Serjeants. Yes or Nay?

Increase attack to 10 in Castle age and 12 for elite in Imperial.

tbf, i haven’t proposed a cost change, while i think a -5 gold could be justified, i would personally buff the feudal and castle variant while keeping the elitè as is, since they seems to struggle the most there imho while in imp i know they can be decent. In feudal they are not that stronger than a MAA to justify loss of momentum in the rush.
so +5 HP to feudal and castle variant while keeping elitè and making elitè upgrade a bit cheaper would be my proposal to make them actually chonkier than something like woads that have speed on their side, and as chonky as a castle samurai for example

other option could be to expand their niche to some degree, like having them affected by treadmill crane, or able to repair siege at a limited pace than a villager

but honestly just the cheaper elitè upgrade would be good and i do not think that would require any other balance. 1900 to upgrade this unit feels almost like an oversight

I feel like they’re probably an incredibly weird unit to balance, because of how massively and inherently they’re tied to not one but two quasi-unique gameplay elements/gimmicks, the Donjon and the First Crusade tech. The OP is comparing them to the MAA line, but out of the two use cases intended to heavily feature them in one they’re more comparable to villagers, with maybe some (pre-nerf) Inca or Spanish upgrades, and in the other use case they’re closer to… Flemish Militia? Kipchaks?

It’s going to take some time to balance both of those uses and still be left with a viable “general” unit, if it ever gets there at all. The Imperial Camel (rider) (or rather the Camel line in general while used by the Indians I guess) isn’t nearly as weird. It’s a Camel that needs to do the job of a regular main cavalry unit as well. And even that one seems to be a pain to get right.

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10 castle would be definitly OP imho…why that much? more attack is something i never though of really cause i see them more as a tank, which is why i would much rather have their HP increased a bit to emphasize that

yeah they definilty are unique and that’s why i like them, but i still think their balance is not perfect, as you sayd

oh please. First of all, TGs are meant to be for fun, you can’t actually balance for TGs because the meta there is even harder as there is a FAR stronger emphasis on spamming Gold/power units and you end up playing with a small subset of the actual units the game has. It’s not by accident that even civs with, say, FU Paladin, like Cumans, are average at best in TG, because NOT EVEN FU Paladin makes the cut when you can CIV PICK something like Lithuanians or Franks instead.

But aside from that, you are not even correct on Sicilians sucking in TGs. They have nice transitions throughout the game, with early aggression possible thanks to the +100 Stone, in Feudal and Castle Age they have above average boom with Wood savings on Farms, in Early Imp they have Hauberk Cavalier which is a good power spike, and late game they have FU Siege Onager + Halb.

I guess you forgot that Siege Onager is a strong TG unit but it’s OK, like I said the game isn’t meant for TGs anyway so it doesn’t matter how Sicilians fare there, might as well ask for buffs to Byzantines or Malians as these civs are unplayable in TGs.

edit: oh and also, faster building Castles, definitely a good thing in TGs also.

I think the problem with infantry is that it’s inherently not viable in Castle Age but good in Imp. The niche infantry has, since it loses to the 2 meta units of Crossbow and Knight in Castle Age, is that they are cheap and more floodable, and less gold intensive. And that’s an Imp thing.

As for your consideration of Feudal Donjon rush, you don’t do MAA upgrade, you just build first Donjon out of LoS from opponent and start making Serjeants from there, sparing the MAA upgrade. This is their niche in Feudal.

In Castle Age, I would say outside of First Crusade, they aren’t very good. I also agree that the Elite upgrade should be cheaper.

i might have explained myself poorly sorry. i meant that a serjeant rush in feudal sacrifice momentum compared to MAA. meaning that a MAA rush is effective because it hits at a certain time and situation, while serjeants rush is significantly delayed in timing. so while you are training a stronger unit overall, the timing makes their attack less impactful compared to teching into MAA and mass them from dark age

my take on castle age is that yes infantry is weaker in that stage, and i agree on your sentiment, but UU compensate that with great stats if you get past the building requirement to get them… Woads in castle are basically foot knights with 10 damage and high speed. zerks have 12 attack, obuch have 80 HP…UU tend to have outstanding stats in castle age compared to the counterpart since its difficult to get them needing a castle (this is also true for castle cavalry and archer UU most of the time). Serjeants are a bit easier to get, but not that easier to justify the loss of that raw stat superiority imho, while just 5 HP would make them better

overall, helping them in feudal and castle would make massing them earlier more worthy and won’t affect first crusade that much since it’s not very easy to get in castle age needing 5 TCs, outside Arena

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You said late game.
Halb+siege in team games could either be halb+siege ram but also halb+siege onager, not sure what I forgot, since I listed things Sicilians don’t have, not the opposite.
They don’t suck in team games, they suck past a certain point of the game, call it late game, if you want, that I said.

