The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #6 - Denmark

Turn 358 Science Victory.

Could've finished early, but decided to take my time.

A nice map, could have used better the unique ability to wreck people along the coast, but decided to do a more peaceful game.

Babylon settled the nice spot across the bay, so I took it. Went on and captured their capital. It was a late war, with cannons and then artillery.

Build quite a few wonders, mainly Great Lighthouse and Statue of Liberty. Freedom is very powerful with all the specialists.

Game was going very well on the diplomatic side also, founded the world congress and was host for all the editions. Managed to push my ideology soon and nobody opposed.

The strangest thing was getting backstabbed by the two major civs when I proposed Science Funding. The AI almost seemed smart and made my game more difficult. Almost at the end, got several DoW from multiple civs and had to fend off several maritime invasions. The most annoying thing was having my allied city-states getting captures and losing their bonuses, which lowered my happiness a lot.

Since Askia also declared war on me, decided to go for a walk and liberate a few city-states, not that it mattered anyway. All the spaceship parts were being built already.

Anyway, they didn't managed to stop the Viking journey to space. The Vikings of the Stars.

I settle 2 tiles south so I could get that marble. I went full tradition, then Discipline (honour), Patronage opener (Forbidden Palace) then some more Honour and then Autocracy.

Tech'd to Calender (for stonehenge), then Optics (Great Lighthouse) then straight to IronWorking (Colossus) then Metal Casting. I also snuck in Mausoleum since noone built it. I figured for warmongerng I needed some good base gold income and it sure paid off. That early gold really helped me get lots of units out. Got a religion too so Tithe was another great source of gold. I popped my religon to a city north of the starting zone as I figured it was closer to the citystates so religious pressure would be more effective.

I then prioritized military buildup. Got Heroic Epic in Capital and started building up Berserkers. I snuck them behind Babylons capital to the North (by the East Coast). He had Great Wall which did absolutely bugger all against Berserkers! With free movement to pillage and 3 base movement meant that I still had more mobility than normal. His capital had Petra too so it really was a great city but I never really needed to make that much use of it as my capital was already so good.
I conquered the rest really quickly with Berserkers and then focused back on the capital and got the naval techs, and started building lots of frigates. I got Brandenburg gate soon after so with 60 base experience frigates could start with 3 range. So it didn't take too long to take out Korea & Siam. I left Brazil to last as they were the least threat and I was more concerned about Korea's technology running away on me.

What I am surprised about is no-one seemed to mention Mount Kilimanjaro! Not far to the North, with that promotion berserkers are incredible. You can navigate through Hill tiles quite easily and it really does help your mobility and it does make quite a difference to your game - speed is everything really.

I found that was the key with Denmark, your UU is at the right time. With a strong start you can get a strong foundation and the UU & UA has the mobility to get more done every turn than otherwise (faster embarked movement, moving to shore in 1 turn and still having movement [very useful for ranged units if you see enemy melee ships nearby, you can quickly land and attack them].
What was disappointing was Ski Infantry, the promotion didn't really make a difference but being on the same unit line as berserkers was good and the positioning is good too (they aren't that much further on) and I'm assuming this could be a bug but when I was building new SkiInfantry they no longer has the free pillage bonus (so for some reason the UA was lost on new units but not on the old upgraded ones which worked properly).

But Denmark is maybe not as bad as I thought it would be considering it gets a bad rep

Thanks to a super decent capital spot there were a few things that I have never seen before in my games:
1. Highest population by the end of game (that is without artificially delaying game for other victory types)
2. Highest amount of GPT from a single cargo ship - 44GPT

It seems that even with 3 cities and cargos it is possible to have a decent science, gold and population if your capital is so great (oh mountain and river is still missing) I went full tradition, patronage, rationalism, a few policies in commerce and aesthetics and for ideology I chose freedom.

Overall very peaceful game and by the end I had a very decent amount of GPT and I could buy all CS to win DV. I won WF, IG and to help the growth cargos were sent to my capital and back.

Thank you for the map.

Wont talk much about this game ... most boring game i ever played, i wish i had balls to go war with the UU or frigates cause this culture victory was slow and pretty annoying with babylon getting most wonders...

didnt make any unit and was friend with the whole world getting me tons of RAs but wasnt enough to catch up the wonderwhoring babylon in science.

My fastest ever Science Victory on Immortal, although frustrated that I couldn't finish a few turns earlier......

Picked up Great Library on turn 39 and a one city NC on circa turn 52.

I then built 3 settlers, only just managing to get the third one in situ over the bay having managed to declare war and snaffle Babylon's unprotected settler just before he settled there.

Picked up The Oracle in turn 89 which allowed me to start Patronage prior to the Rationalism tree and also managed to get Hanging Gardens

Picked up Printing Press circa turn 145 which founded the World Congress and as leader I obviously opted for World Fair, although it took until turn 185 for this to be completed which I think slowed me down a bit.

Used Oxford Uni to pick up Radio circa turn 180 and chose Freedom as an ideology. Building the Forbidden Palace gave me constant leadership of the world congress which ensured that I could get Freedom as the world ideology which helped with happiness through the game (until the last couple of turns)

I only built a single military unit (Galleas) until in turn 235 Dido declared war on me and surrounded Aarhus with 4 privateers and a Frigate. Luckily at that point I had enough cash to buy an Artillery unit and Great War Bomber who blew Dido's armada out of the water

Hubble Space Telescope was built on turn 258 which gave me my final two GS's - I then bulbed my way through the rest of the tech tree, producing SS parts along the way with the final two purchased thanks to the Freedom finisher.

Thanks for the map!

Denmark + Continents = DOMINATION:- What fun!! I love Denmark, embarked siege units which land, set-up (as required) and fire in a single turn. I went full Liberty, full Honour (of course), Top Rationalism and RHS of Exploration. My research beelines were Optics, Metal Casting, Education, Machinery, Navigation and Dynamite (using Oxford for the latter). I went for Babylon first (a tough nut), then Carthage and through the E Continent. The endgame plan was to send the army E to attack Siam and the navy back W to attack Korea, taking the 2 capitals simultaneously. I underestimated how long it would take me to wade through the vast armada of Korean turtle ships and ended up capturing the Korean capital by combined-arms (lost 6-8 turns). Nevertheless, much better than my attempt at ICL#6.

Isolated start with Salt screamed peaceful turtling game to me, but then Sofia had some "secret weapons" in store :



Once I took down Babylon the rest of the game was easy, just out-teched and rushed the remaining AIs one by one. Carthage with ships and camels, Netherlands and Songhai by infantry/artillery, Brazil by bombers, and Korea/Siam by nukes/XCOM.