The Celts

[Gothic_Empire]

There is an enormeous difference between faith on UA/UB and faith on kill.

Faith on kill entirely depends on the type of map you choose (huge/small, pangea/islands, crownded or not, proximity of neighbors and barbs camps, ....)

Faith on UA/UB is stable and can be planned, faith on kill as an important part of luck.

If you play for example an island map you must learn 4 techs at least to be able to build pictish and learn them to swim, hoping there are barbarians near.


For the rest I hope at least G. have some reference because I think something have been forgotten. Is there somewhere a list saying for each civilization wihch type of gameplay is favorized and which type of victory is the better?

You can absolutely plan to use a UU to generate a yield. I'm not sure I understand the complaint. Especially with promotions, spearmen (and therefore pictish) can hold their own for a very long time.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

I'd love the pantheons of the Celts to include some powerful tile yields to make up for not having corollaries to God of the Sea, Open Sky, etc. There are also some important figures of the religion being represented here who have gone unmentioned, I.E., Brigid, Dunatis, Arawn (I think they're missing; if not, I can't recall their bonuses off the top of my head.)

Pre-nerf God of the Open Sky is an example of how I might power up a pantheon for it to match the other Celtic ones, if the concern is that tile yields are too weak of a UA.

 

[Funak]

I'd love the pantheons of the Celts to include some powerful tile yields to make up for not having corollaries to God of the Sea, Open Sky, etc. There are also some important figures of the religion being represented here who have gone unmentioned, I.E., Brigid, Dunatis, Arawn (I think they're missing; if not, I can't recall their bonuses off the top of my head.)

Pre-nerf God of the Open Sky is an example of how I might power up a pantheon for it to match the other Celtic ones, if the concern is that tile yields are too weak of a UA.

I think the idea was to keep the number of celtic pantheons limited. If you add a pantheon for bonuses from one type of improvement, you're kinda forced to add pantheons for all different improvements or you're going to run into situations where people complain that they have don't have one for every situation.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

I think the idea was to keep the number of celtic pantheons limited. If you add a pantheon for bonuses from one type of improvement, you're kinda forced to add pantheons for all different improvements or you're going to run into situations where people complain that they have don't have one for every situation.

Or rather than trying to shotgun every type of improved resource, maybe have one that rewards tile improvements on resources in general. Right now they don't have any way of exploiting, say, a mess of wheat or pastures, or desert resources the way another religious civ can.

 

[Funak]

Or rather than trying to shotgun every type of improved resource, maybe have one that rewards tile improvements on resources in general. Right now they don't have any way of exploiting, say, a mess of wheat or pastures, or desert resources the way another religious civ can.

So what yields would you add to that one?
1 faith? That's awfully boring. Maybe somewhat underpowered for one city compared to other options.
2 faith? That's crazy overpowered.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Their pantheons need to be somewhat overpowered compared to others.

1) They do not get to deny anyone else a pantheon. Because the celts are in the game, another pantheon is free to the other civs, indirectly increasing the power potential of a rival.

2) It's part of their UA, and needs to be beefier than a normal pantheon.

3) More options aren't boring.

I'd lump terrains & resources together, honestly.

Grasslands, Floodplains, Marsh pantheon - food from tiles, faith on wheat, cocoa, bananas, sugar

River tile, coast tile, lake tile pantheon - gold from tiles, faith on crabs, coral, fish, pearls

Plains, hill, desert pantheon - faith from tiles, culture on jade, lapis, amber, gold, silver,

Tundra, ice, snow pantheon - faith from tiles, production on deer, whales, maybe we don't need an ice celt pantheon.

--

The "from tiles" yields could either be actual yields added to those tiles, or yields that the celts get per x number of tiles in the city's three-ring radius.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

So what yields would you add to that one?
1 faith? That's awfully boring. Maybe somewhat underpowered for one city compared to other options.
2 faith? That's crazy overpowered.

Very good points. So what could it be?

