Sicilians are on the broken side

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

I think Liereyy was talking about this a few days ago, Sicilians got way overbuffed.

The core issue with them is that they have the widest tech tree in the game (beating Byzantines at this point), AND most of their units beat their counter units too decisively.

Even other pros, like DauT, have admitted that they are “broken in some matchups” (and just generically “strong” in most of the remaining ones).

Their only flaw is a lack of an eco bonus before Castle Age, but even then, with the wall meta, that’s not very relevant and means that you as the opponent of the Sicilians MUST do damage before Castle age, which is very map- and player-dependent, and overall, it’s not something entirely under your control (meaning that it’s a mix of luck & opponent making mistakes & you hitting good timings whether you find any Feudal damage).

More specifically, the opponent can make some of the following units vs the Sicilians, but all have counters:

  1. Skirms? Sicilians can just make their own Skirms and outtrade you due to dmg reduction. At this point, I think only Byzantine Skirms make sense vs Sicilian Skirms, and with any other civ, if you see Sicilians making Skirms, you should do some unit other than Skirms to counter them.

  2. Pikes are a no-go vs Sicilian Knights due to their dmg resistance, and Monks only work in early Castle Age vs small numbers. Sicilian Knight all-in in early Castle, if the Sicilian player is even slightly ahead, is very hard to stop.

  3. the Sicilian player can also aggressively go Crossbows in Castle Age, and its natural counter unit, Skirms, does less bonus dmg. Skirms doing less bonus dmg to Crossbows is actually significant and it takes noticeably more hits to kill a Sicilian Crossbow than a generic Crossbow (didn’t do the math, but intuitively based on ingame observations about +40% hits required). Sicilian Crossbows are surprisingly good, and also a long-term viable unit due to Arbalest upgrade. Likewise, the lack of last armor is more or less offset by the dmg resistance, and though the lack of Thumb Ring means it’s not a viable unit in super late Imperial age, it’s “good enough” to matter for most of the game (let’s say it’s good roughly until ~50 min into the game, and after, you can probably transition out of it).

  4. Sicilians have FU Halbs who take less dmg from Skirmishers (Halb + Siege Ram is an above average comp for them compared to generic Halb + Siege ram).

  5. The unique unit, particularly the Elite upgrade is (in my opinion) a bit too good. 4 + 4 Pierce armor is nuts and makes it very resilient and allows for a good flood.

  6. Of course the big elephant in the room is Hauberk Cavalier, who is a hard counter to all Archer civs (Britons, Ethiopians), but also to Meso civs who just die to it.

  7. Although until early Castle, Sicilians lack an eco bonus, the extra +100 stone gives you the option to go for a 4 TC boom (remember that above all, TC is a defensive building), or do Donjon defense on gold in Feudal age + 2 TC boom right after. The Farm bonus also kicks in after a while and translates to some wood savings at around ~30 min, which though not as impactful as some of the more early game bonuses (say Franks) is a good bonus nonetheless.

Anyway, the core issue is that Sicilians army composition is too strong. The direct comparison for them would be Byzantines, who lack an eco bonus and compensate for this with an (allegedly) wide tech tree. Sicilians need to have some unit that they are not allowed to play given the (very strong) bonus of military units having damage resistance. Currently, they can play infantry (full Barracks), Archers (Arbalest with Bracer and dmg resistance), Knights (one of the better Knight civs in the game), rly good Siege workshop. Really you can’t go wrong with ANY opening as Sicilians, they only lack Bombard Cannon to be able to do anything.

My proposal would be to tone down their Archery Range (they are an “infantry & cavalry civ” after all), some ideas would be:

a) remove Bracer
b) remove Arbalest upgrade
c) remove 2nd archer armor (making them similar to Burmese)
d) Archery Range units excluded from dmg reduction bonus.

This way, there would be more windows to punish Sicilians, currently, if you haven’t done any damage to them by, say, minute 25, they can make any unit and outvalue anything you make always.

4 Likes
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I’m not sure sicilians are OP, but I really feel that they’re a silly and unfun design, you are basically encouraged to bring them into spots where they’re completely uncounterable for most civs, so if you manage to do that you win, else you die.

Which is just not funny, counter units exist for a reason and designing a civ around the concept of denying the possibility of going for counter units is just bad design IMHO, it’s not just an issue of the last buff (even ef hauberk is the final nail in the coffin), it’s a core issue they have since their release.

