Sicilians overhaul idea

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

The current design of Sicilians is weird. They produce very strange games and are annoying to play with or against because of their unique mechanics that heavily reduce strategic and unit choices.

Also with the last hauberk patch, they now are extremely strong against almost all archer civs but still quite bad against cav civs, which often leads to civ wins with or against them.

I propose a complete overhaul of the civ that keeps some of the unique features and mechanics sicilians currently have but throws away all the silly ones that should never have been part of the game. But fyi not first crusade. But the order of the UTs instead. First crusade is an interesting mechanic for a fast lategame transition that I really like to keep. Imo it’s not overpowered if it is indeed a lategame transition that usually would take much more time to execute - and a killer blow mechanic that needs ages to execute is just unnecessarily stalling. If you are losing, first crusade can’t shift the game in your favor anyways. But a faster transition into a donjon rush can safe all players a lot of time if the sic player has the advantage.

Civ Bonusses:
Can build Donjons intead of Towers.
Start with + 50 Stone
Farm Upgrades provide +100 % more food and +5 % speed for villagers.
Infantry Armor upgrades are free (blacksmith required)
Skirmishers and Pikemen attack +15 % faster
Stone mines last + 20 % longer
(if this is too weak one extra bonus could be: Unit Upgrades cost 50 % less gold)

Unique Units:
Serjeant
Balista (that replaces the scorpion line)

Balista: 75 W / 75 G / 30 secs training time
Balistas shoot normal projectiles that have no blast damage and also don’t travel through their targets, but ballistas are affected by ballistics
Can be garrisoned into castles and donjons (counts as much as 2 garrisoned villagers).
50 HP
Deals 35 % of the units max HP pierce damage (15 pierce damage to buildings) (EG knights would receive 35 - 2 = 33 damage from a single hit)
ROF 3.2
Range 8
Armor: 0 melee / 6 pierce
Speed: .7

Heavy Balista: 75 W / 75 G / 30 secs training time (1000f / 1100g upgrade cost)
Heavy Balistas shoot normal projectiles that have no blast damage, don’t travel through opponent units, but Heavy Ballistas are affected by ballistics.
Can be garrisoned into castles and donjons (counts as much as 3 garrisoned villagers).
60 HP
Deals 45 % of the units max HP pierce damage (20 pierce damage to buildings)
ROF 3.2
Range 9
Armor: 0 melee / 7 pierce
Speed: .7

Ballistas are intended as ranged support to target down the most valueable of the opponents units. With that they are an ideal complement to the sicilian serjeant that has quite high armor but low damage output. While the serjeant deals very well well with all kind of low value units, the balista is ideal to deal with high value units - as long as the sic player manages to protect it well.

UTs:
A) Hauberk becomes a castle age tech. Cost is adjusted to 250 F 200 G.
B) First Crusade: Now Imp tech, Cost up to 600 F / 600 G

Tech tree changes:
Blacksmith: Sicilians get access to ring archer armor
Stable: Sicilians get access to hussar
Archery Range: Sicilians get access to thumb ring and heavy cavalry archer

Hauberk isn’t a problem anymore if sic lose their bonus damage resistant. Archer civs could then use their counters against the sicilians knights and cavaliers. With better working counters against sicilians the serjeant becomes more and more interesting for the civ as it is such an effective trash counter unit, especially with free armor on it.
Sicilians good counter mechanics and army comps can compensate for them having quite underwhealming walls, so sicilians should try to get the military advantage, control the map and game. If they like they can work towards a final deathblow with a donjon rush, but their veratility and unique would units allow them to close the games in basically any fashion they like. Their weakest phase will most definetely be the early game, so it would be the ideal civ choice for all the freaks (like me) that love to be initially behind but use all different tools to stabilize, get control and finally try to end the game with superior strategy. (i.e. right the opposite of the current design of the civ around a basically uncounterable, but in a standoff subpar knight line)

At the same time with that overhaul some things can be tested by the devs:
A) What influence slightly better counters have in gameplay - can they be an alternative for walling early for more defensively minded players?
B) What if there is one more counter option against knights (Ballista)
C) Can the serjeant finally be put in a useful role in unit comps? Can we have interesting infantry units for unit comps that challenge the stale knight/archer meta? (infantry power units can only work inside comps because of the lack of a trash counter, so the serjenat need to be paired with ranged units)
D) In general: What comps and gameplay is possible with a wide open tech tree and are players capable of using it to it’s full potential? Does it make gameplay more interesting to have that flesibility or being matched with an unpredictable civ? Or is important for the development and finding a “role” to have matchups with clear strenghts and weaknesses to strategize around (too much flexibility can possibly also lead to undefined roles and players getting confused, which would be bad)?

