I like it. Instead of building a shrine, can make a settler instead. Each settler essentially is two shrines. It allows a fast expand start without getting behind in the religion field.
I like it. Instead of building a shrine, can make a settler instead. Each settler essentially is two shrines. It allows a fast expand start without getting behind in the religion field.
But you have to wait until the Renaissance to get it! If you get starved for Happiness before then, what will you do? Build Colosseums. At any rate, Mandate of Heaven (and more importantly Golden Ages giving bonus culture) means you need all the Happiness you can get, so why avoid building them in the first place, if you're trying to win culturally?Originally Posted by Joketa
It's annoying because it chains you into building 2 culture buildings first in order to get to one of your Uniques -- which feels junky to me. I thought this was why Unique Chariot Archers don't require Horses? So the game doesn't bar you from enjoying your uniques right away once you tech them? Of all the Unique Buildings in the game, the Celidh Hall is the only one who's 3rd on their build tree.
For a Civ with no direct bonuses to Culture, they certainly force your hand into going Culturally with the Celts -- and I'd rather some more flexibility. Making Celidh a UA would grant a Happiness bonus sooner (but overall still equal out to the same amount, and be no stronger than an old Classical-era Policy) and making their Druidism a UI makes it more fun and engaging, you get to see it on the map, and resolves the problem players have with being asked NOT to improve your tiles, when that's kinda what you're always supposed to do in this game. Not to mention automated workers probably will still try to put something on your forest, so that's out for Celts players... It just could use some easy tweaking is all.
Yeah, one reason I turn off ancient ruins. Get lucky enough and you'll found your religion before 3000 B.C.
I think that is why they get the cellidh whatever thingy to make up for the lousy trait.
For faith, Ethiopia has the greatest potential.
Though really, the American trait is pretty lousy as well. Save a couple thousand gold over the course of the game?
I suppose it depends on how much you intend to utilize Religion in the game. I'm loving it, not only because I get to make my religion first, and thus have the full range of options, but for the consistent boost throughout the early game. For this latest game I'm going for a cultural victory, and therefore chose the World Church belief that adds culture for followers in foreign cities. With the early boost to faith generation, I was able to get my missionaries out early and ensure that my religion is dominant across the (standard sized) map.
I don't see the requirement to have forest tiles as such a bad thing early game. By the medieval era, your faith should be at the point where losing one point per turn per city won't really be a problem, so you can develop as you please. Additionally by then, you have probably gotten a few extra great prophets, whose Holy Site improvement is godly (I couldn't resist, sorry) when you finish the Piety tree. When you complete Freedom, later on, it just becomes absurd.
The whole point is that you don't improve the tile. There's more strategy in having to leave it alone than to improve it. I submit that this UA is only interesting if it remains for unimproved tiles.
There are no UB replacements for Opera Houses, so it's unique. The monument is cheap, so it's not like you won't get it cheaply anyway. I really don't think it's bad at all, but I play tall and culturally no matter what victory type I play, so it has no conflict with my style at all - only bonuses. Also, lots of Civs don't let you enjoy the uniques right away so I don't understand that argument.
As far as the Mandate of Heaven goes, I don't think I'd build a Colosseum just for 1 culture. That is the single most useless policy in the whole game because the culture doesn't multiply. And if someone is forsaking growth for the pittance of culture you get from it then they're playing with a logic that I don't get.
I rarely have to build a Happiness building except for maybe a circus to get me through Medieval. The Celidh Hall happiness comes into play right about the time i want to start conquering. As you can see, it fits my play style. You might be trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, which is why it doesn't appeal to you, while to me it makes perfect sense.
So instead of an immodest proposal that they're never going to go for, I'd suggest they increase the culture and happiness bonus of the sacred forest at two different intervals. Leave the UB and UU as they are. I like them.
But that's what makes their UA a trade off rather than a bonus. Sure there's other tiles your citizens can work but what if that forest is on a river tile and you could have built a nice food producing farm there and chopped the forest down for production to boot, production which could go into a shrine to give them that faith that you lose by chopping down the forest, not to mention the fact that deer or fur could be on that tile too. Attila's UA is a total bonus with no downside whereas the Celts UA has a downside. The Celidh hall is a great UB but it doesn't come until midgame and it has two prerequisite buildings before it which kind of is a downside. On top of that happiness has been a non-issue by midgame for me making it weaker in the post G&K game. Compare that to Ethiopia's UB, almost every single city builds a monument and the Stele basically gives Ethiopia the Celtic UA, again without a downside, especially if you consider the Stele can be built in any city which in the end gives them a leg up on the Celts. I think they need to change it in one of the ways mentioned above because all it does now is give you a slight leg up in the faith game that becomes negligable later in the game once other faith buildings become available and the potential production of the improved tile is weighed against the unimproved tile.
