As a Sicilian main I can say that Sicilians are only good during a short portion of the game in between mid and late game.
The two biggest problems are the Serjeant and the lack of thumb ring, or hand cannonner.
Serjeant is far too expensive for his strength (especially compared with the Obuch. Lessening either the food or gold cost slightly would balance it, or increasing the hit points or movement speed of the unit. Research to elite Serjeant isn’t cheap, but that isn’t that big of a deal since no one is getting it.
Lack of a thumb ring makes Sicilian arbs completely useless, lack of armor is more than a fine trade for the lessened bonus damage since they’d lose against a default arb. There really is no reason for them to not have thumb ring. You could only argue that crossbows might be too strong, but again, they’re strong during the Sicilians strongest point, so it doesn’t really matter all that much.
If those changes are off the table, then may I suggest granting siege weapons x% lessened bonus damage? For siege, 50% is far too much, we can all agree, but they could have 10%, more or less. I understand not adding lessened bonus damage to ships, so I won’t even go there.
At the very end, my last argument would be a better econ buff, since granting stone only makes me donjon rush. Sure there is the doubled farm upgrades, but early game, 75 food more doesn’t feel like all that much.
You can send the stone for fastle castle if you dont build donjons. Some civs have worse eco bonuses than that
To balance sergeants, First crusade needs to get rid of the sergeant soawn mechanic.
Regarding thumbring… Giving them thumbring would make their skirms good at late game, or would allow them to try to mass vanilla cav archers with 100% accuracy.
Regarding siege, i would like sergeants being able to repair them even if at slower speed.
No, the sicilian problem is that their eco bonus doesn’t kick in until it’s time to go up to imp. Granted, they are good in imp and have amazing timings with first crusade, either for an castle age all in or for a defensive play to buy you time for imp, and their post imp arsenal isn’t bad with halbs, SO and the amazing light cav/cavaliers, but they are a defensive civ until then mostly. Strategy wise, they are teutons, but your cheaper farms start from castle age, not from feudal.
You build tcs faster, you have more stone to add 4th tcs and your farms last forever even after only horse collar. That’s very strong eco from the moment you arrive in castle age.
Add to that bonus dmg reduction and full castle age knights is already very strong even before you get extra armor later on in imp.
Meanwhile the Sicilian Cavaliers are just broken, a great lab rat by FE, close to be uncounterable, plus a silly designed tech (First crusade) and that stupid 50% less bonus damage.
Take away Bloodlines, give Hussar and Thumb ring to compensate, remove the 7 spawned serjeants from First crusade and then they are fine.
Well, while I don’t really agree on 1v1, I wholehartedly agree on team games.
In team games Sicilians are really weak in post-imperial fights. Basically all they can do is infantry+siege, without any bonus for it.
Serjeants need buffs, but I’ve already discussed it in another thread.
Fun fact, the 50% bonus reduction is just ONE less damage to halbs from arbalesters and skirms.
In many TGs sicilians hauberk cav is actually basically seen as paladin equivalent…
Nevertheless there is a curious case that sicilians seem to shine only on pro level on 1v1s. I think it has to do that their various bonusses need to be used in the right way. You need to know when a castle drop makes strategically sense, even with sicilians. When and how much eco you want to add… all this kind of stuff. It’s right that a sicilian castle won’t be a daut castle in most of the cases, but even then you need to know when it is useful to make a castle drop. If you make a castle drop on a expanded opponent with no followup it’s just a waste. He will just contain and your damage is very limited, while you invested a lot of ressources for that play.
Also in pro play the counter mechanics are acually at it’s peak of “decisiveness”, so whilst at low elo kowing the counters has basically no influence of your chances of winning, at pro play playing the right counters and the right amount of them is essential. This way this sicilian bonus has maybe the highest impact at pro play than at any other level. So far Sicilians have been played in 2 of the 4 series of kotd IV and are 1-1. But yet alone the pick rate of the civ indicates it’s comparably high standing at the pro level.
Which is surprising to me tbh cause my personal opinion is that they are a sub-average civ on 1v1 open maps. But who can argue with pro play? It’s clearly for a reason pros evalueate them that high.
Still I think the civ would need a total overhaul. I don’t like this whole reduced counter damage thing, I think counters are already bad enough. I think it’s just a weird Idea to give that kind of bonus to a civ. We need more unit diversity in the game, not less!
