Sicilians Hauberk replacement?

I’m against this as well as the PA because it creates a bigger disparity when a Sicilian player gets ahead.

For example if Burmese get ahead of a frank player, the frank player can lean more heavily into counters to catch up again, eco required to do this Vs a Sicilian is even larger. So even though it’s less likely for a Sicilian to get ahead, when they do, it snowballs even faster.

So Im not saying that bonus is unbeatable. Just hurts counter player.

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Is this true though? A number of civs don’t have that armour and they don’t insta die to arbs. You can resolve the dilemma in other ways aside from huskarl cavaliers

But its not too critical so i guess the validation lays more in why cav got the bonus armor and not infantry/serjeants

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Well most civs do have something vs archers. Cav civs that lack last archer armor at least have paladin (Franks, Teutons, Burgundians) or cheaper siege options (Slavs, Bulgarians). Ofc it’s not always possible to get these but still you do habe some options while Sicilians without hauberk have nothing vs arbs except for generic cavalier.

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Yeah it is weird. And I’m wondering if it was an easy band aid. They knew giving it to cav would make them hugely better Vs archer civs.

I’m wondering how something like this would do:

Hauberk: 1/1 and only affects all infantry.
1st crusade cheaper but only spawns from 3 TC
Serjeant cost reduced by 5f
Bonus damage reduction to 33% (or tweak it)

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first crusade is always useful, I reckon ~80% of Sicilians 1v1 games, you use the tech at some point. Unless the game ends sooner (e.g. early Castle age) or you go vs a civ where Serjeants are 100% bad (such as Huns idk).

But really, 35 Serjeants are never useless, it’s just a matter of when you train them.

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Even here you could use them, they’re so cheap and can use them as either a distraction or to destroy buildings.

I’ve done it a number of times Vs Mongols for example. Even if my Resource focus is on my cavliers

It’s called a weakness. As it stands the Sicilian do not have any real weaknesses in the late game. However, Serjeants can tank vs archers very well already as it is. Ironically enough however, the teutons are one of the best counters to the civilization in pure melee fights.

As it stands 1/1 would have an equal effect but i would say 1/2 is fitting so sicillian dont completly loose vs archer

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In my opinion, Hauberk should give all infantry and cavalry +1/+1 armor.

I think Sicilians will still be fine vs archers with this change. Their Cavalier will have as much pierce armor as generic Paladin, and they have access to Siege Rams, Siege Onagers and Siege Engineers…

sicilians are not overperforming overall, they are average in winrates across the boards and before hauberk they were below average, so it is clear that they needed something since they had not a power unit in the late game. their SO is just average with FU but no bonuses, serjeants are meh at best, and no paladin or CA or hussar, above average arbalest without last armor and thumb ring…oh and pretty weak eco bonus on top

that said, hauberk might be seen as too strong in that gives “paladin” wibes for a cheaper price, but i think a quite simple tone down to +1/+1 would do the trick for the cavalier. we already in the game have strong cavalier civs and no one complains. Bulgarians cavalier attack 33% faster, berbers and poles are super cheap, even Teutons cavalier, who have access to paladin, has +2 MA and conversion resistance for free, so it’s not like hauberk is completely bonkers and never seen before. reducing the bonus to +1/+1 would make them more susceptible to archers and that would do the trick

then theres’s the problem that the civ as a whole is not overperforming, so that nerf should be compensated with a buff. maybe hauberk could apply to serjeants also, to make them even more tanky and worth committing, or to all infantry to give them a infantry bonus, or could simply be the way to free “space” for a little infantry bonus, but definitly should not be nerfed into the ground with no compensation since sicilians are not OP

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I saw that there was some discussion on First Crusade as well. Here is my take on First Crusade:

I think it is bad design, not only because I dislike spawn mechanics somewhat, but primarily because the fact that it caps at 5 Town Centers nudges players towards one particular tactic. When you want to research First Crusade, building 5 Town Centers first is always worth it. The 7 Serjeants you get from building an extra Town Center are way more expansive than the Town Center itself. So everyone who goes for First Crusade will always build exactly 5 Town Centers first. Lastly, I think it’s bad that the impact of this single tech on the game is so big. Flemish Revolution has this same problem.

