Denmark

[BiteInTheMark]

Your comparison is pointless. Compare Denmark to other civs, not an overpowered civ from the past.

Compare an AI controlled Venice with a normal civ and with a player controlled Venice. There are worlds between.
Every civ which needs a different playstyle then the (relative) normal civs will be alway suboptimal in AI hands.
In my opinion, Denmark is pretty much fine for AI hands. If you really think they are op in player hands, you wouldn't create a mechanic which makes it more difficult for AI to handle it. (I think the AI is again much worse to aim and focus for tiles which give the runes tone yields.)

 

[Gazebo]

Compare an AI controlled Venice with a normal civ and with a player controlled Venice. There are worlds between.
Every civ which needs a different playstyle then the (relative) normal civs will be alway suboptimal in AI hands.
In my opinion, Denmark is pretty much fine for AI hands. If you really think they are op in player hands, you wouldn't create a mechanic which makes it more difficult for AI to handle it. (I think the AI is again much worse to aim and focus for tiles which give the runes tone yields.)

Re parentheses, it’s not. The AI pillages very well. You’re manufacturing facts to make your case.

G

 

[Zanteogo]

Re parentheses, it’s not. The AI pillages very well. You’re manufacturing facts to make your case.

G

The AI using Denmark doesn’t go out of its way to pillage everything and, once a good base city count has been established, not take cities to allow them to rebuilding for the next pillage raid. I have never seen it anyways.

I think some people might be missing the point here. The gripe is not that the Danes got nerfed, the gripe is the way they were nurfed. Doing pillage raids was fun. You can still do them, but you certainly do not gain anything, and will often lose more than you gain. (From loss of trade routes and even if you happen to lose a single unit, you lost more than you gained)

It was the defining feature that made them interesting. It would be like if all of a sudden Venice could found cities.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Re parentheses, it’s not. The AI pillages very well. You’re manufacturing facts to make your case.

G

Is the AI able to understand, it's gaining more by pillaging improvents on resources?

 

[Omen of Peace]

I also preferred alternate nerfs to the Runestone, like:
- lowering constant culture (from 2 to 1, or even 0)
- lowering per-pillage culture to 2 or 3, or limiting it to once per turn

...but it is what it is. G is the one calling the shots here.

 

[Zanteogo]

I also preferred alternate nerfs to the Runestone, like:
- lowering constant culture (from 2 to 1, or even 0)
- lowering per-pillage culture to 2 or 3, or limiting it to once per turn

...but it is what it is. G is the one calling the shots here.

The culture change on the Runestone was suggested but turned down because (G’s words), it gives the Danes a gain from their UB during peace time and something if they start in isolation.

I would be cool with lowering or removing the culture from Runestones myself.. Heck, I would even be ok with removing the gold from attacking cities, because and again, pillage raids were fun.

Though I hate to repeat myself, the only pillage issue before was in the mid to late game due to number of targets and the era increase amount. The current fix was to lessen the number of targets, by a massive amount. To the point that the amount you get from Runstone pillaging is pretty much a non-factor. Lessening the Era increase amount would be the much more “fun” solution.

 

[infidel88]

I just played against Denmark. Haralds trireme stayed near 5 of my fishing boats and looked quite happy until my ships came for it 4 turns later. There goes pillaging. Plus - one more thing about AI Harald, which may bias you if you only run AI games - Harald is more psycho warmonger than Montezuma. He declared on me with no army whatsover, losing 1 city and going into -20 war weariness unhappiness, 12 turns later Harald has some archers next to my borders - I already had composite and longswordsmen - and I'm like - dude what's up. Harald: 'ahaha, you didn't see my coming, WAAAAAAAAAAAAR!'. Ok. 2 cities less for Harald, peace with -60. Something like 25 turns later Harald has defensive pact with Assyria, who was as strong as I was, so I couldn't finish him. But we can count on Harald being psycho. I see his spearmen and triremes next to my borders (I had crossbows and tercios). I'm like - dude what's up. Harald: 'ahaha, you didn't see my coming, WAAAAAAAAAAAAR!'. There was no 4th war with Harald

 

[4CV]

.... Harald is more psycho warmonger than Montezuma....

