Ideas for Changes to the Sicilians

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I want to start by saying I’m not exactly good at the game, so my suggestions should very much be considered open to critique. However, I’ve been interested in the history of the Kingdom of Sicily for a couple of years now, and I was very exited when they were announced as a new civ. I actually enjoy the faction for the most part, but there are a few things I feel could be tweaked to both better represent the faction from a historical standpoint, as well as make them more interesting/viable to play as.

First of all, the unique techs. I know they have already been talked to death about, but I’d like to throw my hat into the ring on this one anyway. What I think would be the best route to take would be to move First Crusade to Imperial age and give them a new unique tech for Castle age. Yes, this would mean getting rid of Scutage, but honestly its such a weird and situational tech that I can’t really think of anyway to make it work. Think of it this way: the best time to research it is when you have a large army, ideally pop-capped, but at that point, why bother spending resources to get some gold when you could just uses those resources to add more units or replace losses. So if Scutage were dropped and 1st Crusade moved to Imp, I think a good idea for a new Castle age tech would be something along the lines of “Norman Adventurers” and might give, for example Serjeants, Knights, and the Militia-line +2 attack and +10 HP. (Again these numbers are open to alteration and balancing, this is just me putting ideas out there.) I also think, if moved to Imp, First Crusade might instead be changed to give 15 Serjeants per castle rathe then TC, up to a max of 4 castles. While this would have a higher max than the tech currently does, I think its fair since it can be a lot harder to build 4 castles then 5 TCs, especially if you are also spending stone on TCs and Donjons, plus being in Imp would make the sudden upsurge in units less disruptive and overwhelming than it is in castle.

Having mentioned the Donjon, I also feel it either needs a cost reduction or a stat buff, since they’re a bit easy to destroy for their price. I also think the Serjeant could use a slight cost reduction just to make them more viable as an alternative to M@A in Feudal. Even something as small as reducing their gold cost by 5 would help them a lot I feel, though personally I feel that 50f 30g would be the sweet spot.

Aside from that, maybe give them Thumb Ring and Ring Archer armor to make them more versatile? The whole historical draw Sicily has for to me is how they incorporated multiple cultures into one, including their military strengths, and it just feels weird to me for them to not have two techs that almost all of their constituent cultures have (Italians, Greeks/Byzantines, Berbers, Saracens).

Sorry for the wall of text. I’ve never made my own topic on this forum before, so I don’t really know what qualifies as “too long”. If one of the devs happens to read this then I would appreciate a response. It don’t even really need to include an opinion or feedback, just something to let me know someone relevant saw this and I’m not just wasting my time shouting into a void. Anyway, I’ve spent enough time typing this, I’m going to go play some ranked now.

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I actually think Scivillians were fairly well done. If we are looking at tweaks, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Donjon dropped to 150 stone and 50 wood. I agree with a slight drop to the sergeant cost.

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I sugeested this for cumans but would fit sicilians as well:

Rams can garrison XX more units

This compensates for their lack of siege engineers (rams would be a bit stronger and faster if full garrisoned). It is even better against enemy siege.

Their trnsport ships have this already so this bonus is not as crazy as it sounds.

Besides, i would give them free stone mining tech, or extra starting stone.

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Scutage isn’t the problem. It’s just paper money that you click once you’re pop-capped. On the other side first crusade is one of the reasons why serjeants aren’t that strong (since you can’t make them that good AND easy to mass) on top of being much worse in the one-time gimmick department, so it should be the one to go away / be reworked.

Serjeants can’t be a viable alternative to m@a in feudal age since they can’t be used to rush. You would need to give them stupidly high stats for a feudal age unit.

Buffing Sicilian arbs could work ig, since they still get destroyed by the usual counters despite the bonus. Thumb ring should be enough, as ring archer armour would let their skirms be even better in skirms vs skirms situations.

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Sicilians do have SE. They lack only SO and BBC, but their siege overall is very good.

I mean, I don’t think that it would really help them that much, and there is no historical reason for such bonus.

Yeah, more carry capacity sounds a bit too much like saracens, but it’s not a bad bonus, and it’s a TB, which is good. The problem is that crazy anti-ships armor, in my opinion it could be removed and substitute with +6 LoS, that way at least you have to pay attention to the TS, not just click from one point to another, knowing that you can’t lose the ship.

It’s better the extra stone in my opinion, since free mining upgrades still force you to put vills to stone after being Trushed, which still put your ego in disarray. Or give them WT (without GT), so they can at least respond with that and not the donjon.

And donjon could support +5 pop, which would be a nice little buff to their donjon rush, but not necessary…

Yeah I agree, that UT may be situetional but it’s not bad. It have it’s use in “super late post imp trash fights”, when more gold can really make the difference, and in TG.

