(5-17a) Denmark UA and UB Buff

[pineappledan]

Original proposal is here

current abilities:
Viking Fury (UA):
Embarked Units have +1 Movement points and pay just 1 Movement point to Disembark.
All Melee Land Units gain the Viking promotion (no Movement point cost to Pillage tiles. +25% Base Combat Strength when on Pillaged Tiles. +5 HP when healing in Neutral Territory),
All Melee Naval Units gain the Longboat promotion (no Movement point cost to Pillage tiles. +15% Combat Strength when attacking or defending on Coastal Tiles. Recovers HP twice as fast when healing on Coastal Tiles.)

Runestone (UB):
+2 Culture
Units created by this City generate 30 Culture and 30 Gold, scaling with Era when they pillage.
+25% Production to Melee and Naval Melee Units.
+2 Food and +1 Gold to Coast and Ocean.
Can be built without water access.
Cost 1 Gold Maintenance.
Internal Trade Routes generate +6 Food.
+1 Military Supply.

Proposal:

UA changes:

• Change UA name to: Mycel Hæþen Here (Great Heathen Army)
• Viking Promotion:
  • remove '+25%CS when on pillaged Tiles'
  • remove '+5HP when healing in neutral lands'
  • Add 'pillaging non-road improvements gives 30Gold, Scaling with Era.'
  • Add 'pillaging non-road improvements heals unit by an additional 10 HP' (new promotion table ability code: PartialHealOnPillage)
  • Add 'pillaging non-road improvements deals 10 damage to adjacent Enemy Units' (new promotion table ability code: AOEDamageOnPillage)
• Longboat Promotion:
  • remove '+15% Combat Strength when attacking or defending on Coastal Tiles.'
  • remove 'Recovers HP twice as fast when healing on Coastal Tiles.'
  • Add 'pillaging improvements gives 60Gold, Scaling with Era.'
  • Add 'pillaging improvements fully heals unit'
  • Add 'pillaging improvements deals 15 damage to adjacent Enemy Units' (same as above)
• Rename both promotions to 'Viking' (ie. drop separate 'Longboat' name)

UB changes

• Add +25% for Gun units
• Lower extra food on Internal TRs to +4 (same as base lighthouse)
• Remove 30gold on pillage

Rationale:

• UA Name change:
  • 'Viking Fury' is a made up title. 'The Great Heathen Army' ('Mycel Hæþen Here' in the original Old English) is what the Saxons called the Danes invaders when they invaded Britain.
• Promotion ability changes:
  • The new promotion table for yields on pillage allows us to make separate values for land and sea tile pillages. We can use this to make pillaging sea tiles worth more. This is good, because they are relatively rare, so they should be more valuable
  • The 25%on pillaged tiles and 15% in coastline are not great abilities.
    • It incentivizes Danish units to stand and fight instead of moving around to pillage more or retreat
    • The 25% on pillage bonus is really weird, because it augments base CS directly.
    • The CS can also be used defensively, since a unit can benefit from standing on a pillaged tile in friendly land.
    • Thematically, the Danes should be hitting hard, getting the loot, and then get out. AOE damage on pillage would feel more dynamic and aggressive than a combat bonus. It also means that it is strictly for attack, since instant on-pillage effects can only trigger in enemy lands.
  • The heal in neutral abilities aren't interesting
    • Could tie bonus healing to more pillaging instead. More incentive to keep pillaging.
• Promotion name changes
  • With the only difference between the land and naval melee promotions being how much on pillage they give, we can treat them as the same promotion and call them the same thing: Vikingr.
  • Viking no longer has to refer only to the raiders on land.
  • This condenses the UA ability, makes it easier to understand and describe. It's more coherent and consistent
• UB changes
  • The UB needs to lose the gold on pillage so we can have 2 separate levels of pillage gold for land and sea tiles
  • The % bonus for unit production is only on melee and naval melee units. It does not boost UNITCOMBAT_GUN, which means it currently obsoletes for land units at Renaissance. This seems like more of a bug fix.
  • The 2 extra on ITRs is a tiny bonus, and it seems weird to have at all. Is there real intent here to bias Denmark towards internal food TRs? If not, it should be removed

Overall, the idea is to make Denmark even more dialled-in to pillage as the main focus. The bonuses should create more incentives for Danish units to keep moving and pillaging constantly, and not benefit from sticking around.
This proposal is fairly complex, because it requires 2 new abilities, but they both seem quite doable.

