Denmark

[infidel88]

Proving something obvious? Turn 186, Immortal, 6 authority, 6 progress, 6 imperialism, 1 fealty, 2 autocracy. Constant war with someone and yet no war weariness and 30 free supply, couldve opened 2 more fronts. Nothing to build in cities.
I particularly love my explorers sitting next to north pole doing raids on russian farms giving me free policies

 

[Minh Le]

Proving something obvious? Turn 186, Immortal, 6 authority, 6 progress, 6 imperialism, 1 fealty, 2 autocracy. Constant war with someone and yet no war weariness and 30 free supply, couldve opened 2 more fronts. Nothing to build in cities.
I particularly love my explorers sitting next to north pole doing raids on russian farms giving me free policies

Yes earning a few thousand gold in ancient era by Pathfinder raid is broken, even better with some spearman rush. I think it should be tuned down somehow

 

[CppMaster]

Yes earning a few thousand gold in ancient era by Pathfinder raid is broken, even better with some spearman rush. I think it should be tuned down somehow

I agree, but I would also raise it later.
About a map, just play standard Continents or Pangaea. It would be easier to compere it to other civs than playing on totally different map.

 

[neo_arcadia]

Proving something obvious? Turn 186, Immortal, 6 authority, 6 progress, 6 imperialism, 1 fealty, 2 autocracy. Constant war with someone and yet no war weariness and 30 free supply, couldve opened 2 more fronts. Nothing to build in cities.
I particularly love my explorers sitting next to north pole doing raids on russian farms giving me free policies

Gotta try this lmao.

 

[Minh Le]

I agree, but I would also raise it later.
About a map, just play standard Continents or Pangaea. It would be easier to compere it to other civs than playing on totally different map.

Yeah its make sense. I guess Im gonna try a pangea then.

 

[randomnub]

MY EYES!

 

[Galbias]

MY EYES!

View attachment 506214

o-oh

guess I shouldn't have clicked that at work

 

[Minh Le]

Okay here I got some pictures to show how easy it is to exploit Denmark UA:
The key here is to get your pathfinder to Survivalism III which is easy, then finding a newly settled, undefended AI city, better to be far from their capital so they cannot send troops there quick enough.

Spoiler The target :

As you can see, here is a typical target, no wall, no troop around, on flat land, only 5 combat strength.

Spoiler Start the raid :

Pillage the farm because I have combat bonus while standing on pillaged tile, hit the city and grab the gold, easy 105g.

Spoiler Stolen gold :

The gold is deducted from AI tresuary.

Spoiler Repeat the process, retreat when low health :

Using one single Pathfinder, I steal over a thousand of gold from The Netherland before their busy fighting barbs army comeback. They cannot buy unit to defend because I stole all of their money, and at this stage of the game I dont care about being counter attacked simply because it will never happen. Then I just move my pathfinder to explore and find another target. Those early gold means I dont have to build units at all, just straight buy them, the rest was used for invest building. Then I just play like normal, using the early advantage to attack my neighbour for even more gold then snowball like crazy. I didnt continues this game because after Runestone (which I beeline to get), I was ahead in everything and game feel boring so I just quit. Using this strategy (exploit), you can have lots of gold, culture, production and you dont even need to beeline Runestone like I did, just play like normal then steal some easy money early game and enjoy .

 

[Rekk]

Does the stolen gold scale with era?

 

[Minh Le]

Does the stolen gold scale with era?

No, it scales with damage dealt to city. Funny thing is later when cities have strong defend you end up stealing less gold.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

I've been avoiding playing with Denmark because it's just too strong/exploitable. In my opinion, it needs a serious rework. I have no issues in selecting it as one of the AIs, but in human hands, its considerably stronger than when in AI hands.