I would like to see counter units bonus reduced/removed alongside with first crusade with some compensation in exchange

5 Likes
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I think bonus damage reduction is only strong for Scout line and Knight. Archers have many other counter other than Skirms like siege or mass knight or eagle.

Their UU is still too slow and most civ have counter like Cav archer or Paladin or UU like Jaguars or Cataphract. Maybe exception is Mayans but it is more of their own issue that Huskarls counter Mayans more brutally.

I think the conversion resistance of first crusade should be removed. Their Cavaliers already trade well against everything except Paladin and some UU and we should leave Monks as viable counter for civ without Paladin or other counter.
Also bonus damage reduction can be nerfed in Feudal to prevent their scout to win against spearman.

2 Likes
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? No thumbring, no last archer armor, no camels, no hussar, no bbc. There is actually a lot of civs with more tech tree options.

But irrespective of that arguing they got overbuffed is a fair point. I wouldn’t even say they are too strong in general. Rather I think they are too strong in certain matchups, most notably against civs that tend to arb/halb.

Imo the addition of hauberk was a bad idea to begin and giving them thumbring and last archer armor would have been better. But since I don’t they their UT is gonna be replaced again just make it +1/+1 instead of +1/+2 and everything is fine.

4 Likes
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Would liek to see a first crusade remake.

  1. Change flemish Revolution to something like first crusade scaling with TCS to spawn them. Makes much more sense sin e revolutionary should be peasant from town centers. Plus like tartar Every new tc build spawns 2 revolutionary.

  2. Change first crusade to spawn from donjons and castles. And make it every new donhon build spawns a serjeant, every castle 2 serjeant, like tartars sheep.

Hauberk is fineish in imp. Paladins are still better despite the bonus, dmasge resistance and extra pierce armor as was shown by spirit of the laws Video.

Yes we could nerf Hauberk to 1 pierce, and we propably should, liek we should revert Burmese Elefant rams armor and find a different way to buff Burmese IMO.

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They could also nerf sicilians by making it so their bonus damage reduction only applies to gold units, not counter units. That way pikes and skirms are not stronger than any other civ’s

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The thing with the hauberk is that it is so strong against arche civs, but basically useless against cav civs.
That leads to sicilians being extremely strong against archer civs but weak against cav civs.

In general the reduced bonus damage is just silly. I don’t know why this is implemented. The game is designed around countering the enemy. That’s the main concept of the game.
I mean ok, if they want a civ for noobs that hate being countered… fine. But then this civ should be only about that, missing other key things and be terrible in a competitive setup.
And they need to communicate that this civ is for noobs who don’t like being countered. But it’s a problem if this is competitive, cause the whole competition is playing with the counters and try to get an advantage there, outsmarting the opponent.

Ofc you can argue that counter strategy is even more influential than unit counters, and that’s true. But why unnecessarily reduce the depth of the game in a competitive setting.
New civs are supposed to implement new mechanics to the game, not nerfing key mechanics that made the game it is. And loved because of how well implemented these counter mechanics are.

I think Sicilians could play way more around the serjeant, if they were given a good ranged support unit.
Also probably the current malian gold bonus would be way better with sicilians so they could sustain serjeant + support longer. I think this could be a way to go.
We already had a lot of cavalry civs with the expansions, why not making the sicilians designed around serjeant + ranged support? It would be a very cool new comp to play with.

They could have a wide variety of ranged units with bonusses, like their archery range units could have +1 atk (but missing the 2 last armor upgrades) and/or some bonusses to their siege units (scorps + mangonels). Like gold cost reduction for scorpions + mangonels.

This would be interesting to play with, something new: Heavy armored infantry + ranged support.

I think this should be the way to go. More different mechanics and comps, and actually stronger counter mechanics also.I’d like to see even more lategame variety and army comps in the game, instead of going more and more into “uncounterable” units:

Lith: Leitis
Bulgarians: Konnik
Tatars: Kehik + super strong cav archers
Sicilians: Resistance to counters
Burgundians: Super cheap Paladin upgrade and Coustilier (that has no counter with a mass advantage)
Poles: Szlachta Privileges

6 of the 8 DE civs have already broken the “counter game” with sicilians being top with a direct bonus.
I don’t get it.

