King of the World #15: Ragnar

[Bolddrengen]

I tried again, it went good. Doing pretty good, among the best in tehcs, and have killed off england.
I went with 3 warrios from start, then workboat and then greatwall. Yeah... no workers around

 

[dalamb]

If you want the GW REALLY fast you could settle on the otherwise-lousy stone location and tech mining > masonry, but that's probably a bad idea (lousy food). Settling in place lets you work the pigs for somewhat faster growth and teching than in your original plan. There are decent coastal sites SW (probably claimed by Cathy, though) and SE (doesn't look like anybody is nearby). If you go AH > Archery, you get AH in 22 turns just before you finish the worker, and can quickly get pigs and deer working.

Spoiler map spoiler :

There's a forested stone site with deer 3NW 1N where you could settle. I dunno if you have time to get Mining > Masonry, plus build the GW, after AH > Archery before the barbs show up though. Maybe it would be safe to skip archery and go AH > Mining > Masonry? That looks to be 56 turns at most (if only working 2 worth of tiles). Do the barbs show up sooner than that? would warrior fogbusters help enough?

 

[bestsss]

The thing that concerns me about making the first settler at size 5, then going for the wall, while defending with just warriors is that it makes the expansion phase start really late, when good sites might've been lost already, and considering we have Catherine and Victoria as our neighbors a foreign invasion is not out of the question.

Cathy you cant touch to stop expanding and she is basically blocked.
Vicky has as much problem w/ barbarians as we do.

The city grows quite quick w/ the 2 food resource improved and can build warriors in 2 turns. Not bad at all. Again, if you get archers the barbs will go for the pillage

Spoiler :

I got copper w/ settler at 5 and actually it's the only possible good location to settle that can be taken by Vicky.
There is space for settling 2+1 cities before get boxed. Vicky is a real pushover and killed easily her w/ HAs/Jumbos.

If you get great wall/mids the game is over. Everyone teches dead slow.
Since currency kept 100% research w/ negative >80 gpt, just selling tech. and the map.
1st to lib [very unlucky great people 2 great spies/2 great artists/1ge], yet w/ huge lead and Cathy is about to kiss the ring.

 

[Raizer]

Probably part of it was the start. Without raging barbs, that start normally gets more barbarian attack than others, so it's not surprising that under Raging Barbarians, the pressure is even greater.

IMO, AH is not so necessary and can be researched later.

 

[LuCiver]

Re-start with a new random location.

Look for a hill to settle on.

Archery first, and build worker, *archer for a while.

With raging barbs, the AI will be having even more trouble than you getting off the ground. In the opening phase it is you vs. Barbs, not you vs AI. Play defense. Pillaging sucks, but you can still work an unimproved tile. Worker should focus on chopping forest away in your first ring and building ROADS to provide mobile defense.

 

[capnvonbaron]

dude... sucktacular. I say give it a take-two. DeGaulle got a second chance (sorta) so why not Rags?

Would fogbusting the northern tiers be out of the question? I admit I don't know how much land is up to your north.... are the British Isles and Scandanavia connected to the mainland?

 

[Chieron]

dude... sucktacular. I say give it a take-two. DeGaulle got a second chance (sorta) so why not Rags?

Would fogbusting the northern tiers be out of the question? I admit I don't know how much land is up to your north.... are the British Isles and Scandanavia connected to the mainland?

The North Sea is a plain of ice, nothing worthwhile north of the Seine. Fogbusting this map isnt getting very far.

Try again, sure, but there'll be barbs aplenty even without having them raging.

 

[weekend_warrior]

Successful shadow game:

Spoiler :

I think I had a little more success then some other people. Teched Archery to start and went barrack- archer-archer-worker. The worker was a waste; needing mining, bronze working and masonry to make use of the stone is too much and I was easily beaten to the Great Wall. And by the time the barbs came around I couldn't afford to have him do anything outside the city. Although by routing my scout north to fog busting before heading east I bought about 3 turns before the barbs came (compared to Neal's game.)

The barbs never made a dent in my 2 archer city defense. I built a settler during the chaos and used a 2 archer escort to found a city in the east. I did the same to found a city by the horses to the north-east. Around here I quit, still getting pounded by barbs, but now having enough archers to use my lone worker, well behind score-wise the other civs, with 3 very good and protected citys.

I can't wait to see Neals 2nd attempt at this. Very very interesting game!

 

[Neal]

re: Laughing at my Misfortune- Hey, I'm right there with you. After a few moments of dumbfounded shock, I had a good, long chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all. I've gotten a bit of a swollen head regarding this game, lately. Spankings like this every now and again keep me humble

re: Strategy- I don't think there's really an option regarding opening tech. Anything that's not Archery is suicide. Regarding Catherine "doing so well," well, she does start with Archery. And she has plenty of other Immortal bonuses to boot. And she doesn't have that accursed North Sea spawning ground on her doorstep. I don't think I've ever been under this heavy a siege before, except maybe upon my first expansion into South America as the Inca. And even then I had Chile as a failsafe. Once you establish a border, you can either go Great Wall (in which case you're immediately hemmed in by your Imperialist neighbors) or Settler (in which case you'll be working unimproved tiles for thousands of years while Barbarians set up camp within your borders). It's really, really tough.

re: What now- I'm gonna mess with it, tonight and tomorrow. If I come up with something promising, I'll write it up and we'll move on, pretending this horrible round didn't really happen. But I'm starting to think that I may have bitten off more than I can really chew, here. If that's the case, and I can't make it work, should I dial it back to Emperor or Monarch and try again, or should we just chuckle at my ineptitude and return to the real Earth map we know and love?

