A new mod enters the ring - Introducing "Close to Home"

[Mjmd]

There are plenty of situation civs and leaders. Don't see the problem with Vikings being one of the stronger situational ones.

You can always think the map is water based and then end up in PB62..... HI NAUF!

[naufragar]

And I would've gotten away with it, too, if it were for you pesky kids!

[scooter]

Sort of think there's some recency bias going on here. Nobody was considering Vikings OP until PB73, in fact hardly anyone was picking them. I probably would not have even picked them in 73 if not for having a Fish/Deer start (not to mention the presence of Vanilla circumnav), and they were prioritized in 76 because Medieval + water start juices them an an extremely abnormal way. (I also think we should let that game play out a bit more before evaluating if the Civ pick was actually OP or merely a good fit for the era/settings.)


Basically we've seen them do a lot of damage on two very atypical games, and I'm not super sure we should be drawing so many conclusions. Vikings are very good if there's water, don't get me wrong, but that's been true for as long as we've been playing these games. I think part of what's been going on is we keep playing on maps where everyone starts coastal and it's blindingly obvious that water will play a huge role. We could just take a break from all the water.


A downside of Vikings that I think is getting understated here because of the nature of the two games they were picked is they do make your leader choice fairly awkward in a normal game. Vikings really want ORG to make their UB cheap, because waiting for a city to produce 120h before you get the Granary/UB combo is tough. They also kind of want Financial because the UB means you are going to prioritize coastal cities. So pick Darius! Except, that's really slow. And your Zerks really want some sort of combat oomph in the form of Agg/Chm, but of course you pay a tremendous opportunity cost to pick one of them. And it's really hard to get the 4th move on the Galleys in CtH without taking one of those traits. And again, none of these 4 traits help your growth curve whatsoever, so you are going to be behind and have to make up for it. You could take Expansive of course and save on the Granary/UB combo that way, but then you're passing on 3/4 of the aforementioned traits.


And all of this requires a water-heavy map, and you often don't even know this is the case off starting screenshots. I think they're situationally extremely powerful, but that's true of a bunch of civs.

[Thoth]

Free Flanking 1 would be ok, but doesn't solve the issue of getting 4-move galleys early in the game

4 move galleys would require 3 of: Charismatic, Vassalage, Theocracy, and/or settled GGs (or a GG Xp sprinkle).
The only one of those available in the early game is the GG xp sprinkle and that's available to anyone though the Vikings could certainly do it better.

3 move galleys are plenty powerful even without 4 movement points. 100h worth of galleys can enable a unit to move 7 tiles in 1t if properly placed. It takes 150h worth of 1 movers to do the same.


The other option is to give the Vikings something other than a military benefit from their UB. Damnfino what though.

Viking UB currently is either virtually useless (land heavy maps) or far too good (water heavy maps). Something that is more generally useful but without being overpowered is preferable to either banning the Vikings (on water maps) or having them never picked due to irrelevance on land maps.

[Mjmd]

I want to point out there have been water maps they haven't been picked. Is there only win recently PB73? I think so.

Meanwhile we still have Rome and America which are always good no matter the map and we can't even agree to nerf them.

[pindicator]

That's' why I think the bigger issue is early access to Nav-1 and Nav-2. Yes, it's only available in certain circumstances, but when that happens you are able to strike quickly without warning. Which makes it more impactful than galley chaining - with galley chaining you have to have the units in place ahead of time. (Honestly, galley chaining is problematic but it's a lot lower on my list.)

I'd be good nerfing America to 1GPP/t. As much as I defended it before, my bigger problem is that it seems so off brand for CtH. I'd rather do a Grocer UB to be somewhat related to the Mall.

[Qgqqqqq]

Colossus UB would be too powerful. Probably too powerful, but you could make it affect only ocean or coastal tiles instead.

[civac2]

I tend to be very conservative with that of thing but I don't see a need to change the Vikings either.