I don’t agree with this at all. Siciliians are a high tier 1v1 civ. They have a powerful scout rush and crush archer civs in the late game with Cavaliers that eat 70 arbalest arrows (FU paladins eat 60) and resist pikes/halbs.
I will concede that they struggle in team games though since they lack FU archer line and their cavaliers don’t stand up to FU paladins head to head. They have Siege Ram / Siege Onager with Siege Engineers though so it’s not like they have 0 options.
Your suggestion for lessened bonus damage for siege units was already tried when they were released. It was removed at lightning speed because it was OP in mangonel wars.
Giving Serjeants a repair function might atone for their high cost, but I disagree about you thumb ring argument. Sicilians don’t have third tier archer armor so it balances out in my opinion. The point is that you should have some sort of advantage. If you give a civ and advantage, and then take off any reason to use said advantage, it’s not even an advantage at that point.
Also, the skirm thing like, come on, don’t tell me they can’t be easily trashed by a plethora of units, especially with the lack of third tier armor.
That is the only time they shine, both their early game and late game are weak. You couldn’t argue that they’re a strong flank pick, nor pocket pick. You can’t even argue that they are a great 1v1 pick, when at the end of the day, their knights are still default. What people fail to see is that this advantage sounds powerful, but it doesn’t really matter when Franks up time is faster, when Berbers cost less, and when Bulgarians have increased attack speed.
First off, please. Sicilians are top 5 worst win rates in both 1v1 and team games.
Second, Hauberk cav will NEVER be comparable to a full, even default paladin, let alone specific civ paladins.
Really, think, what is the Sicilians most powerful unit? Certainly doesn’t compare with most civs, not even Byzantines, which I also believe are in a dire need of a buff.
Hauberk cav will never be comparable to 40 hp and 2 damage, even with 1 more armor and pierce armor.
hauberk cavalier perform equally or even better against fu arbs and halberds as frank paladins.
That’s just fact. Plus they even go down slower to the counter units, which is also a soft factor.
Plus with first crusade they are also conversion resistant.
It’s also cheaper and faster to research than the paladin upgrade.
First of all, Winrates aren’t all to meassure balance, a civ can has low winrates and pickrates yet have unfair and bad mechanics and units (War Wagon in castle age, Flemish revolution, and yess this cavalier).
Second, you seem to not understand, there’s no point comapring both because even ordinary paladins are always better, but ask, how many times you can go paladin in 1v1, if you do, then you are clearly in a winning position, or losing because of the investment, which is long and very expensive, now Hauberk,is cheaper and faster to research.
Third, the Sicilians strongest unit can’t be a cavalry unit because they are an Infantry civ pushed to go for Infantry, the Serjeant, which is the UU, can’t be used because the OP cavalier exists.
Not It can’t, but you also gain an unit that is better, by a colossal margin, to other cavaliers (Bulgarian and Malian cavalier are ofc better, but player at least botter to make other units to deal with halbs, sicilian cavalier can just run over them). Also being almost inmune to conversions
First off, no. Hauberk cav, especially in team games, is not compare able to paladins.
In pro play, they are not the most picked civ by far, and even at high elo, their win rate is nothing to awe over.
As for your final remark… Really? The civ is unique because of such an interesting gaming element, I don’t see a reason for a massive overhaul, especially seeing as their win rates and general strength is laughable.
Maybe not franks paladins, but against normal paladins with arb support it’s pretty equal.
Plus you get passively a resistance against the indian paladin counter pick.
Oh and then why the Khmer Battle Elephants and Imperial Camels were nerfed, because while not being unstoppable in 1v1, they were incredibly oppressive in TGs.
Sicilian Cavaliers aren’t OP at TG but they are in 1v1, especially vs Aztecs, Vietnamese, etc…
Something being OP at one setting (Either 1v1 or TG) has to be adressed somehow.
In pro play, Neither Burmese or Saracens were picked or got a high winrate, yet the archer bonus vs buildings and the arambai stats were removed and nerfed because being OP at certain situations, same for Leitis pre nerf, despite Lithuanians not being overpicked or with High Winrate.
See a theme here?
They are not high tier 1v1 civ. Their lack of variety and solid econ bonuses prevent them from having a great start or finish to a game.
Also, the fact that they tank 10 more shots is susceptible, since they deal less damage than paladins, meaning that they won’t be better against arbs than paladins.
They are powerful at 1v1 if they make it to their strengths, which is easier said than done.