July 14 edit: increased naval Viking promotion to from 10 AOE damage and 10 heal on pillage to 15 AOE damage and full heal on pillage

 

[Rekk]

The bonuses should create more incentives for Danish units to keep moving and pillaging constantly, and not benefit from sticking around.

The incentive for moving and pillaging is the culture received from pillaging. The 25% Base CS bonus helps reduce damage taken as they move offensively from pillaged tile to unpillaged tile, as well as retreat over pillaged tiles when you are finished. You can "stick around" on pillaged tiles to fight, but there is no benefit to the war if you aren't moving forward to new yields.

I think this suggested hyper focus will make Danish units less able to "hit hard, get the loot, and get out", not mention remove their ability to do anything else.

Best case, the Danes invade from an angle that has a clear path of unpillaged improvements between safe water, and minimal resistance to keep them from moving (what is the AoE on pillage for, then?).

More likely, they will have to invade further inland to reach a decent number of tiles. As soon as there is strong resistance, the Danish units will therefore have to slowly retreat over pillaged terrain, which means no healing (as now), but also fully 25% weaker to incoming damage until they can get to the water.

This proposed change also doesn't allow the Danes to invade and pillage any faster than they can now. It might even make it more difficult to sustain positive momentum; while they heal more on the pillage, the units will take much more damage in the process.

As you say, Naval units will lose their combat strength bonus to rarely cause aoe damage during the war. The promotion will also encroach further on Press Gangs, without completely eclipsing it.

All this in addition to losing their unique components in neutral and defensive wars as well. I didn't even touch on the AI, either.

Overall, I expect that this will make Danish wars extremely brittle, and they will fail to achieve much, losing much of their army and navy in the process. I don't think this is worth the uniqueness of putting everything on the pillage action itself.

 

[pineappledan]

I think this suggested hyper focus will make Danish units less able to "hit hard, get the loot, and get out", not mention remove their ability to do anything else.

Best case, the Danes invade from an angle that has a clear path of unpillaged improvements between safe water, and minimal resistance to keep them from moving (what is the AoE on pillage for, then?).

Your comment acts like the AOE damage on pillage doesn't exist or won't matter. I have tested both of these proposed abilities, and they are very consequential in battle. My goths currently use the enhanced healing from pillage as their UA, and the AI is very good with them.

They can soften an enemy by pillaging the tiles around enemy units and then hit them to finish them off. The better healing on tile pillage also doesn't require any movement or turns like the +5 healing in neutral does, so they can heal faster and stay in the fight better without moving away. They will also deal chip damage to enemy units as they push further in.

I didn't even touch on the AI, either.

No reason to bring that up since the AI is already trash with Denmark. But, since you did, the AI would be able to handle all of this at least as well as they handle the existing kit. As I said before, I have coded these abilities into other modmods and the AI has done well with them.

Would this change make Denmark more brittle? Probably yes, but I completely disagree that it would make them weaker. Even if it did, the numbers can be changed. What is more important is that these abilities would make Denmark feel more satisfying to play than the existing CS and healing bonuses.

 

[Rekk]

Your comment acts like the AOE damage on pillage doesn't exist or won't matter

I don't think it will matter enough, no. Especially in the water.

The better healing on tile pillage also doesn't require any movement or turns like the +5 healing in neutral does, so they can heal faster and stay in the fight better without moving away.

They heal damage faster, once per tile, but they are taking even more damage in return.

Maybe if it were a full heal (with the added benefit of there being zero question in taking Press Gangs), and 20+ damage on pillage. Even then, they'll have trouble retreating.

