Conversion resistance plays very little role at that stage of the game. There’s absolutely no need to nerf a mid-tier civ
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in hindsight its not a completely terrible idea since they could buff the serjeants damage (like they did to lith), they could even buff the castle age serjeant with +1 damage and the imperial age with +3.
i would imagine at that point the civ’s biggest weakness will be against melee heavy civs like teutons. so they could potentially try to work out what would help against them specifically (like a castle age only camel, and have hauberk apply to it as well)
Here are my Idea for how both First Crusade and Hauberk coul be changed if one really wanted.
Let’s start with Hauberk since it is a lot simpler than First Crusade. Although I do think the tech is fine as is, if it were to be nerfed, I would change it to 0/2 armor instead of 1/1. This would turn Sicilian Cavaliers back to generic fully Upgraded Cavaliers in melee Combat. Since most Civ do have either fully upgraded Champs, a pasabal Stable or Hand Cannons (who for the most part are unaffected by the pierce armor thanks to there high attack), which should be capable of dealing with them. Also we should not forget, while alot less effective, Halbs are still cost effective against Sicilian Cavaliers.
I think this would be better then making it a 1/1 since Sicilians always had their identity more or less build around the Idea, that as long as you produce the same units as them, you have an advantage and this change would have this, also be true for their Cavaliers. I think the cost and research time can stay similar.
Now onwards to First Crusade. I think the Idea behind this Tech was, to give Sicilians, together with faster build Castles and Town Centers, a boom that can not get puniched as easily since they can build a defensive Castle once their boom gets pressured and instantly deploy an army of Serjeants to defend themselves. This is at least the feeling i get from it so i will try to change it accordingly.
An Idea for how it could be changed would be, that the tech makes it so Sarjeants can be produced from TC. This would be to weak though since you still have to pay the full price and they compete with vil production. An idea to make this idea better would maybe be to give the Sarjeants created from TCs a massive boost to there production. This on the other hand would make Donjons even more obsolete since TCs cost significantly less stone and you would just build extra TCs to ramp up Sargeant production.
How I would change this would be to either reduce the cost of the base Sargeant and Sargeant created from TCs still have the orginal price. As an example: Sarjeant trained from TC costs 60f/35g. Sarjeant trained from Donjon costs 55f/30g or sth along those lines. If the lower cost is part of the unique teck or civ bonus is not as important in my opinion. I would in this case also lower the price and reserge time, since you are already paying extra for the Serjeants trained this way and because it is meant to be a defensive tech you can quickly pick up while under pressure to get to get a lot of extra military production fast.
TLDR:
A general reduction in cost for Sarjeants is probably necessay if we are going to reduce the power of the unique techs.
First Crusade: Sarjeants can be trained from TCs at an increased rate at 60f/35g (old price so they are slightly more expensive the when trained anywhere else)
Hauberk:Knight line gains 0/2 armor.
I hope you liked my Ideas. Pls correct me if I did not think sth trough or didn’t take sth into account.
Without blast furnace the civ would not have anything fully upgraded (like Malians, but they have Farimba to compensate, and flat extra pierce armor for infantry).
No infantry, no cavalry, no archers. At that point Hauberk should stay +1/+2 and apply to every melee unit to compensate.
Or the civ would have just FU siege (no bombard) without any siege bonus.
Imho removing Blast Furnace is terrible, awful idea.
And, by the way, I’m not sure a move like that would help making Sicilians less cavalry oriented, I’d argue it would have the opposite effect, if you make their infantry even worse. Buffing the Serjeant attack would not help their usage, which is really low at the moment despite the First Crusade tech. Serjeants need utility or a price reduction, or both.
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Agree.
I think best option would be make Serjeants better and then change both of their UTs.
Sometimes it feels like so.
Sicilians Cavalier survives 7 hits from Halberdier which is only 1 more than Teutons and Franks Paladin. But in castle age Knights survive 10 hits instead of 5, basically double than generic. Even Teutons Knight survives only 6.
I think reducing the bonus damage reduction 50% → 33% and then Hauberk from Only knight line +1/+2 armor → All cavalry +30 HP will be a bit more balanced around everything. Cavalier will be slightly better in melee than it is now while against archer they will be still slightly better than generic.
As for First Crusade, I think it should make Serjeants a strong anti archer option. So Sicilians will play Serjeant against archer and knight vs cavalry civs.
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