Zigzagzigal's Guide to the Celts (BNW)

The Celts have a strong early-game; they're usually the first to a Pantheon. They're well-placed to build lots of cities and go for a cultural victory. This guide goes into plenty of detail about Celtic strategies, uniques and how to play against them.

Introduction

Note: This guide assumes you have all game-altering DLC and expansion packs (all Civ packs, Wonders of the Ancient World, Gods & Kings and Brave New World)



The Celtic peoples may be divided across national and international borders, but what unifies them is history. Once dominant across much of central and western Europe, the expansion of the Roman Empire saw the purely Celtic culture confined to parts of far western Europe. In the three centuries following the withdrawal of the Romans, Celtic languages in the region diverged, while the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons pushed Celtic culture into ever smaller enclaves. And the divided people formed distinct identities, corresponding roughly to the contemporary "Celtic Nations" of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man.

Over time, these nations were to lose their independence. Brittany became a duchy of France, while Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and the Isle of Man were conquered by English kingdoms. Scotland would join with England in the 1707 Act of Union after an ill-fated scheme to colonise Panama, and due to the growing power of their southern neighbour. Britain and France would go on to establish colonial empires, with a quarter of the world's population and over a quarter of the world's land area between them, but Celtic culture, like many cultures across the world, was to be suppressed. Unrest in Ireland led to violence, and eventually independence for most of the island in 1921. Since then, Celtic culture in the British Isles has undergone a revival, accelerated by devolved government in Wales and Scotland. In Brittany, however, lack of recognition for the Breton language in the constitution is seen as a threat to cultural distinctiveness. Your task now is to lead a new, unified Celtic nation, where no culture is neglected or suppressed, and to build the people a civilization that can stand the test of time.



Before I go into depth with this guide, here's an explanation of some terminology I'll be using throughout for the sake of newer players.

Beelining - Focusing on obtaining a technology early by only researching technologies needed to research it and no others. For example, to beeline Bronze Working, you'd research Mining and Bronze Working and nothing else until Bronze Working was finished.
Finisher - The bonus for completing a Social Policy tree (e.g. Free Great Person for Liberty.)
GWAM - Great Writers, Artists and Musicians. These are the three types of Great People who can make Great Works, a major source of tourism for cultural Civs.
Opener - The bonus for unlocking a Social Policy tree (e.g. +1 culture for every city for Liberty's opener)
Tall Empire - A low number of cities with a high population each
UA - Unique Ability - The unique thing a Civilization has which doesn't need to be built.
UB - Unique Building - A replacement for a normal building that can only be built and used by one Civilization.
UU - Unique Unit - A replacement for a normal unit that can only be built by one Civilization or provided by Militaristic City-States when allied (this only applies to land UUs that are of Civs not in your current game.)
Uniques - Collective name for Unique Abilities, Units, Buildings, Improvements and Great People
Wide Empire - A high number of cities with a low population each. The Ceilidh Hall UB helps to support such a strategy as the Celts, as does an early, happiness-focused religion.

At a glance (Part 1/2)

Start Bias

The Celts have a forest start bias. This is very important as together with your UA, it practically guarantees you a Pantheon before anyone else. It comes with the downside that heavily-forested areas tend to be worse for growing your cities, but on the other hand, they're easier to defend.

Uniques

The Celts' Unique Ability is early-game and faith focused, and their UU is also so, arriving in the ancient era. However, their UB is all the way over in the renaissance - one of the latest UBs in the game.

Unique Ability: Druidic Lore

• +1 for every city with at least one unimproved forest tile adjacent to it
  
• +2 for every city with at least three unimproved forest tiles adjacent to it

Unique Unit: Pictish Warrior (Replaces the Spearman)

A standard melee unit

Technology	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Production cost	Purchase cost	Resource needed
Bronze Working Ancient era 2nd column (3rd column overall)	Civil Service Medieval era 1st column (6th column overall)	Warrior (Ancient Ruins upgrade only)	Pikeman (75 )*	56 *	260 *	None

*Assumes a normal speed game.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
11	N/A	2	N/A	2	None	Gives faith on a kill equal to half the opposing unit's strength (or ranged strength if it's higher) 20% combat bonus outside own territory (Foreign Lands Bonus) No movement cost to pillage

Negative changes

• 50% bonus vs mounted units removed

Positive one-off changes

• Gives faith on a kill equal to half the opposing unit's strength (or ranged strength if it's higher)

Positive keep-on-upgrade changes

• 20% combat bonus outside own territory (Foreign Lands Bonus)
  
• No movement cost to pillage

Unique Building: Ceilidh Hall (Replaces the Opera House)

Building of the Culture line

Technology	Building required	Required to build	Production cost	Purchase cost	City restriction	Maintenance
Acoustics Renaissance era 1st column (8th column overall)	Amphitheatre	Museum	200 *	740 *	None	1

*Assumes a normal speed game.

