RBE6 - The Naked Vikings

The concept for this game combines two different ideas, that of a relatively low-pressure "builder's game" and the idea of a "naked" civ with no civ traits or unique units. Let's see how this one turns out!

Scandinavian Civ (by popular vote, not that this matters!)
Large Map, 80% water, Pangea, 7 Random AI opponents
Warm, Temperate, Flat climate settings
No Barbarians - it is a builder's game, after all
10 turn rotation, except a suggested 20-30 for the very first one
Exploits listed at RBCiv are out, anything else is game

Since I started the last succession game that I was in (RBP4), T-Hawk won't have computer access for a few days, and JMB has mentioned potential succesion game overload, I'm nominating reagan, one of the newcomers to this series, to play the first turns for us to start.

Proposed Roster:
reagan
Sullla
T-Hawk
JMB
JaxomCA

Here's the starting position; it's not on fresh water, but we do have lots of wines to provide extra food if we ever can bring irrigation to the capital. Looks like a somewhat challenging start; who can lead our drunken Naked Vikings to victory?



RBE6 start

What level is it? I'm finishing up another SG (which is pretty much in hand). Of course, it's only 1 SG at a time for me.

@ Cheiftess-Realms beyond emperor games are usually on diety

I'd like a spot in this game, if you'll have me.

Originally posted by Kazin
@ Cheiftess-Realms beyond emperor games are usually on diety

Click to expand...

. . . and require proof of a Deity victory to be eligible to play.

Hi, Jaxom. This game is Sullla's baby, so he's setting the roster. FWIW, I'm cool with you joining.

@everyone -- I have the start and will try to get something posted today or tomorrow. Thanks for trusting/testing me with what looks like a very challenging start. I sure hope there is fresh water nearby. It seems to me like non-river/lake starts are rare indeed. Has anyone done any research into the frequency of getting a dry start?

Jaxom, I'm going to add you to the roster's fifth spot since I can't see any reason why anyone would object. As for the question of dry versus freshwater starts, I have no idea how the game generates those. There seems to be a good chance of getting fresh water somewhere near your starting position, but I've gotten enough dry starting positions to know that anything can turn up. This was the first starting position I generated, and I decided that there was no reason not to play. Sure there's no river or lake to be seen immediately, but there could be one nearby for all we know, and if we can irrigate those wines we will have a ton of 3 food tiles. And the RBE5 game didn't have a fresh water start either, but they did pretty well.

Originally posted by Kazin
@ Cheiftess-Realms beyond emperor games are usually on diety

Click to expand...

Ah, count me out then. (Just didn't think what RBE meant..)

Checking in; I'm here.

There is one advantage to playing as the Vikings: we don't have to play against them

But we sure could use a scout here to look for fresh water...

hi, great idea! Do your opponents still have their civ-specifis abilities or are you playing with all civs being "naked"...
btw when i saw this threads title i was wondering why it hasn't been closed yet...you know the "no sex at cfc policy"

No, the other civs all have their traits and unique units. It is supposed to be a challenge, after all!

There's no need to rush reagan, take your time with the first turn. Better a careful job than a hasty one, since we have to work from a pretty sizable hole to start here.

Historians trace the origins of the Viking civilization to one man's vision during a party involving a mixture of wine consumption and drunken debauchery. During the bash, a bearded giant by the name of Ragnar said “If you guysh inshult my mudder one more time, I’ll . . . Hey, whish one of yoush ish my mudder, anyway?! Awwww, shcrew it, I’m taking a nap!” Upon awaking from his slumber, Ragnar found himself somewhat more lucid than the previous night and decided that the vineyards where the Vikings were living would make a fine place for the start of a new, more civilized kingdom. Unfortunately, years of living purely on a diet of wine and grapes had eroded everyone’s memory of basic skills and diminished any hopes of being a scientific people. Because their physical activities were limited to lifting wine glasses, engaging in acts of carnality, and sleeping off drunken benders, they were in no way industrious. With their fighting abilities limited to throwing drunken roundhouse punches at each other, “militaristic” was hardly a label fit for a Viking. With their surroundings providing all they wanted, they had no need to develop an expansionist bent. Finally, their lack of marketable skills and shunning of clothing or other material possessions rendered commercial abilities unnecessary. With their interests limited to the worship of the mighty grape, the concept of being a religious people was foreign to the Vikes. Thus, they had to start from scratch and discover, through trial and error, how to do anything beyond the most basic of tasks. The following is a chronicle of their rise from the most humble of beginnings towards a fate that has yet to unfold. And so begins the great tale of the drunken and naked Vikings . . .

