hey guys Spirit of the law here a couple of weeks ago I covered the big changes in the April patch
though now that it's officially out I want to do a bit of a spotlight video for this one focusing
on a civ that got a pretty extensive overhaul the Vikings now I did a civ overview on them a little
over a month ago and naturally they received some of the most changes of any civilization in the
patch classic we can consider this an addendum to that overview going over four major changes they
received in depth to put those into perspective with some testing and examples of course and
also talk about where this leaves Vikings as a whole to set the stage heading into the new patch
Vikings were recently performing 8th best in 1v1 Arabia on the flip side in team games they tend
to struggle a bit more though I think one of the changes coming in particular may actually help
them in those games a surprising amount like I said there's four significant changes we'll
be covering in this video and to start off the first is that I'd argue they're one of the biggest
beneficiaries of the continued push to buff The Swordsman line presumably you're familiar with
the new tech gambesons at this point and in my opinion Vikings benefit more than almost any other
civilization from it the tech adds one pierce armor to the long sword in Castle age extending
through to the champion and when I recently looked at it in depth the main takeaway was that against
very high damage range units it has little to no effect but against cheap low attack units it can
be pretty dramatic for example against crossbows with 7 attack it reduces the damage they take by
25 percent making the militia line better against one of their main counters even more importantly
though I'd argue is how it cuts damage taken by Elite skirmishers in half assuming you have
the other infantry armor upgrades now you might wonder why anyone would make skirmishers against
longswords but remember Vikings are largely played as a crossbow civilization so running
into skirmishers is not that unexpected of course their infantry also have 20 more HP so instead of
a generic longsword taking 30 javelins to defeat a viking fully upgraded long sword takes 7 72 while
I suspect Resistance 2 skirmishers was not the main intention with gambesons considering most
of the best Archer civs don't get access to it Vikings being an infantry civ in this case gain
a very nice complementary unit to their crossbows against a major counter so that's our first big
change where I see these swordsman line Buffs indirectly helping Vikings more than almost any
other civilization moving on the second major change was a whole set of improvements given to
the berserk the biggest one is the effect of the unique Tech Berserkergang is now automatically
given in Castle age meaning big hill 40 HP per minute instead of the previous 20. practically
speaking this means a full heal that previously took three or four minutes is now always done in
under two minutes even for the elite version in addition to healing up between fights that even
has a noticeable impact mid-fight especially in Castle age where this wasn't previously available
for example one-on-one the heel 6 hp in a fight against a light Cavalry 10 HP against a knight and
25 HP against crossbow one-on-one that extra HP gain fighting a knight especially now means with
Chieftains they can sneak out a win one-on-one which was not true before this patch and makes
them actually quite cost effective of course you also have to think about the cost of the tech
that's being saved prior to the most recent patch Berserkergang cost a hefty 850 food and 400 gold
but is now totally free on top of being given one age earlier until now you had not only the
elite upgrade to pay for but two different unique texts on top of blacksmith and Barracks upgrades
even just the research time of berserkergang alone set you back three berserks so giving that
Tech automatically now means they're both better objectively in Castle age but also overall just
easier to switch into all this for a unit that was already considered pretty decent before this patch
that's not all though they also add some changes to their cast late unique Tech Chieftains where
aside from having its cost slightly reduced adds on a brand new effect of having infantry
units generate 5 gold per villager killed and 20 gold per enemy monk or trade cart for a bit
of context managing to pick off 10 trade carts and 30 villagers sounds like a very effective rate for
infantry which remember is pretty slow and adds up to just 350 gold so the total gold doesn't
sound that insane under usual circumstances but the other way to look at it is a berserk only
needs to find one trade cart and one villager to recoup its entire gold cost remember this
applies to all liking infantry though so Pikes and champions generate the same amount of gold as well
all together between faster healing erasing the cost for Berserkergang and the extra trickle of
gold when braiding there's several things here pushing Vikings toward being a true infantry
civ where infantry is actually your default at least in 1v1s at this point the main problem I
see is that infantry tends not to work very well in team games and remember Vikings already aren't
doing very well in that department which is typically dominated by Cavalry and archers
it turns out though Viking are blasters are also improved and that'll be our third big change to
look at with Berserkergang now automatically given to you their new Imperial unique Tech
Bogsveigar as plus one attack to the Archer line we'll do a few comparisons here with
cyan representing archers without thumb ring the arbalester in Darker blue representing a civ with
thumb ring and in yellow we have the Vikings who while lacking thumb ring have 11 attack instead
of 10 thanks to this Tech since thumb ring increases the r blaster's fire rate by just
under 18 and our blasters without thumb ring have functioning about 94 accuracy from a quick test I
ran according to the math our blue are blasters with thumb ring to do better against units with
