Please tell me how to use Berserker wisely?

[EgonSpengler]

I think it's quite reasonable to declare war in order to get access to iron. But without iron it's just too difficult to take a city from a neighbour just with heavy chariot. Horseman is ok though. Swordman rush is sometimes limited by the lack of upgrading gold, too.

Right, archers and eventually catapults are requisites. I also play with a mod that City States free Ancient Walls, right from the beginning, so if you need to hit a CS, you need a couple of catapults all the more.

Really？ I know there are some poromotion only work when they are suffering from range attack. But I don't know if there are other promotion that only work when are attacking others?

Trav'ling Canuck mistyped. It isn't a promotion, it's one of the Bersekers special traits. They get an innate bonus when they're attacking, and a deficit (-5? I can't remember) when they're being attacked.

I think the design of 4 movement in enemy territory is that we may use berserker to move 1 tile and then pilliage it every turn. Most of the time we don't need to move far in enemy territory and get limitied by ZOC also. So maybe Berserker is in fact a sudden strike and grabbing unit. But not conquering others.

Yes, the "pillage with 1 less movement point" ability shouldn't be ignored.


A lot of the time, you'll be better off with a regular unit, just because they're cheaper. Unless you're invading because you have no iron, a good Viking army should only have a small number of Berserkers. Berserkers are also useful for harassing an enemy you don't want to fully invade, or as a raiding force to vandalize rear-area cities that you won't actually be seizing. Berserkers are like metal Navy SEALs or SAS (I suppose some would say SEALs and SAS are pretty metal already). I prefer not to vandalize cities I'm planning to liberate; I like the populace to welcome me with music and local delicacies.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Trav'ling Canuck mistyped. It isn't a promotion, it's one of the Bersekers special traits. They get an innate bonus when they're attacking, and a deficit (-5? I can't remember) when they're being attacked.

The Melee promotion that gives the +7 combat bonus against melee and ranged units also only works when the unit is attacking. That's not clear from the description of the promotion (although the title of the promotion "Battlecry" is a hint), but it's how the promotion works. Someone proved it on another thread (possibly Victoria, or Laurana Kanan).

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Haha, their name is "Berserker." I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to use them wisely. Pretty sure you're supposed to use them recklessly.

 

[myclan]

The Melee promotion that gives the +7 combat bonus against melee and ranged units also only works when the unit is attacking. That's not clear from the description of the promotion (although the title of the promotion "Battlecry" is a hint), but it's how the promotion works. Someone proved it on another thread (possibly Victoria, or Laurana Kanan).

Do we have a thread to explain all the promotion effect?

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Melee promotion that gives the +7 combat bonus against melee and ranged units also only works when the unit is attacking. That's not clear from the description of the promotion (although the title of the promotion "Battlecry" is a hint), but it's how the promotion works. Someone proved it on another thread (possibly Victoria, or Laurana Kanan).

I've been playing the game for 2 years, and I had no idea. I guess that could explain how I occasionally lose a unit I didn't expect to lose. I always assumed it was just RNG whimsy.

 

[NukeAJS]

How to use berserkers wisely? Generally -- don't use them. There are other non-UUs that do some aspect of the berserker but better and/or cheaper.

Frontal assaults -- use swordsmen.

Raiding -- horsemen.

Flanking attacks -- horsemen/chariots/knights.

All of those units except knights are cheaper and they do their job as good or better. They're also unlocked on useful (IE - not isolated) techs.

If they wanted to really fix berserkers, they'd move them off of military tactics to something a bit sooner as well as getting completely rid of the defensive penalty. In addition to that, I'd give all of them amphibious mainly for flavor but any bonus is still a bonus and the vikings focus on raiding is an obvious way to give them a flavorful if very narrow niche.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Do we have a thread to explain all the promotion effect?

Not all of the promotions, not that I know of. And I'm afraid I don't recall in which thread this particular promotion was discussed.

I've been playing the game for 2 years, and I had no idea. I guess that could explain how I occasionally lose a unit I didn't expect to lose. I always assumed it was just RNG whimsy.

You never get to see that it doesn't apply on defence unless you know an AI unit has the promotion. Likely it became obvious on multi-player earlier than on single player. I wasn't aware of this either before learning about it on this site.

 

[ShakaKhan]

A lot of great points, especially by Egon and Naeshar. Here's my take.

