The Archduke and Chevalier Pay the Danegeld

[TheArchduke]

I think we have the outlines of a plan here. Thetford with 1 turn delay. Situational approach to Wales or York depending on Norway and the AI placement on Pikeman. Full out attack with buys and builds on Wolin (actually a longship is the best investment here, so I would research longships first).

Eat losses on Wolin, not in England, settle Ireland and then we take it from there.

Amphibious Berserkers are fine, we will actually use one the first turn. Thetford has only one norwegian snipe longboat as a possibility, should be avoidable easy.

[TheArchduke]

So, we will see if PYDT manages this. However we do this per email or PYDT, I did our first turn.

This is our start:

   

We bring the longship and pillage a monastery south, as we could use the money to buy stuff turn 1. Also one berserker kills the archer thereby opening up the civil tree for us.

   

Finish:

   

It is important that Thetford remains under siege, even that small damage to the city center needs to be maintained.

In the east, I buy a trader and an archer with our spoils, so that our strikeforce is 4 units strong and that portage is boosted. (Horseman, Swordsman and Spearman are even more useless then archers.

I establish a harbour to boost Roskilde´s new commercial district and build a third harbour. We want to get GA points going asap and want to boost Naval Tradition so we can actually handbuild longboats, then berserkers next.

   

Policies right now are useless all around.

   

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

A solid first turn. Unlocking military tradition is a nice boost, and it was good to bring in the longship to pillage that monastery.

So, for our spectators, who may not be familiar with the scenario's rules.

The goal of the game is to finish the highest score. The Vikings are locked into alliances with each other and will never be able to declare war the entire game. They're locked into always war with the other civs (3 major civs - Byzantium, al-Andalus, and Charlemagne's Francia, and a bunch of city-states). So it's basically a race to exploit the AI as best you can. Here's how you get score:

• 10 VP per tile pillaged.
  
  
• 10 VP per  Population.
  
  
• 25 VP per city.
  
  
• 25 VP per  Trade Route capacity.
  
  
• 50 VP per  Great Person earned.
  
  
• 50 VP per  Faith earned for pillaging a tile when less than half of your cities follow the same religion.
  
  
• 50 VP per  Population added when half or more of your cities follow the same religion.
  
  
• 1000 VP for activating the first Great Admiral adjacent to Vinland, 500 VP for the second, 300 VP for the third, and 100 VP for each one thereafter.
  

So, Archduke's pillaging of that single monastery gained us 60 VPs. From what I've seen, high scores against the AI tend to cluster from 13,000 - 15,000 points. We won't reach those numbers, not with human players getting in our way. You also see the value of the Great Admiral - Vinland (which is due west of Ireland) is worth nearly 2000 points if one civ is allowed to monopolize it, which is usually Norway due to their starting units and geographic location. So it's important that we steal at least one, most likely the second if we can. Longships and beserkers, your bread and butter in this scenario, earn GA points and GG points on kills, respectively. 

Furthermore, the Civics tree is locked at the start. You have 3 unresearchable civics: Military tradition, naval tradition, and monotheism. The way to unlock these is to gain the eureka - kill a unit with a beserker, kill a unit with a longship, have a majority religion. Archduke was able to kill an archer on turn 1 (SW of Theretford), thus unlocking one branch of the tree for us. We'll need to find a way to score a longship kill as soon as we can, however. Still, this speeds us down the civics tree - Norway and Sweden are unlikely to get any of the boosts on turn 1, locking them out for a little bit. This is a big advantage for Denmark, since we're moving more rapidly towards the key civic of Vikings. 






Vikings unlocks Oligarchy, the first government, with its +4 combat strength and extra policy slots. In this version, it grants 1 Mil, 1 Econ, and 2 Wildcard slots, something I wish was in the base game. 

The tech tree is similar:






The first techs unlock your units - Longships, Settlers, and Beserkers. Portage removes amphibious penalties at rivers, Knarrs unlocks ocean travel, and Engineering unlocks aqueducts. Stirrups gets you horsemen, Shield Wall Huscarls, and Great Heathen Army siege units (ram and catapult). The key techs are obviously Knarrs and GHA in the midst of useless dreck.


Now we just have to wait and see what Sweden and Norway do. Norway could attempt to snipe York or Utrecht out from under us, so we need to keep a clear eye out.

[TheArchduke]

Thanks for the explanation and summary. It is helpful to lurkers but also to ourselves to go over this again.

Portage is actually useless as berserkers do not have that penalty, but I take any eureka we can and Wolin is an exception that we want any support we can that early and the cheapest and best is an archer atm.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I figured out the issue I was having with screenshots - DirectX 12, of all things. Swapping back to D11 fixed the problem, so I'll get some shots up of the actual tech & civic trees soon.

[TheArchduke]

First, I will post the end of turn save for any info you might get out of it.


  CANUTE 2 792 AD.Civ6Save (Size: 559.57 KB / Downloads: 1)

Secondly, report.

Thetford is proceeding nicely.

Before:

   

After:

   

What is peculiar is that longboat. Why is he not pillaging? Do they want to snipe (not going to happen), proceed past us to get pillaging down in North France or something sinister?

Bad luck on the east front. A german knight stumbles into our lands, I dance around to protect the archers. I also expose our berserker to only one archer shot, might be able to get a kill or lure the pikeman. He is not out yet, which is bad news.

   

[TheArchduke]

Well, here we go.

We pillage:

   

We take it and I position our longship in position to plunder the commercial hub next turn.

   

Norway is not doing York it seems, I think they will try to pillage deny us or make a play for Utrecht perhaps? With 47 city strength this is tough and they leave England to us that way. Pillage deny would be worse imo. We are up to 3 ships since:

   

Also Sweden gets DAMN lucky Apueole leaves its Pikeman outside.

Save:


  CANUTE 3 797 AD.Civ6Save (Size: 566.15 KB / Downloads: 0)

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Thanks for the saves. I gotta run to work, but I'll look through them when I get home.

Re: Norway, check out that Beserker near Ribe. If he was going to Scotland, there's no reason to head south. If norway is pillage-denying us, then they don't need berserkers. I think Norway has decided to write-off England and to try and break in at Utrecht to make a play for France. They could take it and then lunge for Rouen and neatly get inside us on the path to conquering France. Worth giving up all of England for? I'm not sure, but I think we should send our English army towards Winchester, then think about hopping across to Rouen if it comes for it. We can spend our excess cash on berserkers in Mercia to push up the coast to York and Scotland.

[TheArchduke]

You could be right. But the quickest route of that Berserker towards England is one tile south as well.

[TheArchduke]

Chev, you get a cookie. Utrecht it is. I disagree with the move, especially as they had a high risk of a unit moving back in. Early game mainland Europe is a deathtrap. They can not put Utrecht under siege.

I thus decide to pillage the commercial to deny its usage over getting a naval kill with a longship, hope you approve.

In a stroke of good luck the pikeman of Wales leaves, let´s hope he stays out.

Before:

   

After

   

New policies, finally useful.

   

I seem to forgot a screenie of the core. Basically we hand produce 2 longships to save money and start on Wolin.