Speaker A
Hey guys, Spirit of the Law here. In this video, I want to take a look at the new Viking Saga civilizations and see how good they are by checking out how things are going on the ranked ladder.
Analysis of the new Viking Saga civs in AoE2 ranked ladder reveals below-average win rates and varied strategic viability.
Key Takeaways
- New Viking Saga civs are generally below average in win rate across ranked games.
- Danes excel early but fall off late game; Saxons show balanced but modest success.
- Varangians are popular but underperform due to ineffective early gold bonuses.
- Infantry civs tend to perform better at lower skill levels; high-level success is limited.
- Strategic diversity exists but no civ currently dominates; potential for meta shifts as strategies evolve.
What the video covers
- The video analyzes the new Viking Saga civilizations—Danes, Saxons, and Varangians—using ranked ladder stats.
- Danes start strong with food bonuses and infantry siege pushes but rank around 50th with a 47.5% win rate, performing better in early and mid-game but falling off late.
- Saxons have a defensive theme with tower bonuses and discounts on foot units, ranking slightly better than Danes with a win rate near 48%, showing more balanced performance across game phases.
- Saxons' playstyle is still evolving, with players experimenting between infantry, archers, and tower rushes.
- Varangians are the most popular civ with about 13,000 games but have a low win rate (45-47%), struggling despite strong scout and knight bonuses.
- Early gold bonuses for Varangians are less effective, and their unique units don’t translate into consistent high-level success.
- Infantry civs like Danes and Saxons tend to perform better at lower ELOs, while Varangians show the opposite trend.
- Different data sources (Empire stats and Awestats.net) show slight variations but agree on overall below-average performance of these civs.
- Strategic openings vary: Danes favor men-at-arms and fast castle, Saxons favor fast castle and mixed infantry/archer openings, Varangians lean toward scout rushes.
- The video suggests these civs are balanced or slightly underpowered and may improve as players refine strategies.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and overview of Viking Saga civs
- 00:29Danes: strengths, playstyle, and win rates
- 02:29Danes: game length performance and strategy breakdown
- 02:49Saxons: defensive bonuses and overall performance
- 04:04Saxons: game phase performance and player rating analysis
- 04:33Saxons: popular strategies and meta considerations
- 05:07Varangians: popularity, strengths, and weaknesses
- 06:45Varangians: win rate analysis and strategic challenges
- 07:32Conclusion and final thoughts
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Like what happens almost every time, there were the usual predictions of power creep. But it turns out the civs are apparently a bit on the weaker side if anything, and we'll go through each one in depth, not just with the usual stats,
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but even looking at which strategies are working better than others as the first time we've had access to that information. We'll start with the Danes.
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As a quick summary, they get out to a strong start with more food collected, leading into a play style that rewards infantry siege pushes and raising buildings. The unique unit plays into that with throwing torches as well. And
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most players, I think, would say it's on the stronger end for its cost. Altogether, Danes are surprisingly not that great though, currently ranking around 50th out of 56 civilizations with a 47.5% win rate on Empire stats. Another
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site called Awestats.net has them about a percent higher. And there are different decisions about game length minimums, for example, that generally make the same data give slightly different rankings, but safe to say that Danes are below average in terms of win
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rate over game length. And about 1,000 games lasting between 5 and 20 minutes, they're a little above average, which isn't surprising given they have an early food bonus and open with infantry, which tends to push that up. In about
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1,500 games between 20 and 30 minutes, they then seem to have their peak at being able to close out wins, which makes a lot of sense as intuitively they're streamlined to be aggressive and snowball building raises into an early
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castle age win. The problem is if that doesn't work in the 3,000 plus games lasting 30 to 45 minutes, or the even slightly greater number of games lasting 45 minutes plus, they seem to fall off.
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This is a pattern you see in infantry civs quite often, and Japanese are maybe an even more dramatic example of it. Though Kelts also feel like they have some similarities in design to Danes and have a similar late game
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pattern. Another interesting pattern is Danes do much better at low elo than high elo, which again is a pattern we see with infantry civs pretty regularly. The site Awestats.net then goes a bit further and even tries to quantify opening
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strategies, albeit I don't know the exact way they're trying to scrape recordings to figure that out, and we'll take it with a grain of salt. Out of the 1v1 games they've analyzed, about 1,960 have a fast castle, either straight or
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with a fish boom, and over 2,200 had Danes opening men at arms into one of a few different follow-ups that are all categorized separately, combining for a higher win rate than straight fast castle. The next most popular was a
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straight archer rush with under 300 games and scouts being even less popular. So players are about evenly split between men at arms versus fast castle into presumably an eye towards siege and maybe their unique unit.
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Altogether, Danes seem completely fine and at least have a competitive opening, while the civ then just falls off a bit in the later phases when cavalry or top tier archer civs tend to dominate a bit more than infantry.
