Vikings seem to be a hard counter to sicilians. of 5 matches between these civs, Vikings won 4.
I think that’s understandable as Vikings with their insane eco have multiple options to not let sicilians come to the situation when they control the game. Vikings just have the better eco overall.
It’s funny cause Vikings overall don’t have that kind of high power as they used to.
Without the matches agains Vikings Sicilians are 8-8 in the tourney.
But with these matches against Vikings Sicilians “only” have a 43 % winrate. (That’s actually higher than Khmer’s 30% winrate in 23 matches played.)
I think the stats from kotd show that sicilians are in a “solid” spot when it comes to pro play. (And don’t forget Sicilians are actually not a typical open map civ, they are actually way better on maps like arena)
Disagree here. I think sicilians are way better on open maps. First of all gold cav units arent great here and the best way to play sicilians is actually using these bc of two bonuses. On arena halbs perform even good vs sicilian cavalier. Also your opponent has a civ win if playing something like teutons or bohemians. Even vs some midtier civs civs like franks, vikings, celts, chinese, slavs you have quite a bad matchup.
Sicilians have good eco for arena true but eco alone doesn’t make for a good arena civ.
Really? ^^
Sicilians have bonusses to basically everything important for a good arena civ. The only thing they miss for that Map is BBC.
Let me summarise:
a) Scout cavalry resist bonus damage. Very important for the fight over the relics in the midgame
b) Strong boom. Maybe not the most important factor in arena I admit (outside of Poles which seem currently totally OP in that Map). But you shouldn’t underestimate it, sicilians actually have one of the best booms in the game and that definetely helps.
c) Bonus damage resitance. Actually enables the civ to actually play the knight line as their knights are even better against equal numbers of counter units than normal ones.
d) Conversion Resistance with first crusade. Extremely important against monk rushes.
e) super-fast castle build time. Helps both in dropping castles but also to defend against enemy castle drops as your castles just go up so much faster
f) solid siege. They only miss BBC. Whilst many say that bbc is the best and most important siege in arena, sicilians actually have (again) bonus damage resistand light cav that can easily snipe opponent bbc and trebs very efficiently.
g) strong trash. As a lot of the damage trash deals to other trash is actually bonus damage sicilians have quite strong trash units in comparison. In a map with very limited stone and gold this is actually quite handy
h) first crusade + donjon rush. Offers a unique alternative win condition for the civ.
Thing is besides sic have that many tools, it’s still a lot to the “top” arena civs. Also the mediocre monastery makes the civ somewhat predictable in the midgame (sic don’t play a monk rush, which allows the opponent for way more greedy approaches (as long as a castle drop is out of the picture)).
Sic also don’t have any kind of castle age power unit like many other of the “top dogs”.
But also stats show with all the different bonusses sic have to their disposal they are actually a very solid pick on arena:
a)
It’s good, but spearmen still trade very effectively against Sicillian Scouts and it doesn’t help their Monks crucially. Overall nice, but something like Lithuanians TB + Faster moving spears is better
b)
The farming and tc bonus is decent as it saves some villager seconds and longterm wood, but you’re greatly overstating how good it makes their boom, Teutons save just as much Wood as Sicillians in the long term and can get their farms up earlier, Slavs and Poles outright get greater quantities of food, Britons have 300-400 extra wood for greedy boom strategies, etc. I could go on. Sicillians are still better than average for multiple TC booming, but they are hardly exceptional in this regard.
c) .
Sicillian Heavy Cav is still cost effectively beaten by the Spearman line (Pikes for Knight, Halbs for Cavaliers respectivelly) and like all other Knights can’t effectively use their mobility on Arena to raid and guarantee good engagements. This is especially bad against Civs that possess strong Infantry or Cavaliers/Paladins of their own (Like Teutons, Bulgarians) as they can just overwhelm their Sicillian counterparts with sheer greater strength. They’re still great though in certain matchups, mainly against Archer that have to rely on Halb for their counter cav
d)
Not a relevant application for First Crusade as literally just a Castle by itself is enough to stop a Monk Rush, the conversion resistance from the tech is mainly relevant for protecting things like Siege Onagers in Imp.
e)
Is very nice for the reasons you stated, but Sicillians lack a great UU to spam for aggressive drops unlike Spanish. It limits what would otherwise be a completely busted strategy for the Sicllians.
f)
Though their tech tree is good, their Siege is completely generic and lacks any bonuses to assist them outside the Farm one, It’s generally better to have Bombards over Heavy Scorp, SO or SE due to it being a good easy to tech into early-Imp offensive tool and counter siege option.
I also feel you are overstating their Light Cav as it is completely generic outside of the bonus damage resistance (rendering them weak against stronger generic melee options, Arbalesters + HCA), and even with it they’re still killed quickly by Halbs. It’s hardly an incredibly strong counter siege option, especially when compared to bombards
g)
No disputes here, Sicillian Trash and Counter Trash are both very strong.
h)
It’s okay, but not great, as Serjeants are not the most amazing thing in the universe and are very easily taken advantage by the strong ranged units that tend to dominate the Arena meta. They also don’t trade as effectively as you might think against generic Champions. It’s mainly strong when unexpected
I would say you overvalued it, Sicillians have some nice generic bonuses and cool tricks up their sleeves but can’t compare in terms of sheer overall power when it comes to unit comps, economy, kinds of aggressive play they can make, etc. When compared to S tiers like Teutons or Malay. I would say they’re Mid A - High Bish in terms of overall ranking and that the statistics reflect their strength accurately.