This isn't civ5, where you may have a bunch of this UU because of a certain military CS specialization. This is civ6, which means if you are using berserkers, it is because you have chosen to play as Norway. Norway is, IMO, by far the most niche civ in the game. And that niche is island plates or archipelago maps, preferably with abundant resources, and using early game aggression heavily, mid-game aggression even more heavily and strengthened by theocracy, and late game confirmation into a victory condition.

This is not to say that Norway can't do anything except domination. Rather, it's to note that the current meta-strategy heavily emphasizes having lots of cities early and developing them as the game progresses, and Norway is rather good at accomplishing this on island-y maps. They can build an unorthodox but VERY effective navy early on because of the compatibility of +50% naval melee production and their other UU, longships which you can further exploit with the naval production card. This alone may allow you to get quite a few cities early, and then with "vanilla play" (just playing as if you had no unique bonuses but instead using strategy which is universally sound) wins you the game. But on difficulty levels above emperor, you may need a little more, and that's where the berserker/theocracy/stave church bonuses all come together.

On an islands map with abundant resources, stave churches are, again, niche but very effective. You want to add as much of a bonus to coastal resource tiles with fishing boats as possible, and an extra hammer is about the best possibility. The stave church gives you just that, and with the bonus of setting up for a high faith-yield game. If you then follow up with the situation-specific optimal government choices (a first-tier selection of your choosing followed by a long-term 2nd tier choice of merchant republic or monarchy followed by a brief (1 turn) switch to theocracy before returning to or converting to merchant republic or monarchy, during which you cash in ALL of your faith for berserkers), then you really have something. You have a much larger navy of Caravels (because longships are awesome and you'll have more of them and upgrade them when you can), several cities (because of the mapscript) with uber-tile yields from sea resources (emphasized from the stave-church and probably the god of the sea pantheon because of the islands map and abundant resources) and lots of berserkers because the stave church works well on this map coupled with giving you lots of faith which theocracy will let you convert into a bunch of berserkers. In this scenario, you have a lot of cities early (good) with some very productive tiles (good), a lot of a UU (longships) that can uprgrade to a unit that is very effective at taking all cities on a coast (which on this map are very likely)- (good) and then there's the berserker-- but what role does it serve?

The berserker, in this very particular scenario, is about the perfect support unit that you can have. Your navy is taking the cities and weakening the ground forces (with ranged attacks) while your ground forces are finishing off their ground forces, and the berserker is substituting in for your ground forces or getting big yields from their pillage bonus or recovering from 1HP to 100HP because of their movement and pillage bonus combined.

ALL THAT said, they berserker is a very specialized unit for an extremely specialized set of circumstances. But any number of probable possibilities nullifies this. If you're not on an islands map with abundant resources, it's probably not going to pay off. And even if you are but the AI decodes to settle many of their cities one tille off the shore- again, it's probably not going to pay off.

So this leaves Norway as the most niche, or situationally specific civ in the game. In all the circumstances where every one of the numerous criteria aren't met, they;re just average. But in the perfect scenario, boy are they good!

 

[myclan]

A lot of great points, especially by Egon and Naeshar. Here's my take.

This isn't civ5, where you may have a bunch of this UU because of a certain military CS specialization. This is civ6, which means if you are using berserkers, it is because you have chosen to play as Norway. Norway is, IMO, by far the most niche civ in the game. And that niche is island plates or archipelago maps, preferably with abundant resources, and using early game aggression heavily, mid-game aggression even more heavily and strengthened by theocracy, and late game confirmation into a victory condition.

This is not to say that Norway can't do anything except domination. Rather, it's to note that the current meta-strategy heavily emphasizes having lots of cities early and developing them as the game progresses, and Norway is rather good at accomplishing this on island-y maps. They can build an unorthodox but VERY effective navy early on because of the compatibility of +50% naval melee production and their other UU, longships which you can further exploit with the naval production card. This alone may allow you to get quite a few cities early, and then with "vanilla play" (just playing as if you had no unique bonuses but instead using strategy which is universally sound) wins you the game. But on difficulty levels above emperor, you may need a little more, and that's where the berserker/theocracy/stave church bonuses all come together.

