The free wheel and hand cart has a big influence too! Of course if you can distract the Palas with your 66hp Pikes while the Berserks swoop around and raid your eco. Despite lacking the Halberdier upgrade, their infantry is excellent as well with all upgrades, additional HP, an… However, if the vikings got the halberdier, it would end up as a much stronger civ late game. Cookies help us deliver our Services. I'm not talking about expert level which usually features mirror matches for a reason. It's great because Longboats are very good ships, and they don't require a War Galley upgrade or anything. Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition brings fresh content such as new Civilizations and Ultra Textures that could not be seen in the earlier HD version of the game. The Viking economy (with free Wheelbarrow and Hand Cart, as well as cheap docks and warships) is quite arguably the best in the game. they cost effectively beat all trash units, and other infantry. The early economy advantage certainly needs to be exploited. Fire galley players don't need to micro and can focus on eco more. The main reason that Vikings have such a weak mid-late Imperial Age is because of the free wheelbarrow and hand cart upgrades. HUGE BONUS. Chieftains now does +4 damage against camels. #4. I been practising 15 min castles with them because of that huge bonus. What a miracle it is to have AOE2 not only alive, but thriving in 2020. Gave them free wheelbarrow and hand cart. Now I can fight champions, huskrals, paladins, elephants, everything that is not anti infantry with no problem. Here are some of the perks: Albrabest, fully upgradable archers. However, because there are simply more civs, they are comparatively much worse. Then that's the time longboats in AOC can work. But again most will probably choose champs over Berserks in other situations and that's okay but i treat Vikings like Celts and go for Berserks like Celts would go woads. They will chase down trush vills. Comunicación Social Okay I've probably said enough bias on Berserks but then again i also did drush fc Berserks in a resonance 22 community game. Being the first to eco faster/harder than your opponent determines more wins than you can imagine and vikings always have that advantage. For example on arena just going for 3tc boom -> imp and push with rams + arbs around min 26 won't be stopped by other greedy booming civs. However, there still is that no fire ship problem. The second, the Genitour, is a mounted skirmisher, a unit that's effective against archers, mounted and cavalry. In Imperial they are however weakest to Paladin civs. {20% in all ages in AoC} •Infantry gain 10% more health in the Feudal Age, 15% more health in the Castle Age, and 20% more health in the Imperial Age. Also trying to fc means you'll be super vulnerable to landing (dark age transport is a thing too). And even if you mass galleys, you need 10 of them with fletching or 15 without to take on fires with micro and if you ask most expert water players. Vikings are quite weak to civs with strong castle age UUs or bonuses like Mayans, Spanish, Turksm, Britons and Huns. On one hand, you have unlimited gold for the Berserkers, but on the other hand you have cheap, fast, and deadly versatile condos in Imp. Why would you choose Longboats over Galleys or in what situations? And when I played the campaign to find out they regen I was like omg this civ has a hero like unit. And lastly because they are rather expensive to do, you save so much resources! If the opponent is able to hold this push you might very well be in trouble. I'm FUCKING SOLD. In order to balance the Vikings and not have them be totally dominant, the developers had to give them a weaker Imperial Age. They are a very competitive land civ due to eco bonuses, a very good tech tree and bonus HP on Inf. Honestly in AOC they are a little underwhelming and take a lot of time to create and may not see rise on open maps in 1v1, but in TG and especially as pocket, it's a very good idea to go Cavalier to Berserks + Siege Ram and if your flank couldn't go Arbs you can add those too. Even feudal rush you get a huge resource collecting. From what I've seen, pros will pick Vikings if they cannot pick Italians. Their post-imp isn't stellar though. vikings vs aztecs aoe2. This is balanced by a crap late game. I've always been curious how well Vikings do in arena. Not in a million years. This is huge to have too because now you have very high damaging infantry + high damaging archers. But Vikings need to push fast on such map and get a very forward wall off or they will have to push in elsewhere if one flank has walled like a god. And you can't just secretly mass galleys even with a back dock as you will be spotted by the fired eventually and if you can't back dock then well, You're even more fucked. They are an excellent cavalry -counter. Find out what nation will fit your tactics in Age of Empires II In fact alot of people do archer rushes with this civ. How are Vikings on water maps now with the ship cost nerf and the lack of Fire Galleys, and how does this compare with how they were in AoC? Pretty good! They seem like an interesting arena civ, since their monks lack Sanctity and Redemption, but their eco is very strong in early Castle, but they don't have many great late game power units to tech into, but etc. Free wheelbarrow and hand cart gives such a huge early eco boost, not only do you save a lot of resources, the research time is equal to 6/7 villagers. They do see rise in Arena and if you manage to push one side of the BF flank hard with siege ram arb early imp push. Great as flank, FU arbs and rams is always great. Even better than Japanese or Aztec infantry? Great post! An interesting question to which I do not have the answer is how Vikings stack up against the new water civs in the Portuguese, Malay, and possibly Berbers. 5/5 armour is pretty decent and 20 Berserks vs 20 Arbs is actually better than 20 champs vs 20 Arbs even with micro considered.