But Vikings rely so much on eco and tech leads to gain advantage while their military is not strong.
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Which is why they need thumb ring back + another unique tech to replace Bogsveigar to buff them.
Honestly, this makes Viking less unique and less fun to play
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Personaly, I am very tech tree oriented, so I do not see any interest to play Vikings instead of Japanese (or Huns instead of Magyars). But if other players like what they give, goid for them and the civ wouldnt need a change.
According to statsio, Vikings play rate are at 1.46% in 1v1 (9th worst) and 1.39% in TG (13th worst). So pretty low popularity but not the worst I guess. So if some want a change to make them âmore interestingâ, I understand the sentiment, but will say they are not at the top of the priority list.
I did not ask for total cost to be decreased, I asked for the gold cost to be changed to wood.
Exactly! Gold would be better spent on other things than the UT. Even without infantry armor, you can add pikes cheaply vs cav and even Castle age berserks have good stats for fighting skirms.
Arbs donât pierce through skirms, even with the UT. They just do a bit better, itâs still a bad trade.
Yes
Why should cost be increased if it is wood? Wood gathers at same speed as gold (even with Viking eco) and is heavily used in Castle. I think it should be 600 food 500 wood.
Agreed. I just think the gold cost restricts future tech switches. I donât see how they get any faster if the tech cost wood instead of gold.
And just make Vikings to play nothing but Archers into Arbalest-Siege Ram as years ago.
4 Likes
No, not if they also receive a new unique tech which helps elsewhere in their tech tree to replace Bogsveigar.
I dont see any reason to nerf Viking eco either. Even with one of the best eco in game, they are still fairly balanced due to bad tech tree. If their eco get nerf, they will at least deserve bloodlines then. (Similar to Armenians then?)
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Bosveigar is closer to Bracer than Thumb Ring. And it is probably 10 times worse than Bracer while also cost 2x more. But thatâs fine. UTs are usually way more expensive than generic techs.
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Bogsveigar was originally intended to make up for the lack of the Thumb Ring and delay the peak power of Viking archers. However I personally rarely see Vikings using archers in the late game. What I see most often is that in the Imperial, they try to form Berserks + Onagers.
I would prefer Bosveigar to give Archers and Longboats 100% accuracy and +20% RoF instead of +1 attack, which would make it work like the Thumb Ring. But anyway, as for the price, 500 food and 400 gold may be good.
I understand that UTs are generally more expensive than generic techs, but Bogsveigar feels like a risk I donât need to take when it costs gold. It is a âwin moreâ button, not something Vikings are encouraged to stay with long term. If I am only getting a temporary boost from it, then why should I waste an exhaustible resource on it?
Exactly! I would prefer to make those units than risk gold on Bogsveigar. That is because Vikings donât have any well-rounded compositions using arbs.
Isnât Arbalest + Berserk + Rams a good one?
Because gold becoming more scarse could be taken into account.
It is not only about fighting skirms, and not only about 1v1.
Maybe. I am not an expert about the exact number value. I cannot tell why the devs settled on this exact cost. Maybe due to thr longboats buff ? Maybe the devs feel it is more fair to restrict Vikings gold ?
And as said, in the end the cost being too high or too low is not a really a matter of concern to me. The overall civ balance is more important.
Even in TG open maps as flank ?
I understand. It is 250 wood vs 350 food + 500 gold. Now if you train 10 more Arbalester you will actually have both army and resource advantage of 350 food and 50 gold over a TR Arbalester. Now with 18% faster ROF vs +1 attack, from some math it is 55 Arbalester with Bogsveigar vs 65 Arbalester without the UT will have same DPS. Obviously it will vary with PA and in reality the number is even lower.
I personally think Vikings should have been focused on infantry.
2 Likes
To go for that, you need so much gold that it is better to skip the UT since Berserks can kill anything that the UT would have been useful against. The Arbs can be swapped out for skirms to make it more gold efficient, but skirms arenât affected by the UT.
I disagree because I donât think the tech is worth 500 gold in the 1st place.
What other scenarios are there that you think make it a good idea to spend 500 gold on Bogsveigar? I honestly want to know as I cannot find any, where I wouldnât rather switch into other units. In TGs, it doesnât matter what it costs since gold is infinite.
Longboats were nerfed to make this UT compensate for it. So, they did not get anything overall. I agree the tech is useful on water maps, but having a wood cost would be as impactful as having a gold cost due to the lack of wood on those maps.
Devs already balanced Vikings by giving them a very restrictive tech tree in Imp, so I donât think restricting them further makes sense.
I am also concerned about that and I think Viking late game is unnecessarily restrictive and are rarely picked in tournaments. Occasionally, they get picked for some water maps. This is mainly because their Imp tech tree is very restrictive. They could do with a very slight buff - make Bogsveigar less risky to get in the long term.
