This could create nice synergy between this unit and siege which could complement each other. For example searjant could better protect mangonels against crossbows or make ram push more reliable.
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It’s a scrapped feature and thanks goodness it is, because siege repaired by villagers can already be quite obnoxious to destroy, imagine if it was repaired by a much tougher unit.
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With another civilization and unit, I could see this sort of buff being scary, but the Sicilians are pretty weak overall. Their signature strategy of pushing with sergeants and donjons doesn’t work well enough to see much use in competitive play, so I wouldn’t mind this buff to the unit in order to make it more viable. As it stands, the serjeants feel pretty useless in 1v1, and the rest of the Sicilian tech tree is too lackluster to make playing them much fun.
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what do you think the purpose of giving them siege onagers is
Well, for starters, this change hasn’t happened yet. I was just talking about where things stand currently. Regardless, I’m not sure getting siege onagers does a lot to improve the civilization identity. Existing civilizations have the potential to go for siege onagers and halberdiers. I would rather see the Sicilians changed to push them towards their unique unit and building, just so that playing with or against them feels different. That’s just my personal preference, though. And I know that there might be some other buffs to the serjeant stats, so my feelings towards this buff towards the unit may change depending on how strong they seem to be after those changes. But I still think it’s an interesting idea.
Sicilian are quite exceedingly pushed toward making serjeants already. They literally have a button that make you have tons of them. At least siege onager improves their late game and tech tree without risking making the bonus damage reduction OP (since they aren’t affected). So it allows the “civ identity” of less bonus damage to remain untouched.
Also donjon aren’t bad in castle and imp, I suspect it’s just too much APM for most players to bother using compared to cav that can be carelessly thrown at its counters.
Or instead, make villagers repair units (not buildings) faster.
So their siege and navy improves a bit.
True, I wasn’t thinking about first crusade. I suppose buffing the unit risks making that technology too strong. On the other hand, with the serjeant as weak as it is, it doesn’t seem like anyone makes it except when using that technology. Honestly, I’d probably prefer both a different unique technology and a stronger unit. It seems like a poor decision to give the Sicilians the only unique unit that can be made in feudal age while also, simultaneously, making that unit so bad that it’s only used when it’s made available at a very steep discount once you’re fully boomed and have a castle.
Donjons may be decent after castle age, but as Sicilians, you also have castles that go up lightning fast at that point. It almost always makes more sense to save the stone, in my opinion. The main thing going for donjons over castles seems to be the fact that you can make them with serjeants, which the player may not have, or may prefer to use actually fighting the enemy, rather than making overpriced towers.
I’d be fine with giving them siege onagers, sure. However, I would like to see the serjeants find their own place. They also don’t gain much from the bonus damage reduction, except maybe against hand cannoneers, so I don’t see that as a concern. Meanwhile, Sicilian halberdiers taking less bonus damage from both archers and skirmishers could make their late game siege onager and halberdier composition pretty tough to deal with. So, yes, it’s somewhat unique because of the bonus damage reduction, and I wouldn’t mind that being what they use in the late game. But in order to make the civilization more fun to play, I’d really like serjeants to be worth making, especially in feudal. Maybe the stats buff is enough to improve the situation, making the siege repairing idea unnecessary, but I definitely think the unit needs to be changed, one way or another.
It will most likely be that way, and a halbs+SO push from sicilian can be strong with their farm bonus and their halbs that takes less damage from skirms, arbs and CA.
Basically if your civ doesn’t have BBC you would struggle a lot to kill that composition. Considering that now first crusade also gives extra conversion resistance, so not even monks with block printing are a great counter.
Overall it’s a fine change, I just wish that they would buff their monastery a bit too, like giving them redemption.