Base output	Output Multiplier	Specialist	Great Work slots	Other effects
1 3 *	None	None	1 Music	None

*This is local city happiness; the total amount in a city is capped by the number of citizens.

Positive changes

• Provides 3 local city happiness

At a glance (Part 2/2)

Victory Routes

Note that these scores are a matter of personal opinion based on experiences with the Civilization. You may discover a way of utilising the Civ more effectively in unconventional ways.

Cultural: 8/10
Diplomatic: 6/10
Domination: 6/10
Scientific: 5/10

The Celts use the momentum of a good early game to help propel them to victory. The scores may appear fairly poor, but that's due to the emphasis on faith generation, which doesn't directly help any particular victory type. Because of your UB, you should focus on trying to gain a cultural victory, and try to tailor your religion to suit that. Use your religion wisely and there's little reason to say you can't compete with the likes of Polynesia or Brazil.

Alternatively, a happiness building can help with warmongering, even if it's a difficult UB to build. You can combine that with an early choke tactic (pillaging enemy lands early on to set their progress back,) then use a war-focused religion to win that way.

Similar Civs and uniques

Overall

Although much of how they play out diverges greatly, the Celts are closest to Ethiopia due to their shared very early faith bonuses. The Celts are usually first to a Pantheon, while Ethiopia is usually first to a full religion. Both Civs don't have a particularly strong skew towards any victory route, but Ethiopia is even more unfocused than the Celts.

Another Civ to consider is the Mayans. They're also a wide-building Civ with faith bonuses, but their scientific advantages put them on a very definite victory path.

Same start bias

The forest start bias is shared only with the Iroquois.

Similar to the UA

Early faith bonuses are also features of Ethiopia's Stele and the Mayan Pyramid, both of which are ancient-era Unique Buildings.

Similar to Pictish Warriors

The faith-on-kills attribute is unique to Pictish Warriors, though a similar effect can be used by any Civ via the God of War Pantheon.

The foreign lands bonus can only otherwise be found on Foreign Legions, which can be gifted by allied militaristic City-States if you have the Replacable Parts technology, or obtained from the Volunteer Army tenet in the Freedom ideology.

No movement cost to pillage is more common, but Danish melee units are the only other units that can get this promotion prior to Landsknechte, which anyone with Commerce's Mercenary Army can build.

Similar to Ceilidh Halls

A few Civs have bonuses to happiness, but the two that work in the most alike manner are Persia's Satrap's Court and Egypt's Burial Tomb. Like Ceilidh Halls, both of these offer local city happiness on buildings that have prerequsites meaning you need to get production off the ground in new cities before you can make use of these.

Unique Ability: Druidic Lore

Your forest start bias will likely put your Settler next to at least one forest. Found your city, and you're immediately generating faith.

The obvious advantage of generating faith right away is you're typically the first Civ to a Pantheon. The problem with this, however, is that at this incredibly early stage of the game, you've barely discovered anything and hence it's hard to tell what Pantheon will go well for anywhere besides your capital. For that reason, it's worthwhile to build a Scout before anything else (unless you're clearly on a small island, hence making that redundant.)

Having first choice of the Pantheons ensures you get the one you want, but no single Pantheon particularly dominates for the Celts. In the Religion section, I've got a list of decent Pantheons, but the one you choose will depend on the situation you find yourself in at this early stage.

A Pantheon's not enough, however - you'll want a religion. Founding new cities next to forests will help give you more faith without the production and gold costs of building Shrines. Get plenty of cities - the more you have, the more faith you can generate. Pictish Warriors will also be a great help for getting a religion ready sooner. You may not necessarily be first to a religion, but you won't have to dedicate too much effort to get there, leaving you more time to focus on expansion, infrastructure and/or wonders.

So, where should this religion be heading? The clue's in your Ceilidh Hall UB. Being half-way in the cultural building line, it greatly encourages you to aim for a cultural victory. The high amount of happiness it offers allows your many cities to grow without leading you into dire unhappiness.

Unique Unit: Pictish Warrior

Your UA gives you an early Pantheon. Your UU helps secure you an early religion. The best way of explaining the Pictish Warrior is to go through each of its differences from the Spearman in turn.

No bonus vs mounted units

Normally, the main purposes of Spearmen are to provide a cheap, resource-free melee unit, and to deal with early-game mounted units. But with the removal of bonuses against mounted units, the Celts lack the latter option, meaning they're more vulnerable than most to Civs like Byzantium and Greece, which have early-game mounted UUs.

Generally, the lack of bonus towards mounted units will not be a significant problem, but if you are facing large numbers of enemy Horsemen, use defensive bonuses to your advantage (e.g. forests near your cities) or intercept them with Pictish Warriors outside your lands for the 20% foreign lands bonus. Consider giving some units open terrain promotions (Accuracy for ranged units, Shock for melee) as mounted units tend to perform better there.

Faith on kills

Above: The Honour opener gives you culture, too (at least, for Barbarians.)

