Denmark Challenge Photojournal

[CrazyG]

Following a debate about how strong Denmark is, I will doing a challenge as ol' Harold Bluetooth.

Spoiler Thoughts on Denmark :

Denmark is in my opinion, the strongest civ in the game by far. He has excellent early game, mid-game and late game, with no real weaknesses.

The unique ability is excellent (a lot of people seem to think its not, I don't know why).
The embarked movement is situational, but really useful when it matters.
Viking is a great promotion. 25% combat strength on pillaged tiles is a powerful combat bonus, I've seem people saying that Denmark isn't a good fighter but I disagree. The gold is really powerful, as of turn 100 its earned at least 1,000 gold.
Longboat is relevant sometimes, but viking is really the star.

Runestones are busted. They are pretty strong even without the pillaging. In addition to a basic lighthouse, you get another +1 food on all coastal tiles, which makes regular coast much, much better early game. 2 culture is a great yield bonus too (most civs only get 1 culture on their UBs from this era.

The pillaging bonus ends up being like 5 culture and 5 hammers per turn per city in the classical era without too much effort.

Berserkers are a good unit. +1 movement and a tech early is a really great bonus to have.

Spoiler Game Settings :

Standard Size, Standard Speed
Continents
No events, no ancient ruins, no tech trading.

Challenge: no workers or work boats! In the event I do capture a worker, I can't build any improvements. This means I can only connect resources using either great people tiles or by settling a city.

Spoiler Starting Location :

 

[CrazyG]

Spoiler Where I settled :

I moved up one tile. There is a chance that horses or iron, appear there, and it would be amazing to settle on horses. It also means that I can settle a city on those southern coast tiles if I need to.

Tech: Mining, Bronze Working.
Build: Monument, Shrine (invested), Well, Warrior, Warrior

Spoiler Small Continent? :

I have only met Siam at this point, but I haven't scouted out that much as I need to deal with that Barbarian. I take authority on turn 24.

Tech: Trapping, Pottery

Spoiler Siam Settles Quickly :

That is a fast second city. Siam got a pantheon (God-King) extremely quickly, and is already at 3 social policies, so I'm guessing there are more city states to his West.

A cool trick, see how I'm building a warrior the turn I discovered bronze working? It will be replaced by a spearman in the queue with all the production going that way. I saved the rest of my gold to upgrade that spear as well.

Build Order: Warrior, Spearman, Spearman, Spearman, Spearman (Ignore supply cap at this part of the game!)

Spoiler War and Tribute :

I declare war on Siam and attack the city twice, earning a lot of gold. I buy another spearman. After raiding, my spear goes north to clear that camp. This turn I cleared a camp, took my second social policy, the immediately got heavy tribute from Bratislava.

Spoiler Religion? :

Pantheon comes on turn 40. What would you take?
Love, God-King, God of All Creation, Fertility, and Protection were all taken already.

 

[Minh Le]

Im thinking about beauty, you gonna need those GE to connect strategic resources.

 

[Stalker0]

CrazyG, really glad to see you doing this. I think photojournals are now one of the best ways we can highlight balance concerns with real facts and data everyone can see.

Thank you for putting in the time to do this!

 

[amateurgamer88]

I feel like there are two options here. Beauty gets you GE sooner but its faith output is very lacking. Meanwhile, God of War provides you quite a bit of faith from clearing barbarian camps and future wars with Siam.

I guess the question is do you want more faith or do you want to connect resources sooner. Horsemen and Swordsmen are quite powerful but, even going Beauty, you can only connect one through a GE. The rest you might have to settle on top of the resources. However, your odds of getting a religion is going to be lower overall. God of War means you'll use weaker units but I'm sure you can come out on top nonetheless with your skills.

 

[Stalker0]

Normally I would go with God of War but the whole no worker thing does shake it up. Beauty's ability to snag you a few more GP would be useful

 

[CrazyG]

I actually mistyped last night. God of War was taken by an AI, (I mixed it up with protection). I wouldn't take it either way, Denmark is not Aztec!

 

[YukiN]

I agree with Minh Le that Beauty is really good. Renewal is also very tempting given the amount of unimproved forest you'll probably work to the South.

 

[CrazyG]

I went with Wisdom for my pantheon. Science is nice.

Spoiler War :

At this point I've cleared all four of the barbarian camps that appeared and tributed all three of those city states. I have spearmen so I'm dominating Siam in war pretty easily. I get several chances to take Si Satchanalai, but I don't. As Denmark you don't really benefit from conquering cities.

I earn my fourth social policy on turn 48, I now get science kills. My military is big enough so at this point I get a settler out there, as well as my free settlers.

Spoiler Viking Gold is really powerful :

I surround the city and get 200 gold for hitting it. I don't conquer it. Conquering it is pointless and I gain basically nothing by doing so.

I got Statue of Zeus because I have a ton of gold and hammers without anything to use them on. I settle my next city on top of truffles to connect them. I pump out 3 more settlers quickly, all of these cities are building shrine first. Time to get some faith. I can invest in most of them, at this stage the viking ability has given me around 600 gold. It also provided crucial gold to get a spearman earlier, enabling me to tribute those city states much more quickly. I'm thinking 5 or 6 turns earlier, which is a huge deal.

Spoiler Another Continent :

I meet Spain who appears to be by herself on another continent. I've also finished researching sailing, the science from wisdom and from imperium speeding up the tech significantly. Siam and I are momentarily at peace. I also met a faith CS behind Siam's land, which I manage to tribute from and clear a nearby barbarian camp.

Spoiler Runestones Completed :

I have 5 runestones, the last one finishes on turn 82, invested because of viking and tribute.. Time to start pillaging.

