For the Thralls, they’d only turn back into villagers once brought back to their own TC, until then they’d just be un-usable units that can move (like sheep). The idea is to make the ability for a eco-boon from aggressive gameplay, but likewise you need to secure them properly from raids… either by using walls or military units of your own to remain nearby.
It’s meant as a weakness, but also a boon and based on scandinavian economy… which was reliant on the thrall workforce to function.
The main issue is to make it work as a civ. As we know Vikings existed during the dark age/early feudal in game. And currently those periods in game can be very short.
After that, there’s some quite bland kingdoms, which form a major union later on. Obviously this period is building up to that time when Sweden decided to go absolute bonkers and take on basically all of Europe. But that’s a bit after the cutoff date in imperial.
So to capture the part we all love about the Norse, i.e. the raiding and pillaging of sacred stuff we would need a civ that is able to harass in the dark age. I quite like the idea that villagers can serve as warriors. If they could also construct transport ships - like how infantry can create siege engines, they could colonize quite early as well. Or sail over and burn some buildings.
Naturally, attacking monasteries should be their thing, but they only exist after the castle age. Still relics are on the map from the start, so gathering those earlier than other civs might be an idea. Against Rus you have to guard/kill wildlife, against the Norse you have to guard relics on the map.
To summarize: my idea of the Norse would be that you grab some warrior-villagers, build ships if needed, head to the enemy base. Try to destroy a mill, kill a villager or two. Get a bounty for that. Return home. Hit feudal, start hoarding as many relics with a unique early monk as possible. Then you go to castle age, lose the ability to create any ”viking” related units and hopefully win due to the accumulated advantage from first raiding and then stealing relics.
I wouldn’t mind a ”chieftain” either. Like the Khan to push the early game advantage.
If we see them at all (popular demand says yes lol) I think it’ll be something along these lines. But we’ll see!
Tbf Norse was most fun and unique to play in Age of Mythology so they should go with something similar. Let me give list of how they worked:
Their villagers couldn’t build but their infantry could. Their scout was also infantry. Their villagers could be instantly upgraded to 1 specific anti cavalry infantry for the infantry cost (not resource effective since took TC time and you lost original cost of vil). Their infantry built quite slow though
They had 2 different kind of villagers available: One excelled at gathering food and wood, another gold. The gold one costed gold
They had movable gathering point for all resources that was trained quite fast from TC and took 1 pop but no traditional resource gathering points. It made them weak to being raided since it was easier to kill it than lumber camp.
Their defenses were pretty bad, most strategies involved going forward with infantry and building “forward offensive base”. Rushing and raiding was viable too but their cavalry wasn’t that great outside raiding or softcountering specific units
Their hero unit was infantry that could also build (to gather relics and counter myth units but I guess they should buff allied units attack when attacking in AoE4 since myth units don’t exist)
Almost all of their units were cheap decent semi-counter-units that could almost hold their own resourcewise even against neutral units and could easily be massed.
They had only 2 places to train different kind of units (excluding monastery): Longhouses (feudal) and Castles (castle age). Both allowed you to train different cavalry and infantry (low range ranged anti-infantry infantry included). Castles also had siege. So no siege workshops, archery ranges or stables. Only 2 different places instead of 5.
They also generated one resource required to research techs and make strongest units by battling. So they were forced to fight throughout the game to get techs.
They should go with something similar. Footsoldier forward-base heavy with raiding cavalry.
Now this response I can agree with. We get it, you love the Turks, but it would be like me shoving my Teuton thread into every single post I visit. Its spam, and honestly not very civil.
Looking on the time frame of the Chinese civilization, which reaches to 1644, the Swedish empire would be a viable option for imperial age Norse. Gustav II. Adolph (King from 1611-1632), the most famous Swedish king who achieved many military victories in Europe during the 30 years war (for example the battle of Breitenfeld) would still fit in this time frame. And as a half swede myself I would absolutely love to see the Swedish empire in aoe4 (at least as an imperial age form of the Norse)! There would also be plenty of room for unique stuff there, for example leather cannons etc.
I personally hope they go with the generic name norse, and incorporate elements from norway, sweden, denmark and iceland… they all were the same culture/civilization but split into nations (i mean, early on they were just small petty kingdoms spread across the countries).
and indeed, denmark/sweden both have good moments that could fill out the imperial age.
Well, if they decide to go that late then it feels more obvious to go for the Swedes to represent the nordic countries. Although - Sweden is already partly represented through the Rus.
Sweden would have quite the modern lategame army though.
But the Rus have the streltsy after all. So they are willing to put units with muskets/arquebus’s in the game. Would be lovely to see something like castle Tre Kronor as a landmark.
What about a Norse civilization where you have 3 landmarks as an option when going to the feudal age (or castle age whatever is more accurate) and depending on which landmark you choose your civilization is going to evolve into the Danes, Norwegian or Swedes. This would reflect their similar origins and would let the player to have an option to choose different approaches. You could for example say that the Norwegian option has a strong early game (because of early medieval vikings), the Danes have a strong midgame (Kalmar union and so on) and the swedes have a strong lategame (Swedish empire). (I know that the Danes also had many viking raids going on but this is just a mix of Gameplay variation and a bit history) Or you could make the gamedesign approach that for example the Danes have good economy, the Norwegians good utility and the Swedes have good military or something like that. I would love to see a Norse civilization and something like this would everyone let to choose their favourite Scandinavian faction
If Christian missionary house is chosen to age up, in my view, that action can unlock Norse War Clerics. They’re similar to Rus Warrior monks, but use maces, hence they have attack bonus against heavy units, while also heal nearby units passively when idle.
If the Viking harbour is chosen, alternatively, this action can unlock Obudshaers(quite slow, but quite cheap, heavily-armoured mercenaries that use halberds to stop and crush enemy horsemen and heavy units, plus passive ability, namely bloodthirsty, that allows their attack increase depending on how many HP they had lost) for self and allies. In this case, the Obudshaers can be trained in limited numbers from self and allies’ markets or docks, but they don’t cost population. Raids and trade missions including them will also bring extra spoils, depending on how many of them was included.
One more thing, Gun Holks should be available in Age 4 as a type of less sturdy but faster substitute of Carrack.
As a unique unit for Norse they could train mounted “champions” (similar to khan’s)
Functions similar to a knight. Train slowly but you can have multiple of them unlike a khan.
Their stats are reduced if in proximity of other champions from the same player. This heavily encourages micro and multiple avenues of attack.
They’ll have some UT that gives them a passive aura for friendly units nearby (like higher damage or attack rate)
Norse unique resource is “unit kills” (not animals) the more kills you have the faster the player’s global training rate and maybe something similar to rus where there’s a building that has an increased resource income or free unit production based on kills.
The rewards are based on an exponential value, so you need increasing numbers of kills to gain rewards.
This encourages /rewards early aggression while scaling into late game.
Some nice ideas here, some might be a bit complex to play with and keep balanced.
But would be nice to see some of this uniqueness.
The training from houses and set limits sounds like a lot of sim management thought. Tracking down which house can or can’t be trained from especially as Vils are lost.
the ideas in the original post makes 0 sense for AOE game… random units equipment, no berserks, powerful vills that cost double… and carry more… come on xD
