Denmark

[ElliotS]

I'm thinking you don't really get Denmark. You can puppet every city you come across, because puppets don't affect bonus yields. Growth isn't particularly important either, because your production isn't tied to your population. (PS, if you are building workshops or factories before other buildings, you are doing it wrong).

This seems excessively hyperbolic. If you really think you can succeed with no production buildings and no growth then do your own challenge, because this implied that they're as or more OP than when we nerfed them from getting yields on kill.

Also might I remind everyone that last time they were OP (Jelling Stones gave 5 / per unit kill scaling with era) we nerfed the yields to 3 / and they became really, really bad. (As a counter-point to myself, people did think that they were a bad or middling civ until I posted a photojournal and called attention to how OP they were.)

We moved in the right direction by lowering the yields and expanding their toolkit. (You pillage less tiles than units you kill, and need to be winning a war to pillage tiles. Also indirect nerfs because war-weariness was buffed to perpetual war is more difficult.)

So they went from entirely relying on OP yields per kill to having some actual bonuses to warring and being less knife's edge on balance.

The thing is that right now they're not OP until they hit this 'critical mass'. Where they have 8+ cities and are in later eras in an okay position. That's when they can go ham.

That means we should aim to move balance to what they're getting right now at 5-6 cities. Some suggestions have us smashing their yields into the realm of 1-3 cities, which is just clearly an overreaction.

We need to remember the history of danish balance nightmares to avoid repeating it.

To address some specifics:

Why don't we just drop the era scaling and call it a day?

Massive over-reaction. Their yields aren't even good in classical, by design. The yields are lower because we know they scale with era. This would make them unplayable.

Just to add to chaos and put another idea out there, if it gave gold instead of production, it would already be a lot better balanced, just because infinite gold is a lot less useful than infinite production.

I don't disagree with this idea. It's thematic enough, and lowers the yields by reducing their quality. I would only say that the runestones should then reduce the cost of buying a unit by 25% as well. (Still have XP penalties apply.)

It's interesting. I don't know - the more I think about it, the more I just want to nerf it as-is, perhaps just dropping the +5 production on pillaging and calling it a day. It would be a lot less work and rebalancing!

Cutting their yields in half seems kinda extreme. At the very least give Jelling stones some production to compensate.

Perhaps 'closest city' is just the easiest method, period. Buff the value slightly, but make it only apply the bonus to the closest city. Might also be a good idea to do this for the 'on victory' bonus for Rome/Greece, just to keep things the same (buff their values, but make it closest only).

G

What would you buff the values to? 25 /? Also a more-or-less uncontrollable flow of production into random cities is terrible. Even at 40 / I would call this a severe nerf.

---

Out of all these suggestions my favorite is CrazyG's of changing production to gold.

If I had to pitch another I'd say to change it to "If you pillaged a tile on the previous turn, get +10 / scaling with era." so alpha strikes are less powerful, you're capped at the value of 2 tiles per turn, and longer wars are needed. This should significantly reduce the outliers without really hurting more normal play.

 

[CrazyG]

If you drop the production and leave the culture, Denmark is just a slightly different version of Greece.

Here is why gold is a good move.
-If you use it for units, you get an XP penalty.
-You can't build buildings with just gold, you need production too. Even if you have infinite gold, you still need production.
-Its much worse for wonders
-You can't use it to build those world congress proposals by yourself in just 1 turn
-You can't use gold on a research or culture project. This is a big deal, late game your Runestones can reposition to work on science, which is the only yield Denmark isn't drowning in.

For the AI or for a human playing Denmark mostly normally, gold will function similarly to production. With all this said, I'll bow out of the discussion if Denmark will remain pillaging focused, as I find this to be a big gimmick.

This seems excessively hyperbolic. If you really think you can succeed with no production buildings and no growth then do your own challenge, because this implied that they're as or more OP than when we nerfed them from getting yields on kill.

I'm not sure how much of a nerf changing to pillaging was. If you are okay being gimmicky, you can really abuse pillaging more than yield per kill against the AI. City states often build like 8 workers, you can pillage their tiles every 10 turns pretty consistently. If you just farm a couple of city states this way, Runestones are pulling a ton of yields. I'm not really trying to win wars against humans (you aren't Aztec). The other thing is because you scale with era, you are constantly getting stronger. Other warmongers feel pressure to succeed now, but with Denmark you just stronger and stronger over time.

Another thing is Denmark can settle cities differently than anyone else, because you don't need strong tiles to work. When you realize this, you don't need that much land to get 10 cities down. Your cities need a Jelling Stone and science buildings to be worthwhile, nothing else. If you get a religion (but honestly you don't need one) you should take science as well. I don't think I'd even build shrines though, you win the game by having a strong military, building jelling stones, then advancing in science to scale them while pillaging. After initial expansion, I'm not taking cities, I'm pillaging everything then leaving to let that sucker repair the tiles to pillage again. They AI will actually repair their tiles faster than they rebuild their army (don't capture their workers!).

