After the announcement of the Lords of the West expansion, I was amused by the new imperial UT of Sicilians scutage and their similarities with Vietnamese’s paper money. At first I thought scutage was broken but I don’t think that anymore.
Scutage: Upon researching, each team member receives a one-time payment of 15 gold for each military unit that they own. (Price and research time not confirmed right now)
Paper money: As soon as it is researched, the player and their allies instantly receive 500 gold. Price : 500f 300w. Research time: 60 seconds
A Sicilian player must have more than 33 military units in order to receive more than 500 gold with Scutage. It is pretty easy to have more than 33 military units in the late game, so I think this UT will be far more expensive than paper money.
However, scutage has an issue than paper money doesn’t. Paper money is very useful for recovering after being at a disadvantage: you can research them even if you have no army or villagers and still have 500 gold for granted. Scutage, on the other hand, is better if you have an army ready, so it is not useful for recovering from raids. So I see it as more useful for pushing (especially in trash wars to buy more siege).
I won’t compare their usefulness in Team Games because gold is not a big issue in team games thanks to trading. Thus, I wouldn’t talk about the combo scutage-flemish revolution…