The Celts

[crushboss]

Diodorus Siculus, in his 1st-century History had this to say about Celtic head-hunting:

"They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold."

Yea, so probably not diplomat. After reading some of their history they were both expansionists and conquerors. Either one would suit them better than diplomat (at least pre-modern celts).

 

[infidel88]

Hold on! The big advantage (for player) and problem (for AI) of the Celts is their flexibility. Depending on pantheon, they can either be warlike or tall civ. Aside for window opportunity of pictish warriors (who become useless quite quick), if Boudica doesn't take Morrigan, she becomes quite generic as warmonger. This is also one of the reasons, why you will never make AI excel as Celts.

 

[Workerspam]

Is the argument that the Celts should be warmongers based on their VP civ traits or historical accuracy? Because I don't see much in the Civ traits that would vouch for heavy warmonger. Rapid expander who will go to war for territory, sure. Bring on that Ottoman lifestyle.

Side note: I don't play the war heavy civs very often, as much fun as Songhai, Denmark, and Monty can be; just not a fan of the micromanagement necessary for conquering cities. But the Celts are in heavy rotation since you do not necessarily have to war with them to take advantage of their strengths.

 

[tu_79]

Will she stops fighting once her territory is safe and her religion strong? Or will she continue to fight even without any warmonger bonuses?

 

[doublex55]

Changing her personality to expansionist seems good. His will lead to her aggressively using her army early to gain land, but not being belligerent later when her UU falls off.

 

[tu_79]

Boooty's stats:

UPDATE Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases SET Bias =    8 WHERE LeaderType = 'LEADER_BOUDICCA'                AND MajorCivApproachType = 'MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_WAR';
UPDATE Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases SET Bias =    6 WHERE LeaderType = 'LEADER_BOUDICCA'                AND MajorCivApproachType = 'MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_HOSTILE';
UPDATE Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases SET Bias =    8 WHERE LeaderType = 'LEADER_BOUDICCA'                AND MajorCivApproachType = 'MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_DECEPTIVE';
UPDATE Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases SET Bias =    8 WHERE LeaderType = 'LEADER_BOUDICCA'                AND MajorCivApproachType = 'MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_GUARDED';
UPDATE Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases SET Bias =    6 WHERE LeaderType = 'LEADER_BOUDICCA'                AND MajorCivApproachType = 'MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_AFRAID';
UPDATE Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases SET Bias =    8 WHERE LeaderType = 'LEADER_BOUDICCA'                AND MajorCivApproachType = 'MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_FRIENDLY';
UPDATE Leader_MajorCivApproachBiases SET Bias =    8 WHERE LeaderType = 'LEADER_BOUDICCA'                AND MajorCivApproachType = 'MAJOR_CIV_APPROACH_NEUTRAL';

Her personality:

UPDATE Leaders SET Personality='PERSONALITY_DIPLOMAT'     WHERE Type = 'LEADER_BOUDICCA';

I (personally) disagree with her being Diplomat, but I didn't put here there...I think Lynnes did forever ago? In any case I'm happy to change this around.

G

This kind of thing is what makes me proud of helping this project.

You could have stayed each one on your opinion all day. Instead you went and checked the code. By pursuing true knowledge is how humanity actually progress.

Maybe this is such a minor issue nobody would care, but what really matters is the attitude.

 

[infidel88]

How often do you see Boudica worshiping anything else besides Nuada? Out of my recent couple games I saw Celts in, there was only one case of them not choosing Nuada :/

 

[PapaRockett]

How often do you see Boudica worshiping anything else besides Nuada? Out of my recent couple games I saw Celts in, there was only one case of them not choosing Nuada :/

Yeah I only ever see that one chosen now. There's a lot of cases where others would've been a better choice (heavy forest starts, etc)

 

[Rekk]

(17-12-01) Another game, another Nuada pantheon. Boudicca had a coastal start with 1 whale; her big monopoly was perfume that she would've needed to expand inland to claim.

Her Picts were too skittish to try and fight off Maya's aggressive forward settling (with warriors) into her perfume, and she never recovered after that.

 

[CrazyG]

Has anyone played with Nuada and can comment on how strong it is? I've never had the desire to use it

 

[Gidoza]

I've been thinking about Son of the Sea and The Skilled One - and I'm not sure why I would ever pick these; they give a singular bonus that is easily outstripped by most of the other Celtic Pantheons in a short amount of time. Am I missing something?

 

[ElliotS]

I've been thinking about Son of the Sea and The Skilled One - and I'm not sure why I would ever pick these; they give a singular bonus that is easily outstripped by most of the other Celtic Pantheons in a short amount of time. Am I missing something?

Not in my opinion, no. There's a reason I disagreed heavily on the final versions of those.

