Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

No Flag Floom
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Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

Post by Floom »

The Intro
Hey folks, I'm new in town and getting into aoe3 in a big way thanks to DE. I've always played RTS's though, so as I've been watching hours and hours of higher level games on twitch and youtube trying to learn the game, I've come across some cards that gave me an idea that's perhaps just crazy enough to work. I'm still super new though so I present the following theory light heartedly, perhaps this strat will be only good for memes.

The Premise
In Age of Mythology, a common and powerful strategy for the Norse faction is to boom hard until you hit max population, raiding and denying map control as best you can before hitting max age and hitting a button, "Ragnarok", that turns all your vills into powerful warriors. The goal is to roll over your opponent in a final push with overwhelming numbers, given that they'll have a bunch of pop tied up into villagers that aren't even close to as strong.

Lakota have a age IV card called "Warrior Culture", giving villagers 200% more attack. While this doesn't seem like much at first, when you consider the many buffs available to Lakota via dances, Warchief (with Command Skill card), Teepee (With Friendly Territory card) and Spirit medicine and/or Pioneers card, it starts to sorta seem plausible.

I'm not suggesting that every one of these buffs are needed, but these are the elements to be considered.

Booming to max population is possibly faster on certain maps using the Kinship Ties card to train villagers from Native Embassies, though this is an age 4 card and probably way too slow. The fertility dance helps and there is also the Adoption card at age 3 to speed up vill production.

The Strategy
So assuming you're crazy, like me and you think this sounds like a good idea, how to achieve this boom without straight up losing the game?

You need to be very aggressive early, putting a lot of effort to secure map control and building as many trade posts as you can control for extra XP and/or resources. You can use warcamps and teepees to make a strong forward base to make it very costly for your opponent to push out of his base.

Once you have map control, age up to 4 as fast as is reasonable while not losing too much control of the map. If you age up to 3 with 800 wood, that's enough to build 2 TC's straight away to continue your villager boom. Losing your forward base as you commit resources to booming is inevitable so don't overcommit your military to a fight you can't win.

Once you have 80-100 villagers or so, you can use the big New Moon Festival button at the market to help you get Warrior Culture at the right time.

Push your opponent
????
Profit.

The Outro
So that's it. Is it a good strategy? Probably not. But I wanted to see what the community thought! Perhaps we can come together to make this sort of strat work, but if not....well, at least it's fun to think about it. At least it is for me.

What do you think?
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China fei123456
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Re: Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

Post by fei123456 »

Vills only have 3 ranged attack... Even with 1000% buff they still lose to industrial muskets, let alone 200%.
Also, vills don't benefit from warchief aura, firepit dance, teepee aura, etc. All those buffs only work to military units.
No Flag Floom
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Re: Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

Post by Floom »

well vills not benefiting from any buffs hurts the theory a lot, but if you set them on melee they hit harder than and they soak a tonne of damage regardless. Might still have merit but it's unlikely
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Re: Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

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Post by Squamiger »

Hey, welcome to aoe3 and to the eso community! One thing that is interesting to note is that the idea of the revolution feature in legacy AoE3 was very much influenced by AoM ragnarok-- the idea that you would totally negate your entire economy in exchange for a last, mighty push that would either result in victory or defeat. Other stuff in AoE3 was actually influenced by AoM as well-- selecting a politician for your age up was very similar to AoM god powers. Revolutions are still a thing in DE, and mostly achieve the same effect, but from what I can tell (I haven't seen them enough to be sure), they seem to offer more economic opportunities now and possibly function more like an alternative age up rather than an all-in Ragnarok. But revolutions are only available to the original Vanilla civs, so it's not a choice for Lakota.

If you're down, I have some constructive criticism about this build. I think it's definitely possible to pull off, and it could be quite fun to try to use the warrior society card and try to bring everything in at once for a final push. The thing is, if you're in a 1v1 with Lakota and you have full map control in age 2, you're doing good-- but if you age up to the 3rd age and immediately slam down 2 TCs and try to villager boom to 100 vills, there's just no way you're going to survive against an equally skilled opponent, assuming they aren't already on the brink of death from earlier fighting. Most likely, your opponent is going to follow you up to age 3, but instead of 2 more TCs they will invest their resources into military production, crush your forward base, and then crush your town centers and kill your villagers. You just won't be able to hold on long enough. If you've already hurt them so much that they can't do this, then you've basically already won the game and you can do whatever you want, so there's probably faster ways to end the game than booming to 100 vills.

