Denmark

[Minh Le]

Actually you only need to stay at war with 1 city state, kill its units for culture and science, pillage its tiles for culture and production, hit the city a few times for gold, then withdraw, waiting for it to repair pillaged tiles, then go back and repeat. Just 2 berserkers is enough for this. As long as you dont declare war multiple times or conquer it, youre total fine.

 

[ElliotS]

Actually you only need to stay at war with 1 city state, kill its units for culture and science, pillage its tiles for culture and production, hit the city a few times for gold, then withdraw, waiting for it to repair pillaged tiles, then go back and repeat. Just 2 berserkers is enough for this. As long as you dont declare war multiple times or conquer it, youre total fine.

Tiles don't just magically fix themselves, so you're limited on the amount of yields you can get out of 1 city state. I don't see the mechanic as too powerful compared to other mechanics.

 

[Stalker0]

Tiles don't just magically fix themselves, so you're limited on the amount of yields you can get out of 1 city state. I don't see the mechanic as too powerful compared to other mechanics.

I guess the question is how much can you eek out of one city state with this method?

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Denmark is so powerful in human hands, I usually avoid playing as Denmark, because it makes the game at least one difficulty level easier. Don't know how to adjust the UU elements to change that, but I don't think small tweaks will suffice.

 

[Minh Le]

Tiles don't just magically fix themselves, so you're limited on the amount of yields you can get out of 1 city state. I don't see the mechanic as too powerful compared to other mechanics.

City states have a lot of workers normally. I once saw a city state with 5 workers sit in the city. So they fix tiles quick. Yield of everything is limited, but doing this (another exploit) bring you much more yield than simple demand tribute.

 

[CrazyG]

Tiles don't just magically fix themselves, so you're limited on the amount of yields you can get out of 1 city state. I don't see the mechanic as too powerful compared to other mechanics.

I mean let's say that your hypothesis earlier of just 1 tile per turn is correct. That would be a crazy powerful unique building, like that alone makes Denmark top tier in production and culture the entire game.

1 per turn is really low too. 3 city states alone can reach 1 tile per turn on average. Don't capture enemy workers as Denmark and be very selective when taking cities, because every city you take is tiles you can no longer pillage.

 

[pineappledan]

Denmark gets tiles for every pillaged tile.
Greece gets culture for every kill.

How many units do you kill in a full-on war? 30? 40?
How many improved tiles are contained by your average empire? 50? 75? A single city could have >30 tiles. I find the AI is much better at improving terrain than I am; they always make plenty of workers and are diligent improvers, reliably exceeding the population of the city they are improving.

Just by sheer volume of opportunity, any offensive war gives Denmark more opportunities to benefit from their comparable instant yield benefit. It also takes far fewer turns for a civ to fully recover all their pillaged tiles than it would to recover a full army.

I’m not finding these arguments for the comparative rarity of improvements/rate of pillaging particularly convincing... whether it’s balanced or not is aside the fact that that this argument is starting to sound absurd.

 

[Cozzolino]

Denmark is so powerful in human hands, I usually avoid playing as Denmark, because it makes the game at least one difficulty level easier. Don't know how to adjust the UU elements to change that, but I don't think small tweaks will suffice.

Berserkers do not do this any better than Horse units and Scouts, if there's any problem it's in the Runestone.

In my Denmark game, I just racked up over 3200 culture and Production with a Knight and a Scout in 10 turns. It's Renaissance and I am raiding 6 city states at once. I pillaged over 20 tile improvements. Of course I can do this freely because I don't fear retaliation, but it's a worthy risk as long as you can defend yourself. Besides, it buffs you up pretty quickly.

 

[neo_arcadia]

Berserker have free amphibious promotion so it does play well in city states with river on it but I see your point.

 

[ElliotS]

Denmark gets tiles for every pillaged tile.
Greece gets culture for every kill.

How many units do you kill in a full-on war? 30? 40?

My experience on Deity has always been that Greece will get more culture than Denmark in a war, even moreso when trading even. Denmark gets nothing from a losing war while Greece is just happy to grind units to dust.

I'll keep my stance that Denmark is within the acceptable power window and would rather not touch it because we're trying to go gold and fiddling isn't worth it. It seems like a lot of people disagree with me, so maybe I'm wrong or biased because I love Denmark.

I think we've all made our arguments and are kinda just circling on the issue of "are there too many yields?" so I'm going to tap out on that issue and leave it to G to decide who's right.

 

[Minh Le]

Denmark is ok playing normally, but there are many ways to exploit its UA and UB effects. Ive showed an example of how easy it is to exploit Denmark UA as a human player and earn thousands of easy gold early game. I can show more examples of how easy it is to exploit its UB to get some policies ahead and tons of production, but I think it gonna be just a waste of time.

 

[chicorbeef]

People are discussing Denmark being OP right now. I admit I haven't actually played Denmark but my intuition says that the Runestone is a part of the problem and Denmark AI is a monster in my games. So to those who have played Denmark, does this civ need changing?

 

[Gazebo]

What if the Danish pillaging bonus from Runestones is split: +4 production from pillaging land tiles, +4 culture from pillaging naval tiles?

