[Spoilers] Gröt and Bänzai lose several screws assembling a Sweedish Strategy

[Grotsnot]

Ok here we go. Spoilered in case you want to make your own dotmap first, Banzai

This is one is broadly about cramming as many cities as we can into the main river. Most of the cities have freshwater, actually. The ones marked with an inner red ring are dry space-fillers, orange inner is coastal.

The ones marked with stars are what I'm thinking about for our starting settler:
* Up in Riga is a rapid settle with good district options, at least once we conquer Apuole, and can help churn out Longships.
* All the way down at Odessa is right on the Black Sea, so can start building up to dominate the region. It's a long way away so on the one hand it gets a head start but on the other it takes up a bunch of turns to get there and has to be escorted through barb territory. Additionally, a trade route back up to Apuole would cut a direct road down south through the hills.
* The middle ones get us an early amenity and split the difference on distance. Bit of a foothold in the area to base anti-barb operations out of. It'll take a lot of Settlers to fully evict the red bastards but it's a start.

An additional wrinkle is that the Truffles and Black Sea sites have limited capability. Especially without buying some tiles and money will be tight for the first phase, until we get our first GA.

Also, it'll be slightly faster to get down to the southern cities after we've researched Portage to unlock free river crossings.

[Grotsnot]

One thing I've been wondering is what the hell the point of Missionaries is. Faith is worth points at the end so they need to do something to produce a return. And you can't build any until you already have a majority religion!

For one use, let's focus in on two of the VP sources:

• 50 VP per Population added when half or more of your cities follow the same religion.
  
• 50 VP per Faith earned for pillaging a tile when less than half of your cities follow the same religion.
  

We've been trying to nail down the specifics of that 50VP/pop. Could be that it ceases to apply if you build a bunch of heathen cities so that Catholicism longer has a majority. And if so, does it also reactivate the 50VP/faith pillaged? What about the raiding gold bonus? Something to make sure we test out before our Settler Wave. We could potentially get some mileage out of flipping back and forth via new cities.

In such a case it'd be somewhat unfortunate that pillaging the Moors doesn't give Islamic religious pressure. I've tried that one already, it's always Catholicism

Also, that "+50VP per faith earned for pillaging" has to be a typo. That'd be like 600VP for pillaging a Monastery or Holy Site. I'm guessing it's either 5VP/ or 50VP/pillage action. Another thing to playtest.


Another, more edge-case, use is to send Missionaries over to our cousins to screw up their raiding. The Norse pantheon gives a ridiculous +100 per pillaged tile but only before, or while?, you have a majority religion. So we could potentially use Missionaries to deny them a chunk of gold. Comes at the cost of some score for us and probably giving them some 50VP/pop points, though. Something to think about but likely never use

[Grotsnot]

Ah shoot, apparently we can't harvest Stone in this map? Puts a little bit of a damper on the Dnieper cities

[Banzailizard]

I'll run some of my own tests and do a dot map tomorrow afternoon. As it is I am just on my way home now at 7 pm. Next week are finals but after Wednesday I should be pretty free to plan intensively.

[Grotsnot]

Ok yeah wow this is big. Settling heathen cities does reactivate +100 from raiding and +50VP from raids that gain faith. Have also verified that it is NOT +50/ it's +50VP from a raid that yields Pillaging also starts generating religious influence too, so Missionaries are still useless.

This game I was able to conquer Apuloe on Turn 6 and Wolin on Turn 11. May or may not be fast enough to beat Denmark. And a weakness of rushing everyone over to the west is the barbs get free reign in Russia. Slowly amassing a Zerker force to drive them back and get cities settled while my flotilla makes its way around to the Black Sea. Going at a leisurely pillaging pace they're on course to be there a little before T30 and I think the land forces should get there around then too. Without interference from the other Vikings I think a concerted rush could get there by T23-25 to lay siege to Tmutakaran.

Will post up some more notes on this tomorrow. But the ability to flip religion off is big, gotta figure out some plans to make use of that.

[Grotsnot]

Ok so here's a quick overview of the units. At Valhalla speed everything is at half the official cost so I'm going to list the rates with this already factored in.

Great People:
Lindisfarne/Rus/Hastings (the Scenario's era names for any lurkers unfamiliar with the scenario) have GPP costs of 45/165/270. The first GG is a Lindisfarne and the first GA is Rus. If I'm not mistaken, both will immediately jump up to the Hastings rate afterward due to the AI civs starting with most of the tech tree.