Something like this might work in team games where you have cover from your teammates, or possibly against a civ that is also going full eco and playing passive, but then you'll just find yourself in age 4 against an opponent who is also age 4 and has a stronger economy than yours-- you've missed your timing window, which for Lakota is generally around mid-late fortress when you can call the Dog Solder big button from the TC and get 6 dog soldiers to help your push. Relative to other civs, that's probably the biggest power spike you're gonna get as Lakota in most 1v1 games.

If you're new to AoE3, "timings" are a hugely important part of the game. Every civ has maybe 2 to 3 windows where they will be very strong relative to their opponent, and the timing window can vary based on your build order and your opponents build order and a lot of other factors. Learning to recognize when you have a timing window to strike is a big part of strategy in the game.

That said, I like your line of thinking. Fighting with your villagers is actually a super important part of AoE3 that most new players don't figure out for a long time. In early colonial, learning when to pull some villagers to tank damage with your army can swing fights. And in a late fortress war where both players are trading back and forth, the game reaches a point where there are no more resources on the map, and transitioning to mills and plantations would give your opponent a window to push and win, so it's actually very worth it to fight with vills and sacrifice them to get an edge in the fighting. There's loads of other situations-- blocking cav in your base with vills, vill punching falconets, stealing treasures with vills, etc, and I'm sure more skilled players than me have more examples.
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Re: Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

Post by howlingwolfpaw »

That card will give vils a 33 attack, and with the 65% hp card can get them to 300 HP. Its really good at defending cav raids as cav will engage in melee and a few vils like that vs cav make raiding really hard, its sort of Lakota's answer/ bonus in defense for not having walls. Now In age 4 in DE you can build walls so you may just want to use another card. Feasibly you could micro them to walk next to units before attacking but its really more of a defensive move.

If you like strats like that, try India. They can turn all vils into sepoy, which are stronger than minute men and you can retrain settlers after wards. If you plan on doing that try to macro and make a bunch of mahouts and siege eles and just push push push.... gather food and any shipment you have send 9 urumis

Also inca have a card that increases HP and armor making them very good vs melee units, but very weak to attack. But its a age 1 card so would make cav raiding really useless vs them.
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Re: Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

Post by Floom »

Thanks for the replies.

@Squamiger I suspected it was probably too hard to pull off in 1v1's, you're right about timings and I'm far to inexperienced to have a solid grasp on those yet. I saw that there are moments when Lakota was done a tonne of damage early but doesn't quite have enough to finish the opponent off. I figured this could be a transition out of aggression but as you say, an equally skilled opponent isn't going to let that happen. You're right, it could be interesting in team games.

@howlingwolfpaw Thanks for the tip about India! I didn't know they had a card/button like that, I'll look into it. You're right that walls probably make for a better late age defensive strat. Doesn't even cost you a card.
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Re: Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

ive done this for a laugh before but the single biggest issue is that even if your spamming vills on full fertility dance from 3 TCS and 5 native embassies after that specific card is sent it is very hard to micro 80 vills as they only attack 1 unit at a time, cant force them into meelee, dont get buffed by war or siege dance and are pathetic against walls or building (which is different to other aoe games). Under no circumstances should this card or strategy be done under 'competetive' play but is funny to pull off if your oppenent is very inexperienced shall we say.
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Re: Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

Post by Rohbrot »

They had to fcking make it so that vills can walk in formations.
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Re: Lakota "Ragnarok" Warrior culture theorycraft

Post by klonko »

Best way to do it now is to look at the incas. They have the similar containement play style as the norse, they have a possibility of 6 town center fertility boom, they can turtle, the house produce food so you can actually recover after the push and most importantly, they have a card that do just that for 2k of all ressources turning all units into euro counter part at guard level and turns your villager into colonial militia.

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