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[Spoilers] Gröt and Bänzai lose several screws assembling a Sweedish Strategy
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November 26th, 2018, 22:33
(This post was last modified: November 26th, 2018, 22:33 by Grotsnot.)
And to get the post spam going early, here are our opponents' starts:
Norway; +2 Naval movement (does not apply to embarked units but does to GAs):  Denmark; +1 Military policy slot:  We get +1 Economic policy slot. Probably the weakest power of the 3 but there's a couple useful things. Starting Districts The scenario has a limited district palette: only Harbors, Commercial Hubs, Encampments, and Holy Sites are available. Harbors are unique to Viking civs and are half price. Holy Sites are gated behind pillaging our way to a religion so won't show up until mid, possibly late-early, game. All starting districts also come with a Lighthouse/Market/Barracks. Sweden Köpingsvik: Harbor, Commercial Hub Birka: Encampment Ladoga: Commercial Hub Denmark Odense: Commercial Hub, Encampment Ribe: Encampment Roskilde: Harbor Norway Nidaros: Harbor, Encampment Oslo: Commercial Hub Stavanger: Harbor So everybody has 2 of what you'd expect and 1 of each of the others. Starting Units Sweden 3x Berserker 1x Archer 1x Settler 1x Builder (3) 2x Trader Denmark 1x Longship 5x Berserker 1x Archer 1x Trader Norway 3x Longship 3x Berserker 1x Archer 1x Trader The baseline looks to be 3x Berseker, 1x Archer, 1x Trader. We get an additional Trader, a Settler, and a Builder. Denmark gets a Longship and 2 extra Berserkers, while Norway gets 3 Longships. We definitely have the most domestic start - but still have enough to take down Apuolė, at least once we get a Longship or two built. Whether we can snag Wòlin as well depends on whether the Danes rush it or focus their energies on Utrecht and southern Britain. Note: we are at Always War with the city-states and non-viking powers - the Frankish, Moorish, and Byzantine Empires - and an alliance with the Danes and Norwegians. We don't share vision but do get open borders and some fairly lucrative trade routes between us.
This has been a busy week at school so far. We have talked a bit on steam but I am going to make some notes here of things we should look into.
1. Useing 6 gold 1 production trade routes. I want to check the trade off rate of gold to production. Is this scenario on normal speed? We may still want to favor the gold over the slight production and food bonuses due to other srategic concerns, but it would be good to know. 2. We discussed how to read the points you get from religion. Either it's +50 per pop per city once you gain a religion or it's +50 rather than (or maybe in addition to) the +10 you get per pop but only after you get a religion. If the latter we want to delay some pop, if the former, it matters less. 3. What should be our leading district for discounts? Harbors half priced sound good but we cannot build harbors everywhere we are going to settle in Russia. 4. Tech path should be longships frist to get 100% chops and extra trade gold policy? Choping settlers out quickly is my thought. Grab all of Russia that we can and turn those cities to producing whatever we need for points. Should we realize Rurik's dream and conquer Miklagarðr? 5. We really need to look at the econ policies in this game and find the best uses for our extra slot. We should try to predict the best uses for Denmark as well. 6. There are 60 turns for this right? In such a short game we should be able to layout a roadmap in general of grabbing the most points and adjust in response to the other teams play.
A bit scattered but mostly in order:
The Speed dial says "Valhalla" so not much direct help, there. Cities grow like weeds and most units are in the 30-60  range, though. At least I think so; one thing I'm meaning to do is post up a quick reference sheet of capabilities and costs for the scenario units.Since this means the food is somewhat superfluous, I like the gold trade routes. Especially pre-religion since later pop is, according to current theory, worth more VPs. There are also limited Amenities available and IME the core cities will be mildly unhappy from mid-game onwards. In my earlier post I forgot that you *can* get Entertainment Districts eventually but I'm not sure the ROI justifies doing so. Also gold is more flexible: rush buy things in newer, front-line cities (like the Black Sea coast City-States) and unspent gold is worth VPs at the end. Still need to verify for sure how the Religious +50VP/pop works. I was looking over some of my old achievement hunting saves and I suspect that conquering a city post-religion gets you +50/pop in that city. If so, conquering the ERE should be a major goal. Leave the ridiculous Frankish Caballerii to our western cousins  I'm not certain there's enough turns in the game for district optimization to pay off. I was getting 20+ turn build timers on inner-Russia Commercial Hubs. Some domestic TRs would help a bit but they'd have to be purchased since Traders cannot rebase in this scenario. Could be wrong though, if there are enough quick districts to knock out it would make those CHs more viable. I 100% agree with Longships first for tech. Will need some gameplans for when and what on to use chops are but getting out Longships is very valuable in-and-of-itself. The first 2-3 boats I think are not worth stalling for chops but we'll definitely want more. Always. Be. Pillaging! Settlers are also rather cheaper in this. I believe they start at 40 and increase by 15 each. So chops help, especially towards the mid/endgame, but are not as essential as in the base game. I was able to get a half dozen of the buggers out without any real focus. Concentrated effort would produce even better results though  The +  from trade routes card is always nice. I'll need to review the policies but there's some reasonably nice things in there. A lot of the best are Military though. The +100% Harbor adjacency card is what comes to mind off the top of my head for the 2nd econ slot.Yep, 60 turns. Does a quick sketch of "Baltic CSs -> Settler Wave+Pillagefest -> Black Sea CSs -> Eat ERE" pass the smell test? In my mind Pillagefest includes funding a GA or two. Also it never really stops, but post-religion it's a lot less lucrative.