Also the fact that a puppet is usually smart enough to build a Runestone as its first or second building, then it and gets full yields for that Runestone culture is SOOOOOOOOO good.

 

[chicorbeef]

This got me thinking...it would probably take a toll on performance but is it possible to not have Runestone apply for City State pillaged tiles, only major civs?

Also, CrazyG, what is your opinion on removing era scaling? Seems like it would put a dent in your plan of "don't take cities beyond initial expansion, just farm/dominate infrastructure".

Massive over-reaction. Their yields aren't even good in classical, by design. The yields are lower because we know they scale with era. This would make them unplayable.

I don't play Denmark so it's hard for me to say. But, +10-15 Production/Culture per city per tile pillaged in Medieval-Renaissance Era really sounds like there is one too many sources of scaling. I mean, compare it to other buildings.

Egypt gets +8 Culture/+5 Science per city from their UB in the Classical (with the UA boost). At most, they get +8 Science/+7 Culture, with the bump in Artistry. I consider the Burial Tomb one of the strongest Classical Era buildings, imagine what it would be like if it scaled with era.

Sweden gets +3 Science per 4 citizens/+1 Culture per 3 citizens....in the Industrial Era. By that time, Denmark gets +20 Culture/Production per city by pillaging one tile per turn. Even if you pillage one tile every 2 turns, you still get about as many yields as the Skola, and that's not even counting the yields that you've got along the way. What other UB provides that many yields? (Tabya? Skola? Burial Tomb? Acropolis? Colosseum?)

CrazyG and Minh Le and LukaSlovenia have all remarked how they can pillage tiles regularly (partly by farming city states) so I think one tile per turn is not an unreasonable estimate. You have to be pillaging less than one tile per turn for the Runestone to not be better than literally any UB I can think of in raw yield power.

I think making it impossible to farm city states would be something if feasible code-wise. Beyond that we can experiment with trying Gold, removing Era scaling, whatever you experienced Denmark players feel is necessary.

 

[Gazebo]

Tapping into @ElliotS's point, what if we made it so that the pillaging/kill/death instant yields can only trigger once per turn? So if you pillage something on a turn, you get the instant yield like normal, but subsequent pillaging in a turn provides nothing? I don't know, it may end up being gamey.

Might just swap Culture for Gold and drop the yields by 1.

G

 

[pineappledan]

Tapping into @ElliotS's point, what if we made it so that the pillaging/kill/death instant yields can only trigger once per turn? So if you pillage something on a turn, you get the instant yield like normal, but subsequent pillaging in a turn provides nothing? I don't know, it may end up being gamey.

I can see this being abused in bizarre way, like putting 2-3 city-states into a loop where you run in, pillage 1 tile, then run back out again and move your units far enough away that they send a worker to improve it. Then have this cycle occuring on staggered intervals in a few places.

I think the 4/4 sounds like a fine idea. Perhaps the biggest issue with this thing all along was that it added local yields.

 

[Stalker0]

I like the suggestion of a challenge. Would be great for someone to showcase just how OP Denmark is.

 

[Gazebo]

I can see this being abused in bizarre way, like putting 2-3 city-states into a loop where you run in, pillage 1 tile, then run back out again and move your units far enough away that they send a worker to improve it. Then have this cycle occuring on staggered intervals in a few places.

I think the 4/4 sounds like a fine idea. Perhaps the biggest issue with this thing all along was that it added local yields.

Culture does filter through border growth at the local level, but that's okay.


G

 

[infidel88]

1 tile limit is far bigger nerf than lowering yields in half. Skilled played can easily pillage 5+ tiles/turn in industrial era+ just with recon units.
Also don't forget UU and UA is kind of designed to pillage stuff and making war that lets you thrive when you are pillaging and then live off spoils of war for X next turns thanks to production in culture.
With current war weariness changes it's not so easy to reach 'critical mass', as you can't stay in permanent war with everyone since classical and back then Runestones can't rocket your civ into space yet.
Vikings got their 4th UC nerfed strongly (which you don't care). I would just go for delaying possible critical moment instead of nerfing ability into ground.

 

[ElliotS]

Tapping into @ElliotS's point, what if we made it so that the pillaging/kill/death instant yields can only trigger once per turn? So if you pillage something on a turn, you get the instant yield like normal, but subsequent pillaging in a turn provides nothing? I don't know, it may end up being gamey.

Might just swap Culture for Gold and drop the yields by 1.

G

You mean swap production for gold, right?

Also I think that being able to farm city states might be the problem. CrazyG is right that I haven't been doing that enough, which probably explains the differences in performance. If we could remove the ability to farm city states then the problem would be much less pronounced.

Can we make it 5 / and remove the ability to get yields from city states? That would probably be enough to balance it.

 

[YukiN]

I think that being able to farm city states might be the problem.

Did VP remove the permanent war feature with all CS?

 

[randomnub]

I prefer to have the UB granting 5 /, to not get rewarded too much in the culture department while warring and feel like Greece v2. The base +2 on it is already good enough to not fall back, or maybe even too good since it's the same bonus Carthage gets on its lighthouses after building the Cothon.

