The Celts

[kenneth1221]

Question: What's the best way to Reform religion with the Celts? Going ultra-wide yourself, to ensure your own empire has a large proportion of global followers? Going ultra-tall, so you have a massive amount of citizens? Or spreading to city states and other civs with missionaries and accepting that you're going to have to waste the faith to get a reformation belief?

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Question: What's the best way to Reform religion with the Celts? Going ultra-wide yourself, to ensure your own empire has a large proportion of global followers? Going ultra-tall, so you have a massive amount of citizens? Or spreading to city states and other civs with missionaries and accepting that you're going to have to waste the faith to get a reformation belief?

You have to take into consideration that your cities do not exert pressure but other cities with your religion do exert pressure; converting a couple of CS is enough to help spreading the religion to neighboring cities.
The answer really depends on what founder, follower & enhancer you choose and what reformation belief you are targeting; for example if you intend to take a faith sink reform like Faith of the Masses or got zealotry as your enhancer you are better off conserving faith for these and going tall/wide while keeping in mind that you are very likely going to spread a little bit but the exact opposite if you choose a faith generating reformation or faith independent one like Defender of the faith/Crusader's although it's actually counter intuitive to spread your religion if you want to conquer them.
If your choices had a good faith generation like hero worship and orders or a founder that gets bonuses on spread you should be aiming to aggressively spread your religion via missionaries.

 

[crdvis16]

I'm pretty sure the Celt religion exerts pressure. It just doesn't receive or exert foreign pressure.

 

[Omen of Peace]

There's not a single way to play the Celts. I think they lend themselves really well to wide play, whether peaceful or through conquest, but tall play is doable too. When going tall, you pretty much have to use missionaries if you want to reform.

 

[JamesNinelives]

There's not a single way to play the Celts. I think they lend themselves really well to wide play, whether peaceful or through conquest, but tall play is doable too. When going tall, you pretty much have to use missionaries if you want to reform.

I like that their pantheon choices make them so potentially versatile.

 

[andersw]

I've only been able to try in 2.9 but Celts now can rush really good in early game.

Cernunnos, the Horned Stag have an anomaly
wiki:
+1 Food and Gold from Forests,
+1 Production and Science from Jungles.
+1 Culture from camps.
+2 Culture from Ceilidh Hall.

Ingame help also adds +1 faith from forest/jungle on unimproved tiles, however this faith is kept on tile improvement.

It seems very strong to go mining -> pictwarrior -> pyramids with Cernunnos and quickly grab massive amounts of land.

 

[Omen of Peace]

The Celt pantheons should not add any Faith. Please file a bug.
That's because they get a base of 3 Faith / city as long as the city has the main pantheon/religion.

 

[Legen]

Regarding Nuada, I don't think the +1 gold on city connection did much to this pantheon. It is still a very slow pantheon that just takes too long to scale, not making up for the loss of the strong early game provided by other Celtic alternatives.

Picking posts from January:

I didn’t say anything about Nuanda because I think it’s not just a numbers tweak there. Nuanda needs a rework.

it’s supposed to be the big / one right? Why does he have a scaler off of science generation, but 0 additional science?

Nuada is a combination of the old versions of Commerce and Wisdom pantheons. The old versions of them were as this (as seen here):

(old) God of Commerce
+2 Gold and +2 Faith from City Connections, +1 Faith for every 20 Gold per turn.

(old) Goddess of Wisdom
+2 Science and +1 Faith, +1 Faith for every 15 Science per turn.

From that, there are two main considerations for Nuada:

1. Nuada's parts that mirror old Commerce actually compare well in isolation. The main issue is that Commerce is slow and expensive for civs that actually have to build roads for city connections, which includes the Celts.
2. Nuada only mirrors one part of the old Wisdom. The unconditional yields part was what made Wisdom such a reliable pantheon for the early game, and it is absent in Nuada.