 

[Capellan]

If this game falls through, I'd love to see a nearly-vanilla Roosevelt game (the only edits being the the map changes from the Saladin game). Catherine would also be a fun one, if you go for hordes of Cossacks.

 

[Jehoshua]

Id say chuckle at your ineptitude and get back to the earth map. A loss is a loss and serves to make even the loftiest of kings (the KotW in this case) kowtow before the barbarians and get in touch with their humble, servile side.

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Id really like to see a game as either babylon or sumer with an ancient start (possibly including the arabs) With that start your basically surrounded by hostiles with a lack of any strategic metals (excepting the northern copper which you'll have to fight persia for) which should make for an interesting game. (and the barbarian problem goes mysteriously away like it never existed)

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Of course a game as roosevelt would be interesting but an american game so soon after sitting bull ( the short india game and the experimental body swapping game in the interegnum) would be unfortunate. Although if you can get a full game out of ragnar then perhaps it would be more acceptable to me. [although i still prefer a game as gilgamesh/hammurabi in mesopotamia]

 

[Rubbaduck]

After playing some more of my own game and giving yours a shot, I noticed that the AI has MUCH more trouble with the barbs. We have a nice wall of forest around the capital, some of it on hills. The AI, contrary to many claims here, seldom goes for pillaging, and then you can put garrisons on resources or attack them.

Strategic placement of the second city on a hill to the northeast will also allow you to get three safe cities in Italy running scientists, while the capital and the hilltop city suck up all the barbs.

If it seems too difficult with Ragnar, maybe a guy with a resourceless UU would be better, say Babylon or ...You've already played the rest of them :/.

 

[Airefuego]

If it seems too difficult with Ragnar, maybe a guy with a resourceless UU would be better, say Babylon or ...You've already played the rest of them :/.

Wait.. too difficult? No!

we have an aggressive leader, we know (to an extent) the map, we know it's raging barbs, we know we have stone and we also know (now!) that archery first is a good idea...

armed with this knowledge we can get this right...

After all if Ragnar wasn't born to tame the icy north of Europe, who was?!

 

[Rubbaduck]

^Hence the 'if'. Myself I found it rather difficult, though that's probably just because I'm a Prince-level player normally...

 

[Killroyan]

I really hope for a replay. The starting position is so good. GOod luck with this Neal, tough start and tough luck last game.

 

[Bolddrengen]

I've gotten into this game for real, took some time aswell.

With only two cities I have managed to get far ahead in tech. Almost got Steel from lib, but had to go with chemestry as William was close to getting it aswell. But I've managed to take over all of England with a mix of Granadiers and Cannons. Still got a solid tech lead to Russia, but she got 5X my powerrating 8X my empire size and 4 vassels, will post if I should survive.

It's very interesting, I can't decide if I will go for attacking weak oppenents, or if I should go for the big dog now. Thinking I should try the big dog here, but it's damn hard, but really lots of fun at the same time I love this game

My start was 3 warriors, workboat, greatwall. Worker Worker and then settler
Was lucky yhr warriors survived only had one standing in the end, but managed. My tech was Mining -> Masonry and then BW. Was abit lucky with huts though, got wheel from huts and pottery later on. Maybe helped alot. My second city was founded NE of the fish you can see in the south. England in my game really hardly had any problems with the barbs for some reason, maybe some improvements, but no cities where lost :O

 

[JoeHollywood]

I've been lurking on this one...

In my opinion the best defense is not to let the barbs spawn so close...

I'd probobally do a scout-warrior-worker build with archery as my first tech if you do a replay...

Scouts on a hill can fogbust quite nicely, and they can be repositioned a lot easier to help stop barb spawns so close.

You're going to need archers to deal with the waves that come from afar though.

And whoever mentioned a diety rome game...

NOW YOU'RE TALKING!

 

[Bolddrengen]

I am 100% sure the way to go here would be The Great Wall. Skip pretty much everything else expect this.

 

[madscientist]

AT Immortal I am pretty sure he's not getting the Great Wall built before he is overrun by those raging Barbs. Neal needs defense and fogbusters first, thus

1) Tech: Archery/mining/BW/Masonry/wheel

2) Spam 1 worker and warriors/archers for a defensive eprimeter.

3) Once the stone is hooked up then Build the Great Wall real fast.

At that point you can expand.

 

[UWHabs]

Could always try it out again, but without raging barbs. I know it takes away some of the fun, but for me, I prefer battling my opponents and not the barbs. I still think Ragnar on an ice age map would be fun to see, raging barbs or not.