Berserkers generate +10GGP per kill, so with a lot of luck we have a small shot at nabbing the first GG via Apuloe and hunting barbs in the east. More likely Denmark's 5 'zerkers with a human behind the wheel will get it, but they have Caballarii and Walls to deal with while we can suckerpunch Swords and Spears. Unsure how much it's worth to lock it in since GGs have no aura in VTR (the wiki disagrees with this but I'm pretty sure I'm right). In my test games it's always started with the +1 Promotion GG but can't say for sure that'll be the case here.

In a similar vein, Longships get +10GAP per kill, so popping the idiot AI units that embark themselves is very worthwhile.

There are 7 total GGs of varying utility, each worth 50VP for claiming. The one I want most is the guy who gives a free catapult: since GGs have 4 movement we can get it down to the ERE much faster than building one. The one who turns a unit into a Corps is also very valuable since I don't think there's any other way to get one in VTR.

There are 5 total GAs which all give 50VP for claiming, 500 for reaching Vinland, and worth 1000/500/300/100/100 VP for the trip. Absolutely worth dumping into if we can somehow grab the first one since the cost nearly doubles afterward, which might give us enough headway to beat the Norwegians to Vinland. But like with Denmark and GGs we really can't count on pulling this off since a human Norway will be earning a lot more pillage gold and be able to buy it ahead of us. Building Harbor Shipping is an option but big of a gamble when we need as many Zerkers, Settlers, and Longships as we can get our hands on.

Civilians - same as base game but halved:
Settler: 40 base, +15/ea
Builder: 25 base, +2/ea
Trader: 20 base, increases through the tech tree up to 80. 23 at T0 since we start with Sailing+CoL. There are 18 techs and 16 civics so it increases by roughly 3-4 per completion of whichever is leading.

Military, in my opinion of an approximate order of usefulness

Name	Production	Purchase	Maintenance	Movement	Melee	Ranged
Berserker	80	320	3	2, +2 in ET	50, +/-7 Atk/Def	-
Longship	32	130	1	6 (claims 4)	40	-
Knight	90 w/ Iron	360	3	4	48	-
Battering Ram	32	130	1	2	-	-
Catapult	60	240	2	2	23	35
Archer	30	120	1	2	15	25
Crossbow	90	360	3	2	30	40
Huscarl	60	240	2	2	40, +10 Def vs	-
Horseman	40 w/ Horses	160	2	4	36	-
Siege Tower	50	200	2	2	-	-
Spearman	32	130	1	2	25	-
Swordsman	45 w/ Iron	180	2	2	36	-
Pikeman	100	400	3	2	41	-
Frankish Caballarii				4	48, No Injury Penalty	-
Moorish Farfanes				5, can move after attacking	38	-
Byzantine Quadrireme				3	20	25
Non-Viking Galley				3	25	-

(thanks to Cornflakes for show me how to de-Zalgo my tables )

Longships are pure gold, nothing much needs to be said. Not able to sack a city on their own but otherwise excellent. An absolute steal at 32 + Maritime Industries

The Berserkers are just great. They can one- and two- shot just about anything that isn't a Knight. And give GGPs for kills and the speed boost in enemy territory lets them move 1 and Pillage. Their promotion tree also includes a +1 Move at Tier 2 which makes them even better at pillaging, though it does compete with Amphibious and we'll need at least a couple marine units to take Constantinople and Tmutakaran.

Eventually we'll need to switch production over to Knights just because they're faster and can actually reach the front in time to be useful. Better at soaking hits from other Knights too, which Byz will have a crapton of. Berzerker Tier 1 promotions are Battlecry and Tortoise so they can, against non-cavalry, make up for their defensive penalty pretty well IME.

We'll also want at least one Battering Ram and possibly a Catapult or two to kick over cities.

Archers don't really do enough damage to be worthwhile. Enemy cities all start with walls and high STR and Barbs start spawning Huscarls pretty quick. We start with 1, so getting a 2nd is worthwhile for the Portage boost, but otherwise their only advantage over just building more Berserkers is that they're cheaper. Crossbows are solid if Archers survive long enough to upgrade, which might justify another 1 or 2, but otherwise too expensive to get over Moar Zerkers.

Huscarls are billed as cheap in the civilopedia but are pretty meh and not *that* cheap. Much weaker on offense means their only use is hoping the AI is dumb enough to have their Walls shoot them instead of the Zerkers and Knights. BUT getting two gives a boost for the very useful Vikings Civic, which unlocks our first government upgrade. So probably worth getting a couple and putting them on Barb suppression duty or maybe escort the Rams.

