Reread the thread to make sure I was up to speed. This conversation doesn't seem to be have revisited since 'a change to test' was made.
I'm finding the Celts weak. They should be one of my favorite civs, as I love the religion aspect and they get unique religion stuff as their UA. However, I can't reliably get a religion with them on Immortal, and their Pantheons feel kind of weak compared to what others get. I'd usually rather have Goddess of the Hunt or Dance of the Aurora with the maps I see when I start Celt.
On Faith generation, the Great Work bonus comes so late it's not worth mentioning. You get +2 faith around the time you should be halfway to a religion, IF you take Tradition. Otherwise, it's a tech on the same line as Philosophy, except you have to also wait for the great person. Will not provide any help in getting a Religion. The UB comes even later. This leaves the Pictish Warrior, and the Pantheons themselves.
The Pictish Warrior is pretty good at generating Faith, if you open Authority and research Mining and Trapping first. That is, if you go for the worst overall opening, you can probably get a religion out of them. 11CS isn't enough to safely kill a Brute in an Encampment when you're at 10% Barbarian bonus from difficulty (it's worse on Deity). 25% of 11 is a joke (13.75) and the conditions it applies in are not super common (hills and tundra with no forest, or snow where barbs don't spawn). On Immortal against a Brute in an Encampment, you have 14.85 (11 +10% difficulty +25% attacking into hill) vs 10.4 (8 +10% Terrain +20% Defending) which causes you to do slightly more damage per turn than you take. It takes 4 rounds to kill a Brute:
1 - deal 37, take 24, Barbarian heals 10
1 - deal 33, take 21, Barbarian heals 10
3 - promotion, deal 31, take 21, barbarian heals 10
4 - kill, take 21
At the end of this, you have 20 HP. 8 turns of healing, as you don't have Medic yet. For your efforts, you receive 16 faith, about 1.25 faith per turn assuming you only count fighting and healing time (leaving out production and travel). If any other barb unit shows up during this fight, you lose your Warrior or you flee, getting nothing. Killing an Archer on a hill outside of an encampment with Shock 1 takes 2 turns and 3 turns to heal, granting 14 faith.
Pictish Warrior is no better at killing than a Spearman, has the same production price as a Spearman, and loses the Mounted bonus to get the Faith and Hills bonus. Overall, it will have little effect on gaining a religion unless you cripple your early infrastructure growth to produce a bunch of them.
Then you have the pantheons. They are generally powerful, but there are clear outliers among them, and they generally suck at early faith generation compared to traditional pantheons.
Bran, the Sleeping Guardian - 20% RCS for Cities is laughably pointless in CBP. +20% Growth is a pretty small boost, it's going to be worth a handful of extra citizens over the entire game. +2 Faith per city isn't enough to have a big effect.
Cernunnos, the Horned Stag - If you have a lot of Forests and you're wiling to hurt your early-game growth and production (when you need it most), you can get a religion. 2 culture per Jungle is pretty nice, makes herbalism - workshop - jungle mill - university jungles really powerful late game.
Dagda, the All-Father - Really powerful late game, rather weak early game. 400 faith in 100 turns means you need an average of 12 followers for those turns, which you're unlikely to have.
Epona, the Great Mare - Seems cool, but borders grow pretty slowly in CBP. 10 Faith, Culture, and Food per growth (does this scale with era?), even for an Authority player, is gonna need dozens of border growths in the first 100 turns to get a religion.
Lugh, the Skilled One - Great Wide Pantheon for the yields, but it won't help you get a religion. With no Wonder construction bonus, you might get one Ancient and one Classical Wonder if you tech and build specifically for them. Earliest Specialist is the Market, which you probably shouldn't work early, so you're waiting for Writing to get your yields boost. It's a huge yields boost for that point in the game, and a tiny boost Renaissance and later.
Mannanan, God of the Sea - 2 faith per city isn't enough to get a religion. 3 production and 4 gold per city is about equal to two Ancient era policies, so kind of weak late game.
Morrigan, Harbinger of Strife - Doubling down on Pictish warriors. The conversion seems to be 75% of Combat Strength. Might get a religion with Raging Barbs. Not sure where the food goes? Golden Age bonus is pretty nice as the game progress, you can get a LOT of golden age points fast once you can sustain war with the AI.
Nuada, the Silver-Haired King - 1 faith per 5 gold income is probably your best bet to guarantee a religion, if you focus on markets, trade, and money. Great to have that option, but thematically weird for the Celts. The Science to Culture is also amazing, providing 100 culture midgame and hundreds lategame.
Ogma, the Learned - The Science benefit is super amazing. The Faith is less than Goddess of Love, which is currently up for debate as under-powered. No religion for you.
Rhiannon, Goddess of Sovereignty - Great yields for mid-game Wide, except they don't help you get your expansions established faster, don't make up for the extra Science costs of settling, and don't provided enough gold to even pay for the roads to the new expansion. The 2 faith per city is unlikely to get you a religion.
Most of the pantheon options don't scale. The ones that do scale INCREDIBLY well, meaning those are the only options. The ones that scale have trouble getting you a religion, and are likely not powerful enough to warrant being a pretty major part of the UA. Celtic faith generation in the game is very weighted towards lots of faith late-game. If they could keep their pantheon without a religion late-game, this would be fine, as they'd have Great People options to use it on. However, without a Religion, they can't defend against foreign Missionaries and Prophets.
Getting a Religion is just as required for the Celts to use their UA as it is for Byzantium. We fixed Byzantium by giving her an extra bonus religion (though she always seems to found one early anyway), I'd say the Celts need more early faith generation options. Boosting Faith from Pantheons, or making the Pictish Warrior a more powerful or cheaper unit, can manage this. A wild alternative would be to strip their Pantheons of faith altogether, and give them 1 faith 1 culture on improved resource tiles.
). Anyways 3 faith per city is pretty massive. I'm not saying it's not going to work, but you should probably have some kind of thought behind changing the current pantheons in that case. Anyways if you just did +2 per city and kept the pantheons the way they are I could see that working out.