I suggest faith. You can never be wrong with faith as pantheon yield.

 

[Funak]

So which pantheons would you remove to add those 4 new ones?

 

[Gothic_Empire]

So which pantheons would you remove to add those 4 new ones?

Is there a hard cap?

 

[Funak]

Is there a hard cap?

The big G said he wanted 10 of them, so he got 10 of them, if you want to add 4 new ones you have to remove 4 existing ones.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

The big G said he wanted 10 of them, so he got 10 of them, if you want to add 4 new ones you have to remove 4 existing ones.

Is there a function of gameplay that giving the Celts fewer pantheons serves? That sounds far more like a nice round number to hit while hammering out a new concept than a number one gets to from calculating gameplay balance.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Well, if you want to add new pantheons, at least you'll have to find a suitable Celtic god for it.

Have you considered going all the way to the natural conclusion of this Celt UA? Make them like whoward's Morindim civ. When they found or enhance : instead of choosing from the regular founder/follower/enhancer : they add a new pantheon. They can add as many as they are willing to use GP on, and can't spread to foreign civilization. The code for this is in his dll, so it should be in the CP dll.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Well, if you want to add new pantheons, at least you'll have to find a suitable Celtic god for it.

Have you considered going all the way to the natural conclusion of this Celt UA? Make them like whoward's Morindim civ. When they found or enhance : instead of choosing from the regular founder/follower/enhancer : they add a new pantheon. They can add as many as they are willing to use GP on, and can't spread to foreign civilization. The code for this is in his dll, so it should be in the CP dll.

That's a cool idea, though I suspect that would make Celtia ridiculously OP. And there are a lot of Celtic gods remaining - "Celts" covers a relatively huge number of peoples.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Yes "Celts" is a culture more than a nation as they spread through all of Europe.

Don't know if this would make them OP. Downside would be missing founder and associated NW, Reformation and Enhancer. Their Pantheon beliefs tend to be better than follower beliefs, but with 2 Great Prophets they would sit at 3 pantheons when every other religion would have 1 founder, 2 follower, 1 enhancer and possibly a reformation belief.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

With the recent change to sacred path, should Cerannos be changed to match?

Right now it is
Sacred Path now 1 culture & 1 faith per 2 jungles or forests near a city
vs
Cernunnos, the Horned Stag: +1 Faith from Forests, +1 Culture from Jungles

 

[Funak]

Cernunnos, the Horned Stag: +1 Faith from Forests, +1 Culture from Jungles

2 culture per jungle*

 

[Gothic_Empire]

With the recent change to sacred path, should Cerannos be changed to match?

Right now it is
Sacred Path now 1 culture & 1 faith per 2 jungles or forests near a city
vs
Cernunnos, the Horned Stag: +1 Faith from Forests, +1 Culture from Jungles

Cerannos was so UP in my last game that I think I need to rethink my claim that the celts need more powerful terrain pantheons. I suspect that terrain pantheons are somehow antithetical to CBP.

 

[Funak]

I suspect the sacred path is about to get nerfed anyways, so comparing it to that isn't necessarily a good thing.

 

[Gazebo]

Well, if you want to add new pantheons, at least you'll have to find a suitable Celtic god for it.

Have you considered going all the way to the natural conclusion of this Celt UA? Make them like whoward's Morindim civ. When they found or enhance : instead of choosing from the regular founder/follower/enhancer : they add a new pantheon. They can add as many as they are willing to use GP on, and can't spread to foreign civilization. The code for this is in his dll, so it should be in the CP dll.

I thought about it, but I decided against it, as the one major problem with this is that the AI would have a hard time understanding how to protect their pantheon without inquisitors/missionaries. It'd be a lot of fiddling with the AI, which I'm not keen to do at this point. The celts feel pretty good, and the AI does really well with them most games right now.

I suspect the sacred path is about to get nerfed anyways, so comparing it to that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Yeah, dropping it to 3/3, I think.
G

 

[PurpleMentat]

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.