On an islands map with abundant resources, stave churches are, again, niche but very effective. You want to add as much of a bonus to coastal resource tiles with fishing boats as possible, and an extra hammer is about the best possibility. The stave church gives you just that, and with the bonus of setting up for a high faith-yield game. If you then follow up with the situation-specific optimal government choices (a first-tier selection of your choosing followed by a long-term 2nd tier choice of merchant republic or monarchy followed by a brief (1 turn) switch to theocracy before returning to or converting to merchant republic or monarchy, during which you cash in ALL of your faith for berserkers), then you really have something. You have a much larger navy of Caravels (because longships are awesome and you'll have more of them and upgrade them when you can), several cities (because of the mapscript) with uber-tile yields from sea resources (emphasized from the stave-church and probably the god of the sea pantheon because of the islands map and abundant resources) and lots of berserkers because the stave church works well on this map coupled with giving you lots of faith which theocracy will let you convert into a bunch of berserkers. In this scenario, you have a lot of cities early (good) with some very productive tiles (good), a lot of a UU (longships) that can uprgrade to a unit that is very effective at taking all cities on a coast (which on this map are very likely)- (good) and then there's the berserker-- but what role does it serve?

The berserker, in this very particular scenario, is about the perfect support unit that you can have. Your navy is taking the cities and weakening the ground forces (with ranged attacks) while your ground forces are finishing off their ground forces, and the berserker is substituting in for your ground forces or getting big yields from their pillage bonus or recovering from 1HP to 100HP because of their movement and pillage bonus combined.

ALL THAT said, they berserker is a very specialized unit for an extremely specialized set of circumstances. But any number of probable possibilities nullifies this. If you're not on an islands map with abundant resources, it's probably not going to pay off. And even if you are but the AI decodes to settle many of their cities one tille off the shore- again, it's probably not going to pay off.

So this leaves Norway as the most niche, or situationally specific civ in the game. In all the circumstances where every one of the numerous criteria aren't met, they;re just average. But in the perfect scenario, boy are they good!

Thanks for your great answer! I think you have pointed out a very very important thing: Berserker should be combined with range ship thus they can quickly finish the already damaged unit, without being attacked. But there is still problem that quadrireme is too weak while frigate is too late. And yes, norway is strong when small island everywhere is the world. When there is large landmass of inland norway can't do anything and just like a no trait civilization.

Stave church is good. I like it in R&F because faith can buy worker/settler/archaeologist now

 

[Roxlimn]

I think if you're going to play for the win condition exclusively, all of the units on Military Tactics suffer a tech disadvantage because of that placement. This has usability issues, but it's different from difficulties in just using the unit when you have it.

Let's presume that we want to roleplay the Civ and use the unit. It requires a detour and we're going to some kind of war, so there it is. We'll also presume that we have a standing army, some Knights (from Heavy Cavalry), and some other units. Why would we make a Berserker in the first place?

Well, if you have no Iron, then you can only use Berserkers instead of Swordsmen or Knights, so there's that. Berserkers are strictly better than Swordsmen, though nearly twice as expensive to make. In R&F, their non-promoted, default defensive Strength is 35 while their base offensive Strength is 50 because of their unique modifiers.

You do not want Bersekers in the frontline. You want your Tortoise Swordsmen for that. Ranged units or ships make the bulk of your attacking force, with Knights functioning as outriding defenders. They're marginally better than Knights for doing the last blow on a city at 50 Strength. They can be better at this, if they have the Commando (+1 movement in R&F) promotion. With Commando, a Berserker starting on enemy tiles can pillage a tile, move to another one, and then pillage that tile, too. This can allow them to regain lost Health quite fast if there are enough Farms on tap. Or they can move to tile from outside, pillage it, then escape with 5 movement points the turn after. This makes them the best unit for taking output from a Civ's tiles, if you don't want to conquer the Civ.

With Battlecry, a Berserker is also stronger on offense against melee units - a Knight could have Barding or Charge, but neither will improve its 48 Strength on the attack. Berserker with Battlecry is 57 against melee and ranged, and 67 against anti-cav.

The promotion line for Berserkers should normally be Battlecry-Commando, though Tortoise-Amphibious can be good with Harald to supplement the melee ships. With Tortoise, a Berserker can still be 45 Strength against an attacking ranged unit. Not amazing, but usable. To compare, a Knight would be 55 with Barding or 48 with Charge.

It's probably best to level up new Berserkers on Barbarians or a convenient nearby non-allied City State before putting them into battle in earnest.

