4/4 Armour is only on the Elite version, and yes, it is weak, Serjeant is too slow and get kited to death by Arbs and Cav Archers.
Serjeant is always weak, because it is slow Infantry. The Huskarl and Eagles are much better, for example.
Not to mention that the Elite upgrade is very expensive, and you have no good Eco bonus that is conducive to spamming a unit that is more expensive to upgrade and field, than the FU Champion.
Donjons may beat other towers in feudal, but cost a lot more, so if you get Trushed, you will find yourself really behind in eco, since in castle age you’ll have no stone for TC, and you’ll have to put vills on stone.
Any civs with a faster dark age can simply send forward some vills and Trush you, and you’ll be find yourself struggling to keep up since you’ll need more resources to answer with your own towers.
Even just one enemy tower burns all your initial stone, and after that he can easily retreat.
Onestly, why sicilians lack paladins? Both for gameplay and historical accuracy it would make sense for them to have it.
Because 50% bonus damage resistant Paladins, would be grossly OP, and we already have too many Paladin civs, to the point that Cavalier civs with bonii, are more interesting.
I prefer 50% Pike-Halb resistant Cavaliers, than Paladins, which almost never see the light of day in 1v1 anyway.
Yeah but halbs would still be cost effective vs sicilians’ paladins, and they would deal 16 bonus damage, which is still a lot. Basically they would be like paladins, but with attack bonus vs infantry and without the trample damage.
And for too much paladins civs, celts can loose them, since they already are never used.
Nah, 50% resistant Paladins, would be a pain to deal with.
Never used… they are used. Play michi sometime or something that isn’t ranked play. Every unit is used in some way. Maybe not in ranked, but still used nonetheless.
But anyway, 50% resistant Paladins would be a joke. Cartoonishly OP. A POST Paladin 1v1 already beats Halb, this would make it even worse.
I’m pretty sure the OP doesn’t necessarily agree with his own proposition anymore, so there’s that.
The main advantage to the Donjon rush is it’s ability to pick up steam without extra villagers being pulled. Serjeants can run the train by themselves. It is feasible, even, to perform a tower rush without forward villagers if you commit to a defensive Donjon in a particularly open area of your base and simply march the Serjeants forward, which would be a slower, but more cost-efficient tower attack. Also, being able to mix Donjons into any position secured by military is a unique strength that’s hard to quantify.
All of that means that while the Donjon is probably weaker in Feudal than a more potent tower rush civ’s effort, Serjeant Donjon has a lot of utility and how well that utility is abused is more important than the raw stats. How good is the Man At Arms rush when it gets in if you have good quickwalls? I’d wager the Donjon is a scary addition in that case if the outer defenses are breached.
Ok so here is the number:
An halbs takes down a FU standar cavalier in 3.78 hits and a paladins in 4.87.
An halbs takes down a sicilian cavalier in 6.67 hits. An eventual sicilian paladin would take 8.57.
An elite cataphract takes 7.14 hits from an halb, while also dealing back 20 damage (a paladins deals 15 damage) on top of 5 damage to all other adiacents units.
Oh and there isn’t a halb in the game that can beat a paladin 1v1, their role is to counter them cost effective.
So in the end they would basically a cavalry unit that survive a hit more than a cataphract from an halb hit, but that would also deal less damage, it doesn’t seem that OP to me, considering that they don’t have any other bonus or a stellar eco to sustain paladins for a long time.
But it is true that they would also be resistant to archers, so maybe to be balanced they should lose the last cav armor, to be a bit more vulnerable to ranged units.
My friend, they would survive almost twice as much hits than a normal Paladin, and that is a lot.
No need, they already miss the last Archer Armour upgrade, and are clearly balanced with Cavaliers.
If it is not broken, no need to fix it. Also, it would hurt their Light Cavalry a lot, and thay already gave people Burgundians as the “guaranteed Paladins in every match” civ.
Proportionally is about the same of their cavalier.
That’s true…
Cataphracts need to be made in castles and their upgrades are expensive
It costs slightly more to upgrade from knight to cavalier to paladin than to get the elite cataphract but if you add logistica it’s more expensive to get FU cataphracts
Cataphracts are also weaker to archers and have less hp - losing last armor upgrade would make them have same armor but would mean they didn’t have to buy it and spent even less, and would still be better vs. archers because they have +30 more hp than a cataphract (Sicilians get bloodlines and Byz do not)
halbs would do 6+4+16 - 5 for a total of 21 damage to paladins, requiring 8 hits to kill. pike civs would fair even worse.
aztec pikeman would do 4+8+11 - 5 for a total of 18 damage requiring 10 hits to kill.
Italians would literally get mauled, 4+4+11 - 5 = 14 damage a hit, requiring 13 hits to kill
you ignore that cataphracts are more expensive, require more tech to get rolling, and have 2 less pierce armor.
Cataphracts also requiere castles to be massed
Sorry to add more wood to the fire. Removing the last armour upgrade would really hurt their 1v1 potential as well imo.
Sicilians already get countered by raw damage. Imo they already have a tougher game vs cav and CA civs that both have eco or military bonuses on raw dps units like farimba or stirrups cavalier.
And archer blobs could be very oppressive vs their cavaliers in 1v1 until both onager and SE is teched. So quite a power lag.
But i really think the bonus damage reduction needs to be reduced to something like 33%. Sicilian knights are so good vs camels already.
Yeah yeah I get it, sicilians paladins are a bad idea. I still think that halbs would be fine, but I didn’t thought of civs who have crappy pikes.
It was an idea rushed too much…
But I still feel like they lack of something for the late game. Some really good, powerful and FU unit. The cavalier has no bonuses, and the arbs are below average.
I fear that they’ll suffer a fate similar to Italians, portos, spanish… They have a good tech tree and decent bonuses, but overall no real strategy that is really good.
I actually think the 50% is a good number. They are not too strong as it is.
I agree, because they do’t have any other bonusses to these units, 50 % reduction isn’t that big. It Helps them surprisingly more for their skirm then anything else, because other skirms deal them much less bonus damage. The Scouts/Knights aren’t that overwhealming because they are much weaker in general than the known cav civs.
The donjon also doesn’t need to be moved to castle, the feudal donjon isn’t that strong (for obvious reasons). But I would like to see an adjustment because it is atm a too one-dimensional too volatile mechanic, the donjon rush. Without the first crusade it’s not that strong, even considered weaker than most tower rushes, but because you don’t have to sacrifice your eco for it, the trigger is too one-sided.
In some scenarios you might get away with a failed donjon rush whilst a failed tower rush will surely cost you the game. And if the donjon rush isn’t stopped quite early it is impossible to stop later because of the booming behind.
It puts all volatility on the defender and makes counter raids almost impossible, which should be one of the best strats against a tower rush. So there is only one way to defend against which of course has to be able to be done from even the weakest civs and therefore the donjon rush needs to be weeker than tower rushes.
I would like to see the volatility of the donjon rush reduced so it is more a way of getting map control with production/garrisoning buildings than a tower rush. This would allow many different counter approaches with more skirmishing. Then both the donjon and the UU could be stronger for their cost to make it finally a good play if paired with some other units like archers.
Then it can be balanced even without a silly OP unique tech.
Lastly sicilians need donjons in feudal, otherwise they wouldn’t have anything to protect their res. It’s fundamental to the game to have towre/donjon for defensive play available.