The Serjeant

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
#1

So I’m creating this because I don’t really want to spam other topics, but I’d like to discuss in depth this unit.

The Serjeant costs 60F 35G, takes 20 seconds to train at Donjons and 12s to train at Castles. FU has 15atk 7melee armor 8 pierce armor, 85HP, 3 bonus damage against buildings and 3 bonus damage against Eagle Warriors.
0.9 speed, same as militia line and Obuchs.

On paper might sound strong or good, but let’s not forget that Sicilians have:
-Units that take half bonus damage, expecially good for cavalry
-FU siege lacking only Bombard Cannons
-FU infantry
-Arbalesters missing Thumb ring and last archer armor
-FU 6/8 armor Cavaliers with Hauberk
-FU Light cav
-First Crusade tech that can spawn up to 35 Serjeants at once, with each one of them costing down to 8f 17g

So first of all: when would you TRAIN Serjeants? In which scenario? To deal with what?
I feel like if the First Crusade tech was removed or reworked, nobody would even consider making them at all, not at 35g each unit at least.
Now I know that unique units are not meant to be the core of an army, but since Sicilians lack proper towers I think you are more “forced” into their UU compared to other civs, and besides, what is the supposed role of their UU anyway?

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#2

how does lacking proper towers “force” you into UU more? Makes 0 sense, besides, Donjon is not a bad building, the only time when it’s weaker is in Castle age when you compare it to a Guard tower (it’s obviously stronger than a Watch tower).

In Imp, it fires 3 arrows and with Bracer, Chemistry and Arrowslits, the total damage is not that bad to the point where you also can damage Knight-line to a degree.

So really it only falls short when compared to Guard towers.

As for the main question: you train Serjeants in late Imp, Sicilians go-to army comp is Serjeant Cavalier and some Siege, it’s stronger than Champion and Champion is fairly good at making a big push into fortifications from 1 spot.

Basically you use them the same way you would use Berserks, they are slower and lack bonus vs cavalry but compensate for that with massive armor value.

#3

The gold cost is indeed pretty high for such a slow unit and now that their cavalier have insane pierce armor the highly armored serjeant seems again a bit off. However, first crusade is still a strong tech. I personally think it’s the most stupid thing (after flemish rv ofc) in the game but since you have all the unit upgrades you can just continue making serjeants after the UT and spam these along with cavalier or something. Super expensive on gold but also very strong army strong against anything that isn’t paladin, boyar, berserk and the like.

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#4

1111111111111111111111111111111111
Both should get a rework.

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#5

There are 2 reasons to make serjeants:

A) Counter trash - which is odd for the sicilians to say the least.
B) Make a donjon rush

I hoped at some time they would add a good ranged support to the serjeant in which case sic could make a nice army comp, but devs actually went the complete opposite way and removed the tech which gave a bit of extra gold to work with.

And ofc because of hauberk the serjeants are now even weaker in comparison to the knight line.

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#6

If you commit to Donjons, and don’t use Serjeants, you’re just paying 175S 75W for a tower that has some advantages over regular ones (no need to upgrade, 2x garrison) but even some drawbacks (2x2 base, less damage vs high pierce targets).
Donjon strength is the ability to make Serjeants, but if you don’t make them…for this reason I said “forced” you into the UU.

And how much gold does it cost all of that? Double intensive gold unit army? Unless in team games (where you might go full cavalier and siege), it doesn’t seem that viable 1v1.
That’s why almost every game I see Serjeants spawned and not trained, it’s the only way to get them without paying a fortune.

Massive armor is just against arrows, and even then, we’re talking about a slow unit, much slower than Berserks, against melee, yes Serjeant has good armor, but lackluster attack, cost effectively it doesn’t even trade well against champions.
You can use Berserks to raid, but 0.9 speed, non ranged units?

They already have FU champions for that, which cost almost half the gold, yes champions require upgrades, but the Elite Serjeant upgrade alone costs almost the same of the militia line combined (maybe even more gold).

It’s the only thing that came to mind, I believe you’re right. How viable is that though?

I get that Serjeants are better than champions, but it’s not like gold is unlimited every time. Sometimes you have to make a choice.
Even teutonic knights are better than teutons champions then. But why nobody ever makes them outside some really super-mega-niche moments?

Or cavalry archers (including UU), or burmese, aztec, japanese champions, and soon bulgarian THS, or siege, or battle elephants.
That leaves out basically only trash, eagle warriors, arbalesters, camels and regular FU champions, something against Sicilians already have plenty of tools to deal with.

I am the only one really sad that Serjeants are almost always spawned with First Crusade and never trained because Sicilians have other options for less gold, or with more utility?