What modmod have has AoE pillage?

 

[pineappledan]

I believe that the heal on pillage would need to be a full heal (with the added benefit of there being zero question in taking Press Gangs).

I tried various levels of heal on pillage with the Goths, and lowered it twice. Once from "double heal on pillage" (+25) to +15, and then to the current +10.
Anything above +10 HP on pillage was too powerful. Full heal on ships it's fine, because there are so few opportunities to pillage, but on land even a little bit of additional heal on pillage is very strong.

Also my Goths forced me to nerf this twice, and they don't have no movement cost to pillage while Denmark does, so this would be even harder to control on them.

What modmod have has AoE pillage?

Arabia's UU2

 

[pineappledan]

Cool thing about my proposal: condensing the promotion abilities for land and sea units makes them short enough that you can describe what they do:

Current UA:

My new UA:

 

[pineappledan]

amended OP.

Added 25% to gun units on the runestone.

 

[azum4roll]

You gotta list how much gold is gained in the UA description.

 

[Anarcomu]

You gotta list how much gold is gained in the UA description.

Problem is, depends on if it is naval or land melee. And you want to have a description that fit the UI.

 

[azum4roll]

Problem is, depends on if it is naval or land melee. And you want to have a description that fit the UI.

Otherwise it's only on the Viking promotion, and a new player may not know it.

 

[pineappledan]

If I have to give the exact amounts depending on if it is a land or sea improvement it won't fit. The only alternative is to go back to just saying they get the 'viking' promotion, and not explaining what that is at all.

Of the options available, saying it gives gold without giving the precise amount is the most information possible within the space provided.

 

[KlHannibal2]

Agreeing with Rekk, I expect Danes to become much weaker in war on deity. Gettin in fast to pillage and get back out quickly is fine thematically. But how does it win you the game? You want to take cities to become bigger and snowball. Denmark is a warmonger and needs to take land to win. They are not Japan or France or Greece who can use war yields for other win conditions.

And to add to that: to use their naval mobility to land and pillage, you need to rule the seas. Removing the coastal and healing bonus would weaken their fleet substantially. The extra heal and damage on pillage might be debatable on land. But in the water there are way fewer improvements, making the suggested ability much weaker for ships. It would be easier to block the danish navy with your own ships, rendering most of their other abilities useless.

 

[pineappledan]

Agreeing with Rekk, I expect Danes to become much weaker in war on deity. Gettin in fast to pillage and get back out quickly is fine thematically. But how does it win you the game? You want to take cities to become bigger and snowball. Denmark is a warmonger and needs to take land to win. They are not Japan or France or Greece who can use war yields for other win conditions.

We don’t balance for deity anyways.

Are you suggesting the pillage mechanic is that it gives the wrong yields? My proposal does give more yields earlier, but you seem to be alleging that we should re-focus the Danish onto something other than On pillage, and away from being a pure warmonger. These yields help them win the game in less direct ways than GWAM points, etc. but they are still valuable. Before it gave , the Runestone gave instant , which still doesn't directly contribute to a VC, but was deemed too powerful and exploitable.

More importantly, the current civ and the other Denmark proposal is no more victory-focused

And to add to that: to use their naval mobility to land and pillage, you need to rule the seas. Removing the coastal and healing bonus would weaken their fleet substantially. The extra heal and damage on pillage might be debatable on land. But in the water there are way fewer improvements, making the suggested ability much weaker for ships. It would be easier to block the danish navy with your own ships, rendering most of their other abilities useless.

The coastal bonus is 15%. On top of being boring, it’s negligible. It’s just not helping the Danes that much; it’s too small to do anything. The real promotion bonus is the double heal, even the 25% to naval melee on Runestones is far more consequential. I have already increased the gold value of sea tile pillage relative to land tiles; I will also change the heal on naval pillage to full heal; that will compensate more for the loss of the double healing on coast.

@KlHannibal2 , as someone who I know has played my Goths mod, I know you have first hand experience with how oppressive the +10 heal on pillage can be when given to all land units, and that is with a civ that still pays movement to pillage. You know it is a far superior bonus to +5 heal in neutral and that this is not a nerf.

