Good points, i agree with you in all points.
It might be a little OP, but what if Madrasah returned some of the gold cost (definitely less than 33%) of Mamelukes? It would give Madrasah a purpose while making Mamelukes a better option.
I thinked in a idea based on the sacrifice tech of AOE1 (allows priests to covert instantly if you delete them if they start a conversion), so Monks that suicide (pressing SUPR)while converting units will make them to convert instantly in addition to the returning gold cost.
I like the idea. Would definitely give Saracens more character. And with insta conversions already being an ocassional (random) thing. I dont think this would be op.
Those monks would do the same thing they did in AoE1, which would be screwing your eles and your siege all day long with a success rate of 100%. Monks are so squishy they often die when converting the enemy, but with this tech back you wouldn’t be worried about your monks getting sniped before they convert.
Sounds horrible 
Not only now they have idiotic siege archer that get OA for free almost out of desperation but also can now monk rush you even harder converting knights or elephants for the mere cost of 66 gold without any chance of being stopped. They cost more gold than the monks already but in combination you also get the food ressources. Monks are costing 100g for a reason and conversions are not always successful so high risk of getting 150 ress and momentum or you lose 100g
Probably true. Wouldn’t even need that much micro anymore then and with block printing archers wouldnt be much of a danger either.
I think the best solutions would be either
Just straight up 33% cheaper monks, or if that’s not enough to make it useful
Cheaper monks and monastery techs (maybe reduce to 20 or 25%)
Or cheaper monks and faster working monasteries (20% faster work speed i.e. on par with the Lithuanian team bonus).
The delete mechanic definitely is something that could be game breaking.
Another idea would be to include either the effect of theocracy or a scaled down version
of illumination into Madrasah.
Or hey, just a crazy idea (probably not a good one): Madrasah means school and according to the wiki refers to people often having been educated at Mosques by Imams.
So one could have the extremely socially controversial effect of Petards being able to be trained from Monasteries. Or the idea that will cause less uproar, of Mamelukes being able to be trained from Monasteries. Since Monasteries work slow in general, the creation time would be 51 seconds, just as monks.
This last idea, is more of a fun one that just came to mind. Don’t take it too seriously.
I dont like Madrasah especially with the combination of a unique tech that attributes saracens zealotry it reads as if madrasah describes the the process of radicalisation and not education that was way better in the arabic world than in the christian at that time. And then the tech itself is something which rewards you when your monk dies…
My adaption of the aoe I mechanic is for slavs as replacement for orthodoxy which converts an enemy unit in melee range when the monk dies.
Yeah, giving it a non violent focussed theme is difficult though. Both, healing speed and healing range are already attributes of other civs, so you could give it a bonus affecting villagers, to reflect their better education. But what would that be? Faster building speed? Being affected by blacksmith upgrades already is an inca bonus, faster construction speed is already a spanish bonus.
Being affected by Theocracy and Fervor? Sounds okay as a civ bonus but pretty weak as a technology.
Villagers can be trained from Monasteries? Sounds game breaking.
Maybe a trade bonus? Trade units move faster?
I think reflecting the better arabic education during that time in a non violent non monk centered way is just too difficult.
I would honestly change that tech to something entirely different and give saracens a flat 15% discount on monks or monastery techs. Why not give them a unit tech which gives them some kind of water bonus instead? Could make them more viable in water maps.
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I don’t play water maps, so I’m not really qualified to give suggestions about this, but are they not already quite strong on water?
25% faster firing Galleys should be huge, only having the problem of lacking shipwright and fast fire ship. Though I understand that lacking shipwright is huge, giving them too strong of a water bonus could easily make them op. Buffing Galleys even more would be too strong, buffing the fire ship into a useable meatshield would be either completely pointless for Imperial age, as the fast fire ship is a very big upgrade (more pierce armor, more ship armor, higher movement speed, more damage), or absolutely OP in castle age. Reducing costs, or production speed would just be a mini shipwright. Buffing fishing boats in castle age would be pretty pointless, buffing transport ships even more would not do much either. So that only leaves demo ships or cannon galleons up for a buff, whereas cannon galleons won’t really help you on water and are only useable when you have water control already.
It could be nice to give cannon galleons more movement speed, so you can start building them even without full water control, but then you would have a castle age tech, that affects a unit only available in Imperial age. Which would be quite weird, too.
