Hub Changes. Do the Vikings need a buff?

Do they need a buff?

In the recent hub changes they are losing Thumb Ring. But getting their bonus HP for infantry at the very start. Their early game militia will be great. However, in the late game they will be lacking. This will become particularly the case in late-game booming team games, where lots of trade carts are made. The Vikings won’t be able to do much to aid their allies here. Apart from countering the goth’s flood.

Some buff ideas. Feel free to make your own.

Give them Halberdier.

Berserk does splash damage to adjacent units in front of it. It will kind of fit the theme that berserkers fight wildly.

Berserker has a charged ranged attack where he throws an axe. Same damage as his normal attack, but before he fights a champion in 1v1 fight, he will get damaged by throwing an axe at him before engaging in melee.

Long Boats can unpack and turn into a harmless, slow moving unit on land. This can be used for Long Boat to move between rivers they can’t sail to. They did this in real life. Will allow Vikings to make use of ponds, and send a Long Boat to another body of water over land. Would make it even cooler of if Long Boats could be used as transports.

3 Likes

Imperial Age tech should give 33% trample damage to Berserk is good idea with health regen is arranged to 30 per minute (it was 20 and 40 after tech) but after this change, free hand cart and wheelbarrow should be heavily nerfed. Longboat should gain 5 units garrison ability, too.

Yes, give them Halberdier, they would be dead in trash war at this point. Or they can just buff chieftain for Pike men so they can perform at least on par with halberdier.

As for the second idea, with the current version of the game engine, you either do blast damage in a circle or you do nothing. Also I think berserk is already strong, they just need a little food reduction(55 or 60).

As for the third idea, it’s just too complicated, and people would just kite them like throwing axe men or gbeto. We can try giving them charge attack like coustilliers but on lesser scale instead.

The last idea for long boat would be cool.

I think it’s a bit early to talk about this when we don’t even know how the changes play out. I wouldn’t mind giving them either husbandry or plate barding armor, so their late game trash isn’t as terrible.

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No, they don’t need a buff, they were a bit too opressive on land maps with that arbalest play.
Instead they now need a nerf for water maps.

I wonder what your elo is and if you are sometimes just trolling or not.

Sure buff berserks even more or let longboats move over land. Do you even think about the consequences?

This civ only lost 1 tech. It’s not a useless one but its not the most important one either. They can still go arbalest fast imp. THis civ was probably never meant to be an archer civ like the others to begin with so i’m totally fine with the change… and they even got 2 things to compensate,

They won’t drop to D Tier just because they lost thumbring. Why would you buff a civ, which hasn’t even been tested out yet and is with 99% probability better than at least 5-10 civs?

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Why not +20%/25%/30% HP for infantry?

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Naw. Elite Berserks are the nastiest infantry unit in the game already, even in team games, with above-average performance vs. everything except CA due to raw stats. A Jack-of-all-trades, master of Jack-of-all-trades, so to speak. And with the +3 damage, +1 armor for non-Elite Berserks, Berserks will absolutely compete with Knights even before Chieftains. FC into UU could become a thing for pocket Vikings. And I feel flank Vikings will miss having Thumb Ring less and less when they remember Vikings still have one of the best economies in the game.

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why do their infantry need buffs? they already get free extra HP and Chieftains on top of it.

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Gives halb to vikings is clearly not needed, Vikings pikemen are already very good and ALL the infantry already take good trade vs cavalry if they get halb they will be too op vs cavalry civ at any stage of the game.
Absence of cavalry , bbc and good onagers is what make them completly bad at the late game.

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Before the PUP changes were announced: Do the vikings need a nerf?
I think some people would agree with that, and others dont… But everyone agreed that they didn’t need a buff.

Now, the developers have decided to buff infantry UU. This should affect berserks. However, vikings didn’t need a buff. So they nerfed them with thumb ring.
Since this appears to be too much, they then buffed their feudal and castle infantry a bit (which is consistent with other “XX% more hp” bonuses such as vietnamese or franks one)

Thus, the thing is that developers wanted to buff berserker, but had to nerf vikings in exchange.

Lets see what happens. I suppose they have tested them a bit, and the reason for them having more HP in feudal is exactly this.

5 Likes

I mean neither do Japanese, Koreans (They are forced to be archer civ in DE imo), Malay, or even Byzantines, Portuguese, and Bohemians. Don’t get me wrong, in a different thread I said I’m really happy that they are now different from all those naval + (practically) archer civs.

