It was a Paladin Rush, which he helped me defend. The Camels worked just fine with my Pikes, Condos and HCs.
Cuman Camels are weak on their own, but to defend a Paladin Rush under a Castle? More than enough!
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Just according to this https://gbts.github.io/aoe2calc/ Cuman Camels are a waste versus generic FU cavalier because they arenāt more effective than your own Cavalier in that matchup. If I used Cuman Camels and managed to win vs Paladins I would have felt like a smurf tbh.
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All I care about, is that it worked.
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Arenāt Halbs viable in DM at all?
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They are, but not against Italians. He also rushed to defend, so Camels get there faster than Halbs ever could.
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After reading all the comments I now agree that lowering the training time of the genoese crossbow would be the best fix , and MAYBE adding siege engineers to deal with siege if you still think thats adding SE is too much just let me know
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Italians are fine without siege engineers.
Spanish also donāt have it.
Cheaper bc is good enough to destroy siege, and they even have good hussars.
Buff the Portuguese instead, they are the weaker twin brother of Spanish and Italians.
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Yes I donāt mean that is a bad bonus, it give a lot of flexibility, my complain is that it help you a bit on everything but you donāt have something strong to go, you have almost everything but all units are standard, with the exception of the more armored crossbow, (which you need a castle fist so itās a lete tech) and the GE (again a caste).
Thatās why I like the idea of a discount (or free) ballistics, so you have a strong edge for a while on you oppenent that you can use or not, right now everything is viable but nothing is really that strong or out of di ordinary.
If you think about other civ they have some kind of bonus but also something that make some they units more viable then (Britons, Mongols, huns, slavs, mayans and so onā¦)
However my main complaint is still about the training time of the GC, since even them arenāt viable in castle because of the time it take to mass them.
As for condos with 1pa it would be just a little more resistant to archers and effective against HC, an huskarl have more attack (and bonus damage) more speed and 6 base pa, they actually compare better with base eagles.
EDIT: free ballistics it would be on theme of anti-cavalry archers, since it would help to counter their main advantage.
The lacking of SE is to balance their BC, since SE for BC is more useful against buildings than other siege, (the BC already have a bonus for siege and have the best mobility-range ratio) .
If we really want to buff the Italian siege I think it would be useful to have siege ram, to deal better against enemy castle and skirmisher. But overall we canāt complain too much about siege.
To me the problem is that they are a bit good on everything on land (archer, infantry, cavalry) but they donāt have that really strong option that is even a bit out of the ordinary.
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I agree, cheap BC are the best for dealing with onagers.
As for the porto, we should create another discussion and stay on the topic here.
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Big no! Give spanish genitours instead, which is by the way historically accurate 
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That is true. Genitours are actually Iberian, so Spanish and Portuguese would be the best matches, if the units was to become so common.
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Berbers conquered Iberia, and also the units resemble some of their cavalry, plus Spanish donāt need genitours.
Still this discussion is about balancing Italians, not other civ.
Big no!
Also big no to what?
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spanish have halb though and paladin and siege ram
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Just because one or two civs are exceptionally strong on both land and water doesnāt mean the Italians need that as well. They are still the strongest Imp landing civ, by far, because of their access to an immediately viable imperial age option from the barracks.
They arenāt weak on land either. The Genoese Crossbow handles a lot of the strongest meta UUās in the game with their anti-cavalry damage and their extra armor. Theyāre hard to get into, but granted that restriction, they invalidate Cavalry. Flatly invalidates it. And they got even better with a 50% fire rate increase in Castle age when DE dropped.
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The GC arenāt difficult to get into it, they are impossible to mass.
And Iām not saying that we should make the Italian a super powered land civ, but at least make them viable.
You canāt have a civ strong only on water or late imp games, the majority of the games are wined by land battles in feudal/castle age.
I mean, itās a good civ, but they nedd some buff, faster training GC and maybe something else that give them a little push, not necessary on the level of vikings, Persian or Japanese.
No they are not, and seeing as they singlehandedly neutralize entire civs that depend on Cavalry (Franks, Huns, Mongols, Persians, Khmer, Indians, Burmese, Berbersā¦) they amass already quite a bit too fast. If you have no FU Arbalest or Elite Skirmisher, I think you already lost against a Castle Age Italians.
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There is only one civ without E skirmisher, so they are far from being impossible to counter, and with less range they are even more vulnerable to manganels, plus they still need to reach a critical number to be effective. They need to keep up with units created at a stables, and maybe against huns or frank which have faster production or Mongols and slav with great economy, while you need to collect 650 stone to build a castle which take a lot of time, and when you finish and your opponent already have a huge army you still need to wait for them to train. On top of that their only other archer bonus is a tech that you can research in the castle, so itās the same problem.
But other than that why all other UU archer (and even other UU) have super fast traning times? I mean chukonu are by far more powerful and versatile and almost as good as GC against cavalry, and it takes 16s in castle age versus the 22s of the GC.
This to me is unbalanced, either they give a substantial bonus to standard crossbow to use them while you mass up GC or at least decrease the training time to 16/18s.
Oh and in post imp a chukonu take 8s to be crated, while a GE 15s with conscription.
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Now you donāt want to give the Italians other bonus, like free ballistic and such. Well I donāt agree with you but I can see your point and accept it, but at least let them use the strengths that they have on land.
One last thing, a knight take 30s from a stable (without factoring in bonus such as huns and franks) , it safe to assume that a civ with good cavalry have at least 3 stables, that takes a lot less time to build than a castle and are accessible in the feudal age.
On the other hand you have the GC that takes 22s from a castle, that cost more and takes more time.
So taking a castle versus 3 stables in 2 minutes of games itās 12 knights versus roughly 5 and a half GE, I donāt think that they can take out the knights.
Some other numbers just for comparison
Chukonu - 16s - 8/9 units
Camels - 22s - about 16 units