 

[myclan]

I think if you're going to play for the win condition exclusively, all of the units on Military Tactics suffer a tech disadvantage because of that placement. This has usability issues, but it's different from difficulties in just using the unit when you have it.

Let's presume that we want to roleplay the Civ and use the unit. It requires a detour and we're going to some kind of war, so there it is. We'll also presume that we have a standing army, some Knights (from Heavy Cavalry), and some other units. Why would we make a Berserker in the first place?

Well, if you have no Iron, then you can only use Berserkers instead of Swordsmen or Knights, so there's that. Berserkers are strictly better than Swordsmen, though nearly twice as expensive to make. In R&F, their non-promoted, default defensive Strength is 35 while their base offensive Strength is 50 because of their unique modifiers.

You do not want Bersekers in the frontline. You want your Tortoise Swordsmen for that. Ranged units or ships make the bulk of your attacking force, with Knights functioning as outriding defenders. They're marginally better than Knights for doing the last blow on a city at 50 Strength. They can be better at this, if they have the Commando (+1 movement in R&F) promotion. With Commando, a Berserker starting on enemy tiles can pillage a tile, move to another one, and then pillage that tile, too. This can allow them to regain lost Health quite fast if there are enough Farms on tap. Or they can move to tile from outside, pillage it, then escape with 5 movement points the turn after. This makes them the best unit for taking output from a Civ's tiles, if you don't want to conquer the Civ.

With Battlecry, a Berserker is also stronger on offense against melee units - a Knight could have Barding or Charge, but neither will improve its 48 Strength on the attack. Berserker with Battlecry is 57 against melee and ranged, and 67 against anti-cav.

The promotion line for Berserkers should normally be Battlecry-Commando, though Tortoise-Amphibious can be good with Harald to supplement the melee ships. With Tortoise, a Berserker can still be 45 Strength against an attacking ranged unit. Not amazing, but usable. To compare, a Knight would be 55 with Barding or 48 with Charge.

It's probably best to level up new Berserkers on Barbarians or a convenient nearby non-allied City State before putting them into battle in earnest.

Good point, but as Berserker is much more stronger when attacking compared to defending, the most ideal case is use the Berserker to attack a target, then the target fall before the turn ends so the berserker don't need to suffer from any attack.

Which means:
1. Terrain is a very important factor. If the target is on a tiny island, we may surround it with berserker and attack it from all the 6 direction. But if there is a great landmass with mountain here and there, we may only reach the target from 1~2 direction. A prolonged battle will increase the risk and amplify Berserker's disavantage.

2. Speed is always important, but for berserker, it is even more important because the battle will be prolonged if fall behind in strength. I think there is no time to farm barbarian or CS to get EXP but send them to frontline at once.

 

[Roxlimn]

That part will depend on how you got to Military Tactics in the first place. For Japan, this can be a detour. Military Tactics requires Math which requires Currency. Eurekas are 3 Speciality Districts for Math, then Spearman kill for Tactics.

For Norway, this may not be. Japan's more land-focused. Norway prefers to settle by the sea with Sea Resources to leverage the Stave Church. So right there you have Holy Site, Harbor, and Campus (of course). Feudalism may not be an easy get nor may it be useful because you may not have that many Farms. You may not even have a Pasture or Horses (makes Horseback Riding useless).

Math makes your ships go faster and Currency is still beneficial for the Commercial Hub.

The most onerous requirement is really to actually make a Spearman and then go kill something with it. Bit of a faff, but less out of the way if you're not farm-dependent.

The time you have to train up new UUs really depends on how hard you go for the tech, and if you're trying to Berserker, then you should be going for it pretty hard.

 

[myclan]

That part will depend on how you got to Military Tactics in the first place. For Japan, this can be a detour. Military Tactics requires Math which requires Currency. Eurekas are 3 Speciality Districts for Math, then Spearman kill for Tactics.

For Norway, this may not be. Japan's more land-focused. Norway prefers to settle by the sea with Sea Resources to leverage the Stave Church. So right there you have Holy Site, Harbor, and Campus (of course). Feudalism may not be an easy get nor may it be useful because you may not have that many Farms. You may not even have a Pasture or Horses (makes Horseback Riding useless).

Math makes your ships go faster and Currency is still beneficial for the Commercial Hub.