G

 

[neo_arcadia]

Considering water tiles are few compared to land tiles in addition to needing naval unit and land unit respectively for pillaging, I think the pillaging yield need adjustments.

 

[azum4roll]

What about buffing the values slightly, but only giving the pillaging yields to the closest city with a Runestone?

 

[CppMaster]

What if the Danish pillaging bonus from Runestones is split: +4 production from pillaging land tiles, +4 culture from pillaging naval tiles?

G

Naval tiles are so few that it would be negligible.

What about buffing the values slightly, but only giving the pillaging yields to the closest city with a Runestone?

This is interesting and might solve the problem. I like it

 

[CrazyG]

Right now, Denmark basically wins the game if it gets about 10 cities. Its how the Runestone is designed, you eventually will just reach a critical mass where you explode. At that point of the game, the Runestone can almost win by itself (you only need to produce some science).

The Runestone would just be much better balanced if it wasn't constantly activating for every city, like if it was a national wonder, or if it only went to the nearest city. You could substantially increase the return if it was limited to just one city. That suggestion could work.

G's idea might leave Denmark still too strong. Basically its just production, but with a niche (but not weak) source of culture. Your culture output is going to vary a lot from game to game. Going just by theory, I still think its too strong. You still reach a point in the game where you have effectively infinite production, which is the main problem. Of all yields to have basically infinite of, production is really problematic because it removes so many decisions from the game.

With Greece, you get great culture output (and you can skip things like opera houses), but in other yields you are still playing a mostly normal game. Even with skipping culture in the mid-game, you still have a lot of yields to produce. You still want to grow, improve tiles, and make good build order decisions.

With Denmark, you can just forget all of that. You don't need to produce food or production. The Runestone will build everything for you. Why listen to that stupid supply cap? You could have -100% growth and production in all cities and be fine (it doesn't affect bonus yields, AKA the Runestone). If anyone wants to do a challenge photojournal, play Denmark and never use workers. You'll have to be clever to get strategic resources, but otherwise you'll be fine by the medieval era. You don't need your tiles, you don't need good city placement, you don't need WLTKD or golden ages or great people. All you need is science (which is mostly buildings and specialists) and a bit of gold for upgrades, and that's it. You don't need yields, you just need tiles to pillage. On a related note, never friend a city state. Pillage instead. A pillage every two turns will yield dramatically more yields than any alliance will.

 

[Gazebo]

Right now, Denmark basically wins the game if it gets about 10 cities. Its how the Runestone is designed, you eventually will just reach a critical mass where you explode. At that point of the game, the Runestone can almost win by itself (you only need to produce some science).

The Runestone would just be much better balanced if it wasn't constantly activating for every city, like if it was a national wonder, or if it only went to the nearest city. You could substantially increase the return if it was limited to just one city. That suggestion could work.

G's idea might leave Denmark still too strong. Basically its just production, but with a niche (but not weak) source of culture. Your culture output is going to vary a lot from game to game. Going just by theory, I still think its too strong. You still reach a point in the game where you have effectively infinite production, which is the main problem. Of all yields to have basically infinite of, production is really problematic because it removes so many decisions from the game.

With Greece, you get great culture output (and you can skip things like opera houses), but in other yields you are still playing a mostly normal game. Even with skipping culture in the mid-game, you still have a lot of yields to produce. You still want to grow, improve tiles, and make good build order decisions.

With Denmark, you can just forget all of that. You don't need to produce food or production. The Runestone will build everything for you. Why listen to that stupid supply cap? You could have -100% growth and production in all cities and be fine (it doesn't affect bonus yields, AKA the Runestone). If anyone wants to do a challenge photojournal, play Denmark and never use workers. You'll have to be clever to get strategic resources, but otherwise you'll be fine by the medieval era. You don't need your tiles, you don't need good city placement, you don't need WLTKD or golden ages or great people. All you need is science (which is mostly buildings and specialists) and a bit of gold for upgrades, and that's it. You don't need yields, you just need tiles to pillage. On a related note, never friend a city state. Pillage instead. A pillage every two turns will yield dramatically more yields than any alliance will.

I fear making the Runestone a NW (Heroic Epic replacement, maybe?) would neuter the Danes a bit. I could have it go to the nearest city, that's possible, but it might also lead to some frustration for players.

G

 

[Owlbebach]

I fear making the Runestone a NW (Heroic Epic replacement, maybe?) would neuter the Danes a bit. I could have it go to the nearest city, that's possible, but it might also lead to some frustration for players.

G

How does that work in this case? You get ridiculous amount of production in 1 city? Thats weird... Maybe just nerf numbers if it is so OP? Or maybe it should have some limit, like "every next pillage per turn gives 30% less"?

 

[Gazebo]

How does that work in this case? You get ridiculous amount of production in 1 city? Thats weird... Maybe just nerf numbers if it is so OP? Or maybe it should have some limit, like "every next pillage per turn gives 30% less"?

Nerfing it as-is would, as CrazyG describes, just increase the number of cities (slightly) that you need to go nuclear. The mechanic favors wide play a bit too much.

G