Sicilians siege bonus damage

i feel it was a mistake to remove the 50% bonus damage effect from Sicilian siege. i dont believe anyone in the comunity was asking for that change. also we never got to truly test how that bonus would work since at the time of the bonus mangonels were not dealing their full damage to eachother due to a bug. this bug fix and balance change came at the same time. sicilians are still a low tier civ ranking amoung the worst civ win percentage wise. i dont think this buff would ruin the civ and i feel it would give their early castle age a much needed buff

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It’s too strong. Onagers have 60 HP, do 50 base melee damage + 12 bonus damage to Siege. So a Sicilian Onager would take 56 damage instead of 62. Aka, a Sicilian Onager would survive a direct onager hit from other onagers. (I know that Celts have Furor Celtica, but at least that is an Imperial Age UT, so needs a castle, and the tech is pretty expensive)

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you are forgeting that each of extra projectiles deal 1 damage. there are 5 extra projectiles so theoreticaly a direct shot would kill an onager. currently on aoe2stats.io in 1650+ 1v1 elo sicilians are the second worst civ at 42% win percentage. i also feel sicilians is more of a knight civ in the late game so making onagers against them is suspitious. i definitly feel they need a buff but i think it should be a change to one of their current bonus and their 50% bonus damage seems like the best candidate.

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I’d prefer to wait and see. They got +100 stone, and a nice new TB to buff them on water. I’d like to see how that turns out. I think they might actually be a good civ now, once we figure out how to play them :slight_smile:

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That is still the old patch. I am checking every day for new data… but nothing so far. Is there another page where you can see the actual win rates from the new patch?

I also think that the Sicilians could be a solid Civ now for sure with the free +100 Stone and their now great Cavaliers.

not that i know of. 100 stone is nice but i dont know how much of an effect it will have on their win rate. they already have a decent win percentage late game its their early and mid game that they realy struggle

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They are my favorite Civ at the moment. Their feudal game gets boosted by best feudal skirms (take half damage from other skirms which is huge) and great early scouts (a lot stronger against spearman). Even their spearmen survive more skirm and archer shots.

Their castle Age gets boosted by later reseeding (3-4 min) and the next reseeding happens at around 50 minutes which is really good and helps them a lot with booming.

Their super fast TC building is great too since you win some booming time with less villager build time and you can now instantly build 3 more TC instead of 2 with the +100 stone without having to get any stone which again means 1 less early mining camp and again less villager time for getting the 100 stone which you get for free.

Then you get the first crusade usually late Castle Age or on the way to imp which is basically almost free Faith and up to 35 almost free good Infantry units which you can use to build Donjons defensively or offensively.

In Imp you have Donjon’s + tanky infantry and some of the best cavaliers which are fast and cheap to tech into and you save a lot of wood with the delayed reseeding of the farms which all together helps a lot and makes the Sicilians a good Civ in my opinion.
Also don’t forget that you take 50% less bonus damage on all units (except siege) - so your FU halbs are sturdier against Skirms and Archers and your cav - while being weaker than paladin - is cheap and fast to tech into and survives longer against halbs which helps to snipe siege or units which you want to kill.

The almost free Faith on top is very nice especially with on top great -50% bonus damage Light Cav which is almost impossible to convert with First Crusade.

Oh and lets not forget the almost instant castle build time that is very hard to stop - defensively or offensively.

I would wait and see how this patch changes their win rates before buffing them more only to later eventually having to nerf them.

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i also realy like the civ but i also note that at any relitivly high elo sicilians are not seen at all. i cant even recall the last time they were seen in a tournament. the 100 stone is very new but i fear it wont be enough.
i also realy like the idea of sicilians having some sort of siege bonus considering they have siege ram and siege onager. they are in such a bad place competitvly that i feel some buff is in order but mabey i am being too hasty

Like you say it’s early to see the effects of the changes. I actually never understood why the sicilans have such bad win rates especially in the early game. Even Spanish with minor eco bonus (blacksmith upgrades cost no gold mainly) have a better early game which makes not much sense when you think about the -50% bonus damage which helps the sicilians in early game (archers + skirms take far less dmg from enemy skirms and scouts take far less dmg from spears).

They were really not picked much in competitive games but the games which I remember I think viper meant they are not as bad as they look - and that was before this patch.
If I remember well he also mentioned that one has to use the -50% bonus damage as kind of an early game buff to be able to compete with better eco civs.
From Castle Age onward they have really solid Eco - it is probably one of the better ones now.

Here is a game from Hera with the new patch. He also talks a bit about their strenghts but also having to try to survive against the very strong early eco from britons until he can take advantage of his civ bonus.

He even kinda forces britons into their own Cavaliers because he counters Arbs so hard with the fast to tech into 8 pierce armor Cavaliers. Paladins from other civs would be as strong as these Cavaliers against archers but they take far longer and are a lot more expensive to get - sometimes not an option when you need some defense against the Arb Power Spike pretty much immediately.
Something that the Sicilians now can achieve.

Replying to this thread to check out my new badge. But yeah Sicilians are junker tier now.

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Haaa, there’s no doubt that Sicilians in Imp are clearly broken lol
Forcing player to go for heavy cavalry? how many civs can field rightfully that? and I talk in 1v1 not team games because here the Sicilian cavaliers aren’t OP.
People mocked to the freaking death that 22 attack Lithuanian paladin were “oP” but Sicilian cavaliers which are close to be invincible is fine? lol

they are still countered by halbs and lack bbc and thumb ring

Halbs are slow to catch them and Sicilians have the ultimate Halb/camel killer, the Serjeant, hell even they have fully upgraded Champions to deal with it.
Lacking BBC and Thumb Ring doesn’t matter when they have quite good eco to be ahead though.

they still trade badly against halbs, they are definitely very strong, no doubt. In 1v1 Paladin is also quite rare, so that definitely makes these Cavaliers solid. I guess they probably still also do badly vs Elephants.

Maybe some specific civs like Aztecs (no Halbs) might struggle

Aztecs have 21 attack champions though, jaguars to deal with serjeants and super quick economy.
Obviously you need more numbers, but on equal resources they perform greatly, something they can’t really do vs paladins.
It’s mayans that are probably in a worse spot now, even though they have FU halbs.

Also a lot of people talk like the Sicilian techs cost nothing.
You have Hauberk, First crusade, FU cavaliers and dozens of serjeants, nothing can stop Sicilians now! And the opponent what is doing while the sicilian player spends thousands of resources to amass that?

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I’d give the matchup to mayans on an open map. The early aggression potential that mayans have is incredibly hard to stop with civs that have no early eco bonuses.

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Impossible, it is well known that Sicilians start with castle and FU units, there is no early game for them.
That’s why they’re scary now.

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I don’t expect sic to have a winrate above 48 in high elo after that patch.
I think maybe 45 is reasonable, but hard to tell exactly.
They still suck against cav civs, only against archer civs they might perform better now. But IDK if they are really that “archer counter civ”. I think Koreans are still the best archer counters out there.

+100 stone sounds nice, but the reality is if you need that stone, it often is already a bad sign.

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I think this is meant for the donjon rush. It’s probably supposed to be Sicilians method for… surviving well against the civs that are very strong in their early aggro.

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But makes them predictable, and as they don’t have a consistent follow-up as they lack any longer lasting eco bonus relating to the trush, they fall of very fast after the initial powerspike.
I still don’t think sic are a good trushing civs, speaking about feudal trush. The lategame donjon + serjeant rush can be deadly though, it always was.

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