 

[KlHannibal2]

We don’t balance for deity anyways.

Your criticism of the pillage mechanic is that it gives the wrong yields? My proposal does give more yields earlier, but you seem to be alleging that we should re-focus the Danish onto something other than On pillage. These yields helps them win the game in less obvious ways than GWAM points, etc. but they are still valuable. More importantly, the current civ and the other Denmark proposal is no more victory-focused

The coastal bonus is 15%. On top of being boring, it’s negligible. You allege it is instrumental to Danes winning naval, but it’s just not. It’s too small to do anything. The 25% to naval melee on Runestones is far more consequential. I have already increased the gold value of sea tile pillage relative to land tiles; I will also change the heal on naval pillage to full heal; that will compensate more for the loss of the double healing on coast.

@KlHannibal2 , as someone who I know has played my Goths mod, I know you have first hand experience with how oppressive the +10 heal on pillage can be when given to all land units, and that is with a civ that still costs moves to pillage. You know it is a far superior bonus to +5 heal in neutral and that this is not a nerf.

Allright, I'm buying into your aim of making Denmark more of a pillager than a conqueror. It fits them historically, there are few civs that can win non-domintation victories using warfare and winning non-domination using pillaging IS unique. I also like the concept to not direct them to a specific non-domination victory condition.

Let me first explain why I feel the current proposal makes Denmark weaker than other non-domiation warmongers.

Greece: The bonus culture from kills is way easier to get than from pillaging. It can be done purely on the defensive. Even if you attack and keep your territory safe in the war, you don't have to push far into your enemy to get continuous kills. If you attack someone and trigger a defensive pact, it is much easier to get kills on two fronts than to push into the enemy on two fronts to pillage. It also gives yields from barbs. And the extra border growth gives some production and gold from authority, balancing out that Denmark also gets gold from pillaging (at least to some degree).
Greece also has bonuses for diplo victory and strong fighting bonuses with diplo synergy. Denmark mostly has the yields from pillaging to help in a non-domination victory.

Japan: Has help for founding a religion. If you want to go for non-domination victory without city conquest, it's very good if you can safely found yourself.
Has good culture and sicence bonus just from buildings (no need to fight).
Bonus culture and science from level ups and GWAM points from generals / admirals are even safer than Greece's bonus trigger. You don't even have to get kills, just tanking damage is enough.
Well, they might be nerfed soon.

France: While taking cities is harder than pillaging, the potential yields are much higher. Once you weaken an enemy enough to take cities, race them, let them re-settle and take them again.

Bottom line so far: I think you are moving Denmark in the right direction, and your proposals help them pillaging instead of conquering. I just feel that they might not get enough yields out of it to help them as much towards winning as the civs mentioned above. So as the proposal is right now, I feel the better way to win would still be to go for conquest (pillaging on the way) instead of just pillaging. And the proposal makes them worse at conquering IMO.
Let me mention the increased heal on pillaging instead of combat bonus on pillaged tiles. To take cities, I find you need staying power for your melee units, while siege and ships do the damage to citiies. And also consitent melee attacks if possible. For this, I prefer the current pillaged tile bonus over a once per tile extra healing. I love the ability with the Goths, and I find it stronger with them. Their sword UU is stronger in rough terrain and can get stalward early, making the extra heal more impactful. Same goes for early city assault and their reduced damage from cities. Denmark does not have any of that, making the extra heal weaker when it comes to taking cities. It is however better for fast pillaging than the current bonus. I like the full heal on ships though. Imagine a dreadnought 3 ship getting a full heal.

So where to go from here? First, how would I play the proposed Denmark to max the ability? I see two main approaches. For both you want to take authority. But you can get away with just taking the opener and the science from kills, ignoring the rest (and maybe open with progress).

