The Community Deity Game #10 - Denmark

Shark Diver · Mar 17, 2016

I played a quick 50 turns. As this looks like it's going to be a hack-and-slash-fest from the get-go, and since I'm still finishing up DomV's in the Persian and Spanish Dom games, I may take a bit of a break and play one of the other VC's before going deeper into this one. I need a bit of variety from constant war.....don't I?

beetle · Mar 17, 2016

Shark Diver said:
I need a bit of variety from constant war.....don't I?

Sure. CDG 7/8/9 were not about war, so for the folks keeping up, Dom VC should be okay. Personally, I am finding the NQ maps to be kind of tedious -- too much land to grind through. (Plus, I am not good.) This being an all-land map might be just as bad from that perspective. I have not finished it, but I played enough to think folk will find it worthy of their time. I did not do enough with the Berserkers, so I am looking for tips how to work the UU!

Sclb · Mar 18, 2016

This is gonna be a very long game if going for no archer achievement. In acken's mod, I recall that melee units were buffed and should be usable, but I don't see how on unmodded deity this will be of any use here. They are nowhere as good as Persia, so I would rank this at least as hard as the CDG#1.

gobbledydook · Mar 18, 2016

Great victory! T297 DomV 6 points

Spoiler :

'

Comments:
This was a hard map even with the ungodly amount of salt. The amount of hills and lakes meant that there were few direct routes to your nearest neighbour. So you have be creative in order to make early wars work.

Later on, when you have enough navigation techs for fast embarked movement, embarking onto the nearest pond actually makes you move a ridiculous distance. With Great Lighthouse (obviously conquered), you end up with 6 embarked movement. When you land your unit, it only loses 1 movement out of 6 (!) so you now have a 5 move unit and that is ridiculous on units like artilleries and such.

Berserkers are crazy, they stand toe to toe with impis with buffalo upgrades, which is saying a lot. They also stay relevant for quite a while.
Norwegian Ski Infantry are better than I thought. They are riflemen that don't lose movement points on hills, which helps mobility a lot. The snow double movement is useless.

It also turns out that getting to rocketry quickly enough without research labs or rationalism is still workable.

beetle · Mar 18, 2016

Nice win! Please post a picture showing where you put your cap and expos. Where was Metal Casting in your research path? Right or left side of Honor first? Also, why Order instead of Autocracy? Thanks!

gobbledydook · Mar 18, 2016

beetle said:
Nice win! Please post a picture showing where you put your cap and expos. Where was Metal Casting in your research path? Right or left side of Honor first? Also, why Order instead of Autocracy? Thanks!

3 city honor.

Spoiler :

Philosophy -> Metal Casting -> Machinery -> Civil Service -> Education -> Artillery beeline (stole Scientific Theory sometime here) -> Rocketry beeline

Right side honor -> Left side honor -> Mercantilism -> Commerce finisher -> Order

Order because

Spoiler :

went order before me and was already familiar, so not going order would never have worked.

beetle · Mar 18, 2016

stormtrooper412 said:
I don't think settling in place would be a good idea, a river is probably the most important factor in a game like this

Good point. Why are not people about settling the Salt in OP. Or is settling luxes only for those on hills?

gobbledydook · Mar 18, 2016

beetle said:
Good point. Why are not people about settling the Salt in OP. Or is settling luxes only for those on hills?

If you settle salt you get 1 gold only. If you mine salt it gives 1'food 1'hammer...Salt is the best luxury to work.

beetle · Mar 18, 2016

^^Thanks gd. I am going to try settling the river mountain in OP then. The Observatory should eventually be helpful since my dom games always take until Rocketry.

I am going to try 3 city Honor like you did, thanks for that too! I am not comfortable wander my initial settler as far as you did though...

gobbledydook · Mar 18, 2016

beetle said:
^^Thanks gd. I am going to try settling the river mountain in OP then. The Observatory should eventually be helpful since my dom games always take until Rocketry.

I am going to try 3 city Honor like you did, thanks for that too! I am not comfortable wander my initial settler as far as you did though...

Observatories are nearly useless for domination. It isn't worth settling next to the snow and tundra in that spot. If you are going to kill someone, then the observatory pretty much happens at the time when you want to be building berserkers and such, so when would you ever get it?

donkeyfish · Mar 20, 2016

Hello, I have played this game for a long time but mainly on my own. But I thought I might try to play a couple of these CDG´s and GOTM, starting with the most recent ones.

