Serjeants - the ultimate Teutonic Huskarls

Stats in - Feudal - Castle - Elite forms, all without upgrades:

  1. HP - 45 - 60 - 75
  2. Attack melee - 5 - 8 - 11
  3. Melee armor - 1 - 3 - 4
  4. Pierce armor - 2 - 3 - 4
  5. Attack bonus vs buildings and eagles - 2 - 2 - 3
  6. Movement Speed - 0.9 [0.99 with Squires]

Sicilians have access to all possible upgrades for Serjeants - Arson, Squires, all 6 blacksmith techs.

Considering the stats of Elite Serjeants with all Blacksmith techs, we have 16 attack and 7/8 armor.

Now we consider the stats of Teutonic Knights with all Castle Age upgrades:

  1. HP - 80 (close to 75)
  2. Attack - 14 (slighly off from 16)
  3. Melee armor - 7
  4. Attack bonuses - 4
  5. Movement speed - 0.8 + 10% = 0.88

Now the Huskarl with all Castle Age upgrades:

  1. Attack - 12 (16 for Elite)
  2. Pierce Armor - 8
  3. Attack bonuses - 2 (3 for Elite)
  4. Movement Speed - 1.05 + 10% = 1.155

The similarities are uncanny and could possibly mean that a Fast Imperial into First Crusade and Elite upgrade can end the game. You cannot use melee units because of The Teutonic Knight properties, and you cannot use regular ranged units because of the Huskarl properties. You also cannot use specialist units like Slingers, Cataphracts, Jaguar Warriors or Hand Cannoneers (assuming you are up before your Sicilian opponent) because of the Sicilian 50% immunity bonus.

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do the math(or better yet run the editor, i think its something like 14:10 champs win, whereas you can actually field 17:10)… generic champs beat these guys cost effectively any day, and train faster due to rax over donjon. and dont forget sic has no eco bonus. so any civ with generic champs will have an eco advantage on top of champs trading effectively

1st crusade is broken AF, but these little mofos arent… they are very expensive for what you get…

but yes if you are going to hide in your base and not fight each other then a lot of things in this game are imba

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I also think they are not OP. I like to compare with Malian Champ. Cheap and super tanky against arrows and this is the more expensive version.
1st crusade is really strong. Imagine 50 tanky units out of nowhere and suddenly in your base.

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Yeah, that’s because I am comparing them to Castle Age versions of Huskarls and Teutonic Knights. The combination of Elite versions will obviously be broken.

Yeah same. I have seen one of the Viper’s game against Villese. The unit is good in my opinion. A little hard to counter - you have to use brute force melee units like how you counter the Malian champ or the Elite Huskarl. The Unique Unit and the Unique buidlings may be strong or weak, but they are balanced nonetheless.

I am more worried about the 1 time use of these techs. Imagine having 100 villagers, 100 spearmen, researching First crusade taking the military count to 150 and then research Scutage.

Plot twist: serjeants are actually malians champions with extra melee armor.

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Minor correction:

Melee attack is 11 for elite version.

Leaving that aside, this unit is mostly defensive stats. It can act as a good front line unit.
IMO, mid castle age is a better time than early imperial for the first crusade. By that time mostly your opponent won’t have 50 anything. If you delay till imperial age, army numbers by then usually reach about 80-100 and the extra 50 may not be that impactful proportionately.
(of course post-imperial for 250 pop push might be another option)

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Even taking it on 1 TC is beneficial. Gold is gathered faster than food. So getting 10 for the inverted price is still situationally beneficial.

I think for castle age a really achievable goal is 3 TC. 30 sergeants for that price is still insane. Remember you need to build a castle + all the stone on all the tcs and still fight your enemy…

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Yeah their armor is sick, I mean, I get that they need a good PA, both because their are slow and to avoid being killed by archers when they build, but why such high MA?

