ALC Game 20: Vikings/Ragnar

With 7 culture from religion, Cologne has a shot at getting the Banana, which would let you reneg your Fur/Banana trade and grow Cologne to profitability. But Yue Chi looks like it's at Refined, so you'd need to tie up a stack (6 units? more?) to keep Cologne from revolting. I think I'd be looking for Domination by soaking up the little guys after Hannibal, leaving Mehmed and Hammurabi alone until the end, if needed. In that case you might as well keep trading for the Banana, and Cologne would be too much of a money and unit sink.

Temporary Nationalism would be reasonable to draft a couple garrison Musketmen per city, but after that, Vassalage is better. Vassalage benefits Berserkers, Cannons, and ships, and those are the units you want, not Musketmen. The Barracks happy would be nice, but is not necessary. Remember that you have three Market resources.

I'd stay in Representation and spend all the money on unit upgrades. Berserkers, especially - after all, Berserker upgrades are Ragnar's big trick. I'd go easy on the infrastructure (Forge, Market, Courthouse, Harbor, Library) except in Nidaros, Bjorgvin, and Berlin. If anything, I'd go to Slavery for those buildings. Caste isn't doing much for you: it's blocking slave revolts, but you don't have many workshops (some in Germany) and can already run 3 Scientists in those 3 cities, plus other specialists, with Representation.

For the Engineer, how about a Steam Power bulb? Then Railroad, and between Grenadiers and Machine Guns you can stand up to Riflemen and Cavalry. (Edit: it looks like it would only save 3 turns. So maybe Ironworks instead. But still...)

After Germany, I'd go after two barb cities - capture Teoihuacan for the Gems, and replace the one by the Incense to get the Incense - while researching to Railroad, and then go after Hannibal with Grenadiers and Machine Guns. Then Isabella, Surya, and Roosevelt.
 
I ran a lil ole test in the lil ole world builder. And lil ole kmad is 100% correct. A civ must be running that religion to be upset that the holy city is razed. There is no unhappiness penalty if you that religion present in your city either. Sorry bout your luck Cologne. You can always hope sis names the city he places on the cold and lonely ashes of your ruins in your honor. Something like "little Cologne". But I doubt it. Vikings are not known for being sentimental....unless the sentiment is REVENGE. Yeah Cologne I'm talking to you buddy. Remember about 4 months ago when I was building the Pyramids and Bismark built them first? Huh? Huh? Huh? Remember that? Remember that he built them in COLOGNE. You may not remember but I do.Oh how do I remember. I tried to get Sis to leave the city. Not out of kindness but out of a deep burning hate for you. He would need things built there like a courthouse and a monastery with missionaries. How do you get those from newly conquered civs? THE WHIP. Dat's right boyo, THE WHIP . Oh how I have dreamed of seeing the skin flayed from your little red angry faces. As you die beneath the cruel bite of the Vinking whip, you will send forth not missionaries of your god. But rather fleeing refugees seeking solace in the arms of any diety that will save them.
But I digress.
 
The State of the World, 1395 AD

Techs:



Hannibal has Divine Right. You have a Great Engineer.

If Hannibal builds Versailles on his home continent he'd be a fool, but you'd be very lucky for that poor decision on his part. If you can research (or steal or somehow trade for) Divine Right, a Great Engineer can hurry Versailles to the point where a 5 population whip would finish the job.

...Hey, look! You're about to capture an 11 population city! Looks like a time for a 5 turn switch to slavery (still with Vassalage) after you grab Divine Right. Drop in the Great Engineer, whip the next turn and you have yourself a shiny new capital on the continent where it will do you the most good. The +10 culture per turn won't hurt either since that will allow you to start with a defensive war after you declare on Hannibal. If you do choose the defensive war, the War Weariness won't go against you at all and it will hurt Hannibal in his biggest cities - the cities where you would get the most benefit from an injured Hannibal.

One more thought: If you do want to go after Hannibal, send a couple of Privateers to pillage all of his seafood resources. You'll need to spend some time rebuilding them afterwards, but it will severely hurt Hannibal's ability to defend himself when you do attack. ...and you can send the Privateers to cripple Mehmed's resources right after you finish pillaging Hannibal. :)

So the decision points that I see include keeping or razing Hamburg, ditto for Cologne (or vassalizing Bismarck), civics, what use to make of the Great Engineer, and the big one, when and who and how to attack next. It also occurs to me that I better start beefing up security back home--Bismarck has Astronomy and may trade it in desperation.

