Oh I don’t think the weaknesses are a problem or should be removed, I just don’t think that the advantages make their tower/barracks combo strong enough to be removed from feudal age, it costs as much stone as 2 town centers or 1/3rd of a castle and it dies really easily if you don’t match their military when you place it
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Oh ok
Actually feudal serjeants are just more expensive. One less attack is compensated by one more ma, so they hit each other for same damage and have same hitpoints. Plus for m@a you have to do the upgrade that’s as expensive as the attack or defense upgrade on serjeant plus the gold difference of at least 3 units. Doesn’t sound like they would get smacked, but more like an even fight.
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A donjon is more expensive than the m@a upgrade tho.
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Yep, that’s true. But tower, barracks and m@a upgrade is more expensive than donjon.
no barracks = have fun getting scout/archer rushed while being unable to use skirms and spears. And as much as I complain about walls I wouldn’t go up to the point to claim that donjon+full walls is sustainable.
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Yeah, never said you can’t build barracks later.
And actually I’m not experienced enough to see all situations that may happen afterwards, I just wanted to say serjeants are not smacked by m@a in general.
Oh ok
There are a couple of matchups where they would get taken out by MAA pretty easy for civs with some kind of infantry upgrade or free tech bonus(Japanese, Goths, Magyars, Vikings, Slavs, Burmese, Bulgarians - Inca villagers)
Also many civs will have an economic bonus that kicks in early and would let them make more than you even if their MAA aren’t getting directly affected by it - +100% food from farm upgrades is nice but it’s probably not going kick in early enough to help in feudal, I doubt you’re even reseeding farms once after horse collar at this point as a generic civ
Plus several of the civs that will do well with MAA against you might be going for a MAA rush anyway since it’s a common strategy for some of them
But your point is valid, it just doesn’t apply to a lot of civilizations and especially to a lot of the more popular civilizations that get the best economy boosts since they’ll have little trouble making 1+ more MAA than you can make serjeant and MAA can start being produced in dark age on the way up to feudal so they have a head start
Here is how I see it happening if your opponent expects the serjeants and is decent enough to actually respond to it
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You can’t make the serjeants until you build the donjon so if you’re rushing you either have to:
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Wait for 400 stone, make a donjon on your side with vils and then produce serjeants to place a donjon on their side of the map(worst option for you takes too much time)
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Make something besides serjeants to defend your donjon(costing you more resources since you’ll need at least a barracks and probably an upgrade or two)
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Or make them after you place the donjon near their base and defend it with loomed villagers until they are produced
So if they start making MAA in anticipation of a donjon rush they’ll have a pretty big number advantage when your first serjeant comes out and just be able to kill them one at a time / take out the donjon in between when serjeants are made
If they do not start making MAA in advance of your rush but they see you start to place the donjon and immediate start researching the MAA upgrade in their barracks they will not be too far behind, construction time of donjon is probably going to run you between 40 and 60 seconds depending on how many villagers you send and if they slow you down by attacking with something, MAA takes 45 seconds to research, serjeant takes 20 seconds to produce and MAA takes 21 seconds so if you can start making your first serjeant before they start making their second MAA you should win, the donjon will get some damage in on their units but they won’t take too many shots if the walk them underneath it instead of fighting you where it can shoot them -
If they are Bulgarians they don’t have to research MAA and can have at least 2 ready before your donjon is built, and Goths make them faster from team bonus so they’ll probably get ahead of you too(Plus they are likely to have preemptively research MAA anyway)
Incas are good at tower rushes because their villagers are hard to kill and dangerous by themselves so they start off with an effective military force without having to build up strength after the tower is placed, and they can immediately place a second tower so that the towers cover each other from melee units(or just palisade around the first one), you can’t full palisade the donjon nearly as easily because it’s larger and it’ll probably keep your serjeants from getting out of it correctly, and you have to sacrifice food/gold economy you could have used to make serjeants if you want a second donjon because you’ll need a few stone miners working to get another 200 stone
I think a better strategy would be scout rushing into full wall 5 tc boom with as little military as possible to survive into late castle/imp(knights?), drop castle, elite serjeant, First Crusade, Scutage - backed up with whatever unit you were using in the meantime to not die and some type of siege for buildings(probably just trebs since you want to attack as quickly as possible instead of waiting for more upgrades), it would work best if you hit imp slightly before your opponent
The large donjon stone cost hurts even more since you want to have a lot of town centers and at least one castle as soon as you hit imperial age to get the most mileage out of your instant free army - which you won’t have if you’re spamming donjons all over the place unless you cripple your gold and food income by mining tons of stone
I agree fully to you here.
I’m also waiting for strategies showing the Sicilians full potential. Maybe donjon is also better as a defensive building than for tower rush in order get you to the 5 tc with small army. They’re at least interesting and have potential to go another way then all the crossbow /knight rush civs.
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Yes, I think they might be decent as a early defense before you can place a defensive castle since they get 2 arrows as soon as you go up to castle age and if you put it behind your wall they cannot just rush it down with melee units, if you do not build too many it won’t hurt you that badly on stone you need for castle and TC and you can place it before you reach castle age instead of having to wait until after you click up
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I am blue. In this game I did manage to easily kill his tower rush. He quit as soon I defeated his tower.
So, maybe it’s not OP? I dunno.
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He lost so much Stone, that he would be behind in TC count.
Donjons look scary, but are actually less effective than Inca or Korean Trush.
They cpuld make eudal donjon skin (i.e. with more wood than stone) and make the building change to castle skin upon aging up
I know you are talking about balance right now, and this is kind of off-topic but:
Since I don’t like the whole “no towers but donjon and military unit that can build donjons to make more serjeants” that much (it’s too gimmicky, asymetric and alien to the game imho) what if instead of all of that mechanic, serjeants were able to build castles and towers. Just that. That would be unique enough without going to crazy with the civ design.
Right now I feel like the whole gamestyle can either be too weak or too strong.
I doubt they’re removing the just introduced donjons from the game, but this is an idea I had and want to know your oppinion.
Edit: Forgot to say that also the aspect of having a buillding halfway between a tower and a castle is already taken by bulgarians. Donjons are more towers than castles, but I still feel there’s some overlap.
I’d argue that it is even worse than a generic trush. 1 Donjon is stronger than 1 tower. But that’s not something as a trush or Donjon rush. You have to continue building tower/donjon on your opponents resources. We can consider first one - tower or donjon - is free as you don’t have to mine any stone. It is 50 stone vs 200 for the second one , 4x more stone while gives you roughly 43% more HP. Even after the second one 60% more stone + 50% more wood for 43% does not make them stronger/more effective over a generic trush imo.
All I can say it is just an alternate version of trush which is weaker than generic trush in feudal but become stronger in castle.
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seriously ??? They are built by millitary unit and they shot multiple arrows
probably he got dc 11
They only shoot multiple arrows in the Castle Age, still get out-DPS by Towers even then, and you need to build one before you build the military unit that builds the Donjon, not to mention that it is worse than the Militia line until the Imperial Age, and even then loses cost-effectively to Champions.
Donjon and Serjeant are actually kind of weak. The Sicilians Meta is Scounts into Knights.
4/4 armor is kinda weak ?? yea it must be like 90/90 ofc ofc 11