This is getting a bit farcical, lads. And ya’ll are acting like the 25% bonus to military production and mountains of food that the runes tone provides doesn’t exist.
People are acting like the UA doesn't exist.
Runestones alone were better than basically any other civs UA, UB, and UU combined and it took forever to actually get a change. And for some reason, all changes are being done relative to the old runestone, which is really dumb because the old runestone was a problem. A couple arguments can be summarized as "its much worse than the old runestone". Well yea, that's the point.
I think the Danish UA is one of the best in the game. Its provides a lot of gold extremely early, its not uncommon to get more gold than Carthage does if you rush spears and play aggressive. And you useful military perks that last all game. People have mentioned this and it keeps getting ignored
+2 culture is a lot for a classical era building.
+1 food to all coastal tiles is valuable
+25% production on military units is valuable.
These benefits above are solid, they would be a reasonable (but not great).
+10 culture for pillaging sea tiles. "Sea tiles are rare". Yes but 10 culture is a lot. Per city, per era. You have 10 runestones in medieval era? That is 200 culture for every fishing boat you find. What is your per turn culture at this stage? Depends on religion and things, but probably around 200-400. You don't value getting a half turn of culture for pillaging some fish? Then you're a fool.
The gold for pillaging is great too. The UA gives so much gold already and gold decreases in value if you have a ton of it, but that's a problem you don't mind having.