Better make it like with Bohemians: Increase counter mechanics ! Give the civs special new counter abilities that allow them to make unique comps. Bohemians have better spears and their UU is a very good archer counter, that also can threaten enemy walls.
They have intersting new mechanics with the earlier chemistry, but it doesn’t breaks the game, as the standard counters are still working against them as intended.

I think this should in general be the way to go. Besides I rarely play bohemians cause it’s an arena civ and I ban arena, but in general I like the concept behind it. It’s way more sophisticated than the 6 other mentioned civs that somewhat break the “rules of countering”.

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You don’t only counter archers with skirms… Siege? Eagles? Cav? Own better archers?

Why do you only counter halb siege with skirms?

Elite tech is mother expensive, serjeants are overly expensive and slow.

About the only issue with sicilians is Vs archer civs and if they’re allowed to get ahead. Which they shouldn’t since they have such a poor eco initially. It takes longer than you said for the eco to kick in.

Donjons can be avoided, or is the player somehow able to cover their entire base in donjons and still have the Res to boom and build an army… along with all the wood needed for 4 TCs

I really don’t see how you think lack of BBC, camels, terrible horse archers (no TR, armour or HCA) and no HC somehow equates to better than byz

Same for the huge discount on byz units + huge discount on Imperial age somehow not being an eco bonus…

And lastly you can still use counter units and they are still cost effective, sicilians had literally one of the lowest winrates pre buff yet people were already saying they’re OP simply because they don’t understand them…

2 Likes
11

Hauberk +1/+1 and -33% bonus damage is reasonable maybe.

It might be still op, but it’s worth a try to reduce to that first.

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Either -33% bonus damage or reduce building speed is a good nerf. I don’t think Hauberk is the main issue tbh (where bonus damage IS the main issue)

Edit: wait noone even want to bother with the insane +100% castle speed?

2 Likes
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Just compare it with huns and Tarkans:

  • Marauders is saved
  • Hauberk is cheaper than elite Tarkans
  • Hauberk applies to kts, your existing units you make upon hitting castle age anyway
  • Cavalier with Hauberk can’t be countered by halbs

I agree that in teamgames it’s not op, because franks, huns, persians have both a significantly better scout rush and eco.
But in 1v1s, once it gets to the stage, Hauberk is op.

And to compare it to goth again, goth have to switch from xbow or kt play to infantry play.
Then they also kill almost all.
But it’s harder to get there.

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oh yeah, good spot. The +100% Castle drop speed basically means that any Castle =/= DauT Castle. You can run in 15 vills under Crossbow fire and, if you’re Sicilians, turn a horrible play into a clutch forward into gg (for the opponent).

I think this bonus should be outright removed, any form of % boost to Castle building speed is bad balancing just because of how forward Castles work.

As compensation give them +400% faster building Mills or start with a free University or w/e but not faster castles.

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They can tho. They are just better than Palas against those

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It is difficult to get to Hauberk. If you check the Liererry game, it’s the bonus damage (which hurts skrim fight) and insane castle drop that kills, not Hauberk. In particular Hauberk is not that effective in 1v1 games imo.

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very often, massing Halbs vs Paladin play ‘just barely’ allows you to survive. This is because Halbs need a lot of upgrades and you don’t mass them too early. It’s generally a close thing when a generic cav civ assaults with Cavalier/Paladin in early Imp and another generic civ defends with Halbs. It can go either way.

With Sicilians, you not only deal with a (vs Halbs) better version than Paladin, but it comes out earlier, too (less resources and tech research time).

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I think you’re overestimating the bonus damage resistance. Pikes are still a counter for knights, they just do 11 bonus damage instead of 22. For comparison, Flemish Militia and Kamayuk both do 8 bonus damage to cav, and still hard counter it (they do attack faster, but are more expensive than pikes).

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Halb upgrades is actually pretty cheap (300F 600G) compared to cavs.

Also I think mass pikes are becoming meta as well?

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Eh, its still just barely better than Frankish Paladins who have a way better early game. Halbs still pretty much a counter to your cavaliers

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It’s not. If you have 35 farmers, 20 gold miners and a castle, you can click +4 and hauberk right away, and even your castle age kts have 8 pa.

Both -50% bonus damage and Hauberk is over the top on it’s own, but in singery it’s ridiculous.

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Nah Hauberk alone wouldnt be that good and the resistance wasnt that good alone either

1 Like