1. Keep attacking city states. Attack them fast from the sea, kill all the units and pillage all the tiles. Then move back to heal (if necessary, but your land units should be mostly fine from the extra pillage heal, and at least some ships should get the full heal. Then move on to the next city state. Keep rotating through all city states in range so they can repair their tiles and rebuild some units for you to kill again. I would stay at war with all city states in range constantly as this is better for diplo than repeated DOWs (I think).
Pros of this approach: much less military resistance than attacking main civs. No defensive pacts. No war weariness (AFAIK). Usually easier access via sea due to city state locations.

2. Attack one civ that is easy to access. Kill their military, then pillage all tiles you can safely reach. Retreat a bit or move on to another city of them to keep pillaging. Let them repair tiles of the first city so you can pillage again soon. Keep the war going as long as possible once their military is crippeld to keep pillaging without much resistance. Maybe take one central city to get good access to several target areas.
Pros of this approach: more potential tiles to pillage once you have crippled their military. Keeps diplo victory possible. Can weaken a competitor.

Over all, I think approach 1 is stronger than 2 as it is much easier to pull off. As long as you have good access to city states.


As I think the proposed kit might be too weak for a non-domination victory (compared to the civs mentioned above), some ideas to buff it:

Add science from pillaging to the rune stone. Culture and gold mostly benefit diplo and culture victories. Some help with science victory would make them more diverse. It's hard for me to estimate the right value. Maybe 10, 15 or 20 to start testing.
Or increase the gold and culture yields.
I like the increased gold yield from sea tiles over land tiles, offsetting the lowe number of improved tiles. Can the same be done for the culture yields?

Give the viking promotion also to melee cavalry (mot sure if you meant to give it already) and scout units. In a Denmark game, Milae showed how strong an early scout from ruins can be with the pillaging yields. With the current proposal, scouts would only get the culture from pillaging, not the gold. And melee cavalry is very good for pillaging if you have to fight more over land. Real vikings also used horses once they established themselves in England.

Give the same yields (but higher) as for pillaging, and maybe the healing bonus, also to plundering trade routes (at least naval ones). Vikings did conventional piracy as well as pillaging on land. It also gives you more output if you attack an AI and not just city states, rewarding the higher risk and military resistance.

Give yields to melee city attacks. Once you have cleared the units and have access to pillage all the tiles around a city, why not take a few melee attacks to reap extra benefits? It's debatable though, since this ability was removed before, because it was deemed too strong. Maybe only give it to naval melee units (and land melee units attacking while embarked?). This way, you can get more out of island cities with little land tiles around to pillage. And giving it only to naval units means you can do the city attacks in a less sustainable way than with land units, since you have to move to friendly territory to heal (after the few sea tiles in range have been pillaged).


Not sure if the yields are really too weak for non-domination. Never played Denmark this way. Maybe someone else has tried this playstyle?

One more idea to make the pillaging playstyle unique and discourage taking cities: Denmark can't build siege units until cannons or field guns. You can still take cities that you can quicky surround from the sea and where you do the damage with ships and berserkers. But it's harder over land.
This might be more suitable for 3/4 UC though. Speaking of that mod, how on earth is the unique agribusiness supposed to synergise with their current (and proposed) kit? I always found it out of place. Am I missing something?

And as always: I'm greatly appreciating your contribution to VP. I might not always agree to your proposals, but damn, you're doing an amazing job here!

 

[azum4roll]

1. Keep attacking city states. Attack them fast from the sea, kill all the units and pillage all the tiles. Then move back to heal (if necessary, but your land units should be mostly fine from the extra pillage heal, and at least some ships should get the full heal. Then move on to the next city state. Keep rotating through all city states in range so they can repair their tiles and rebuild some units for you to kill again. I would stay at war with all city states in range constantly as this is better for diplo than repeated DOWs (I think).
Pros of this approach: much less military resistance than attacking main civs. No defensive pacts. No war weariness (AFAIK). Usually easier access via sea due to city state locations.

Cons: multiple CS will ask other civs to denounce/declare war on you. You also don't benefit from CS yields and quests.