The most onerous requirement is really to actually make a Spearman and then go kill something with it. Bit of a faff, but less out of the way if you're not farm-dependent.

The time you have to train up new UUs really depends on how hard you go for the tech, and if you're trying to Berserker, then you should be going for it pretty hard.

Ah yes, I forgot fedualism is also a must. 6 farm is difficult, also the inspiration of Defense Tactics, which seriously delay Berserker come into being.

 

[acluewithout]

That part will depend on how you got to Military Tactics in the first place. For Japan, this can be a detour. Military Tactics requires Math which requires Currency. Eurekas are 3 Speciality Districts for Math, then Spearman kill for Tactics.

For Norway, this may not be. Japan's more land-focused. Norway prefers to settle by the sea with Sea Resources to leverage the Stave Church. So right there you have Holy Site, Harbor, and Campus (of course). Feudalism may not be an easy get nor may it be useful because you may not have that many Farms. You may not even have a Pasture or Horses (makes Horseback Riding useless).

Math makes your ships go faster and Currency is still beneficial for the Commercial Hub.

The most onerous requirement is really to actually make a Spearman and then go kill something with it. Bit of a faff, but less out of the way if you're not farm-dependent.

The time you have to train up new UUs really depends on how hard you go for the tech, and if you're trying to Berserker, then you should be going for it pretty hard.

You could build Spearmen to support your (eventual) beserkers, use one or two to kill some barbs or defend a DOW, then upgrade them to Pikes once you unlock MT. The only real problems are that Spears and Pikes are too expensive for their firepower, and a little too vulnerable to Ranged attacks. Researching Spearmen also gets you an Encampment, which is another district for boosts plus GGs, so not all bad.

The best way to get six farms for feudalism is to steal them, but building them from scratch is not the worst thing in the world especially if you have some food resources. Farms aren’t bad - giving you food and housing (and possibly more production too by working more tiles). I think food has got a little more valuable with Magnus and the ability to make settlers without losing Pop, and Liang who gives builder charges and so can make each farm less costly. But of course Pop is less valuable over all, so that’s a thing.

That said, nothing is as efficient as stealing farms and making Knights.

 

[Roxlimn]

It really depends on the difficulty level. I think it's good to steal once the Ai gets to about Emperor or above. At that point, you're really using the AI's bonuses for your own benefit. This makes progress faster and it skews valuations towards war and leveraging "catch up" mechanics. At King, this is not efficient because the cogs you put into your invasion force is more expensive than the cogs you'd put into just making two builders. On Emp it's a little bit of a toss up. Could go either way.

The main problem with putting off Feudalism to get Berserkers is that your Builders will suck longer and you need Feudalism to get Medieval Faires and Mercenaries. You also need Mercenaries to get your mass upgrades for your units via the Professional Army card. This is the default play for most Civs.

With Norway and water play, the progress (or at least the different way to do it) is entirely different. Your Sea Resources already give good food so you don't need that. You need cogs so you build your Stave Churches, get your God of the Sea and go for hills. You may or may not have Iron.

This sort of play is MUCH easier done with Indonesia. Their Kampungs give you way more Cogs than Stave Church and their Jongs are better than both Longships and Berserkers combined since they're a more powerful Frigate as well as being a fast way to deliver troops and civilian units to distant locations.

 

[acluewithout]

@Roxlimn I'd agree with all of that. I don’t think going for Beserkers is at all efficient - if you build them, it’s just for fun.

To my mind, Norway is sort of a turtle Civ, although in a kind of weird way. You do build military, particularly naval, but it’s not really for conquest. More raid, pillage and harass. Beserkers kind of makes sense that way - both because theyre good at raiding, but also (in principle) because Pikes should be good for Defence and they unlock at the same time (so they provide a safe way to retreat).

The problem is that it’s too easy to just get Knights, you can use them to raid anyway and conquering is just better regardless, as as you point out getting Feudalism sets you up for a tonne of other stuff.

Knights need to be harder to get - and I mean both harder to build and harder to research. And anti-Cav need to be cheaper and a little less vulnerable (at least defensively).

Stave Church is a mess. Norway are basically a faith based economy Civ, but then the Stave Church also gives you cogs , but only in the cities where that is the least useful (coastal cities, which are usually better at gold than cogs). Maybe the cogs sort of synergise with the melee naval production bonus? Hmm... Dunno. It just seems daft to me. Norway would make more sense just getting god of the fishies as a default ability (instead of needing a stave church), or getting faith from fishies, or having the stave church give cogs in all situations (eg maybe cogs equal to its faith adjacency).

