Madrasah is such a terrible tech as it is right now. I’ve seen many discussion on this topic, but I think that saracens should not be a civ that should move towards monk usage at all. Instead, I would propose a another tech.
This would be “Grand Bazaar” (600 wood/400 food). This tech would upgrade Saracen Markets to “Trade Centers”, at first, trade centers would be Markets with double HP and some more armour. The Saracen Trade Center would increase saracen market bonus by 10% or 20%, also cheapen Trade Carts by 10%.
If you want to expand it even further, could give the Sarcens the ability to train allied unique units (mercenaries) in their castles, but at the cost of only gold (and at a greater cost, of course).
This would make Saracens a civ very reliant on market usage. What you guys think?
Kind of redundant tbh. Saracen start with a 5% fee on market transactions, that’s so small no one would pay this much to get a boost on a bonus that is already fully optimized. Also when your markets only cost 75 wood you could just build more of them rather than paying for a tech that makes them more resistant to damage. 10% cheaper trade cart is not only worse than silk road, but it’s even worse than the Portuguese bonus.
I guess being able to train ally UU could be a fun thing to do once in a while, but then what’s even the point of mamelukes anymore if your high gold cost UU can be literally anything.
So while I think Saracen could use not not having a wasted unique tech slot, I don’t think this idea is a suitable replacement.
While I do like this one because it doesn’t add much text to the description and also doesn’t take away anything, I think it is too OP late game considering how strong fully upgraded mamelukes are.
As for the Grand Bazaar, Saracen markets are already pretty great, so finding the balance between making it useful enough that anyone would bother to click it vs making it too OP might be impossible.