I think the tech would be more interesting if it was not so clear how many Town Centers you’d want to build and if its impact were smaller.

You could achieve this by:

  • recucing the cost of the tech;
  • decreasing the number of Serjeants that spawn per Town Center;
  • removing the upper limit of the number of Town Centers the Serjeants can spawn from, or drastically increasing it.

What if you got, like, only 3 Serjeants per Town Center, but you could spawn them from a maximum of 20 Town Centers? Someone might build 20 Town Centers before researching the tech for maximum payoff, but on the other hand, if you can afford to build 20 Town Centers, you probably have already won the game. So then the answer to ‘how many Town Centers to build before researching First Crusade’ would become ‘it depends’, which is an answer that you want. Additionally, on average players will spawn fewer Serjeants and the tech would become less worrysome from a balance perspective. You’d of course have the occasional Low Elo game where someone spawns a huge number of Serjeants from an absurd number of Town Centers, but that is fine.

I don’t think First Crusade should spawn anything at all.
It should have different utility, like allowing Serjeants to build any military building, like someone suggested a while ago.
Serjeants then could be discounted to 50-55f and 25-30g, and their innate ability to build Donjons removed and packed with the new UT.
That way if you want to go heavy on Serjeants they could really be front line builders, and if you just want to train a bit of them you don’t have to spend a ridiculous price (95 res each is too much for what it offers). Also the elite upgrade should be discounted, 1900 res is ridiculous.
Then we can proceed to tweak Hauberk, maybe modifying it to give +2/+3 to all cavalry units, and removing plate barding at the same time. Result would be flat +1/+1, but for Cavalier and Light Cav.
At the same time it would force you to have a castle or your cavalry units would be subpar, I think that’s reasonable compromise. The cost could be increased, since it would spare you the resources of Plate Barding. Something like 600F 500G.
Just throwing ideas.
However I don’t think we would see infantry play, infantry is simply too bad in this game, suffers from same melee pathing problem of cavalry, while being much slower and less beefy, archers can kite it forever, and cavalry can simply avoid it.
Notable exceptions are obviously fast infantries like Eagles.

why not just make hauberk increase armor by +1/+1 for all cav then? would be much simpler

anyway, i do not think you can overhaul both UT at the same time…first crusade could use a look at for sure, but maybe that would be too much of a change at the same time resulting in some balance inconsistencies and problems potentially

First Crudade Replacement:

Norman Architecture: TCs Donjons Castles built 100% faster.

Because it would be pretty weak for an imperial UT, for 900 res, and too limited for Knights only. My version would spare you a little food and gold of Plate Barding, plus it would affect 2 units: knighs and light cav.
Right now we have 2 UT that give +1/+1. Pavise and Silk Armor.
They both are Castle Age UTs, they both affect 3 units (Archers, Genoese Xbows and Condottieri, Scout line, CA and Steppe Lancers), and they cost much less than Hauberk: Pavise 300F 150G and Silk Armor 400W 300G.
I almost forgot Carrack, which gives +1/+1 to all ships, another Castle Age tech, for just 200W 300G.
If Hauberk gave only +1/+1 and only to knights, then it should be age swapped with First Crusade, and its cost lowered to at least 300F 200G or something like that.

Honestly that is already above average by virtue of having SOs. You can also distantly say that their farming bonuses helps with booming for a better eco to sustain SOs.

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their farming bonus is very week, nowhere near tutons, that have also a bonus to siege, SO, and better infantry. basically they can perform halb+SO without any bonuses, worse than other infantry civs (slavs, celts, teutons all have far better version of this). even koreans have better than them in that regard with bufed SO

yeah but i was also considering giving hauberk to all cav no? you mean +1/+1 to knight and light cav would still be weak? i also tought as a given that the tech would then have a new cost, much cheaper, but maybe the tech could also include serjeants, so something like

Hauberk, same cost and time, +1/+1 affect all stable units and Serjeants

Well, in that case it might be good. 8/9 armor Serjeants is something I’d definitely want to try :grin: