Carabodes
Timid Viking Warlady
There are tiles (looks like 2 judging by the photo) south of Nidaros that are still in the fog. For all we know, he could have both metal and horses.I agree with everyone that the best option is to block ragnar in. It doesnt look like he'll have any iron or copper, since all his tiles look like forests with the exception of the cow. and being in that coastal spot he probably has lots of seafood resources. I think going to teal and green would be the best path. While the brown city would limit ragnar to one city until he could get some galleys and ship settlers out, it would give him some breathing room so he wouldnt feel like he has to declare war on you possibly. that and the brown city looks terrible lol. also teal=stone, which is always nice
You do not want to tick Ragnar off by blocking him in if you yourself is not very well defended. He's a lunatic.
An example of that:
First time I met Ragnar, we became the very best of friends, sharing everything, trading happily through some 4 - 5 millennia. Then he placed a new city smack into my border, as it happens, that was the border of one of my cities that became legendary a couple of turns later.
His little "newborn" got swamped by my culture and flipped. Happy about that, I moved some more units into my new city and, SMACK, Ragnar turned round and bit me! He came at me with everything he had. And he had not been preparing for war, he drained his other cities of forces just to get back at me.
Ragnar is the only one that has ever attacked me for culterflipping a city! And at friendly???
Personally I would go AH (possibly with hunting first?) for the cow and the possible horses and start by settling westwards (especially the floodplains) and that part of the north that is not totally covered with jungle, i.e. the coastline up against the northern stone (stone is yummy).
If horses are indeed found close by, I would consider going for religion/priesthood/oracle before IW, researching IW while oracle being buildt.
If horses are not found, I would go straight for IW (archery first if hunting researched before AH), meaning we may have to tech MC "the hard way".
And if horses are found, I would contemplate sending them all towards Ragnar, in a constant stream untill the viking is no more.
(So much for kinship, same bloodline and all that.)