ALC Game 20: Vikings/Ragnar

Can't wait to see what happens
Realy liked the astronomy beeline, and Ragnar is strong.

I say attack Surya .. he's close, backwards in tech and has no friends (i think - not sure about his religion ..); should be a good target. You get some free land and a bunch of promoted berserkers...

Sis should be going on Christmas vacation after today, so maybe things will pick up...

Julian Delphiki said:

Was Sis hired to finish the Wheel Of Time story ?

Click to expand...

Now that there is funny!

OMG. This was on the 2nd page when I gound it. Sisutil, are you planning on updating or not?!

Round 6: 930 AD to 1130 AD (20 turns)

Sorry for the delay! I finally got back to the game and played a short round today so that I'd have something to post and we'd have something to discuss. There are, as usual, several decisions to be made, so let's get to it.

As I started the round, if you'll recall, I had one turn left in my golden age. I first, as advised, made one last use of the Universal Suffrage civic to give my fur village a slight boost.



And then I changed civics.



The only change there was to swap US for Representation. I know several of you were urging me to go to Vassalage or even Theocracy (though I don't have a state religion) for the XPs. But with the capital doing so much heavy lifting, it made sense to stick with Bureaucracy for now. I still began to queue-load military units, but I will probably do a conventional civics switch into Vassalage in the next round--complete with a turn or two of anarchy.

Once my second horse tile was ready to go, I was able to adjust my trade deal with Hannibal, snatching that iron away from him.



Of course I'd rather not be trading a strategic resource to him at all, but this map type doesn't leave me with much choice if I want to grow my cities as much as possible. As reluctant as I was to trade with Hannibal because he's one of the score leaders, that very fact made trading inevitable. As you can see:



I also wound up giving away a tech or two just to keep people happy.



This is something I never did on the lower difficulty levels, but it becomes wiser to swallow your pride and give in every now and then on the higher levels. You never know when you'll wish you had a slightly higher diplomatic rating with a particular leader. I don't always give in, of course. I consider several factors, including long-term diplomatic prospects with the leader in question, their current tech level, the tech in question, and so on. In this case, Philosophy is a Liberalism tech, yes, but Mehmed was far behind me in that particular race, so giving it to him was low-risk. It raised him to "Pleased" and I managed to get his world map and 40 gold from him as a result.

Religions continued to spread to me, but none that would do me any good diplomatically.



Thus I remain something of a heathen.

I researched Guilds, as you may have gathered, and then...



...with an eye towards going after Economics and the free Great Merchant before too long. I was awaiting my next great person out of Nidaros, hoping for a Great Scientist who would research most of Education for me.

And that's exactly what I got and did.



I also made some adjustments to my espionage levels. I first directed all my espionage points at Bismarck for awhile so I could see what he was researching. I'm also anticipating attacking Germany first, before Carthage. Then I redirected the EPs towards my nearest rivals in score.



I managed to get visibility into Hammurabi's, Hannibal's, and Bismarck's research by the end of the round. Mehmed is going to take a lot longer.

Mehmed also appears to be watch his pennies, or maybe he just lucked out with some random event.



I finished my next tech...



And then set off in pursuit of Liberalism.

At this point, I was also presented with another quest, one that I haven't seen before.



Well, I'm doing a military build-up in my city queues, so this is a possibility. Does anyone know what the rewards are? I don't own the Oracle--can't remember who does, but capturing that city may be an option if the reward is worthwhile. OR is not that attractive to me, but I've got a civics change coming up and again, if the reward option is attractive (like the Drill I for Swordsmen was), then the civics change might be worth it.

As I said above, I don't always give in to requests for techs. Roosevelt is just a non-factor in this game, so I blew him off.



He asked for freebies twice and I turned him down both times, so he dropped to cautious with me by the end of the round.

Another turn, another random event.



The second option would have given me a few hundred gold, the third +1 in all cities. I decided that espionage would be the most useful items in this game, and since the bonus is attached to one of Ragnar's cheap buildings, well, that's just gravy.

And that concludes the round. A state-of-the-world post will follow.

The State of the World, 1130 AD

First off, a look at the map, focusing on Viking territory.