#7

No i mean the composition of both units. Sicilian cavalier actually perform more or less identical to paladin vs cav archers while hauberk is half of resources cost and one quarter of research time compared to paladin so I dont see cav archers doing too great vs a composition with two units having 8 pierce armor. And thats the value of the serjeant right there. While mass halbs still are okayish vs sicilian cavalier having the serjeant on top is great here as an infantry unit that doesn’t die quickly to ranged units.

#8

Serjeants should be a great meatshield for siege, they take forever to die so they should be the go to option if you want to push alongside siege rams and onagers. This is mostly for closed maps though

#9

Aren’t most UUs that way?

Japanese, Malians, Ethiopians, Persians, Britons, Mayans, Franks, Saracens, Teutons, Aztecs, Huns, Incas, Indians, Slavs, Burmese, Khmer, Malay, Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Tatars, Burgundians

Theres list of civs that have very rarely used UUs. Why not just make champion, xbow or knight line instead of them?

Anyways serjeants are great, 7/8 armor is like malian champions combined with teuton champions. Pretty worth the resources Id say. And if you add the devastating donjon spam to every resource, they can be pretty dank. Even in castle age they have 5/5 armor making xbow deal only 2 damage to them.

Obviously Cavalier can be better option to tech into since as a thrash light cav spam tends to be stronger than halb one. In the end it comes down to if enemy has anti cavalry (camels/pikes) or if you can utilize the donjons to the maximum.

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#10

Only Sicilians, Bulgarians, Huns and Goths can make their main UU outside castles, this is really a HUGE advantage over other UUs. And compared to Bulgarian Krepost the Donjon is far more spammable, yet the few Serjeants made are usually spawned with First Crusade.

For 75% more gold and 33% more food, while doing less damage against buildings (champs have +4 bonus).
Serjeant is not bad, again, I have never said that, but why would you pay 35g when you can pay way less with a Castle tech? Imho their gold cost is too high.

OK, so let’s say the enemy makes archers in castle age, would you rather
A) create multiple donjons to train Serjeants at 60F 35G
B) make a castle and try to build TCs to research First Crusade
C) Go mango+skirms/scorpion+skirms/knights

They also take forever to kill with 11+4atk in imperial age or 8+2atk in castle age.
But fair point, siege all-in should be viable with them, even though it might be a strategy very, very vulnerable to enemy siege.

#11

Serjeants are great vs archers, and unlike cavaliers they can charge into pike defended archers with much less worry with the casual onager behind to help snipe those archers.

They’re a middle-ground unit between Huskarls and Teutonic Knights. That alone is a good incentive to use them, heal them often(via herbal meds), and utilize them for many x situations while adding other support units as wanted/needed.

#12

Serjeants are situationally useful, but depending on the map and the match up you need to decide whether to make a few, make a bunch (First Crusade), or go cav/archers.

If I only need a tower or two, I will make a few Serjeants from a donjon to defend the donjon from rams, or to make more donjons and relive the villagers from doing so. I won’t invest in elite or armor upgrades.

If I’m against an archer or meso civ (Serjeants are useful against Eagles from meso civs, even Incas whose Slinger bonus damage is reduced against Sicilians) then I’m going to consider making a full investment of donjons, elite upgrade, armor, and town centers. The cost to First Crusade is higher than most people are claiming, in that you need to make five town centers to receive full value. That’s wood, stone, and villager time.

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#13

i would disagree, if you just look at them purely on face value then maybe, but even on paper you need to compare them to other units… they’ve been out for 8 months already, there’s more than enough evidence, never mind running the sim yourself, they’re simply not cost effective

they’re only “good” for building donjons, everything else is either decent or below average for the cost. heavy infantry is generally made in imperial, when food becomes less important, so their gold cost (and stupid high tech price) becomes exorbitant in relation to champ line

even a malian champskarl beats serjeants cost effectively, nevermind the horde of better melee champs (burmese, teutons, japs, vikings etc)

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#14

I agree that the Serjeant is too expensive outside of First Crusade. For 30G or even a bit less we would use it far more. At 30G it is still 50% more expensive than Champions gold wise but it also brings good pierce armor and is able to build donjons. They would still not be cost effective against champions or Paladins but have their value outside of First Crusade.

For me the perfect price tag would be 60F 28G. Obuch is another beast obviously with 55F 20G cost but that is OP for what it offers.

Also the elite upgrade of the Serjeant with 1100F and 800G cost is definitely not on the cheap side.

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#15

I don’t think the serjeant needs a buff or cost reduction.
Maybe you could argue that his melee armor is a bit on the low side for the pierce armor he has, but the key part is that sicilians miss a good ranged support for the serjeant. Especially an affordable one in terms of gold investment.

