Today I played around with the Abbasid unique technology that allows monks to make a conversion without relics and I have some thoughts to share
- Being an imperial age upgrade, it comes at a time where converting a single unit is of negligible impact on the game. Even with 9 monks (assigned hotkeys 1-9) and a 100 percent successful conversion rate (my next point), 9 units has very low, if any impact on the game as it is likely that population is already capped at 200 with many units in que.
I think changing this to age 3, or even age 2 where getting a conversion on a single unit can make a big difference to the game. It is an expensive investment that should have a larger impact.
Not withstanding that with the current seige balance issues, this would be a much more useful technology if it could be taken advantage of before seige dominates the battlefield
- The difficulty of using the monks could easily be reduced by making them convert when right clicking an enemy unit. Currently you must press the button or hotkey (W) and then click the enemy unit
This can be really tricky with multiple monks, having to click each one, then the convert button and than the enemy unit (or 1, W, right-click. 2, W, right-click, etc if using control groups and hotkeys)
I believe this could really be a strong identity for Abbasid with a few tweaks!
This all stemmed from an idea for a strategy of using the monks (imams?) Like an Aoe2 player, and wondering how it might work out.
Has anyone else played around with this technology? I know it’s low on this list of Abbasid problems but would love to hear thoughts!