Why this?

Well because currently sic make just no sense. SIc have one of the best trash counters in the game with the serjeant, but trash is heavily nerfed against sic anyways because of the silly 50 % damage reductions. So, why do they have that strong trash counter if opponents try to avoid making a lot of trash against them anyways?
Sic castle drops are stupidly easy, their whole roster is geared against archer civs and they produce weird gameplay currently Nobody really knows what to do with or against this civ, as it has random bonusses that in most cases just not synergize at all (unless the opponent allows them to, like letting them boom, castle drop and get to their lategame powerspikes, but in most cases this is just not possible for them and then their whole construct of bonusses falls apart quite heavily).
In almost all other cases the gameplay with and against this civ just feels random and nobody really knows what is going on. The civ is just confusing. At least for me.

And the - 50 % counter damage mechanic is just stupid.

2

I didn’t read all, but how exactly are Sicilians bad against cav civs? Until Paladin kicks in, they are far superior to Teutons as they have Husbandry, an eco bonus, a stronger combat bonus and an equivalent if not better tech tree to Teutons. I guess Teutons are bad vs cav civs also then?
(Teutons here is used just as an example, you can compare to Bulgarians if you prefer who don’t even have an actual eco bonus).

3

The ballista would be ludicrous against elephants and paladins, each shot would deal several times the damage of a halberdier strike. In fact against a persian elite war elephant, each shot would cause more damage per shot than a trebuchet. It also would mean unit upgrades would have almost no effect against it.

4

Correct, it is intended to specifically counter high value units.
But it would be comparably bad against cheap units, like light cavalry would love to jump on them. And significantly worse than scorps against high amount of enemy units.

It’s intended to have exactly this behaviour of being a good heavy cav counter when protected but vulnerable against massed cheap units. Just wanted to have one more counter option to try against heavy cav, something to give just one more viable option to deal with that line.
I think it’s only good for the game if every unit choice has at least 3 viable counterplays, just that the games aren’t that repetitive.
(i think with the proposed sic I would still prefer to use the spear line in general as it theoretically counters all cavalry lines and costs no gold. But I think in some situations the Ballista could be an interesting alternative. (don’t forget the heavy balista upgrade is very expensive, too))

5

I think hes just saying that Sicilians are waaaayyyy better against archer civs than against cav civs because of the bonus affecting skirms in an exagerated way as well as Hauberk

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6

And btw teutons shred siilians with their better knights.
SIc have no answer to TK/Siege onager/bbc.
Also donjon and serjeant are kinda trash against teutons.
And the teuton farm bonus is also better, because more flexible.

7

Sicilians have no answer to Teutonic Knights? TK are considered 1 of the worst units in the game for a reason… Sicilians have nearly FU Arbalest btw.

Also the comparison was:

Sicilians vs Cavalry Civ X

vis a vis

Teutons vs Cavalry Civ X

The comparison was not, Sicilians vs Teutons. Teutons is just used as an example of a civ that isn’t too bad vs cavalry civs and is similar to Sicilians, I could have pulled other civs also.

8

It’s basically the same with all the other cav civs. The other cav civs just have better cav or better agression or better overall eco. SO it doesn’t matter as much if the sic knight are harder to counter if they lose in the direct standoff with their counterpart.

The lack of mobility for the teutons is mostly relevant when fighting HCA. But sic don’t have hca. In the direct matchup between the knights the extra armor of the teutons is actually much more valueable than the mobility of the sicilians.

Ofc Sicilians can try to use their counters against the opponent. But as we all know how bad the counters perform currently, just having a bit higher tats on your power line is actually more valueable than having better performing counters.

That’s why sic are quite bad against cavalry civs, cause the +1 armor with hauberk is almost nothing and also very late. And yes, I looked in the statisitics of this reddit page. Sicilians perform exactly as expected with good winning records against archer civs and bad records against knight civs.

And it makes totally sense, as hauberk +50% bonus damage reduction is extremely geared against archer + halb comps. The ones you are actually fighting basically every time you go with a cav civ vs archers. But when fighting other cavalry civs you will have a lot of knight standoffs you will most likely lose cause the opponent just has better or more knights.

