T100 Science Victory Attempt: Norway

[Hellenism Salesman]

What happens next?

 

[ValleTomate]

Nice to see another thread from you, I hope your mouse hand is ok as the biggest issue I had with my own 2 norway SV is that managing 5+ pillage flip cities requires 150-300 mouse clicks per turn

 

[ValleTomate]

T3: More good news - Original Warrior meets Granada in time for a free envoy. That will speed the Builder, and Granada is a top notch CS for this strategy, as we can eventually spam Alcazars on flatland tiles for more pillaging! Their quest is to build a Holy Site. Meanwhile our Scout finds another hut quickly, but gets a Military Training inspiration, which is pretty marginal as this one is easy to earn organically.

Boosts: Military Training

T4: Original Warrior finds a third hut.

T5: Borders expand onto Wheat, which will allow us to actually grow in a reasonable amount of time (we were working a one-food wonder tile before). Our Scout also finds ANOTHER hut. Original Warrior pops the third hut, which is another dud with a Bronze Working boost, again something we probably could have picked up naturally.

Boosts: Bronze Working
View attachment 668050

Are you sure you can you can use alcazars to pillage flip? I know that unique tile improvements from Civs ( like ziggurats) definitly get removed when a city flips or gets conquered, and while I can't say I am 100% sure about city state tiles I believe those disapear aswell when a city flips

 

[Minou]

I am farther ahead in the game now but have not had time to write up more turns (hopefully tonight).

ValleTomate, you are correct, the Alcazars vanish when the city flips to a Free City. For some reason I thought they would stay. That's too bad, as if they did stick around it could be possible to convert empty tiles into pillageable ones. Oh well. I am not sure if the Alcazars also vanish in other cases, for example I thought if you conquer Granada and they have Alacazars they stay but maybe that is wrong too.

 

[Minou]

T25: Our capital crawls to 3 pop, allowing us to work the Alcazar again. We also add our second city Minou Town. No fresh water, but the 8 chops will be very handy when we start churning out Horsemen and the city also has Marble and Citrus for sales. We have enough gold to buy a Builder instantly and will start training another.

Up north, all units are now in position to attack. Depending on how Khmer moves between turns, we could possibly open the war by killing the Slinger, capturing a Builder and hitting the city three times! But, Khmer has 3 Warriors, a Scout, and a Slinger and this perfect opening salvo may not be plausible if some units block our path....

 

[Minou]

T26: Our first Viking Longship pops, securing a Golden Age. Between turns, no new Khmer units pop and in fact one Warrior marches north into the fog, leaving us an easier task. The only negative is that the Builder we want to capture blows a charge on a useless farm. Aside from the Irrigation and Feudalism boosts I never build these reprehensibly bad improvements. Sadly, the AI loves them and usually wastes their two free Builders on 6 farms, leaving no juicy mines or pastures to pillage. Also between turns we meet Hong Kong, which is great - they are one of the best City States since they help a lot with Space projects in the last part of the game. Their quest is to clear a bar camp, though said camp is not visible yet. Finally, Buenos Aires kills off the barb Spear we had hoped to kill with our Slinger, denying us the Archery boost for now.

So, here we are. This is the biggest turn of the game so far - if we can capture Mahendraparvata with minimal losses, we will have a great flip city very early and slingshot towards Political Philosophy and HBR. If we fail due to Walls or Archers, we will be set back at least a dozen turns. Here we go....


WAR!!!

In the opening move two levied Warriors hit the Slinger but fall just short of killing it despite it being on flat ground. That's disappointing as it not only let's the unit live to counter-attack but also leaves the southern most Warrior 3 tiles south of the city instead of just 2 if it had made the kill and moved onto the Cattle. On the plus side, two other Warriors capture a 3-charge and a 1-charge Builder, which will come in handy making improvements to pillage. Three Warrios can hit the city (including the one that captured the 1-charge Builder, since it was on a flat terrane). They hit for 25, 22, and 22. The first roll was about average but the second two were REALLY bad, I think the second worst and worst possible rolls back to back! On the plus side the city is now sieged.

Unfortunately, I ended the turn with a boneheaded play. I moved the Builder in Minou Town onto Marble expecting to hook it right up, but we don't actually have Mining yet! It would have been much better to move onto the hill for an Alcazar next turn. Ouch! I also allowed a second mistake - the game put our third citizen onto the stupid Fish tile instead of the Alcazar, costing us a little culture and science. That's on me for not checking, but I certainly didn't expect the algorithm would take a 2f/1c/2g tile over a 1f/1h/3c/2s/1g tile, especially when it would not result in 0 net food. Certainly not the end of the world, but frustrating. Gotta focus harder!