One problem with replacing the UA with a UI is that it requires the forest to be worked - currently, the faith is given to the city just for having the forest.
Does the Aztec Jaguar retain its "heal when destroy enemy" remain after upgrade?
I could have sworn it used to. I dunno if it still does.
I can't say I love it myself, but here's how it panned out for me.
In an eight civ game, I used the UA and UU to get enough faith to be the second to found a religion (with only a single shrine to boot). For a founder belief I picked +1 happiness per city, and for a follower belief I picked +1 happiness from shrines. I built monuments (which I'm inclined to do anyway) and then grabbed the tradition sopol that puts a free culture building in your first four cities. Voila, free amphitheaters. That set me up for the celadin hall. Plenty of happy and nary a colosseum needed.
If I recall correctly my friend used the Celts to expand/upgrade their Religion before anyone else in the game even had FOUND a religion. (On Immortal.)
I would take the Celt's trait over William the Orange's, and plenty other old and new civs, any day of the week.
Love the Pictish also and I thought they DID keep the "faith on kill" trait when you upgrade them.
I thought it kept it when I upgraded mine. Perhaps I had something else giving my units Faith on kills, I know there are some of those in the religions...
And wonder if this is working as intended or is a bug. As far as I thought any UU you upgraded were supposed to keep ALL of their special stats. Otherwise it kinda takes the whole "Uniqueness" out of the UU.
I don't see a little pointy yellow up-arrow indicating that the faith-for-kills trait is actually a promotion. I do see the +20 for attacking units outside friendly territory. I definitely don't see white faith numbers appear when I rack up a kill.
+Faith and +Culture from kill show up at the same time, so if you took Honor and are killing a Barbarian, you may not even see or be able to read the White number that's indicating the faith you get.
Also, it's true -- I didn't see an actual promotion marker on the unit saying it gets +Faith from kills.
There's a couple units that lose their promotions actually (not remembering names immediately or I'd say. Janissary?) and units that simply have a higher strength (like Hoplites) lose this on promotion as well of course.
They do lose the faith with kill ability when promoted. Maybe if it carried over it would make them better.
It's worth mentioning here that the magic numbers for the UA are "one" and "three", right? It's not like you simply don't have the option of improving any forests. If you only have two adjacent, then by all means turn one into a lumberyard. If you have three, well, after you've gotten a couple of prophets and have a fully-enhanced religion, maybe that extra point of faith isn't worth it. Improve two, leave one to generate +1 faith.
Yeah, I don't see the problem with that any more than Aztecs keep culture-for-kills forever with all of their units.
But what I'd be satisfied with is just getting more than half-strength per kill. Either full-strength, or just a flat +5 per kill. If you're only meant to milk it for the (fairly short) lifespan of a spearman, then make it good.
See, this is why I don't like Celts. You get some early Faith bonuses at the cost of not having proper spearmen. You get a pillage promotion in the early game when AIs don't have most of their tiles improved, and you're probably not immediately rushing off to war with people -- or if you are its when you have swordsmen and your Pictish Warriors are already starting to be out-teched. Yes the +20% bonus is nice and you keep that, but you'll have it in your anti-tank line, not where I'd want it in your infantry line.
You get your pantheon before you can do a decent amount of scouting so you have to choose based off incomplete information. All that extra faith goes away eventually, meaning it wont help you buy out Great People in the mid-game. I dunno, I'm not really sold.
I think the thread has reached a consensus. Please buff the Rubbish Warriors and make the Celtic UA slightly more enduring than the first 50 turns of the game.
Also, it would be much more meaningful for the anti-tank line to even exist if the AI used tanks. Which they don't. Anti-mounted is essential because the AI makes lots of mounted units. That's what horses are good for. But the AI has a strong preference to spending oil on spamming airplanes over armor. That's why it's so rare to see the AI use tanks at all.
