How I'd change the Celt speed bonus

Hi all! With the return of the Dark Age bonuses for Persians and Portuguese and Incas having been buffed since the Dark Age (hell, even Slav Farmers work faster for a Fast Castle strategy!), it’s high time Celts received back their Infantry speed bonus.

I’ve put in numbers the speed values of several units as a reference, to get the whole point of values and decide which bonus would suit Celts the best:

https://preview.redd.it/gh7ieqz1addc1.png?width=712&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f2386b5842cb9896f404e5496d9be8c7763c8f0

Generic Militias have a bit more speed than Villagers. If you want to have the chance for a kill, you must block the Villager with the Scout. That scene wouldn’t change with extra speed, but as the % increase goes up, it looks like Militias will be faster at getting hits against the Vill.

A couple things that irk me a bit about Celts is that, while being an Infantry civ, their Champions perform quite similarly to other civs’ generic ones. All their infantry units will lose against any other bonused Champion. Extra speed in combat only affects marginally, just reducing the time a unit needs to find a new target after having killed the previous one. In that regard, the +5% speed Celtic Champions get should be enough to beat the rest of generic Champions in equal number fights, but by a very small margin. The biggest advantage should come on Celt units being able to: a) Chase better foot Archers. B) Force fights on a Champ vs Champ, Halb vs Halb or Woad vs “any other slower unit” matchup. The other thing that makes me frown a bit is Lithuanians, who aren’t an Infantry civ, having faster Halberdiers than Celts.

I’ve seen some proposals asking for a staggered speed boost, as if +15% speed for Militias on Drushes were too strong. But +5% in Dark Age and +10% in Feudal would result in a nerf for Feudal, while not being so strong for Dark Age, as shown on the Table.

So my proposal would be:

- Give Celts a staggered +10%/+15%/+20% speed in Dark / Feudal / Castle Age. In Imperial Age keep it at +20%.

- Adjust Woad Raiders’ base speed so that, with the +20%, it remains unchanged (1.38) for the Castle Age unit, but increase a little bit the speed for the Elite Woad Raider (just to 1.44) so that they match Celt Condottieri speed. That way, we’d have another reason for Woad Raiders’ quite expensive Elite upgrade cost. If 1.44 was too strong (especially knowing that they’d match Elite Eagle speed), then it could be reverted and the Elite upgrade cost reduced a bit.

I’m eager to read what you think of this. Have a nice weekend!