Back on 1v1 and the Serjeant matter, I stand by my opinion that they’re trash, Sicilians have a lot more useful tools.
Serjeants are trash and First Crusade is trash gimmick free spam tech that doesn’t belong to the game, plus it makes almost impossible to balance the Serjeant.

Halb + SO is good enough to get through team games, and if you need you still have more than FU Cavalier to assist you. Even better, it’s Cavalier that doesn’t die to Halbs, so Sicilians are one of the best civs to beat Halb + Siege civs (such as Slavs or Ethiopians).

If Halb + SO is not good enough for TGs, then I guess we are restricting the subset of viable units for TGs to such a small one that basically the only civs allowed are those with FU Bombard Cannon, more than FU Cav Archer and more than FU Paladin or Battle Elephant. So basically you might as well say that in TGs you are allowed only to pick 15 ish civs, and everything else, including stellar 1v1 civs like Vikings or Aztecs, are garbage.

As for Serjeants in 1v1, I don’t think the unit is spectacular, I agree with you that they are brought to a level of viability through the UT that they wouldn’t see otherwise, and I agree that you rarely make them from a Castle even in Imperial Age, as just dropping 10 Barracks and spamming the weaker but more readily available Champion is more practical.

But the unit is not incredibly underpowered, it’s an OK unit, 4/4 armor in Imperial age before upgrades is definitely a good thing and makes it a pain to kill them with traditional infantry counters (including cavalry & archers). Mix in 30% halberdiers to counter mass Knights and you have a composition that most civs will struggle to stop 1v1.

don’t know if I agree with this, yes towers come out a bit later than the ritual 21 pop MAA, however a tower is also more annoying to deal with than regular MAA that can be walled off.

Castle Age Berserkers have been overbuffed in an attempt to make CA Berserks a thing. Other than that, even extremely strong UUs, like Obuch, aren’t seen in Castle Age, not only because infantry requires a certain mass to be relevant, but also because the requirement of a Castle means that if you hit Castle Age at say, minute 21, the earliest you can do a Castle in most games is like min 25, often min 30. So you get the first Berserk/Woad Raider/Serjeant at min 30, by this time opponent (if uncontested) has 25-30 Knights, to beat that you need like 40-50 infantry UUs so in short it’s not viable to train a unit that loses to mass Knights (analogous considerations for Crossbow).

I think in Castle Age there isn’t an easy way to buff infantry UUs due to this bottleneck of Castle required + infantry being good only in high numbers (Knights and Crossbows in contrast can be relevant in low numbers also). But I think Serjeants can use some help in Imp too, only I wouldn’t like a Sicilians buff, imo they are already too strong 1v1 and slightly oppressive to play vs.

i’m completely OK to a serious definitive buff to serjeants at a cost of other things if sicilians would then be too strong of course. requiring a castle tech and 5 TCs to be good is just a bad design idea

but the elitè upgrade being a bit cheaper is pretty much a necessity that should came without any adjustement imho. otherwise they should be much stronger for that price tag

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In order to address Serjeants you’d first have to address Sicilians as a whole, currently they’re a single dimensional Knight Civ, having arguably the best Knights in the game. What’s the point of making Serjeants? Knights are as good against melee units and better than ranged units.

Developers killed Sicilians the moment they introduced Hauberk into the game, it could be an elegant civ based on their Unique Unit and Unique Building. But that’s too hard to balance for them, so let’s just have another boom-into-knights civ.

If you cant govern the gimmick, dont add gimmicks into the games, please developers. Sicilians could be a great civ, no point to address Serjeants unless you fix the current nature of the civ.

The unit itself is perfectly balanced, the only thing they’re missing is more viability in Feudal Age, but since Trush as a whole concept died, there is no room for a Trush-civ I dont see how you’re going to balance this unit other than ruining it and making it more of a generic Champion-like.