He's gone insane after being overnerfed... poor Harry

 

[azum4roll]

"Your land is mine!" - Harald Bluetooth's last words

 

[amateurgamer88]

After deciding to try the new Denmark out, I must admit that it feels different and my playstyle isn't differing too much from other warring civ. I just want to suggest the changes below and hope that Denmark has greater focus on pillage and remove other things that are OP but aren't necessary. Below are the changes to the Danish UU, UA and UB that I feel should help make Denmark quite unique without them being as broken as before. I didn't clarify the numbers because I'm not sure what values would be ideal.

Viking Fury:
Embarked units have +1 Movement and pay just 1 movement point to move from sea to land. (same)
Naval Melee Units gain the Longboat Promotion.
All Melee Land Units gain <insert name> Promotion (This promotion will give 25% CS on Pillaged Tiles only)

I prefer if we remove the Viking promotion from all land melee units. It gives you stupid amounts of gold from attacking cities and doesn't contribute to pillaging playstyle at all.

Berserker:
Everything stays the same except we give the Viking Promotion to Berserker. The Berserker is basically unchanged from what we're used to.

Runestone:
2 Culture.

Gain X Culture and Y Gold in City when you pillage a tile where X and Y are a number. (No scaling is needed. The fact that we get more cities and more tiles to pillage is scaling in itself)

+25% towards Land and Naval Melee Units. (I'm fine with just naval melee units but I do want to hear people's thoughts on this)

+2 Food and +1 Gold from Coast and Ocean Tiles, and can make City Connections over water.

_____

I feel these changes will remove the crazy amounts of gold we get from our land wars. A navy is expensive so, if you can dominate the seas, you should reap the benefits. Runestone won't scale since the game will help it scale over time. If we can find the right X and Y values, then this UB ability from pillages is helpful early game while late game can get you a fair bit of yields if you make the effort to pillage everything. I'm suggesting this because I just don't like how Denmark no longer feels like Denmark anymore.

 

[Gazebo]

After deciding to try the new Denmark out, I must admit that it feels different and my playstyle isn't differing too much from other warring civ. I just want to suggest the changes below and hope that Denmark has greater focus on pillage and remove other things that are OP but aren't necessary. Below are the changes to the Danish UU, UA and UB that I feel should help make Denmark quite unique without them being as broken as before. I didn't clarify the numbers because I'm not sure what values would be ideal.

Viking Fury:
Embarked units have +1 Movement and pay just 1 movement point to move from sea to land. (same)
Naval Melee Units gain the Longboat Promotion.
All Melee Land Units gain <insert name> Promotion (This promotion will give 25% CS on Pillaged Tiles only)

I prefer if we remove the Viking promotion from all land melee units. It gives you stupid amounts of gold from attacking cities and doesn't contribute to pillaging playstyle at all.

Berserker:
Everything stays the same except we give the Viking Promotion to Berserker. The Berserker is basically unchanged from what we're used to.

Runestone:
2 Culture.

Gain X Culture and Y Gold in City when you pillage a tile where X and Y are a number. (No scaling is needed. The fact that we get more cities and more tiles to pillage is scaling in itself)

+25% towards Land and Naval Melee Units. (I'm fine with just naval melee units but I do want to hear people's thoughts on this)

+2 Food and +1 Gold from Coast and Ocean Tiles, and can make City Connections over water.

_____

I feel these changes will remove the crazy amounts of gold we get from our land wars. A navy is expensive so, if you can dominate the seas, you should reap the benefits. Runestone won't scale since the game will help it scale over time. If we can find the right X and Y values, then this UB ability from pillages is helpful early game while late game can get you a fair bit of yields if you make the effort to pillage everything. I'm suggesting this because I just don't like how Denmark no longer feels like Denmark anymore.

Removing Era scaling does not solve the fact that it happens in every city. It's just not viable.

G

 

[amateurgamer88]

Removing Era scaling does not solve the fact that it happens in every city. It's just not viable.

G

Let's use the scenario I show below:

Let's say we have 20 cities with some of them built and some of them puppeted. All these cities have Runestones in them. Let's say that, for the sake of this example, the Runestone gives 1 Culture and 3 Gold.

Then, we'll assume that we are warring against an enemy that has 15 cities (also owned and puppeted combined). For an extreme case, we'd say that each of these enemy cities have 18 land tiles that don't overlap with one another. Therefore, we'd have 270 tiles to pillage. When we pillage one tile, we get a total of 20 Culture and 60 Gold. Once we pillage all those tiles, we'd get a total of 5400 Culture and 16,200 Gold.

