They get to form fleets like, 2 civs earlier. I guess the Armada thing is okay. The hilarious thing about their trade bonus is that it needs to be international AND to another continent. By the time you can set up a trade network like that, 6 gold isn't nearly as good as getting an extra unit plus you have no way to keep loyalty, even if that loyalty doesn't mean much. If you want gold, just trade with a city state and don't jump through hoops. You know a civ bonus is weak if you play like it doesn't exist. Or in truly bad scenarios like Egypt's case, you wish it didn't exist.
Even with a coastal start, it's no guarantee your rivals will also put ciites on the coast. I mean the longboat is nice passive defense for your cities I gotta admit. Also Japan is just as good as Norway in galley combat in shallow waters.... but early naval combat is always in shallow water!
Basically, it's not okay.
England has as much of a chance of founding a religion as Spain does, so the same strategy could be used by England.
Spain can get a Religion more easily than England.
Spain don’t get a direct bonus to getting a Religion. But getting Religion is really about opportunity cost - you spend early production getting a Religion (and its benefits) but at the cost of not spending production on other useful things. Spain gets additional benefits from having a Religion as compare to say England; so the opportunity cost (the difference between what you get vs what you forgo) is smaller. In other words, Spain gets more for the hammers it puts into Religion, meaning Spain can more easily commit to getting a Religion vs. England.
Spain is a big winner from RnF. They’re basically geared towards capturing cities and then holding them. Basically, you go nuts mid game, capturing cities with no resource musket men and armadas (+17). You capture the cities, and immediately get loyalty via auto conversion of the City’s religion (assuming you founded a Religion). Spain’s UI then let’s you quickly boost loyalty further (you just need a builder, versus say England that needs a build a whole district). Your inquisitors then help you maintain religion and keep the loyalty boost.
Spain has really only two problems to my mind. First, as I’ve said elsewhere, Religion (as opposed to faith) is a bit limited if you don’t found your own Religion. Spain’s abilities do mostly work even if they don’t found a Religion, but aren’t as good. I don’t think Spain need a boost to getting a Religion, but they would benefit from a mechanic that let you more proactively adopt someone else’s Relgion and of having a majority Religion had more impact (eg if the Religion / Loyalty thing worked for your majority Religion, not just founded Religions).
Second, while Spain are good a foreign conquest, the problem is that grabbing foreign cities mid game doesn’t have enough pay off for the effort involved. Spain’s trade route thing is meant to help with that (as is England’s RND +2 gold), and the various colonial cards are also meant to help. But I still think the bonuses are a bit too low for Spain, England and really everyone else too.
Norway really is its own thing.
Norway aren’t that good at capturing coastal cities, and I agree there often aren’t that many anyway. But that’s okay, because they’re all about Coastal Raiding. The idea is you pillage mines, farms, other improvements, and districts built near the coast. You get the benefit of pillaging and then peace deals.
Norway can also then pillage on land with its Beserker - the extra movement and better embark and disembark let you pillage more easy, kill vulnerable units, and then withdraw if stuff gets hairy.
Norway is not really about capturing foreign cities so much as it’s about settling them (just like real Vikings). Long boats let you scout out good land early (plus grab goody huts and city state meets), ocean tech let’s you settle those cities early, and faith let’s you buy settlers cheap.
On the Stave Church, IMo Norway is designed to work with low production starts, and the Stave Church really works with this. Norway’s production bonus for boats let’s them build a Navy notwithstanding low production starts. Later on, they’ll purchase things with faith, which the Stave Church helps with, while also maybe boosting production for a few coastal cities.
Norway suffers from maybe just three niggles. First, your sort of pushed to getting that Grand Chapel Government Plaza building, so you can do things like buy Beserkers. It’s not really a problem, but it does feel hard to take a different strategy.
Second, Beserkers are hurt by Military Tactics being a bit Naff and Pikes being relatively weak. Given you can’t prebuild Beserkers, you’d ideally like to have some spears on hand to upgrade to Pikes, so they could support your Beserkers (just like how you can upgrade horses to Cavalry when you unlock RedCoats). But Pikes are so lame it’s not worth the effort.
Third, Norway don’t really get any bonus to holding foreign cities in terms of loyalty, and again is settling foreign continents really worth the effort? Maybe it’s okay because you can settle early before loyalty gets out of control.
So, in summary. I’m not sure either Spain or Norway are that powerful. But they do have great strats and great synergies, so I think are lots of fun. I think this makes them better Naval Civs than England, although perhaps the competition is tighter if we’re only considering raw naval power - in which case, I still think Spain (+17 attack strength for ships) and Norway (cheaper, better naval melee) still win.
England can also field swordsman without iron using their ability. So Spain is only better than them during muskets.... And falls behind again once redcoats come along. So they can do it better for most of the game. Not to mention early bonuses mean earlier settlement to get the best spots.
Yes, it can field Swordsmen without Iron (if the continent gods are in your favour), but it can’t heal them without Iron.
I recently played England. They were MUCH better than I expected.
The +2 gold for Harbours on a foreign continent also adds to the production bonus for Shipyard.
Ironically enough, I thought the "free melee unit when founding city on foreign continent and extra free melee unit when building royal dockyard on city on foreign contintent" to be the most useful. Think of it as saving production that you would spend on land units, and being able to build other things instead!
RnF made Harbours better overall, particularly that age of steam dedication and Reyna. That is a boost to England given they get half price Harbours, and maybe some extra adjacency, although I’m not sure that enough to counter the various hard nerfs.
I’m slowly working on a balance mod (old dog, new tricks, also this old dog travels a lot and drinks too much).
One idea I had was to keep Harbour Trade Routes at Lighthouses, but maybe move CH Trade Routes to Banks (with maybe a free Trade Route somewhere else in the Civics tree to make up for that). That would be a soft buff for Harbours and Coastal cities, and help with something else: land locked Civs usually aren’t poorer in Civ, whereas they usually are in real life). Combine that with maybe
Lighthouses and Markets getting +1 Gold on foreign continents, and I think that would make the game more fun - more reason to settle coastal cities, more reason to settle foreign continents, trade routes less front loaded.