Due to the rest of the tech tree, Bogsveigar is almost useless in practice. If you get it and win, you probably could have won without it because of the situation you need to even justify getting it (40+ arbs). And if you get it and lose, you likely could have done better with more berserks (or other units) instead of getting the UT.
I find your argument hard to follow. Why are you considering TR arbs when Vikings donât have it? If you are considering generic arbs, the 1v1 DPS table from the wiki that I posted earlier shows how they compare - generic arbs are slightly better upto 6 PA and then Bogsveigar arbs are slightly better till 10 PA. But if you want to kill something with 7 PA, why not make Berserks/skirms instead? Even as a meatshield with pre-UT arbs firing from behind would still do better than arbs with Bogsveigar.
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Whenever you are pop-capped and want to use arbalesters (e.g. because Berzerks do not work against what your opponent fields), the tech is worth it.
Against cavaliers (6 PA), Bosveigar gives +25% damage.
If the tech had 15 arbalesters worth of cost, it is worth its 600f+500g cost if you have 60 arbalesters. It is a big number but very reasonable if you play archers into xbows into arbalesters. And every future arbalesters will get the value.
If you still are unsatisfied with the cost, then do not research it. Many other UT are researched much less frequently than Bosveigar.
If you fight cataphracts, arbalesters should be your only option.
If you face any heavy cavalry+Hand cannoners, Bosveigar arbalesters are a solid option.
If you are pop capped as flank player in an open map TG, you are on at least 60 arbalesters and Bosbeigar is an obvious tech.
If you fight Gbetos, arbalesters should be good.
If you are in a very late game with low gold and no castle (no Berzerks), you best chance might be to keep an arbalesters ball and a few trebs alive while spaming skirms and pikes.
I, as a players, dislike training melee gold units in the 1v1 late games and rather keep some ranged gold units alive, so I would clearly choose Bosveigar arbalesters over anything else, especially with how weak Vikings trash is.
Yes, I do not see any reason to pick Viking over Jpnese on any non full water maps. Vikings tech tree feels so empty.
They are very often picked on water maps, they should easily be top 5.
On other maps they dropped off since early DE. Losing the TR power spike along with the arbalesters cost nerf had a big impact on them. They benefited more on the cheaper arbalesters cost than other civs due to their fast imperial potential.
Now they are not worth of contention anymore at pro levels. On the ladder they are still fine.
I feel Bosveigar is a good thing for their arbalesters. If Bosveigar only affected Longboats in a future patch and not arbalesters anymore without compensation, it would be a significant nerf in my eyes.
For me, Vikings late game is carried by their arbalesters (who are not noticeably better than the ~20 civs with arbalesters) and their Berzerks (who are not that hard to counter, depend on castles and cannot be easily kept alive due to being a melee unit).
That is also why I initially compared the price of Bosveigar with arbalesters and not Thumb rings. It would feel weird as well to complain about Hussars being overpriced compared to bloodlines. Even if it is technically true, it is fine to make Hussars much more expensive.
Skirms are less pop efficient against any non archer/pike unit while atbalesters have more better matchups. Berzerks are melee units much harder to keep alive.
But if you have lot of gold, Berzerks are surely the better option though.
They should do similar against 6 PA targets. But the comparison should only be with other current alternatives and not with previois ones (FU arbalesters). Vikings got a nerf like they seeminly deserved.
But if I were personally asked what to do to make me want to play Vikings instead of my current civs (Saracens, Burmese,âŠ), I would ask for a better late game at the expense of a worse mid game eco, like @NastyHigh suggested as probably as you want to have.
Currently I am not asked to play them, so I do not feel the need of changes, as long as the civ is balanced and have an acceptable play rate.
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If you are pop capped as Vikings, you should not be on pure arbs unless you are so sure of winning that the tech wouldnât make a difference.
True, but berserks do well against cavaliers as well and even act as meatshield for non-UT arbs.
UTs should not be balanced around being useless. You can make a thread about the other useless UTs and I will likely agree with you on those. But that doesnât justify leaving Bogsveigar useless.
Yes, that is a good situation to get Bogsveigar. But I donât see how the game would even develop to reach this situation. Why did Byzantines not make cheap skirms against your pure arbs? Cataphracts are so expensive to tech into that skirms would be made every time against Viking arbs. Also, Byzantines have FU arbs which are better vs Bogsveigar arbs. It seems that Byzantines making cataphracts would be a mistake.
Berserk + skirms are better in this situation. Even non-UT arbs + pikes would do well here. Pikes are cheap to upgrade into and HCs are inefficient against pikes due to overkill. Pikes can be spammed and act as meatshield while still doing a lot of damage against the heavy cav. Once they are dead, the arbs can kill the HCs.