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well, that’s not a problem with sicilians. a civ capable of winning only through infantry simply does not exist, since the only one is goth and they are still considered quite bad, cause infantry as a whole in this game is sub-par compared to archers and cavalry so any infantry civ need either a power-unit that is archer or cav. Samurai get FU arbalest, vik lost their FU arbalest only because of their crazy good eco, teutons have paladin, and so on. it’s just how the games work.

i too would like to see a infantry civ with proper infantry prowess but cannot be done with the core limitation of infantry in the game. also sicilians in particular are classified as a infantry and cavalry civilization, so no wonder they have good cav

VAT? I didn’t say that, they have Arbalester, All Siege Units with Siege Eng (No BBC), and a Cavalier+Light Cav that are Pike-resistant. (excluding Hauberk) Sicilians Cavalier is as good as a Paladin in 1v1s, too efficient vs. Pikes. They were a Cav civ even before the Hauberk change, on top of just being super versatile.
Unlike Goths.

Same goes for Malians, an Infantry civ (Champskurls) with great versatility overall, and of course an amazing Cavalier. (I’d still prefer Sicilians one on 1v1s)

Hauberk is one step too far, it’s a dead civ conceptually. Sadly.

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I don’t think elite upgrade should be accompanied with a nerf, the cost is too high for what you gain very likely. Even though 4/4 basic armor is nothing to discount, the normal version comes with 3/3 already and also the better stats compared to Champions (armor especially) are already sort of accounted for by the comparatively high gold cost, so you pay for armor already with the 35g a piece and shouldn’t pay again with the upgrade cost.

For this reason, the Serjeant → Elite Serjeant should be around the same price of Long Swordsman → Champion transition. So I think maybe like -100f and -200g as a start could be wise (I’m even tempted to say -400g, but baby steps is better imo).

I’d still like to see serjeants able to repair military wooden equipment from transports to siege. Or just repair in general as a villager would.

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i proposed 1000F 600/700G which is -200/300 so yeah, i had a similar tought process. -300 would be perfect imho not to high not to low and 600G cost would help make more of them since they already cost so much gold

that also would be quite interesting but i would do it at a limited pace. like they repair donjons like villagers, but with everything else they repair at 50% efficiency or such

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Yeah but we’ve seen that that is how the vocal majority want the game to be balanced anyway.

Devs try to make more unique civs, but generally get shouted at by knee jerking over reacting players. Before 1st crusade and coustis were nerfed, burgundians and Sicilians had a winrate closer to something like 44%(Devs admitted as such)

And instead of buffing such low winrates, the civs were nerfed.

And then given very generic buffs because that’s all that People can mentally handle.

Sicilians were on the perfect track to become a true siege + infantry civ.

I would also like to see hauberk removed completely,but even a nerf to 1/1 would be good enough. And I used to be a huge Sicilian supporter

and then you still get these weird suggestions where players don’t understand how this pigeonholes a civ, nevermind that Sicilians would have zero counter to melee heavy civs (Burmese/teutons/Japanese would just steam role them with literally unstoppable champs, while BBC/SE onagers snipe any attempt at scorps)

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Because both these things were unquestionably OP. You don’t straight buff a civ because it loses when it can’t pull of its auto win strat.

Buff to UU and UB (what Sicilians got at first) = generic, ofc… Also do you have another argument other than “people can’t handle it”, “people are conservative”…

If anything first crusade is still the reason donjons aren’t used (because using the +100 stone for more TCs and magic button > the rest) and flemish militia is just as toxic for Burgundians (because 200 pop army of Viking 2HS + just enough cav and siege to handle obstacles > the rest)

other civs are also pigeonholed vs Sicilian Cavaphract, so I don’t see the issue. If you want a civ to have strengths, it needs to have weaknesses as well, it sounds like you wanna keep broken Cavalier, Light Cav and Skirms while also enjoying FU Siege Onagers, Siege Rams and infantry play and usable Arbalest.

Right now, except for Camels and BBC, the civ is legit better than Byzantines and that’s sad. Byzantines are kept afloat by Camel play and BBC but even BBC is debatable since I’d rather have Siege Engineers Rams, Onagers and Trebs than BBC without Siege Engineers.