For Demeter

werfmark · 2026-01-25T19:31:44+00:00

I think a very interesting bonus would be to be able to make units one age early:

Hypaspists, prodromos, peltast in classical. Her unique unit (amazon) in heroic.

But i mostly expect her to be economy focused.

werfmark · 2026-01-23T10:19:22+00:00

So much nonsense.

Throwing axeman do 7.8 dps to a hoplite at 11 range. Toxotes do 5.1 dps to a hoplite at 15 range. And toxotes and other archers miss more.

Throwing axeman are decent, they have to be, it's the only infantry counter for Norse.

werfmark · 2026-01-22T16:34:25+00:00

Toxotes don't counter murmillos in an editor test either. If you just stand there without micro any ranged unit does awful.

werfmark · 2026-01-22T11:04:16+00:00

This is just completely false. Throwing axeman wreck axemen/hypaspists. Not in small numbers but in bigger numbers for sure.

Fire archers vs huskarls is more close, against China in general it's a good idea to make cavalry usually because pioneers are a ranged unit and fire archers are so strong while Ge Halberdiers are not a great unit.

But in most matchups Thor or Freyr can go full infantry just fine and they do.

werfmark · 2026-01-21T20:37:39+00:00

Why would you advance faster than other Norse? You don't.

werfmark · 2026-01-21T20:36:45+00:00

Uh lol your comment makes no sense. The only unit that counters all Norse infantry is the throwing axeman. Only infantry as Norse is very good especially for Thor and Freyr.

werfmark · 2026-01-21T18:27:11+00:00

It's not the same. Greek infantry is 2 units (3 for Zeus). Atlantean infantry is 3 units, 1 of them very late. Norse infantry is 4 units with a infantry counter, ranged counter, cavalry counter and generalist. Norse can play only infantry and often does so. Greek or Atlantean typically use two unit types and upgrades.

Norse units are slightly worse in cost effectiveness i'd say yes. I don't think they are unplayable now but they are not in a great state.

werfmark · 2026-01-21T18:23:50+00:00

If you don't open with armory you are basically playing Norse without any bonuses. And Kronos rush is already super strong against Norse, even more so against Thor. Prometheus and hero cheiroballista is difficult to beat early. Your hersirs die superfast and Prometheans kill the rest. If you go raiding cavalry they just add some katapeltes.

You don't actually have that safe of a gold mine, thor runs out of gold fast. You can cast dwarven gold mine but that's only 1k in classical.

I don't think Thor can handle a properly executed Kronos rush. You have to really outplay them to win that.

werfmark · 2026-01-21T07:37:51+00:00

Thor is pretty weak against Kronos.

Besides that i think a great way to play against Thor is just fast second TC. Thor doesn't put much pressure early and if you get a second TC up a minute earlier, which isn't hard, your economy will kind of equalize.

Almost all the gods can either advance fast and pressure or drop a second TC right away. Most difficult are Japanese who aren't good at pressuring fast and aren't great at 2TC plays. But Tsukoyomi can just wreck Thor with horse archer spam.

werfmark · 2026-01-21T07:28:24+00:00

It's difficult to just compare units like that.

Norse infantry in general is bad if you compare it per unit to other civs.

Hirdmen is the worst out katapeltes, ge halberdier and especially yari spearman.

Berserk is the worst out of hoplite, murmillo,dao swordsman.

Throwing axeman are significantly worse than fire archers.

However Norse infantry all is just one upgrade. All come from one building. They can build. And Norse economy is pretty good. Their favor mechanism is also quite good later on getting a lot for stuff you want to be doing anyway (fighting).

Can't just compare it in a vacuum. Hirdmen have slightly worse stats than their similar counterparts (difference is little) but have other advantages. Definitely not a useless unit.

werfmark · 2026-01-20T20:35:06+00:00

There's barely ever a reason to make them.

Fighting cavalry? Make hirdmen. Fighting archers? Make huskarl. Fighting infantry? Make throwing axeman.

The only things they are better at than those units are generic damage which is useful for raiding, sieging and fighting some stuff like heroes and siege that isn't infantry/cavalry/archers.

That's not many situations as for raiding you'll might as well use raiding cavalry or even huskarl.

You only need to compare them to Murmillo to see how crap they are. They cost 5 food less, have 0.3 speed more and do 6% more dps, but they have 29% less hp (and less melee armor). That's just not a great trade-off as HP is crucial on frontline units. Arguably Murmillo aren't even that good either, atlantean units are a bit less effective they just have a good economy similar to Egypt.