Definately keep Hamburg. If you take a couple of turns to digest the German cities, Versailles will make the coming war with Hannibal significantly easier. Also, don't forget to run several artists for the first turn that those cities come out of revolt so that you can get a border pop on the first turn and avoid potential starvation.

Raze Cologne. You don't need a beachhead on the island of Purple-stan. Especially not one that you'll have so much trouble maintaining in the face of Purple cultural pressure. Just take the entire island in one fell swoop when you're ready. Also, colonizing Bismark will give you a bonus happy point (which you really don't need) and give you a negative diplomatic modifier with everyone else. With no matching religions, you can't afford too many negatives at any one time. Go ahead and slaughter him out of existance. You'll take care of all of his remaining culture, possible UN/AP resolutions which might return a city and "we miss our homeland" type :mad: modifiers in those cities.
 
I am curious why it took us over 50 turns after astrnonomy (A.A. for this ALC henceforth.:) ) to field the first berserker and over 80 AA to declare the first war and take the first city.

I am curious why th weak Bizzy felt like an appropriate first target. I am also curious why we are using a single SoD and marching on land. Ditto about "taking several turns to take down % defences" :confused: :confused: :confused: , how many frigates we had ???

I am more curious than Validator why Steel and Nationalism felt more apropriate than Military Science anf grens. However, considering all the above i am by no means curious as to why Hannibal is teching like mad to rifles, should be expected.:mischief:

I am quite curious about why we are actually considering diplomatic relations and religions so much, or thinking of razing mature cities just to get to work an extra resource and hook another.

I am completely overwhelmed by the choise of builds: a single city is building a unit and thats a musket???:eek: :confused: :cry:
Makes perfect sense we are mere 3rd on power ranking then, ehh?



Unless the plan now is to win a culture victory or see space Vikings the focus should be military builds, many more offensive units. Hannibal should be swarmed ASAP and anyone that is willing to vassalize at any point should be allowed to do so. And any large enough cities should be kept and make more units.

Please dont tell me we are aiming for rifles after MilScience.:eek: :confused: :cry:
Beeline com for SP. As simple as that. No time or need for silly wonders or building infastructure. Theres plenty of time to do that after we take over the world.;) :D

If the GE is bulbing something decent let him do so, otherwise he will be mostly wasted. I cant imagine any building important enough to us to be worth rush building. Who needs Versailles in one place when he can run SP.

PS: I see mehmed has ScMethod for trade, well what are we waiting for?

PS2: It kills me to observe we are the only ones headed for natinalism.
 
No time or need for silly wonders

BAN HIM. BAN HIM from the forums forever. Wonders are not silly. BLASPHEMER. They are shiny and pretty and come with movies. I say the reason we are headed to nationalism is for the Taj Mahal (that shiny casino in Atlantic City). We get a goldedn age and can build wonders even faster. We are the vikings. We are famous for our wonders. Ummm, the Great Drinking Horn of Oden. Ummm, and there was the ummm, you know the other one. I am pretty sure valkeries count as wonders. Otherwise Wagner wouldn't have written a whole opera for them. I think Civ 5 should have a UNW (unique national wonder)
 
I'm a bit tired.
Kmad is right, of course. Too late to draft berserkers. So it's pretty pointless to switch to nationhood (I already did the same mistake in the ragnar WotM, some people never learn).
And of course, it's a GE that could be used for mount rushmore.
I'm going back to bed.
 
With a single frigate and a single galleon it takes a while to wear down the defenders. What? We had more than a galleon of beserkers? I was expecting a multiple city attack. I'm sure Hannibal was quaking in his boots at the prospect of a Viking invasion - severe laughter can do that. If Bizzy trades Astronomy, the Vikings have only themselves to blame.

Only 80 AA until an attack ... that's quite quick for Sisiutil. He's not really a natural warmonger. I'm not sure it is going to matter in the long term. Preserving units and gaining promotions is just as important as taking cities

US would allow the quick military builds.
There's not a lot of point in Theocracy nor being in nationhood nor holding off on Scentific Method.

I'm expecting Hannibal is building Versailles in Kerkouane - no I haven't checked the save.

If you plan on being in State Property, there's no point in founding Corporations. the GE could be used for something else.

A military academy in your major cities would help in the production of units. I think I'd have gone after the barbarian cities whilst teching to Military Science after Chemistry.
 