I mean it could be a bit different if hauberk was +3 / +1 PA instead. Then Sicilian cavaliers could perform quite good against other cavaliers. But +1 / +2 PA is just heavily geared against archer civs and we see it in the resulting stats.

9

Their worst matchups are against Franks, Berbers, Huns, Lithuanians, and Spanish. Sicilians only win 40-42% of games against these civs. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that 4/5 of them are Paladin civs and the 5th has the most cost-effective Cavaliers.

Not sure I can explain why this is the case though, since Sicilians have good halberdiers. Hard to debate that they are doing well against heavy cavalry civs though, they have an apparent weakness (which is ok IMO).

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10

Just FU Halberdiers isn’t enough to be good against cav civs. Look at Koreans, they have discounted FU halbs but still they are comparably bad against cav civs.

You need something more than just FU Halbs to deal with cav civs. If it was that easy to stop cav, nobody would play them.

It’s ok to have some weakness, but Imo scicilans are too specified against archers. We already saw them picked quite a few times as archer counter civ. Especially the Knight line with Hauberk: Conversion Resistent, takes less bonus damage, +2 pierce armor - features basically a bonus to everything an archer civ does against the cavalry.
IMO the civ is too much specialised to counter archer civs and imo this is too much. Sicilians are already annoying to play against because of their special bonusses and then it’s also often civ win or lose against them, which makes the civ only more unsatisfying to play against. (And therefore it’s bad standing.)

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11

I don’t agree about Sicilians vs Archers. Hauberk isn’t available until Imperial Age and until then they are generic Knight/Cavalier vs Archers (since no bonus damage is involved). Someone posted data in another thread that showed they were similar to generic Paladins against arbalesters, and IIRC worse than Frank Paladins. The +2 pierce armor ends up about the same as Paladin’s +40 HP, +1 PA and +2 attack. Against any melee enemy the Paladin is much better than Hauberk Cavalier.

The Pierce Armor on their Cavaliers is important because their Skirmishers become very weak vs Arbalesters in Imperial Age without Ring Archer Armor. Onagers are an option, but they only take you so far (doesn’t work vs Britons) and Sicilians have no civ bonus for Siege (unlike someone like Celts or Slavs going Siege Onager against Archers).

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12

The thing with Hauberk is, it’s cheaper than paladin and gives abou the same value as the paldin upgrade against archers.
In total witht the reduced bonus damage sicilians hauberk cavaliers perform about the same as franks paladins against basically anything an archer civ will throw at you. But for less investment.

13

That is true. I just find those facts to be well balanced. Roughly half the cost of Paladin, and effective against roughly half the enemies you’ll face.

14

But Franks have better eco bonuses and Stables work faster and a better support unit like Axeman

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15

But why…

I mean, I don’t like hauberk UT either, but you know that this is basically a new civ right? You know that it’s unlikely that such number of changes are implemented?

Why? They have the same problems as before, that any tower rush will burn through their stone faster than they can get more.

This is far from OP, especially sine it needs a BS, but I don’t see the point. They already have their tanky serjeants.

But why?

Why not have a bonus or UU that applies that effect to the scorpion for an actually new civ?

16

i really like your ideas, and most of them could simply be translated to a new civ (with the next DLC) including the UU, although it would need to be toned down.

BUT there’s no chance the devs would change an existing civ so much so quickly. especially when your "annoying to play with or against " is incredibly subjective…

i think mayans, franks and britons are far more worse to play against, 100x ove… and the poll on reddit proved as much for britons.

so in the meantime, you might not like playing against or with sicilians but many other people dont mind, or actually like it (i love playing sicilians) so i doubt such a radical change is remotely warranted

i especially like the +10% vils speed in castle age, along with the better infantry with better support, making them a fun infantry civ, so i think these could easily apply to a new civ in the DLC.

this is absolutely redonk OP v knight/ele civs, and helps them eff all vs archer civs, as an infantry civ that will be their toughest matchup… so if anything i would rather give them an anti archer siege weapon (eg a larger area of effect mango type weapon or some such)

imagine this thing v mangos or rams?

1 Like
17

A bit better, especially in the early game ofc, but sicilians mid game eco is actually already very strong.