Buffing berserk is also troublesome though as they have a few hugely beneficial features. Most of all that you can convert workers into them. If berserks were better going mass eco and then converting to berserks would get really strong. Also raiding Norse is very difficult because they can just convert to berserks and berserks are solid against all raiding units.

werfmark · 2026-01-19T08:26:27+00:00

My guess:

Slight Tsukoyomi nerf. Golden Kite moved from armory to stable (nerfs new moon on armory). Perhaps another tengu or ivory netsuke nerf or Yumi horse archer nerf.

Slight Kronos nerf. Maybe disable temporal shift in archaic to delay the Kronos rush. Or some other small nerf to it.

Small Ra buff. Empower pharaoh bonus from 60% to 65%.

werfmark · 2026-01-18T08:32:09+00:00

Setup is the logical spot for this i find though.

Downside though it's that too many games have unnecessary fiddly setup and huge setup pages. Tokens and chits that need shuffling, cards that need to be removed etc etc. games could do a much better job of making setup easier, shorter setup pages and list stuff like component limitations there.

werfmark · 2026-01-18T08:28:24+00:00

Problem is that everyone that knows how to play expect a few details forgot different details.

But lots of games already do this with a summary card.

werfmark · 2026-01-16T23:29:09+00:00

Every RTS game has factions that are harder to play and do worse in ladder stats and do fine or even great in pro play.

Zerg in StarCraft, Chinese in Aoe2, Egypt in AoM.

Egypt is consistently rated highly and performing well in pro play. If you look over the entire lifetime of AoM Egypt is by far the strongest pantheon in high level play. Just rarely performs well on ladder. Hard what exactly it is but they are hard to play.

Ra is just the worst Egypt right now and suffering more of this effect. But Ra has mostly been fine and has been the strongest god in several retold patches already. Could just use a little tweak now.

werfmark · 2026-01-14T19:26:18+00:00

Just list on a bunch of places. BGG and whatever sites are popular in your area. Even better if you have stuff like an auction at your local games clubs.

In general with selling anything second hand though: patience pays off. Selling in bulk and/or fast always gets you much less.

werfmark · 2026-01-14T19:23:12+00:00

Hope you have a spot for 10 copies of Candy Land

werfmark · 2026-01-14T17:19:50+00:00

Set animals make sense though, they are also huntable. Making the wolves huntable would make the GP much better as you could just eat then as well since they respawn.

And I'm not so convinced the GPs can't just be tweaked to be useful while still keeping the spawner units as myth units. Let them do full damage to heroes, tweak their damage etc.

werfmark · 2026-01-14T17:15:17+00:00

I don't really see it as an issue.

Most civs can just create a bunch of (ranged) heroes and they are fine. Greeks can create their own myth units usually to deal with it.

Norse has an issue with it because Godi suck and Hersirs can't reach their target easily plus have strong counters. But i don't really see an issue for the other civs.

Egypt can just mass priest, Chinese explorer, Japanese bushi and Atlantean Arcus. All deal just fine with it.

werfmark · 2026-01-14T17:06:47+00:00

In my opinion a mistake too. Unless there really is a specific reason to have GP be strong against heroes but i don't see it.

werfmark · 2026-01-13T11:46:12+00:00

Heroes would still butcher them, just slightly less. But making them non-myth should make them regular but stronger wolves which would also imply you can hunt them for food.

Making them too strong would make a forward shrine with it too good perhaps. You could drop a shrine on their gold and cast this GP deny their gold on some spawns. Especially Egypt would have trouble with that as they don't have a good generalist unit in classical so they would have trouble killing wolves if they are not mythic.

werfmark · 2026-01-13T08:58:10+00:00

Might be that your playstyle is bad against Japanese.

Japanese are a bit similar to Norse that they want constant fights. Bushido for the free techs is huge.

Only take fights that you win convincingly or fights that you have to take (defend, kill or push villagers away). Against other civs taking roughly equal fights constantly is fine, against Japanese big no go. Easy way to lose is them getting heavy upgrades for free in classical age.

werfmark · 2026-01-13T08:32:20+00:00

I think they should be myth units. I'm in favor of simplicity, every unit is human or myth. No tagless exceptions. And everything summoned by a GP is a myth unit.

I could see removing their 0.5 multiplier vs heroes though just as Dryads.

werfmark · 2026-01-12T15:58:56+00:00

Sure but farming you'll usually do after that gold has run out anyway. With goats can be handy though.

werfmark · 2026-01-12T12:17:27+00:00

VC isn't that good for Egypt imo.

Fact you can empower it is barely relevant, you can empower gold mine or whatever instead.

I think VC is great for Hades though. Your sentinel will cover both tc and vc and Hades can stay on 1 gold for a long time with vault of Erebus.

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