The Sicilians civ have many good bonuses at any field, eco, buildings and navy. 100% building faster to TCs and castles mean better booming and quick eco, farms +100% food, military units that can build Donjon which is like MAA+Trush and lastly and the strongest bonus in my perspective is that their land military get only 50% less bonus damage and thats i want to talk about which is completely sick.
50% less bonus damage do you know what this mean? The units in aoe2 have hidden features and bonuses attack against each others; for example knights have bonus attack vs infantry units, skirms have bonus attack vs archers, fighting up hills have bonus attack, scouts have resistance/bonus vs monks, etc. But with the Sicilians bonus 50% less damage this is actually broken from my perspective, because this mean all your army will do 50% less damage against Sicilians army and maybe you will “no, it is only 50% for bonuses attacks” but actually every single unit have a hidden bonus attack against other units and i mentioned some examples about that (skirms vs archers, knights vs infantry, pikes vs knights…) so what to do?
My suggestion:
1-Land military take 25% less damage from attack bonuses
This really doesn’t help much against brute force and siege units. Since buildings are unaffected enemy rams, bbc and trebuchets are still great choice. Foot archer uu have +2 bonus vs spear infantry and regular ones have +3. I think the biggest effect is on your monks, cavalry (specially light) and archer units (which you won’t use probably).
As per today’s meta, you usually use Arbalests to counter infantry, not HC. Arbalests have no attack bonus. They win by brute force. The biggest effect I see is of siege units on siege units, especially rams.
The greatest effect is in countering Cavalry though. Halberdiers will have the same attack vs SIcilian Cavalry as Turk Spearmen have against generic Cavalry.
All mounted units have attack bonuses against infantry. CA have a bonus vs infantry and spears, knignts have a bonus vs infantry, archers and skirms, skirms have bonus vs archers, pikes have bonus vs knignts and all of them will make only 50% effect
What about skirms and archers for example? You know the skirms have attack bonus vs archers, so by this the Sicilian archer will take only 50% damage, and there are many other examples like hill bonus, spears bonus vs cavs, archers bonus vs infantry, infantry bonus vs buildings…
half of the effectiveness of skirmishers comes from that pierce armor and the other half comes from attack bonus. Skirmishers have +3/+4/+5 attack bonus against archers, same as their pierce armor.
No man, Knights have no bonus at all, except Persians vs archers.
CA only have bonus vs spearman, not all infantry.
Knights counter infantry just because the better stats…
I haven’t tried the sicilians much (to busy wrecking everything with burgundians). What do you think is the strongest unit combo is with these bonuses? I feel like in feudal archers/spears could be pretty hard to counter. For generic civs the best counter to that is skirms because of their bonus damage against both, so is sicilian feudal archers/spears uncounterable?
What’s their ideal unit composition in castle and imp? I guess playing into arbs is good, my issue with the civ is I have a hard time seeing what your game plan should be, unless they should just be viewed as more of a jack of all civs like Malian/Portugese.
No. The lack of last armour upgrade cancels out the civ bonus. On top of lack of thumb ring and minimal eco. On top of onagers not caring about that bonus and deleting your subpar arbs. And sic doesn’t have BBC to counter onager
Opposing archers will still be better than yours in feudal. They also don’t care about that civ bonus. Neither do opposing knights.
I think their archer line is purely for assisting the main force (ie serjeants or knights) to counter opposing militia or spears depending on your main composition
Ive been trying to think of the most polar match ups.
Worst for sic is something like Bulgaria who can trush+m@a. Or goth late game. Lack of eco means your generic champs can’t beat goth cheap champs. And goth bbc can snipe your scorps.
Best for sic is maybe mayans their weaker militia and focus on archers. Both counterable by serjeants.
The 50% bonus damage reduction only seems to apply to infantry, cavalry, archers and siege weapons. Ships, monks and buildings are unaffected by it and hence take full bonus damage.
The biggest impact of this seems to be
Bloodline scouts defeating spearman in 1v1.
Mangonel surviving a direct hit from enemy mangonel.
Wait the Sicilian bonus doesn’t work on monks? I thought it did and that explained their uber bad monastery .
Either you try and figure out what is the perfect build orderTM for feudal age serjeant+donjons, or you just scout rush and enjoy your scouts that can sit on spears twice as long.
Tbh their arbs aren’t the unit who benefit the most from their bonus. I think it’s a viable option for them, but they are no where near as strong as mini-catas cavalry or siege that can eat direct shots from enemy mango without dying.
If you’re on a boomy map then the plan is even more obvious: you make a 5 TC boom, a castle, click first crusade, gg ez.
Sicilians don’t have very good eco bonuses. While doubling the Food per Farm offered by Horse Collar, Heavy Plow and Crop Rotation sounds good, it actually does nothing until said tech are researched and new Farms are created/reseeded. Basically it start having an effect in mid/late Feudal, by saving a bit of Wood here and there through delaying the reseed.
As for the Dungeon and Serjeant, it isn’t that good in Feudal Age. Dungeon costs 200 Stone, only one can be build with the starting Stone. Serjeants, for their part, cost 15 Gold more than M@A while having the same stats. So a Dungeon + Serjeant rush would require a huge amount of ressources and a huge toll for the Silician’s economy.
The Sicilian bonus doesn’t work against enemy monks (they don’t get Teuton bonus) I am unsure if they they get protection from the scout lines atk bonus vs monks
How does this perform compared to for example frankish paladins or even general paladins (pretty sure paladins beat halbs normally, though they cost way way more). Also the issue with cav vs halbs is partly cause the halb player also masses archers and it’s an annoying meatwall in the way.