Sicilians are F tier (they even build castles and TCs slower than Spanish)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Unless you do the YouPudding strategy, they’re bad (and even with that, they’re not OP by any means).
I don’t understand what’s so difficult about fixing Sicilians.

I just ran a post-imp test where 8 Sicilian vils and 8 Spanish vils build a castle and Spaniards were MUCH faster. It gets worse with a single vil where there difference is an entire minute (somehow).

Also ran tests where units fought and the 33% resist is about as worth as a penny (discounting early castle).

Just watched the NAC 5 and they weren’t picked ONCE.

They have no identity, no advantage, there are so many angles they could take to fix it, and instead are useless. You can use some of these for example but not all of these at the same time.

You can have the Donjon cost less stone over time (25/50 less stone for castle/Imp).

Return the build time speed for TCs and Castles. As it stands they’re FAR worse than Spanish who build EVERYTHING faster. It wasn’t even OP before, only low elo was complaining about it.

You can change the eco buff to “Farms have 100% more food” making their farms better from the start.

You can grant Serjeants ability to repair structures and siege.

You can give Sicilians a bombard cannon.

You can give them thumb ring.

Replace Hauberk with a better tech, since at its price it is useless. Something like a tech giving siege resistance to bonus damage akin to their civ advantage.

You can return resistance to 50% because 33% is so lame and useless. Maybe have it stack over time (30/40/50 in feudal/castle/imperial).

Replace Militia line since as it stands they’re a lame default. Maybe get goofy with it and make it serjeants or smthn. Either that or make them better. This is supposed to be an infantry civ? What a joke.

You can make it a defensive civ by having vils build def structures faster (maybe have Serjeants be able to make def structures?).

Make the Donjon beefier.

Empower siege or infantry some other way (speed, survivability, anything?).

Have the Donjon count towards Castle age?

It bogles my mind that having returned to the game recently, that Sicilians still SUCK. And I love this civ, I want to play it, but when the only good way to play it is YouPudding, that’s no fun.

You can’t fix the Sicilians for low elo, they’re always going to hate them (explains Sicilians win rate sitting at over 50% ONLY at low elo).

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Show a video? This is impossible.

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I think you have to look how Sicilians were doing in the past, when were taking 50% less bonus damage and Hauberk was 500f 400g Sicilians were a top pick in KOTD just because how stupidly hard was to deal with their Knights and Cavaliers, and one game showed how OP was the 100% faster built castles.
Sicilians simply suffer awful design, they need to be just unfun to play againts or balanced to be useless in most cases, Serjeants are aslo bad unless played by YouPudding, then they become unfun, that needs to be fixed.

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Having actually done the maths just now to check this, there should be no way this can occur. Construction time in AoE2 is calculated as (Building train time / ((2 + number of builders) / 3). A Castle takes 200 seconds to build, and Spanish apply a 30% faster work rate onto their builders. Therefore, with 8 Spanish builders, the Castle should take (200 / ((2 + (8 x 1.3)) / 3) seconds, which is 48.4 seconds.

Sicilians have a 0.666667 multiplier applied to the base construction time for their Castle, changing it from 200 seconds to 133.3334 seconds. Therefore, applying the formula again, a Sicilian Castle with 8 builders should take (133.3334 / ((2 + 8 ) / 3), which ends up at 40.0 seconds. So with 8 Villagers working on it, Sicilians should finish about 8 seconds faster than Spanish.

With one Villager each, for Spanish we get (200 / ((2 + 1.3) / 3), or 181.8 seconds, whereas Sicilians take (133.3334 / ((2 + 1) / 3), which is just 133.3334 seconds. This is a difference of about a minute, but it’s opposite your claim. Are you sure you had the civs round the right way, as there’s no way those results should be able to occur.

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I agree that mathematically it shouldn’t occur. That’s why I ran the test twice in editor. Run it yourself if you don’t believe me.

I had the exact calculation, and was stumped seeing the result. It was like they had no buff.

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Ah, I might’ve solved it. Give them a Town Center first, then run the test. It looks like their TC speed up doesn’t take effect until they have a TC, so that might be the cause.

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That’s why I brought up random ideas. It’s fixable. You could easily have a 20/30/40/50 less bonus damage in dark/feudal/castle/imp (the dark one is kinda useless but…).