I don't think Nuada needs a rework, I think it just needs to stay true to the early aspects of old Commerce and Wisdom. For instance:

Nuada, the Silver-Handed King
+2 Gold and +1 Science in the city.
+3 Gold from City Connections.
+1 Culture for every 10 Gold per turn (capped at half the followers in the city), and +1 Golden Age Point for every 5 Science per turn.
+5 Gold from Ceilidh Hall.

It's weird that Rhiannon boosts Ceilidh halls with GAPs when her pantheon doesn't even give that yield. Should also help boost Rhiannon jut a little, and nerf what could be a very potent new Nuada

I think GAP makes sense. Rhiannon provides Culture, Production and Gold, the three yields that golden ages boost. You can think of Rhiannon as the pantheon version of a golden age.

On an unrelated note, do the Celts really need to lose faith from cities with only the pantheon after founding? It drops the religious momentum quite hard and makes it quite harder to reform, as your first missionaries take forever to come out.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

One part of celts UA that never made any sense to me is the loss of +3 after founding a religion; the celtic pantheons do not generate for a reason that it's reliant on the UA to found rather pantheons but it makes popping the first missionary such a pain and having to use it to convert your own cities instead of neighborhing cities awefully hurts the religious momentum a for no reason either flavourfully or for a game play reason.

 

[andersw]

One part of celts UA that never made any sense to me is the loss of +3 after founding a religion; the celtic pantheons do not generate for a reason that it's reliant on the UA to found rather pantheons but it makes popping the first missionary such a pain and having to use it to convert your own cities instead of neighborhing cities awefully hurts the religious momentum a for no reason either flavourfully or for a game play reason.

I was about to ask about this.
You go from a LOT of faith since a pantheon provides the +3 faith/city, ie it counts as majority religion.
Found and then suddenly the pantheons does not count as majority religion and all cities drop the +3 faith/city until you have a religion there again.
Whats up with this mechanic?
Sure you can get some faith with shrines and Pictish warriors but as @SuperNoobCamper noted there is no faith from pantheons.

 

[Necamijat]

Why not just put the +3 Faith in each city on every Celtic Pantheon?

EDIT: I didn't think this completely through, because it won't work if you're a non-Founder and adopt someone else's religion. But does it matter then? You lose your original Pantheon if you adopt someone's religion anyway, right?

 

[pineappledan]

I think it makes perfect sense. Add 3 faith to all cities with the Celtic pantheon. period. It's easier to understand than the current system

It also makes Celts feel more consistent as a religious civ. In the current system they actually have less faith generation in mid-game because none of their pantheons give you Faith. Considering they gave up an entire UA for that stronger pantheon, it feels like there are just too many drawbacks to playing the Celts, especially when you stack them up against civs like Spain who can do similar things, but better.

 

[kawyua]

the 3 faith mechanic is an odd quirk that's counterintuitive, yeah. I've just accepted that its how it works like it was for the sake of balance, but yeah its not explained at all

this civ has both strong early faith and early military presence which will always be relevant anyways, so celts will stay good in my book. much more so when its so hard to found religion lately on deity, religions can be gone even by like t85

I want to mention that I'm loving rihannon with the celts. 2 culture and production/gold in each improved resources is a lot of yields. Like when I'm regularly getting around 7 improved resources in each of my cities when i'm going wide. woo its a lot of yields to work with. Its such a consistent pantheon that scales incredibly given some decent city spots and because I'm usually settling to variety of different resources going wide.

hmm a city with 10 resource tiles with rihannon giving 10 prod and gold is some strong pantheon.

 

[Ziad]

It's a mechanic that encourages me to hold on to my Prophet before I get enough faith for at least one missionary. I can get away with it cause I play on Marathon, but I imagine on faster speeds it'd be infuriating.

It should be tied to the pantheon choice which is in your religion anyway.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

It's a mechanic that encourages me to hold on to my Prophet before I get enough faith for at least one missionary. I can get away with it cause I play on Marathon, but I imagine on faster speeds it'd be infuriating.

It should be tied to the pantheon choice which is in your religion anyway.