In TGs, the cost of UTs doesnât matter since gold is infinite.
Gbetos have such low pierce armor that you donât need the UT to use arbs.
How are you getting the UT with no castle? Also, champs with extra HP are still available.
Seems like a personal preference, canât argue with that. I personally prefer melee units because they require less micro and can survive longer without my attention, especially berserks due to their regen. If berserks get attacked when I am not looking, I can pull them back and they will regen back to full HP. Canât say the same for arbs.
Japanese have way more Imp techs than Vikings.
As I said before, +1 attack is not really worth it. AM players used to get everything except arb upgrade with other archer civs, then wait to see what the opponent techs into. With Vikings, Bogsveigar is even more expensive on gold, so better to not spend gold on it. If it did not cost gold, I wouldnât worry about the future of the game and just get it.
Pop efficiency is not as important in 1v1s as it is in TGs. Skirms can be spammed endlessly. Even if they are killed, they died so your arb mass could survive which is enough. Keep skirms in front and non-UT arbs behind and you will do better than pure arbs+UT. The skirms will kill the 7PA unit that they are strong against and the arbs will kill everything else while the skirms die.
Berserks are way more durable than pure arbs+UT. They have more HP and regen and cost less gold. If a berserk dies, you only lose 25 gold. If an arb dies, you lose 45 gold. Adding berserks instead of getting the UT and keeping them in front of the arbs you already have will almost always be better than pure arbs+UT.
Here, I am comparing Bogsveigar arbs to non-UT arbs + meatshield, as you wanted. Meatshield dies, keeping your non-UT arbs alive while they fire from behind and kill everything. Without meatshield, pure arbs+UT will be exposed to attack. If the enemy uses hussars, the arbs will eventually die no matter what.
I donât want such major changes to their identity. It is fine that Vikings need to kill quickly to win. I just want a small change in the same direction, which changing the gold cost of the UT to wood would be.
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Why do Vikings have better archers than cavalry in the first place? Thatâs pretty historically inaccurate. Sure they used bows, but they used cavalry more often.
2 Likes
Well, I agree that techs and units should in theory not be designed to be useless. But it is much better for the game to have a few useless techs and units than to have civ imbalances.
Only because you are pop capped faster in TG. It is still very important in late game 1v1, otherwise people wouldnt pay 500f 600g for hussar, which is overpriced when compared to bloodlines. The thing is, for the unit you spam any little bonus is welcome.
In TG late game you spam the most efficient gold units, and in 1v1 late game you spam the most efficient trash units and try to keep alive whatever important gold units you spared for, namely siege and optionally a ball of ranged units.
+1 attack is worth it. +1 attack for an excessive price is not worth it when you are pop capped.
You always want all techs on the units you are making
I agree that Bosveigar has excessive price for a +1 attack to arbalesters, if we exlude the longboat effect. I agree that useless techs (I dont think Bosveigar is useless) are problematic and should be addressed when possible.
But I dont think it is enough of a reason for a buff.
If you say âVikings have low win rate or pick rate. Letâs make them more attractive by improving the UT.â, then sure. But if the argument is "The UT is too expensive for what is dies compared to a regular tech
I do not go pure arbs unless I have army or tech advantage, which is reasonable as xbows are massed from Feudal ahe and cost no food. After the power spike, I will need a meatshield of pikes (and the usual siege).
Arbalesters should not die, they kill from far away a run away if they have no meat shield. And they should have number advantage before gold runs out because they do not cost food. Adding a few unupgraded berzerks will not help that much compared to pikes, as you need upgrades to make them work.
I would play arbs with pikes, and upgrade bracers > chemistry > arbalesters > pikes > bosveigar > squires > archer armor 3 > infantry armor 1 > 2 > 3 > squires > infantry attacks 1 > 2 > 3 .
If you went from xbows into arbalesters (not sure you would, as you seem to be more of a berzerks player), you would probably go infantry armors 1 > 2 > 3 > squires > Elite Berzerks > infantry attacks 1 > 2 > 3 > arson.
I think your xbows and berzerks would get overrun long before Bosveigar comes into play.
Bosveigar is cheaper than Elite Berzerks, so if I am getting low on gold, I would rather stay on arbalesters and take Boveigar and transiting to berzerks.
If arbalesters shoot, they would not leave alive, they die in one volley (75hp + regen at 5 PA against 10 or 11 damage).
Yes I think it comes to that.
But then, not sure you would go arbalesters even if the UT was cheaper. Maybe if it afftects infantry units as well ?
And again, for me âthe tech is very expensiveâ is not enough of a reason for a buff; âthe civs is has very low win rate or pick rateâ is a good reason.
I was trying to compare old Vikings with new one.