This is the main advantage of Pictish Warriors. Killing enemy units gives you faith equal to half the unit's strength (or ranged strength if that's higher,) so that's 4 for a Warrior or Brute for example. Remember, you only get the faith if you deal the final hit with a Pictish Warrior.

The best way to use this bonus is by fighting Barbarians. By taking the Honour opener, you can tell where their encampments are, you receive a high combat bonus against them, and get culture for killing them as well. You can leave some encampments alive in order to let them carry on churning out Barbarians, or destroy them for City-State favour if possible.

Essentially, you can consider Pictish Warriors Shrines that fight back. Instead of focusing production on building Shrines in the early game, you can build some of these instead, providing you the faith you need while also building a reasonable force which should discourage warmongers going into your lands.

Foreign lands bonus

Pictish Warriors fight 20% more effectively outside friendly land, giving it an effective strength of 13.2 not accounting for other bonuses. That's higher than any other resourceless unit in the ancient era, and means it can stand up well to any non-unique pre-medieval unit. The main advantage of this is to get a bigger edge on Barbarians when killing them for faith.

No movement cost to pillage

Now, this is an interesting one. In theory, you can use these early units with their 20% foreign lands bonus to conquer foreign lands, which easy pillaging assists with. Even if you don't capture any cities, easy pillaging would help set your opponents back. However, early wars anger other Civs for the rest of the game, and may hurt your cultural aims by making Open Borders agreements harder to pick up and suchlike.

Instead, if you want to go off pillaging, wait until they upgrade into Lancers. A high-move unit with free pillaging can do plenty of damage (much alike the Ottoman Sipahi.) By that point, you'll probably know who your enemies are likely to be, so a war to set them back a little won't be as destructive to your reputation as an early war would be. Still, the Celts aren't really the strongest warmongering Civ around, so it's not the end of the world if you don't use this bonus.

Special promotions kept on upgrade

• Foreign Lands Bonus (+20% strength outside friendly territory)
  
• No movement cost to pillage

Despite looking like a promotion, the faith-on-kills attribute is not kept when you upgrade Pictish Warriors. For that reason, it's worth keeping a few around until either the world is settled enough that farming Barbarians for XP is impratical, or the Barbarian camps are churning out units far too advanced for Pictish Warriors to be able to finish off.

That issue aside, everything else keeps on upgrade, and promoting Pictish Warriors to Pikemen gives them a bonus against mounted units again. Together with the Foreign Lands Bonus, that's pretty great for intercepting mounted units before they enter your territory. The 20% bonus gives Pikemen the edge over the Siamese Naresuan's Elephant where normally they'd be at a disadvantage, and it's also enough for your Lancers to get a more even chance against Polish Winged Hussars. That's just two examples of how the bonus can keep you safe throughout the game (particularly the midgame.)

Again, the free movement cost to pillage works well on Lancers and Helicopter Gunships, but the Celts aren't the world's best warmongers, so that ability may never see use.

Unique Building: Ceilidh Hall

No other building offers as much local city happiness, meaning you can burst through the midgame happiness slump like no other Civ around. But on the other hand, it's the only UB to have two prerequisite buildings - the Monument and the Amphitheatre - making it harder to build than pretty much any other UB out there.

So, how do we address that little problem? Well, focusing on culture and Great Work generation gives you an incentive to build the prerequisite buildings. The Aesthetics Social Policy Cultural Centres makes the whole line of cultural buildings much cheaper to build. So, emphasise the cultural path to make the most out of your UB.

Now let's get onto the big advantage. Like other happiness-providing buildings, Ceilidh Halls provide local city happiness. In most cases, you'll get your full three points of happiness, but in particularly small cities or those with lots of happiness buildings already you may see a gain of less than three happiness. Not to worry, though, as the city grows, the local city happiness will cancel out the unhappiness from city growth.

What the happiness is very useful for is sustaining a good level of happiness despite building wide, or supporting all your cities to grow taller and strong in their own rights (giving you lots of potential wonder-building cities.) This means the Celts are really strong candidates for using the Order ideology, as while the rest of the tree generally favours wide-building empires, its level three cultural tenet - Dictatorship of the Proletariat - requires lots of happiness, which can be hard to achieve for other wide-building Civs.

Social Policies

Pictish Warriors work really well with the Honour opener, but after that you're best off focusing on Liberty to help building wide. Dive into either Piety or Aesthetics next, then whichever of the two trees you didn't go into before. Alternatively, take Rationalism as your third tree to keep up with science.

Honour

Opener

Get the Honour opener right away. You don't need the rest of the Honour tree, just this opener will do. It allows you to far more effectively use your Pictish Warriors to farm faith with, and also keeps your lands safe from Barbarians by knowing exactly where their encampments are. Plus, you get culture from killing Barbarians, so if you fight them extensively, you can push through Social Policies quite a bit faster.

If there's no or few Barbarians in your starting area, skip this policy.