Horsemen are fast and have a promotion that lets them Pillage for only 1 Move (normally 3) but are comparatively weak. And I think that Promotion is Tier 2. Having a couple around to give flanking bonuses is nice but since we need Encampment cities to build them, or a 2nd Horse, I'm skeptical it's worthwhile.

Siege Towers are nice but I think unlock too late to be properly worthwhile. Could buy one on the Black Sea if I börk the pööch and get our Ram(s) killed, I guess.

Spears and Swords are just fodder units the AI builds. Swords could almost be justifiable as cheap fodder of our own but they require a 2nd Iron so no.

Pikes are almost not useless in that they can kindasorta fight Knights (though they're still too slow). But whoever decided they should cost more than Knights was clearly hitting the weed too hard

As for the enemy UUs, we got the best draw in our primary opponent. Caballarii and Farfanes are both competent enough to be really obnoxious, though under an AI they're still not truly threatening to a human player. Quads can be annoying if they get the first hit but unless built in large numbers our Longships have a +20STR advantage to sweep them away with ease. And I don't usually see the AI start building these until the late game, anyway. {Grotsnot will eat these words...}


So as far as I can tell, we want:
* ∞ Berserkers 
** Starting sometime in the 30s switch over to Knights in cities farthest from the front and roll the switch forward over time
* 3-5 Longships ASAP to get around to the Black Sea and compete for GAs
** And more later, though pillaging efficiency will tank after the 30s or so since Britain and France will be eaten and we have to journey all they way to the Med for pillages. Also because we want a Majority Religion while sacking the Black Sea + ERE for the large pop increases (which I still need to verify  ), which will reduce pillaging value even further.
* 1 (additional) Archer
* 2 Huscarls
* 1-2 Battering Rams
* 0-2 Horsemen
* 0-1 Catapult? I need to practice actually conquering the ERE still I suspect Zerkers with a Ram is sufficient. The GG one would be worthwhile at least.
* A few (2-5?) Builders to +100% chop Longships into Settlers
** We'll want probably in the neighborhood of 8-12 additional cities? Will see what production allows and the ROI on the final dotmap. Also depends on if our cousins send their Settlers over to our area
** Eventually we'll switch Military cards from +100% Naval to +50% Melee for Zerkers, so will start using those for chops instead. Lucky Denmark can run both!
** The first 1 or 2 might not need chopping and could save our trees for larger chops later in the tech tree? Faster is probably better but something to plan around.
** We'll likely capture a builder from Apuole, possibly Wolin too
** Also need 3 charges for hooking up Iron+Luxes in Russia. Maybe some more for Bonus Resources but dunno if a 60 Turn game allows sufficient ROI over Moar Zerkers


The major piece to fit in is Traders. I think that since they cannot rebase, purchasing them in new cities is likely to be a worthwhile investment. Especially since there's no + card for them. But we'll want to wait until after the GA race is decided before we know if we can afford it. Otherwise try and fit some in around the Berserkers I guess?


I haven't bothered to include Buildings since I think for a 60 Turn game they're crap.  Repairing the Markets and Water Mills in conquered cities is often worthwhile but otherwise I doubt any compare to Moar Zerkers. Maybe Markets or Shrines once even Knights and Longships can't get anywhere useful in time?

[Grotsnot]

This time here's the tech trees:

Civics is pretty simple decision-wise and has an interesting mechanic so let's do that first:






*s:
Vikings gives the flanking+support bonuses which is nice
Feudalism give bonus food for farm triangles which is mostly not worth the effort but possibly in the last 15 or so turns

So you might notice all the Tier 1 Civics have obscene turn timers (and for some reason I'm still writing like the general "you" here has no idea how the VTR scenario works...). The boosts are 100% which I find a neat twist. Which leaves us 3 important tasks:
* Build 3 Harbors. So even though Ladoga starts with a Commercial Hub, it's worth knocking out an early Harbor. The GAPs are important too. We get a District Discount at the start so Ladoga can 2-turn and Birka can 3-turn their Harbors. Ladoga can even 1-turn theirs if we buy a forest tile or use a domestic trade route but I'm uncertain how worthwhile either option is. Especially since Birka can't do better than 3.
* Win a battle with a Berserker. Trivial though we may want to be careful with the timing. Policy swaps start at 85 so an easy free one is a handy trick
* Get a Majority Religion. This one is gonna take some time but will happen eventually from our pillaging fleet. We need it by the time we finish Vikings or our will rot, but we can settle some heathen cities to flip back into raiding mode.

