Raiding with Ragnar

[Kark]

Greetings from Nidaros, Norway. (Today known as Trondheim.)

Living in the Viking capital, my favourite leader of course must be Ragnar. Mostly mentioned in this forum as an AI opponent, so maybe he’s not so popular? I’ve just won my first monarch victory (almost) without cheating (domination victory). Berserkers upgraded to amphibious grenadiers makes great fun, especially as the AI tends to prioritize riflemen. Later on upgraded to amphibious infantry, the fun goes on.

I prefer playing Ragnar on snaky continents. In war this gives him the realistic advantage of the Viking age, but first the opportunity to peacefully establish contact with other Civs without too great risk of being attacked. This peace of course ends as soon as I have a handful of axemen. Well, sometimes it’s wiser to delay the attack until the arrival of the berserker. In the meantime the axemen can practice on some barbarians – before upgrading to nice berserkers.

Any Ragnar fans out there?

 

[Imrahil91]

Yes, I'm a Ragnar fan, too. I'm also from Norway I haven't been playing so much that I've tried alot of tactics, and I've only won a Noble victory. I'm doing the Ragnar scenario, but I'm getting trouble when the enemies are getting swordmen and longbowmen, hard to kill them when defending cities.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

I'm surprised Ragnar doesn't get more love. The amphibious promotion is map specific (it can be great, it can be useless) but Ragnar is aggressive and financial. The UB is reasonable as well since you are going to build it in coastal cities anyway and the benefit is like a free circumnavigation.

I like him primarily for his traits since both financial and aggressive are very easy to use and powerful.

 

[Herod]

Greetings from Nidaros, Norway. (Today known as Trondheim.)

I’ve just won my first monarch victory (almost) without cheating (domination victory). Berserkers upgraded to amphibious grenadiers makes great fun, especially as the AI tends to prioritize riflemen. Later on upgraded to amphibious infantry, the fun goes on.


Any Ragnar fans out there?

The financial trait is arguably the most powerful trait in the game. Just out of interest what map type were you playing on?
Ive only ever played continents because the early boats annoy me with their lack of capacity and non-ocean going properties.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

try archipello maps, snaky continents. and start raiding/razing the ai. and get back in the boat.

 

[Kark]

As I said: I prefer playing Ragnar on snaky continents (the variant of archipelago). This makes communication possible without early boats. You can focus on getting bronze working before sailing – which you need fairly early of course, to get the benefits of trading posts. Building trading posts before galleys are a must. The extra movement point reduces the need of triremes for protection. Just run away from the AI’s triremes. Well – eh – I usually builds a couple, but mostly I concentrates on galleys until I’ve got caravels.

The problem mentioned by Imrahil91, about swordmen and longbowmen: The classic solution against longbowmen is getting catapults. They are fairly cheap and can be sacrificed. With berserkers yourself, swordmen are the least of the problems.

And it’s important to produce early axemen. Use them against barbarians to get promotions to city raider. Then upgrade to berserker, and you only need a few catapults to help them capturing almost any city for a long time.

Most important on snaky continents: Always go for early amphibious grenadiers. Always. They are awesome. Especially when you get frigates and can bombard all those nice costal cities just waiting for you to raid them.

 

[Electryon]

I'm a Viking fan too. I usually play on some variety of archipelago to take advantage of the Vikings seafaring advantages. Lately though I keep running into maps where I don't have access to Iron or Copper, and of course no one will trade with me. I would love to just go take it from them but it's hard to do with just Warriors and Archers

 

[Sjaramei]

Who is Ragnar by the way? I've never heard of him?

Does he have a place in history or did they pick the name cause it's "cool"?

Edit: Silly me.. why didn't i think of checking in the game first .... swedish king! I'm disappointed

 

[Leeksoup]

Edit: Silly me.. why didn't i think of checking in the game first .... swedish king! I'm disappointed

Swedish?
SWEDISH?!

I... I can't even look at you.


