Why is it for a while the devs pushed to nerf the tower rush opening, only to then add the sicilians?
What was the thought process behind that?
We don’t want teutons or incas or koreans going tower rush, but then let’s design a civ who has a unique tower that produce a UU that builds it’s unique tower???
I’m not making any statement as to if tower rushing is good or bad for the game, how good sicilian donjon rushing is, anything like that. This isn’t a balance observation.
I’m just perplexed how both of these ideas came from the same studio in this order.
Except Donjons are actually worse than normal towers at both offence and defence because of their higher cost. So it’s actually a legit strategy to tower rush a Sicilian player because they won’t be able to keep up with your tower production without putting themselves behind economically. Yes, one Donjon vs. one tower, then the Donjon is stronger, but it’s better to have more towers which are individually slightly weaker but cover a bigger area. Donjons also have a bigger hitbox so they’re easier to get a good surround to destroy with villagers or melee units. Hera mentioned the weakness of Sicilians vs. towers in his One Tip Against Every Civ video, skip to 14:54:
Sicilians are actually a pretty bad civ right now. The Donjon isn’t even good. Go look up pro level matches with Sicilians. Hera has at least one match where he plays Sicilians, completely outplays his opponent, and then his opponent just spams infantry and Sicilians have no counter to it. I’d argue Sicilians aren’t really good at anything at the moment and are in dire need of a buff. They have mediocre infantry, no Paladins just Caveliers with a small buff, their archery line is garbage, and while their Mangonel line gets full upgrades they lack bombards. Anyone can just spam infantry, or HC + Halb + Bombard and annihilate Sicilians easily.
I don’t think their infantry is mediocre. They have gambesons champions with full upgrades. To deal with infantry, their Arbalest are only lacking the last armour. Apart from lacking BBC, they have a complete siege workshop with siege engineers. Maybe they could lose siege onager and get BBC instead. Obviously they’re not a top civ, but they don’t need much to buff them. Maybe just BBC and / or Hussar would be enough. They have a decent farming bonus already.
Their infantry are mediocre because they have no real bonuses other than a full tech tree. Any civ that has an infantry bonus can just spam infantry at Sicilians and destroy them. You are wrong on, Sicilian Arbalests. They lack the Thumb Ring in addition to lacking the final armor upgrade. Their archers are terrible. Watch this match between Hera and Yo. Hera absolutely out micros Yo and eventually Yo just spams infantry at Hera and despite Hera’s superior micro he cannot counter the infantry spam. His Siege Onager micro this game is seriously amazing.
Not really. Sicilians have fully upgraded champions with gambesons, better than average Cavaliers and heavy scorpions. One anecdotal game from the No.1 ranked player doesn’t prove anything either way.
Fully upgraded champions with gambesons are unremarkable. Any civ that also has FU champions + a champion bonus can just spam champions at Sicilians and slaughter them. Sicilians cannot respond with archers. Scorpions are easily countered by bombards or SO which most civs with infantry bonuses have one or the other, and if not a regular Onager is good enough.
Sicilians will be buffed in a future patch proving I am correct.
They do not need to be top tier Arbs in order to defeat generic Champs.
Any civ that also has FU champions + a champion bonus can just spam champions at Sicilians and slaughter them.
This is just not true. Sicilian Arbs work just fine vs FU champs, with or without thumb ring and last armour.
Just because a tech tree item is lacking something does not mean that it is not the best option in a given scenario. I have seen plenty of pro games where, for example, Ethiopian Cav ended up winning the game, even though on paper it is not a ‘good’ unit.
Nope. Sicilian Arbs are not viable. You can archer rush in fuedal, maybe go crossbows in castle if you have a bunch left from fuedal age, but you are not making Arbs in imperial unless you are just styling on your opponent because they are so inferior to you.
Find me a single pro match where a Sicilian player goes Arbs to counter a civ with superior infantry.
To add to this, Viking arbs were considered not viable just from the loss of thumb ring, to the point where they had to get a unique tech to add +1 damage to keep them viable as an imperial age unit. Sicilian Arbs are worse than Viking arbs because Sicilians lack an armor upgrade on top of lacking thumb ring.
Can’t recall a match like that with Sicilians specifically, but I’ve seen plenty of matches where one player wins with arbalests to counter infantry with a different civ, but either never gets round to (or simply forgets) picking up thumb ring or the last armour upgrade. Armour upgrades for ranged units get skipped very often actually. Sicilians still have Bracer which is far more important than armour. You would never be sending naked arbalests into battle anyway. You would have gambesons champs or cavalier with their bonus in front as a meat shield and arbalest behind, with scorpions as an option too. Sicilians just need a small buff like Hussar or BBC and they’d be fine.
