Go Berserk? (Suggestions on my current game.)

[Legba]

I just recently made the switch from Noble to Prince and I'm getting stomped. My current game is kinda interesting, so I decided to put it out there and see what advice I get. I'm not doing too bad for once, but I feel like I'm at a big turning point and the decisions I make now will decide whether I win or lose... If anyone would mind looking over my saved file and giving me some suggestions on what I may be doing right or wrong, such as city placement and specilization and such; and what I should do from here, I'd be much obliged.

Civ: Vikings, Ragnar (Aggressive, Financial)
Year: 590 A.D.
Difficulty: Prince
Map Type: Fractal
Map Size: Large
Game Length: Epic
Climate: Temperate
Sea Level: High

I'm situated alone on a decent sized island, to the southest is another smaller island, and beyond that is the main continent. To the north of the continent are two more islands roughly the same sizes as the two near me. I can reach all this land with galley's.

Hatshepsut, Mansa Musa, Genghis Khan, Brennus, Victoria, and Qin Shi Huang are all crammed together on the big continent. Shaka is on the northern islands in a similar situation as me, and the last Civ must be isolated out in the ocean somewhere.

Eastern part of Continent:
The Hatshepsut is on top with the most land covering the northeast and northcentral, thanks to her cultural trait. Her ally Mansa Musa is in second and is in the southeast. Genghis is in a horribly weak position in the far southest, boxed in by Mansa Musa. They are all Buddhist.

Western part of Continent:
The Hindu Victoria, who is in third place is in the northwest The Confusian Qin Shi Huang is in the southwest. Brennus is Christian, is directly east of Qin and judging by his score, is in a weak position.

Current situation:
I decided to emphasize commerce and infrastructure for the early game. I didn't really want to do this strategy, since one reason that I tend to loose games on Prince is not building a big enough army. I decided to do it anyway since I was alone on an island and I'd only be fighting barbarians for quite awhile.

I have six cities, four on my starting island and two on the smaller island, with room for around four or five more when I'm ready to expand. I have built the Lighthouse and Collossus in my capital, and the Pyramids is in my only landlocked city. Confusianism and Christianity have spread to one city apiece. I currently am in fourth place, on the score and am doing a fair job at keeping up with the tech race.

Diplomatic situation:
Everyone dislikes Victoria, and she's not very pleased with me. She's fought a brief war with Hatshepsut that recently ended. Forseeing that my big rivals would be Hatshepsut and Mansa Musa, I made the unwise decision of trying to find allies in Qin and Brennus who were both Confusian at the time of my decision. Confusianism had just spread to one of my cities as well, so I converted. Brennus was a decent partner until he discovered Christianity, converted, and then instantly hated me. Qin is an awful trading partner who doesn't trade techs easily. My only choice to keep up in the tech race is to trade with the enemy, Hatshepsut and Mansa Musa

Qin is Pleased, but everyone else is either Cautious or Annoyed with me.

Possible strategy:
I am about 15 turns away from discovering Civil Service and getting my Berserkers. The top rivals have just recently started getting longbowmen. I'm thinking that Mansa and Hatshepsut, together, are going to be able to out-tech me. So, my initial idea is that I need to get a huge war started on that continent in order to stop Hatshepsut and Mansa Musa from pulling too far ahead. It appears as though this is a good situation in which to use the Berserkers. The only problem is that this would require a massive fleet, which I haven't built, and a massive army, which I don't have.

I need some suggestions on how to prepare for this war and how I can get some possible allies. My goal is for a conquest or dominance win, but if this war doesn't go so good, I may just try to cripple Mansa and Hatshepsut as much as possible and go for a space victory.

What do you think? Thanks again.

 

[Kietharr]

Ok, I can't look at the save right now, but when building up for midgame military rampages, you can do the following:

1. Focus cities PURELY to production of units. They can get buildings that will enhance unit production (barracks, stable, drydock, Heroic Epic for your best production city, forges, granary, ect.). Ideally, these citys will have:

Food Sources: one loaf resource (any irrigated grain, fish, pigs) or multiple floodplains or 4 slice resources. Grassland farms will work in a pinch but will never fuel the best production city, especially once you get State Property. The more the merrier, only bad one IMO is hill sheep because it's one less plains hill you can mine.

Plains hills: as many as you can get in the fat cross. These are the best production tiles in the middle ages, getting 4 hammers each mined. Metals are a very nice bonus, adding several extra hammers to any tile they're on and allowing you to put mines on flat land in some cases. Horses, Cows and Sheep also add hammers when improved.

Not within enemy striking range: Trust me, it sucks ass to have your HE city burnt to the ground by a SoD 3 turns after you sack their capital.

What to put in it: Your best city should have Heroic Epic and possibly Ironworks (someone else explain what makes a good ironworks site please, I hardly ever end up building it because the game is usually winding down at that point), or Westpoint. HE/WP is my usual combo, but HE requires a level 4 unit to have been under your command at some point to unlock it, and WP requires level 5.

All production cities need a Barracks and a forge, granary is also a very good choice because as it grows with only one or two major food sources it will start growing very slowly. I hardly ever whip things out of my production cities later in the game, as those pop points take forever to come back. If you're making calvary out of a city, put a stable in, it gives xp in addition to the barracks for mounted units. Same for a drydock and ships. You probably will want a culture building or two in there as well to make the borders pop and keep the AI culture away from your prime tiles if you're forced to have a production city on the border. Great generals are also a good thing to have. Personally, I always get one pre education and I settle him in my best city (settled they give you +2xp for every unit you make, very powerful), or occasionally I join him with a chariot to make a medic 3chariot to accompany my stack, makes the conquest go much faster. Education gives you the ability to make a military academy with a great general, which I believe gives you 25% extra military production in the city. It's good to put on in the HE city to make it even more beastly.