I still haven't founded the three remaining cities we planned--one on the southwest tip of the main island, one in the very middle, and one in the far northeast. I'm kind of hoping the barbs might build the latter one for me. The middle city is the highest priority because it has a few good cottage tiles, and that would take some of the burden off of the capital.

Domestic advisor:



I'll be changing civics early in the next round, I anticipate. There are several units in the queue in Uppsala, and their hammers will start to deteriorate. Plus, if I'm going to unleash the Viking hordes, I better get on with it.

Civics:



I'm only anticipating changing to Vassalage for a few turns to churn out promoted units, but I'm open to other suggestions. The Knight quest may affect things too, since one of its rewards requires Organized Religion.

Foreign advisor, Relations and Glance.





Active trade deals:



Resources:



While getting Astronomy early has certainly helped, I'd say that besides overcoming isolation, resources are the biggest adjustment on this map type. At this point in the game I'm used to having several different resources to trade without having to trade any strategic techs. I'm also used to facing opponents with all the usual strategic techs as well, so I guess that cuts both ways.

Trade route income and civics:



Yep, Hannibal switched to Mercantilism--the first of what will probably be many. If they all adopt it, that could really hurt my economy. It's another reason to target Economics and to trade it away at low cost, so I and others can adopt Free Market instead.

Techs:



Well now that's interesting, isn't it? My best deal here would be to trade Education to Hannibal in return for all his gold and Gunpowder--or, if I want to avoid trading with the game leader (and my second likely target after Bismarck), I could trade Education to Mehmed, I'll just miss out on the gold. Hmmm...

Getting Gunpowder would allow me to keep researching Liberalism rather than switching away from it and choosing Chemistry as the free tech on the very next turn Then I can build Frigates and Privateers; the former will mean I won't have to rely on spies and espionage points to eliminate city defenses, the latter offer a huge host of benefits--ruling the seas, crippling opponents, extra income from blockades and pillaging, XPs without declaring war...

Yeah, I think it's a bit of a no-brainer.

Religion:



It amazes me that neither Confucianism nor Islam have spread to me. Islam would be the best option at this point, allowing me to cozy up to Hammy and Mehmed while I take on Bismarck, Hannibal, Sury, and Roosevelt in, yes, that order. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

Thanks to playing around with the espionage points, I can now see some power ratings:



I'd say Bizzy is ripe for the picking.

Demographics:



Still tops in GNP and manufacturing!

Espionage:



What I'm thinking of doing then is making the Gunpowder/Education swap with Mehmed, changing civics in a few turns to churn out my units, and first going after a couple of barb cities for some additional XPs--nabbing the gem city and the incense city would be good for my own happiness caps and for trading. Once those are in hand, it's off to Germany.

But of course, that could change based upon your input. To which I look forward.

It's like a Christmas miracle or something, the ALC was updated .

Things look like they're going well. Have fun playing with the privateers. The only suggestion I might make is that you focus more on them than worrying about the barbs and settling a few islands. The window for privateering is pretty narrow, and on this map, a few decades of it could really mess up any or all civs.

Sounds good.

But please stop even considering to change a civic for a few turns.

Either

Keep Bureaucracy for your economy, go for theocracy and convert a few cities.

Or decide on war and go Vassalage and keep it.

Cheers,
AD

Sisiutil said:

The second option would have given me a few hundred gold, the third +1 in all cities. I decided that espionage would be the most useful items in this game, and since the bonus is attached to one of Ragnar's cheap buildings, well, that's just gravy.

Click to expand...

Are you sure it's an espionage bonus to all Barracks, not just those in one city only?

I would have switched to a religious civic now in anticipation of getting a religion you'll want to switch to, it might have saved a turn of anarchy later. Not sure I like the idea of switching again just for XP. Definitely not for the quest, free Flanking I on Knights is just fine, I'd say.

Mesousa said:

Are you sure it's an espionage bonus to all Barracks, not just those in one city only?

I would have switched to a religious civic now in anticipation of getting a religion you'll want to switch to, it might have saved a turn of anarchy later. Not sure I like the idea of switching again just for XP. Definitely not for the quest, free Flanking I on Knights is just fine, I'd say.

Click to expand...

