I keep hearing this thing. But it’s a LIE.
A big one.
Sicilian units are not resistant to monks, not until you build a castle and spend 300F 600G.
This a HUGE difference when you go for a knight rush in early Castle, because clearly in that case you can’t afford a Castle and 900res spent on a useless tech when you need to pump out knights.
And during castle age, while you might have a castle ready then, you’d rather use those 900 res to keep booming and spamming more knights, not to make some Serjeant with zero infantry upgrades. When you go to imperial, you need 300F 300G for cavalier, plus the smith armor, plus the Hauberk tech, again you wouldn’t waste 900res for that.
So in the end, if a Sicilian player goes full knights, there are like 90% chances he/she would never, ever research First Crusade, and this means no conversion resistance ever.
So I’m asking you (you all, not AbuzzJam) to stop spreading this LIE, please.
Agree. They don’t come with a built in monk resistance like teutons (or bengalis with their elefants…). It costs a lot of investment and occurs late in the game in imp/post-imp if anything.
The reduced Bonus Damage nerf now makes Sicilian Cavaliers weaker against Halbs than FU Paladins. This is because they deal less damage than Paladins and therefore need 1 more hit.
If my calculations are correct a Sicilian Cavalier survives a 1v1 fight with a Fu Halb with 64/140 HP and can’t fight a 2nd one.
A regular FU Paladin wins a fight against a FU Halb with 108/180 HP and can beat a 2nd Halb with 36 HP left. That is because a Paladin only takes 4 hits to kill the Halberdier while a Cavalier takes 5. That gives a Halb only time to land 2 hits on the Paladin while the Sicilian Cavalier takes 3 hits.
Before the nerf when the bonus damage reduction was 50% Cavaliers could tank 7 hits and that way they could also survive 2 Halbs in a row like a Paladin. But these times are gone with the nerf.
So with the 33% bonus reduction this makes them now weaker than regular FU Paladins in pretty much all matchups. I guess given the cheaper price and less time to research that is probably fine but like others said I think Sicilians need a buff to keep them on their win rates.
Here is a link to a reddit post where some tests were done before the PUP nerf. It shows that Sicilian Cavaliers were slightly weaker against Archers than Paladins, slightly stronger against Camels (probalby not any more) and considerably weaker against Champions, Cavaliers and Light Cav.
I would also suggest 10-15 less ressource cost for Serjeant or an attack buff or speed buff from 0.9 to 0.95 if you want to keep the price.
This is fine.
Knight line needed the nerf. The issue wasn’t necessarily only halbs anyway. It was non halb civs(Aztecs) and counter reliant civs(byz), or the lower tier stuff like Koreans that can’t necessarily match sicilians with power units and don’t have the eco boosting them like higher tier stuff
You did some great calculations and it helps.
But this isn’t how the game works. You aren’t factoring opportunity cost at all.
Those 35 serjeants need 4TCs, a castle and a UT. All of that in floating resources. Iaw you’re not getting returns on your investment until that UT arrives. This specifically creates massive lag, and a huge power dip.
Compare eagles. They are expensive, they use gold, but because the resources needed for them can be gained quickly they’re a very agile (in terms of economy) military choice, on top of their actual stats
Italians, Spanish etc have massive powerful late game compositions, but Aztecs with their (one of the worst) late games still easily beat both civs due to when their power comes in
So even a 20 Res reduction on serjeants (doesn’t come close to your math) is potentially so OP because you’ll get those few serjeants so soon that nothing can counter them, even if you’re losing thousands of Res down the line due to lack of crusade
Agreed, either cost reduction, or stats buff, but with the stats buff I would nerf 1st crusade.
Even if it is a power lag initially, in the right matchups with buffed serjeants it can create too much of a negative experience. (As we know from 50 serjeant crusade even though Sicilians were under performing)
They do actually save a lot of wood by castle age. They have a lot more to spend at a time when others wouldn’t
And as we know from Lith, you don’t need a consistent eco bonus to be strong, sicilians bonus damage resistance (currently) is still very good in the right matchups, in the same way Lith skirm/halb or relic damage helps them a lot even if their eco is done by then
Would they be though? What about from 0.9 to 0.95, so they can actually catch archers. Because currently with minor micro and or using terrain around you, serjeants are a fairly poor counter to archers, especially considering price.
Malians work because they cost dirt
How? the farm bonus literally doesn’t give you anything until around mid castle age in most games.
I’m considering Arabia with extended feudal
so in SOME cases they save wood. it isn’t guaranteed by any stretch.
This UT is still useful when playing against monks. Late game sicilians army is hard to counter.
Either way their eco/civ bonuses are loaded too heavily later into the game, even the stone means less earlier than it does later.
They still save wood regardless, in some cases it’s earlier, but in all cases it happens.
The faster TC construction is still an eco bonus, it is situational but it’s still an eco bonus. which should be removed in dark age anyway , so that any compensatory buffs can happen earlier without making nomad types even more lopsided
not disagreeing, but as you said, all their bonuses really only start in castle age. they need compensation elsewhere. the civ isn’t overperforming, it’s literally just a problem of their knights bc FC/Hauberk/Bonus Damage Reduction.
It’s random but what if donjons counted as barracks as well (and possibly archery ranges)?
i think that would be absolutely busted.
How would it counting as a barracks be busted though? Either way there needs to be some kind of compensation earlier in that thing
because you could basically tower rush with infantry to protect it from units getting underneath it. two towers with your starting stone (and a quick mine of 50 extra stone) to deny resources and apply pressure, start pumping out infantry, and overwhelm your opponent in early castle age with a flood of numbers. you don’t need to build other production buildings like other tower rushes. and you have a variety of infantry to suit your needs. want something cheap and you can throw away? militia. want something tankier? serjeants. want something to counter cav? spear line. want to clear up those archers? pop in the tower. and let arrows kill them.
having it as an archery range would be absolutely beyond busted.
Adjust TT
In the same way serjeants were trained slower from castles
And thus the maybe, but again. Increase TT.
Would it still be problematic if archers trained in 80sec?
Or if donjon could “only” produce spears or skirms, again with a TT malice
Or donjons count as barracks only in the state that you don’t need a barracks to build ranges and stables. The donjon doesn’t get the function of the barracks
what would the point be? seriously if you put that type of malice it basically becomes a novelty bonus instead of a real buff.
It scales with age, tweak TT malice, there’s many possibilities
The point is, the donjon currently is almost a debuff on the civ, instead of an advantage, I can’t remember the last time I’ve played or seen a match where donjons were advantageous
and that’s why the donjon should be buffed, but they need something beyond just buffing the donjon, and specially not in some novelty buff way.
I’d reduce the wood cost to 50, I’d also probably increase the number of arrows from 1-2-3 to 2-3-4 or 1-2-4
I’d also buff the Serjeant itself, either cost, attack or speed.
Yes I suppose Sicilians was an Infantry civ with powerful tower before their change on UT. After Hauberk it become almost another civ and I think they should buff the Serjeant and Donjon so that it will find back their identity