[Database] (6-86) Denmark Tweaks

[NerfRDD]

A few patches ago Denmark's ability was changed to focus on the pillaging aspect of warmongering.While the reasoning makes sense thematically,it doesn't really help Denmark's ability to war effectively compared to other civs.The loss of 25% combat strength when on pillaged tiles really hurts Denmark's war endeavours and makes the period before unlocking their UU painful.In order for Denmark to utilize it's pillage fetish to the fullest they need to be able to duke it out with enemy units and take more risks in doing so.Their UB Runestone which they need to get to be able to raid efficiently sits pretty awkwardly at the top of the tech tree,competing with writing and military theory.Therefore I propose the following changes.

Current Denmark ability UA (Mycel Hæþen Here)
Embarked Units gain +1 Movement and pay just 1 Movement to Disembark.Military units with melee attacks heal 10 HP deal 10 damage to adjacent enemies, earn , and spend no movement when Pillaging.


Runestone (UB):
Lighthouse replacement.
+2 .
Units created by this City generate 30 and 30 , scaling with Era when they pillage.
+25% to Melee,Gun and Naval Melee Units.
+2 and +1 to Coast and Ocean.
Can be built without water access.
Cost 1 Maintenance.
Internal Trade Routes generate +6 .
+1 military supply.

Proposed Changes:

Denmark ability UA(Mycel Hæþen Here)

Embarked Units get +1 Movement and pay just 1 Movement to Disembark.Military units with melee attacks have the Viking Fury promotion,heal 15 HP deal 15 damage to adjacent enemies,earn ,and spend no movement when Pillaging.

Viking Fury Promotion:
Unit always fights at full strength.

The Danes are fearsome warriors who enjoy fighting.Keeping true to their Viking name they will plunge themselves into battle for glory and loot.

Runestone (UB):
Monument replacement.
+2
+34% faster border growth rate in this city.
Units created by this City generate 20 and 20 ,scaling with Era when they pillage.
+25% to Melee,Gun and Naval Melee Units.

By moving the UB from the top of the tech tree to the very beginning heavily incentivizes the Denmark player to start raiding as soon as possible without hampering research towards the much needed writing and barracks.

These changes are aimed towards making Denmark have it's own niche when it comes to waging war.The pillaging numbers can be tweaked in case it ends up being too strong.Please feel free to share your thoughts!

 

[ma_kuh]

The Runestone is much more interesting as a lighthouse than a monument. So I think that's a nonstarter.

I can understand the pop-culture idea of "the berserker" getting stronger as their health is lowered. I don't know that it's needed at all, but I guess I also don't see how it would hurt. It's kind of just more stats for the sake of stats though... That said, I would totally trade "fights at full strength" (or "CS increases with missing health, rather than lowers") for "formation" on the Berserker, it low-key really bothers me that axebros wreck horses so badly

Denmark is fairly ridiculously tuned right now when their UU breaks out. I don't like the general direction of this change, it's more power "to help them out early", but they don't need any help at this point. If anything they need better scaling so they can leverage an early-game advantage into actually winning the game. (Which honestly is probably just AI tweaks, they get the best ocean-invasion tools in the game so they should theoretically be best positioned to take over other continents when it comes to it.)

You might want to do another pass at highlighting the changes you're making, it looks like you're sneaking in +5 HP heal/damage without making it clear that this proposal is touching that aspect of the UA.

 

[Rekk]

Also, you'll notice that we removed the "Viking Fury promotion" from the text in the UA in favour of just stating what the promotion does. Adding it back in for a single promotion ability when the rest of the promotion abilities are still there is nonsensical.

 

[pineappledan]

I should say that I tried to test Denmark in this new version, but didn't get any good data. I didn't get a to fight a good war with the new Denmark, because when I tested them in 4.X, the AI forgot to improve tiles entirely, and as a result their economy and army were far behind me. So I ended up fighting total pushovers that died too fast while also denying me the use of my UA. That being said, I did get a pretty good feel for the (relatively new) Berzerker Pikes and hot damn they are WAY too good. I think they need their CS reduced by 1, or even 2, down to the base 17 CS, same as Pikes. They lose their +1 movement on upgrade, so they still wouldn't carry everything forward, but they are SO CHEAP, and SO FAST that I throttled my whole continent with them before late medieval.

There's already a civ that gives all melee units fight well at full damage: Japan.
Japan also is one of those civs that gets economic bonuses for fighting, except while Denmark's is tied to pillaging, Japan's is tied to gaining XP
We don't need Denmark to become Japan when Japan already exists.