There I’m actually not so sure. The serjeant is an excellent addition to the cavaliers as it not only has the same pierce armor, but also comparable high melee armor against the low-attacking halberdiers.
It’s a perfect addition if the opponen makes a lot of halbs (and he needs a lot cause they deal less bonus damage) but still has a lot of archers around The axemen can only really work if there are not a many archers leftover, but the serjeant can do it’s job against halbs even if there are still a lot of archers left.

Why do people do anything? You just have ideas and wanna see if they work.

Well they would still have hauberk (and actually from castle age) but without that silly 50 % bonus damage reduction. So their knights and cavaliers would still be quite good against archer civs. And they woult still have some problems against other cav civs (as 15% faster attacking spear line isn’t cutting the deal on it’s own). That’s why I wanted to add another tool for them against cavalry, just to see what influence this would have in gameplay. Especially a ranged (yet immobile) cav counter is just an interesting concept (we only have it with GC, but they are kinda underwhealming currently).
So I wanted to give it a try because I think the civ would still have generally more problems with cav than archers then.

Against mango it’s still hard, as mangos can one-shot them. But ofc the unit would perform a bit better than the current scorpion line. Against rams they would do 1 damage per shot, as the damage is pierce.

18

just variance and people not playing to the civ’s strengths

19

Yeah but this is a completely new civ. All the changes seems random and not aimed to any of the sicilians problems…

You started off by saying that sicilians are weird, and then hinted at a generic weakness toward cav and a generic strength toward archers, which can be the truth, but you never elaborate, or pointed any real problem or problematic situation.

Your suggestions aren’t aimed at nothing, you just randomly add some things and removed others.

Why for example you reduced the starting stone, but then added a bonus that stone last longer? What’s the point of that?

Why they get access to the HCA? What is the balance or historical reason for that?

I mean, those 2 are just examples, you thrown a bunch of changes without justifying any of them in a super long post that in the end has no prospective?

What are the sicilians in your mind now? They aren’t anymore a unconventional civ? Are they a new trash civ? A siege civ?

20

The order of your question is somewhat reversed so I try to make it more understandable by switching them:

The goal was to make it a kinda “versatile” civ, with various Tools do deal with everything. And with “tools” I mean both defensive and offensive tools. But in terms of offensive, they need to make special army comps that are unique to them, as they don’t have any FU lines to work with.

Against archer civs they can try to use their knights/cavaliers with extra armor, but they still need to add something do deal with halberdiers. Most likely the serjeant. Against cav civs they can go archers/cav archers but want probably to add the ballista (or halbs).

It’s intentional that they have good trash, but not top tier trash, so they can’t just spam trash to try to take the opponent of gold, at some point sic would need to make offensive moves aswell, otherwise they will most likely not be able to win.

So basically a civ that needs to make use of all kind of various bonusses they have. WIth this, it’s the ideal civ for strategic players who like to outplay the opponent with their knowldedge of the game.
That’s the idea behind it.

So you are right with questioning which kind of civ it is, cause the civ isn’t an “archer”, “cav” or whatever civ anymore. It’s a combination of various bonusses that only work if you manage to combine them well according to what your opponent does. That’s the idea behind it. (Maybe it’s best comparable with malians who also have a wide spectrum of options - but a different approach to the idea.)

TBH I currently have the opinion that sicilians can’t really be fixed as long as this 50% bonusd damage reduction is still there.

Well I think I explained some things. Ofc I couldn’t go in detail with all, that would take too long. I also explained eg why the serjeant seems to be a bit off for the sicilians cause it is so good as trash counter but sicilians have the least problem with trash anyways. Just as an example.

I tried to eplain that. It’s about the donjon rush as lategame winning scenario. As sicilians are already such a strong lategame civ it’s better if they have that tool to make short work of the finishing move. That’s what this is about.

To have one more option for a good backline for the serjeant. I like them to have various options how to build up their army comps instead of having bonusses to the different types of units they are supposed to chose the “right” comp for the right situation. That’s the idea behind the open tech tree.

So sicilians can chose if they want to add archers, cav archers or siege in addition to their serjeants. All of them are solid but sicilians have no specific bonus. That’s the idea behind it.

And I disagree I wouldn’t have explained what are tje reasonings behind it I think I was pretty clear about some of the points. But ofc the whole new concept is a bit more complicated so I decided to not explain too much about the individual changes as I thought that the general idea to make sic a versatile civ that needs to make use of this diversity would be explanation enough to explain most of the changes.