[R&F] Civ of the Week: Norway

[Arent11]

It would be cool if the longships could have both ranged and melee ability.

Sadly they don't. I would infinitely prefer ranged ships for obvious reasons, but you often only need a few to bombard some inland city. But since maritime industries gives you +100% and your ability only +50%, I think it's ok to deviate once in a while from building mighty longships

Since longships & warriors both benefit from oligarchy, I ususally just upgrade some warriors. Combined with ranged ships they often do the trick.

 

[eleven11]

The thing about settling uninhabited islands though is the longships can't take care of the barbarian menace on those islands. And I got like no army lol. I haven't seen that many I'm interested in, but I may need oil later.

Which is why, in my mind, the Viking Longship isn't designed correctly. When built, tethered units should apply bonuses much like the Jong.

 

[acluewithout]

There are so many little things I love in Civ. Longboats benefiting from Oligarchy is one of them.

 

[Victoria]

An early longship gives your cities 30 strength with a slinger in them.
Early sea means early CS and goody huts and golden age.
If a stave church gave a fighting bonus the civ may have a fighting chance but there is just nothing of sound strength about them.
Where is the shield wall?

By the way, how is coastal city capture post R&F? I

Harder, often cities are 1 tile in which is a small pain but mainly it’s about loyalty. 2 cities next to each other both on the coast means you can take them both but you may still face loyalty issues.
The AI still stupidly sends all their troops into range of your frigates so it’s a way to chew their army to pieces before landing.... but if the frigates are not strong enough to take a city fast it gets tricky.

 

[Scaramanga]

Norway can be effective on true start earth maps but that is probably because the capital is fairly isolated so they can strike anywhere at will.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I'm not going to even provide saves as it was kind of a bore. At the end my capital didn't even have 40 production and finished the Forbidden Palace at turn 200.

From what I can see on your map, I’m counting 9 hammers in oxymoronic 7 Population Hamar (which consistent with most of my Norway experiences). The "Thunderbolt of the North’s" nickname is less of an oxymoron, as it is associated with the loud noise (thunder) part of thunder and lightning as opposed to a deadly high voltage discharge part (lightning).

Spoiler :

But Norway's ability to meet everyone quickly was useful. Mostly came down to Magnus chopping some longboats before the land became crap and then I used them all to explore.

Thers is always that .

 

[UWHabs]

My biggest flaws with Norway is to make use of them, you need to settle the coasts. Which means each city needs a Harbor. And if you want to use the stave church for production, then they need a holy site as well. But then that means that you're already down 2 districts, so less districts left to build campuses/theatres/etc... Kind of the same problem that Russia has - they need a lot of infrastructure to power up, leaving you less for your actual victory condition.

Popping huts and stealing builders with longships is great, and fun to do. If you get lucky and find a barb settler, you can steal it and then settle a city nearby. But otherwise when I've tried to play them, I either end up behind in either science or culture since I just can't develop that quickly.

 

[Scaramanga]

• Unique Infrastructure: Stave Church. Unique Building, which replaces the Temple. Unlocks at Theology, Cost 105, Maintenance 2. Grants your Holy Site an additional Standard Adjacency (+1) from Woods and provides +1 Production to all Coastal Resources for this City. Otherwise, provides +4 Faith, +1 Great Prophet Point, +1 Relic Slot, and +0 beards.

You forgot Beard of the Evangelist.

 

[Archon_Wing]

My biggest flaws with Norway is to make use of them, you need to settle the coasts. Which means each city needs a Harbor. And if you want to use the stave church for production, then they need a holy site as well. But then that means that you're already down 2 districts, so less districts left to build campuses/theatres/etc...

You don't need a harbor just because you settled on the coast though.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

This is how I see Norway's abilities in Civ 6. I'm assuming a map type where water and coastlines play a part.

Leader Ability - Thunderbolt of the North: This ability was faintly decent when it was just coastal raiding with melee ships. In peace time, it allows you to pop goody huts and clear barbarian encampments, although the latter requires a ranged vessel to kill the units first. In war time, you can do a fair bit of economic damage to an opponent who has his districts by the coast. Also, coastal raiding is fun, and being able to do it early in the game without the need for naval raiders is pretty nice. When this ability got buffed to include a good production boost to naval melee units, it went from faintly decent to pretty darn good. It also made the ability synergize very well with the Viking Longship..