My game:
DomVC t272 13 points

A: Win a DomVC w/o ranged units: 3p
B: Keep 10 Bersekers alive: 0p (I lost count after Metallurgy, but anyways they died like flies in the end so probably not)
C: 4p (2 caps)
D: 5p (the rest)
E: 1p (for fun 2 turns before I won with a cavalry)
Sum = 13p

A fun game, but a terrible grind at the end. Had atrocious science, gold, culture, faith and everything else the entire game except army

I liked Bersekers and free pillage, especially with Pyramids. The embarkation movement was not very useful to me. Never seriously played a game with Denmark before, but Bersekers and Crossbows will probably be very similar to Impi/Crossbow and could clear a pangea without ever building a library (If there´s enough Iron). Difficult to kill and 3 movement. My problems in this game was because of the siege units, not the Berseker. It was also a spanner in the works that Ski Infantry apparently is not a melee unit, hence no free pillage. That cost me some units...

I wrote some details and attached some ss, they are (if I did the technical stuff correctly) in the spoiler below.

Spoiler :

I settled across the river next to the Salt. Great spot until 13-14 pop, more pop shouldnt be necessary

Contemplated doing Honor, but free pillage and Pyramids seemed very tempting. So went Liberty and only settled one additional city between Gold and Oasis north. Build was:
Scout-Monument-Scout-Granary-Scout-Warriorx2-Pyramids-Barracks-Units-Heroic Epic-units- ... - eventually caved and built Library.

In my new city I built monument, granary and barracks then units. Eventually I caved here as well and built a Library around t120. Barbs made it impossible to use caravans before I had Swordsmen to clear the camps. Got food from camps pantheon for free from scouting.

I teched Pottery (had a +7 food granary!) - Mining (since I stole a worker) - AH - Archery - BW (found 18 iron!) -> Iron Working (for swordsman) - Sailing -> Metal Casting -> Physics (for Trebuchet) - then Philosophy and stuff like that.

Had 8 workers at t55, so I started a road from Aarhus to Askia/Shaka borders and put my Swords and eventual Catapults on bother Kathmandu-duty to gain xp and pillage/heal. It felt fitting to finance the Berseker upgrade with loot. I got Metal Casting very late I think, I was hoping to get it in the range 60-80 but it was more like t90. Lack of early caravans (and libraries) delayed things quite a bit. When I got Metal Casting I captured Kathmandu to upgrade my units, and had road to the edge of shaka/askia.

Shaka and Askia fell easily, but slowly, with Berskers and Cat/Treb, Berseker stood up to the Impi well, but not every game there´s 18 iron to spam them. Took 3 cities from Shaka, got 100gpt in peace deal, killed Askia and then took Ulundi and Umgungundundundlovu (or whatever its called) quickly. Almost 40 turns to take out these guys made me abandon hope of clearing map with Berseker+Trebuchet.

Similarly when I attacked Aztecs next, very slow progress using worker bait to avoid heavy casualties. Had to wait for cannons, which with my tech rate took a loong time (ca t150). Got Metallurgy 5 turns before I took his cap :mad:

, didnt focus. In addition, Shaka declared war again costing me 15 turns to clean up his newly recruited throng of Impis. As usual, he decided to throw away his Deity production advantage having two 4-pop cities and 35 units. Made sure he was removed from the game this time. Finally finished with Montezuma around t175.

Then I picked Russia (Inca had GW and DoF). Also made a second army to take Constantinople. Was kind of a standstill from t175-210, cannons only gave me Adrianople and Rostov + some other crap russian cities. Had to sell an aztec city to Inca (more GW :mad:

) to avoid going bankrupt, for 6000 (!) gold. Really awful game except military, so had to sell cities, pillage/heal, sell lux in razing cities, getting people to pay me to DoW etc. Every "cheap" trick I know to stay solvent. During this period I had 2 Bersekers and 6 workers in a razed area next to Ulundi pillage-farming gold. At t212 I got art and mowed through byzantine and Russia by t230. Kinda dumb that I decided to fight Shaka at t100 and Russia at t200, could have picked the other way around

T230 I declared on Inca, merging my two armies. Had to make peace just before getting Cusco due to bombers around t245, they were 1-shooting my artilleries. 10 turns and 4 citadels later I could one shoot Cusco (120 defence city) as revenge

. A little bribe made sure the Incan airforce had moved east to conquer the Swedes, so the other Incan cities fell easily as well. Had 25-30 artilleries at this point, 4-5 elite ones (with logistics/range/volley etc). In the meantime I had built a third regiment that started to pick on Sweden. Rest was really just mowing through Incas last units to get to Sweden, who had no military left after a longtime (staged) war with Inca and Byzantine. And, importantly, make this extended embark attack on Sigtuna for 1 point!

