Civ 5 Celtic Civilization

Civ Bonuses, AI Info, Strategies, Unique Units and Buildings

Updated for Gods and Kings and Brave New World DLCs

Civilization's Leader: Bouddica

Civ Bonus: Druidic Lore

+1 Faith per City with 1 unimproved Forest tile next to it. Increases to +2 Faith with 3 or more unimproved Forests. Roads do not count as improvements as far as breaking this bonus, but camps would.

Unique Unit: Pictish Warrior

Requires Bronze Working, Replaces Spearman

Has the same stats as a Spearman (11 Combat Strength) but removed bonus to Mounted units. Instead, they get a +20% Combat Strength bonus outside Friendly territory and require no movement to Pillage tiles. They will earn 50% of an opponent's CS as Faith on kill, meaning you can farm your first Great Prophet by fighting Barbarians and other Civilizations, along with the Civ's passive Faith bonus.

Unique Building: Ceilidh Hall

Requires Acoustics, Replaces Opera House

Exactly the same as an Opera House, except it provides +3 Happiness - a major boost for Wide empires, whether your lands were acquired through conquest or spamming Settlers.

Playing Against The Bouddica AI - Their Tendencies (XML Info and Flavors) Warmonger

Hatred Wonder

Compete Offense

Build Defense

Build City

Defense DoF Friendly

to Civs Denounce

Civs War w/Civs Deception

Likelihood CS

Comp CS War 4 4 7 6 6 4 4 6 6 6 5 6 Other Info Bouddica is an unfriendly neighbor and not likely to sign a DoF with you without several positive diplomatic modifiers in your favor. Thankfully, her Unique Unit is not very dangerous in the hands of an AI. What you would need to worry about most is how dedicated to spreading Religion she will be - and capable of doing so, given whether or not she plays well the AI is going to get the passive faith generation and utilize the UU against Barbarians, ultimately founding a Religion. If she's your neighbor and you are in the position to do so, squash her early to avoid a late-game war. Else, use her aggression to get her to attack another Civ you know you'll have problems with and let them have the bloodshed they desire. Bouddica has a flavor of 8 in Happiness and Religion, so is likely to be very angry if you spread your own Religion in her lands. Start Bias: Forest

To retain +2 Faith, only 1 of these 4 Forests can be Improved/Chopped

Wait until your Faith per Turn is high enough to lose this bonus before chopping/improving tiles

Strategies/Ideas for playing The Celts:

Because of the big mid-game benefit from her UB, Boudicca's Celts are best played wide to take maximum advantage. The +3 Happiness will completely offset the cost of an additional City, it's just a matter of keeping your Citizens happy until you've reached that point. This also applies to most Civs that are focused on Faith Generation. Faith is one of the few metrics that don't scale in this game, meaning you will only get more Faith by having more Cities with Shrines and Temples and suffer no penalty for doing so, as long as you can keep them happy. In my game, I used a Liberty start to let me focus on building up my first City to prepare for War with the neighboring Germans. I recommend using a build order of Scout > Scout > Monument > Shrine > Worker > Pictish Warrior x2 > Granary > Barracks and going directly for the free Settler from Liberty. Your starting Warrior can protect your first City. Having a Pictish out by the time you're ready to Expand with the free Settler would be wise. Tech-wise, I got Pottery/Calendar then went for Bronze Working to unlock the Pictish Warrior and Barracks. Afteward, a Library to fuel tech and Composite Bowmen were my next priority to help me capture Cities.

So long as you insist on a start that has at least 3 Forests surrounding your first City, along with the usual needs of food and luxuries to trade, you will be in good position to found a Pantheon within 5-10 turns. Leave 3 adjacent Forests alone (Those right next to the City) and Settle your first expansion in a similar location if you can. The Faith per Turn will hit immediately, and you can amplify it with a Shrine. A Faith-producing Pantheon would be wise depending on your terrain, but you may want Culture to aid you in adopting new Policies. Only later in the game would I chop those Faith-producing Forest Tiles. Your borders should expand to better workable tiles and you will not need every tile around your City improved right away. Once FPT is high enough, chop away and get those tiles improved. Even a trading post would break the bonus, but a road will not. With Liberty, you'll get Happiness for each City you connect, and in this case it is good to do early in the game to get extra income to support a large army.

I highly recommend you go with Holy Warriors as your first Follower Belief. You should get first pick if you expand fast enough and get those Shrines up. After finishing Liberty, Piety can further aid you and let you choose a strong Reformation Belief that will help you to either purchase Great People or Post-Industrial Units with Faith. Either one is an excellent choice. You should have first pick on regular Beliefs, but some AI start Piety and will get their choice for Reformation. I took Tithe, Holy Warriors, and Religious Center for my Beliefs with Religious Texts as an Enhancer. This let me boost Faith/Happiness throughout the Empire, gave me more gold for supporting Military as Religion spread, and set me up for huge Faith generation later in the game. It is vital you Enhance your Religion rather than use Holy Warriors right away, because that will get you first pick on an Enhancer, then feel free to start spending Faith on Units. Notice I didn't get a building, so I had only two uses for Faith - buying Military Units or saving up for Great Prophets. Once the Religion is enhanced, Pictish Warriors cost 110 Faith and Composite Bowmen ~150. You'll be able to generate an extra unit every 8-10 turns with the +1 from Shrines/Temples with Piety. Getting a Grand Temple early will let you benefit from all these this faster, thus Puppeting any Cities you conquer is the way to go. After Composite Bowmen I went for Theology to unlock this National Wonder and get my religion spreading faster - with the desire to enhance quickly, you do not have Faith to spend on Missionaries.