Liberty

Opener

Liberty helps you build lots of cities. Due to the fact cities can generate faith as soon as they're founded thanks to the Celtic UA, it's generally more effective to start with the Liberty tree (after the Honour opener) than the Piety tree, as you get more out of the former than the latter. The opener lets all your cities expand their borders right away, and partially offsets the increased Social Policy costs per city.

Republic

This policy makes a significant difference to early production, (and production in new cities,) and helps to churn out more Pictish Warriors for faith.

Collective Rule

A free Settler without having to spend time building it! Just another help for building plenty of cities. Faster Settler production in the capital means that future Settler building will be of little difficulty.

Citizenship

Faster Worker speed and a free Worker really helps in developing your cities and building roads. The highly-uncompetitive Pyramids wonder makes it even better, getting your city tiles improved to an excellent level before anyone else.

Representation

Now, building wide will slow down Social Policy gain less. This will be useful for dealing with Aesthetics and Piety policies quickly - the sooner you have them, the greater the effect.

Meritocracy

Quite a handy boost to your empire's happiness, which will help you expand in the pre-Ceilidh Hall stage of the game. Every 20th point of population in your empire is now unhappiness-free, essentially, as well as the happiness point from every city with a city connection.

Finisher

A free Great Engineer to rush a high-priority wonder is a good idea. A Great Scientist is reasonable, too, to help offset the increased technology costs per city.

Aesthetics

Opener

If a Reformation belief you want is likely to be fairly competitive, go to Piety first, but generally I'd advocate Aesthetics first. The opener immediately increases GWAM generation by 25%, which means quite a bit more Great Works.

Cultural Centres

It takes a long time for a new city to reach Ceilidh Halls, but now it's significantly quicker, letting you more easily take advantage of the happiness and Great Work slots.

Fine Arts

High excesses of happiness may not be particularly common at this stage of the game, but eventually, you could be getting strong amounts of culture to help you push through the last few ideological tenets.

Flourishing of the Arts

Ceilidh Halls allow you to grow cities taller without destroying your happiness, and hence you can have a decent number of cities capable of building wonders. Spread them around your empire for maximum effect from this policy.

Cultural Exchange

By not using Pictish Warriors aggressively against other Civs, it's much easier to get Open Borders and International Trade Routes, and your early-game faith generation helps to spread around your religion and make it strong to take advantage of the shared religion tourism bonus. Those three factors are even more effective now, offering you a 120% tourism boost to Civs you have all three with, rather than just 75%.

Artistic Genius

If you've not got the Great Art slots, hold on to the free Great Artist rather than using it for a Golden Age to take advantage of the tourism. It's hardly the most powerful policy in the tree, but tourism is tourism.

Finisher

Double theming bonus! This is particularly nice for Museums, which are only one building after Ceilidh Halls and are relatively easy to achieve the theming bonuses in. Building wide will help you secure more Antiquity Sites and hence more Artifacts for them.

Piety

Opener

Why start Piety so late? Because by this stage of the game, you may be wanting to improve your Forests, which removes the faith bonus, and Pictish Warriors are obselete, meaning you need a new source of faith. Plus, there's the Reformation belief that's worth diving into. This opener gets Shrines and Temples built super-fast, so if you haven't got many already, it won't take long to set up a good faith infrastructure.

Organised Religion

And those Shrines and Temples are more effective. Building wide, you should now be producing more faith per turn than most other Civs.

Religious Tolerance

A strong enemy religion? Steal some of their advantages with this policy. Use Missionaries/Great Prophets to slow down the spread of a rival religion with a less useful Pantheon to make the most of this policy.

Reformation

See the Religion section for more details. Sacred Sites will generally be the most effective.

Mandate of Heaven

Great Prophets and Missionaries are now cheaper, as are any faith-purchased buildings you've picked up along the way (it's a good idea to take as many faith buildings as you can in your religion for happiness and the Sacred Sites Reformation belief.)

Theocracy

Helps to reduce the maintenance cost of Shrines and Temples by providing a gold multiplier.

Finisher

A great chance to spread your religion out, or you can place a Holy Site for a good boost to faith generation. It's your choice, really.

Rationalism

Opener

Playing culturally usually entails grabbing a few wonders, and you'll need to keep up in science if you want better odds at grabbing more. Although keeping in positive happiness for this Opener isn't easy for most wide-building Civs, your Ceilidh Halls will really help.

Secularism

An immediate (if small for a wide empire) science bonus.

Humanism

Enjoy more frequent Great Scientists.

Free Thought

Wide empires can't work too many food resources, so why not build a few trading posts and work those instead? You can get science out of it now, so it's even better. Meanwhile, your Universities give +50% science instead of +33%.

Sovereignty

Free up some gold tied up in maintenance. Unlike Secularism, this tends to be much more effective for wide-building Civs.

Scientific Revolution

And now you can use all that gold for research agreements.

Finisher

Use your free technology to grab something expensive you're not already researching, and it can give you quite a head start to the next wonder.