 

[pineappledan]

Let me mention the increased heal on pillaging instead of combat bonus on pillaged tiles. To take cities, I find you need staying power for your melee units, while siege and ships do the damage to cities. And also consistent melee attacks if possible. For this, I prefer the current pillaged tile bonus over a once per tile extra healing. I love the ability with the Goths, and I find it stronger with them. Their sword UU is stronger in rough terrain and can get stalward early, making the extra heal more impactful. Same goes for early city assault and their reduced damage from cities. Denmark does not have any of that, making the extra heal weaker when it comes to taking cities. It is however better for fast pillaging than the current bonus. I like the full heal on ships though. Imagine a dreadnought 3 ship getting a full heal.

Current Viking:

+25% CS when on a pillaged tile​

+5 heal in neutral land​

no movement to pillage​

New Viking (land):

30 Gold on Pillage​

10 HP on pillage (total of 35)​

10 AOE damage on pillage​

no movement to pillage​

Spoiler my thoughts :

• The 25% combat bonus on pillaging
  • This is the strongest of the bonuses. It's a powerful combat steroid
  • First off, it's really janky. It's the only promotion in the game that changes base CS directly instead of giving a 25% modifier. So it is applied before other modifiers.
  • It doesn't play well with the no movement to pillage. It requires that your unit pillage a tile and then stay on it. Your units can only pillage if they have movement left, but Danish units don't use movement to pillage, so that means they always have movement left after they pillage. This means Danish units, as a pre-condition of being able to use this ability, always can move off the boosting tile. And that's exactly what the AI does. They pillage and then they have movement left over, so they move off the tile and lose their combat bonus. The AI would be able to use this ability better if they pillaged, and then didn't still have movement left over to move away.
  • This bonus works on defense, because you can fight on pillaged tiles that you own. This is antithetical to the Danish Viking flavor; they should be attacking, fighting in foreign lands, and have bonuses for that.
  • This bonus rewards you for standing your ground. It is fundamentally at odds with Denmark's movement bonuses, creating friction in the kit. They have a UU with extra move and free movement over rivers, and a UA that gives more movement on embark, free embarkation, and makes pillaging costless. So why do they have this bonus that rewards standing still when everything else rewards moving?
• +5 heal in neutral land
  • This bonus' main utility is ultra early game. It gets weaker and weaker as more land is claimed by all players, and eventually the bonus just disappears.
  • The greatest utility for +5 healing in neutral is for early barbarian hunting and scouting. It acts as an extra level of survivalism on your starting pathfinder. Is this what we want to be boosting on Denmark? Stronger ancient era scouts?
  • Like the 25% CS boost, this is another bonus that requires your units to stand still. You could argue faster healing means getting to move faster, but you could also just give healing via some other action. This flies in the face of your multiple movement bonuses and your pillage bonuses. Why should Danish units have a bonus to standing in place when pillaging already gives 25 HP at no movement cost? It's incoherent and conflicting.
  • Of the 4 bonuses discusses (CS for pillaged tiles, heal on pillage, AOE on pillage, heal in neutral), it is by far the weakest. A distant 4th place that only helps in early game and then obsoletes entirely.
• 10 heal and 10 AOE damage on pillage
  • neither bonus by itself is as strong as the 25% CS, but together they are much better than the CS bonus + neutral healing.
  • These bonuses fix a lot of flavor with the current pillage bonuses. They are both instant effects, which means you have to be pillaging the tile, which means they only work in enemy lands. This gives Denmark a clear boost towards aggression
  • They are both instant effects that, when combined with the no movement, work with Denmark's movement bonuses, rather than working against them.
  • Combined with the base 25HP on pillage, 35 hp on zero-cost pillage will make Danish soldiers heal almost to full at any damage state if they are in foreign lands.
  • The active, instant bonus is much easier for the AI to handle. Between more healing, more damage, and instant yields, there is always some sort of extra reward activating on pillage that always benefits the unit no matter the situation.
  • Unlike the 25% CS, they do not punish your units for moving around to find more tiles to pillage like the current CS bonus does.