All barracks. Check the link in my last post.

The Oracle is in Akkad, from your 930 AD save - 5 leading cities.
The City is also the home of Hinduism.

The drawback taking out Bizzy is that the other civs can then use espionage to steal your techs. There's something to be said for embroiling Germany, Carthage and Mehmed and Hammy in a major war.

Given your happiness constraints, +1 happy in all cities was probably a better choice.

I think there's a lot to be said for taking Sury and Roosevelt - their capital and religious holy city (and Seattle and San Francisco) and sacking the rest. You'd welcome barbarian cities. You'd gain two other capitals that would complement Nidaros.

You can't keep all those berserkers sitting around forever sharpening their axes.

duplicate post that I can't delete.

I haven't checked the save yet, but it still looks pretty straightforward from here imo.

Make the trade with Hannibal - he'll be dead sooner than Mehmed, and that gold would be nice.

Continue full tech ahead for Economics (you don't want to risk Hannibal beating you there), but after that it'll be best to emphasise hammers imo. Given your tech lead, you can afford to slack off on research for a while to maximise unit production.

The German should go down pretty easily, so I'd be looking to hit Carthage not long afterwards. With that in mind, while conquering Bizzy use Privateers to cripple Hannibal and block his metal supply. It's unlikely, but you might even be able to completely crash his economy - aim to blockade every last workable coast tile. Use the GM gold for a mass upgrade to Grens between wars.

I'd ignore the quest unless you manage to get Islam and still want to adopt it - five free conversions could be a big help (less missionaries, more troops). A free settled Prophet would be nice, but not so nice to justify fighting a war just to get it. Free flanking is pretty weak, and I wouldn't imagine that mounted units will play a major role in this game anyway - your ships give you all the speed advantage you could need.

After these two wars are complete, I'd suggest that wherever possible you look to upgrade troops rather than building new ones - production will be limited, but the commerce will be free flowing (esp. from Hannibal's lands). For the same reason, I suspect US will prove to be a very useful civic in the mid-late game (religion can handle your happiness needs).

ps. Just noticed that Hannibal is researching Divine Right. Apart from that giving you another religion for late-game happiness, with any luck he'll waste a ton of hammers he should be spending on troops, building Versailles just in time for you to take it off his hands.

Andvare said:

1. Knights gets flanking for free.
2. With OR, 5 conversions of own cities to state religion.
3. With Oracle (I guess?*), settled GPriest in triggering city.

From this thread.

*: The list doesn't actually state if this is the oracle bonus. So it's just a guess.

Edit: The weirdness continue, as the list claims that you have to have a state religion to trigger it. Guess not.

Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing this out.
The python code for this one is a bit confusing since it checks for state religion and oracle in the code for whether you can complete the quest - and not in the rewards section where it uses them...
Anyway:
1) Flanking I for all Knights
2) convert 5 of your own cities with OR (and state religion)
3) get settled Great Priest (it seems like this is in the Oracle city - but I am not sure).
Corrected the Random Events List

ori said:

Thanks for pointing this out.
The python code for this one is a bit confusing since it checks for state religion and oracle in the code for whether you can complete the quest - and not in the rewards section where it uses them...
Anyway:
1) Flanking I for all Knights
2) convert 5 of your own cities with OR (and state religion)
3) get settled Great Priest (it seems like this is in the Oracle city - but I am not sure).
Corrected the Random Events List

Click to expand...

Hey, thanks for the list. Great job.

I'm not 100% sure about the value of the quest. It'd be great to spread a state religion around, sure, particularly as that would make Theocracy a viable alternative to vasselage, allowing you to keep Bureaucracy, but meh. Not a huge deal. Flanking would be alright, as you'll have built the knights, particularly if you'll be queuing them up in multiple cities. I've actually found knights to be pretty good at attacking longbows in general. I dont' use them often as they're a bit too expensive for my tastes, but if you have them they're good. The priest is not worth it.

I just lost a game with Ragnar thanks to a backdoor AP win.... It hurt.

Mmmm... such a peaceful world Those poor unsuspecting AI leaders, every one of them has positive attitude points towards Sisiutil... wait until the beserker hordes start burning things and then the diplomacy will get entertaining!