 

[Roxlimn]

Norway would make more strategic sense if they just boosted the Cog output, but then they'd be just like Indonesia and that's not particularly interesting. The Longships are usable early but fade quite quickly and there's no economy there once you get to midgame.

The best way, IMO, to boost this play midgame is to boost Berserkers to have base 4 movement in the water OR when starting in enemy territory. That way, they can actually get to where they're needed.

A permanent 100% boost to pillaging yields would also be beneficial if added to the Knarr Civ ability This way, a solid portion of Norway's economy can be sourced by pillaging, which can allow them to carry through this specific playstyle to the midgame, setting them up for either a conventional endgame or a domination endgame with pillaging economy using Total War (stacks with the Knarr bonus).

The early game pillage boost will make Norway strong out of the gate, and as they move towards the midgame, the Berserker's ability to move that pillaging inland can both cripple enemy Civs and give Norway's economy a sensible, unique, and flavourful boost.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Another big problem with the Vikings, both from civ6 and civ5, is the value of pillage yields when compared to the yields you can acquire through conventional builder strategies. You can get low two-digit gold yields from pillaging a tile, which involves putting the unit at risk (especially with civ6's bombardment mechanic) or you could easily get your empire to be able to produce twice that (at that point in the game, considerably more later) by just clicking"next turn."

That, along with my previous post, discusses what I feel are the limitations of this unit and civilization in terms of gameplay. I have more reservations with how they perform in-game compared to their historical development and portrayal. From the perspective of their targets, berserkers were perceived the same way horror movie villians were except they were real. Imagine (if you are of similar age to me) your childhood visions of Jason Vorhees or Leatherface but knowing that they were real (yes, I know Leatherface was based on Ed Gein) and numbered in the tens of thousands. There's nothing about this unit in the game which would create this kind of image- before the Boogeyman goes to sleep, he checks under his bed for berserkers. Berserkers/vikings (along with the also under-utilized Samarai) are the quintessential unique unit, they have generated their own sub-culture almost independent of their civilization, filled with tales and fables that blur the line between awe-inspiring true stories and romanticized fiction. Especially since the rest of the traits of the Norwegian civilization are slightly sub-par at best, this was the opportunity to have a unit be the centerpiece of a civilization, and they just missed.

And in regards to their culture, they may have been perceived as monsters by their targets but from their own perspective, they were just doing what they needed to survive. They come from lands with very low fertility, their land prevents them from feeding themselves. So they developed into raiders to take what they needed for self-sustainance. They also developed different agreements with neighbors- some would pay them tribute in exchange for not being pillaged, and even ask the vikings to help in wartime for their tribute. Other neighbors got pillaged.

This history and culture, their view of combat as a means of sustaining as opposed to the one of three reasons that pretty much every other civilization has for conquest (1.) if we don't conquer them, they're going to conquer us sooner or later, 2.) We want to conquer the world and they are part of that world, or 3.) we want to be a more powerful civilization and will become so if we add their land and resources to our own) gives them a truly unique and objectively cool image, It would be so much better if they were portrayed as such, not necessarily more powerful, but unique- they should be the Ithkul (MOO3) or Lady Gaia (SMAC) of this game. I have some ideas:

 

[ShakaKhan]

-Since it seems the developers can't find a good balance with the pillage action and this action has such notoriety in Viking lore, maybe Berserkers (or all Norwegian melee units) do something different. Much like the apostle has a command button to "launch inquisition," the berserker has a command button for "raid" which can be activated when standing on an improved, unpillaged tile in enemy territory. Once activated, the unit generates gold and randomly culture, beakers, or faith every turn as long as it doesn't move from that tile. Each turn that the unit successfully plays "King of the HIll" generates more gold and secondary yields.

-Something unique: the game tried and, judging by forum reaction, kind of failed with this in the Kongo- I like them, they're certainly different, but many cry because they lose one victory condition possibility. But the fact that they can't build holy sites is a big disadvantage which is compensated for by some other potent advantages. I'd like to see something along this line applied to Norway: they can't capture cities. Instead, once you break down a city's defenses and the unit moves into the city tile, it generates a more potent form of the raid described above - generating gold, culture, and faith every turn that the unit occupies the city tile. Maybe this is amplified if it is a larger city or capital city. This removes a victory condition, ironically domination, from their possible ways of winning, but that was kind of their MO- they could have easily conquered most of the cities that they raided, but preferred to take what they could, let the city rebuild, and then sheer that sheep again in the future.