Within those 5 turns I earn 355 culture and production. Of my per turn culture of 26, 12 is from Runestones. The building has probably increased my culture by 3x or 4x. In production, its already paid for itself. I'm teching towards swordsmen because I want swordsmen. One market is complete, I can use that Great Merchant to connect more horses or iron.

Quite frankly, at this point I would normally just stop playing because I think I'm in such a dominant position even if I do miss religion. I have more social policies than I should, and my cities are doing absurdly well in production (I'm building trade units and granaries that I don't even want).

Question, am I allowed to build a road to a coastal city? Otherwise I cannot ever get city connections.

 

[amateurgamer88]

I think you should be allowed to build roads. Now, whether or not your Towns can benefit from it is a different question.

I can see you emphasizing the power of Denmark but I find it so gamey to only pillage and never conquer a city. I guess it's a good thing that AI Denmark isn't capable of such a thing.

 

[Minh Le]

Its not gamey. Its the Viking way. Raiding then left. In other game with the Danes Im also do this too, come raiding then left, I dont conquer with them .

 

[amateurgamer88]

Its not gamey. Its the Viking way. Raiding then left. In other game with the Danes Im also do this too, come raiding then left, I dont conquer with them .

Haha, I won't call it gamey if the AI Denmark does it too. I guess it just doesn't suit my style so, after my photojournal, I don't see myself playing Denmark again. They seem too broken to be fixed.

 

[CrazyG]

I'm going to build a single road to just one city, then delete the worker. I won't put any towns on it.
I've also decided I won't attack city states for yields.

I guess it just doesn't suit my style so, after my photojournal, I don't see myself playing Denmark again. They seem too broken to be fixed.

This is how I feel. The rewards for raiding being so much higher than the rewards for outright conquering just causes silliness. Other civs can sort of abuse killing units or capturing cities, but its no where near what Denmark can do. The key is just that workers don't need to be rebuilt, so for the rest of this game Siam will always be able to repair his tiles.

Also, runestones aside, Viking is giving me so much gold. Like Carthage levels of gold on this tiny continent. Imagine if I had more than one neighbor.

If I wanted to be really gamey, I'd could build some workers and intentionally lose them to Siam during a war.

 

[amateurgamer88]

I'm going to build a single road to just one city, then delete the worker. I won't put any towns on it.
I've also decided I won't attack city states for yields.

This is how I feel. The rewards for raiding being so much higher than the rewards for outright conquering just causes silliness. Other civs can sort of abuse killing units or capturing cities, but its no where near what Denmark can do. The key is just that workers don't need to be rebuilt, so for the rest of this game Siam will always be able to repair his tiles.

Also, runestones aside, Viking is giving me so much gold. Like Carthage levels of gold on this tiny continent. Imagine if I had more than one neighbor.

If I wanted to be really gamey, I'd could build some workers and intentionally lose them to Siam during a war.

If you think Viking is bad now, get some Landsknechts and you'll see broken. Their promotions stack so you'll be swimming in so much gold.

I like the uniqueness of Denmark but it's such a hard thing to balance. If they can make it so that you only get to proc Runestone once for each tile, then I think that's manageable as it's suddenly finite and you have to think carefully when to pillage and when not to. I do think that will be exceptionally tough but, if they can do it with cities where your bonuses only happen once per city, maybe there's a slight possibility. Otherwise, I'll stay away from them.

 

[Minh Le]

It would be perfect if you get reduced reward for each time you Viking raid a city or pillage a tile. Because no town can be raided forever right? Also make it unable to steal gold when your enemy has notthing left is nice too.

 

[Stalker0]

I say no roads. Show us the true cheesy power of vikings, no roads, nada!

 

[Owlbebach]

Ideally i think it should be some sort of a counter that counts how many tiles you have pillaged over the past ~10-15 turns. The higher it is - the lower is your reward. So that if you pillaged 0 tiles over the past 10 turns - you get 100% reward, but if you pillaged 10 tiles over the past 10 turns - you get only 50% reward. And if you pillaged 20 tiles over the past 10turns you get only 1 culture and production per city.

Makes perfet sense imo (the richer you are - the less happy you are after new pillage) and actualy seems to be quite easy to implement on paper

 

[chicorbeef]

Denmark has been changed to provide Gold instead of Production. You also can't pillage City-States. I think we should let these changes settle first before we decide to nerf Denmark further.

Anyway, CrazyG, while you've certainly solidified your early game..what makes you think you've won? There are still possibilities of trans-continental runaways and those can really ruin your day. If you're just going to pillage Siam forever, I assume you'll have to eventually make peace to rest up war weariness...I dunno, I just feel like this game has a lot to go before we can call it done.

Unless you get Berserkers and go raid Spain at the same time...

 

[CrazyG]

If you're just going to pillage Siam forever, I assume you'll have to eventually make peace to rest up war weariness...I dunno, I just feel like this game has a lot to go before we can call it done

Because pillaging Siam alone puts me in such a good position. I have the best late game in the game because Runestones scale with era. Poland or Brazil won't match my culture. Maybe Korea is in the game and a science threat, but I think I'll beat him military easily enough. I'd be dominating to an absurd extent if I could improve resources. War wariness is nothing (pillaging tiles doesn't give you war wariness!). Happiness doesn't matter, without improved tiles I'm not growing much (nor should I grow much).

I suppose if Korea runs away it could be a problem. Also, I'm not going to raid city states this game.

 

[azum4roll]

(pillaging tiles doesn't give you war wariness!)

Wait it doesn't? Doesn't it give your enemy war weariness, which in turn gives you 50% of it?