After Liberty, I picked Commerce. Had to concede and put two in Rationalism at some point as well. Stealing art made my culture flourish eventually so I got Protectionism right before the end.

I think if you´re using archers, its perfectly viable to play completely illiterate (like I did in this game), but with siege units I think it would have been a lot smarter to settle 3-4 cities, get NC and then start a war. Would have probably given me Metal Casting max 10-15 turns later. With artillery on t160-180 I would have been done probably 50-70 turns earlier and I would have never seen a Great War Bomber. I did get rifles first though, which was silly (just because of the Unique Unit). Despite the strong start land-wise, I just finished before Inca ran away too far.

Some screenshots:

Spoiler :

Redaxe · Mar 25, 2016

Ok I thought I'd give this one a go since Denmark doesn't get a lot of shining ovation and this thread needs some love.

Firstly I'd argue that Denmark isn't really a strict domination civ - their abilities seem more useful for pillaging and weakening your neighbors and using the gold to get your civ ahead of the rat race so you can win any victory.

Nonetheless I ran into serious troubles trying to take the East neighbor down - in the end I had to load back to an earlier point and utilise other AIs to help me war. The range unit handicap is really too difficult to overcome in many circumstances so I think you need to use diplomacy in this case to weaken a civ.

My progress is shown below. Its not a lot accomplished considering its turn 137 but on the flip side I do have a pretty strong military now. I have 14 Beserkers, 2 Pikemen, 2 Great Generals (lost one I think) and a Great Engineer ready to build the next good wonder I can access.

My strategy here was to settle on the gold (you don't need to settle on river) and build scout, scout, shrine, scout, monument (I got a culture ruin) so I could afford to delay the monument. After that I built 2 settlers and then proceeded to work towards National College and Production buildings. After National College I bought a Workshop, built forge, stables, stoneworks etc... all the production buildings. Heroic Epic went up next and then I researched Steel in a timely manner so a quick Armory was in order. By now I had all the production tiles in the capital worked so Beserkers could be trained in 2-3 turns each (mostly 2 turns).

For Pantheon I chose God of Craftsmen. I didn't want to bother with religion and having

Spoiler :

on the map this was really a no brainer - just save the faith and use it to buy the religious buildings.
My second city was able to build the Pyramids around turn 90. Very lucky that no-one built that I really should have prioritised it earlier but didn't want to spend the early hammers on it although I'm happy I did build it. One thing with Denmarks melee units - you know they are able to pillage a tile twice in 1 turn if there is a worker on the tile with you. So a free +50 health if the tile isn't pillaged already on the start of your turn is pretty damn powerful.

Spoiler :

Social policies was the following order. Basically open Liberty to get the production bonuses and then focus on Honor which is well suited for melee units. Generally for domination you don't want to build too many cities (you simply don't have the happiness - 3 early cities is enough) so Collective rule is a waste imo. For this map the excess of salt means you should take Citizenship first so you can get those super tiles improved asap. An extra early worker can simply accelerate your civ far more than republic can.
1) Liberty
2) Citizenship
3) Republic
4) Honor
5) Warrior Code
6) Military Tradition
7) Discipline

For a straight domination game you probably shouldn't build anymore than 2 settlers. 3 early cities is I think the ideal number. Any less and you hit the unit cap too quickly and your production gets affected. Any more and
1) your capital spends too much time on settlers
2) you delay your National College and Heroic Epic and hence your domination
3) Low diversity of Luxuries (relevant to this map) and major happiness problems. You want to be able to grow a large capital so you can work all the production tiles

Spoiler :

Redaxe · Mar 25, 2016

Also I'm a little confused on this - are we allowed to build siege units? The original post says no ranged so that can be taken either way.

stormtrooper412 · Mar 25, 2016

Well, without ranged units, it would seem like the safest bet is 2-3 city Tradition setup to get the economy and everything else going, secure Iron, make Swords and Cats then upgrade to Berserks and Trebs with some Horses/Knights as support. It's probably going to be one epic grind.

