Help Ragnar become a Deity

[Nordic Civ]

Hello all,

I've logged more than 1000 hours on Civ 4 BTS, all of them only with Ragnar, on standard size map, Epic speed, currently on Emperor level and sort of stuck.

I believe some of the reason I am stuck on Emperor is due to Ragnars leadership traits, because when I played with some of the new leaders from the BAT mod such as Harald Hadrade (agressive, charismatic), I win more often than not.

My typical experience is this. After my first one or two wars, I am in a good position having subdued my neighbors, but usually lag behind in science. This is mostly because of Ragnars poor rapid expansion traits I think, charismatic for example allows much less unhappiness and cultural would allow more resources and better land grabbing. Much seems to be up to chance, how religon and wars pan out on the other continent, do I have enough ships to launch an attack of the other continent.

Maybe I am just not playing correctly. Ragnar does seem quite limited in strategy at this level, making war a necessity. I never manage to get good mid game results or mid game wonders.

Your input is appreciated, keep in mind, I do not micromanage and prefer it like that. I am familiar with specialist and cottage economy though, but prefer a more free flowing game.

 

[shakabrade]

Hi Nordic Civ, welcome to the forums!

Regarding other stuff, traits are not holding you back as you can win on any difficulty with any traits. Especially with FIN, which is, don't let the name fool you, really good for your finances.
Ragnar is good for expansion because Ragnar can support his large empire with FIN. Also, Epic Emperor is really good for Axe Rushes in which Aggressive trait also helps a lot. If you have trouble getting a lot of cities, you probably don't know benefits of Slavery and also chopping forests.

Don't focus on leader but on yourself. All limits are your own.

Great extent of micro can be done without mental effort (I prefer it that way, Pareto principle). But automatic improvements will lead you nowhere near higher levels and if you prefer it that way then why Civfanatics and not some Steam forum, I'd say. But now that you are here, start simply by reading a lot of threads. Especially the ones where people shadow each other's games. Look what they do and why they do it, you must put some effort.

That part of types of economies is really taken too strict. Economy should be chosen as best one for your land and circumstances. And can vary city by city.

 

[SnipedSoul]

You should go watch AbsoluteZero let's play videos on youtube. His YT name is Chris67132. He has a variety of games on there to show how you can adapt to different situations.

The things that have really helped me improve my game are:

1) Spam more cottages. Approximately half my cities work nothing but food for growth, special tiles, and cottages. FIN makes this even easier as non-river cottages don't take forever to become useful.

2) Abuse slavery to the max. Have a couple cities that overlap heavily with a "core" city. These overlap cities can help grow cottages for the core city's BFC while working farms in their own BFC. Grow them as large as possible, then whip them into oblivion once you get a key military tech. With 2 cities starting at size 10 or 12, you can 2 pop whip a LOT of units on your way down to size 2 or 4. Don't stop whipping until a city will be so unhappy that it can't work special tiles. Your core city can take over the cottages lost to whipping.

3) Pick a decent techer that is not hated by the rest of the world and get them to friendly ASAP. Open borders, long-term resource trading, shared religion, and favorite civics will all help you get +10 relations. This civ will be key to keeping you in the tech race until you have a large empire full of villages and towns. Make sure you can see what they are teching via espionage. Research something to trade with them. Popular choices for trade techs are music and philosophy (bulbed). The AI usually won't trade these techs for a while, so you can get a lot of value out of them.

4) Trade/beg for gold as often as possible. You can get thousands of gold by selling cheap techs, surplus health/happy resources, and begging from your friends. This can make all the difference in powering you to an important tech like music which you then trade around for lots of other goodies.

5) Don't build too many units in the early game. I used to be so paranoid of wars that I would keep a massive standing army. The result was huge maintenance costs and slow tech rate. I personally like to bribe the warmongers on other civs to distract them and foster long-lasting hatred. If the war target is not well-liked globally, you can even DoW them yourself to improve relations with the warmonger. Do your best with diplomacy to make sure that you won't have wars on multiple fronts.

6) Don't build too many buildings. Most buildings are just bad until your city is large and the surrounding land is improved. Markets, in particular, are a trap. They are absurdly expensive unless you have 3 or 4 of the boosted happy resources, a shrine, or a bureau capital. Cottage growth is your #1 priority outside of emergency war situations. Science/gold buildings can wait until you have lots of villages and towns. The exception is making sure you have enough universities/theaters/etc. for national wonders. I will build most of these in my production cities to avoid sacrificing cottage growth.

Ragnar is pretty solid. Try some of the tips I mentioned and let me know how it works for you!