worth taking DF and trying to find some desert.

Seriously though, unless you got a legendary start, picking a pantheon on turn 5 is a bad thing. Beats picking it after turn 20, but I personally think the 3-forest start with Boudicca is bad thing. Much better to get your pantheon on turn 10.

Matter of opinion I suppose.

 

[Cromagnus]

One interesting play with the Celts that worked for me on Immortal (probably wouldn't work on Deity) is to open Honor and turn on raging barbarians. Then for your pantheon choose God of War. When you finish the tree you're getting gold, culture & double faith for each barb that you kill. It's awesome. It's equally fun for conquest. Convert cities as you capture them to get the pantheon, and you're getting faith for kills as you attack the next city. This faith turns *massive* later in the game.

It's kind of silly but you'd be surprised how quickly you earn faith this way. Your forests get you baseline faith as good as most pantheons would, and the sheer number of incoming barbs you kill garners you even more. Seriously, you'd be surprised by how much faith you can earn this way.

I first discovered this in the Honor Germany Challenge. I took God of War on a lark, and actually managed to found a religion. I was averagin about 4 faith/turn from kills. It's doubly effective with Boudicca. The problem, of course, is that barbarians eventually become irrelevant. But this can actually take quite a while.

If you're not set out to conquest, you have to either get a Reformation belief or complete Rationalism to really benefit from all that faith, but if you *are* doing conquest, all that faith pays for a ton of prophets, missionaries and faith buildings, which will keep your happiness rolling in your new cities as you take them. Anyway, it's a fun way to play if you're bored of the standard Tradition/Liberty strategy.

 

[phillipwyllie]

Just need Bronze Working for Pictish Warriors, so you can do this much earlier than having to slog all the way to Iron Working.

My mistake, I've got Iron Working on the brain for The Collosus