RBC13G - Middle Ages - Norwegian Nightmares (Demigod)

[T_McC]

The reason I wasn't keen on exploring with the King units was because almost all of our terrain is movement cost 2 or 3. So a 1.1.2 doesn't get us very much more information than a warrior, so why take a risk? But we didn't start with any warriors, so I've got a sword poking around now. Might be interesting to put a King on a boat to check out the interior of Europe, although that too might be risky.

Longships do bust the fog rather quickly. We should make 2-3 more contacts on Bede's initial turns. (Abbasids and Byzantines, at least).

What struck me as odd was that the Danes spent money on the first production cycle. Must have been an embassy.

All of our Kings are 1.1.2. . I had them all out wandering.

Just to further clarify my research chocie: I suspect starting Byzantine Ingenuity --> Seafaring will get us to Blacksmiths about 7-8 turns later than going Seafaring --> Smithing. It'll probably be 40 turns before we get our pop back up after an initial settlement splurge, so we would be unlikely to get Seafaring in much less than 40 turns anyway. After our pop gets back up, we should be able to research Seafaring @2nd or 3rd fairly quickly. And we'll have an expensive tech to boot.

 

[T-hawk]

The Byzantine game started with two 1-1-2 kings and one 0-0-1. I didn't realize that different civs had different combinations of kings. Good to know.

Byz Ingenuity at minimum is certainly fine to start; I was just talking about plans for after that.

 

[Bede]

Got it.

 

[Bede]

There have been two revoltin' developments in 5 turns:
The Swedes built a ville smack dab in the center of our eastern lands and the English built Hastings SE of Borre where the quarry hill sits.

I was tempted to go smack the English trespassers, then thought why not let the town grow and take it then as it would save a settler build , and the same for Sweden's Stikelstadt to our east?

What do you think?

Course if the English build a worker first that's twenty turns away, at least. I could spend the coin for a city investigation I guess, to discern Matilda's plan.

I'll check back before proceeding.

 

[Kabuki]

Bede - could you throw up a screenie of those cities?

 

[Bede]

It'll take awhile. If you look at T-McC's dotmap a couple of posts back, the English city is on the blue dot SW of Borre and the Swedish city is centered between the three red dots.
Working on Screenshot now.

 

[Bede]

Yellow blob is Swede. Black is English.

 

[Kabuki]

Thanks Bede,

Since the English one is just where we want it, lets not waste a settler on it and capture it later.

As for the Swedish cities. Lets settle them just where we planned and take out the offender at a convenient point in time. This would be a very aggressive posture... so I'm not sure its the best solution as the Swedes are very likely to want to kick our ass. Then again we could always return the favour.

 

[T-hawk]

Let the Swedes have theirs for the moment; we're not geared up to fight them yet; we'll have to settle for other spots like maybe the second furs from the west and/or somewhere south of the Swedish blob.

The English city will grow (remember on Deity it's 6 turns for growth, not 10), and the AI will build a defender or two there before a worker. We can capture that when we're ready, which'll be fairly soon I think.

 

[Bede]

Yo, will send settler towards closest red dot.

Thanks, K.

 

[Bede]

After taking a closer look will send settler to saddle in mountains north of yellow blob, as I am assuming this city's pupose if to acquire lux, no?

 

[T_McC]

Agreed to capture Blue Square when we want to attack England. We don't need quarry anytime soon.

The two red squares are a response to the Swedish city. Should have seen the western one earlier, but that is a terrific site.

 

[Kabuki]

I agree completely with the western square. The Eastern square looks like its on the coundary of a Swedish city... and one that may have a cultural building as well. Not an improvement over the original placement IMO. I think western square and circle are both legitimate placements as long as we are willing to take the lumps that come with that.

The saddle placement looks like it only has one 2f square (assn: 1w from N red dot) in the initial 9 squares. This makes it a rather limited city. Our early city must be a productive one if nothing else.

 

[Bede]

T1-5 873-888
Exploring and dancing with Swede settler and Danish longships.
LS in Med meets Byzantines and Abassids and heads home along north coast of Med. I kept the build at Borre on Spears as Swedes are wandering around the borders. English found Hastings on our doorstep SW of Borre. As the city is bang on blue spot I decide to wait for it to grow before attacking. Open an embassy with the Celts just in case war starts with England. English sword is threatening Borre. Swede sword and berserk are moving through mountains toward Trondheim, one from the south and the other from the east. Swedes found Stiklestad taking in two fur tiles in ville radius and quarry tile in first expansion range.


Thanks for the help last night, guys!!

T6 891
I'm so busy watching the Swedes and English I forget that Trondheim is going to grow before it gets the settler and it riots as the garrison warrior is out keeping an eye on the Swede berserk coming from the east.

Longships are sailing around keeping an eye on the world and the garrisons at Trondheim and Borre are eyeing the English and the Swedes . The English sword is moving away from Hastings.

Dispatch Longship from Borre to Orkney to pick up worker.

T7 894
Settler completes at Trondheim, boards longship for trip to settlement site (4 turns rather than 7 or 8) Trondheim starts warrior.

Longships are cruising the Baltic and the Med.

T8 897
Sword and spear move eastward form Borre to check out settlement sites.

T9 900
Exploring coast of Italy in Med and Baltic Longship contacts the Rus.

Finn raiders ambush Longship in Baltic. All are sunk and longship promotes to elite.

Celts found Entremont south of Orkney.

T10 903
Baltic longship uncovers two Finn camps, a Finn Keshik and a blue border.

Med Longship sails past Burgundian Genoa and uncovers Cordovan Ansar on Italian Riviera.

