Madrasah is the Saracens’ Castle Age unique technology which enables monks to refund 33 gold when they die. The technology is researched in a castle and costs 200 food and 100 gold.
0 voters
I think the best change would be you gain 25 g for each successful conversion.
I like this a lot, I wish I could add it to the poll, but I don’t want to invalidate the results. I would use 33 gold per conversion just to make it jive. I suppose if “Other change not listed” wins, a follow up poll would be cool.
I like the increased conversion range in castle age actually, it makes more sense to me than gold refund. Gold refund should have been an innate civ bonus instead
Useless tech, along with the Slavs’ and imho even the spanish one.
If I’m going to smush, I’m not going to build a castle and waste precious resources.
It would need a complete rework to make it useful. Something like refund when a Mameluke/any military unit/camel units die.
Techs for monks are useless imho, too expensive (requiring a castle) in castle age, useless in imperial age.
Make monks cost 50 gold or something
Just remove its current effect and make it something else instead
Hey I know this one! haha
Today I used this tech for the first time, in a 2 hour FFA game on nomad, because I had a lot of mamelukes, went for some monks to heal them up and decided to give it a shot because why not. It probably refunded, I don’t know, 500 resources worth of monks. Not bad but… It’s so ridiculously niche I have never seen it in a normal game.
Some boomer in the last thread about this went on a rant about how back in the days when the “saracen monk siege rush” was a thing and people sold stone for gold you could go for it after dropping a castle on your opponents to get some value even if your push is stopped.
Needless to say that’s… not a thing. If your all in fails, and it’s an all in to the point you are abusing the market so much, the best decision is to go for an alt f4 timing approximately 4 seconds after your pressure is cleared to save your and your opponent’s time and avoid any unnecessary 105s.
It’s for when you are doing an all in (30% of the time as saracens) with monks and siege (probably 20% of the time, you normally use crossbows camels and siege) and you are mining stone to sell for gold (about 10% of the time, if your map is really bad and all golds are forward and you drush FCd) and you drop a castle on your opponent (I’d say 5%? of the games or so) and your pressure gets cleared up (let’s give this one the ambitious 50% because it sounds like a terrible strategy to begin with).
So, the tech might be useful, if you don’t resign immediately in this particular scenario with an occurrence of about 1/6667 games played, it… may pay off.
Compare it to Tatar silk armor on CA/hussars which comes into play probably 100% of games that go to imp, or to Britons yeomen, or to Aztec extra skirmisher dmg/range, or to even more off-meta techs like kasbah for Berbers which is useful at least in post imp for TGs when UUs are involved.
I don’t think Saracens’ identity would suffer from the tech being replaced, reworked, or something else done to it.
It’s just a tiny bit better than the Slavs Orthodoxy that, let’s be honest, deserves it’s own thread for how bad it is so I won’t get into that.
Thing is though, Saracen lategame isn’t shabby at all. It’s pretty good, siege onager, siege ram, hussar, full skirm, CA, mamelukes, few civs can compete in the tech tree department. Their issues are more in the early game and castle age, rather than imp.
So trying to buff Saracens via reworking this tech just might not be the best option.
I’d probably make it something related to gold, but not focused on monks- monk UTs are a bad idea, only exception is Hussite Reforms, as it makes monks usable lategame. UTs are for when your economy is up and running, castles are involved, there are more than 80 villagers on the field for both players and it’s approaching “thinking about imping” or already imping stage of the game. Which is exactly when monks start to go from a good unit to a bad unit due to how gold and micro intensive they are.
So… Remove it and replace it with something else. Like instead of applying only to monks it applies to all units and it’s 25% and it costs a bit more. Fits the civ identity and might give some redemption to the fact everything Saracens have is extremely gold intensive and also they have no counter to cavalry if they run out of gold.
Have thought about that too.
Feels like this should be more for Slavs though, because they suffer a bit against monks and siege in post imp if they don’t go for their own monks. Make Orthodoxy +3 conversion and healing range and it’s now useful and still a monk tech and covers one of Slavs’ weaknesses in post imp.
Oh wow. Great minds think alike 
Here could be a way to give all of the different monk unique techs that I can think of (Inquisition, Madrasah, and Orthodoxy) a true purpose. Inquisition keeps the faster conversion rate but also gives +1 range, or possibly increases the recovery time. Madrasah gives 10 gold per conversion, as well as the current bonus. Orthodoxy no longer gives monks armor, but gives units being healed a temporary +3/+3 armor boost, or possibly gives the unit +2/+2 and the monks get +2/+2 as well. This could be a way of making all three techs viable at different roles, healing and armor, powerful conversion, and monks making gold.