In my game, I did build one Wonder, but given I was Warmongering I kept it at Pyramids to help me quickly improve lands and make City Connections to get the Gold/Happiness from Liberty. After the second Great Prophet to Enhance my Religion, I used one to spread it to some key Cities to allow it to spread further, and used later Prophets for Holy Sites since I did finish the Piety Tree. Their Faith and Culture was very helpful - you can place those Holy Sites near Cities that need border expansion, for +3 Culture is very significant toward improving the rate of new tile acquisition.

Make many Pictish Warriors and go out fighting Barbarians to get Faith

Use this Faith to Found a Religion and consider getting the Holy Warriors Follower Belief

The Pictish Warrior is an excellent UU for a few reasons. First the Faith on kill - hunting Barbarians will prepare them for War and give you extra Faith to speed up the founding/enhancing of your Religion. Their strength is quite high enough to handle most units they'll encounter in the Ancient/Classical eras. Second, it comes early but not too early - you won't be upgrading them to Pikemen immediately, and their Combat Strength with the +20% bonus outside friendly territory is 13.2 - nearly that of a Swordsman (14). Last, the no movement cost to pillage means they can pillage/attack in the same turn or even pillage 2 tiles to wreck your target's happiness or deprive them of strategic resources. They keep both no movement to pillage/foreign lands bonus when upgraded, but not the Faith on kill. That would be a bit overpowered. Regardless, you will want to make as many of these as you can to get those bonuses. I deliberately avoided Civil Service for a while to get more Pictish out before they became obsolete - I instead entered the Medieval with Theology to unlock the Grand Temple. A Pikeman with these Promotions is far better than one without, and you will not require Iron to have a strong Melee unit, meaning you can possibly trade it away. I never used Horses, so those were able to go too. After all, the Pictish can pillage without movement and that was fine enough for me. It costs a mere 75 Gold to Upgrade a Pictish Warrior to a Pikeman, so I highly suggest you try this strategy.

While the Ceilidh Hall seems like a strange building and may feel it comes a bit late, its role is obvious once you're in the mid-game. With Acoustics researched, you will be able to expand your Culture to begin acquiring policies faster and have great incentive to get Monument > Ampitheater > Ceilidh Hall built in all your Cities for Border Expansion and Policy selection. After Piety, I suggest a couple points in Aesthetics to catch up culturally and make producing these buildings faster but would not finish the tree. Going 1 further, Fine Arts may even help if you can get enough +Happiness to make a big impact on your Culture. Use Writer/Artists Guilds as early as you can to begin accumulating culture to defend your Ideology later in the game. The Ceilidh Hall will let you choose something unpopular like Autocracy without going into Unhappiness - Puppets will even build them. Ultimately, it will let you build the Hermitage faster having incentive to create these buildings, and that will further aid your Culture generation and prevent differing Ideologies from hurting you. With the massive Happiness bonuses from Autocracy and Boudicca's incentive to play Wide and Warmonger, you should even be in the positive enough to experience Golden Ages. Overall, I underestimated the Ceilidh Hall and this Civ in general. They are wonderful for guaranteeing you get a Religion on Immortal and below and even have a better chance than usual on Deity. Playing a normal game, you should easily see your Religion spread world-over and may even consider taking a Belief like Just War that increases Combat Strength near enemy Cities that follow your Religion.

I took the Belief to allow me to buy any type of Great Person with Faith (To the Glory of God) instead of Post-Industrial Units because without a Tradition start, you cannot buy Great Engineers. Having a large, happy empire, I was also in fine position to just build Units myself. This let me get late-game Wonders quickly with Great Engineers and made it a possibility to buy artsy types or Great Scientists without finishing Rationalism or Aesthetics.

Overall I consider the Celts to be a pretty solid Civilization and recommend them to anyone who wants to try their hand at spreading a Religion with a dash of Conquest. Domination Wins are the go-to once you've expanded a lot and conquered your continent, but with a huge, happy empire you are able to grow both Wide AND Tall and see great Scientific output from those Cities just from Population and the basic Science buildings. However, I cannot over-emphasize just how happy your Civ could be with Autocracy, getting +Happiness from all Barracks, Armories, and Military Academies among other things, and other Civs' Culture and its negative influence on Public Opinion can be crushed if you simply take a few Cities. Once your Civ is stable, rush for Artillery and some Naval power if you need it and you will be in a strong position to crush the other Civs around the globe one by one.

Just to toss an idea out there, Order is not a bad selection either, for you can get a Tourism boost for all Civs that are less happy than you. Given you will inevitably conquer many Wonders if you play the Celts as I did, you can certainly win with Tourism after a point. You'll get another boost from other Civs that choose Order, meaning a total of +68% to them. This would work exceptionally well with Fine Arts from Aesthetics, for you could get the extra Culture from Happiness and have more reason to push Happiness extremely high and ultimately reduce diplomatic penalties with other Civs. The only Ideology I would avoid with Boudicca is Freedom for it just doesn't fit with her playstyle.

Share your own tips for playing the Celts using the comment form below and help your fellow Civ players improve their game!

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