You blasphemer, he was a mighty semi-legendary Viking Chieftan/General whose work in England nearly toppled the nation before it got powerful.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Edit: Silly me.. why didn't i think of checking in the game first .... swedish king! I'm disappointed

Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue,
Orn desh, dee born desh, de umn børk børk børk!!"

Orn flim der boat umn sinkee sinkee... joost toorn it upseede-doon und blame-a zee Norvegian

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

Who is Ragnar by the way? I've never heard of him?

He was a collector. He loved to collect shiny things.

 

[Sjaramei]

Swedish?
SWEDISH?!

I... I can't even look at you.


You blasphemer, he was a mighty semi-legendary Viking Chieftan/General whose work in England nearly toppled the nation before it got powerful.

He was from the area known as sweden today. That means he was swedish

 

[Kark]

Almost all we know of Ragnar Lodbrok are from the not too reliable Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (about 1200 AD) and from some even less reliable Icelandic legendary sagas. He may have been from what’s known as Denmark today, or from Sweden, or from some other place, or he may not have existed.

 

[Jenarie]

I like Ragnar. Partly for the financial/agressive and partly 'cause I like purple.

 

[cabert]

I like purple

That's why you want to play prince(ss) ?
(purple rain is quite old now, but it's still purple)

I tried playing WotM 6 with ragnar, but without "testing" him, I found I was completely in foreign land.
I don't know how to play him, really.
Should be easy, with 2 nice traits, an excellent UB, a good UU.
But I just don't get it.

 

[Shawnosaurus]

I don't know why I don't play Ragnar more often. I do pretty well when I play the vikings. I also really enjoy the berserker fight animation, when they bring both axes together on that longbow sissies head.. ouch.

The berserker also comes around tech wise right around when I am ready to destroy some mouthy neighbors. So that works out nicely. Although I sometimes get the berserker song from clerks in my mind as they storm a city...

My love for you is like a truck, Berserker
Would you like some making ****, Berserker
My love for you is like a rock, Berserker

Yea, Ragnar is one of my favorites

.

 

[Akadah]

I am also a big fan of Ragnar. So here's my question: How would you play when you find yourself alone on an island? I try to get Caravels ASAP, but always find myself behind in techs by the time I meet other Civs.

 

[DigitalBoy]

Even though I tend to play as nobody but Alexander (and occassionally Kublai Khan), I'm surprised I haven't tried out Ragnar. His traits, UU, and UB are all pretty good.

 

[Polycrates]

Vikings are great, and one of the civs where everything just fits together so perfectly (his only rival here being Shaka).
Financial favours lots of coastal cities; faster ships, Aggressive and an amphibious UU makes taking coastal cities a breeze; Financial helps you fund your aggression; high tech rate plus already fast ships means almost certainly first to circumnavigate for even faster ships; and the UU comes just when you hit your stride, gets the aggressive bonus, and is perfect for coastal strikes behind enemy lines.

Akadah: When you're alone on an island, I'd suggest really taking advantage of Financial and cramming every square foot of coastline with cities - your coastal squares bring in a lot of commerce and really should not be wasted. Hurry to Optics, trying to pick up the Colossus on the way (it makes ocen squares great too). I'd definitely make one of my (probably inland) cities a Great Scientist pump too for an academy and lightbulbing some of the Liberalism path. Find others, tech trade some of the stuff you've missed, then go for astronomy and go kick some heads, while getting big trade routes from some others. That's what I'd do, anyway.

 

[Kark]

An alternate way of playing Ragnar, is on a Terra map. First I regenerated the map until I got a costal capital. (Inland Viking cities are of little use in the early game.) After building up a decent force of berserkers upgraded to amphibious grenadiers, I aimed for astronomy and sent six of them across the ocean in a couple of galleons. Over there they easily conquered the native longbowmen. When at last the AI civs followed, I controlled almost all of the New World (in the Viking age known as Vinland). Finally this led to a domination victory. It seems like the AI are not too eager colonizing the New World.

My initial BC-4000 file is attached, if anybody likes to try it. Monarch game, build 2.0.8.0.