I'm happy to read Validator and Porphyrius's feedback because the following quote is so common after a post that I don't always feel nice about disagreeing:
Awesome round! :D

A loss of focus is understandable after a decent break for writing stories though, so no sweat. This game would still be challenging to lose.

One way to do that would be to entertain fantasies about sailing around the world capturing cities from the sea. It just doesn't make sense to, even with units that start with amphibious. The reason is because a 90 shield Frigate bombards at 8% per turn while an 80 shield trebuchet bombards at 16% per turn, with the potential for 24% at five experience points. You need twice as many Frigates as trebuchets to drop a city's defense. Even with a worthless, 3 movement 120 shield Ship of the Line, you bombard at 12% per turn. Considering it sometimes takes as many as four turns to drop a big, castled city with 4 or 5 trebuchets, you can see that dropping defenses with ships is simply not an option, when your plans are wholesale invasion. Discard that romantic image from your mind. You will need to land your troops because you need trebuchets.

Moreover, when you are the aggressor, the only real problem you face in war is war weariness. Thus you should strive to lose as few troops as possible, and the best way to do this is to make major use of siege weapons. If you create city raider trebuchets, they will generally greater withdrawal rates than city raider troops. In fact, after the first one or two, which you stand a good chance of losing, the withdrawal rate becomes so high you essentially want to attack with every piece of siege you have just for the experience point. They'll have almost no damage done to them because they withdraw after dealing their maximum damage. At this point, with every unit at 25% strength, you can take the city with axemen and spearmen if you want. In this way, you don't really care what units you have for taking the city, just one or two to good ones to defend the stack, and whatever else you have from the BCs to kill all the city defenders in a single turn. At this point, your whole focus is on speeding up the healing rates and having enough siege to drop multiple cities in a single turn. Lack of casualties + fast healing = world domination.

Focus on siege weapons. Don't worry as much about upgrading grenadiers from berserkers so you can suicide them on city defenders which haven't been weakened by siege weapons. And for godsakes, land your siege weapons. By all means use your ships to facilitate the invasion, but believing that attacking off a ship offers any kind of real advantage in Civ4 is just fantasy.
 
A defensive war in previous german territory will give sitsuil plenty of WW...
 
It's too bad you cant draft out of all those 18 & 19 pop carthaginian cities. But you can still whip, so there may still be some way to get use out of that population. It would be hard to defend without rifiles, so you may have to finish your golden age with that. The grens can attack just fine, but you'll need the riflemen for defense, especially since he's teching cavalry. But you can still get use of amphibious with the upgraded grens. Your window is until machine guns/infantry but things can get started relatively soon. tech rifling now while building the last berzerkers. upgrade and attack hannibal, whipipng his pop to nothing, and then freeing the whole continent as a colony. Take the new modern army you whipped, and do the same to someone else
 
...The following quote ("Awesome Round") is so common after a post that I don't always feel nice about disagreeing.

What can I say, I enjoyed reading it :D especially at Xmas time when the forums are dead...

This game would still be challenging to lose... One way to do that would be to entertain fantasies about sailing around the world capturing cities from the sea. It just doesn't make sense to, even with units that start with amphibious. The reason is because a 90 shield Frigate bombards at 8% per turn while an 80 shield trebuchet bombards at 16% per turn, with the potential for 24% at five experience points. You need twice as many Frigates as trebuchets to drop a city's defense. Even with a worthless, 3 movement 120 shield Ship of the Line, you bombard at 12% per turn. Considering it sometimes takes as many as four turns to drop a big, castled city with 4 or 5 trebuchets, you can see that dropping defenses with ships is simply not an option, when your plans are wholesale invasion. Discard that romantic image from your mind. You will need to land your troops because you need trebuchets.

Well... maybe. Actually, no. Sis ought to have a fleet of about, say, 25 Frigates by now and should be using them like crazy. Land-based attacks do not play to our strengths.

First point: Frigates (and our frigate-escorted galleons) are essentially invulnerable at present. They can bombard enemy cities with no fear. You do it like this:

Main Frigate pack (say 12 frigates) stays AHEAD of the galleons containing massed amphibious troops plus collateral-dealing trebs. One or even two cities ahead. In one turn of bombardment that city's defences are zero. Then the Zerks on boats turn up, with just one or two frigates escorting. Treb from the sea if some collateral is needed, otherwise just Zerk, Zerk, Zerk. Conquer, then raze and/or heal if needed, and move on. By now the main frigate pack has ALREADY moved on to bombarding the next city. It's ready to fall. Rinse 'n' repeat. Each naval squadron (frigate pack plus galleons) can take a city every two turns or so, plus travelling time. A lot faster than unloading and waiting for land-based trebs to do work. Two such squadrons would make Hannibal history (or irreparably crippled and vassalized) in short order, especially given the vulnerability of his links to his strategic resources on the south island.