And that leads me to the next point. Is it just me or does the AI seem to completely ignore the bottom half of the tech tree once they hit the Modern Era? They get destroyers, tanks, and railroads much later than everything else. And nobody cares about Neuschwanstein. Seriously, the AI just don't bother with it.
I think the AI seems to be hell bent on getting nukes asap and tend to ignore other parts of the tree. At least that's been my experience. That's why anything not on that line is usually easy for players to get.
I'm not convinced it's awful.
Religion is a pretty big deal in the expansion, I would say it can buff your empires power by 25% or more and converting the heathens makes them all diplomatically docile, so you do the hand of god and decide what civ isn't spiritual enough for your taste and take it to hell, while the rest sits around praying for you to deliver them.
Even when the Celts is played by the AI it's strong and has converted over half the continent to it's religion, just because of that early rise.
Sure it's pointless with 1 or 2 faith later in game, but at that point you have the religion spread everywhere and get all the cool buffs due to it. The games I've played so far the effect of that early start is felt up until the winner is decided.
I just don't find being first to a religion THAT advantageous, and the fact that they don't have an impactful amount of extra faith production mid game means their UA has a serious expiration date, worse than France by around 2 eras.
I use the massive amount of faith from the UA to buy Pagodas for every city in my empire, and then stacks of great engineers for late game wonders - popping Neuschwantstein is pretty damn epic.
Of course, I'm also a fan of the Honor social policy that gives +1 happiness for defensive structures, which then become zero-maintenance juggernauts. Alongside pagodas, you have an insane amount of boost for an expanding empire.
The UA and UU basically lets you play the early faith game without building any buildings (shrine/temple). That's the biggest draw for me.
Religion is grossly overpowered in my opinion. If you don't get one, or you can't grow yours, you'll have a really hard time. Having the dominant religion though is a massive lift.
No, you only miss out on the founder belief if you don't even bother lifting a finger to do anything about religion because eventually someone else will spread it to you. Even the early game pantheon advantage is modest at best.
Also, it is entirely possible to be beaten to the punch to found the first religion even as the Celts. Someone who finds and allies a religious CS will almost always get it.
Keep in mind that it probably also depends on the game length. If like me you prefer epic or marathon games, you spend a lot more time in the early eras, and that early faith boost goes a long way. Pantheon beliefs that boost production or food, etc, accelerate your growth a lot more than they would in quick or standard games.
There seems to be wildly varying opinions how how influential faith and religions are. I think it comes down to how well you use it to complement your strategy. People that like to get the early religion boost seem to love the Celts UA, like I do. Using the Picts to kill barbarian camps, btw, is another good way to get a fast early chunk of faith.
I think some people don't like that it's strictly an early game UA and UU. That's fair, but I think that used right, the boost it gives you puts you in a very advantageous position for the mid to late game.
It's true. And as Magic_Hotdog said, it's really just the Pantheon that it almost guarantees you'll get first pick. I still think they should get further bonuses from the unimproved forests as time goes on. France is an excellent comparison on this. With the lower availability on Faith +1 is probably equal to +2 culture, but France gets it for every city without the condition on Forest tiles. Also, there are multipliers you can get for culture (Sistine Chapel, etc.), and no such for Faith, so France's bonus is really much better. Why France's disappears over time, I don't know. It shouldn't. Nor should the Celtic one feel so weak by the Renaissance.
I haven't tried the celts yet, but it seems the UA gives you three advantages:
1. Better pick of pantheon and beliefs.
2. Biggest advantage: earlier establishment of your religion. Better pressure and earlier missionaries mean you can spread your religion earlier. This insures a religious foothold in your own territory, and can give you significant founder benefits if you can get it around the world.
3. Faith isn't that easy of a resource to come by past mid game, so the extra bonus could prove useful. But by the time you are in atomic (and maybe modern), I think you'd just be better off improving the forest tiles, as faith purchases become quite expensive.
Someone brought up a good point, maybe the Celts advantage is better on slower progression speeds.
I know on marathon it's godly. (pardon the pun)
I agree, definitely. France gets this buff immediately, and also has comparably better units. Pictish Warrior seems to be much better geared for creeping to pick up easy Faith and Culture. I for the life of me have no idea why it has a bonus to pillaging. Lose that if you need to to make the rest of the Civ better.
I'll say this much about the UA: it doesn't even stack up particularly well with the majority of pantheon beliefs.
