Great post Lief, you bring up some interesting points. Here's another point regarding the Norse Ulfsark/Villagers... yes the villagers will could be vulnerable to attack by the enemy if the Ulfsark were elsewhere (this is a risk I often took... building a mill and/or dock with the far villager and building the TC with my two close-together villagers)... but the FLIP side of that is that a Norse Ulfsark who comes across enemy villagers might get some easy kills!
Now... this depends on how strong is an Ulfsark? Is like like a man of arms... not that strong? Or is it a legit offensive unit? If so, this could actually be a big problem for NOmad (which is my favorite game type BTW). A. Will Norse players have an advantage because they can get early kills, also B. what if the Ulfsark is killed and all you are left with is two villagers who can't build? Screwed! In AoK NOmad you could lose 2 villagers and you'd still be able to build a TC with the 3rd and theoretically come back and win the game but for the Norse no such luck if the Ulfsark dies.
This will be very interesting and if Ensemble can pull off an excellent NOmad game I will be very impressed and very excited. But, I have to say I am a little worried at the prospects. I fear that if nothing else there will be a situation where after a few weeks every NOmad game says "No Norse" or "No Greeks" or something... that was fine in AoK to say no Chinese and no Mayans because there were a lot of other civs to choose from, but to have 1/3rd of the triad unbalanced in a game type would be devastating!
H, C, C, H, C, C, H, C, C, H, C, C[This message has been edited by Yamato (edited 05-22-2002 @ 01:46 AM).]