In the early years of their fledgling civilization, the Vikes began to explore their surroundings and study the secrets of storing the food they had learned to grow amongst the grapes. Because they so enjoyed (and were proficient at) the “task” of adding population to their kingdom, the Vikes needed to be able to better store food to fill their empty bellies. The development of granaries would aid that task. The road to that knowledge is slow and costly, but ultimately will prove to be well worth the effort. The Viking explorers made early contact with a neighboring tribe calling itself “India.” Their leader looked a great deal like the creatures the Vikings called “turtles.” Because the Viking envoys were able to keep a straight face while communicating with the one called Gandhi, he was polite towards them. He was quite the braggart and enjoyed reminding the Viking people of his superior knowledge of Bronze Working, Alphabet, and Ceremonial Burial. He was also quite possessive of his knowledge and for a long time would not share it with the Vikings at any price. All that changed when the Vikings discovered Pottery. Then, Gandhi was willing to make two alternative deals. He would take Pottery and 6 gold pieces for lessons regarding the Ceremonial Burial of those poor Vikings whose wine-ravaged livers had finally failed them. The Indians would otherwise offer the secrets of Bronze Working in exchange for Pottery, all of the Vikings’ gold, and around half of their GDP.

Alas, this historian’s eyes grow weary and his hands are cramping from recording his knowledge of Viking history. He will leave it to his scholarly successor (who apparently knows a little bit about Terrapins of a different sort) to continue the relaying of this tale.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBE6-2800BC.zip



It looks like we can seal off the Indians with the two scouts by the landbridges. There is an Indian warrior drifting around on our side of the bridge and an Indian settler somewhere in the yellow ellipse. I saw the settler when our scout was perched on a hill during the previous turn, so I moved our scouts into position. Leaving the scouts on the eastern side of the bridge will seal off the city site to the north on the Indian side, as well. Bonus! By the way, were we supposed to be able to train scouts? If not, I apologize for not sticking to warriors.

We have a great growth opportunity in our immediate area, given all of the wheat squares. Red dot will be a nice city site, but will not be able to take advantage of the whale bonus until it builds a temple. The three green circles within the red borders are a whale, a fish, and a game forest. The purple circle by the river is a wheat that was difficult to see against the terrain background. All of the other bonus squares should be visible on the map.

I stopped at 23 turns because the discovery of a new tech seemed like a good break point. That will allow Sullla to choose our next research path and decide which trade opportunity he likes best. Running higher than minimum research does not speed things up, IMHO, enough to merit foregoing the extra income. My thought process for suggesting Alphabet for our next tech is that it is the most expensive first-rung tech and India is not likely to turn loose of it lightly. It will also allow us to trade for Ceremonial Burial and open up the greatest number of advanced tech choices to us. If we are going to conduct 40-turn research, we might as well get the top one, right? Alternatively, we could give a lot of our $$$ away, acquire Bronze Working, research Iron Working, and think about carving out some Indian territory for ourselves with a sword rush (assuming we have iron, which would be a gamble). Spoken like a true warmonger . . . errr . . . builder, huh? If you feel our homeland provides us with enough land for the early part of our game, the first approach is probably best and more in the spirit of our intent for this game.

I snapped the pic prior to swapping the rax to a granary, BTW.

I'll quit rambling now. Have fun with your turn, Sullla!

This is one of the most interesting starts I've seen in some time. We've got some amazing fertile land here, almost all of which our capital managed to miss, heh. Blocking off the Indians was of course the only move that we could do if we want to have a chance at success. It looks like we are alone on this island with India; if that is the case, then sooner or later Gandhi IS going to come after us, probably as soon as he finishes settling his part of the island. This is a large map, don't forget; the amount of land on our side of the choke is NOT going to be enough to win. My suggested course of action is to trade for Bronze Working, min science on Iron Working, and PRAY that we have iron somewhere. Goal would be to attack with swords sometime around 1000-750BC. It's risky, but short wars of aggression are pretty much mandatory when crammed into a small starting spot with another Deity civ. Sorry it's not the builder's game that I thought so far, but we've got to play what we get in any case.

I'm going to be moving a lot of stuff today - going back to the "land of the turtles" as reagan alluded to - and so will probably play tomorrow. I would like to see others weigh in here on our course of action and see what the group thinks. I'll push for the military drive, but there may be other ways to get out of this that I'm not seeing. By the way, I also think our second city should go right where the lower one of those scouts is sitting; on a river with two wheat tiles and blocking off both chokes in its cultural borders. With that spot secure, we could fill in our backlands easily.

We weren't supposed to be able to build scouts, but it's my own fault for forgetting to take away our access to them. We didn't start with a scout and won't get anything from goody huts, so I suppose it's not that big of a deal. One other thing I wanted to mention: Excellent introductory story for our Vikings!

Lurker question -

How can you goes get you GA?
Are you dependent of building wonders for it?

AFAIK, the first wonder they build will trigger their GA.

Sulla, I was thinking almost the same thing, but perhaps 1 tile to the sw (this way, I think there will be fewer wasted tiles... It is rather hard to say though as we don't have a full dotmap). we can then block off Indian access to our lands with 2 warriors (who will later be used for our sword rush...)

About the fertile land... I don't think I have ever seen a location with as much food as the one N, N, N, NW of our capital!