And that’s what they actually solved for the obuch, the obuch “creates” it’s own strong ranged support by reducing the pierce armor.

Because of that I don’t think the serjeant can now be tweaked towards that utility anymore, the obuch just makes a better frontline.

Atm. the serjeant just seems obsolete in the sic unit roster and makes only sense because of the donjon rush and first crusade.

Idk I think it just makes no sense to give an inf UU to a civ that takes less reduced bonus damage, as infantry actually excels in fighting trash.

One idea would be that serjeants generate stone/gold when attacking buildings. This way they would have a unique ability that can possibly be a difference maker in certain situations. A snowball unit if you like to call it so.

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#16

In the few matches I’ve played as Sicilians I’ve used them as a anti-trash unit. Would normally tech into cavalier to kill archers and then when they started using halbs would pump out serjeants to clean up the trash, I know champions have higher attack but the additional range armour means they can kill trash that is supported by archers. In the late game a mix of Serjeants + halbs + skirms + siege ram is very hard to stop (excluding mass onager).

#17

scorps for all that trash, mangos to hit the rams

or as we literally just said:champs. the opponent can just spam champs and they will beat everything here, even better since you wasted res on halbs and skirms, while they have pure champs that are already beating the serjeants. nevermind this is a very slow and immobile build(so a cav civ just runs circles around it and hits your res nodes), yes it works in some cases, but firstly the tech price to reach this is nuts, secondly if someone counter raids you that army cant do jack(oh you want to tech into light cav as well?? add the tech fee/pop space to that as well)

what do you do until this composition is completed? arbs can still kite serjeants, this is where the high cost comes in, champskarls are much cheaper and can be spammed from rax all over the place, both the price and the production prevent this on the serjeants, unless you 1st crusade, meaning your serjeant ball is small enough that the enemy can kite it

and lastly, and this is very important… sicilians lack much of an eco to even achieve this… first you have to delay farms in order to tech horse collar. so your food is slowed down waiting for horse collar, and you have spent food that other civs wouldnt necessarily use. the wood returns on this take very long to kick in, so sicilians literally have zero eco until late feudal or early castle

and then your next eco bonus only works if you boom… this is very similar to how gimped the cumans were, you only had an eco if you boom…

and the game is governed by eco bonuses… the top civs have the best ecos, the bottom civs have the worst ecos… coincidence?

their arb is good enough, for that role all they lack is TR, which is good enough. if you were right but unfortunately you arent, so it doesnt matter they have the arb. if sicilians had TR, we wouldnt suddenly see serjeant arb death balls. the serjeant is still too expensive and produced too slowly to be a front line troop. and the sicilian eco isnt geared for it.

obuchs not only train faster, cost less, and are stronger in combat, but poles eco is significantly better

obuch is -20res per unit,-500 res to upgrade, and doing hugely more damage and boosting the dps of their ranged support, serjeants arent remotely close

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#18

This is exactly how I feel about the Serjeant.
At this point I hope the won’t nerf or rework the First Crusade Tech, or probably I wouldn’t use Serjeants at all.

What a sad thing to say.

If only their use was expanded a bit at least, like siege repairing, wall building, something else outside donjons.

#19

Change First Crusade to something that only benefits Serjeants like: “Serjeants are immune to conversion and can repair Siege Weapons”

I think that would be greatly beneficial to the unit and allow for sick pro strats!! Considering that they are quite a slow unit, I don’t think this would be broken at all if their repair rate is slower than a villagers’ of course.

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#20

So I’m upping my “old” thread because I think Serjeants are going to be even worse with the recent infantry buffs.

In castle age they already sucked against some infantry UUs, but now with recent longswords and THS buffs they suck even harder.
In addition to dying from Samurai, Jaguars and Teutonic Knights, now they die even to Japanese and Burmese longswords, and soon they’ll die even from castle age Berserkers and trade almost perfectly 1v1 against Vikings’ longswords and Woads. Obviously they lose even more cost effectively against any long swordsman now. In early imperial if your opponent researches the THS upgrade, paying 400 res, you can either spend 1900 res to match them, or just go for something else, really, anything is cheaper than the E. Serjeant upgrade. Even completely ditch Serjeants and research all stable techs from scratch.

The only selling point of the unit is the DISGUSTING First Crusade tech which allows to SPAWN ( :face_vomiting:) them for as much as a QUARTER/THIRD of their cost.
But think a moment if First Crusade wasn’t there, why would you make any Serjeant at all? Outside some gimmicky all-in feudal donjon rush I mean.
Sure 60F 35G is fine, if you can avoid paying that. :joy: :joy: :joy:

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