Hi all! so in my process of learnin the Lord of the West DLC civs i still do not have a strong opinion on the donjon, which also received a slight direct and indirect buff lately (+100 HP over tower and faster serjeant TT)
the fact is that in feudal they are a stronger tower, but are also much more expensive in both wood and stone, and larger so easy to rush with units, and their extra arrows later are not that impressive when you factor in that PA from target “hits” multiple times, making it deal less damage than a keep to targets with good PA. they also produce serjeants so they are more useful than a tower in some situations.
being more expensive means they are also bad at defending from other towers, and sicilians totally lack access to watch tower to offset that.
basically i wonder if they are actually a bonus or a liability for the civ, lacking watch tower, and i want to hear some opinions on that.
personally i would like a little buff to it, like -25 wood, or 5 pop space, or 0 range to defend themselfs better, or addition of watch tower (but not guard tower nor keep) to defend tower rush and make the donjon truly a bonus for other situations, or maybe i’m just wrong and they are great and i do not know how to use the bonus, hence why i ask the forum opinion
Donjons are a dead abandoned concept, here is why:
Trush (Tower Rush) as a whole is dead, wether it’s Koreans, Mongols or Sicilians, players almost never commit to Trushing ever since developers nerfed towers dramatically 2 years ago or so.
Arabia is too open for holding a static position, unlike Arabia we had 2 years ago, this one has multiple tiny woodlines that prevents one from getting heavily punished by a Trush.
Hauberk- Sicilians are pushed into a generic Knight kind of a civ, why would anyone risk it and go Trushing? Hauberk makes your Knight a Tarkaphract, one unit to rule them all, so all you need to do is boom into this tech and win.
You’re trying to force Donjon into viablity, while it’s far from being any close to the meta/map/civ balance we’re having currently. /these tiny tweaks are a hopeless naive attempt, There should be a massive overhaul to rescue us from this defensive Archery Range meta.
If you ask me it’s overpriced to prevent feudal serjeant rush from becoming an “Inca turbo tower rush 2.0”. Which kind of sweeps the whole thing under the rug more than anything. I think it would be better if serjeants couldn’t build donjons in feudal so that both the unit and the building could be buffed in some meaningful way.
Donjons are worthless, if you can spam them and keep them alive then you’re already winning.
They’re just viable as coastal defense.
They are also a double edged sword, you lose the donjon, you lose access to Serjeant, you lose access to the latter, you can’t push anymore as you’d probably not have barracks nearby, nor maa. And your feudal push is dead, and probably even you soon. Better go archers, go Castle boom and go knights. Also at 95 res Serjeants are extremely expensive for a feudal push, this makes donjons even more difficult to use.
Serjeants being able to build donjons Is kinda their “thing” tough, and it’s not like they are this strong in feudal. For their cost, 95 res, they are pretty meh. You pay 15 res more than a scout to have 2 more MA but a lot less speed and not needing stone to create
Yeah both serjeants and donjons could use a little buff since they are basically interdependant, but i think a little help for both would not be bad. Like serjeants -10 G and donjons -25 wood, or serjeants shootint arrows into donjons
Or maybe just make Watch tower available. I do not think tower rush Is dead. Not meta? Yeah, but not dead even i see it seldom used, and it’s very hard top defend having only donjons. To be a civ BONUS It should be better than the base option, so adding the Watch tower alone would help a lot i guess
In Nomad maps the Donjons can be a pretty fun way to apply early pressure. I’m not sure if it works better than a regular tower rush and a barracks though, but the Serjeant seems more effective than men at arms.
Well nothing has bonus damage against infantry in feudal and serjeants can have more armour and HP than what Inca vills used to have, so if donjon trush became viable it would probs be just as toxic if not worse, due to the fact attacking a serjeant while it’s building doesn’t prevent it from doing so, unlike with vills.
When did you last play Arabia? The devs overhauled it in the last patch I’m pretty sure, so you may like it more now. Also, I don’t think it’s the Donjons that are the problem, it’s the Serjeant. I know you hate gold efficiency usually, but the Serjeant gold cost is too high for what it does, especially as for a Feudal Donjon rush, it has to compete with villagers for food. It needs the gold cost reduces by 10, meaning you don’t need as many vils on gold to create them, and therefore can have more vils on stone or food, depending on what you mostly need at that time.
Don’t get me wrong i’m just saying serjeants and donjons are both UP atm and could use a slight help enough to make it an option without making it toxic. Or maybe it is already viable but it seem suboptimal to me since serjeants are so overpriced, and expensive for feudal
Donjons are fine, sergeants are the problem as mentioned above. Especially considering donjons recently received a 25% hp buff
Devs obviously don’t want trushing of any form to be meta in feudal.
