Best way to start with Sweden

I'm planning on starting an immortal game with Sweden. I have thought many possible openings, since Sweden is quite flexible and can do many things. I usually open my games with tradition and tend to make only those four cities that get the bonuses from tradition. Sometimes I found fifth and sixth city later in the game, I rarely go wide.

I started thinking about getting a GG from honor policy tree and gifting that to a CS. Could that be a strong decision in any way, or will the rising cultural cost for policies negate the benefits? And what would be optimal CS to gift that GG? To make even more bizzare opening, how about going piety after that and gifting that GG to a religious CS for more faith and hope for the Dance of the Aurora pantheon still be available at that point and gaining even more faith and getting the Glory of God reformation and having a nice synergy with the UA. There's many ifs and buts in that scenario, but it could be pretty strong. Getting faith only from CS will save some turns for not having to build shrine in the beginning and getting a worker instead and getting a better city slighty faster.

Other thing I was wondering is going liberty and getting a free great prophet from the finisher, completely ignoring religion before that. In this scenario getting a reformation belief is more tricky since it takes 6 policies to liberty instead of 2 to honor. But on the other hand full liberty is much better than couple of honor policies. Or is it better to beeline to theology and build HS with GE that I would get from liberty?

One main reason for trying out Sweden is that i have played MANY games halfway thru and really not know what kind of victory I would try to get. I'm new on Immortal, have won once and lost couple of games but Emperor is starting to feel too easy.

I always start my games with large shuffle map. Any feedback and suggestions are welcome.

I would still definitely start with Tradition or Liberty but dipping into Honor is a great choice for your pre-Rationalism policies. The main draw for Sweden is warmongering to breed Great Generals (and capture foreign prophets) for gifting to city-states. I wouldn't go Piety; it'll put you too far back for what you want to do. If you want a religion try to grab Stonehenge (should still be very possible on Immortal if you beeline it). Get the Messiah belief, Prophets can spread three times and still be gifted for the full influence benefit.

Arachnofiend said:

I would still definitely start with Tradition or Liberty but dipping into Honor is a great choice for your pre-Rationalism policies. The main draw for Sweden is warmongering to breed Great Generals (and capture foreign prophets) for gifting to city-states. I wouldn't go Piety; it'll put you too far back for what you want to do. If you want a religion try to grab Stonehenge (should still be very possible on Immortal if you beeline it). Get the Messiah belief, Prophets can spread three times and still be gifted for the full influence benefit.

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I forgot to mention in the opening post that my aim would be to have something around 7 or 8 cities, depending on possibilities. And another thing I kind of meant wrong is that since Immortal is quite tricky for me, going piety and honor would raise the difficulty if I after all decided to go Emperor and/or little something special instead of the usual Tradition. But on Immortal it could definitely set me too far behind.

Thanks for pointing out capturing foreign prophets, didn't thought of that! Could work really nicely around faithmongers. Stonehenge is a solid wonder, could actually be better than my initial thought of using Liberty finisher to get religion. Instead of using a potential GE from the finisher for religion Stonehenge gives points towards GE.

Is fast NC really a must on Immortal in order to succeed? What should be the latest point to have it built? I'm having problems to build it before turn 120 if I have more than 4 cities at that point. Or should I just buy libraries to new cities instead of building those?

Sotanorsu said:

Is fast NC really a must on Immortal in order to succeed? What should be the latest point to have it built? I'm having problems to build it before turn 120 if I have more than 4 cities at that point. Or should I just buy libraries to new cities instead of building those?

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Yes. You should try to have it up as soon as possible. I'm not sure how late because I don't play on standard speed. Buying libraries to get NC up and running is pretty common.

The Tundra start bias can hurt, but there are usually plains near tundra to my experience (Sometimes you'll start near tundra, not on it). And once you get to Rifling, you could always try to spam Carolean sand have fun with them. I'm not quite sure how easy it would be to get the Alhambra and/or Brandenburg Gate (Heard it's quite hard on Emperor and up. Mainly a Prince player here talking) but if yo ucan manage it, you've got yourself some Medic II 25HP a turn healing Caroleans.

Said combo made my friends ban Sweden from multiplay....