Right now, Berserks are just Champions with less HP and pierce armor, but slightly faster movement speed. And yes, they also regenerate. But I think this is too little of a differentiation compared to the Militia-line. I propose a few small changes to the unit to make it more unique and more worthwhile:
Remove HP regeneration (other units are using this now anyway)
Remove “Infantry generates 5 gold per villager kills and 20 gold per monk/trade cart kill” from the Chieftains tech
Now, add:
+ Berserkers generate 20 gold per villager kill and 50 gold per monk/trade cart kill
So, no need for a special technology for this anymore. 5 gold per villager is too little matter. Now with 20 per villager, you’d get 200 gold from killing 10 villagers. Still quite hard to do but at least it’s noticeable now if you can pull it off. And if you can manage to snipe a monk or two that could be pretty nice as well. People usually don’t have a reason to make monks against Vikings, aside from one or two to pick up relics with, so it’s not like this would potentially net you thousands of gold in a game anyway.
+ Berserkers dodges every 2nd arrow from Town Centers & Fortified Churches (or potentially, all defensive buildings including Towers & Castles).
The unit has low pierce armor already and does worse against archers and skirms compared to the Militia-line. That’s fine. But to help its role as a potential raiding unit (of which Vikings sorely lacks with their abysmal Stable), then this could be a way to balance it. So if a TC shoots 10 arrows (fully garrisoned), only 5 of the arrows would hit the Berserker. That means it would die after the second volley instead of the first.
What are your thoughts? Would a change like this help make the unit more viable and more fun overall? Also thematically, the fact that the Vikings specialized in raiding and pillaging, I think the civ should lean into this a bit more. Right now it is arguably the worst raiding civ in the game.
Maybe berserks upon being killed stay alive for a few more seconds able to be attacked but essentially invulnerable because they feel no pain… then they die again after their rage time runs out
Not a bad idea but I don’t think this would help it separate itself from the Militia-line. It wouldn’t give the unit a clear role. It would just make it slightly tankier/better (similar to what its HP regeneration already does).
You can’t do this. It’s the very first unit in the game to have regeneration.
Any unit can lose regeneration, but not Berserker.
I think we can find a way to make Berserker’s regeneration more unique than others.
Maybe, it can gain +1 attack for every 10% of HP it loses, so it can get up to +9 attack when its HP is below 10%. However, when its HP restored by every 10%, it loses 1 of these extra attacks, and back to the original stat when fully restored.
This idea is to reflect the Berserker’s furious fighting will, but the values can be adjusted.
I like the idea of making looting exclusive to Berserkers.
This effectively gives Berserker two separate regeneration mechanics, rather than giving a new mechanic that interacts with the old regeneration mechanic.
And, the Tiger Cavalry has owned this in a similar way.
I think they are fine as they are, they are quite a bit stronger than the champions. In fact they are the to go unit of the Vikings in 99% of the cases. The fact that they are more mobile, and that in less than two minutes they are full hp again make them extremely cost efficient.
I have an idea, when berserkers hp reaches 0, he heals to full health instantly but gets a permanent debuff -5hp/second. (last stand/feel no pain). then he dies when reaches 0 hp again.
Let’s respect the original creators and the old players by not fundamentally changing Berserks.
They already regenerate, move faster, and have better melee armor, whereas the Viking Champion has higher HP and one more pierce armor. If the Berserk tanks arrows better than the Champion, then it would make it pointless to train Viking Champions.
Each hit increase +1 attack, +5hp, -0,1 RoF and +0,1 movement speed up to 4 hits.
These stats buffs just stay for 10 seconds. After that, the stats return to base stats.
It pushes player to keep looking for a fight to stay in killing spree mode, and force the oponent to retreat when the berserker “rage” reach its maximun.
Regen ability could stay but only when unit is idle.
About plunder effect of chieftains. I think this should be a civ bonus and affects all foot military units.
This is what I liked about Vikings. Generic line is slightly better against archers and UU is clearly better against melee units. But now with Champion getting +1 attack, Berserk is not that good in melee compared to champion.
Games arent 1v1. The berserk is faster so of his health gets low the player can weave a near dead zerk out and put a new healthy one in to take the beating instead all while thr other essentially becomes a full zerk again