+1 or 2 Faith from cities built next to undeveloped Forest Tiles VS +1 Faith to all Tundra Tiles (without Forests); +1 Faith from Deserts (including Flood Plains); +1 Culture and Faith from Wine tiles; +1 Culture and Faith from Gold and Silver; +2 Faith from Quarries.
I dunno, the UA seems at best on par.
I too was initially comparing this with Napoleon's UA, which is like a free, additional monument in his cities (until Steam Power).
Boudicca's could behave the same way, as a free, additional shrine. If it has to have obsolescence, then perhaps Scientific Theory would be appropriate (even though it “is” a little late, and by that time, faith isn’t really as important anyway). Though, I think it would be fine to not have any effects go obsolete.
Though, flavor-wise, it still also needs something to tie it in with nature.
What about this:
Druidic Lore: +1 Faith per city and +1 additional faith if an unimproved forest is adjacent to the city.
EDIT: the additional +1 faith isn't "per" forest. It's only 1, no matter how many unimproved forests are adjacent.
A pretty simple change. You’ll always be guaranteed that 1 point of faith per city (similar to Napoleon’s too) but you can also gain more temporarily by having those unimproved forests around. It’s an early boost (when religion is important) and has a bit of a “soft” obsolete effect. You’re probably going to want to improve the forests around you eventually. Maybe not at first since it’s a trade-off of yield bonuses (1 faith vs. 1 food/production/etc.), but later on when improvements gain more potency (farms +1 food, mines/mills +1 prod, etc.) you’re going to want to improve those forests or cut them down for other improvements. But at the same time, there’s a bit of permanence in the ability, since you’ll always be guaranteed at least 1 faith point in your cities.
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Now… personally, I may make some tweaks to her UA and some others anyway.
I don’t really feel like Boudicca’s ability is as fitting or meshes really well with her. It’s definitely cool and I dig the druidic flavor.
I was thinking of giving a form of Bismarck’s UA, to Boudicca and naming something like, “Warrior Queen” , “Wrath of the Inceni”, or “Wrath of the Tribes”, etc. This way, the civ can be more focused on warfare and those Picts can be put to more use against barbs, and then against civs with their new barbarian allies joining them. Pillage away and/or conquer, and rack-up faith points from the Picts. The AI may be a little scarier with her as well.
A form of the faith ability can be supplemented with some other very religious leader’s UA. Perhaps a tweak and rebalancing of Isabella's UA?
Bismarck would receive some other type of UA I have yet to come up with, but I know I’m going to rename it to “Blood and Iron”.
In regards to comparing her with Napo, I would say that given the constraints imposed by needing A) forest tiles that are B) adjacent and C) unimproved, it would be easy to justify both bonus faith AND culture.
Or I'd go in a different direction and let cities purchase forest tiles with faith. Also, instead of having the Céilidh hall replace the opera house, simply make it a unique faith buy akin to the cathedral, mosque, etc.
In general, I would have built the Celts to do stuff with faith that didn't actually require them to found a religion. I mean, druids are pagans, not evangelists. Should they really go beyond pantheons to the full-blown trappings of relgion?
I would like to add that a city on low ground surrounded by forests has a hard time defending as well, especially if there be hills beyond those trees.
She also doesn't have a start bias of being next to a river
I am playing a Celtic MP map right now, and I am absolutely loving them. I pretty much went war-mongering, and with my Pictish warriors I gained faith so fast, that the other civ's are having trouble getting great prophets since I made them so expsenive. I am dominated the game thanks to this early lead. I do admit that late game they don't stack up, but with the start I have, I played my cards right, conquered other civs very soon and now have a huge land empire with veteran troops.
yesit keeps all its bonuses
So they're basically like the Huns. Capitalize early or you'll have a rough game later. Still, compared to the other expansion civs (Huns especially, I won't be surprised if the ram gets nerfed) the Celts are pretty weak. There are no game breaking "gotta have it" beliefs so racing to religion isn't really all that important, just beating out enough civs to be a founder is. IMO the Celts aren't even the fastest for founding, Ethiopia is. The Celts will get the pantheon first but the Stele is a way better faith producer than the Celtic UA considering it's 2 faith for every city unconditionally, assuming most people build monuments in every city. The Celts just need a little tweaking to get them on par with other civs is all. Right now I'd rank them pretty low in overall strength.
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