The Serbs by MantisAoE

A new civ concept was uploaded today, looks really interesting:

4 Likes

I’m against more European civs until we get a minimal amount in both America and Africa but I would be lying if I’d say that this doesn’t seem like a fun civ to play :smiley:

Would prefer if the Serbs would come with their own architecture set though. Shared with probably Croats or Vlachs which would come likely with a DLC adding the Serbs.

The sole thing which I would critize is that from a first glance, their eco seems pretty weak.

When it comes to a wonder, I’d pick Манастир Студеница (Monastery of Studenica):

God forbid! Croats, Wallachians and Serbs had completely different architectures.

Serbs as a Balkan Orthodox nation should be part of brand new Byzantine Architecture Set together with Byzantines and Bulgarians civs!

Croatian cities such as Dubrovnik are not at all similar to Serbian cities. Croatians civ would definitely fit in the Mediterranean Architecture Set.

Vlachs civ would find their place best in the Eastern European Architecture Set.

3 Likes

I think this civ design isn’t thought through well.
The civ has basically no bonus applying in feudal (except the Vanguard UU).
The issue I have that in castle age the vanguard xbow comp is extremely strong. And I see people spamming vanguards like crazy in castle age cause the unit has almost no real “counter” whilst still bein a trash throwaway unit.
Then we have the Tunnel which allows you in open maps to just migrate your eco from whatever area is currently threatened to another area. Which means you can’t be pressured. Yes, the opponent can try to raid you with cav all over the place. But then it only plays in your hand cause you want to spam your vanguards anyways. The vanguards then also can just be teleported via tunnels wherever they are needed…
The vanguards also don’t have a trash counter which means it’s basically a free win in all trash wars.
The same is also for the Gusar upgrade which makes the hussars being almost even with halbs.

This paired with also a very open tech tree and good siege (again vanguard/siege looks kind of overpowered) makes the civ way, way tooabnoious to face for the opponents. Cause even if you can stop that Vanguard powerhouse, what do you do against cavalier, UU CA or hussars?

Just a really flawed design in my opinion.

3 Likes

Weak early game and midgame, multiple gimmicky unique things and a few unique things that are probably too good (like the Vanguard and the thing it builds).

They basically rely on the vanguard (which is a way better spearman which costs the same too) and the caltrop to beat cav civs while against archer civs you will just struggle since your eco sucks and your units are quite generic. Once in late game you have the best spearmen in the game which can probably carry you through the trash wars and you also have the Gusar UT which makes your hussars extremely hard to deal with. However your imperial age siege is generic

The monk UT I feel like it will be either useless or extremely annoying.

Also the Tunnel is just goofy and probably quite annoying.

2 Likes

Ok we forgot that they have better mining which would lead to a kinda ok-ish archer play in feudal. Not super strong, but decent with the vanguards as tool vs the cav civs.
And yes I think the vanguard would also be very annoying already in castle age when paired with bows. Cause you can’t even use skirms vs these boys then.
It’s too durable for a trash unit. It’s actually a decent unit, cause it even can raid with the speed and pierce armor. I mean, the only 2 castle age unit that counter that I know are LS (which see almost no use and are countered by xbows) and scorps. Which would be easy to kill by adding a few (SE) Mangonels.

Even if this thing was their UU and cost like 35 F 25 G it would potentially be OP.

Yeh, this was iffy enough with the OP spearline replacement that is just better in every way with no attempt to balance it with any kind of situational drawback. Then he lost me completely by trying to port Dwarves/Goblins from Battle for Middle Earth 2 to AoE2 via teleportation tunnels. Caltrops are right on the fringe of what I think might be okay for AoE2, but combined with the OP trash UU and all the other gimmicky stuff on the civ, it’s just too much. The couple positives I can mention are that I think the mounted Xbow is kind of interesting, and props to him for (mostly) creating the civ in the Editor to show how it would perform.

3.5/10

1 Like

Another no

Another No for this civilization

Honestly if this guy didn’t decide to hide his rather gimmick planning behind images and, I assume (which is rude) minor scenario editing and video work, nobody would give him the light of day they way they do civ crafters who work with the keyboard.

Its not minor work honestly

Forgot to answer, but I dont think I would call their archer play decent considering how meh Bohemian archer play ended up being. Unless fighting cav I dont think the civ is very competitive

Yeah the unit is really good and the price is too low. Even ignoring the caltrop. Funnily enough it would only be worse than halbs vs catas

The whole civ design seems weird.

For example the Satnik is an active military rank in Croatian military and one more made up word by Croatian state, shouldn’t have to do anything with Serb civ. Satnik basically means цлоцк ман (translate to English, the word gets censored on forum for some reason) lol.

Why tunnels? Those could be too OP or opposite if restrictions were added, I wouldn’t like to play with those and I bet the opponent wouldn’t like them either, seems like straight copy from CnC Generals.

The caltrop feature seems unnecessary, overall I don’t like it.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Brasov, Romania

Manasija Monastery, Serbia

Eh, no need to dunk on the guy; I don’t align with his creative vision or idea of balance, but I respect the effort that went into this much more than that of scenario editor unit fights, which one can apparently make a career out of. One other concept of his I saw (don’t remember which) I actually thought was decent, just don’t much care for this Serbs ideation.

2 Likes

我很欣賞他的創意
但還是覺得設計盡量簡單比較好
Caltrops感覺不是很必要 歷史上Serbs好像也沒用過這樣的武器?

UU跟UT是很不錯的主意
跟Sicilians正好呈現相反的文明定位
Sicilians面對相剋兵種能減少受到的傷害
Serbs則是面對相剋兵種能增加製造的傷害

城堡時代的Petard也很好
但相比Siege Engineers
我覺得城堡時代的Sappers更合適 也比較符合歷史

Tunnel我覺得可以給予跟Siege Tower相同的效果或是刪除
因為攻城獎勵有2個已經夠多了

或許可以再給予村民受到攻擊時不會中斷動作的獎勵?