Vpr2- Always War Vikings

Thanks to Admiral Kutzov for suggesting that I start this and helping me get down the final ideas.
World Size: Standard
Civilization: Vikings
Difficulty: Regent
Landmass/Water Percent: 60% water, continents
Temperature, Climate, Age: 5 billion years, arid, dry
Barbarians: Sedentary
Patch: C3C 1.22
Victory Condition: Only Domination and Conquest are allowed
Variant Rules:

Always War (AW): When you meet an opponent (as soon as they appear on the F2/F4/Shift-D diplomacy screen, you’ve met them), you must declare war on them – THAT turn. You can make initial deals for hard goods only (no gpt deals, no alliances, no resource/luxury trades). Opening the diplomacy window to spy techs, cities, resources, etc. is allowed. Signing peace for even a single turn is prohibited.

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Players
viper275
Admiral Kutzov
BigNHuge
Kaiser Berger
bed head7

Rules

I'm using slightly modified GOTM rules.


Allowed
Island block
If you fill the coast of a certain island with units, even non-military, the AI won't be able to land, thus isn't able to conquer that island, until it has marines.

ICS (Infinite City Sprawl)
Build a lot of cities very close next to each other. This way you simply have more cities which are in the beginning just as big as normal.

Not Allowed

Scout resource denial
Place a scout on a square where there is a resource and in (future) enemy territory. As long as you have peace with them you can leave him there undisturbed and the other will never be able to build a road to it.

Pop-Rushing
In despotism and communism it is possible to use cities purely for unit rush building. Workers can be added to such a city and then the city can then use them to rush build units. This is disallowed, so do not create these kind of cities. Pop rushing one or two regular citizens to finish a building or to build a unit is within the rules and the spirit of the game. What is against the rules is joining workers to cities for the purpose of pop rushing.

Worker dogpile
Let all your workers join a city with a hospital and continue to build workers and let them join that city. There's no size limit so your city will become huge and you loose only one population per turn. All the workers become specialists and add to your score.

Free Palace Jump
When disbanding your capitol your palace will appear in the biggest other city. Your former capitol can be rebuilt by the settler it created. This way you've moved you capitol for free.

Ship hopping
While at sea, you can unload a ship on the same square where there is another ship and that ship can take over the load. This way you can move your units to any location in one turn. But it takes a lot of effort.

Gold mine
You can make cities give wealth and production at the same time. First set the cities to produce wealth. At the beginning of the next turn when another city is done building something else you can go to other cities with the arrows above and change the production of the cities that produce wealth to e.g. some unit. That will get production as well.

The negative science exploit
You can run a huge deficit (-250 / turn) of negative cash with a token penalty of one lost worker / cheap building.

Do not automate workers.

24 hour got it and a 48 hour play time.

2 BG & a cow!!!

I'll reserve further comments until we get a team. Nice job.

Sign me up! Im a Emperor player, but need some work on my war skills. This sounds like the perfect opportunity.

You're in, BigNHuge! Looks like a nice starting location, as Admiral Kutzov said.

I'll join this. I've always wanted to try an AW game, and this seems like a great oppurtunity.

@ Kaiser Berger- Added you to the list

While we're awaiting our last team member. Here are my thoughts after fog gazing. I'm no expert.

I'll do better on the screenie next time.

EDIT: remove extra large screenshot

With a couple weeks left until school starts, a fourth succession game sounds like a really good idea to me right now. Even though I am playing another as the Vikings, I want to try an AW. Plus, it looks like a great start.

bed head7, you're in. Admiral Kutzov's fog-gazing looks accurate. I wonder if there are more hills to the north. I'll play this pretty soon.
EDIT: Any ideas on the first moves?

irrigate cow. build where we start. 1st build is curragh to send SW along the coast.

some shameless plagarism follows (thanks scout ), I'm just trying to gain some perspective.

Here are some questions for my compatriots:

How would you describe your style of play? Builder? Warmonger?

What do you tend to seek first, military strength, commerce, production, or science?

Do you have preferred civ traits? (This is not intended to start a 'best civ' sub-thread...)

In warfighting, do you prefer to "blitz" or use a "combined arms" approach?

Do you have a favorite Age?

Usual level?

Sounds good, but do we really want to know everybody this early on, knowing that we need to declare war on them once we meet them (we might not have a great military at that point.) I guess it could be a good idea if they have a weak miltary and don't know where we are, but it could be risky.

Alternative - send the curragh NE to follow contours of whatever we're on. One way or another, we need to know who and what we have close by. IIRC, we start with warrior code. Unless we run into someone on the 1st turn, we can whip a few warriors & archers to take care of whatever AI we meet in the 1st 5 turns.