Or, bombers with tanks with nukes, that can also work but it will just be a carbon copy of the Persia map in my case

Redaxe · Mar 26, 2016

Well I can report a domination victory of 267 turns or their abouts. Pretty horrible game. I underinvested in ranged/siege units and ended up getting bogged down in a 40 turn fight to take Russia out. They got to Cossacks and had Red Fort + Defender of the Faith. My elitist of elite Muskateers just couldn't get through so I had to sit back until I teched Artillery & Riflemen :rolleyes:

CityStates everywhere to keep fighting against too. I honestly don't know how people could do this with Tradition - at least Honor gives you plenty of gold to keep buying units.

Probably took about another 40 turns to take Byzantium out too. They got to Great War Bombers so that was another blow. Eventually I had enough gold discount bonuses to be able to overwhelm them with units. Those embark to land free movement is kinda pointless when you still suffer the embark defense penalty. Even the most elite unit can get 1 shot by a city or cannon. And its generally pretty pointless trying to attack a coastal city from the sea even if you have free Amphibious promotion. An embarked unit typically gets 1 shot from a city or ranged unit - which makes a lot of coastal attacks unviable. I'm surprised the devs didn't adjust that.

A well earned win but like one of the those bad dates you never want to remember. That will certainly be the last domination game I ever attempt on Civ 5. Just too frustrating.

Edit: Oh forgot about points

No ranged (non-siege) units trained: 3pts.
3 capitals before Mettalurgy; 6 pts
3 capitals before Replaceable Parts: 3 pts
Can't remember how many Beserkers surived - I think I lost a lot of units after upgrade so im going to say less than 10. It's too bad the movement bonus from the Berserkers is removed on upgrade - that really is the best thing going for them. Once they lose that mobility its very hard to keep them out of harms way.

beetle · Mar 29, 2016

I tried three city HAC, lost Aarhus for a turn when I tried warring with the Ski Infantry. That large lake was just so full of units that I just could not save it. Restarted for four city Tradition. That went much better, as I easily won Worlds Fair, was first to Ideologies, and I had a modest tech lead most of the game.

Initial BO was 3x scouts, shrine, monument, worker, 3x settlers.

I teched Metal Casting before Philosophy, got Holy Warriors, and pumped out a dozen Berserkers but did not come close to taking cities with them. I got them all upgraded to NSI, but I could not keep enough alive. Once I was down to nine, I stopped being cautious with them and they were all dead by the end.

I used Oxford for Dynamite but my Artillery was countered by GWB. I used Rationalism finisher for Rocketry but did not really make progress until Stealth. World Leader vote was in six turns and I would have had to sabotage myself at that point, so basically my DOM VC took about as long as possible. I killed off the only civ coming close to SV.

Four achievement points, A and E.

It was very interesting trying to figure out the embarked movement bonus. I think I had only every played Denmark on Islands and Archipelago. A worker three hexes from a hill or forest wants to get there by water — so they can land and immediately work the tile. Moving across the map takes micro because the automatic pathing does not know to end turns in water. I never lost a unit to city bombardment, but I did get units killed in the water because I though they were out of enemy sight range. Eventually I built a half dozen marines, and those held up well.

Redaxe · Mar 29, 2016

Sorry what is 3 city HAC?

So you struggled taking cities with Beserkers too? I ran into the same difficulty the first time round with Songhai. I reloaded to an earlier save and managed to get Shaka to help me out. I was lucky enough to get the Pyramids with the worker citizenship bonus from Liberty. I brought plenty of workers with me so I could heal units 1-2 times per turn. But I also made sure I had Heroic Epic, Discipline and a Great General before I started with Beserkers. Oddly though the Heroic Epic doesn't apply when a melee unit attacks a city but I guess it helps with mitigating ranged damage. One thing I learned is how valuable the Cover 1 and Cover 2 promotions are. Honestly I wonder if the presumed wisdom of promoting to March is a bad idea. In enemy terrain that only gets you +10 hp per turn - not that noticeable. A cover 2 promotion could easily save you 20+ hp per turn and work out as a better investment then the March Promotion.