Yes that sounds good to me if we can pull it off. We should run some quick tests (I can try to run some of my own Friday) too see how quickly we can get down to the ERE and eat it. If it is reasonably fast enough maybe we can grab some Abbasid territory? we should also map out our settling territory.
Yes we do want some GA's to try and bleed points away from Norway. Not sure what we can do to get in Denmark's way. Having Archduke on a conquest happy civ seems dangerous and our biggest competition. How limited are the amenities? Are there more in the Balkans and Middle East? We can maybe get pretty massive pop by settling first letting them grow to their natural limit and then rapidly conquering cities even if they are unhappy.
Re: Amenities, I have this from my notes, might not be wholly complete:
Quote: We all start with 1 Furs I've got some screenshots of the various areas of the map, just gotta scrounge together the time to post em up.
So I gööfed and forgot to upload the most important map screenshot: Russia! Dotmapping will have to wait till the evening
 But for now here's the rest of the world: England  One interesting note here is that the Great Powers are also permawarred with the city-states. Often the southern Britons will knock down Rouen's walls for opportunistic Vikings. If we can get a couple Longships and a 'zerker in the area - and, the hard part, beat our cousins to the punch - it's one way we could mess with Denmark. (I think most options we have for messing with Denmark involve sniping things they want  )France (frankenstitched from a few different games since getting to their interior is a pain in the ass):  Arles starts as a CS but Charlie usually eats them Iberia  Can just about make out a Basque city-state immediately southeast of the Iron. Usually the Moors eat them if the Vikings don't get there first. The Pyrenees are impassable except for a small gap on the south coast. Central Med  Rome also starts independent but usually gets eaten. These cities are probably our stretch goals if we can manage to finish rampaging through the ERE before T60. Denmark and Norway will have devoured the Franks by then and our troops will be in the area anyway. Eastern Med  Byz will eventually eat Preslav. Which I suppose isn't all bad since it'll knock the walls down for us but probably a sign we're moving too slowly. As pictured, it's possible to get a fleet around to the Bosphorus by midgame. Which will be quite useful for putting Tmutakaran under seige! We can build or buy reinforcement ships from there or a plant on the mouth of the river for use against Byz cities. Iceland & Greenland:   Have some rare amenities and some goody huts, though I think the huts will be disabled? Norway would probably get them first anyway. I've never found any huts elsewhere on the map so they might be hardcoded to those locations. If we really try for it we could probably land settling some of this but dunno if the payoff is worth it. It's also quite out of our way and Denmark&Norway could see us headed there. GAs are not able to warp between cities in this scenario so it doesn't even serve as a forward staging base for Vinland  Also, pretty sure Vinland's location is fixed: due west of Ireland's south coast.
I was maybe going to suggest shifting priority to Italy for the sake of amenities but the map makers really cut it off with moutians.
My expectation is that Denmark will advance along the coast first to try and make it hard for Norway to grab cities in France/Britian rather than inland to Germany, or south to Spain. Bit of a toss up as to whether Denmark will go straight to England or let Norway try to take it. Norway wants England though, more coastal cities for more harbors means more GA and being able to collect those explorer points. Denmark could also head east and try to cut our expansion off. I see that as less likely though, less to claim unless they want to bring settlers too. The ability to buy ships where we need them in the black sea makes me like the gold plan even more. It would be a shame to buy when we have +100% though. Need to see Russia and plan where to spend our production down to the unit/building.
November 28th, 2018, 21:38
(This post was last modified: November 28th, 2018, 21:40 by Grotsnot.)
Yeah unfortunately we're gonna have to go the long way around to get to Italy. The map is really pushing the Viking waterways, which is at least thematic. And gives Denmark less incentive to come over to our side of the world!
Anyway, here's what I have for the colonizable region. I'm pretty sure the resources are static but not 100% confident. Will do another Sweden playthough soon and confirm. Russia  This is our breadbasket. Lots of rivers, but not many forests. Has Truffles, Mercury, and Iron. We don't need a 2nd Iron until Knights but it'll be important then. Also has a few stone we can chop. Finland+Arctic Circle  Opposite up here: lots of choppage but not much food. The White Sea in the upper right is a lake so provides good housing that the cities will never use  Southern Finland has some wheat at least. And the Furs are 2 so we could set up some settlements to work those up to size 2 and then chop out Settlers with the Deer and massive quantities of timber. Not sure how the ROI compares to just gunning south. Or if our opponents will be competing with us for any of this clay.I'll post up a potential dotmap in a bit. Can see some of it in my northern screenshot  I think 3-4 key sites to pick from for our first Settler are Riga, Odessa, or the river section running from by the Truffles down to the sea (Kiev-ish?) |