So there's not a lot of decisions to be made  in the first half of the game. We want Naval Empire ASAP for Maritime Industries and then get to Vikings as fast as we can. The boosts for Naval Empire and Military Training are both pretty easy, just need to make sure we get them in time. One candidate for the Longship victory that I've done in a couple tests is have a boat get the finishing blow on Apuole. The boost for Vikings requires sinking some (or ?) but since it gives us two wildcard slots it's likely worth it.

Post-Vikings there's not a whole lot I really care that strongly about. We want to get to Exploration eventually for the end-tier govt and Mercenaries on the way has +4 from trade routes which is nice. Recorded History sucks but is needed for Exploration. Guilds is semi-useful: +100% Commercial Hubs could maybe be useful once the Strategos and Navigation policies outlive their usefulness? It also gives +15% growth on foreign continents, which applies to a surprising number of our cities. Continents on this map are kinda weird, the British Isles are split into like 5 and Scandinavia is separate from most of Europe. So the bonus would apply to all our Russian cities and all our conquests, but it's still probably too small a bump to actually be good.

I've been over why I think Theology is garbage but it does lead to Divine Right which gives a +100% toward mounted units policy which would be handy.

So not very deep a game plan but it's something:
Naval Empire -> Military Tradition -> Vikings -> Feudalism -> ??? Mercs?






The *s are:
Portage - All units can cross rivers without movement penalties. Which seems to also remove combat penalties from rivers.
Knarrs - All units can enter ocean tiles
Hacksilver - x2 Trade Routes for Harbors and CHs

A lot of the late-game techs are pretty worthless, making our job much easier:

• Castles is pure garbage, if we're building even Tier 1 walls something has gone very wrong
  
• Which is lucky because we damn sure aren't bothering with it's prereq Military Tactics. Somehow managed to make it even less useful than the base game! Only thing going for it is also being a pre-req for...
  
• Military Engineering, which is *almost* not worthless because Siege Towers. At nearly 100 at the end of the tree, Armories aren't worth the bother. The GGs will probably even be gone by then! And ideally we won't need the Siege Towers
  
• Shipbuilding is only slightly little more useful since Shipyards are marginally more useful than Armories. But at 77 each, even a +4 bonus will have a hard time paying off. If the GA race is somehow still on at this stage it... no it still wouldn't be useful, Harbor Shipping is better
  
• Medieval Faires is almost kind of useful. The extra amenities could be nice for a lategame population push once we can't get new troops the front any more. More "kinda nice but not that important" than worthless
  
• Similarly, Machinery. Crossbows are a bonus if I don't get our Archers killed but not so sure they're worth going out of the way for. 40 is pretty nice, though.
  

Most of the important boosts are pretty achievable:

• Portage requires one more Archer without losing our starting one
  
• Stirrups is utterly trivial
  
• Already start with Shield Wall
  
• Knarrs requires a little bit of waiting but Naval Empire is the civic we want to proper-research first.
  
• Engineering we get from our starting Settler and Apuole
  
• Great Heathen Army requires the low-end of the flotilla I talked about rushing in the previous post
  
• Hacksilver we'll have long before we have the pre-reqs
  
• Machinery isn't gonna happen. Starting Encampments come with Barracks and it isn't worth building 2 more with 2 Stables just to save a few turns on a marginal tech
  
• Shipbuilding I damn sure hope we get by then!
  
• Medieval Faires will probably happen by the time we get there but may need a little bit of effort, a Granary maybe. Should be late enough to have the bandwidth but also not really worth going out of way for
  

Lances is the only one for a tech we care about that will be tricky to pull off in time. Longboats might be lucky enough to find one embarked in the Med, otherwise we're waiting for our Zerkers to kill a Byz Knight. If we get that ball rolling fast enough, great, otherwise plowing through 1 full-cost tech isn't gonna break the bank.