Boosts: Political Philosophy

 

[Minou]

T27: Khmer countered by attacking with the Slinger, damaging a levied Warrior. This is fine because now the southernmost Warrior can kill it off. The Scout attacked Original Warrior who is standing on the farm. Since there is no chance of taking the city this turn, Original Warrior can heal 50HP by pillaging the farm. Three other Warriors can strike the city, hitting for 31, 28, and 25. One of the attackers dies, but we still have a siege and are sure to take the city unless walls go up between turns.

Sadly, our Scout is cornered by Dutch units and looks likely to die. Oh well, it certainly made a difference by contacting Hong Kong and popping those huts.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Glad the images work! But I have to say pillaging does not scale poorly at all. Quite the opposite. By the end of the game with Raid you can pillage >100s and >400g from a single mine!

The science scales poorly though, in the sense that early on, a single pillage can yield several turns worth of tech research, while in the late game (typically when you have 1000 science per turn yourself), a single pillage might not even be remotely close to shave a single turn off a tech. You can however pillage more mines per turn to compensate, but personally I was a little disappointed in the yields when I attempted a Norway SV pillage strategy myself. I personally relied on pillaging early on to catch up, while the gold yields were more important later on, as these still scaled nicely.


Either way, hope you can pull it off, and it will especially interesting to see how you solve it in the last half of the game when techs start getting expensive.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Our first Viking Longship pops, securing a Golden Age

This you need to be careful of. If you intend to flip, I found that being in a normal or dark age worked the best, because if you get a golden age and the target gets a dark age, you can lose out on a lot of pillaging as the "flip time" becomes longer due to loyalty issues. Also dont underestimate light cavalry for pillaging, they are rather efficient for pillaging in the limited time you have before the city flips back.

 

[Minou]

T28: Things go somewhat badly between turns, and we lose two more Levied Warriors (seemed likely we would lose only one). Nonetheless, we can take Mahendraparvata this turn, killing the Khmer Warrior defending it. We can also kill off the Scout. That will leave us with three levied Warriors and Original Warrior, most of which will gain a promotion. We have 3 turns to set up improvements to pillage and to heal before the city flips via Loyalty.

Horrendously, we missed Mining this turn by like 1s. If only we had worked the Alcazar that one turn! Our Builder tosses down a second Alvazar in Minou Town (yup, if we had done this last turn instead of having moved stupidly onto the Marble, that also would have given us Mining this turn).

Civics: Craftsmanship

 

[Minou]

Apologies, I did not take any screen shots for a few turns

T29 Between turns, a Khmer attacks two of our levied Warriors gets redlined but lives. Notably though, Khmer does not attack "Flip City" itself. The AI seems to be hard-coded not to take cities back for the first few turns after they are captured. One of the Builders can chop a Warrior for reinforcements (chops are worth 30h, but with Agoge thats enough)

It has been 10 turns since we declared on the Dutch, so we can sign peace and make 19g by selling them Open Borders.

T30: Between turns a Khmer Scout suicides into one of our units. Again no units hit the city. Time to set up the pillage tiles. The 2-charge Builder makes an Alcazar (which yields faith but no science/culture) and the 1-charge Builder hooks up Cattle

We can finally quarry the Marble at Miinou Town this turn, which gives us a quest envoy to Buenos Airers and boosts Masonry. The Dutch will pay 92g/2gpt for the Marble too.

A Builder pops in the capital and heads for the Pearl. It will take another turn to reach it, but we can still gain another 118g from Greece for 10gpt (that would cost us 300g, but of course we will declare long before 30 turns is up). With the extra gold we can buy another Builder in Flip City.

Boosts: Masonry, Horseback Riding
Techs: Mining

T31: Flip city revolts! It looks like I was mistaken, the Alcazar disappears when the city leaves our empire. For some reason I thought it would stay. This makes me much less excited about Granada..... This leaves only the Cattle Pasture to pillage, which provides 23c and 41f. We will need to establish many more tiles to make this work. Luckily we can get going right away on that as our Warriors hit the city for 48-61-45 and take it (we only need to do 160 damage because the city started at 100HP after we took it and only healed for three turns before flipping.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Tip (just in case you were unaware): You can pillage and heal on the same turn, if you choose to forty and heal, then manually cancel the fortification and then choose to pillage. The unit stays fortified, you heal, and get the yields as well. Why choose when you can have both. Works with promotions as well.

