The Community Deity Game #10 - Denmark

I had a great game with Denmark, so much that I would rate it among the good civilizations for domination. However, I am not too sure how much of it was dependent to the insane capital location, the map script or the fact that 4 AIs gimped themselves with Piety in this game.

I tried an other illiterate game. I beelined straight to Metal Casting and ignored every other techs (ie I research only the required 11 techs for Metal Casting and ignored Pottery, Writing, etc.) I got Metal Casting on T88. I am not too sure if it is good or bad since I usually never beeline that tech. AIs only started to send me trade routes back at around T75. I am not too sure if researching Pottery, Writing and Sailing would have given me a better time for Metal Casting.

The Berserker may have become my fav early game melee unit. With Disciple (15%), SoZ (15%) and a GG (15%), their CS is around 30 vs cities and later with city siege around 40 which makes them long-lasting units. They are also on the same tech path as Trebuchets which complement them well. Three movement points and no movement cost to pillage are also huge! I never upgraded them to Musketmen as I feel the +3CS isn't worth the loss of their abilities. They will probably become obsolete against Riflemen, but none of the AIs I faced had them in my game. Berserkers also eat impis alive for breakfast. This game, I went for Cover I & II before going for other promotions and city fires felt almost harmless most of the game.

I thank the OP for his choice of achievements for this game, especially the no-range unit achievement. This compelled me to go for Honor and focus solely on Berserkers (and adding Trebuchets later on). I now believe this is 100% the right way to play Denmark and I would not add any range unit to my unit mix if I had the choice to replay that map again without any restrictions. Here, I went 2-city Honor proxy settling my 2nd city near the two silvers close to Russia. I used this city mainly as a base to upgrade my units. I sold all my duplicate luxuries securing a very nice 50gpt very early in the game. I hard-built SoZ and mass produced warriors even after going over the supply cap. With Professional Army and Metal Casting, I then mass-upgraded my units to Berserkers right near Russia's borders.

Sweep order: Moscow, Novgorod (FoY, 9 iron), Tenochtitlan, Cuzco (Great Wall), Ulundi, Gao (2nd army), Constantinople, Stockholm

The fact that both close neighbors (Russia and Songhai) were also very near to ambitious warmongers (such as Monty and Shaka) made the starting wars easier. Overall, only the Zulu had a large intimidating army and Byzantium's Galleass and Dromons were a bit of an annoyance since I had no range units to kill them. With 3 Trebuchets, I still had no problem to take over Stockholm with 55CS since Sweden was still on Musketmen. I also had to hard-build the Pyramids since only the Zulus went Liberty and choose to never built it. I had a lot of units this game and was frequently supply capped despite adding capital after capital.

Achievements

• Win a DomVC without ever having trained* a ranged unit (3pts)
  Got 1 scarchers and 1 XB CS gift (used them for defense)
• Keep 10 Berserkers alive to the turn of victory. You can upgrade them, obviously (3pts)
  Finished with 20 Berserkers, none upgraded
• Each cap conquered before Metallurgy (14pts)
  All caps, never reached Metallurgy
• Each cap conquered before Replaceable Parts (0pt)
• Melee attack an inland city starting w/ embarked units (1pt)
  Captured Stockholm with an embarked Berserker

They are! I won with a pure melee rush, never built any siege or ranged units at all. I went for a 2-city Liberty/Honor mix: got the worker policy first to improve the Salts quickly (and get Pyramids later for super-workers), then full Honor. You really need a lot of workers as Denmark, no-movement pillaging is great and much more powerful than I expected. The Berserkers just never die once they have Cover and you have Pyramids.

Sailing was my only detour from Metal Casting, I used Cargo ships to quickly grow my two cities, then sent them to Songhai for some science and gold. I prioritized Iron Working to get Heroic Epic up and start the swordsman spam early. Got Metal Casting on T87 or 88 and upgraded 14 swordsmen. Then I built 2 workshops, as they pay for themselves really quickly with hammer cargo ships. Managed to get an additional army up with all this production and sent it to Sweden.

Religion: Earth mother, 100 gold on conversion, faith-buying pre-Industrial units.

Sweep order:
- 1st army: Russia, Aztecs, Inca
- 2nd army: Byzantium, Songhai, Zulu
- 3rd army: Sweden, then help a bit with Inca

Each army was 8-10 Berserkers, a GG and however many workers I could steal. Really fun map, thanks for sharing.


Achievements:
Win a DomVC without ever having trained* a ranged unit: 3 pts - only got one scarcher which I gifted to a CS
Keep 10 Berserkers alive to the turn of victory. You can upgrade them, obviously: 3 pts - had 28 in the end
Each cap conquered before Metallurgy: 14 pts
Each cap conquered before Replaceable Parts: 0 pts
Melee attack an inland city starting w/ embarked units: 1 pts - took Gao from the Zulu with a couple of triremes and embarked Berserkers