You may also now buy Great Scientists with faith. Even though GWAMs can also be bought with faith doesn't mean faith-buying Great Scientists is a bad idea, especially if you've passed Arts Funding (the reduced generation of Great Scientists doesn't apply to faith-purchasing them.)

Ideology

Decent happiness, a cultural focus and a wide-building approach lend themselves well to Order. As ever, I'm covering the first "inverted pyramid" of tenets, so that's three from level one, two from level two and one from level three.

Level One Policies - Order

Hero of the People

Get more GWAMs churned out, or even stuff like Great Engineers, for that matter. As most of your culture will be from Great Works, and with plenty of cities you should be able to store all the Great Works you need, it only makes sense to pick this first.

Socialist Realism

For Dictatorship of the Proletariat to have maximum effect, you need lots and lots of happiness. Socialist Realism is a really easy way to get it, as any city you have with a Ceilidh Hall should also have a Monument, granting that valuable +2 happiness.

Young Pioneers

The same idea again.

Level Two Policies - Order

Workers' Faculties

The surprise in the mix, but a strong science bonus is too good to pass up. It'll get you to important late-game technologies for tourism (Refrigeration, Radar and The Internet) sooner.

Academy of Sciences

Again, it's all about the science bonus. If your main cultural rival is in the Order ideology, take Cultural Revolution instead.

Level Three Policy - Order

Dictatorship of the Proletariat


Above: Remember, for all the power of this tenet, a shared religion, an Open Borders agreement or an International Trade Route with the Civ offers an even bigger tourism multiplier with a specific Civ thanks to the Aesthetics Social Policy Cultural Exchange. Try to stack as many bonuses as possible on the trickier Civs.

Now your Ceilidh Halls are really paying off. With happiness-giving tenets in the Order tree, and plenty of happiness buildings, you can push your happiness level above a fair deal of rivals, hence allowing you to exploit the tourism bonus. As you become more influential with Civs of a rival ideology, it pushes their happiness down, making it even easier to maintain that bonus.

Religion

A good religion helps cultural aims, as you get a 25% tourism bonus with any Civ with your religion dominant in at least half of their cities. That increases to 40% with the Aesthetics Social Policy Cultural Exchange. So, make good use of your UA and UU and be the first to the good beliefs!

Pantheon

God-King

It may seem an odd choice, but consider how early you're getting a Pantheon. One point of culture, gold, faith, production and science really helps get you off to a strong start. All five of those resources will make a huge difference in the earliest turns.

Dance of the Aurora or Desert Folklore

These are excellent policies for high faith generation, though they rely on specific terrain. If you're likely to work many of those tiles, then the respective Pantheon takes top priority.

Earth Mother, Goddess of Festivals, One with Nature, Religious Idols, Stone Circles or Tears of the Gods

Yes, I've listed an awful lot of Pantheons. But the thing they all have in common is that they all provide faith, and the best one for you varies depending on your start. An option if you don't want God-King for whatever reason and can't get Dance of the Aurora or Desert Folklore to work.

God of War

An interesting option. If you've got lots of Barbarians around, or you're keeping an encampment alive near one of your cities, it can make faith-farming with Pictish Warriors even more effective.

Messenger of the Gods

This helps ensure that building lots of cities early on doesn't kill your tech rate.

Founder

Pilgrimage

Getting an edge over rival religions rewards you with faith to get an even bigger edge over them. Faith will be really useful in the late-game for buying GWAMs with, and before then, it'll be good for getting faith buildings up.

Tithe or Church Property

A nice source of cash to fuel whatever it is you feel like using cash for. While money tends to be less useful to cultural players than the other victory types, it's good to have a backup source of cash if your International Trade Routes are plundered or just to get through cultural buildings faster via purchasing.

Ceremonial Burial

The happiness contribution is low, but happiness is happiness. This is strictly a backup option, as the previous two Founder beliefs can help buy you happiness buildings.

Follower

Pagodas

Take advantage of your high faith generation to get this before anyone else steals this. It's a handy extra source of local city happiness which will help out in supporting wide expansion before your Ceilidh Halls destroy happiness issues for once and for all.

Cathedrals

Before the Industrial era, Great Art slots are rather rare - they're the last to have their own building for. But now, you have an easier way - just faith-purchase Cathedrals.

Mosques

Yep, that's right, another faith building. Use the Sacred Sites Reformation belief, and boom! You've got yourself a great source of early tourism.

Monasteries

Usually the weakest of the four religious buildings, though it is cheaper to buy with faith than the others. A backup if you can't get any of the others.

Liturgical Drama

Amphitheatres are on the way to Ceilidh Halls, so this policy is an easy source of faith.

Religious Art

The Hermitage requires an Opera House in every city, or in the Celts' case, a Ceilidh Hall. That's not too difficult to do, and this belief offers you culture and tourism out of it. A nice point about this is that it's one of the hardest Follower beliefs for other Civs to use when your religion spreads to their cities.

