Japper's Vindlandsaga

[Japper007]

Turn 21:



The barb warrior moves into the camp but can't attack the slinger as he is on rough terrain so I get to take another free potshot, on my way to promo lvl 2 and possibly Bronze Working now!

On the international front, Singaboy just settled his second city, judging by the score-leap:



I first thought, with admitedly some dread, that his score jumped due to him completing a Holy Site but no-one is earning GP points so far, we still look to be in line for first Great Prophet.

[Japper007]

Turn 22:



Slinger #2 spots an excellent city spot to our south! With this much dirt fighting almost starts to seem like a waste! Not that I'm complaining, obviously

[Japper007]

Turn 23:



Bizarelly, we end up being first in culture, with just our base yield from pop...

Turns out we are the first to a "domestic tourist" due to me grabbing the eureka for military tradition by clearing the barb camp:



Game seems to count this alongside the total culture produced, so if someone, say Woden and his Brazil, or Oledavy with his cheaper Theater Squares tries to push a Culture Victory, it could be benificial to start grabbing boosts for late game civics, those are worth a couple thousand music notes all on their own.

This also means we are the first person on the map to grab three Inspirations, a good start, to be sure!

[Japper007]

Patch notes just came in Norway got buffed!

Norway

• Thunderbolt of the North gains +50% production of naval melee units
  
  
• Stave Church gains +1 Production for all water resources in the city
  

More hammers for our longships!

[Japper007]

Since Frigates are a long way off in the PBEM still, I ran another test game under the new patch, to see if the strat was still viable...

...it was:


One frigate this early is enough to do this much damage:



Several actually allowed me to redline the city enough to cap it with a caravel:
In one turn!


Now this test-game was played on Deity so the AI was about ten-ish techs up on me, it made no difference at all, frigates are just that much of a strenght jump and they are really easy to focusfire with because of their immense movement. I was killing 60 strenght cities before my assault finally ran out of steam.

Now to see how it fares against people who know what they are doing

[Japper007]

turn 25:

First contact!



Just my luck, it's Singaboy and his massive scorelead... He is to our Southeast so I'll make it a priority to settle in that direction

Anyway, rest of the turn:

Finished Foreign Trade and our first Holy Site, so I could change over from God King to Urban Planning since the Holy Site generates 3 faith for us. Queued up a Settler, done in 7 turns. I debated between a settler and a slinger since we are behind in both military and economic power (actually... middle of the pack, but there is no second or third place here!) but decided to get a settler out for the Early Empire Inspiration. I started on Craftmanship since it's on the way to PolyPhi.

[Japper007]

Put the following message up in the diplo thread:

"Japper of the Viking Empire greats Singaboy of the Germans. We hope that our contact ends up fortuitous for both sides and have no desire for war."

Yes I indulged in some pluralis majestatis there. Hopefully Singaboy isn't in the Moar Blood mode that dominated PBEM 2 up to the end.

The no war is obviously a bluff, given my plans but I don't mind sucking up to the tech leader of the moment..

[Japper007]

Turn 26:

Turns out that the "berserk mode" that the barbarians get into after you clear the camp also applies to their scouts. A scout decided to suicidally rush my (Discipline buffed)Warrior up north and weakened itself enough that my warrior could counterattack and kill the scout, netting us Bronze Working. Excellent, I want the tech eventually anyways to be able to chop the jungle under the banana tile for some sweet food and production.



After the scouts demise, our Warrior checks out the river to the North some more. Turns out there is nothing but tundra up there:



Which also means we're nearer to the northern than the southern pole of the planet, though there is a jungle tile at the capital, so it could be we are right on the equator and the southern peninsulea don't stretch far enough to have tundra tiles. Or the map-maker must have put the bananas there just to screw with my geography sense  .



A barb camp on the southernmost tip of our land, it's actually not a bad place for it to spawn, it means Singaboy won't be able to land on the peninsula without some escort for a settler, meaning he'd only be able to at Shipbuilding.

[Japper007]

turn 29:

Managed to pull off the same trick with the slinger as I did with the one up north:



This is how you keep down early barb problems people. Just aggresively scout with slingers and warriors and go *stomp* on them before they even find your cities. Horse barbs have sunk me in too many games before.

Speaking of sinking...



WTF is Archduke doing over there?   That score is just pathetic, it's almost making me paranoid that's he's gonna pull of something surprising/amazing to get back in the lead.  I understand why we are second from bottom score, no extra culture/science income, and our first city still a few turns away, but Archduke? He clearly didn't go early district (no GP income from him...) or early military (since he has one of the lower scores in domination too) or early monument (a bad strategy anyways, but also impossible, since he only has 2 civic score so far).

Our warrior finishes mapping out the sub-tundra lands to the north:



Not a bad spot, but I'm not making it a priority either, if someone else wants to organize an early expedition to freeze their butts off up there, they can be my guest...

[Japper007]

Turn 31:



Our first settler finally completes! I sent him south, since I want to quickly contest the area between me and Singaboy (who is now leading in science and score, any land denied him is a win now) and, apart from the much weaker city to the far north, all city sites available to us are about equally strong.
I started the capital on a trader, having a road through all that rough terrain to the south could be nice.

Internationally, Archduke increased his score to 26, probably by grabbing a second city (still doesn't explain why he is so late to do it though) and researching his third tech. We are now bottom score, together with OleDavy, both of us at 24 still. My score will climb to the top of the pack soon though, when I plant my second city.