As far as fixes I think with the recent specialist nerf Skilled one could maybe just be made scaling again. It was OP before, but now working that super early specialist kills your growth.

Son of the sea needed a but and needs a buff. I still like the +1/ from fishing boats/lighthouses idea.

As far as Nuada the problem is twofold. It was OKAY when wide got an insane amount of gold as it could eventually give the most culture, but now it's been nerfed a lot by the reduced bloat of gold for wide-civs. I would make it "+1 // for every 10 , and +2 Gold from City Connections."

This would make it a much better choice for late-game wide-plans. It would compete with Dagda (being weaker early, being about even mid and surpassing it a bit late) and outscale everything else. I know it looks strong, but I really don't think it's OP at all when you do the math and compare it to other pantheons.

 

[Workerspam]

I've been thinking about Son of the Sea and The Skilled One - and I'm not sure why I would ever pick these; they give a singular bonus that is easily outstripped by most of the other Celtic Pantheons in a short amount of time. Am I missing something?

I think Skilled One is okay as is. One market and your getting more local culture/science/gold than the other pantheons can provide for a while. If you want to expand wide early it seems like a reasonable option to combat unhappiness. Even with the change to specialists I can find a way to work 1 in exchange for 9 bonus yields.

You add 1 culture to Son of the Sea and I think it's competitive with the others. It's the only pantheon that has no culture attached and that makes it hard to go for even in otherwise optimal conditions. With that change you could potentially use it to channel your inner Celtic Carthage and go wide with good early infrastructure.

 

[ElliotS]

I think Skilled One is okay as is. One market and your getting more local culture/science/gold than the other pantheons can provide for a while. If you want to expand wide early it seems like a reasonable option to combat unhappiness. Even with the change to specialists I can find a way to work 1 in exchange for 9 bonus yields.

Sure would suck if there was a choice that would offer 8 yields per city at about the same rate with NO sacrifice at all AND outscaled it horrifically, right? Good thing Dagda doesn't exist...

 

[Gazebo]

Please post ReligionAI logs for belief scoring. Otherwise I can’t help.

G

 

[Workerspam]

Sure would suck if there was a choice that would offer 8 yields per city at about the same rate with NO sacrifice at all AND outscaled it horrifically, right? Good thing Dagda doesn't exist...

Dagda isn't local (if I remember correctly) so won't help your satellite cities combat happiness or grow their borders. Dagda eventually outscales Skilled One, no doubt; your capital will love you for taking it. But if you want to settle wide and early you could do worse than Skilled One. That's the trade off as I see it: early snowball potential via settling versus long term yields.

 

[ElliotS]

Dagda isn't local (if I remember correctly) so won't help your satellite cities combat happiness or grow their borders. Dagda eventually outscales Skilled One, no doubt; your capital will love you for taking it. But if you want to settle wide and early you could do worse than Skilled One. That's the trade off as I see it: early snowball potential via settling versus long term yields.

That's supposed to be the tradeoff, but Skilled One is terrible so it's not true.

The fact is that by forcing you to work a specialist that costs a TON of food early, Skilled one costs a LOT for it's yields, while Dagda is free and automatic.

Secondly the power peak isn't there. Skilled one is worse before you get a market online, (which either forces you to skip shrine/monument or takes multiple turns in satilite towns) worse if you can't/don't want to work a specialist, and worse in/past medieval.

You're trading in a ton of effort to get a potential advantage during the later half of ancient, classical and the early part of medieval. (before you hit ~10 pop per city)

There is a fine line that you need to toe when balancing early vs late stuff. In this case the "strong early but worse later" option isn't strong enough early to be worth how useless it is later, so we need to extend it's benefits because buffing it early would be broken. I'm honestly surprised this is even remotely controversial.

I would NEVER pick Skilled one as it is right now. There is no possible reason to pick it. I've brainstormed for a while. Remember that I was the one to point out how crazy it was before, when everyone else was focused on Eponia. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's 100% useless and will never be better than Dagda or another pantheon in the current state.

Also let's not pretend that the local yields are anything more than a cherry on a steaming turd of a belief.

Making it scaling as is would be the bold choice, scaling at +2 // would be the conservative (and probably correct) choice and making it a non-scaling +3 /// is the interesting choice.

 

[CrazyG]

Making it scaling as is would be the bold choice, scaling at +2 // would be the conservative (and probably correct) choice and making it a non-scaling +3 /// is the interesting choice.

I think G said scaling isn't possible with the current code

Authority got nerfed (its not obvious but this pantheon is great with Authority, not really tradition) and specialists now eat more food. Its due for a buff

 

[ElliotS]

I think G said scaling isn't possible with the current code

It used to scale tho.

 

[CrazyG]

It used to scale tho.

keep in mind that the 'scaling with era' bits on Lugh are not possible in the code at this time (lots of reworking required).