So unless, you come up with a new mechanic (transport ships can shoot, if garrisoned. Ships can garrison in docks, things like that), I don’t really see any room for a water buff there.
It should, but it is not enough. They are not a bad water civ, but the meta is dominated by far by italians and vikings. After those civs, I would probably pick portoguese and then koreans. Maybe saracens only then. Water meta is really unforgiving, and small advantages tend to snowball pretty quickly. Perhaps you are right that there’s no space for a UT tech for water for saracens, but I think that the current madrasah is just pointless. If it could research at the monastery, it could be at least situational, but in the castle? Makes no sense to me, by the time you have a castle you would have already switched away from monks.
Perhaps we could think a bit outside of the box and say, give madrasah instead the effect of “stealing” a fraction of the gold value of the enemy unit converted, so you would get a bit of gold for each converted enemy gold unit. Not sure whether this would work well though…perhaps it’s just too clunky
My idea is the following:
Caravanserais also provide pop space similarily to slavs so spam those markets along your trade and it will be more safe But ofc the concept itself is still open to experiments stating the requirement of balance for instance the market cost can be reversed to 100w or even more. But Saracens should have a camel bonus in castle age already and not twice the team bonus pushing them into an archer civ that they not are. +2 as tb is enough and I thought of extending it to CA and HC for some twist.
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I feel like your Camel updates would be OP. You are basically giving a second bloodlines for free in Imperial age AND give them 25% more attack speed. Though I would appreciate a civ that has camels that can deal with Indians in team games, while being worse at raiding, I feel like this might be too much.
Regarding the archer bonus: +2 bonus damage against something that has more armor than you have attack means you will deal 1 damage more than without the bonus. So it really won’t do much (we had that before DE, didn’t we?).
Regarding Saracens not being an Archer Civ: Well, what are they really?
Saracens are in a weird spot: They DO have a full black smith, a full archery range, but next to Indians and Meso civs are the only Civ lacking the Cavalier upgrade.
They do lack this to balance off their stronger camels. However, they also are missing helbardier, making the camels a necessity.
So in terms of identity they are just in a very weird spot. However, I think this makes them quite interesting. I don’t think they need a rework. Just Madrasah needs a rework, and the other changes proposed above: Reduced Zelotry cost (due to lacking Cavalier AND helbardier), and slightly reduced Mameluke cost would be enough.
I don’t think they need a Castle age Camel bonus, because in Castle age they still have full Barracks and Stable.
Regarding replacing Madrasah with Caravenserai: would certainly be better than Madrasah, but does not feel very impactful either. However, I mainly play 1v1 and 2v2, so I guess I cant really judge that, too well.
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They are a camel civ as stated in the tech tree except they only had zealotry in aoc which has no impact. Ofc they have knights at least to survive castle age, but afterwards they run out of steam before being able to go to camels and camels in castle age are just too weak. The UT will balance itself very fast when you keep the cost high enough. And numbers can always be adjusted thats what I said and felt most uncomfortable with I can also live with 10%.
A UT that does not much in 1v1 is ok, when the rest of the civ is strong enough, which they are for sure.
I heavily oppose your statement that saracens are ok and the only problem is madrasha. Almost free obisidian arrow which copies the tb they already had is one of the worst designs ever (esp since OA is already a really bad UT). They just needed some proper land bonus that is not the market thingy and devs decided out of desperation to just copy paste the thing they already had totally reshaping what the civ is. And yes my tb is the old one just that it also affects HC and CA.
how about we don’t redesign a civ completely from the ground up and just tweak where is needed.
You use a bot for your messages ? But I fear the devs missed your memo because they totally redesigned several civs by now to buff them desperatedly. Among those are saracens. And people starting to nerf the market bonus feels like the same mistakes that has been done with Khmer where they break the civ and break much more to not revert the buff and say: “At least we tried”
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no, they haven’t redesigned several civs. tweaks? buffs? nerfs? sure. but completely redesign with all new civ bonuses replacing old ones and replacing both unique techs? never happened.
There is literally only one new civ bonus which is the same as the old UT… That is redesign on a level with copy pastaing the teambonus.
which old civs got redesigned then, since you claim it happened before, give an example of a civ that has since aoc days:
gotten a new civ bonus
had an old civ bonus removed
and has had both its unique techs replaced.
we’ve had new bonuses added to old civs.
we’ve had bonuses removed from civs.
we’ve had unique techs that were useless replaced.
but all on one civ? never.