Holy Warriors

A crazy unconventional option if you can found a religion really early. Declare war on someone, kill their units with Pictish Warriors, faith-purchase more and continue until you have a huge army. Not recommended for most games, but if you're ever in a high-faith situation, it could be worth a try just for the fun of it.

Enhancer

Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers

Both of these help your religion to stay reasonably strong without needing lots of Missionaries and Prophets, which is important for freeing up more faith for buildings or GWAMs.

Reliquary

Generating plenty of GWAMs? When you use them up, you'll get faith! Then, you can feed that back into faith buildings or more GWAMs later in the game.

Reformation

Sacred Sites

A cultural player with a strong religious focus does well out of this belief. Crucially, it's an early source of tourism, which will really accumulate as the game goes on.

To the Glory of God

A reasonable backup to Sacred Sites, allowing you to faith-purchase any Great Person. Sometimes, a Great Scientist to grab an important technology sooner or a Great Engineer to rush a good wonder will do more good than buying GWAMs.

World Congress

Here's a list of the decisions and brief notes on importance of some. Ones missing depend greatly on the situation you're in, though you should try to push your own religion as the World Religion if possible. Voting choices may vary depending on your game.

Here's a list of the decisions and brief notes on importance of some. All these decisions assume you're going down the warmongering route. Ones missing depend greatly on the situation you're in. Voting choices may vary depending on your game - if everyone's pushing for a policy you don't want, but your strategy doesn't rest on it, then it may be better just to abstain (or vote for it for possible diplomatic bonuses.)

Note "priority" refers to how high you should prioritise your votes if it comes up, not how much you should prioritise putting them forward.

Arts Funding

High priority
Vote yes

Cultural Heritage Sites

Medium priority
Vote yes unless a rival has high culture or tourism and lots of wonders

Embargo City-States

Medium priority
Vote yes if you've got plenty of trading partners, thus having no need for City-States

Historical Landmarks

High priority
Vote yes

Wide empires mean plenty of Antiquity Sites within the range of cities, hence more Landmarks you can get more culture out of, and hence more tourism with Hotels, Airports and/or the National Visitor Centre.

International Games

Very High priority
Vote yes

Lots of tourism!

International Space Station

Medium-High priority
Vote no

Natural Heritage Sites

Medium priority
Vote yes if you've got Natural Wonders of your own and a cultural rival doesn't have more than you

The culture on Natural Wonders turns into tourism with Hotels, Airports and the National Visitor Centre, so it's well worth pushing forward if you've got Natural Wonders.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation

High priority
Vote yes

Scholars in Residence

Medium priority
Vote yes unless you're in the lead technologically speaking

Sciences Funding

Low priority
Vote no

Standing Army Tax

Low-Medium priority
Vote yes

World's Fair

Medium-High priority
Vote yes

Wonders

Building wide for culture early on may hurt your wonder production, but high local city happiness puts you in a great position to pick up late-game wonders. Here's some of the best to go for, arranged by era (and in alphabetical order in each era)

Ancient Era

Pyramids (Liberty Only)

Uncompetitive and gives you a great advantage to Worker speed (and the free Workers are good too) meaning you can develop your cities efficently.

Stonehenge

It's a competitive wonder, but it really gives you an edge to faith generation if you manage it. Plus, it denies anyone else the chance. With it, you're very likely to be first to a religion.

Classical Era

Great Wall

If you need defence in this stage of the game (particularly from mounted units which laugh in the face of your not-Spearmen) then the Great Wall is a horrible thing for your enemies to be up against. By the time the wonder obseletes, any early weaknesses in defence are long-since sorted.

Oracle

It's in your main tech path, and a free Social Policy is good for anyone, so this isn't a bad choice of wonder to take.

Parthenon

Probably the earliest possible source of tourism, which is good for theming bonuses requiring Great Art from different eras, as well as the accumulated effect over time. Plus, becoming more influential with Civs early on means a fair bit of science from International Trade Routes.

Medieval Era

Borobudur or Hagia Sophia

Both of these offer a chance to spread your religion. You probably won't be able to take both.

Machu Picchu

Lots of happiness to maintain lots of citizens means that City Connections will be rather valuable later on in the game. Machu Picchu capitalises on that advantage.

Notre Dame

Offers 10 points of global happiness, as well as faith. The only problem is it's off your main tech path, so this may be for lower difficulties only.

Renaissance Era

Globe Theatre
Theming bonus wonder - 2 Great Writing, same era and Civ for theming bonus

By the end of the game, Great Literature slots are the rarest of the three. Any source of them's good, plus you can use the theming bonus for extra tourism.

Leaning Tower of Pisa

A competitive wonder, and one that's a little awkward to get to early from the main cultural tech line, but if you manage it, 25% more GP generation means more GWAMs and hence more tourism.