5 or less Pierce armor at six Pierce armor they should be about the same as Vikings and after that
point Vikings should in fact do better until you reach 10 pure summer where the extra attack has no
effect anymore and at that point we'd want faster firing and better accuracy again all this means
there's a window of relatively high accuracy armor enemies that Vikings should end up better against
now than they were even before losing thumb ring of course in practice this probably undersells the
importance of Vikings Focus firing requiring fewer shots and instead over emphasizes damage over time
but we'll still look at a couple of quick examples to show how this plays out to start with a pretty
common example here against an elite skirmisher liking our blasters in fact do the best one-on-one
of course this isn't cost effective especially when you consider gold but I consider this a
pretty important matchup for them to hold up in and Vikings hands down did the most damage overall
throw in some Viking Champions with gambesons and you should be able to effectively neutralize
any skirmishers used against you likewise Vikings need a quarter fewer shots to bring down an onager
which even with a bit less accuracy missing thumb ring could still mean the difference between the
onager getting one more attack away and destroying half your army or keeping your arbalesters alive
as another example Cavaliers with all the armor upgrades are just on that threshold where thumb
ring and the Vikings plus one at attack are theoretically very similar this one comes
down a bit to Randomness in the Vikings accuracy but you can see it's almost indistinguishable in
Effectiveness likewise against paladins as well you need theoretically a quarter fewer arrows and
especially in this matchup shows they're at least as good as our blasters with thumb ring probably a
little better when you consider Focus firing and the fact you need 15 fewer arrows personally I
think that's a big deal in team games especially where a viking player going crossbows into our
Blaster has jumped from what were sub-standard art blasters before to being now above average
against paladins in particular now of course there are a couple of downsides to all this the first of
which is that it costs more than thumb ring and is definitely something to get after bracer and
chemistry in those moments you really want a last push in your Firepower the other issue is
you don't have access to it until Imperial age so your crossbows aren't anything special in the mid
game considering that's when vikings were already doing well though this seems like a well-targeted
buff for Imperials specifically so far we've covered their infantry changes and how their
late game are blasters are now often as good or better than ones with thumb ring but there's one
last change to Deep dive which is the secondary effect of their Imperial unique Tech in addition
to archers it also increases Longboat Attack by One this might sound excessive given Vikings
reputation and popularity on water Maps but in reality it's not really a change while this does
give an indirect plus one attack Improvement to regular longboats in Imperial the elite Longboat
have this offset by producing their hidden attack bonus against ships and buildings by one basically
getting this Tech just brings you back up to what they were before at least against things they're
usually fighting which are enemy ships and dogs in fact it's reasonable to wonder if it's even
worth paying 1150 resources for it on a water map where you aren't planning to use the extra attack
for Archers and are just thinking about your Navy we'll compare a couple of elite longboats here
the cyan one is without this Tech and the yellow Elite Longboat will be with this Tech researched
and spending the over 1000 resources ideally hoping to see significantly better results
checking out a couple of common matchups the tech seems to give a noticeable but not amazing
Improvement they take out galleons about 10 faster setting them from almost exactly equal
back to being a bit better than a generic Galleon one-on-one likewise there's a similar roughly 10
percent increase in Effectiveness against fire ships and as it happens there's actually no impact
against demos considering the elite upgrade is similarly priced and increases their attack much
more as well as adding to their HP box Vigor just seems like a very low priority though if
you're absolutely swimming in resources then it certainly won't hurt to pick up I have to admit
I do like the idea of unique texts affecting both water and land units at once to make them overall
more useful on any map but in this case it just feels like the game is selling you something that
used to be free so while it sounds like a buff in my opinion it's actually a slight Nerf to
the unit so to give some final thoughts while Vikings are basically unchanged in the early
game from Castle age on I'd argue on land they received some very nice improvements the major
takeaways again are first that long swords are more viable especially to mix in against
skirmishers to support your crossbows again I think Vikings are a big beneficiary of a new
tech that was purposefully not given to a lot of other civs who would have benefited in the
same way second the berserk is unambiguously better and for fun also has a unique rating
mechanic now giving some extra flavor to the game third the art Blaster is stronger in
late Imperial at least as good as ones with thumb ring and especially when Focus firing
against High pure summer targets it should be a noticeable Improvement finally the Longboat was
also slightly nerfed now having higher upgrade costs though I should point out that up until
Imperial they're as good as before on water and considering the berserk Buffs they might
even be a little better on water maps all things considered overall if you're looking to embrace
the devs concerted push for infantry I think Vikings are a great sip to try out now more than
ever I've been playing them quite a bit this week and am enjoying the berserk changes in particular
that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys and I'll see you next time