Turn 0
Load/unload few units - unload archer, load axe, etc.
Turn 1
Dont know what to do with the 2 workers in a galley. Will move them along to Rheims.
Traded Calendar to Isabella for 40 - it seems she is close to discovering it herself.
Victoria is the only who dont have it (except Ragnar), so I trade it to her too for 80 gold. Easy money
(Dont kill me - I could not resist)
Turn 2
Scientist and Prophet are born somewhere. Catherine beats badly the poor Dutch and gets a Great General.
2pop Whip courthouse in Orleans.
Second turn at 100% espionage, our 2 spies are at 50% discount and yet not enough espionage for revolt. Our closed borders with Ragnar will cost us some more espionage.
Moving all 5 galleys full of fierce Frenchman.
Ragnar gets feudalism in 2, which is not good at all
Turn 3
Corsica finishes Theater, starts forge.
Tours finishes Archer, starts Trireme, as a barb galley have shown nearby
Our trireme near Guimaraesh encounters another barb galley. Doing nothing - if the galley wants, let she attacks us.
Finally we have enough espionage to incite revolt in Nidaros.
Our galleys are a bit late though.
Turn 4
Our trireme kills barb galley near Guimaraesh
2pop whip trireme in Tours - the barb galley is closing our fishing nets and also Tours is working unimproved tile.
Elba finishes theater -> sword
Marseiles finishes Granary -> sword
Ragnar moves out of Nidaros Horse Archer and 3 galleys - the first is super, the second - not so - I was hoping to catch all of his 6 galleys in the port of Nidaros and sink them. Lets hope he dont blockade the narrow sae pass to Nidaros. It will be real pain as we have only 1 trireme.
Turn 5
Tours finish trireme and start archer for MP. Move trireme on fish just in time. The barbs are near - let them come.
Rheims - Axe -> Sword
Elba 1pop whip Sword
Ragnar is almost strong as us - 1.1 ratio and Nidaros have 5 defenders now - Sword, HA, Spear, Chariot and Archer. I start to get nervous. The galley which unloaded the 2 workers is loaded with 2 axes. Start to wonder to postpone the attack with 2 turns to get those 2 there.
Turn 6
Catherine builds Hanging
Ragnar switches to Vasalage - good - 1 turn of anarchy for him.
Trireme near Tours kills barb galley, who tried to run away.
Dont know if we planned this for sure, but put Elba to build Great Library - will use overflow from whips to try and finish it.
Damn! Ragnar upgraded his archer in Nidaros to LB. All his galleys are back in Nidaros.
2pop whip spear in Paris, sword will be ready right after too. Have galley to pick them up - the one, who was west of Lens.
Wife kisses me good night passing by - it is already 5 minutes from monday.
Aint gonna wait any more soldiers - will declare on the next turn with 10 units only as was in the initial plan.
Turn 7
Music is finished.
Michelangelo is born in Elba.
Hinduism spreads to Elba and with this she becomes unhappy. A lot of happenings in Elba this turn.
But our attention is focused somewhere else.
Declared war to Ragnar and unloaded 10 units north of Nidaros. In the city there are only 3 defenders - LB, Sword and spear.
Move our 4- units "Lens" stack to jungle hill in Viking teritory - will search for metal or horses to pillage - they are not going to come in time for the assault of Nidaros anyway - those 10 guys there have to decide the war on themselves.
Science back to zero - 104 GPT.
Lyons, Rheims and Orleans - 2pop whips swords and galley.
Down to 90 GPT.
Turn 8
Out of a sudden Isabella declares us war. Who cares - she is the weakling of the world.
Ragnar showes some muscles bringing 6 HA and 4 swords to defend his capitol.
Surprisingly, Ragnar attacks our spear protected stack, but more surprisingly our only spear loses to the first HA who attacks him, but our swordsmen proves himself worthy and kills the next HA.
Chariot retreats from battle with our sword.
We are down to 9 units, 2 of which badly wounded and have no more spears in this stack. This is too much. I sound the retreat.
Back to the ships.
It seems it will not go without catapults. Switch to Constructions at 100%. Trade Aestetics to the Dutch for 220 gold to get it in 3 turns. Need to hurry a bit before more LBs show up.
Turn 9
Ouch - I considered our fleet out of reach of the Viking 6 galleys being at 3 tiles. It seems they had Trading Post built and thus 3 movement. The outcome is 2 our galleys under the water with 3 soldiers in them and 2 Viking galleys sunk. Cant tell we had good luck here, but thats the situation. Sink another wounded viking galley with unloaded galley of ours and continue the retreat.
Now we have to conquer the sea first.
Barb galley attacks our trireme in Portuguesse waters too.
Move one of the spyes to take a look where are the Vikings man forces.
Turn 10
Constructions are ready.
Next tech Machinery for Maces and Engineering.
the war between Russia and Dutch continues with full power - this time Willem gets Great General.
Turn 11
St.Petersburg is captured by the Dutch.
I trade Drama with them for 210 gold to be able to tech faster than Ragnar.
Lyons 2pop whip galley - we need to replace the ones we lost.
Will make some kind of ferry network - most of our galleys are near the Vikings and our newly produced soldiers on the distant islands are hard to come to the war theather.
Turn 12
Willem and Joao will trade Horseback riding, but we dont need it for now.
Our triremes start to swarm the straights of Nidaros so we have the sea under control again.
Bribed Joao to declare to Ragnar + 60 gold for Drama. He is not going to do much harm to him, but this way we buy his loyalty.
Turn 13
Nothing like fatalistic number.
