What about Celt 2HS in Castle Age?

Infantry civs are at a huge disadvantage in mid game since Infantry isn’t used that often. While Celts are also a siege Civilization, you won’t necessarily make the bulk of your army siege units.

Other infantry civs have other good to decent meta options, like how Aztecs, Vikings, Malay, Japanese and Incas can play Crossbowmen into Arbalesters; Burmese, Teutons, Bulgarians, Sicilians, Slavs and Malians can play Cavalry; Aztecs and Incas can play Eagles.

So that leaves us with 2 civs which do not have any good meta options - Celts and Goths. I do not need to speak of the latter, because Infantry is their thing. Moreover, Huskarls perform the role of Knights as raiding and anti-archer units quite great and are stronger than Long Swordsmen in Castle Age (10 attack vs 9).

For the Celts, siege is their best friend. But you don’t make an army of siege units. The only thing helping them in the mid game is the wood bonus. So I have suggested this change.

2HS in Castle Age won’t shift the Celts too much since they are basically the same against Crossbowmen. This is to help them by building a core unit against Knights [Celts can’t use their Knights or Crossbowmen].

Necessary check and balance:
2HS naturally have +6 attack vs Eagles
2HS gain +2 attack vs eagles upon reaching Imperial Age (they are back to normal)

Optional change:
Stronghold: siege units fire 25% faster (civ bonus changed to castle age UT)

If you are being honest with yourself, the Sheep bonus of Celts, just like thw wolf bonus of Magyars, is quite useless in most games. So they have 3 bonuses only.

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Celts can make pikes and siege in castle age

Pikes aren’t the building block of an army, just like camels aren’t. Even those Pikes are quite generic in combat.

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neither is the militia line.

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I think with Celts you can pretty much ignore the Barracks in the castle age. Just go knights, monk and siege

I’d just remove the infantry classification from Celts. Infantry moving a little bit faster doesn’t really justify the classification, the Burmese arguably have a better infantry bonus, despite being classified Monk and Elephant civ

nah. replace the knights with crossbows and pikes.

Thats why you add siege

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What about Woad Raiders and Siege in Castle age?

Castle is an expensive investment. Moreover Woad Raiders are worse in melee combat compared to Long Swordsmen.

The William Wallace campaign lied to me.

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Some thought

I don’t think the +3 attack of the two-handed swordsmen will make that much of a difference. I’d prefer to keep the +25% siege.

Celts have a strong identity as a siege civilization, and for all-in castle age push (hoang rush). You can play maa into archer and then transition into pikemen and siege mid-castle/imperial age (Hera usually play celts this way Playing Celts Right Not Hoang - YouTube . You can also play scorpion+pikemen in castle age with some mangonels. Late game, you usually see siege (onager and ram) with halberdier and woad raider.

I think the castle age unique tech (stronghold) could be changed to something more useful (like an infantery tech referencing the Gallowglass warrior). But the question is, do you want to buff celts ? Personnaly, I would like to have the last archer armor upgrade for archer to have a usable skirmisher when you have no more gold.