You lose all of the accumulated faith once you use the first prophet to found a religion .... At least that's what happens in my experience.

 

[Ziad]

You lose all of the accumulated faith once you use the first prophet to found a religion .... At least that's what happens in my experience.

Ah yes I haven't played the Celts since that change was implemented (later changing to GA point conversion).

This makes it worse.

 

[DeAnno]

Does anyone else think Rhiannon is overpowered compared to other pantheons (maybe moreso on high difficulty)? You get 2c per city, which means you can spam cities in the earlygame without fear of ruining your culture, AND it combos with the Tribute policy for Authority, which is maybe the strongest tree for the Celts. Then, in the middlegame your +1h1g on all connected resources starts to scale really high, which is a pretty big benefit which also enables a lot of tiles to get +1g in Golden Ages that otherwise wouldn't. Whenever I try to convince myself to choose something else it always seems not worth giving up Rhiannon. Playing these Pict-Rhiannon openings on Deity is so powerful it feels like you're playing Immortal, the only thing that really compares to it is Spain.

 

[crdvis16]

Does anyone else think Rhiannon is overpowered compared to other pantheons (maybe moreso on high difficulty)? You get 2c per city, which means you can spam cities in the earlygame without fear of ruining your culture, AND it combos with the Tribute policy for Authority, which is maybe the strongest tree for the Celts. Then, in the middlegame your +1h1g on all connected resources starts to scale really high, which is a pretty big benefit which also enables a lot of tiles to get +1g in Golden Ages that otherwise wouldn't. Whenever I try to convince myself to choose something else it always seems not worth giving up Rhiannon. Playing these Pict-Rhiannon openings on Deity is so powerful it feels like you're playing Immortal, the only thing that really compares to it is Spain.

I think Cernunnos is really strong too in heavy forest/jungle when paired with progress. All that early science begets tech begets policies. I think Celt pantheons are just pretty strong overall, though some are probably much better in AI hands at high difficulty levels.

 

[Cokolwiek]

Does anyone else think Rhiannon is overpowered compared to other pantheons (maybe moreso on high difficulty)? You get 2c per city, which means you can spam cities in the earlygame without fear of ruining your culture, AND it combos with the Tribute policy for Authority, which is maybe the strongest tree for the Celts. Then, in the middlegame your +1h1g on all connected resources starts to scale really high, which is a pretty big benefit which also enables a lot of tiles to get +1g in Golden Ages that otherwise wouldn't. Whenever I try to convince myself to choose something else it always seems not worth giving up Rhiannon. Playing these Pict-Rhiannon openings on Deity is so powerful it feels like you're playing Immortal, the only thing that really compares to it is Spain.

Exactly today I before you posted it I was playing Celts for the first time in a very long time, deity, standard, doing my usual faith-focused, chill-out, land-grabbing peaceful authority with a coffee in a hand. I spent five long minutes evaluating three pantheons: one yield for every three pantheons followers and two extra happiness in every city (very strong for authority and progress but without early game power), science one (plus three science, culture, and great scientist points in the capital) and Rhiannon. Rhiannon one outperformed the rest (garbage), forest one (could be very strong but wasn't on my map), and the science and happiness ones heavily in my calculations. I agree Rhiannon is strong, but it is only as strong as you go really wide. It is the nature of Celts that they scale really well with wide (plus three faith in every city from the moment that you select pantheon). But they're completely out of any middle and late game bonuses, which makes me judge Rhiannon with going wide as fair. As Celts you have to be powerful early game, because you unique abilities provides nothing later on. Difficulty increases with time for the Celts. I founded rather easily (though nothing certain, as most Celtic pantheons does not provide any faith) and got extremely productive and rich cities, but my science, my food and my faith, which you usually seek in pantheons hurt. I don't think without authority Rhiannon would be nearly that good.

Spoiler :

 

[pineappledan]

If Rhiannon is very strong, then IMO all the other celt pantheons should be boosted up to Rhiannon's level, not the other way around.

Remember, the Celtic pantheons are Both, their pantheon AND their UA.