Pig for fish with Willem canceled.
We need healt resources. Some cities are at -4 food and halt to grow.
Demanded cow from the poor(already) Cathy and she agrees.
Turn 14
Short pleasure of the Russian cows - Willem requests we to stop trading with her and I agree after much consideration.
We are the most advanced in the world. Willem next, then Joao. Isabela, Ragnar, Victoria and Catherine are in the lower half.
Turn 15
Those Vikings are brave - klled one our trireme with 2 galleys.
Ragnar is willing to negotiate, but his fate is already sealed.
Got Willem to stop harrassing Cathy+130 gold in exchange of Music
120 gold from Joao for Music too
Turn 16
Got Machinery at last
Finished few teatres and courthouses, building and moving catapults.
The Vikings continue their lucky streak - attacking fortified spear in the wood, their chariot retreats.
Harrassing their seafood.
Turn 17
merchant for Victoria with her Pacifism.
Isabella builds Temple of Solomon.
2pop whips catapults in Rheims and Orleans, Mace in Elba, overflow in Great Lib
Lost one spy - not that it matters much now with the Catapults, but still...
Turn 18
nothing to be mentioned
Turn 19
Moving our massive 9 swords, 7 axes, 2 maces, 7 catapults and 4 spears army
Turn 20
Willem will trade Feudalism, but he wants all our 3 technologies and I am reluctant
Turn 21
Killed Viking chariot.
Moving our stack again to Nidaros. This time by land - have no so many galleys and we have catapults this time, so the enemy numbers does not matter too much.\
Ragnar have Elephatns too.
Turn 22
A lot of movement by Viking forces.
Turn 23
Storming Nidaros - second attempt.
Spy - mission successful, return safe to Elba.
Sword vs LB - lose
Axe vs LB - Lose at 58%
Great General is born for Ragnar. Too bad it is in Nidaros
Axe vs sword - WIN!
Axe vs spear - WIN!
Sword vs LB - WIN!
Nidaros taken, 183 gold pilaged, Granary and lighthouse captured.
In attempt to clean the surroundings, attack HA with Spear at 73% - lost
Second attempt at second HA - this time win at 78%
Turn 24
Fierce counter-attack:
Our mace kills HA
Our Spear loses vs Viking Oilephant. The beast is without a scratch!
Whip settler in Orleans for settling those Dyes and Horse
More and more maces and catapults are coming Ragnar's way
Turn 25
Took Teology+30 gold for Civil Service from Joao
We have Taoism and Hinduism in our lands too
Bribed victoria to declare at both Ragnar and Isabella for Music
About 15-20 Viking units are moving to storm Nidaros. I use gold to upgrade our some of our 12-15 units to Maces. The terrible Elephant is still there killing second Mace of ours. He is now with 2 stars and Shock promotion. Have no spare catapults and spears to deal with him right now. later.
Charter found
Turn 26
The terrible elephant finaly dies
The Viking hordes are approaching Nidaros in 2 bigs stacks and few dispersed units. They consist of about 50% HA, few Elephants, axes, swords, chariots and catapults. Instead of hiding in the city and waiting for them to hit us, I decide to atack the bigger stack with all our 4 catapults, who will be dead from flanking anyway if they hit us. The result is we lost 4 catapults (again bad luck - last two catapult had like 53%) and Ragnar lost 10 units. Looks like the battle for Nidaros is won. And with this the war too.
Turn 27
Ragnar attacks in desperation and the result is 2:3 for us. Those 2 our units died again against all common sence - Viking chariot attacks our sword (why sword - I cant imagine as we have 3 spears there) and kills it at 23% and Viking swordsmen attacks our maceman at 10.6 % chance and kills it. Not good luck in the game.
I sally and mop-up those 2 lucky ba$tards
Logically at this point I should have stop for the next player, but I think I deserve to kill-off the Vikings. Now our ratio is 1.9 in our favor. Now their main army is destroyed. I see their cities and they are guarded by 2-3 units each.
Turn 28
Made peace with isabella for 20 gold payed to us. This nut have nice number of cities TBH.
Turn 29
The two remaining viking Elephants attack at 50% our spears and of course win both. I am sick at this luck already.
Lost another Mace at >80% before killing those elephants.
Turn 30
Moving to capture Birka. It is on bloody hill and Ragnar moves a lot of LBs there - might be another retreat?
Turn 31
Bombarding Birka to 0%
Turn 32
Few turns ago I was wondering is it time to whip the Great Lib for 4 pop and it seemed to me it is high price. Now, 3 turns before completion, someone built it. Well, the money we can use for teching and if we found who built it, we will eventually take it from his dead cold hands sooner than later.
This is just ridiculous - 3 catapults died attacking the LB in Birka without even scratching him. Good call to put 2HillsDefence LB on a hilly sity. Someone said "retreat"? Yeah, will wait for better times.
Slaving Nidaros mercilessly - he has no culture to work tiles and the citizens will die anyway. Now we have 1 spear and one theatre next turn.
OK, I was reluctant to leave the Viking to someone else to reap the glory for conquering them, but the game told me she dont wants me too anymore. The game crashed. Loaded from the last turn autosave and uploading. Have no energy left for uploading screenshots right now. Maybe tomorrow
Here is the save for the next one.
Save after me
How about we speed thing up a little bit?
I think with a bit longer sessions, we can finish earlier.
bring same nordic heads for us
Not exactly as planned, but plenty of nordic heads you got.
Oh, now finally I'll go to sleep few hours - its 3.50 over here.
Edit: OK - only one screen:
A great read and what a ride you've had. 
