My opinions on the new patch - let us talk

  1. I won’t play Multiplayer until there is a hotfix. I am less scared about Burgandians and Sicilians, and more about the bugs like those of walls and Lithuanian relics.

  2. The Burgandians seem an amazing civ in general. Their tech tree, bonuses and team bonus are all solid. 20 food and 30 gold from relics isn’t broken. Relics are collected in Castle Age. At that point food is either equal to or less valuable than gold. So anywhere from 50 gold to 34 gold of worth. Compare that to Aztecs and Indians who have consistent gold rates from relics of 40 and 33 respectively.

  3. Sicilians have same solid good 2 bonuses and their Unique unit is also nice.

  4. The problem lies in everything not mentioned about the 2 civs. Coustillier, the 4 unique techs and the other 2 bonuses of Sicilians.

Coustillier - judging by the cost and base attack, it is a medium cavalry like Tarkans and Keshiks. The charge attack is too good making them equivalent of Heavy Cavalry. The only distinction between Heavy and Medium Cavalry is the attack and slightly less melee armor. For reference the Light Cavalry is about 65% the HP, attack even less than medium cavalry, no melee armor, higher movement speed.

I don’t want to ruin the unit but some essential changes can be good. Dropping the charge attack, either can be applied:

a. Looking at the weapon, 1 range can be given. This comes at the cost of 1 melee armor (for both) and 1 pierce armor for the standard.

b. Give the standard version +2 attack of class 31 and +3 version for class 31. This is the melee armor ignoring attack of the Leitis. Most importantly it does not affect the attack vs buildings most of the times since buildings have decent inherent melee armor.

The Burgandian UTs provide some short term value and also some long term value, making the choice tricky. Leaving aside this, the tech is locked to be automatically researched in Post-imperial situations. Better that the long term effect (farms generating gold and Flemish militia) are unlocked atleast.

The Sicilian UT of faster construction of Town Centres and Castles is great. To put in context, 2 Sicilian villagers construct a Castle faster than a Frank villager constructs a Tower, or 1 Sicilian villager building a Castle builds as fast as a Frank villager building a TC. I am not sure if it affects the starting TC. The bonus can be toned down a bit, but the bonus itself is also limited in use. Maybe a +0%, +25%, +50% and +75% make sense?

Land military units absorbing +50% bonus attacks. This is combined with their average tech tree in archery range and stables. Usually other units do not take bonus damage. Using Mangudais, Huszars and Eagles against siege units is pretty uncommon, 5/37 of a probability or less. Also as with the meta, infantry units are being countered by Arbalesters, Heavy Scorpions and Cavalry Archers more than they are countered by Hand Cannoneers.

The bonus really shines for Archers, Cavalry Archers and Cavalry units. Their Light Cavalry and Cavaliers are better than Elite Cataphracts. Had this been on water, it would be completely broken since Fast Fire Ships would be Huskarls on Water.

Apart from lacking an economy bonus, except possibly faster construction of TCs on nomadic starts, the Sicilians do not have any long term unique bonuses.

As an infantry civilization, they can really benefit from Siege bonus, which I have an idea for. Siege units deal +35% attack (affects both melee and pierce siege units). SInce they lack SO, this is balanced. They can also get the Celts Castle Age UT Stronghold, which for Celts is pretty much useless. Celts can have a trifle UT and still be great.

Stronghold for Sicilians: TCs, Donjons, Castles fire 20% faster and are constructed 80% faster.

Also the farm bonus is pretty crap if you ask me. People usually ignore Crop Rotation. Without that, Sicilian farms are still worse than Teuton farms. That’s after waiting till Castle Age and getting 2 2nd priority techs.

The economy bonus I suggest is kinda ridiculous but balanced and effective.

  1. Farms cost 12 wood.
  2. Farms created in 3 seconds, rather than 15.
  3. Farms naturally provide 35 food.
  4. Farm upgrades provide 30% of what they naturally do, that is 22.5, 37.5 and 52.5.

Effect: A generic civilization has to wait for 60 wood to build a farm, In that same 60 wood, you can create 5 farms - all of which combined have 175 food and are built in 15 seconds. The advantage is 5 villagers farming instead of 1. You are also more likely to benefit from farm upgrades since they hit up sooner. 12 wood to get back 35 food is the same equation in the long term but is more efficient to get rolling. A farm destroyed also costs you lesser to re-afford.

The 3rd part of the bonus is actually a long time buff. All other attributes have been reduced to 20% but the farm upgrades have been raised to 30% basically making that +100% more efficiency to +50% which is still good in late game.

Basically farms go from 60 wood - 175/250/375/550 food for generic civilization to 12 wood - 35/57.5/95/147.5. This can however be broken for farm slinging.