Current Longboat:

+15% CS when on coast​

Double heal on coast​

no movement to pillage​

New Viking (naval):

60 Gold on pillage​

Full Heal on pillage​

15 AOE damage on pillage​

no movement to pillage​

Spoiler my thoughts :

• 15%CS on coast
  • A modest CS boost when hugging the coast. Most relevant when early ships can't enter deep ocean, which also happens to be the part of the game where boats are non-existent because they are generally useless.
  • Has some utility on sieges and defense, and helps you take/deal a little more damage to cities. However, Once naval units are strong enough and mobile enough to threaten cities, 15% is peanuts. It is swamped by other bonuses.
  • So this is only relevant when boats aren't, and becomes irrelevant as soon as boats start to matter. Not a great bonus design.
• Double heal on coast
  • Boats can only heal in friendly lands unless they get supply/Grand Canal. So this is a double healing bonus in friendly land until your boat reaches at least lvl 5.
  • This is the strongest bonus on Longboat. It helps you hit an enemy, take damage, retreat to heal, and get back in the fight in half the time. It is, in this respect, a little dynamic because it reduces downtime on boats, which have a lot of downtime.
  • It's very useful on defense. Your defending boats heal 30 hp or more each turn. Combined with the 15% CS, this ability is most useful when tanking damage in friendly lands. The only problem is, why on earth to the Danes have a defensive bonus like this? Shouldn't they be out attacking and pillaging other civs?
• Gold, Full heal, and damage on pillage
  • These bonuses are weaker and give less sustain than the double heal on coast. Even combined, they are weaker than the heal.
  • They fit Denmark's theme much better though. You can fully heal 1-2 ships on a city assault, and you do it without withdrawing. You get more gold overall than you do now. The bonuses promote being in other people's land

TL;DR - the instant bonuses on heal are passive, stationary bonuses that work against the movement bonuses and reward defensive play instead of offensive play. They are anti-synergy.

Add science from pillaging to the rune stone. Culture and gold mostly benefit diplo and culture victories. Some help with science victory would make them more diverse. It's hard for me to estimate the right value. Maybe 10, 15 or 20 to start testing.
Or increase the gold and culture yields.
I like the increased gold yield from sea tiles over land tiles, offsetting the lowe number of improved tiles. Can the same be done for the culture yields?

The rewards for pillaging went through several rounds of balancing before they settled on the numbers and yield types they are at now. The rewards are already quite substantial, scaling to 210 per tile in Information.

In order to have the culture work the same as the gold yields, we would have to move them off the runestone and onto the Viking promotions too. This would greatly weaken the Runestone, it would also mean that all yields could only be given by units with the viking promotion (ie. no more on pillage for ranged units).

Give the viking promotion also to melee cavalry (mot sure if you meant to give it already) and scout units. In a Denmark game, Milae showed how strong an early scout from ruins can be with the pillaging yields. With the current proposal, scouts would only get the culture from pillaging, not the gold. And melee cavalry is very good for pillaging if you have to fight more over land. Real vikings also used horses once they established themselves in England.

This is how it already works. That's why my UA proposal text says "Units with melee attacks" and not "Melee units".

Viking promotions are given to the following UnitCombats: Melee, Gun, Recon, Mounted, Armor, and NavalMelee

Give the same yields (but higher) as for pillaging, and maybe the healing bonus, also to plundering trade routes (at least naval ones). Vikings did conventional piracy as well as pillaging on land. It also gives you more output if you attack an AI and not just city states, rewarding the higher risk and military resistance.

Give yields to melee city attacks. Once you have cleared the units and have access to pillage all the tiles around a city, why not take a few melee attacks to reap extra benefits? It's debatable though, since this ability was removed before, because it was deemed too strong. Maybe only give it to naval melee units (and land melee units attacking while embarked?). This way, you can get more out of island cities with little land tiles around to pillage. And giving it only to naval units means you can do the city attacks in a less sustainable way than with land units, since you have to move to friendly territory to heal (after the few sea tiles in range have been pillaged).