-food. Food (or lack of it) is the catalyst for creating most of the Viking traditions. I wouldn't represent this by having them get reduced yields- this would kill the early game which consequently kills the game. Instead, Viking cities need 3 food to support each population point above city size 3, 4 food for each population point above size 5, and so on. A way to tie all this together is to have improvement tiles being raided (see first note) or city tiles being raided (see second note) to also generate bonus food to Viking cities, distributed in the same manner that amenities are: it goes where it's needed.

-amenities and war weariness: to make all this work, the vikings would need a different approach to war weariness,otherwise they'd just fail miserably. Maybe they just don't have war weariness, but that kind of copies Macedon. I say they have the opposite of war weariness- they generate increasing amounts of unhappiness the longer they are at peace with all civs. As the game progresses, they need to be at war with more civilizations to maintain neutral effect on war weariness amenities. Maybe they get a bonus to something (research perhaps) if they are above the era-dependent number of civilizations that they need to be at war with.

Sorry for the long post. I have ideas and I want to make the game better. I think the series really created a gem when they made SMAC- while there were only 7 factions to choose from, each one provided a very different experience than the others. I'd rather have 7 civs that were very unique instead of 40 that are basically the same with very minor attributes

 

[acluewithout]

I’m not sure Beserkers, or Norway specifically, need all that much if anything.

Yup, they’re a little underpowered, but I actually like that. But if you play to their strengths, they have some very interesting strategies.

Norway would benefit massively from anti-Cav getting buffed and Military Theory being more valuable (to justify it being a leaf tech).

Beserkers are fine. Yeah, maybe increased movement on water would be helpful because they are hard to get places. But they really are fine, and you can potentially buy them with faith or gold. You’re just never going to have a heap of them, that’s all.

My only really fundamental issue with Norway is the Stave Church. Norway seem to built around both cogs and faith, and I’m not sure that makes heaps of sense (i.e. cogs for melee ships and cogs for coastal cities with Stave church, but faith from woods (so lumbermills not mines)). I think it needs to be one or the other, although Indonesia seems to have a similar design (kampungs and adjacency for hammers, coast and faith buying for prayers).

Honestly Guys, there are so many Civs in this game that are actually very good but just suffer from the underlying mechanics being either unbalanced or boring.

In no particular order:

• Anti-Cav being too expensive and too vulnerable to ranged; Military Theory being too much of a detour and not valuable enough; Knights being to easy research and too cheap: Greece, Norway, Japan, Georgia, maybe Germany and Poland.

• Industrial Zones and Industrial Zone Buildings being too weak: Germany, Netherlands, also any Civs going down the second top tech tree (so Norway, Japan and Georgia again).

• Walls being weak, which makes Monarchy weak too: Georgia. Also Poland if you roll in Forts being weak too.

• Tall / High Pop cities being weak: India, Khmer, Georgia and others.

• Religion being underwhelming if you didn’t found one yourself: Spain, Norway , India, Kongo, Georgia, Poland (although they have a bonus to get a Religion via their Wildcard if they want it) amongst others.

• Colonial Cities not being valuable enough to justify the effort getting them: Spain, Netherlands, England (although England has a tonne of other problems).

To my mind, the only Civs that seem to really click are those that have a Domination focus or strong Cav or early Melee units (eg Macedon, Rome), Civs with bonuses to getting a Religion (eg Russia, Arabia), Civs that are focused on faith but not Religion (eg Indonesia), “Science Civs” (Korea, Scotland, Arabia (again)), and Civs that work more generally with adjacencies and or trade (eg Egypt, Australia, Brazil). I think those Civs work better because the underlying mechanics they’re using are better balanced. (There are also a few outliers that are good and have relatively unique and strong individual mechanics, eg Nubia, Kongo (although note my comments about Religion above), Aztec and China.)

This is why I keep coming back to balance as a key issue. There is some really great stuff in the game, and specifically great Civs, but a lot of mechanics not quite clicking holds back so much of the good stuff that the game becomes frustrating.