Now that we will have Caesar’s campaign back, we will again see Greeks or Assyrians representing different Celtic peoples. I hope they don’t do it again.
That’s why I thought of a new civ to represent the Celts. I hope you like it, and the bonuses are a bit flashy.
Maybe splitting Gauls (who would cover all continental Celts from the Celtiberians to the Boians, and even the Galatians) from the Britons would allow better representing them. Your civ fits the Britons better, who were isolated from the rest, had a less advanced economy and notably still relied on chariots at the time of the roman conquest, while the Gauls had stopped using them centuries before. Gaul was surprisingly advanced, one striking fact is all the agricultural tools used in the early 19th century, so before mechanisation, were already known by the Gauls.
Gauls :
heavily armoured infantry : the Roman “lorica hamata” was actually called “lorica gallica”
good farming and trade
decent aristocratic heavy cavalry
okay defences
Britons : as you made this civ, though I question the horse archer.
Celts having heavy horse archers make no sense at all. Celts should have good infantry and cavalry, but that doesn’t mean it has to be cataphract. In Rome 2 they had really good melee infantry (swordsmen) and cavalry and very poor missile/range units.
I did a bit of a double-take when I read the title: we already have Celts in AoE2! We could really do with a separate Return of Rome subforum.
Anyway, I think the overall idea is good. The lack of Celtic civs for Romans to fight in AoE1 was always weird. I agree with @DukeOfLorraine that this is more appropriate for Britons, and that Gauls could be separate. I like the priest bonus, presumably representing druids performing human sacrifices (the evidence that this was a real practice and not Roman propaganda seems surprisingly strong).
I’m not so sold on the other details, though. I think the infantry bonuses have too much overlap with Romans and Choson. I’d be inclined to go more down the route of AoE2 Celts or Goths, i.e. either faster moving infantry, or cheap and numerous but weak infantry.
For the tech tree, I’d remove horse archers but give them chariot archers. Maybe also remove monotheism and iron shield, and add long swordsman.
In East Asia, the barbarians were called “Yue”, as large group as Celts. In the game one Yue group is represented: Lac Viet (Luoyue). So I think it would be more fair to have various Celtic civs such as Iberians, Gauls, Britons…
I’d rather give them a pagan shrine (make it look like it would fit both celtic and germanic paganism) in a grove. Stonehenge predates the celtic presence in Britannia.
Yes, we could call them Britons, we could take out the Horse Archer and give them Composites instead. I didn’t want to give Chariot Archer because there are already too many civs with this one. And Romans is the only civ that has only mele chariot.
And of course, all this would come with a new architecture.
The only thing that matters is never again to see Assyrians representing Gauls, or Greeks representing Britons.