Sistine Chapel
Theming bonus wonder - 2 Great Art/Artifact, needs art of the same era and Civ for theming bonus

Offering two pre-industrial Great Art slots is handy due to the lack of them, and more culture pushes you through Social Policies faster for more tourism, sooner. Plus, it makes life difficult for cultural rivals (and denies them the chance to get this wonder.)

Uffizi (Aesthetics Only)
Theming bonus wonder - 3 Great Art/Artifact, needs art of the same era and Civ for theming bonus

Even more Great Art slots. And the nice theming bonus you can get out of this wonder to consider.

Modern Era

Broadway
Theming bonus wonder - 3 Great Music, same era and Civ for theming bonus

Another one of the Great Work wonders, this time for Great Music. The theming bonus is tricky as you can't trade Great Music and it all needs to be from the same Civ and era. Having some faith ready when entering the Modern Era to buy a Great Musician is one possible way to get a better chance of fufilling the requirement.

Cristo Redentor

10% cheaper Social Policies doesn't have much of an effect this late in the game, but consider its high culture generation - you can turn that into tourism with a Hotel, Airport and/or National Visitor Centre.

Eiffel Tower

+12 tourism. And some happiness. Hence, a great wonder to pick up.

Neuschwanstein

This turns Castles into maintenance-free sources of gold, culture and happiness. Good if you had to defend earlier on (or have to defend now) as you can get something good out of those efforts. A lower-priority wonder, but one that's relatively uncompetitive.

Atomic Era

Great Firewall

Getting the Great Firewall for yourself denies other Civs the chance, meaning you get the full benefit out of The Internet technology.

Sydney Opera House
Theming bonus wonder - 2 Great Music, same Civ but different eras for theming bonus

While the Celts don't tend to be short of Great Music slots, the theming bonus is still mildly useful, and more culture will help stop other Civs trying to win via culture.

Information Era

CN Tower

You'll never have any trouble with Great Music slots ever again. Plus, ensuring all your cities have a maintenance-free 33% culture boost is yet another way to annoy cultural rivals.

Pitfalls to Avoid

it's easy to dive into the Celts, see the Pictish Warrior and Boudicca's history and think they're a warmongering Civ, but they're not really. Here's a bunch of easy mistakes not to make.

Starting with Piety

Liberty gives the Celts more than Piety does early on. You don't necessarily need to build Shines and Temples for quite some time as Pictish Warriors and your UA fill their role more efficently. The Piety tree will still be useful eventually, just not immediately.

Lots of early warfare

Fighting Barbarians is fine. Pictish Warriors can get lots of faith off them. But against full Civs, early rushing dents your reputation for the rest of the game. You're not the Huns. Don't assume charging cities with Pictish Warriors will work. Yes, you've got a free pillaging promotion, but resist the temptation to go to war and use it extensively early on. It'll make getting those tourism bonuses (Open Borders, shared religion, International Trade Route) much harder later on.

Removing or improving forests adjacent to your cities early on

Roads and railroads don't count - they won't affect your UA. Otherwise, improving or removing a forest next to one of your cities will hurt your faith generation if it's the only unimproved forest or one of three. Hold off from improving them as long as possible, until you really need that lumber mill or trading post or burst of production. That way, you're getting the most out of your UA.

Upgrading Pictish Warriors as soon as possible

The faith-on-kills attribute doesn't carry over on upgrade. Keep a Pictish Warrior around until either there's nowhere left for Barbarian encampments or the Barbarians are too advanced for your unit to deal with, even as a last hit.

Iceni Incinerated: The Counter-Strategies

You can usually tell that the Celts are in your game if someone gets a Pantheon particularly early on. They've got a strong start but are rather weak in defence.

Playing against Druidic Lore

The Celts will get a Pantheon before you. That's almost certain, and can't really be stopped. But you can slow down their chances at an early religion.

The Celts rely upon good forest spots for faith. But forests in no-one's land can be cut down by anyone - if you can spare a Worker, cutting down forests in what would otherwise be an exceptional spot for the Celts is one way to weaken their UA. Or even just settle your own cities there. They're not the Aztecs or the Iroquois - they'd have a hard time taking those cities off you with all that rough terrain.

Playing against Pictish Warriors

Pictish Warriors work best when fighting Barbarians. For Barbarians to spawn, there needs to be an area out of sight of any Civ or City-State. Keep the areas lit up, and Barbarians cannot spawn.

Are they fighting you? Then take advantage of their weaknesses. Lacking a bonus against mounted units, Celtic armies are vulnerable to Horsemen. And if the Celts are defending, Pictish Warriors have no useful combat advantages over the Spearman - in fact, they're worse than the generic unit in that instance.

Playing against Ceilidh Halls

Opera Houses can be kept when a city is conquered, so if you've got a city that the Celts are about to capture, be sure to sell the Opera House so it can't turn into a Ceilidh Hall and give them lots of happiness.