I think this civ might be allot more fun beyond the early game if they had a special Callus Belli available, "Raiding War" or some such. Giving them warmonger points with the civ they are raiding, but not with other civs.

 

[Disgustipated]

You don't need a harbor just because you settled on the coast though.

No, but you can often get better adjacencies for a harbor than you can for a commercial hub. I picked goddess of the sea in my game, so I have lots of cities on the coast. even with that pantheon however, it's probably more beneficial to settle inland.

 

[UWHabs]

No, but you can often get better adjacencies for a harbor than you can for a commercial hub. I picked goddess of the sea in my game, so I have lots of cities on the coast. even with that pantheon however, it's probably more beneficial to settle inland.

Yeah, it's more the fact that if you want to use sea resources, you basically do need the lighthouse to get the +1 food to make those tiles worth working. I mean, you can certainly plan some or most of your cities inland, but then they're not making use of the Stave Church either.

 

[The Ferret]

Okay, so I started this game a couple weeks ago when the Civ of the Week was one I didnt own. Europe, Emperor, Epic and TSL for around 10~ Civs.

After founding a religion, I took advantage of the longships straight away. My first victim was poor Victoria. I took many of her cities in the first war, however finally took London in the second war after conscripting land units.

The result of conquering England meant I wasn't the most popular leader around. Consequently, Germany and Spain declared war on me. Once again, using a large fleet and a couple land units, I was able to conquer the first German city. At the same time, a small fleet consisting of frigates and longships were pressurizing the north of Spain.

Spoiler :

After securing the German capital and a small northern Spanish city, the increasing size of the Roman empire came to the German's defence. The Roman empire was strong, and killed many of my units. Luckily, I managed to fight them off and built defensive walls in Aachen.

Spoiler :

I sent a small fleet of frigates and caravels to capture small Roman cities in Northern Africa. At the same, the war on mainland Europe was turning in my favour. Note that I was pleasantly surprised by the difficulty of the war, however after upgrading my army and killing off the remaining units, I eventually peaced out, receiving Cologne in the process.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

My main concern right now is the size of the Russian empire. It appears to be slightly bigger than mine. Ahh!

Really enjoying this map and Norway right now. Only thing I would do differently is set the pace to Marathon instead of Epic!

 

[Disgustipated]

Finished my Norway game. I admit I didn't use them nearly in the best way. I dislike building lots of holy sites. Other than good exploration and goody hut popping with the longships, and conquering one city-state, I really didn't use their bonuses at all. Berzerker I was able to build even though I had musketmen tech, and get the era score for that. That unit comes too late for my tastes. For my playstyle, I really do have to rank them in the last tier. I just grade them like school grades, 5 tiers. For me that's an F. Still they can be fun on island plates and archipelago maps, or TSL Earth map. They aren't particularly fun to play without those 3 map types.

That said, my game didn't turn out bad. Mostly because I pushed for one victory type. Cultural victory is so easy. I often disable this victory because it's so easy and the games end so early. Often in a game I'm not particularly interested in, I just choose the fastest victory type. 1874 was my ending year.

I was last in total combats, don't think I've ever had that before. Talk about a peaceful game. Everyone loved me at the end.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[Archon_Wing]

No, but you can often get better adjacencies for a harbor than you can for a commercial hub. I picked goddess of the sea in my game, so I have lots of cities on the coast. even with that pantheon however, it's probably more beneficial to settle inland.

Well I mean you can place it if you have a good adjanency bonus. In the last game, I just settled some cities and chopped out a +5 harbor with lighthouse. That's all the city was good for, but I don't think every coastal city needs a harbor. The main thing about the longship is you can Magnus chop + Maritime Industries to make any district/wonder you want, and 99% of the time you're better off making a district; probably a Campus, first and worry about a harbor when you have nothing better to do. The harbor's actually more useful for inland cities if you ask me.

Now admittingly I have no use for the Stave Church but that has more to do with Holy Sites being garbage than anything else.

 

[acluewithout]

Should Norway be buffed?