Also, Hauberk can be replaced by something that makes this “infantry” civ more of an infantry civ, or give them a siege angle. Or maby hauberk can go towards the light cav or smthn (idk).

The building the castle faster I still don’t mind. The 100% wasn’t that OP, you still had to get to a point where you can drop a castle in a 1v1 game. Still, making it 75% could be a fix, why drop it SO LOW that it doesn’t even have a point?

The TC should also be 100%, who tf was complaining about that?

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Thanks for the clear up. I placed TCs for Spanish, forgor for the Sicilians apparently. Still, even then, the buff is so much weaker than Spaniards who build everything 30% faster (the dif is quite small frankly).

Sicilians only have a noticeable advantage with TCs (and even then, it’s nothing special).

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The devs have to do something with Sicilians and Bulgarians.
I would add the Ethiopians too.
It seems that they need an eco bonus to make them work, which at this point seems difficult with all the eco bonus around

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Here’s what I’d do.

1: Lengthen Feudal Serjeant build time significantly. The Youpudding Rush is funny, but it’s mostly just mean to lower ELO players. It would return to normal at Castle Age.
2. Serjeants can repair siege.
3. Change their farm upgrade bonus to just a simple farm upgrade. “Farms and Farm Upgrades provide +100% food.” Maybe 75%, whatever’s balanced. This way you aren’t reliant on getting the farm upgrades right away, and you aren’t punished harshly if you get attacked early and need to throw some down.

Lacking Bombards, Serjs repairing siege shouldn’t be too OP, and it will give them a substantial niche in later parts of the game.

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Maybe give them back 50% resistance for stronger scout rush and knight rush but take away Hauberk.

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The game needs to start adding more things that are shared by a small number of civilisations.
Currently only units are regional but I think that principle could apply to technologies too.
Maybe even bonuses.

But most things are already a civilisation bonus or unique technology so not much left to be added as a new technology.

If it’s a early game technology then it has to be worth the investment in the early game without giving too big of a bonus in late game.

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The day civs start getting repeat bonuses is imo the day we have clearly too many civs. Im fine with new, cheap early game regional techs tho

And imo new eco bonuses arent that hard to do rn, although I disagree on the idea that Ethiopians Bulgarians need a new eco bonus. Both civs can be buffed by tweaking the strength of their current bonuses. Sicilians imo could get 100 wood and stone with every age up instead of the starting stone

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Never saw anyone else complained Ethiopians. Why do you think they need another eco bonus?

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Recently i got to know that the AIs suffer at lower difficulties. Buildings are constructed slower. Units are trained slower. Defensive structures fire slower. Villagers gather at the same rate though.

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I struggle with coming up with new early game tech ideas that don’t also offer late game advantages.
Like x% faster Food/Wood/Stone/Gold collection is kinda not an option, even if limited to specific things like only from Sheep or something.
And then those techs have a return of investment time.
Unit upgrades are a more immediate advantage like +1 (pierce) armour can be useful instantly if you are currently in a fight.

It’s hard to give someone a technology that pays back quickly enough to be worth picking up in Feudal Age but also not good enough to impact the late game.

Also impossible to not make it overlap with a civilisation bonus.

Maybe something like a discount on villager cost but then you need to train a bunch of villagers before you get any return of investment and it would be an even bigger buff for early castle age.

Adding Dark Age technologies seems a little early though.

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Ethiopians need something to make them more appealing.
I think they need a buff somehow. The last change on Royal Heirs didn’t do anything for them. The only decent buff they got was their TB and still nobody use them.
Some Pros say that fixing the pathing will make the range units a better choice. Not sure about this statement because a lot of Cavalry civs are really OP or easy to handle than archer civs.

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I never said it shouldnt offer late game advantages

It doesnt need to not overlap with civ bonuses either

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Are you referencing the First Crusade giving conversion resistance like Teutons TB or Berbers stable discount being locked in Castle Age so that Magyars scout get some time to get spotlight?

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It shouldn’t give a late game advantage if the civilisation is currently already balanced in the late game.
Technologies always have a payoff time. So the bonus gets delayed.
So if you want to give a civilisation, like the ones being talked about in this thread, an early game bonus it’s hard to do it as a technology.