In most situations, however, it won't come to that. Just consider the fact the Ceilidh Hall encourages the Celts to focus on the top half of the tech tree, giving you one less Civ to worry about if you're trying to get Printing Press early (whether for the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the World Congress or any other reason.) Additionally, remember that they'll have particularly high happiness late in the game, which makes things difficult if you're an Order cultural player yourself.

Strategy by Style

Early-game Aggressors - Bring the fight to their own lands and the Pictish Warrior's advantages become useless. You won't have to face Spearmen with bonuses against mounted units, so exploit that advantage.

Mid-game Warmongers - Quite the opposite to the situation with early-game aggressors. Many of those old Pictish Warriors will be promoted to Pikemen and later Lancers, meaning the Celts may have an above-average number of them. Hence, Longswordsmen, Crossbowmen and Musketmen will do well. Remember to use rough terrain promotions to account for the Celts' forests.

Late-game Warmongers - Nothing particularly different from most other Civs here. Just remember that pillaging their resources won't hurt their happiness as much as it will for most Civs.

Cultural Nations - If you found a religion before the Celts enhance theirs, you can grab a good religious building they may have wanted, hurting their potential for Sacred Sites. Keep a pressure on their religion so they focus on making Missionaries, Inquisitors and Prophets rather than faith buildings and GWAMs. Many cultural Civs have a higher tourism generation than the Celts, so hurt their tourism generation early on, and they'll find it hard to recover.

Diplomatic and Scientific Nations - Like any cultural nation, if the Celts become really influential over your Civ, they'll find it easy to piggyback off your research with more science from Trade Routes and faster Spy operation. If that's happening, generate more culture.

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Meta-guides

These guides cover every Civ in the game and can be used as quick reference guides.

• Civ summaries (Gives a brief overview of how each Civ plays)
  
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Civ-specific guides, in alphabetical order

All 43 Civs are covered in in-depth guides linked below. In brackets are the favoured victory routes of each Civ.

• America (Domination)
  
• Arabia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Assyria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
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• Aztecs (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Babylon (Scientific)
  
• Brazil (Cultural)
  
• Byzantium (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Carthage (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Celts (Cultural)
  
• China (Domination)
  
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• Egypt (Cultural)
  
• England (Domination)
  
• Ethiopia (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• France (Cultural)
  
• Germany (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Greece (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Huns (Domination)
  
• Inca (Scientific)
  
• India (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• Indonesia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Iroquois (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Japan (Domination)
  
• Korea (Scientific)
  
• Mayans (Scientific)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Morocco (Diplomatic)
  
• Netherlands (Diplomatic, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Ottomans (Domination)
  
• Persia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Poland (Domination)
  
• Polynesia (Cultural)
  
• Portugal (Diplomatic)
  
• Rome (Domination)
  
• Russia (Domination)
  
• Shoshone (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Siam (Diplomatic/Scientific)
  
• Songhai (Domination)
  
• Spain (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Sweden (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Venice (Diplomatic)
  
• Zulus (Domination)

[Copperwire]

God King, Tradition Opener, then full Liberty, finish National Library (means take the worker first from liberty), plant 2-3 cities (1st settler from liberty, then build the rest usin the bonus), Back to Tradition (time to get UB for free), convert to Expansive Warefare. Religion - early faith is free, usually best to get a mix of faith, happy, and culture (in that order). Early harassment play vs an AI is a good call: steal worker, pillage with the UU, and soften someone for when you hit the UB and can afford to eat some capitals.

[Zigzagzigal]

Yes. The Celtic UA only affects unimproved forest tiles and not jungles.

[Hayden]

When the game refers to forests, this means forests only, and not jungles right?

[Zigzagzigal]

No problem. I find it annoying how Steam labels expansions like BNW and G&K as "DLC" when the term usually refers to small content packs.

[Wabba]

I meant something like BNW or G+K, thanks for the info

[Zigzagzigal]

If by "game-changing dlc" you mean an expansion, I'll probably have something out quite some time before then. But if you mean a Civ/Wonder pack, then there'll probably be a couple released before I make any guides.

[Wabba]

So, if you do it will be after any game changing dlc?

[Zigzagzigal]

I want to, but it may be some time until any are released. There's a lot of new systems in Civ 6 that won't be properly understood for quite some time, core strategies that need thinking up and obscure game mechanics that need revealing. There's also the matter that post-release patches could change a lot of things, and I don't want to have to rewrite everything multiple times.

That being said, I have plans to re-arrange the guides so they're just in-depth but take a lot less time to write. The sections between Social Policies and Wonders were always fairly boring to write and time-consuming, while Pitfalls to Avoid is an odd relic of my earliest guides that isn't really necessary.

[Wabba]

Will you ever make civ 6 guides?

[Zigzagzigal]

I just tested it, and they still got faith-on-kills. In fact, the bonuses seemed to stack so I got 8 faith from killing a Barbarian Brute than the usual 4. If the faith-on-kills wasn't working for you, I guess it was probably just some kind of odd bug.