Doing some exploration with curraghs wouldn't be a bad idea, but if we see any hints of borders, I would suggest reversing course immediately. If we can manage to hold off contact for even a few more turns it'll be to our advantage.

As for research, I would go with writing first, then philosophy and literature as our free tech if we get it. From what I've read about AW games, the Great Library is quite essential.

Sounds like a good idea, Kaiser Berger. GL sure would be helpful. I assume we won't want Republic slingshot since this is AW (WW might be a problem?)

To answer Admiral Kutzov's questions (note: I just copied and pasted these from another SG, so it might look familiar if you've read it.)

1. Warmonger, and I have to admit, a sometimes risk-taking one at that.
2. Production.
3. None in particular, but it all depends on the game I'm going to play.
4. I tend to be a bit more on the combined arms side.
5. I think I like both Industrial and Ancient Ages more than the others.
Please note that these are just trying to give answers to questions and just to give a basic idea of my style of play.
6. Right now Monarch is too easy, Emperor too hard, so I try to be inbetween whenever possible.

How would you describe your style of play? Builder? Warmonger?

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Im usually a builder during AA and Warmongerer there after.

What do you tend to seek first, military strength, commerce, production, or science?

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I like to get some Production/Science off the bat, then go MS and Commerce.

In warfighting, do you prefer to "blitz" or use a "combined arms" approach?

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I love the blitz strategy with horse units. They can work wonders.

Do you have a favorite Age?

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Middle Ages, by far.

These may have been retorical questions, but could not help but answer.

Also opening moves should be: Science 100% to Pottery. Irrigation of the cow, while building of a curragh for scouting and then a warrior for protection. Then go Granary while chopping a forest for the shields. These are just a few ideas. lets go guys!

P.S. Monarch has become easy and Emperor is starting to pose no threat. Soon to be a DG player

Sounds good, I'll play this when I get time tonight.

Also opening moves should be: Science 100% to Pottery. Irrigation of the cow, while building of a curragh for scouting and then a warrior for protection. Then go Granary while chopping a forest for the shields.

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concur

P.S. Monarch has become easy and Emperor is starting to pose no threat. Soon to be a DG player

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I wish. Finally I'm doing well on Monarch as the Romans after Cilve1.

GL would be nice and easily attainable on this level. I think on regent, it isn't even a must have for keeping up. As long as we are semi-successful in early wars, we will probably be one of the biggest, if not the biggest civs, and might even be able to afford a few libraries in the core once the war front is well away from our center. By the way, if I am way off base, let me know. First time for Always War, although I am trying to catch up quickly by reading some of LKendter's (spelling?) SG threads and any other Always War I can find. Arathorn's in particular was interesting, although Sid is probably just a tiny bit out of our reach. So with that, I would say that any curraghs built need to be used very carefully. We don't want anyone to have the ability to contact us until we have at least a few cities, and hopefully barracks in those cities.

To answer the questions:

1. Builder all the way up until lack of resource or technological advantage or some other dire need forces me to war. So this should be a valuable learning experience for me.

2. Commerce/science are sort of tied together, and are where I focus. Production comes next, and then military strength, because if you have the first three, you can get military strength quickly enough when the time comes.

3. I value seafaring highly, especially if the game gets to Mass Production and Commercial Docks at half price. I am beginning to really like commercial also, which ties in well with my general focus. Of course, industrious and agricultural are always nice as well, and if I can build barracks half price, I probably will war a bit more. Now that I really think about it, I don't know if I have preferred traits, since they are all so nice.

4. I am sort of lazy sometimes when it comes to the warmongering I actually do. So if I need some artillery to even up the odds, I will bring it along. But if I can do a blitz with cavalry against pikes and muskets, I will probably leave the cannons at home.

5. Not really any preferred age. They all have their pluses and minuses. AA is generally most exciting/critical, MA/IA will often be my warring period which can be fun, and then Modern Age is typically not reached, unless I won diplomatically.

6. I came here (edit: to this forum a couple months ago) Regent/Monarch, I would say, and haven't evaluated recently. No time for epic games with SGs and GOTMs. So now I am probably Monarch/Emperor, and maybe leaning towards Emperor.

Here are my answers (although they're in flux due to prior SG)

1. Warmonger - really like to build swords and take out nearby civs. In the process of learning prudence.
2. Still like military although food is growing on me
3. On regent, I luv the writing->phil->lit gambit. On monarch, I've seen the error of my ways.
4. like to blitz if I'm ahead, still learning combined arms
5. probaly strongest in AA at this time. No real pref.
6. see above, moving to monarch as we post