Settler lands on hill SE of Borre and is covered by sword

Worker ferry leaves Orkney for Borre

Settler ferry picks up Berserk at Borre and sets sail for Finn camps for amphib training.

All the Catholic and Moslem nations have learned HBR and one of them sold it to the Danes. Of our contacts only the Swedes, the Rus and the Poles are lacking it. Best offer is more than we can afford.

Swede borders have expanded putting a real squeeze on the eastern settlement spot.



Norwegian Nightmares

Roster

T_McC
Bede-done
T-Hawk-up
Kabuki-on deck
Ville

 

[T-hawk]

I see it and can play tonight.

Are we in any wars yet? It's not quite clear from the reports. Was that neutral barbarians or another civ attacking our longship?

 

[Ville]

It was Finns IIRC so barbs

 

[T_McC]

No, we aren't in any wars yet. It was just the evil Finns attacking our boat. The Finns even have 3.2.3 Keshik Conscripts.

On the last dotmap, the eastern block is a cultural push on the Swedish capital, so that's not a good idea. The hill 2 NW of the Swedish outpost is a reasonable site for a city. Can only grow to size 4 now, but when we take the Swedish city both can grow to size 6 comfortably.

There is also a hill/fish site SW of Trondheim that can grow without lots of worker effort.

Heh, after looking at the save, we might need to find a plan and focus on it. We've got sort of a hodge-podge going on. Do we want to pop out a couple of more settlers, then prepare for war? Do we want to prepare for war immediately? Are we trying to get the 'zerks off MP duty in the British Isles? Who do we attack first?

My votes are: Two more settlers (maybe 1 from Trondheim and 1 from Borre). Boat 3-4 units to the British Isles, leaving 2 MP in each city there. (Can we spare two Swords? We can easily build replacements in our Barracks cities.) Bring the two 'zerks back to the core. Build a few more spears or swords and attack the English outpost. If we can get an MA with the Celts, our cities on the Isles should be safe, and we can concentrate on "float-by" killings after cleansing our core. Only fear is that we make the Celts too strong if we put a serious crimp in the English.

If we use our GA to build vet 'zerks, then we can do something about the Swedish problem soon after.

Feel free to veto the Temple I started in Sheep Hill. We're only at 11 shields there, so even a warrior wouldn't be very wasteful.

 

[T-hawk]

OK, here we go.

Yes, we need some kind of a coherent plan. We are WEAK. We are almost in last in the power graph, ahead of only Poland and Castile.

We need to add more powerful core cities for ourselves, and the single possible way to do that is attack Sweden. England is too far away to develop for ourselves. Amphibious attacks work just as well against other Vikings as they do against other civs, and as long as we have a few longboats to intercept incoming boats, our own cities should be safe.

But we've got to build up - a lot - before attacking either Sweden or the British Isles. The only war we can do in the short term is attack England to just grab Hastings, and hopefully get something good for peace like Horseback Riding.

What our cities are lacking is GROWTH. POPULATION IS POWER, always. Borre's worker should be having irrigation brought to its cow, not roading a forest. Stavanger needs those plains irrigated if it's ever going to grow, not its iron mined.

It takes me a long time on the inherited turn to decide what to build. I eventually decide that both Borre and Trondheim need workers more than anything else right now. Stavanger swaps to a settler to fill in the little river spot on the west coast.

==========

906 AD: We see that Hastings just built a worker, so it'll be some time before we're able to capture the city instead of razing it. I intend to have two Berserks on a boat ready to pounce the moment it grows to size 2, though.

The Danes landed a spear/settler pair on our west coast. Nothing we can do about it though.

The Swedes built a city and took out one of the Finn camps, and are going to get the other before we get there to do anything. So I keep our boat with the berserk at home, right outside Hastings.

We build our city on the hill outside Sweden, as planned. The game gives Dublin as the suggested name, which is just going to be confusing, so I rename it to Oslo.

Not much happens until...

924 AD: Hastings has grown to size 2 and it is time to pounce. We call up Empress Matilda of England and declare war. One Berserk is all that's needed to capture Hastings. This triggers our Golden Age -- I know it's early, but we need to get ourselves OUT of this hole.

The best thing we can do with the Golden Age is use it to push our cities' growth. Trondheim, Borre, and Oslo all swap to granaries.

I check the price for an alliance with the Celts - 17gpt, we can't afford that. Denmark won't ally for our entire economy. So we'll have to go it alone.


927 AD: Use another Berserk to knock off the English sword that was wandering around our area.


936 AD: I realize I miscounted and went one turn over. I haven't moved units on the 936 AD turn. Trondheim and Borre completed granaries, though.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbc13g-936ad.zip

 

[T-hawk]

 

[T-hawk]

Our Berserks are assembled in boats off the coast of England, but we DO NOT want to use them yet. Rather, WAIT until England will talk to us. Then ON THAT TURN, use the berserks to capture a city or two and immediately make peace.

We cannot defend any cities captured before that, and we will lose our berserks if we try. With that plan, we should be able to get Horseback Riding as a peace concession.

Denmark and Sweden have Seafaring tech, but we can't afford it yet. Hopefully we can pull a brokerage deal between that and Castle Building soon.

Other than England, we need to build up our core cities and build about 8-10 Berserks to go after Sweden next. Borre can grow quite fast now with the granary - have it build some workers. Trondheim needs to GROW as fast as possible to get our economy going - keep it set to work all water squares for +5 food per turn until it hits at least size 7.

Trondheim and Borre are both building spears now because they will need a third police unit. After they grow this turn, raise lux tax to keep all citizens working, and build berserks.

Get irrigation down to Stavanger pronto, so the city's growth isn't choked. It should actually probably build a temple instead of a barracks first, as that would pull in two more plains squares that will have irrigation soon.