Norway has been directly buffed twice now. Once last year, when I think it got the production bonus for melee ships (or maybe the bonus was just increased) and the Stave Church started giving production. And then a second time when Berserkers got buffed.

Norway has also been indirectly buffed a few ways, eg: spears getting added to agoge, various buffs to coastal cities, buff to raid cards, more uses for faith.

Norway is also a Civ which is sort of great because it is a little underpowered. I wouldn’t want that to change.

But for all that, Norway does feel a little too weak sometimes. Although, I go backwards and forwards on that.

Overall, I don’t think Norway needs a direct buff, but it would benefit from a few other general things being tweaked.

Specifically:

- Coastal Cities and Harbours probably still need a small (small!) buff. I’d like to see Harbours give a +2 adjacency to Industrial Zones, and maybe Coastal Cities getting a free trading post or something like that. These changes would help everyone, but particularly naval based Civs like Norway.

- Making Anti-Cav cheaper and improving the value of Military Tactics would help Norway, Japan and Georgia (and sort of also help Greece and its Hoplite).

- Allowing Civs to coastal raid without necessarily declaring war. This might be quite hard to implement with the AI, but I feel that not being able to raid in the early and mid game without declaring war really limits options for conflicts.

If Norway was buffed, I’d like to see something like this:

(1) the Stave Church no longer gives a production boost to sea resources; instead, Norway gets the same production bonus just be settling a coastal city and having researched Apprenticeship (or maybe extra faith from sea resources once it unlocks theology); and

(2) the Stave Church keeps its adjacency bonus from woods, but also provides +1 adjacency to all adjacent districts (or gains +1 adjacency from adjacent districts).

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

Five starts with Norway: zero woods tiles and probably 50 jungle tiles. Three water starts vs two inland starts. I'm not sure how they have a woods bias with starts like these.

Norway is one of the few civs I will just restart with if I don't start next to water. I really like them as a niche civ and they are a lot of fun to play on island or even coastal continents maps but you may as well have a blank civ when you roll a land start.

 

[acluewithout]

Starting inland with your first city is not a huge problem.

For both Norway and England, I usually push for my second or third city to be on the coast (depending on the map and assuming I really want to push navy). I then leave that coastal city to work through the various naval eurekas by itself, while my other cities focus on doing “the usual things”. So, usually my little coastal city works on two galleys then works on a builder to improve some fish. Hopefully I find. wonder for the holy site boost.

Depending on what else is going on, I might help my little coastal city out with my initial trade route (which is a big investment if I do), the fish pantheon (again, big investment), or a spare builder / chop / mine etc (much smaller investment).

There are two downsides to this strategy. First, you don’t get ships out as fast as you might like. But I think it’s still pretty good. Second, you then have less resources for other projects - it’s hard to push early navy this way and also get a religion or early writers are early knights.

Another option is to focus on religion early, and then build an economy, then get going with navy. This lets you maybe unlock Berserkers before you start you reign of sea terror, but I never quite get it to work. By the time I should be pivoting to naval, I have a very strong economy and I’m not entirely sure there’s much point sending out raiding parties at that point. It might be more worthwhile if I use the raiding policy cards, but I haven’t really tried that yet. It would also help if you could buy naval units with faith, but Norway can’t do that.

 

[LuckyAC]

Norway has an underrated strength.

What's the biggest threat to make you lose to deity AI? Getting rushed at the very beginning, when warriors can still overwhelm a city. But just by building one Longship (which is very cheap), you boost city strength from 13 to 23. And then by actually garrisoning the longship, you boost it to 33. A 33 strength city with a ranged unit in it is mostly invulnerable to warriors.

 

[liv]

Thanks for the suggestions.
I love playing Norway but I set the game up for it
Archipelago map and emperor level
Build on the coast, start sailing build a worker first. Use the worker to explore and take out huts. Build longship next unless there is a camp nearby.
Declare war as soon as you meet them, plunder and steal
Stay in golden age by taking out camps with longships and Quadririmes.
It is true that loyalty can be an issue. But you can compenstate by trying to squeeze out good piece deals build up some land army and get the loyalty triangle going for your next round of attacks.
Aim is to take over the world while longships are still viable-I am able to do it if luck is on my side.