Saracens are fine imo. Clearly not a very good civ, but on average they are fine. Way better than Portuguese, Turks, Italians (on land), and Koreans. Paired with other several ones…
They have good archers with a decent bonus and the market bonus which is extremely helpful. People say that you should never use the market, but basically we always use it, as the pro players do.
The issue with the mameluk… well… I agree that its cost is very large, but that unit is definitely the strongest answer to Paladins in the game. It is more a team game unit. In 1v1 Paladins and elephants are rare, so the mameluk is not that common. I am always favorable to what can bring variety to the game, so a cost reduction to mameluk to see them more is welcome, but not too much since they still have an important role.
There are other UUs which are a disaster compared to mameluks, like EAs.
I wouldn’t reduce the range… 5 less gold is fine. Also the current PA is fine. Currently mameluks are strong vs cavalry and quite resistant to halabs. Fine if they are weaker to archers, Saracens have SO and FU e-skirms
What about team games then? The unit should be weak to something. If it is ok vs infantry and devastating vs cavalry, it has to be weak to archers. Clearly it is a unit you never want to use vs archer civs. In 1v1 I see mameluks useful vs Franks, Cumans, Persians, Huns… so basically mobile civs, especially the ones missing bracer.
If you are vs Britons, you should exploit the open tech tree of Saracens, focusing more on skirms, knights/hussars, siege rams, and maybe onagers. Going camels/mameluks is simply a favour you are doing to your opponent.
What is fine, because they are Camels and Catas are Camel-killers. BTW in larger scale Mamelukes win, because they are ranged.
Saracens are fine, i think, after DE buff to Archers. They have very good Range, CA included, Good Siege, Monks, Camels.
Mameluke maybe need gold cost reduction, but only like 5. Mameluke also have realy cheap Elite upgrade.
BTW, yesterday i notice the Saracen HC is not affected by theit civ-bonus vs buildings. Maybe it should?
Why tho? There is no rule that states that all AoK/AoC civs should always be better than HD civs. It’s already the case for most of them, so it’s normal there are exceptions. On top of that FE brought their fair share of slower civs than Saracen, like Portuguese or Bulgarian.
With equal numbers, and unless you’re packing ur mamelukes together in a chokepoint, they will just shred ballista eles. Furthermore, your first few mamelukes can go raid or attack enemy cav, while your first few ballista eles are just a big pack of HP with a bad attack, that can maybe go cut some trees for the meme.
Someone’s gotta have that spot you know.
Great news: they happen to belong to the civ which can market abuse the best.
Before DE this bonus was of +4, now it’s limited to +3. So actually it would be nice to make CA benefit from it, and since the OP siege archers are gone I see no reason to hold their CA back.
Because it is not efficient. It is always better to collect that resource in the long run instead of buying it. However, the momentum given by the market is too important, so in practice, even if inefficient, we always use it.
Well, I agree on a small reduction of the mamelukes cost, but keep in mind that it’s not a unit designed for be massed, but only for being use in small group.
SotL looks at the meccanics behind the game, the stats, the bonus, why a unit cost more, why another cost less… then he try to bring the theory on real game situation, but it’s hard to consider all possibilities since there are so many.
Still, I think his videos are the more entertaining in all AoE you tube world.
Yeah but the food that the elephants takes is a lot more high than the gold that mamelukes requires.
Archers and Paladins can brute force it, but they are not direct counter, since they deal no extra damage vs Cataphracts.
As for Halberds, you will need a considerable amount of them, to defeat 20-30 Cataphracts, and that is just not pop-efficient.
I agree… however the game is focused on archers and knights. Cataphracts are weaker than the knight-line in fighting both other knights and archers. Moreover are trained from a castle and require expensive upgrades. So I wouldn’t say that cataphracts are that good.
So yeah, no reasons to have even mameluks stronger than cataphracts