Haven’t thought it out much, but replace strongholds with something actually useful for Celts. I was thinking Hobelar (Irish medieval light cav) and it improving some cavalry stats but still pretty cheap. This might help the problem with unit transition? Celts basically have to rely on siege since no bloodlines and crappy archers past midgame.
They have to wait on the siege deathball (or siege rush) and hope they don’t get raided to death first. Woads do okish for counter raiding and mobility but only when elite, which is super expensive. I honestly feel like some better light cav would see them come from a goodish civ that’s just hard to play consistently, to a good civ that’s more in the high level and meta.
Buffing the Celt’s horses seems out of place. The civ is overall fine. Great in team games, since they have an easier time to pump out the gold intensive onagers with trade.
Well but having problems with unit transitions in imp is basically a cornerstone of their identity and what keeps them from being completely broken. I think a better change to stronghold might be that also TCs are affected by the tech, but it’s not that the civ really need it and I’m not sure what the effect of this change would be
Could be wrong, but I think they’re similar to Inca,where their Arabia winrate is propped up by Hoang rushing.
It’s not as clear cut as Inca though, there it was easy to rectify the issue because trushing simply isn’t fun to play against (you’re beating a build not the player) and was much simpler to fix the issue. But the moment their crutch was removed it became immediately evident exactly how much weaker they are relative to the other mesos(which makes sense)
I’m interested to see the latest Celt stats since Arabia was opened so much
They’re way better now than what they used to be on old arabia. They have basically always have hills in front of enemy base to exploit early castle age, their m@a rush is also stronger since resources are more exposed.
Stronghold would be useful if they had bracer. The lack of damage and range on their castle fire holds back the UT. However, I don’t think they should have the option of archers in the late game, their identity is to go with Siege instead. If they receive Bracer i would recommend removing Leather Archer Armor. Alternatively, the Stronghold tech could add +1 range and +1 attack to castles and towers without affecting other units. Personally I’d go with the Bracer option because their navy is lacking power and that would solve their castle and ship range issues.