Yeah, again I agree, their late game composition is the main problem for the sicilians. There are mainly 3 big problems in my opinion.

  • Their arbs, that lack both TR and the last armor, and the lack of HC, so it’s difficult to kill infanty in the late game.
  • The lack of hussars.
  • Their monks, since they lack redemption and block printing. they sould get at lest those 2 techs, since they already lack BBC and hussars for coutering enemy SO.

Buff either one or two of these 3 things and they can be decent. Then of course there is the problem of the donjon and transport ships that should be adressed, but those could come in a second moment.

Also, and nice little buff could be to add docks to the 100% faster building bonus (so castles, TCs and docks). It could be a compensation if the TS were to be nerfed.

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It doesn’t matter what you give them if their economy is the worst out of all civs. More food for farms? Oh yeah… Let me just wait 10 min for that to kick in.

Just give them Infantry armor upgrades for free or something. Should be sizeable buff.

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Another idea could be that the 50% bonus damage becomes limited to just the stable units, since anyway they are the ones that benefits the most from it. That would justify buffs on their archers or monks, maybe by giving techs like TR, the last archer armor, redemption, BP, atonement and such…

Or the firtst crusade UT could also reduce the cost of sarjeants, like supplies do for champs.

That bonus is actually very good. Reseeding farms less often already in the feudal age is a nice wood bonus. You can constantly have less vills on wood, or more wood for archer (if they would’t suck so much…).

Nah, it’s better to first fix their tech tree…

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Here is a fresh and detailed opinion on the sicilians by our beloved viper.

I mostly agree with him, the concept of the civ is good, but its implementation lack…

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First Crusade

Solution A
12 per TC limit to 3 TC

Solution B
10 for first TC, 9 For Second, 8 for third, 7 for fourth, 6 for 5th (You may cap on four if 40 units are too much)

Solution C
5 per Donjon & castle, no limit or very high like 60 units

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Or maybe reduce the cost of the serjeant and also reduce its TT from the donjon, or allow its traininf from the TC…

There are several options and secondary effects that the UT can have in exchange of a reduction of the number of serjeants spawned.

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I like that, but I think 50 is enough.

I also like:
make farm bonus be 60-80% food to all farms from the beginning.
change cost of serjeants to 50 F 35 G

And change donjon so it is comparable tower rush defense but more “forward production + garrisoning building” than bein a tower itself.

This would make sicilians viable without overpowering them in one aspect like the first crusade was before the nerf.

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Give them: Hussar, Thumb Ring and Bombard Cannon
New Bonus: Barrack technologies cost 50% less.
Donjon costs: 120 stone.

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i agree with what you said, wondering if this is left over from the “siege take less damage” thing…

so they nerfed the bonus damage to siege, and then didnt compensate them for it…

i also like this… anything to help justify that stupid high stone cost

i think these are a must

this might be too cheap, its then simply better and cheaper than a tower

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Yeah, but the main issue is still that being Trushed burns through all your stone, so giving them WT or more starting stone is the priority.

This was a nerf for just manganels/onagers fights, since sicilians manganels and onager could survive from a direct hit from their counterpart of another civ. Also their onagers could survive from a BBC shot, but still, considering that they hadn’t anything else…

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My bad, I mixed their tech tree with burgundians in my mind. In this case, I wouldn’t apply this bonus.

Well, didn’t crusaders use rams?

Redemption is very crusade-like. I would add it at least.

I like this one. This would make sicilians better in nomad again. And persians already have faster TC and docks.

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If they don’t already, making Donjons count as a feudal age building might be a nice bonus. That way, when they get to feudal, they only have to build a blacksmith and a donjon in order to age up again. This would help to mitigate the relatively expensive cost.

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Since everyone loves to be triggered by UT that only affect the UU, maybe make it affect both serjeants and champs. This way you can justify removing the spawn gimmick, since it will have a sizeable effect (not necessarily a cost reduction, as long as it’s useful). Even if it overlaps with something else anything goes to get rid of this mess, really.

I don’t think they need hussars. LC spam is more than enough especially when they are harder to counter with halbs already.
Half cost barracks technology sounds dangerous, they don’t have the same obvious hole in ther tech tree as Bulgarian did.

Also I don’t think BBC fit them either.

Tbh this bonus kind of suck. Garrisoning is nice once in a while but halb+ram works so well just because you don’t care if the halberdiers die as long as they defend the rams. So you’d rather spam halbs rather than garrison them.

Sounds legit too. Do normal towers count?

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You are right. Actually, I would propose it to affect siete towers as well…
but garrisoning in siege towers would have few consequences since most times you use siege towers more as a way to hop walls instead than as a transport, so their garrisoning ability is not important.

no they dont

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Ig they went for the consistency rule then, for the same reason they decided one krepost would be enough to go imp.

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I think devs consider donjon=tower and krepost=castle