I think they will be completely fine 1v1. They will suffer in TG as they were a top 5 TG flank civ. I guess Vietnamese or Italians will take their place there.

How about we wait and see how it goes before we suggest buffs for the civ with the vest eco in the game?

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The buffs only help their Feudal and Castle Age infantry. I’m not sure why some seem to think that it offsets their Imperial composition nerf, which will now include Arbalesters that fire 15% slower than generic, and miss 10% of those shots. Not a good trade, especially for team games.

Berserks are looking decent in castle age now, but they are still generally worse than champions in imperial (exceptions would be vs perfect hit and run from archers, or to maximize population efficiency when you don’t care about unit cost).

Let’s not turn Vikings into another “you should’ve ended the game in castle age” civ.

I agree but chieftain seems kind of redundant. Why do they need chieftains? Because they lack halberdiers. why don’t they have halberdiers. Because they have chieftains.

Well it’s already that kind of civ actually…
And that’s the reason why a lot of people consider the change actually as an overall buff to the civ, not a nerf.

The elo of this topic is like 700, vikings are top tier civ, top 5 civ rank civ since AOK, best rounded civ for RM maps, best boom in the game.

Berseker has no weakness, it kills trash,militia line and trades vs paladins, they kill archers as well, basically berseker only loses to stronger UU’s or heavily massed ranged units and siege, other than that the unit is broken, samurai dies badly vs cavalry while berseker doesn’t.

You guys can’t seriously suggest more bonus to a civ like that, trample damage to berseker so it can counter everything but heavy siege?

Well, I highly doubt that… Archer or cav archer +mearshield is pretty deadly to berserks actually.

But yes it’s pretty appealing that the civ doesn’t perform as good on the ladder as the top players can play it. I still have no real answer to that cause I consider vikings to be an absolute top tier civ in arabia aswell and don’t really understand how you can play them bad. They feel so smooth…

Maybe it’s because of that, people not knowing that you can play basically play everything with them in the midgame, and you should use that. Vikings eco is just nuts, you don’t have to play them pure archer. Besides their best play is probably with archers, you can and should adapt constantly with them, that’s how you make the best use of their eco.

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No, that is false. Getting tired of people spreading this lie without bothering to test. Viking Champions beat Viking Berserks easily considering cost. Both get the increased HP and bonus damage to cavalry.

When facing 20 generic Paladins, 26 Elite Berserks are required to win consistently, which costs 1690 food + 650 gold. Alternatively 32 Champions can be used to win that same fight, and costing only 1440 food + 640 gold. Unless you plan on letting the Berserks go rest and regenerate slowly (without garrison or monks), then using them to win this fight is simply a waste of 250 food.

Berserk speed is not that impressive, they are just 5% faster than Pikes.Certainly within the middle of the infantry units range, 16% slower than Woad Raiders, and 19% slower than Eagles. Their speed matches the Huskarl, but they lack the Pierce Armor and bonus damage to be considered an archer counter.

If the civ is going to be restricted to solely infantry, and their UU is just a Champion clone that requires castles, it had better be a more effective unit. Vikings have poor cavalry, poor monastery, no halberdier, mediocre siege (no cannon or SO), and now will be lacking full upgrades on any archery range unit. Strong economy and swordsmen is not enough, and it defies the civ’s identity for the last 20 years.

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That’s the wrong comparison to make when Berserks are supposed to be a Militia line replacement in the later game, and you ought to be comparing Berserk vs. Champion in equal numbers instead, and their creation times vs. Knight creation time, and their resources spent per training minute vs. what Knight civs must spend per training minute to have an equal army strength. I’d wager with the new buffs that 1 Castle Zerks adds army strength vs. Knights at a faster rate than 2 Barracks Swordsmen, and Zerks ought to be the late Castle Age transition when a Vikings player wants to go infantry vs. cavalry, even before Chieftains.

Differences in upgrade times are also a huge difference. Elite Berserk upgrade now only costs 25 food/25 gold more than Two-Handed Swordsman + Champion, however; Elite Berserk upgrades 135 seconds faster than Two-Handed Swordsman + Champion, and 55 seconds faster than Cavalier. If you shall not see the power of possibly upgrading to what amounts to a Super Champion no sooner than 45 seconds after reaching the Imperial Age, then this conversation is going nowhere.

And do not think to try and convince me into believing one Castle Zerks are too much more expensive than 2 Barracks Swordsmen, when it’s a given that one Castle is a common thing to see in late Castle Age, and the economy behind all of this is Viking economy.

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