I think that 1 MA is more than enough and above average for infantry units. 2HS have 0 MA for comparison, and except for TK, JW and samurai (all counter infantry units), no infantry unit have even 1 MA in castle age. And this one get 1 in feudal and 3 in castle.

I personally think that having 1MA and 2 for elite is more than enough, but I’ll admit that those are early thoughts based on few time spent on testing them, so maybe I’m wrong.

Armor on serjeants is deceptive: these units are not as good as they initially seem. They are mostly damage sponges. They move and attack slowly and deal less damage than champions. I could see them as excellent guards for siege…if they were a little bit cheaper.

First crusade UT is however broken, that needs to be addressed for sure.

That 3MA more than the champ easily negate the champ 2 more atk, on top of also 3PA more. As for speed, they are equal.

Yes, champs are more cost effective, but still, 3MA in castle age is more than a knight. And they also take half of the infantry bonus damage, so even cataprhacts aren’t that good.

Maybe the UT can give just 3-5 serjeants for TC, then give the UU a secondary effect, like reduce the cost.

They still lose pretty badly to knights afaik and they are far more expensive than champs. Armor alone means nothing, you need to look at the complete picture, otherwise TKs would be the best unit in the game.

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TK are slower than serjeant, and have less PA. Yes of course they lose vs knights, but still it’s a lot.

Even with 1MA in the end in castle age they would have more base MA of all other units, saved for TK, knights, boyars and BE. It would be more than enough…

The unit is great at defense sure. But Sicilians lack offensive units then. No Arbalests, Hussar and Paladin. That’s why I am asking for a Imperial UT to be Siege specific, namely +35% damage for Siege units, except against buildings. The combination of Infantry and Siege is great.

The way Serjeant is designed, a Serjeant + Scorpion combo is more effective than Serjeant + Onager combo since the Serjeant is already archer-resistant and as an infantry counters buildings.

Also for reference, even +2 melee armor > +3 melee attack for infantry except in discrete cases.

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That may be counter intuitive but using bonus damage still holds a lot of value, even halved. The reason is the high armor of the Serjeant : evey point of extra damage is magnified.
For exemple, a Champion would deal 10 damage, while a Samurai would still deal 15 damage, or a 50% more damage. In the same vein, an Arbalest would deal 2 damage, while a Slinger would deal 5.
The half bonus damage save is more important for Cavalier, saving 9 extra damage from HCamels and 16 from Halbs.

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True, I am not worried about their archers even if they had the Saracen Archer Tech Tree. The bonus damage from skirmishers isn’t much and halfing that isn’t doing much. Even ignoring skirmishers, archers can be countered super-effectively by Onagers or Rams + own archers or heavy cavalry, none of which have bonus damage. The Paladin itself is a great choice, so I can completely ignore the +2 attack bonus of Persians.

The real deal is against infantry and Cavalry, which I am glad they do not have Paladins. Also this doesn’t help them in raiding since Castles, TCs and Towers aren’t affected.

Another fun trivia is serjeant build donjons noticeably slower than villagers, making forward towering a bit less threatening. Those donjons aren’t particularly amazing in terms of holding a location like a castle would either, since basically, they are towers. I tried to troll a moderate AI with mass serjeant with tower creeping in on “border stone” (a map where you have over 200k stones for you to mine, in the form of stone pile walls). That ended very badly as AI just build knights and serjeant are mostly dead meat.

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they have arbs, what are you talking about? yeah they lack the final armor upgrade and thumb ring but they still take half damage from skirms/huskarls/etc.

first of all paladin is rarely used in 1v1 games because its so bloody expensive
they have light cavalry and cavalier with bloodlines, who take literally half the damage from all anti cavalry sources, with full attack and defense upgrades, their light cavalry and cavaliers literally hold up against camels and halbs better then hussars or paladins could hope to.
they are designed as a civ with units who outlast their opponent, winning wars of attrition.

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Their monks should take half of the Light Cav bonus too

Sorry, I didn’t own the DLC uptil now. Haven’t played the game since then. Purchased just 2 minutes ago.

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