Looking at a Carthage photojournal game by @randomnub , I see that Carthage is producing around 1000 per turn on Standard. This means that pillaging all those tiles will only shave off 5 turns from your next policy. Even if we use half that value at 500 per turn, we are still seeing 10 turn shaved off from a lot of pillaging. Overall, I see this number to peak around midgame where you have a good balance of cities and tiles to pillage. Late game, the yields you get won't be as significant or you have already won the game with the number of cities you conquered.

Regarding gold, it's not as powerful as culture so I don't think that value is unreasonable.

Overall, I feel like, if we have small values, we can make it so that pillaging gets us more yields from what other civs can get. It shouldn't be so high that it's more beneficial to just pillage and not take cities. After all, a puppet should give you another Runestone that gives you additional yields.
_____

You are the developer so you probably encountered something us mortals don't know of. If you can enlighten me, I'd be happy to learn a bit about what makes this not viable. Maybe you can also point out any flaws in my scenario above. Thanks!

 

[chicorbeef]

The gold on city attack is kind of cheesy and abuseable with how early it is...as Minh Le showed you can just use a Survivalism III Pathfinder to start (ab)using it. It also happens to be what the Songhai Mandekalu Cavalry get so I think Denmark recieving it for free on all its units is too much.

I don't really get why it was limited to resources only. If has to go, why not make it 5 scaling per pillaged tile rather than 10 scaling per pillaged resource and the occasional gem of 10 per sea resource? It honestly just feels like needless complexity (and as far as I know, Vikings most profitable raids were on Monasteries/Cities, not poor Fisheries) and I wonder how it affects the AI.

Removing Era scaling does not solve the fact that it happens in every city. It's just not viable.

G

But the Runestone as it is now also happens in every city. If we're trying to limit the amount of procs we get...I wouldn't mind @amateurgamer88 's idea of just removing the free pillage (the +25% CS on pillaged tiles can stay).

About from pillaging tiles. I am still kind of unconvinced that the from pillaging major civ tiles is easier than Greece's per kill from Acropolis. I have a game to show this. I haven't set foot in Zulu territory and after conquering two Celtic cities I am purely on defense against the horde, hadn't even had the opportunity to pillage a single tile. But look at the amount of I'm making....it's been like 5 turns since I entered Medieval!

Spoiler Acropolis :

As you can see, I'm barely surviving, no way I could go on offense right now, but Denmark has to be winning a war or they won't get any yields, which adds a lot of risk.

 

[Gazebo]

The gold on city attack is kind of cheesy and abuseable with how early it is...as Minh Le showed you can just use a Survivalism III Pathfinder to start (ab)using it. It also happens to be what the Songhai Mandekalu Cavalry get so I think Denmark recieving it for free on all its units is too much.

I don't really get why it was limited to resources only. If has to go, why not make it 5 scaling per pillaged tile rather than 10 scaling per pillaged resource and the occasional gem of 10 per sea resource? It honestly just feels like needless complexity (and as far as I know, Vikings most profitable raids were on Monasteries/Cities, not poor Fisheries) and I wonder how it affects the AI.

But the Runestone as it is now also happens in every city. If we're trying to limit the amount of procs we get...I wouldn't mind @amateurgamer88 's idea of just removing the free pillage (the +25% CS on pillaged tiles can stay).

About from pillaging tiles. I am still kind of unconvinced that the from pillaging major civ tiles is easier than Greece's per kill from Acropolis. I have a game to show this. I haven't set foot in Zulu territory and after conquering two Celtic cities I am purely on defense against the horde, hadn't even had the opportunity to pillage a single tile. But look at the amount of I'm making....it's been like 5 turns since I entered Medieval!

Spoiler Acropolis :

View attachment 514717

As you can see, I'm barely surviving, no way I could go on offense right now, but Denmark has to be winning a war or they won't get any yields, which adds a lot of risk.

Free pillage is more interesting than yield bloat, IMO. Denmark is far more in line now than it used to be. I’m not ruling out additional changes but, for now, I’m calling Denmark a balanced civ relative to other warmongers.

G

 

[pineappledan]

I find this idea to drop the gold steal from the UA, and add it onto Berzerker entertaining. Berzerker is already one of the most overstacked UUs in the entire game (3 Moves, Charge I, Shock I, Amphibious). Adding a 25% city damage reduction and 200% Gold steal as an additional unique promotion onto the guy would make Berzerkers the most absurd CS gift in the game, hands down.

I don't want to make any assessments of potential balance, but the CS gift wonk is real.