It's better to keep the focus on pillaging and not dilute them. I do not think the pillaging playstyle is so weak that it necessitates bringing in other mechanics. Pillaging TRs is currently a Moroccan specialty, and we have lots of civs that benefit directly from hitting/capturing cities.
City attacks were considered at one point, but it was decided that keeping them on pillage bonuses kept their emphasis more focused and well-defined. There is always mercenary free companies if you want to add gold on city attack to your army.

One more idea to make the pillaging playstyle unique and discourage taking cities: Denmark can't build siege units until cannons or field guns. You can still take cities that you can quicky surround from the sea and where you do the damage with ships and berserkers. But it's harder over land.

One of the best uses of Denmark's free embarkation ability is to move siege units in by sea, disembark them onto land and fire on a city in a single turn. The Danes still have significant movement bonuses that allow them to position and blockade cities quickly.

Speaking of that mod, how on earth is the unique agribusiness supposed to synergise with their current (and proposed) kit? I always found it out of place. Am I missing something?

The Andelsbevægelse is meant to be a land version of the +1 that the Runestone gives to all sea tiles, over and above the normal lighthouse bonuses.
It also loosens build restrictions by dropping the strategic resource requirement, mirroring how Runestones can be built anywhere, without requiring coast.

The with respectable base yield, and major bonuses to food and unit production, the Runestone has decent peaceful bonuses, in addition to its pillage bonuses. The Andelsbevægelse is meant to reinforce and re-emphasize Denmark's non-war bonuses.

 

[Rekk]

In order to have the culture work the same as the gold yields, we would have to move them off the runestone and onto the Viking promotions too. This would greatly weaken the Runestone, it would also mean that all yields could only be given by units with the viking promotion (ie. no more on pillage for ranged units).

You've already proposed no more extra on pillage for ranged units.

Shouldn't they be out attacking and pillaging other civs?

As you just said, this bonus allows Danish ships heal up faster and go out pillaging again. Removing this bonus means that they will be out harrassing other civs less frequently. This is a poor exchange for giving a few ships a 1-time full heal.

One of the best abilities to pair with this is the Grand Canal, specifically so that you don't actually have to go all the way back to your homeland in order to benefit from the increased healing, greatly reducing travel time between your raids.

Just like the 25% CS on Viking; this is used to aid Denmark in moving from place to place faster.

Denmark is not rewarded for sitting around, nor is it rewarded for defending on its own territory. The entirety of the UA already works best when its units are attacking other civilizations. That it also gains a moderate bonus when defending its own territory isn't an anathema, especially when it doesn't want to be stuck doing it.

 

[pineappledan]

This proposal requires new code for 2 promotion abilities:
HealXOnPillage - we have an ability that gives full heal on non-road pillage, but not one that allows you to heal a set additional amount.
AOEOnPillage - we have AoE damage on fortify, on turn start, on attack, on kill, and on move, but not one on pillage.

Even if this proposal doesn’t pass, I have felt the absence of these specific abilities from the modmodders’ toolkit for a long time. I have at least 1 other place for both of these abilities already in mind, and I think they would be great additions somewhere in the mod, if not specifically on Denmark.

 

[KlHannibal2]

This proposal requires new code for 2 promotion abilities:
HealXOnPillage - we have an ability that gives full heal on non-road pillage, but not one that allows you to heal a set additional amount.
AOEOnPillage - we have AoE damage on fortify, on turn start, on attack, on kill, and on move, but not one on pillage.

Even if this proposal doesn’t pass, I have felt the absence of these specific abilities from the modmodders’ toolkit for a long time. I have at least 1 other place for both of these abilities already in mind, and I think they would be great additions somewhere in the mod, if not specifically on Denmark.

I'm curious, where else would you use them? Damage on pillage sounds Huns for me.

 

[pineappledan]

I use damage on pillage with Arabia’s 4UC and specific heal amounts with goths already. Both coded with lua.

If I had dll integration I would use 1 of these for the Phoenician UU, and maybe the Israelite Maccabee