Priority techs:
Longships, Mead Halls, and Apprenticeships are all slam-dunks for oh so many reasons.
Great Heathen Army is a necessity for smashing down the ERE. Can take down Apuole with only Zerkers and Longships with a blitz but Byz will be entrenched.
Portage, Knarrs, and Hacksilver all give some pretty nice buffs
Lances give Knights but don't really need it until like T30

So here's a sketch for tech path:
Longships first, absolutely. Need need need some boats in the water
Thinking that since our cities will be busy with shipbuilding for a bit, go next into Mead Halls and Portage. Depending on when we can get a 2nd Archer out may knock out Apprenticeships before Portage
Next, we'll have a bit of a wait for the Knarrs boost so can chew our way down to GHA in the meantime. Maybe 49% Knarrs but we also need to get the Ram headed south in time so I dunno. At least would get Apprenticeships first.
After that, depending on the turn, can either detour through Hacksilver or it might be time to knock out Stirrups and Lances


As far as I can tell, neither Future Civic nor Future Tech give any actual VPs so cleaning up the trees isn't necessary.

[Grotsnot]

So this is interesting:





vs






So not only do embarked Rams work, they also give the bonus to naval melee units!

Also it seems like Amphibious is redundant. Portage must eliminate the embarked attack penalty as well the attack over rivers one. Not 100% confident on this but it sure seems to be the case... Also note the patched Berserker Attack/Defense mods: they updated it from +/-7 to +10/-5. We'll have to see if it's in effect in Archduke's save but I'm betting so.

However, Medieval Walls still aren't something to approach lightly...

[Banzailizard]

Very neat find on the ram! And you are already down at the ERE at turn 36?

Based on your table we are treating 4gold as = 1 production roughly.  Its a bit more flexible than production though so that is good. That means those 1 production 6 gold routs are worth 2.5cogs or 10 gold equivalent.

Summarizing some of what I learned on my test game.  I conveyed a lot of this on steam to you but I want it all in one place.

1. Norway can defiantly get the GA first.  I managed to grab him by turn 12 and could have bought him out sooner if I had been playing more carefully. Key to this was a mixture of quick pillages with early longboats and the 50 gold per turn gained from sending to our capital.

2. Norway does have a bit of trouble out of the gate claiming land in England.  I was able to get Scotland fairly quickly but the Danes would probably slice though most of England without much effort. 

4. The Danish start is a bit lackluster in that their one city, Roskilde, is basically wasted space unless they get a trader out and run it for some production. 29 turns for a spearman as the game starts. 

5. France is damn well defended so I think the Danes will go for Southern England first.  Their army is ready to go there as well. It cuts off the Norwegians too.  I expect they will try to keep us in check though by gobbling up Wolin.

6. We have the best chopping potential of anyone. We need to use that wisely.

7. Both through reading the VP section and my own tests it seems there are two options for the faith related VP. a) before you have more than 50% of your cities of the same religion you get the VP from pillaging tiles that grant faith. b) after you get more 50% of your cities following the same religion you get +50 per pop.

Edit: I also did a quick test of different Danish openings. I check on Utrecht and it is a hard nut to crack. The Franks show up with multiple Caballarii. Now granted Archduke is a better general than I, but it does not change the relative difficulty of conquering one area over another. England is a cake walk by comparison and will let them stage for France. Further, Norway is unlikely to be able to steal Utrecht out from under the Danes, and we are too far away to want it, so there is no reason for Archduke and Chevalier to go after it right away. I suspect if they really want it they will get Wolin first. Its safer to reinforce England a bit with early units, but with 2 military cards they can probably get the units out to grab it by turn 10 or so. It should not take many more turns after that to overrun it.

[Grotsnot]

Ah, unfortunate about the GA. Sadly expected. Assuming Norway doesn't have so much gold to monopolize them, it does sound like we're in okay shape to beat Denmark to the 500VP trip. Sounds like best case we can hope for is 1100 Norway, 600 us, 300 Denmark.

Anyway, turn has arrived already

Haven't checked it yet since we have a couple decisions to make:
* Where to send the Settler
* Relatedly, whether to throw all 3 starting Zerkers at Apuloe or send one southeast - either escorting the Settler or barb-clearing for future Settlers. Keeping with the main battlegroup would make rolling on to Wolin more doable but if we hang out in the west too long we start getting a lot of barbarians. Haven't tested it super extensively but it doesn't cost us much time capturing Apuole, 0-2 turns (unless the AI does something obnoxiously clever for once, I suppose). I've captured it on T6 before using all 3. If I remember correctly, with the 3rd they start tripping over each other a little but also have more bandwidth for pillaging tiles, which I think is actually more important than capturing ASAP.

