So basically sicilians are an average civ in winrates, not anywhere nera hindustanis, britons, Franks, chinese, burgubdians, or the godlike gurjaras, bit somehow they got a heavy Nerf without any compensation, this is, a dare to say, unprecedented
Sicilians Nerf is absurd in this state, especially considering gurjaras are getting tweaked, if not buffed, when they needed heavy nerfs, and require at least a bit of compensation imho
Damage bonus reduction was already irrelevant for infantry basically and now It’s even worse, and with cavalier being weaker, at least UU should be cost effective no for once
My proposal:
Serjeants -10/15 res cost, being Food, Gold, or a split
Serjeant elitè cost upgrade reduced to 1600 total or so
That said I think it would be better if all of these were covered in the PUP thread (for now). I was just commenting in another thread that we don’t need to make a dedicated thread for every single change in the PUP when most of these implications and remedies are covered there.
I think for a huge patch a unique thread serve no purpose, it spreads the conversation too much and you have like 30 people talking about 5 different buff/Nerf and what happens is that nothing is clear
Technically only 2 civs remained unchanged - Bulgarians and Spanish.
On topic, I fully support Serjeant buff. Sicilians already seem to be boring old version of Teutons to me. And now it is even more. Teutons UU is not used that much and there is no civ that depends on infantry UU that much (for example Mangudai or Ratha or CHK or Plumed). Maybe we can make Serjeant that one. I’ll go even further to the cost 50f/30g, total 15 cost reduction.
Edit: Melee UU are way less common in general. But Serjeant is the only one that can be massed from Feudal. Their first Crusade UT is holding them back. We should change it to better Serjeant stats instead of instant spawn.
That’s fair, but when everyone thinks that we get a couple dozen threads within a few days that either have crazy amounts of overlap or just address minor issues that are better understood within a broader context.
TBF this is one of the better ones, but even here, I think most people will agree with a sentence or too and move, on, or quibble about some minor point that veers off topic.
give them buff to Serjeant as ultra late game go-to unit, and maybe small buff to Donjons (+2 arrows in Imperial as opposed to +1 or something like that idk) and they are fine.
Serjeant could use -5/-10g not sure which one, I’m not an infantry expert, but basically something that makes them spammable after your big wave of Hauberk Cavaliers is gone.
Give serjeants in castle age +2 attack, and +1 for elite serjeant, reduce elite cost to 950f, remove free serjeants from first crusade, replace it with serjeants able to build castles, then finally we will see serjeants being used.
I think food reduction is best. I am an infantry expert so I can speak with utmost certainty (I’m kidding)
But the food reduction will have the bigger impact and make them more viable earlier.
Wood reduction on donjon is also good. But they go hand in hand, a buff to serjeants makes their production building more appealing. A buff to donjons makes serjeants slightly more appealing.
I still think donjons should count towards feudal building count for aging. So you can completely skip barracks line altogether if need be.without having to build a market. Then the existence of the donjon becomes an eco buff to the civ as well.
This also gives Sicilians more uniqueness, to try steer them away from being another knight only civ
Giving armor to serjeant is overkill. I think hauberk cavalier >serjeant in most cases. Thats why I prefer to remove hauberk instead of lowering resistance to bonus dmg. Serjeant can be then used more vs xbow while knights are easier for archer civs.
Sicilians is quite similar to teutons to certain extent, except with bonus dmg resistance. Both civs unit are resistant to monks. Knight and slow UU have high armor and solid siege. Lowering bonus dmg seems to make sicilians less unique.
Sicilians may get their first UT changed. The first UT intends to help spamming serjeant. But one time effect seems lame. Perhaps change to donjons train serjeants 80% faster. Reducing the cost of serjeant and increase its atk seems nice buff as well
I think the nerf happened because GL said Sicilians were OP in RBW 5 and kept picking and winning with them in every match. It also changed Sicilians from an infantry civ to a pure cavalry civ. I think this change is good, but it definitely needs to be compensated elsewhere.
This is good, it makes them more spammable. I would like +1 Attack and +1 melee armor for serjeants since Sicilians now have to rely on this unit for their power spike.
The issue with this is that Serjeants are too slow. They already only take 2 damage from arbs. They get kited too easily. Sicilians cannot be expected to use Serjeants against ranged units. If you give them more speed, then they would be OP.
I wonder what changes to Serjeant people would want, the unit is already tanky through pretty massive armor. I wouldn’t want First Crusade to be a ‘you are now against an unkillable mass that runs under castles and town centers and just rushes those down’. A cost reduction might be fine though, and also the Elite upgrade to cost less?
Totally agree that that was uncalled for. There was just no need to reduce the bonus damage resistence that much. The winrate for Sicilians is average, they have no real eco bonus to speak off aside from their +100 stone which is in some cases almost negligible.
Not sure if buffing serjeants would help though for the reasons the others have listed below.
Here a calculation what would happen if you removed the instant Serjeants from First Crusade.
First Crusade gives you 35 Serjeants with 5 TCs and on top a Faith duplicate for 900 ressources.
From my calculations when you reduce the price of Serjeant by 10 ressources (85 total) and removed free 35 Serjeants from first crusade you would need to create 243 Serjeants to break even in cost.
Calculation:
35 Serjeants from First Crusade = 900 ressources
208 more Serjeants = +19760 resources (208x95)
= total 20660 ressources for 243 Serjeants
If no first crusade Serjeant spawn and you reduced the Serjeant price by only 10 ressources
243 Serjeants = 20655 resources (243*85)
So you need to create insane 243 Serjeants before breaking even and on top you don’t have that power spike of instant 35 Serjeants which is very helpful actually.
So if anyone suggests to remove the cheap instant spawn of Serjeants from first Crusade come up with a VERY strong buff to sicilians to not make this a massive nerf
Even if you reduce Serjeant price by 20 ressources you would still need to create 122 Serjeants before you break even.
Reduce Serjeant price by 30 ressources and it still needs 81 to break even. And these 65 ressources are like supplies Militia line price
.
All these numbers are late imperial. No one creates 243 or 122 Serjeants before mid to late Imperial age. And even the 81 would probably happen in Imperial age if you go full Serjeant.
And as we know early buffs are worth a lot more than late buffs. Removing the instant spawn would mean a massive nerf to the civ which has average win rate.