Later in the game with the assembly line tech, you want a factory and a coal plant (it's not worth the wait for hydro and nuke plants are FAR too dangerous to put in such critical cities) in every production city. The faces are just the price you have to pay to avoide a nuke going off in your city. Also, once you get railroads be sure to railroad every mine and lumbermill, it gives them an extra hammer for practically free. Also, consider running state property, it adds hammers to workshops and watermills and takes the -1 food off of workshops, while actually adding a food to watermills. These improvements are useless prior to SP imo, but after they can add dozens of hammers without impacting food.

It's best to follow these tips from the start of the game, but hopefully you'll have a few sites ripe for turning into factories.

 

[smokey t bones]

one good idea, legba, is to court some allies for your upcoming military drive by giving away technologies, old units, gold, etc. offer them up to your potential allies by offering them a deal with no payment on their end of the bargain. this might raise their opinions of you and make them more likely to unite with your empire in a war.

smokey t bones, ph.d.

 

[r_rolo1]

Legba, I've been looking at your game and my recomendation is to go berserk.
You have The great lighthouse and the colossus, so any coastal city will almost pay itself just with that, and there are some good looking cities in the northern coast of the big continent. You're 14 turns away form Civil service and have Machinery, so you aren't so far away from berserks. My advice ( take if with extreme care, i'm a prince player too) is to start building axes some turns from discovering Civil service without finishing them , try to stir things in the main continent (maybe you could try to bribe China to attack Victoria, and then you apear to rip the English coastal cites), finish your berserks after civil service and use and abuse of the free navigation I galleys and trirremes ( you need more of those) to put your Amphibious berserks anywhere you want.

 

[The Green Man]

I also think war with Victoria is probably a good idea. If you want Qin Shi Huang to soften her up while you build your military, he'll do it for Construction and Machinery. Or, if you do the war declaration first, he only asks for Construction to join you. You will definitely need to crank up your war machine though, and I wouldn't wait for the berserkers to start - you could be making catapults and galleys while you wait for Civil Service to arrive.

You mentioned wanting suggestions about your cities, so here's what I noticed about them (keeping in mind though that I'm still a Noble newbie):

Uppsala: I don't think this city needed either the library or the market you built in it, as it looks like you mean it to be your primary production city. But since you have them, you should probably put down a few cottages to get something from them. You could cottage the three unimproved squares you're working, or perhaps instead farm the river-side forested grassland and cottage two plains squares.

Haithabu: This looks like your primary cottage farm, and as such I would've skipped the forge (or built it after other things, anyway). You've got enough food to whip your buildings here, especially if you work your grassland cottages first instead of the plains ones.

Birka: I wouldn't have built it where you did. Either 1E on the hill, or 1NE - that way you'd have a river-side grassland square in your fat cross, for farming. Spreading irrigation will also be a pain, unless you settle another city 5E from it - otherwise you'll have to wait for your culture to expand, farm a square you can't work, and then finally chain the farms into Birka-land.

Jelling: Needs culture more than hammers - better to start with a library there I think, rather than a forge. The seafood will allow you to whip your other buildings, netting you a lot more hammers than the forge will add, at least until the city matures.

You probably know better than me, so feel free to toss my suggestions if they're no good. Good luck in your game!

 

[Legba]

The Green Man:

Thanks so much for your comments. I think you pointed out a few areas I need to work on, mainly not trying to construct every building in every city as soon as possible. I always seem to assume my cottage cities won't be able to produce anything, when I need to remember to quite liberally use the whip!

As far as Birka is concerned, I had indeed planned to found another city 5 squares east, but I still agree that it's not too good of a spot. I wanted to build a town on the southside (where Jelling is) first in order to start mining those gems, but there was a barbarian city there when I went to settle. City placement always makes me nervous and is something I need to master. I tend to try to place my cities so that I have the most land worked in my territory with as little overlap as possible, rather than found on the best possible spot.

r_rolo1:
Starting axemen so that the hammers will eventually go to my Berserkers is something I didn't know I could do. Thanks! In hindsight, the best plan would've been constructing ships in between other builds ever since I discovered sailing, so by the time I could make berserkers I'd already have a massive fleet ready to feild them. I need to remember that for planned early sea invasions.

I totally agree with you now. Victoria is probably a much better target, especially since she won't give me open borders to allow me to go attack Hatshepsut. Vikings invading England makes more sense than Vikings invading Egypt anyway. I also wouldn't be loosing one of the few people willing to trade with me. It never really dawned on me that since I have the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus that I could keep the enemy coastal cities and not suffer as much from maintenance costs. Ragnar seems made to combo those two wonders and his financial trait, with an early sea invasion.

Kietharr and smokey t bones:
Thanks very much for the comments. They were really helpful.

 

[pigswill]

I had a quick look at your game. Victoria is likely to be your most serious rival in this game (check out GNP); if Vicky and Mansa tech trade they will establish a huge tech lead. Vicky is more likely to use her lead aggressively so best to take her out asap.
While waiting for CS build cats and ships. You can use cats defended by crossbows to whittle down cities while waiting for berserkers to administer the coup de grace.