Celtic Kings is classified as a real-time strategy game, and at first glance it certainly fits this billing.  On closer inspection, though, it does not look or play like your traditional RTS game, and includes a campaign game the plays as much like an adventure/RPG as a strategy game.

Celtic Kings is set in the First Century BC during the conflict between the Gauls and the legions of Rome, but the game is not historical.  You'll find praetorians and Gaulic warriors, but also spell-casting druids and anachronistic Viking warlords.  In the campaign game, you play as the Gaul Larax.  Larax's village has been destroyed by invading Teutons and his wife was murdered in the raid.  Obsessed with revenge, Larax sets off to track the marauders down and make them pay for their crimes.  On your quest you will encounter magical druids, friendly villages under siege, Teutons galore, and even face the armies of Rome.

The campaign borrows a lot from the RPG genre, and does not play out like the typical strategy campaign game which is generally a sequence of missions.  The campaign flows like an unfolding story, and you'll need to perform a variety of tasks.  You'll need to converse with the people you encounter to learn where the Teutons have gone, take on sub-quests, fight beasts and men, and lead armies into battle.  As you progress through the campaign, you'll gain in experience from your fights, and become a stronger and more deadly Gaul.

The single player game plays essentially the same as the campaign, minus the story elements.  At its core Celtic Kings is a real-time strategy game, but it departs from the traditional play mechanics of the genre in several areas. 

You start a game with the control of a stronghold, which comes pre-built for you complete with all the structures that you need and nicely wrapped in a protective wall.  These structures are permanent, and there is no way to build new ones or even to destroy existing structures - buildings can only change hands.  Your stronghold is the base from which you will create and train units, and hire heroes.

Heroes are special units that can command other units.  By attaching units to heroes, you can use formations with the units and they will benefit from the hero's experience in combat.  Heroes make it easy to manage large numbers of troops as giving a movement or attack order to your hero will also give the order to all units attached to the hero.  Heroes also have the ability to carry magical items and artifacts that can give them an advantage in battle.  Units themselves can also improve as they gain experience in combat, or through training in your stronghold's arena.  Units train by fighting each other to improve their level.  They take damage as they train, so you'll need to be careful to only train full strength units and to allow them time to heal after their training is complete.

Experience is very important in the game, and high level units can easily dispatch low level units.  In fact, experience is probably the most important factor.  Each side has only seven offensive units in addition to heroes, and although each has a unique special bonus, in practice there is not that much difference between them (or between the Romans and Gauls).  A large experienced army of one type of unit is just as good as that of another.  Even if combined arms armies were more effective, it would be hard to control them.  It is not entirely clear how units select their target when you command a hero's army to attack - click on an enemy unit in a group and pandemonium ensues as the units gel into a mob of a battle.  You can't give orders to individual unit types without detaching them from the hero, but doing so would cause them to lose the bonus gained from the hero.  Battle strategy in the game boils down to attacking enemy armies with larger, more experienced armies.

Any of the game's basic units can create and man catapult units in the field, but you'll find that they are not of much use.  After all, it is impossible to destroy buildings in the game.  Their range is tough to gauge when setting them up, and they have a very limited range of fire. About the only practical application that there is for them is to knock open the gates of an enemy stronghold, but you'll come under arrow fire when creating the catapult thanks to their short range.

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