But less distinct from TK. I still think just reducing their cost is a good idea with the removal of 35 free spawn from First Crusade.
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Cheaper, less HP, less melee armor, more pierce armor, less attack. Can build donjons.
There are a lot of differences.
And btw, sicilians donât have TKâŠ
Donât know, I think the unit wouldnât be as bad if the civ would have more tools to support it properly.
I think that is actually fine as it is. I still would prefer if the spawning wasnât from the TCs but from donjons instead but the idea of making that switch easier is actually quite nice. Lategame tech switches can be extremely long-lasting unnecessarily dragging out an already won game. I like the idea of having an accelerator for that specific switch.
As long as everybody knows about it and it isnât OP itâs absolutely fine and a nice deviation. Something truely unique.
Ofc you canât make counter units because that bonus is objectively too strong on Knights
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I disagree with the reddit post that you shouldnât make counter units against sic. But if you do, you need to make a lot more than usual.
Spearman line still counters sicilian knights, but just much less than they used to. 1 spear can only fear away 2 sic scouts, you need about 1.5 x as much pikes / halbs against sic knights/cavalier to get an somewhat advantageous trade.
And donât forget if you do that you will most likely have nothing in offense cause you need your whole eco to push this amount of counters out.
Iâve been trying to get better at playing Sicilians, and one thing I havenât been able to figure out is when to make Serjeants. Like what do they counter? Theyâre ok against many units, so versatile I guess, but thereâs no enemy unit that would prompt me to spam serjeants. Aside from First Crusade I just canât justify making a single one with that 35g price. Maybe they need bonus damage against something to clarify their role. They have fairly low attack. Theyâre mediocre against cavalry, infantry and archers, poor against siege, and useless against cavalry archers. Even against buildings and eagles they donât have nearly that Championâs bonus damage, while suffering from the same low speed.
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They are the ideal trash counter. So imagine you make a lot of knights or xbows and the opponent goes very heavily into the trash units. Then you could switch into serjeants which completely destroy pikes and skirms. (Against skirms you donât even need the last armor upgrade.)
So in theory they have a use itâs just that in a practical game itâs quite rare to have that situation.
When you make a lategame donjon rush you can use even little amount of serjeants to sit under the opponents TCs. The 4 pierce armor allows the unit to get âcost efficient tradesâ by just standing under TC fire. Itâs maybe not the most elegant form of damaging the opponent eco, but that kind of forced idle time is one of the few occasions where you get a guaranteed positive value from a normally âbadâ offensive play.
Also Serjeants are excellent against eagles.
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Thanks for the explanation. I suspect that Champions beat trash units more effectively for the cost, but I can see how Serjeants are good against all 3. That is an interesting point about forcing a TC garrison, Iâve heard of that strategy with Elite Skirmishers, but hadnât considered the Serjeant for it.
Iâm sure they win, but their 11 attack + 3 bonus makes Serjeants a weaker counter to Eagles than Champions with 13 attack + 8 bonus damage. Itâs enough to make up for the lower armor on Champs, not 1 for 1, but in numbers with the lower cost. For example 5 Mayan Eagles typically beat 3 Serjeants (285 resources), but they lose to 4 Champions (260 resources).
I guess thatâs my point about Serjeants, yes they can win fights, but there always seems to be a better unit for the job.
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Itâs the thing that Iâm saying for months.
Yes theyâre good, theyâre nice and so on, too bad nobody ever makes them at all. Not when you have First Crusade that can spawn them for 8f 17g, and even then, even pro players prefer knights (obviously).
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More ideal than Champion? I donât think so unless you have some extra stone to spare on Donjon.
As I told before, First Crusade and the ability of building Donjon make them more expensive than its combat performance.
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Yes, and I liked your proposed change to Serjeant and First Crusade in the other topic. Too bad weâre never going to see it.
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Thanks. I think Iâll make a new thread about Sicilians in general as KOTD is finishing up.
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Since the LotW civs have a lot of âone age earlierâ bonuses, I think they just wanted a civ that gets its UU in feudal age. But then they must have remembered they nerfed the Inca trush for a reason, so serjeants and donjons are both expensive as a result.
Now you would think donjons being cheaper and more starting stone would help incentivise that, but Sicilians also happen to have a TC and castle bonus, + a strong incentive to get to 5 TC, so that additional stone is often spent for that.
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Thatâs dumb. First how do you tell for sure a game is already won, second this tech clearly has an impact on both even games and games where the Sicilian player is losing. This being said the idea to make it involve donjons is good, so they could make it so that serjeants built from donjons specifically are cheaper/faster to train.
The upgrade costs are just too high that it can be a game changer move. Usually you would go for the militia line in that situation which has way less gold cost. So teching into serjeant only makes sense if you can continue producing them, probably even make a donjon rush.
I think thatâs just the natural thing. I never understood why you need to make TCs for it. Itâs an agressive move and totally weird that offensive units spawn from eco buildings. That doesnât make sense and could be totally OP if the civ had any chance to get away with a 5 TC boom approach. (And it was OP on arena before the nerf.)
I think itâs the better idea if the tech âempowersâ an donjon rush instead of encouraging it, cause then you would have already commited to your offensive strategy. Also it would give the opponent some more time to prepare a seizable defence as he would know itâs comming and potentially even about when.
Because that is AoE3 mechanics and that is how it works there.
And devs thought it would be good to implement that mechanic from a game that died right a the beginning to a game that survived more than 20 years? Have they ever thought about that maybe this was one of the reasonings aoe3 failed?
MaybeâŠmaybe not. No knowledge on AoE3 other than that it is super unpopular compared to AoE2 and I never like it.
Apparently, yes.
Never knew AoE3 sucked that bad back in 2005-2010. AoE2 was not 22+ years old back then. Or are you indicating DE?
I havenât looked in the stats, but I tried AOE3 and was annoyed by it pretty much like everybody else I knew. We all continued to play AOE2 then cause it was just the better game in our eyes.
And when I came back playing I saw that Age 2 was still there but Age3 not so I concluded the game failed in comparison.
There also was no age 4 at that time which is also an indicator of the last game must have been a fail.
Yay but Sicilians are a hard counter to Byzantines who rely on counter units