 

[ValleTomate]

The science scales poorly though, in the sense that early on, a single pillage can yield several turns worth of tech research, while in the late game (typically when you have 1000 science per turn yourself), a single pillage might not even be remotely close to shave a single turn off a tech. You can however pillage more mines per turn to compensate, but personally I was a little disappointed in the yields when I attempted a Norway SV pillage strategy myself. I personally relied on pillaging early on to catch up, while the gold yields were more important later on, as these still scaled nicely.


Either way, hope you can pull it off, and it will especially interesting to see how you solve it in the last half of the game when techs start getting expensive.

By the end of the game techs cost about 2,5k science but gold pillages are worth around 650gold since norways science from a mine pillage is about 30% of the gold value so rounded up about 200 science. A single pillage flip city with only 10 mines produces 13k gold and 2k science every 2 turns and because of that insane gold it is very easy to set up a lot of pillage flip cities, easily 5, by that point of the game, netting on average 5k science per turn. No Civ building campuses for their science can keep up with norway using this op strat (all of these numbers are with the raid card in mind)

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Which is why I specified that the only way to scale up is to pillage more. It does however become extremely tedious, which is why I personally transitioned into self produced native science to coast off of the early slingshot, and instead relied on pillaging for gold and not the science. But then again, I wasnt trying to speedrun a game either, and only had a single flipping city for testing purposes. That one was more than annoying to micro manage every turn.

 

[ValleTomate]

I agree that it's super tedious, that's why I didn't try it more often despite it's enourmes potential.

 

[Minou]

The key to it all is that normally, no matter how much science you generate you can only complete one tech per turn. Even if you have 5,000 science from 100 Campuses, you will just complete one tech when the turn ends (with some exceptions like Oxford, Nalanda, and huts). With Norway you can complete multiple per turn, and the boosts are generally no problem at all. With all the gold you can just buy Shipyards, Power Plants, etc.

It is best to conquer flip cities rather than found them with your own Settlers. This is because the defensive strength of the city scales to the original owner. If you conquer a city the base defense will often be 20 late into the game, but if you found your own it can quickly rise to 60 or more as you unlock Men At Arms, Musketmen, Infantry, etc.

Now, setting up a Flip city requires lots of work. First you need to make sure you have negative loyalty, preferably above -25 so the city will flip every 2 turns. You can get -20 from population pressure and will get some amount from occupation if the city is captured. It's pretty easy to get -3 from unhappiness by selling all your luxuries. So, with captured cities it is pretty easy! If the city is one you founded yourself you don't get the occupation penalty. Some other possibilities are giving the city a religion different than your own, starving (this however is not an option at 1 pop and even at 2 pop requires a 0 food tile, bankruptcy (not recommended because you start losing one unit per turn), and war weariness (you'll get this organically as the game wears on).

Next you need tiles to pillage, repair, and pillage again. This obviously takes Builders. You will need to balance gold spent on military units and Builders, and also make sure the Builders are positioned to most efficiently repair each cycle. This gets much easier with Monumentality both because you can buy Builders with pillage faith and because the 4 movement points let's them get in a two repairs each cycle much more easily.

Third you need military units to pillage, and to take back the city at the end of each cycle. Generally one unit is needed per tile, though four-move units like Horsemen can pillage a tile next to the city and then attack it the same turn, or pillage multiple ties if they gain the Depredation promotion. At the start of the game, cities can generally be taken back with just three or four Warriors. This is one place where loyalty matters. The city will always have 100HP when you take it back and heal 20HP per turn, so if you can flip it in 2 turns it will have 140HP but if you wait 5 turns or more it will be back up to 200HP and take another 1-2 units to recapture.

At face value it get's hard to keep up as older units become obsolete and you have to spend 800g per unit instead of 120g. However, you can buy Scouts and Warriors for a good long chunk of the game, and Chariots even longer. The key is to get under 20 Iron - if you have unlocked Swords and Knights you won't be able to buy Warriors or Knights if you have 20+ Iron. But, you can can just start a Knight in a city to drop your Iron total, but a Chariot, and then change back the city to something else to get the Iron back (and use it to upgrade that Chariot to a Knight next turn if needed).