Increasing the damage and heal on pillage from 10 to 15. I tried to get some data on whether the damage was at the right level, but I already know that 10 HP heal is the right level. I experimented with 15HP heal on a custom civ by itself, without no movement to pillage, and it was too strong. I had to lower it to 10 HP just to give other civs a fighting chance. At 35 HP healed per pillage, if your unit can survive a turn of receiving damage it can almost heal back to full. At 15 HP their ability to recover from any damage amount becomes total. You can't counter that amount of heal until you have allowed you entire land to be pillaged, by which point you probably have done enough damage to kill their entire army twice over.
You didn't substantiate why you want to increase the damage/heal, or even claim to have playtested this new version of Denmark. You might be right that the damage on pillage is too low, but my own tests with the heal have convinced me that the Heal is already as high as it possibly can go.

In changing to Runestone to a monument, you have suggested the following:
- Denmark no longer has the unique ability to get the sea bonuses even if settled off coast. This is a nice bit of flexibility that can make invading Denmark difficult if used well.
- Denmark's yields on pillage unlocks earlier, but you also lowered the yields by 50% at all stages of the game. Unlocking earlier is pointless, because there are no improvements to pillage at the start of the game anyways. This is like giving a bonus to air unit production in Industrial, a full era before you can build Air units.
- You removed the extra +1 to all sea tiles that the Runestone gives. With the current bonus, all coastal tiles with no resources become 51, better than most farms. Denmark can rush Sailing on a coastal start and still have a really good economy just from the Runestone's base yields.
- I have said it before and I will say it again: People discount Denmark's peaceful bonuses. Harald's war incentives allow you to delay aggression and focus on peaceful play early on, because they require a lot of improvements in foreign lands which don't happen until well-into classical. He also has the peaceful bonuses to not fall behind; he saves a ton on unit production (especially combined with the Zerkers' discounted cost), and can outperform improved farmland with naked coast tiles. If you move the bonuses to the monument and weaken them, nothing changes about his game pace except that you've nerfed everything he depends on to keep his economy running while he waits for the foreign lands to be cultivated, and primed for invasion.

In summary: This proposal makes Denmark weaker, less unique, and less capable of doing any playstyle other than full fight mode.

 

[pineappledan]

it low-key really bothers me that axebros wreck horses so badly

Vikings fighting in formation??? Why I neve- oh actually they did that all the time.

 

[ma_kuh]

But the formation it's talking about is putting spears on your flanks and heavy melee in front of archers. Don't you feel it's better represented by a 4-unit diamond than a promotion tacked onto the UU purely because of the base-unit?

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "vikings are ragers who never fight in formation", I'm just saying I feel like having moved the Berserker from Swords to Pikes is a little off when a good part of viking success was reliant on a difference between hand-to-hand and polearm use.

 

[ma_kuh]

Okay, I'm definitely going to deep at this point... but clearly the solution is to give Berserkers the Indonesia treatment and let them shapeshift into one of "Three main animal cults [that] appeared: the cult of the bear, the wolf, and the wild boar." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker

And then you can have your fancy Boar Snout Berserkers with Formation fight side-by-side your Cover-touting Bear-serkers while a pack of Wolf Berserkers with Mobility move in for the flank.

 

[pineappledan]

except by their name, you already know they are ALL bear cult. It's in the name. The wolf-men were Ulfhednar, and we don't know what the boar-men called themselves.

 

[andersw]

I like the move to monument another option would be to place the runestone at Ironworking (or somewhere on that side).
And yes Denmark is sort of garbage atm.

 

[Rekk]

But the formation it's talking about is putting spears on your flanks and heavy melee in front of archers. Don't you feel it's better represented by a 4-unit diamond than a promotion tacked onto the UU purely because of the base-unit?

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "vikings are ragers who never fight in formation", I'm just saying I feel like having moved the Berserker from Swords to Pikes is a little off when a good part of viking success was reliant on a difference between hand-to-hand and polearm use.

They have formation because spearmen have formation, so Berserkers upgraded from Spearmen have the same free promotions as a Berserker built from scratch.

 

[ma_kuh]

I get the mechanics of why they have it. I just don't like it.
They used to be in the sword line, which at this point would mean they shrug off ranged attacks better with Discipline, and have more HP. So to me that's a lot more "berserker" than anti-cavalry.

It also contributes to them being overly dominant during their window, the extra CS like a longsword but the anti-cavalry measures of a pike, and the speed to run down any archers that try to pick them off. They aren't even resource-gated. It's just too much.

Maybe -10% base CS would be enough to change that opinion, hard to say.