Redaxe · Mar 30, 2016

I think that possibly the victory strategy goal here might not be optimal. The more I play Denmark I think that they are not intended to be a strict domination civ. Their bonuses are really for pillaging tiles and wrecking another civs economy.

Think about what the Vikings did in the middle ages. Sure they conquered most of England but they didn't create a global empire like Rome or Persia or even try to conquer the world in a mad blitz like the Mongols, Huns or Arabs.

The Vikings were arguably smarter - raid and pillage as much of the world as you can and take the wealth back home - no need to set up complex bureaucracies & governments. I think the design for Denmark in Civ 5 actually lives up to this reasonably well. Build an army, pillage all your neighbors land, maybe take 1-2 cities for gold and random it back to them - even a capital if you can. The civ will lose half their buildings and ALL their national wonders. You weaken the civ without accruing too much long term warmonger hatred, use the gold to buy your infrastructure - universities etc and move on the next person.

Do this to a few civs and you'll have set every other civ back substantially and you'll have enough wealth to buy an entire era's worth of buildings and put your civ well ahead of the production order.

So Perhaps the victory conditions should be to pillage as many civs as you can over the game and see who has the fastest SV?

Shark Diver · Mar 30, 2016

Redaxe said:
Honestly I wonder if the presumed wisdom of promoting to March is a bad idea. In enemy terrain that only gets you +10 hp per turn - not that noticeable. A cover 2 promotion could easily save you 20+ hp per turn and work out as a better investment then the March Promotion.

This is a great question. I switched to taking Cover 2 before anything else (with a couple of Medics thrown in) and my warmongering has improved markedly. It really helps with formation attacks as the meat shields last much longer. Not only that, but being able to just stand there and take hits allows them to get XP much faster and you can get March and Blitz relatively quickly.

I like the historical reference in your other post. I just watched some B-level Viking movie and sort of enjoyed the attempt at historical accuracy (can't remember the name but it's relatively new on cable).

Perhaps the true warmongering value for Denmark is brought out on Archipelago maps. You can declare war, land 4-5 siege units, and take a city on the same turn. I guess it's harder when the AI is going to inquire about your training exercise on their borders, but Denmark is perhaps fated to Warmonger hate status anyways, so what's a few more broken promises?

I think this map type actually might hinder Denmark, as there is so much rough terrain that the extra movement isn't always as effective.

Redaxe · Mar 30, 2016

Shark Diver said:
This is a great question. I switched to taking Cover 2 before anything else (with a couple of Medics thrown in) and my warmongering has improved markedly. It really helps with formation attacks as the meat shields last much longer. Not only that, but being able to just stand there and take hits allows them to get XP much faster and you can get March and Blitz relatively quickly.

I like the historical reference in your other post. I just watched some B-level Viking movie and sort of enjoyed the attempt at historical accuracy (can't remember the name but it's relatively new on cable).

Perhaps the true warmongering value for Denmark is brought out on Archipelago maps. You can declare war, land 4-5 siege units, and take a city on the same turn. I guess it's harder when the AI is going to inquire about your training exercise on their borders, but Denmark is perhaps fated to Warmonger hate status anyways, so what's a few more broken promises?

I think this map type actually might hinder Denmark, as there is so much rough terrain that the extra movement isn't always as effective.

Indeed - And if you think about it the Viking raids caused enough wealth to flow back to Denmark that the new Kingdoms were now able to trade with Europe as equal trading partners. Consider for a moment - all those treasures kept in monasteries and churches across Europe was stolen (have to feel sorry for the poor monks) but now able to be recirculated through the economy (yay trade and capitalism)...

Yes there was a lot of rough terrain but that isn't too hard on Beserkers - at least the extra movement point mitigates some of that. What really slowed me down was having to upgrade to Muskateers - once your back to 2 movement points it really feels like you're losing a big part of your mobility. Too bad they didn't make the extra movement point a lasting promotion or give the Ski infantry an extra movement point.

The Community Deity Game #10 - Denmark

King

Deity

Emperor

Warlord

Deity

Warlord

Deity

Warlord

Deity

Warlord

Warlord

Emperor

Emperor

Peacemongering Turtlesaur

Emperor

Deity

Attachments

Emperor

Emperor

King

Emperor

Similar threads