Madrasah and Orthodoxy are... useless

While all 3 monk UTs are extremely situational, Inquisition at least gets value every time a conversion is made, and is a nice addition to missionaries.

Madrasah on the other hand gives you value when you lose units, would require you to throw away 900 gold just to break even (not counting the castle), and in general is a bonus that feels very out of place for being an UT- that you would reasonably afford in late castle age or imp where monks are of little value to begin with. Arena is the only map where in maybe 2% of games the tech is considered as an option and even then, it would be better to simply tech light cav for the monk war.

A similar argument, just bolder, could be made for Orthodoxy- 3/3 armor on monks… for what reason? And 200f/300g for it on top of that. When monks are used they either convert something, die instantly (either to a conversion from atonement or to scouts/light cav/knights). The 3 armor changes very little, would change very little even if it was a civ bonus instead of a tech, as it requires a castle as well. And Slavs aren’t ones to make castles before imping is on the table, even on arena. In imp- the armor is even more useless, as monks are primarily used for converting siege onagers and bombard cannons- you will get one shot from the former and two shot from the latter anyway.

I would like to see some counterarguments, or, even better, suggestions for how those 2 techs could be changed (if the focus remains on monks) or outright removed and replaced with more meaningful ones with a wider range of purposes.

So far I have come up with 2 rather bland ideas- for Madrasah, instead of receiving 33 gold when a monk dies you receive 33 gold when you convert a unit (could also be a fraction of the unit’s price, like 50%)- and for Orthodoxy, giving 3 range to monks for both conversions and healing. Both of those could make monks a unit that those 2 civs employ much more often in the lategame to get more value, especially on closed maps.

1 Like

Your idea for madrasah sounds quite cool, but I’m not sure Slavs need 15 range monks as it would let threm protect their siege fromm BBC way too well.