Halberdier is okay but Pikeman isn’t enough to beat Sicilians Knight in majority of situations. Going straight up Knight against Sicilians Knight is better than Pikeman most of the time. Normally, Pikeman kill Knight in 5-6 hits while Sicilians Knight tank 10 hit which is equal to twice as HP. 15 Pikeman can kill 10 generic Knight but Sicilians Knight simply beat 15 Pikeman and can retreat and heal themselves. Sicilians Knight is indisputably OP and need nerf. I propose to decrease 50% bonus damage absorbing to 40%. 50% is huge bonus and definitely need nerf.
I would change the whole thing to -25% bonus damage received, +33 % bonus damage inflicted.
I think this is the way better approah as it would actually revard good unit choices for the civ instead of making it harder for the opponent to counter your unit choice (and therefore indirectly “revard” poor unit choices).
In first glance, it seems very small change but it decrease Pikeman killing Knight in 10 hits to 8 hits. It is like 20% hp reduction. It is big chance. You should look as 50% attack to 60% attack which mean 20% more attack taken from bonus attack. Spear-line rely on most bonus attack rather than their base attack, thus it is like 20% more damage taken. I stretched it a little but in short it is big chance and it must.
Very logical idea I think. Buffing Sicilians different way instead of current ruining counter mechanic with huge 50% bonus attack reduction is more solid approach.
You assume that they have the attack upgrades researched. Which isnt a given. Especially since if you’re running pikes you’re far more concerned about the bonus damage anyway. Which bs attack upgrades don’t impact.
Yes, most of the time, both side research only 2 armor upgrades (Knight has 2+2 armor) and only 1 attack upgrade (Pike has 4+1 attack) which mean that Pike give only 1 damage to Knight from its base attack, thus decreasing 50% damage reduction to 40% means that pike now give 60% attack instead of current 50% which is +20% more damage delivery.
I think the best way is just move this bonus to First Crusade replacing the 35 Serjeants spawn. Conversion resistance can stay. So First Crusade would be ultimate invisible defensive technology. You can never see this on units stats in the UI but will always work in practice. Serjeant cost reduced from 60f/355 → 50f/30g as no more 35 Serjeants at the cost 10.
I wish I could make a whole thread about this. But I’m not getting the time. Here is some additional bonus suggestions to compensate the missing civ bonus.
Another universal military bonus - All military units upgrade cost 15% cheap.
Similar universal military bonus - All military units upgrade cost 25% cheap on food.
An infantry bonus - Free armor for infantry. Indirectly buffing Serjeants too.
Another infantry bonus - Free Squires and Arson. This will be very weak bonus tbh.
Infantry and Cavalry bonus - Supplies and Bloodlines cost no gold.
Free Husbandry. Or Remove Husbandry from tech tree but Squires also affect cavalry.
Finally Farm bonus swap with Franks. Franks berry bonus can stay at 15% as I’m not removing the bonus completely. I personally think this will be a very good way to balance Sicilians. Not so sure about Franks though.
Yes that’s a nice one. Although you don’t always see spears. Oftentimes it’s just scouts bc they have mobility and spears get easily converted. If you go for spears you usually do a lot and then even sicilian scouts cant engage. But it does indeed help!
Well boom certainly is an important factor on arena but sicilians dont have the greatest units and that’s the second important part. Also it’s not that they’d have the strongest booms. It’s definitely very good though.
Still loses hard to halbedier. You don’t usually have the res to mass large amounts of knights on your way to imp while pikes are cheap. On open maps you can raid, take out small groups of halbs and use your mobility. That likely won’t work on arena. I mean you can try bait your opponent and switch into first crusade or so.
Against a fast monk rush that doesn’t make sense. Your opponent will have monks before you have start building castle and that tech isnt really affordable at that point. Also you don’t have tcs for serjeants here. Where it does help is if your opponent goes for later monks with castle and fast imp.
Surely a good bonus for arena.
Bbc isn’t only the most important siege unit it is the most important unit on arena besides monks I guess. They still do have good siege and can go for halb SO but they don’t really have bonuses for any of these units. Still good option in some matchup (khmer, chinese and so on).
True but only really in trash fights. I mean nobody is gonna make skirm vs you as sicilians. If you go arb they go arb themselves or siege or whatever. Light cav will still melt to halb so that won’t be enough to snipe siege even with that bonus.
Helpful but not decisive.
In summary, yes they have some nice stuff going for them and they should by no means a bad civ but also not a top one. They don’t really excel in anything apart from countering archers. However if you play them smart you certainly can make them work (in most matchups at least I guess because in some cases you straight up die in imp). For that reason the civ has to be explored more for arena imo (like poles for instance).
Yeah that’s actually a curious case indeed.
As I don’t play arena myself I don’t have any first-hand experience with it.
But I never expected Poles to be that great in arena. I don’t think it offers that much besides the insane eco or am I wrong with that? Which other bonusses could explain that insane arena winrate?
I guess it’s because poles are a bit of a weird civ and it’s people don’t know yet to play vs them. But not sure myself. Maybe because they do have some sort of flexibility. Like with that farming and stone/gold bonus you can execute pretty strong forward castle early imp arb bbc push. Also obuch is insane in melee fights and the winged hussar is strong when you use for fighting instead of raiding purposes which is more common on arena. The civ still dies hard to ca civs or civs with archer uu. That makes them feel a bit weird as you have bad civ matchups vs some of the otherwise worst arena civs like huns or tartars.
Also winrates on arena you cant really rely on. There is even people on high level that have little clue about how to play the map (aside from all the other reasons why looking at winrates isnt generally super telling).
There isn’t as much stone in arena. It also don’t allows you to make castle drops faster actually.
But I also included that in my statement that the only thing I think can be pulled out as a reasoning is
the insane eco of the poles. Besides I think that the folwark indeed plays the main role there.
I’m not so sure about that actually. Surely that unit is strong, but I don’t think that alone can lead to such a high winrate.