Second point: frigates are not just for bombarding and escorting. Single frigates or a pair should be used for blockading enemy cities, cutting off his metals supply, and making sure he can't get a caravel in the water. And they can bombard cities bit by bit as they do this. Finally, frigates count as pre-emptive home defence once the enemy gets astronomy.

So you said "he'd need twice as many frigates as trebs" - well, yes. In fact he should have three or four times as many frigates as trebs, in my view.

Many of these points are quite obvious so apologies for restating them. However I think it has to be emphasized!

We are Vikings, with a massive naval tech lead, on an archipelago map... I humbly suggest ;) that a land-based invasion strat is not the way to go.
 
I'm not astute enough to have said it on my own, but Validator's and some others' comments about not enough military units makes sense. I looked at the save and I think Bismarck will fold now, I think I tried that option.

It's striking how the naval fleet is so much smaller in this game compared to Game 17 take 2 Peter of Russia, where you ruled the seas - tons of Frigates I seem to remember. Anyway that was Monarch and this is Emperor and that was then and this is now... have fun however you do it, but I think conquest or something like that could be close at hand.
 
Regarding the size of the military, fleet, etc.

Keep in mind that I have only six cities, and of those, only five have decent enough production to produce units. That's why it took so long to build up a decent military force; that's why that force is not huge and overwhelming; and that's why I went after Bismarck first, to give me more time to build more units and to build infrastructure to support a larger, longer, more ambitious war against Hannibal.
 
What victory are you pursuing?

If you're going for domination then it makes sense to hold onto B's cities though you'll have colony expenses to consider. Might make sense in that case to go for communism for SP (maybe trade for Scimeth?).

If you ain't going for domination then it might be worth changing Germany into a brand new shiny Colony all of your own.

Cannons and berserks should last you up to infantry especially if you continue amphibious attacks though you'll need a steady stream of replacement cannon.
 
If you ain't going for domination then it might be worth changing Germany into a brand new shiny Colony all of your own.

.

My experience with colonies is that they have a annoying habit of trading away any tech lead you might have. Something to bear in mind.


You could cross your fingers and hope for Tokugawa, but knowing the RNG, we'll end up with Mansa Musa instead.
 
I don't really want to add to the criticisms made above, but...

What's going on with your Privateers? Two pairs have been sent halfway around the world for some reason, while the remaining pair are blockading in a rather odd place. The sea to the west of the Carthaginian mainland would have been a much better target imo - Carthage, Malaca and Abdera are all dependent on the sea, and will starve if blockaded.

In my experience, separating your Privateers by such a distance is generally unwise. They work best when kept close enough together to respond to enemy attacks (Hannibal has a huge stack of caravels, btw), and to comprehensively blockade a number of vulnerable cities belonging to the same civ (either next target or main rival - both Hannibal in this case).

On a general note, despite the slow pace of your warmongering so far, I'm still confident that you can win this game in a suitably violent manner. But, as Porphryius suggests, you really need to prioritize military builds at this stage.

Once you've got Hannibal's cottages under your control (Hippo looks especially sweet), you'll have the most potent economy on the planet. But, if you're going to reach that point early enough, you'll need lots of troops asap.

The war against Hannibal must move much more swiftly than the present one has. Hit him hard, hit him fast, and hit him soon. You can worry about your other rivals (and the tech race) after he's dead.

ps. pigswill's colony idea is definitely worth considering, but make sure to pump out as many troops as possible before liberating it :)whipped:). And don't liberate until the last possible moment (ie. when you're about to take a Carthaginian city you want to keep for yourself).
 
Regarding the size of the military, fleet, etc.

Keep in mind that I have only six cities, and of those, only five have decent enough production to produce units. That's why it took so long to build up a decent military force; that's why that force is not huge and overwhelming; and that's why I went after Bismarck first, to give me more time to build more units and to build infrastructure to support a larger, longer, more ambitious war against Hannibal.

since when do you expect us to not expect the impossible from your games? :lol:
 
Top Bottom