 

[infidel88]

I had to quit my game on T203 due to crash again, playing on huge map I was able to go 6 authority, 6 progress, 6 imperialism, 1 fealty, 6 autocracy, entered modern era, had 2nd UB from 4UC mod, which meant I was doing almost everything in 1 turn and I was 3-4 turns away from airports everywhere. And funny thing is - rock bottom civ declared war on me and bribed 2 other civs, who just settled on nearby islands, into this war. Which resulted into getting like 6-7 easy cities within first two turns of war. Absurd.

I didn't found religion in this game and had to switch it twice.

As for UA - of course it's too strong. And it's better the higher difficulty level you play against. Reasons:
- runestones are prioritized by puppeted cities, which means you get tones of from them and you can easily annex fully developed cities;
- I didn't even attack any cities in the method above, but you can get enough gold to jump you 2 difficulty levels from neighborhood friendly city-state and 2 drill spearmen;
- extra movement for embarked means you can stay out of shooting range - land, burn, retreat, rinse, repeat;
- 2nd UU longboat, which has hit'n'run has just too good abilities (except for longboat skill, it has hitnrun) and if you get great lighthouse (which should be priority), you have ultra-strong navy, which can move fast, get tributes and raid cities and get away from shooting range;
- 140 worth berserker with 1 extra pays for himself after 1 berserking raid on opponent improvements + you get tones of in other cities.

AI will never use those strategies - they are way too... hmmm... gamey? And while represent way of viking raids very well - they are broken

 

[Gazebo]

A simple fix is to change the cap. Right now, the cap is Popx500, which is way too high. So, I'm going to switch it to City Strength x10. ~50 gold from fresh, wall-less cities, and upwards from there.

Runestones are fine in testing.

G

 

[TwoPodRay]

When I played Denmark, I could declare war on multiple neighbors and just go on pillaging runs to jump up in culture, peace out, rinse and repeat. Didn’t even need to capture or kill much. The production was also incredibly strong for maxing puppets so later annexing wasn’t actually hurting Tech/Culture since by then they were making more science/culture than their penalty.

I would think dropping the production on runestones, or only allowing it to apply to owned/annexed cites would be an alternative.

EDIT: How quickly does the AI typically annex cities? Or what conditions need to be met for them to value annex over puppet?

 

[Gazebo]

When I played Denmark, I could declare war on multiple neighbors and just go on pillaging runs to jump up in culture, peace out, rinse and repeat. Didn’t even need to capture or kill much. The production was also incredibly strong for maxing puppets so later annexing wasn’t actually hurting Tech/Culture since by then they were making more science/culture than their penalty.

I would think dropping the production on runestones, or only allowing it to apply to owned/annexed cites would be an alternative.

EDIT: How quickly does the AI typically annex cities? Or what conditions need to be met for them to value annex over puppet?

Since pillaging counts towards war weariness, this was hit a bit in 10-10.

 

[CrazyG]

Getting like 100 production and culture for pillaging a tile means its still more than worth the war wariness. I think a civ with Runestones and nothing else would be top tier in human hands.

 

[Minh Le]

Getting like 100 production and culture for pillaging a tile means its still more than worth the war wariness. I think a civ with Runestones and nothing else would be top tier in human hands.

I agree, how about keeping just the culture but not production? At some point in the game Runestones was giving ridiculous amount of production to even surpass any other production boost in the game.

 

[ElliotS]

Guys I don't think Denmark is as OP as you're making it out to be. Adding a cap on early gold stolen should be good enough. Runestones are late bloomers, and there are a lot of civs with great abilities and buildings late game. I don't think Denmark is out of line in that aspect.

 

[Minh Le]

Guys I don't think Denmark is as OP as you're making it out to be. Adding a cap on early gold stolen should be good enough. Runestones are late bloomers, and there are a lot of civs with great abilities and buildings late game. I don't think Denmark is out of line in that aspect.

Its not OP if play normally, but it is easily exploitable by sending early pathfinder raid, horse raid, spear raid, berserker raid

 

[Stalker0]

Ok so I’ve seen the gold numbers from the example and agree it’s definately OP. Talk to me about the runestone, what kind of numbers is it generating with these raids?