Generally speaking culture is both powerful and overused on many uniques.

 

[Rekk]

The problem is that the UB grants production on pillage. Denmark doesn't play like Greece at all, despite them both getting instant yield culture during war.

 

[pineappledan]

The production was precisely the problem, however. It’s partially that culture and production are the strongest yields, but instant boosts of production specifically are dangerous. Denmark could wonder rush, or build major infrastructure in small cities by coordinating a massive surge of pillages in a few turns. Denmark was also unbeatable at world congress projects for this reason

 

[amateurgamer88]

Having recently played Denmark, I do wonder about one aspect regarding the new change. It seems like the culture yield from the Runestone is staying the same while production becomes gold instead. I totally agree with the change from production to gold but the culture still feels too powerful. You can play sub-optimally and conquer cities after you pillage very single tile around that city and still get massive culture spikes that seems insane the later you go in the eras due to the scaling.

If we as the player is two policies or more behind the snowballing AI, how many other civs can not only catch up to the AI but also pass in policies without attacking that snowballing AI directly (like if they were on a distant continent and you can't deal with them yet)? Poland seems like a good candidate with a free policy for each new era after classical era and the two extra tenets. Otherwise, I think only Denmark can do so with those insane yields in culture. I guess I want to hear from other players what their experiences is regarding catching up in policies which's drastically harder than catching up in tech.

 

[Gazebo]

I think it is clear that the Runestone is still a problem. So, what if we filter the pillaging trigger down?

- from Strategic Resource pillaging
- from Luxury Resource pillaging
- from coastal tile pillaging
- from GPTI pillaging
- from water resource pillaging

Any of these are possible.

G

 

[civplayer33]

So, what if we filter the pillaging trigger down?

Personally I'd prefer it to stay at 5c/5g for all categories you mention and for tiles that do not fit there just give 5g; it would be a small nerf but then again Denmark was already nerfed just last version and this way the biggest problems would be addressed IMO (the culture ballooning and crazy production boosts).

 

[TheBigFundamental]

Denmark has very powerful UA and UU, and already gains lots of gold due to them (and deprives others of gold!), and since production/science/culture from Runestones would be too strong in almost any variation and scenario, I'd rather see Runestones yield something like 5 faith & 5 golden age points, scaling with era.

 

[civplayer33]

Denmark has very powerful UA and UU, and already gains lots of gold due to them (and deprives others of gold!), and since production/science/culture from Runestones would be too strong in almost any variation and scenario, I'd rather see Runestones yield something like 5 faith & 5 golden age points, scaling with era.

I kinda remember from the last time I played Denmark that it only gets gold from city attacks if the city owner still has gold in his treasury; otherwise it gets gold only from pillaging, but I could be wrong. Denmark's UU is quite strong, yes, but it, along with the UA and most of what the UB provides are really specialized toward warmongering with a pillaging focus. Denmark needs to keep doing this basically the entire game to really benefit from any of it, which is not always easy.

As someone else here has mentioned already, Denmark's performance really depends, more so than with other civs, on player skill. A bad player (those exist, too) will likely have trouble utilizing Denmark properly and the AI isn't super great at maximizing that kind of specialized war effort, either. If this were a discussion about whether Denmark should be nerfed to balance it for Deity players, then I would agree; but there are other people playing this game and this mod, too.

 

[Zanteogo]

As someone else here has mentioned already, Denmark's performance really depends, more so than with other civs, on player skill. A bad player (those exist, too) will likely have trouble utilizing Denmark properly and the AI isn't super great at maximizing that kind of specialized war effort, either. If this were a discussion about whether Denmark should be nerfed to balance it for Deity players, then I would agree; but there are other people playing this game and this mod, too.

This X 10

I love Denmark because they are one of the only civs who get rewarded for making war without out actually taking cities. Like the historical Danes, they have a pillage based economy. The problem is you put yourself at risk of running yourself too thin and getting yourself taken in a war because you didn't manage your units well.

If we need to make further changes, how about making the rune stone yields a flat amount rather than the ever increasing amount by era? As the game goes on, you will have access to more and more civs with developed lands. Maybe return the production bonus if this is done? 8C and 8P for the whole game seems fair. The only problem I see them right now is the late game scale. Early game the few pillaging tiles you have access to are hardly unbalancing.

Denmark has very powerful UA and UU, and already gains lots of gold due to them (and deprives others of gold!), and since production/science/culture from Runestones would be too strong in almost any variation and scenario, I'd rather see Runestones yield something like 5 faith & 5 golden age points, scaling with era.

Faith and golden age points and the two worst yields in the game, particularly for a war civ. If this is done we might was well just scrap the whole rune stone pillage system. Also I was under the impression that the gold you gained from attacking cities was taken out of thin air, not actually taken from the defending civ?

 

[civplayer33]

Also I was under the impression that the gold you gained from attacking cities was taken out of thin air, not actually taken from the defending civ?

It is definitely taken from the defender; I just don't know if Denmark keeps receiving yields after the defender is broke.