I don’t get why this tech is supposedly OP.
It doesn’t change anything vs Camels/Halberdiers/Monks which are hard counters that rely almost only on bonus damage, and vs Battle Elephants/Paladins which are just stronger.
8 Pierce Armor too strong vs Arbalests, maybe, but why should be Arbalests favored against cavaliers anyway? 70 resources for Arb vs 135 for Cavalier/Paladin. Only Aztecs, Vikings and Italians have arbalesters and lack either halbs/camels/stronger cavalry or USABLE (with thumb ring) heavy cavalry archers.
You shouldn’t be able to handle heavy cavalry just spamming foot archers, imho.
Also, at least in my language Sicilians are now classified as “infantry and cavalry civilization”.
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Probably because it was favored for 22 years and still is for 38 (I mean 33) civs.
The problem is that when you combine the conversion resistance + pike/camel resistance + the arrow resistance = something that is very hard to kill all around. the unit has no weaknesses. and that, is a problem.
and you can’t. 30 archers aren’t going to beat 30 cavaliers on their own. you need a numbers advantage or pikes/halbs.
You realized that You have a civ bonus and another tech that nullified those counters? Sicilians kts already did well against their counters, and you had to rely on vainilla units (cavs/Arbalesters) to kill them. Now those unit won’t be effective either
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And did you forget that this civ HAS First crusade to be uncounterable by monks, and the Serjeant, which can resist all that Cavalier is weak to, and Cavalier take easily what Serjeant is weak to, is just a straight up OP army.
By the way you all talk it seems halbs and camels are useless against them, which is not the case.
Also didn’t I read on this very forum that if you let your enemy mass DOUBLE gold unit deathball, with a civ that also lack eco bonus, then there’s something wrong on your side?
I suspect Sicilians won’t be as OP as some people claim, not even with this tech, but let’s see in the next weeks.
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Too similar to Mali. Also, Sicilians never truly were an infantry civ. They were called infantry civ because none of their barracks units had to be nerfed for the bonus damage reduction while the other units they have access to are situational at best.
If it wasnt for being so cheap and being with Sicilians there would be 0 arguments to say that Hauberk is OP.
How is this civ lacking a good eco bonus, they have:
- +100 stone at start, which means you can place 3 extra Town Centers without mining stone
- Farm upgrades that provide +100% food, which is really good eco.
- Town Centers built 100% faster, which means you can start booming faster.
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they have better then paladin level resistance against halbs, while also having better then paladin level resistance to archers, and having better then teuton level resistance to monks, all while costing far less then the paladin. see the problem yet?
It beats Frank and Persian Paladins against archers.
it beats Teuton and Frank Paladins against Halbs and Camels.
it beats Teuton Paladins in conversion resistance.
and it’s all in 1 package and is actually quite easily achievable in 1v1.
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Not sure that makes them competitive. All of them are too slow for arabia a lot of the times.
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Arabia maybe, but this is clearly close to be S tier eco for Arena
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People seem to forget serjeants have 8/8 armor and can build towers when they are in a tough spot.
Sicilians get free stone and their cavaliers resist counters, plus serjeants kill halbs and stop camels…
When you get to late castle age, you are basically forced to have onagers and scorpions as back up. Just get ready to research siege onagers if you don’t defeat the sicilian in late castle age.
Sicilians are not undefeatable but it’s tedious to do so in imperial age. it’s bad when the game forces you to use heavy siege to counter a simple composition of 2 sicilian units.
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or you could sell that extra 100 stone at the market in early feudal for a good gold influx and go up to castle age faster.
All of these seem problems more tied to the civ bonus damage resistance than to the new tech.
I still don’t believe Sicilians are so broken now, but maybe they will start winning left and right, imho now is too early to deem it OP and call for a nerf, but seeing the other thread about Bohemians, I guess it’s never too early to call for nerfs ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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People say it’s OP because they fantasize about its strengths without actually testing it.
Sicilians cavalier performs about the same vs archers as FU paladin.
It actually does slightly worse if you factor the Sicilian cavalier actually fighting the archers, since it has 2 less attack.
It barely lasts longer than paladin in melee fights vs halbs and only slightly better in fights against camels.
People seem to forget that Sicilian cavalier has -40 HP compared to paladins.
Even with the bonus damage resist, the extra HP makes a big difference.
The extra attack of the paladin also makes a big difference as well.
The percentile damage that Sicilian cavalier and FU paladin take from camels and halbs is a lot closer than people realise.
In all that scenarios that I listed above, it performs about the same as paladins.
The difference is that outside of that, it performs essentially like a regular cavalier.
The Sicilian cavalier dies to Malian and Bulgarian cavaliers, Celt paladins who don’t have bloodlines or the final armour and even Byzantine paladins without bloodlines and blast furnace.
So, it’s like you have a paladin some of the time and a standard cavalier the rest of the time.
The tech hasn’t even been added for a week and people are going on about nerfing something they don’t even understand.
Ridiculous.
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Besides Meso Civs , I don’t see Sicilians Cavalier being that OP against other Civs that heavy Cav to shred
their Quasi- Paladin but then again, only time will tell like Lithuanians being great on hybrid maps. Also Cav Archer Civs do pretty well against Sicilians as the Sergeant is a pretty slow unit even if it has high pierce amour. Also even though Sicilians vs Meso Civ is a bad matchup as Sergeants eat eagles and halbs lose against them with equal pop but Meso Civs have better Eco to back them up.
Here some tests from AdditionalCitations on reddit which I posted already above - but here more detailed with his test results. According to my understanding the list shows how many units it takes to have a balanced battle for Sicilian and Malian Cavaliers and Spanish, Franks and Teutons Paladins against the various units.
As you can see the Sicilian Cavalier is overall weaker than the Paladins in most situations and only shines against Heavy Camels. If he is uncounterable then Paladins - especially Frank and Teuton ones - are even more uncounterable.
The one thing that makes it great is the cheap cost to tech into but this could be fixed by increasing the cost of the tech from like 900 ressources to around 1100-1200.
Overall what makes it super powerful is probably also having first crusade which you can use on top of the cavaliers to make a devastating early imp army.
That seems not true. It only beats Teuton and Frank Paladins slightly against Heavy Camels. Frank Paladins are quite better against archers (3 hits to kill archers vs 4), even plain FU Paladins are slightly better.
And Teuton/Frank Paladin have around the same power against Halbs as Sicilians do.
Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/p38qtx/a_quantitative_look_at_sicilian_cavaliers/
And don’t forget they are a lot weaker than Paladins against Champions, Hussar, other Cavaliers and Paladins especially.
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They have some things holding them back on Arena.no bombard canon + plus their lacking monk tech tree hurts them.
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Unless the donjon rush becomes a viable strategy. I’m not sure if it will be, but it looks like an appealing option on paper now.
Donjons are lackluster, you can use vills to kill them and you’re enemies defensive tower will be faster to make with villagers.So Donjon rush is more meme than strat even with extra 100 stone.