Yes that is probably true.It depends however on what mechanic you use (the one you proposed, the one from the original post or another…) and what rate of res generation is used.
But in diplo and FFA games, a big difference between pillage abusing and trade is that the trade is much harder to set, in terms of time, resources and space. Even if it would be more profitable when set, you have to reach that point. For pillage abusing, you need to spend res on military pop, but you need military pop anyway in case you get suddenly attacked so the resources invested on the pillage trick are not wasted.
Furthermore, only in FreeForAll games (no diplo, all enemies), trade is even harder to set because of the defensive buildings, mostly castles.
15 gold per destroyed building isnt going to do anything unless you redesign infantry in a way they can easily destroy buildings without dieing like flies
I’m sorry but I don’t understand your point. Vikings are in a great place and have an eco bonus most civs would give up half their tech tree for access to. It’s a civ that needs no help even if the thematic idea fits well.
Help a weaker civ or save it for a new Raider civ one day. In other words don’t fix what isn’t broken.
I’d really like to know why Vikings are designed the way they are, and especially why they get free Wheelbarrow and Hand Cart. I know AoE2 often isn’t historically accurate, but it makes no sense to give that bonus to Vikings. As far as anyone knows they didn’t have wheelbarrows at all… (But even from a gameplay point of view I don’t know why they’ve got it.)
I agree that Vikings generally don’t feel very Vikingy on land maps (although having them using archers isn’t actually inaccurate). But it’s too late to make fundamental changes to the civ design.
I don’t see why they wouldn’t have, as they had enough contact with people who did use it, although they surely acquired it later than many of them. Even the principle of Wheelbarrow for Aztecs/Mayans isn’t as far fetched as it seems, as they at least knew of the wheel.
I’ve always thought of it as a reference to how the Norse (and other Germanic tribes) were generally considered as taller/more robust than many of their contemporaries, and how this could have helped them be more productive/efficient at manual labor (since that’s the effect of WB +HC). Sort of like how the HP bonus makes their infantry more robust/better in their role.
They’re not nomads. They did build cities and have economies with trade. Think of them like a medieval version of an MMORPG Raid force sitting around the city waiting for the boat to the next raid to pillaged British shorelines. who doesn’t want to do that?!
Well… more than 20 years after its release we have double of civs and several changes… It is really possible that in 20 years it keeps evolving, by MS devs or modder community… I don’t see the problem in keep changing the game… Players taste and expectations changes, Tech change…
Wheelbarrows weren’t used in medieval Europe until the late 12th century (or at least, I’ve read several things saying as much and nothing that claims otherwise). The Viking Age ended in the mid 11th century.
That’s plausible I suppose, seems an odd way to implement it to me, but ok.
I’m not sure what this has to do with wheelbarrows…
No, it’s not. However, the creators try to approach reality, or people’s expectations of reality, to some extent. They don’t give camels to the Britons or something like tanks to any civilization, because: trying to approach historical accuracy.
The way you put it, is that Viking infantry have no use within the game whatsoever.
You say the civ is in a great place balance wise. That is not what the discussion is about.
One of the ways that civs are being represented are through their power spikes, and how they correspond to the era in which the actual civilization was important. In that sense, I think the Vikings are pretty well done. I would maybe lose handcart for free and keep wheelbarrow, so that, together with the infantry gold trickle, the Viking power spike is a bit earlier.
But that won’t work correctly. Imagine your unit didn’t even destroy his building (he simply self deleted it or another team destroyed his buildings then should you be getting the loot?
I think the idea is cool, but it will be hard to implement in a “accurate” way.
IMO the best way to make it balanced if it has the strongest “effect” if viking infantry hits on walls. This is a very common situation as vikings are an infantry + archer civ that usually doesn’t makes a lot of siege until the very lategame. And bec of their eco they often fight against walls in the early and midgame.
So maybe a constant trickle of gold while infantry hits on all kind of buildings is the best way to implement it, even if it doesn’t make sense you get gold from hitting walls. But the trickle has to be rather small, so you don’t get like extra gold income equal to 1 vill if 3 maa hit on the enemy walls, that would be too much. More like 1-2 gold / min or something like this.
In the exchange vikings could lose Hand Cart (for free).
Trickle would be best to avoid those issues. That feature also already exists, so it’s probably just copy and paste for the devs.
However, it would probably be best in late game, when the amount of units increases and the probability that your opponent doesn’t notice your units attacking buildings decreases. For this reason, the bonus might mainly be useful in imp, which is not when you want it to be useful. You could avoid that by decreasing the effect with age, but becoming less good in something with going age up is probably unwanted.