 

[chicorbeef]

Free pillage is more interesting than yield bloat, IMO. Denmark is far more in line now than it used to be. I’m not ruling out all changes but, for now, I’m calling Denmark a balanced civ relative to other warmongers.

G

Is it worthwhile to at least remove the resource restriction and just make it 5 scaling per pillaged tile? The way it is right now is...weird.

I find this idea to drop the gold steal from the UA, and add it onto Berzerker entertaining. Berzerker is already one of the most overstacked UUs in the entire game (3 Moves, Charge I, Shock I, Amphibious). Adding a 25% city damage reduction and 200% Gold steal as an additional unique promotion onto the guy would make Berzerkers the most absurd CS gift in the game, hands down.

I don't want to make any assessments of potential balance, but the CS gift wonk is real.

I don't even think the gold steal needs to be in Denmark's kit at all, leave that to the Songhai. The 25% city damage reduction can stay in the UA.

 

[pineappledan]

Doesn't the current Berserker already get Viking? I thought all land melee units gets that promotion so it's not like the Danish UU is changing from what we're used to, right?

Current berzerkers get viking if Denmark owns them; they do not get Viking if another civ gets them.

I agree that a CS gift is absurd but how many games have you gotten Berserkers as an option?

Irrelevant.
If the right conditions are met and that leads to an absurd situation in a game then the rarity of its occurrence actually makes it WORSE. What that means is you're adding inconsistency to the game for lulz, because rare occurences can tilt games in ways which are impossible to plan for or mitigate. That isn't fun; that's just RNJesus taking the wheel.

 

[amateurgamer88]

Current berzerkers get viking if Denmark owns them; they do not get Viking if another civ gets them.

Irrelevant.
If the right conditions are met and that leads to an absurd situation in a game then the rarity of its occurrence actually makes it WORSE. What that means is you're adding inconsistency to the game for lulz, because rare occurences can tilt games in ways which are impossible to plan for or mitigate. That isn't fun; that's just RNJesus taking the wheel.

You're right! However, I don't like the current idea of all land melee units getting Viking. That promotion is just too powerful in itself. Maybe just give Berserker a promotion that lets them pillage with no movements? They will they have 3 movements, Charge 1, Shock 1, Amphibious and no movement when pillaging. For Denmark, it's a key kits. For other civs, it's a nice to have but it shouldn't have enormous impact. Reduced damage from cities doesn't make sense.

 

[pineappledan]

For my part, I've never been much of a fan of Denmark's kit, and I don't play them much.

The bonuses vs cities always struck me as odd because it splits Denmark's focus between its pillaging mechanics and hitting cities. The only siege I can think of involving Vikings was the Siege of Paris, which was a bit of a disaster for the Vikings. It's pretty weird that their civ incarnation stresses attacking major cities as much as it does.

If it were up to me, I would drop the damage reduction and Gold on city attack as well. Make the Viking/Longship promotions just the +25% on pillaged tiles, and no movement to pillage. I would double down on the pillaging mechanic though.

UA: Viking Fury or Great Heathen Army
All Melee land units receive the Viking Promotion. All Naval units receive the Longship promotion. Embarked units have +1 Movement and pay just 1 movement point to move from sea to land. +100% Gold from Pillaging and 50% of pillaged Gold is converted to Culture.

UU: Berserker
No changes

UB: Runestone
15/ whenever you pillage a GPTI or Village, scaling with Era.

So... we don't have secluded monasteries and enclaves in VP, but we do have academies and undefended Towns. The Vikings retain all their mobility advantages, but get no bonuses fighting well-defended cities. Putting the bulk of the pillaging bonuses in the UA makes it easier to control the city number snowball, which seemed to be the biggest problem. Hitting a critical mass of 10+ cities will no longer mean endless gold/culture.

 

[chicorbeef]

UB: Runestone
15/ whenever you pillage a GPTI or Village, scaling with Era.

So... we don't have secluded monasteries and enclaves in VP, but we do have academies and undefended Towns. The Vikings retain all their mobility advantages, but get no bonuses fighting well-defended cities. Putting the bulk of the pillaging bonuses in the UA makes it easier to control the city number snowball, which seemed to be the biggest problem. Hitting a critical mass of 10+ cities will no longer mean endless gold/culture.

I want to push Denmark into a wider range of pillaging (albeit with lower bonuses, like 5 scaling per tile pillaged) rather than into an even more narrow niche.