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Next up, let's talk about the Saxons and how they're playing out. Saxons, of course, have the most defensive theme of the group with extra arrows for towers and castles, free food and stone from camps, a very broad unit discount from
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building TCs and castles, plus faster repairing. So, how are they doing? It turns out pretty similar or slightly better than Danes, which both sites agree on. Though they disagree on if it's low 48 or high 48% win rate and
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ranking either 45th or 40th out of 56 civs. I personally trust Empire stats a little bit more here as their number of games is slightly smaller, which might sound counterintuitive, but I think they're filtering out matches that are
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probably just adding noise. For example, removing games that last under 5 minutes. Now, unlike Danes, which had a pretty clear peak in early Castle Age, Saxons are a bit more all over the place. They get out to a bit of a slower
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start, winning less than half of the about 1,000 games lasting 5 to 20 minutes, but pick up in Castle Age as their bonuses start to kick in. They're also decent late game, which isn't all that surprising given the combo of
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discounted arbalesters, a pretty good unique unit in the hearth troop, discounted infantry with their shield wall tech, and among the better mounted crossbows. Looking by player rating, they're again kind of underwhelming except for the 1900 plus ELO category.
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You have to be careful with that as the sample size is about 500 games while the other groups range from 1,200 to 4,000.
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And here are the 95% confidence intervals for context. In terms of how players are approaching Saxons, according to what AoE stats is capturing, fast castle seems like the most popular strategy by far at over 2,900 games, followed by about 1,300
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archer openings and almost 1,600 men at arms openings. So, lots of things being tried. That said, they claim only about 200 tower rushes, which seems a little low to me. And I wonder if some of what's being classified as fast castles
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are actually including some failed tower rushes. I think players are still figuring out if this is more of an infantry or archer civ, as the discount applies to all foot units, and the bonus giving towers two arrows in castle age
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is likewise an in-between bonus that simultaneously kind of encourages a tower rush, but also kind of encourages an early castle age at that. The end result seems to come out pretty balanced though, or maybe slightly below average.
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This is definitely the kind of civ that I think will do better as they get more figured out, and how viable their tower rush and archer versus infantry play is will take time to settle, which in terms of win rate, I expect could look like a
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soft rise over time, even without an overt buff. And finally, that brings us to the most popular of the three new civilizations, the Varangians. They have about 13,000 rated games compared to Danes and Saxons roughly 9,000 which usually implies the
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perception of the civ is that it's quite strong or possibly just seems fun to play. They're built to be a scout rushing civ with 30 HP from bloodlines, about 150 to 190 extra gold from hunt depending on a few factors but either
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way easily offsetting the gold cost of bloodlines and have the best Varangian guards in Imperial Age. The knight line also has trample damage and their Yarl is basically a mounted throwing axeman.
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What's not to love? Well, for starters, their win rate at 45 to 47% depending on the site, putting them at either number 54 or 51 out of the 56 civilizations.
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So, where are things going wrong? I think a lot of this comes down to why I initially wasn't worried at all about the civ being too strong, which is that early gold bonuses aren't very good.
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We've seen it with Portuguese and their 20% gold discount or Turks with their faster gold miners. And until they added a berry and scout armor bonus to those civs, they were bottom tier outside arena, particularly in sub 30 minute
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long games. Gold is cheap in the early game, and food bonuses are king. Or wood bonuses if they can be turned into more food. Ten more HP on scouts is also just not game-winning. And we see that with a
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below average win rate in quick games, turning into a crushing midgame, bouncing back a bit late. I'm a little surprised the trample damage knights or Yarl aren't carrying them a bit more since the Yarl in particular seems like a
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strong unique unit, but something just isn't translating in practice. That's particularly true at high elo and low elo players are actually rocking Varangians just fine. It's the higher rated players that aren't having a lot of success. As for what kinds of
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openings players are using, scouts are obviously the num...
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to those knights or Vangian guards a bit quicker. Though this data includes all maps and arena will naturally contribute a lot of fast castles. I feel like there's a frank comparison to the civ with frangians and Franks both being
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scout into knight civilizations with lots of throwing axes. But I think we have to admit Franks are just way better at that opening with a 56% win rate on their scouts to frangians 49%. And I really think comes down to Franks have a
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food bonus and frangians have a gold bonus regardless of whose scouts end with more HP. Again, I wouldn't say that Vangians are catastrophically bad or tanking. They're just on the low end and could probably use a buff if this trend
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keeps up for the next month. It's really too early to talk about balance changes and best to let players take a few weeks to see what they can figure out. It's hard playing new saves and it's a universal experience to forget new saves
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unique texts and bonuses regularly until you play them a few times. So, this is all more for interest sake than a call for knee-jerk reactions. That'll do it for this quick check-in on the new saves and how things are playing out so far.
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Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
Topics:Age of Empires 2Viking Saga civilizationsDanesSaxonsVarangiansAoE2 ranked ladderciv win ratesstrategy analysisSpirit of the Lawgame balance