JMB

@Lee -- Hello! I have been operating under the assumption that we will not have a GA. If building any wonder triggers it, that will be an unintended benefit. Funny enough, I would consider it a disappointment if we get a GA because that would go against the spirit of our civ-without-a-trait naked Vikings.

@team -- I vote we take the BW -> min. sci. Iron -> sword rush approach. I am relieved that we don't have to stick with a builder "script" and wait to be attacked before entering a war, etc. With that off the table, it looks like we have no real choice but to gamble on having iron. Sullla's right -- if we are alone with India on an island (which appears to be the case, given the lack of any other contacts to this point), Gandhi will come after us sooner rather than later.

As to the choice for a second city, red dot will produce a bunch of uncorrupted shields early. We could build a granary, a rax, and a ton of warriors from it while Trondheim and our cities to follow could produce settlers. We are going to need at least one high-shield city pretty early to start collecting our warriors for upgrading. Just a thought . . . .

The amount of bonus food on this map really was a shock to me, too. It's unreal. If we only had water at Trondheim from the start, it would be almost too good to be true.

First of all, nice writeup Reagan, I enjoyed the read. This is a tight start. I have made 2 dotmaps, one for a defensive stance and one for an offensive stance. On both maps, the black Xs indicate wasted tiles and yellow Xs indicate an overlap tile. The numbers represent the order in which we should settle those cities.



In the defensive stance, we avoid putting pressure on Gandhi by not overlapping with his cities.Using this dotmap, I would not build the granary in Trondheim, I would switch to a settler right away since the next city will be making settlers. I would research the Wheel at maximum pace, as there is a much better chance we will have horses rather than iron. I would bring the horses online as soon as possible, even using a worker colony if necessary, and start building Chariots in the second city while we make our way to Horseback Riding.



In the offensive stance, we go at Gandhi right away. Again I would build a settler first to insure we get that number one city. I would research Warrior code at maximum pace and do an archer rush on Bombay to get those furs. Then we rush Delhi if we did well and extort tech for peace. Otherwise, we make a stand a Bombay as long as we can.

Either way, I would not make any deals with Gandhi right now. If he meets somebody, so will we. Actually, if there is someone else to meet on this island, chances are we will get the first contact. If there is nobody else to meet, there is no hurry in making a deal now.

I prefer the defensive dotmap, as it makes better use of the coastal tiles. As we have seen in RBE5, a strong coastal development is even more powerful in PTW in building a strong economy.

(0) 2800BC Oh boy, I have a lot of tough decisions to make this round. I've taken the advice from everyone else to heart and come up with my decisions. First of all, I want to point out that it takes us 40 turns to research either The Wheel even at max rate. That says to me that we should stick to the min-science move, and we would be better off selecting an expensive tech to do so. I also note that the only techs we can get from Gandhi from our discovery of Pottery are Ceremonial Burial or Bronze Working. CB is all but useless to us in this situation. Bronze Working will speed us along to Iron Working, but will cost us 27g + 4gpt to get it. If we trade for Bronze Working, we CANNOT produce a settler right away, as we will go bankrupt and be unable to pay G-man. With all this in mind, I decide to trade for Bronze Working at the stated price, start min science research into Iron Working, and continue work on our granary. The goal will be to seal off our territory, fill in our backlands with cities, then hook up iron (?) and attack sometime in the future. There's a lot of if's in there, but it could work out. It's a good thing that we're on a continent with a very low aggression civ, that's for sure! And if we really are isolated, we may even get to Iron Working before the Indians do.

(2) 2710BC India produces a settler and sends him north to found their 4th city.

(7) 2510BC Granary produced (finally!) in Trondheim. Our first settler is ordered up. In not-so good news, I believe India has six cities at this point, since they started next to a cattle tile.

(9) 2430BC Confirmation: we are on an island. Good news is that India will be no larger than us IF we can fill in all of the land we have blocked off.

(12) 2310BC First settler produced! He is sent up to the choke point to grab the spot on the river with three wheat tiles. Another settler is ordered up.

(13) 2270BC India settles aggressively close to the choke, forcing our scouts to retreat. Our dot maps look like they'll have to be redrawn a bit.

Having played 13 turns, I'm passing off to T-Hawk now. reagan played 24 turns and I played 13, so if T-Hawk plays 13 as well we will be back on track as far as the dates go. Our position is worse than bad at the moment; India could sweep us aside in a heatbeat if Gandhi so wished. Our military consists of 3 scouts, 1 worker, and 1 settler. India has EIGHT cities at the moment. But (and this is the huge but) if we can keep them blocked off, they will be no stronger than us in time. If Gandhi decides to attack us though... well, it was a fun game guys. T-Hawk, the position of the next city is up to you. I recommend putting it on the river close to India where it would be sheltered from attack from both north and east by the river's bends. That would be an aggressive settlement, true, but we need to seal off our part of the choke with a city and not simply scouts. I wish you luck; this starting position has been extremely challenging so far.

RBE6 2270BC