As you progress in tech the flip cities will spawn the most powerful melee unit you have unlocked, but this barely matters IF you can take it back the turn it flips. Generally, the rebel units do nothing the turn the city flips, so they won't even enter the city to garrison it. This means you may be attacking a city with like 25 combat power the first turn. You can completely ignore the two spawned Infantry and waltz back into the city with your Warriors and Horsemen. But, if you fail to complete the task in one turn those Infantry will either kill your pillaging unit or walk into the city and triple it's defense (or both).

The biggest hurdle is Steel. When you get Steel, all cities get Urban Defenses, including your flip cities. This will make it impossible for a few Chariots and Horsemen to take a city back in time. But, in general one Artillery is enough to soften the city so that a few other decent units can take it. Artillery are very expensive so I recommend buying one Catapult or Trebuchet in each flip city before they go obsolete.

Anyway those are my tips from my first practice game, but I only got up to Flight in that one and then quit because I had made so many errors. Let's see if this works all the way to the end in my T100 attempt!

 

[kaspergm]

Nice job with this thread, it almost gives me incentive to start a new game for the first time in a long while.

 

[Minou]

T32: Between turns, Yerevan becomes a vassal of Khmer, and declares on us revealing they located to the northeast of Flip City.

State Workforce is complete, the first civic we failed to boost so far. With the focus on rapid expansion, there was no time to build a district - in fact we haven't even unlocked any yet! With the GT, we can hire Magnus. And, since every piece of gold is critical now we can actually slot in Land Surveyors which may allow us a pillage tile we would otherwise be unable to afford.

Khmer continues to hammer our levied Warriors, but not the city. We can now promote 3 more Warriors and kill one of Khmer's, although one redlined levy is unable to promote or move to safety and it likely to be killed.

Civics: State Workforce (no boost)


T33: Khmer attacks our Slinger instead of killing the redlined Warrior, which is great news! We can kill yet another Warrior with two newly powered-up Battle Cry Warriors. Greece will pay 53g for the Pearl. With the gold, we can buy a hill tile (saving 13g thanks to Land Surveyors) and then sink our first mine. A Slinger pops int he capital, and we can start on a Trader next - not so much for gold as to get some roads laid down to provide a speedway for our Horsemen later down the road.

Our first Longship also gets in on the pillage action this turn, plundering a Quarry on the Khmer coast for 25c and 43f. Normally we would want to swing west with the Warriors and team up with the Longship to conquer Angkor Thom, but in this game we need to leave that city alone to provide loyalty pressure on Flip City.

 

[Minou]

T34: A barbarian Horseman shows up near Minou Town - they may pillage our Marble, but its already sold so it won't matter much. Speaking of Horses, we can sell 4 for 28g to Greece, a really good price. Then we can declare war to get our Pearl back and sell it to the Dutch. They will only pay 74/1, which should give us enough for another Builder in 2 turns. Declaring on Greece reveals their vassal Ayutthaya - a pretty nice City State though it will be hard to wrest from Greece with their free Acropolis envoys.

Flip City flips for the second time, and this time we can pillage two tiles, earning 25s, 25c, 43f, and 86g. The other four Warriors attack, taking back the city.

Techs: Archery (no boost)

 

[Minou]

T35: Political Philosophy complete! Always nice to hit this benchmark before T50. Switching into Oligarchy is very as the +4 to melee units will greatly assist our levied Warriors. We can now run Maritime Industries for more Longships, Discipline to help handle that pesky barb Horseman (who pillaged the Marble between turns), Urban Planning and, Land Surveyers.

Our first Longship sails by an empty barbarian outpost and clears it for 30g, letting us get our next Builder a turn quicker.

Looking at the Loyalty screen for Flip City, we have the full -20 populations penalty and -4.4 for occupation. That will cause it to revolt every three turns, but if we can get just -0.6 more we could shorten that to two turns (which translates to 50% more pillaging). The easiest way would be unhappiness. Normally we could just sell off all our luxuries, but obnoxiously Buenos Aires is "helping" us by giving us extra amenties for now only for our Wheat and the pillage Cattle, but for any bonus resources Granada and Buenos Aires have hooked up. Can't have that, so let's pull Amani and ditch them to get Flip City up to -27.4 loyalty!

Civics: Political Philosophy