Imo they could make it that serjeants are more viable in castle age at least (which means changing 1st crusade or making serjeants cheaper) so you could create a scenario where donjons are built mid to late feudal, serjeants begin to be massed, and in castle you get the full momentum (stats buff) to push with donjons annd serjeants. Similar to how eagles work
Gold isn’t the issue. How many times do we need to say this. Look at eagles for crying out loud.
Food is the bottle neck.serjeants (like most infantry) are too food intensive to be viable units at that stage of the game.
Higher gold cost is easily offset by simply tasking more Vils to gold or at worst building a 100w MC . Attaining that same increase in food? Vils on wood for farms, space for farms and a separate vil on that farm, and their efficiency varies with distance. or potentially another mill or TC(even more upfront investment)
Yeah i feel the same, that’s why i like the -5 food and -5 Gold, considering that it’s still infantry and the Moment for infantry is Imperial where their cheap Gold cost make them useful, 35 Gold is too much for a slow infantry, so 55 F 30 G would be perfect for me
but either -10 G or -10 F would be good as well, would make serjeants more viable in imperial or feudal/Castle respectively, and i feel that being the only Uu available in feudal, It would be cool to actually have the cost to make that thing even possible
Anyway, literal any discount would be good, since It would not effect First crusade at all
Just increase the attack of Serjeants in castle age by 2 and by 1 for elite, so they are worth how priced are and push people to use and mass them in feudal.
this doesn’t matter too much as you start with extra Stone.
this also doesn’t matter too much as it’s typically MAA → towers. You should always have something to protect your tower and if you kill say 3-4 vills and lose MAA and the Donjon, that’s insane value.
They get extra arrows as you age up, and with Arrowslits in their final form they are somewhere between a Guard Tower and a Keep that is better vs unarmored targets but worse vs high armor ones (like Paladins).
I don’t think Donjons, and Sicilians more generally need buffs. Sicilians are already fairly top tier and Donjon rush is in the right spot, a viable strat but not a must go-for strat.
How is it really viable? It’s costly, even with the bonus stone, tower rushing isn’t doing too well anyway, and the Serjeant isn’t really affordable very easily. Like sure, you can do it, but it’s not really super viable or anything.
I like the idea of reducing the Serjeants cost a little bit and I’m all for it. But I just compared their cost to some of the other Infantry UUs and I think if you compare it to something like the Shotel Warrior and Gbeto those two look heavily overpriced in my opinion.
It’s not viable.
You can build just one donjon “freely”, because you have extra stone, but after the first, the second is immensely more expensive than another watch tower (42% more expensive) for a feudal age economy.
Not to mention that feudal Serjants can barely win against Maa, costing even more, and they are not even that powerful against archers as they can’t catch them without squires so they’ll be kited to death easily.
They can’t be killed easily by villagers and skirms, that’s all.
I never see Sicilians attempt to Donjon rush, it’s pointless. They just play meta, and Serjeants/Donjons are mostly never used.
You forget one particular detail: the speed.
Gbeto has a base speed of 1.25, Shotel of 1.2
They can disengage easily from other melee and archer units, Gbeto is even ranged so it can disengage even from knights without husbandry (1.35 speed) with proper timings, Shotel can 3-shot villagers in Castle age, which is remarkable for a unit with such high speed.
Serjeants on the other hand have 0.9 base speed, meaning they can’t escape from anything, not even siege as they’re even slower than archers.
In a vacuum I’d agree, but not in the specific contest of a feudal Donjon rush.
I don’t agree because when you have high stone cost (+50 each donjon vs towers), high wood cost (+25 each donjon +farms for support), high food cost (you have to keep vill production + serjeants) and even high gold cost (serjeants), the problem is that you don’t have nearly enough villagers for everything.
Eagle spam doesn’t need stone, along with the need of less food. That’s 2 advantages, not just 1.
An analysis that’s pretty on point to me. Infact the +100 stone feels like a need for donjons more than a bonus, and people use it to extra boom or sell it at market. Also yeah, it’s true that you need army ti protect towers, but in a standard MAA tower Attack those arrive at the same time, while to have 3 serjeants you have to build the donjon (90 seconds) then wait 48 seconds to train them, meanwhile villager can rush you and smash you much more easily than a standard tower rush
And as you sayd, Archer are still perfectly fine to counter that by kiting
Discount of serjeants would help indirectly the donjon as well so i would go for it and then see what happens, but i would like -25 wood to make it as costly as a tower wood wise at least
