First, this is not a balance request per se, just a personal impresion about playing with Vikings.
I think vikings never reached the correct feel at playing with them. AoE has a strong imaginery and fictional components, not just historic accuracy and strict balance.
I mean, when you play f.e Franks, Britons, you really feel that gameplan, bonus, power units, etc match with the imaginery. Strong knights with Franks, long range archers with britons, etc…
This not happen to me with Vikings… When I think in Vikings, things like riding parties, pillage and plunding come to my mind. But in game, usually you play as a booming+archer civ. Works fine for the game, but really boring and mismatch with imaginery about vikings.
So, What if Vikigs have pillage as a strong mechanism for gold income?
Pillage would work as Keshik mechanic but working for buildings instead of units. This is generate gold by attacking buildings.
Which buildings? Economics, houses and monasteries.
Which Unit? Could be militia-line, or a unique trash infantry that should have very low stats, but good speed (I prefer this one).
Which Rate trickle? Idk, Maybe 5 units attacking = 1 relic.
Please tell me AllergicTable didn’t change how you think. I really feel like you used to be more friendly and stuff, but after all the civ lists and interacting with the most toxic person on the forums without really realizing it, I feel they may have rubbed off on you.
Your anger isn’t helping. I only want to see the game grow personally.
Pillage as a mechanic is not something I’m opposed to provided the civ could use it well without pushing it over the edge. Vikings would likely need to lose something for an economic bonus like this and scary though it might be the free wheel and handcart.
Honestly goths would be better served as they could use more help to thrive.
Tbf it’s a pretty boring civ bonus. And blocks off a fair amount of variety by it’s existence. “Civ gets one of the best eco spikes in the game and nothing else” blam. Done and dusted.
Extra infantry hp basically just for giggles.
Removing wheel barrow and cart allows for a lot of room to give the civ more flavour. That being said I think effort should be spent on the less played civs first
Could be that and the berserk. Rewards super early infantry play in every match. Would likely require a reshuffle of the whole civ, and by that stage it might be better to simply just make a new civ and make people pay for the effort of the shuffle
I actually fully agree. My point is giving Vikings any extra land resource advantage without removing anything else is asking to push the civ a little too far. Yes give some new civ this. If some other barbaric civ needs a hand give them the help.
And if the issue is flavor then the bonus of free wheel/cart becomes available for another civ and might ruin flavor if the bonus isn’t flavorful. If anything this bonus is so ingratiated into Vikings it would be a hard sell to remove.
This was a scrapped idea from tge beta which could be enabled in the original game(not sure about DE).this could be given to an upcoming civi not a current civi.why waste a new mechanic on a old civi?
I have one problem with that… it can really be abused in diplo games. The Keshik bonus is reasonable because when the Keshik attacks an average costing unit, it will get roughly 6 gold before the unit dies, so that 6 gold is not that big compared to value of the units being killed themselves. With buildings though … you can see where this is going.
In 1v1 and only-2-teams games, it might be more ok, though it will force the enemy to delete some buildings rather than leaving it behind, which might be problematic for the AI.
Nevertheless, there is no way to calibrate the resource rate such that this bonus is both not OP in more-than-2-teams games and not insignificant in only-2-teams games.
A solution to that inconsistency: maybe the gold (from attacking the buildings) could be stolen from enemy stockpile rather than created? This is hard to code though because the stockpile might be empty.
I believe this would work with both viking Berserks and hun Tarkans in different ways.
Although with Vikings I would also love to see the berserk having a special ability to be able to be the only unit able to Garrison in longboats up to 5 per longboat In addition to such a feature.
This would give them an even more thematic approach.
Having both Berserks and Tarkans generate gold from pillaging would be a fun update.
Or even just generating resources in general.
Tarkans = emphasis on gold, stone
Berserks = emphasis on gold, food, wood
With different buildings providing different amounts of resources and different resource types, perhaps.
Eh, I generally agree with this sentiment, but there are old civs that have fallen behind due to power creep and could use a little love, especially if it involves implementing a mechanic that was initially considered for that civ but scrapped for time/technical reasons. But overall I would focus new mechanics on new civs, and I don’t think Vikings need this.
I like the idea of a pillage mechanic but I think it should work relative to the cost of the building destroyed, not via generating free gold. The Keshik is balanced by having to fight units that fight back, and many of them cost gold. Generating potentially huge amounts of gold from poking a stone wall would be too easily abused and is just a silly idea. Instead it should work as either a gain of 20% cost in the original resource (e.g. 5 wood from destroying a house), or a much smaller percentage of the cost (e.g. 5% gold, or 1 gold for destroying a house).
Eh, you can trade in diplo games, which far outpaces the gold you’d get from this.
I feel that on the AOE2 forum, the only discussion about civs is supposed to be about balance somehow. Anytime a discussion is started about something else than balance, the discussion is shifted back to balance by others, ignoring the point that the other person tried to make.
Martinurello didn’t start this discussion to talk about balance, but to talk about the way the civilization plays related to how the civilization was in real life, or how we see them. Maybe the Vikings are in a good place balance wise, but maybe not in their playstyle depicting the real life Vikings. In that sense Martinurello actually has a decent argument.
To me, changes like those are as welcome as balance changes to civs. However, I understand that changing balanced civs might anger some people, just like changing civs that people love to play.
@Martinurello, Ii like your idea. All infantry get trickle income when attacking buildings. That is pretty good for early aggression.
Dude, you explained so well… I avoided to response that comment to no twist the discussion in other dialectic jerk off, but thanks to taking your time.
yes because this game has totally been known for historical accuracy.
what with mamelukes, throwing axeman, gbetos, meso civs with steel, etc.
no sense messing with a civ that is fine. many civs are not depicted accurately at all, let alone the campaigns.
To completely chabge the design of an alreasy existing civ like this would be a monumental change and Frankly i dont see any easy way to balance it. A small resource trickle while attacking buildings wont do crap. Just look at keshik as a good example.
I really like this approach. Of course if pillage would be implemented, some balance tweaks should be made.
Maybe make WB and HC free but still you have to research them. Or remove both gold mining techs to encourage pillaging.
Could be Berserkergang change or add an effect that rise the pillage trickle?? To give Vikings a kind of gold gathering upgraded that replace the lack of mining upgrade.
I think this would be Vikings more appealing with the imaginery, if not more fun and unique to play
But how do you balance it? If the trickle is too little its not even worth it. Too much and it becomes problematic thd other way.
And there’s the fact that infantry are just goimg to get picked off with ease by enemy archers, which brings no value. Look at keshiks. How often does the gold trickle on them matter?