Here's what I have tentatively planned for the first 5 turns. Going with a Riga settlement as the default since I've done it enough times to have the timing down, and throw everything at Apuole for the pillage and can redirect east or west or split depending on Denmark's actions.
T1:
* Research Longships, Culture rots until we get Harbors or kill something
* Slot in both econ policies (+30% Builders, +1Housing for 2 districts) 'cuz Sweden. Slot in Discipline in case the opportunity presents itself to suckerpunch a barb for Military Tradition - we aren't building more melee units until Apprenticeship is unlocked.
* Traders in Kopingsvik and Ladoga both go to Odense for +1/+6. I don't think a human Norway will build Commercial hubs in their Harbor cities but Denmark just might build a Harbor for the GA points. Not counting on it but figure better odds at least. Also, based on your findings, I think Norway will send a Trader to Kopingsvik for any roads we'd want. And I think a road benefits them more, honestly, to get potential Settlers over to steal a piece of our huge tracts of land.
* Ladoga places Harbor first, getting the discount. I'm still undecided on buying the forest to 1-turn it. It would earn back 19 of the 30 spent considering a GAP is worth 15 Whatever it builds on T2 would get paused once we research Longships though so 
* Birka places their Harbor, takes 3 turns no matter what shenanigans we try to pull. Only way to get it faster is to spend the discount here and leave Ladoga in the lurch, which is a net loss.
* Kopingsvik starts on an Archer, due in 3 turns. An alternative would be to 2-turn a Builder to coincide perfectly with Longships tech but we need an Archer for Portage within the first 7? turns and post-Longships we're sacrificing ship production to fit it in.
* Military converges on Apuole. Settler heads to Riga, due T3. Builder heads for the sheep hill, arriving T3 and pasteurizing on T4.
T2:
* Kopingsvik grows, but Archer still due T4. Focusing production from plains farms over food+gold fish for the first few turns.
* Ladoga puts a turn into a builder if we bought the forest
* Units continue on their course
T3:
* Longships finishes, start on Mead Halls. Or possibly  Apprenticeships if we only want 1 round of Longship building before launching into Bersekers?
* Ladoga starts on a Longship. Kopingsvik can afford to finish the Archer because the production overflow and unlocking Maritime Industries next turn mean switching now does not save a turn.
* Ladoga and Birka grow. Minor decision point is whether to have Birka work the Iron or the Copper, trading off between +1 or +2. The science doesn't seem to be critical at this stage but could pay off over time.
* Settle Riga, start on Longship. Remember to do this before moving the Berserkers to get a free river crossing in Apuole's borders
* Berserkers arrive at the outskirts of Apuole. The eastern 2 are within its borders for the +2 move next turn, the western 1 lands on the Farm and will soak a hit from the walls before pillaging said farm to heal up and get gold. Next turn Archer can land and fire but is safe for now.
T4:
* Birka finishes Harbor, popping Naval Tradition. Slot in Maritime Industries and swap the Housing card for Caravansaries' +2 from international TRs. Culture starts on Naval Empire.
* Kopingsvik finishes Archer, starts on Longship. Archer heads east.
* Birka starts on Longship. We now have 3 boats due in 2 turns in Kopingsvik, Birka, and Ladoga. Riga in 4.
* Unless something goes badly out of the ordinary, our vulnerable Berseker will be at about half health. The Farm pillage brings him back to full and he has a move left to move next to the city. Other Zerkers advance onto the Pasture and Commercial Hub for next turn Pillaging. Units that get in the way depending on the AI are easily swept aside or at least badly wounded.
* Depending on Apuole's forces, either land the Archer and start chipping at the walls, or hide from return fire for a turn. It's our most vulnerable unit in the area so can get slammed by dice.
T5:
* Mead Halls finishes, start on Portage
* Kopingsvik grows again, have to sim out farther in advance whether to work a 2/1 forest or a 4/0/1 fish
* Zerkers pillage and start knocking down walls. Being able to Pillage for 3Mv and then attack with the 4th is delightful
* Need to decide what to do next with the Builder. Could get Riga another +1 improvement or head up to Ladoga to chop some forests.


Leaves us with a T6 where we finish 3 boats, a few cities will grow, and we have the opportunity to take Apuole. I'm inclined towards delaying that 1T, just finishing off its walls & field troops and mopping up the pillageables for gold.


I don't want to sit on the turn too long, but since we didn't have a plan decided before it arrived I'll give it a little bit in case you see this for any improvements. Especially on whether to take the quick Riga settle or to venture south. If we're blitzing Apuole it does help with getting into position.