You don’t benefit from Siege upgrades in Castle Age because there aren’t Siege upgrades in Castle Age. You have one of the strongest Castle Age Skirmishers with very cheap upgrades - thats enough against Crossbows
Thank you for the obvious statement. It means that your existing siege can be upgraded in imperial.
Sicilian lategame is one of the worst - Every gold unit is useless, Serjeant is useless, Skirmishers die to Arbalest, no Hussars, no Bombard Cannons
and how many Siege units u have alive? 3?
??? That sounds like a personal problem. Most people do not want to trade their Arbs for Skirms in a 1v1.
an onager is a huge upgrade from a mangonel, more damage, bigger blast radius. A single shot landing from an onager can break an attack completely.
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Sicilian lategame is relatively solid. They have Siege engineers for their Onagers, meaning they can do Halb + Onager just fine, their Archers might be missing the Ring archer armor, but given their resistance to bonus damage they actually take less damage from skirms than a Generic Arbalest. That doesn’t make them a flat upgrade in any regard, they suffer in other cases, but the upside exists.
Halb+Arb is solid, their siege is extremely workable, and the Serjeant got improved and it was already pretty good.
Their winrate, as of right now, is already at 65% in 40+ minute games at 1650+. I think it’s safe to assume their lategame isn’t one of the the worst with that in mind.
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The civ is really meh with a slow UU and limited generic units, but they already have strong things, for example if you give them hussar, they will be the best civ in late game and probably OP, the sergeant after the boost are going to be like cockroaches, i don’t know i’d rather to give them a naval bonus and let them weak for land cause of the risk of their bonuses stacking.
Halb + Onager is too slow for Arabia and countered by every Monk or BBC civ on Arena - Sicilians don’t have answer against those.
Sicilian Arbalests die to Arbalest or other Gold units very hard, Cavalry can easily dodge their arrows because they don’t have Thumb Ring. Sicilians die to every gold unit composition from every civ, but Goths.
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With the resistance conversion buff, monks will be a lot less effective than now. Besides, the Elite Serjeant will be a pretty solid option with the 10 HP buff they’re supposedly going to receive. They have decent base armour, and can construct buildings on the front to add more Serjeants without needing to traverse across the map, so you’ll likely want to base your composition around this unit.
You’re thinking about Ballistics.
Arbalest are already relatively accurate, the main loss from Thumb Ring on the Arb effectiveness is a loss of damage due to a slower fire rate (~ 18%).
Halb Onager is not too slow for Arabia. If your opponent is making cav they play into halb which is half the build. If they make archers they play into mangonel which is half the build. Besides (very distinctly) Cavalry Archer play in Castle age they have a very good transition into the counter units for the strategy in Imp. And if your opponent is trying to mass CA, pile on the pressure early with 1 tc Donjon + siege is better than taking it late.
Every option for the Sicilian (except thumb ring for archers) is FU in castle age, so you really shouldn’t have problems taking a fight in castle age if your opponent wants to do something slow like CA.
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It is just a beta patch, we don’t know when they are gonna release the patch, they can change many things.
No I am thinking about Thumb Ring, it also makes dodging much harder.
It is too slow for Arabia
Donjons are just useless expensive Towers, not scary at all, that strategy could work vs lower rated players.
berbers
ethiopians
franks
indians
koreans
malay
portuguese
Saracens
teutons
vietnamese
10 civs have both siege engineers and bbc. Is erverything else trash?
Sicilians have already quite good siege in comparison.
Look, I can do this too!
It is not too slow for Arabia.
No, everything else is good which is mobile, because you don’t have mobility and Onagers are very squishy, unlike Siege Onagers.
Siege onager is so freaky expensive, I almost never get it in 1v1, besides I like the defensive playstyle and using onagers a lot. But SO is just too expensive.
Sicilian knights take 4 extra hits from pikes and 5 extra hits from camels, Teutons take about 3.3s longer to convert and don’t have husbandry. Their “free” buffs allow their units to survive different counters better.
Similarly they can buy different things. Teutons can buy heresy, and now Sicilians can buy faith heavily discounted and an age earlier. At a minimum you get 5 serjeants worth whatever you think they’re worth (95 if you believe the sticker price less if you want). Even if you put the value at like 70 you’re effectively getting faith an age earlier for 550 resources.
Also I suspect you haven’t really looked at the graph for Default/Teutons/Faith. A Husbandry knight takes a little less than 12s to kill a monk that starts converting it. Look at the graph and see what percentages you get at that level for all 3 lines. You can see that the benefit of faith over the Teutons is still about halving the number of units converted if you beeline toward the monks at max range. It’s more if you catch the monks off-guard (start conversion at < 9 range) less if you are slow to reach the monks at max range. You’re still basically halving the effectiveness of monks, which is exactly what Heresy does (in a different way).
Also why is everyone always so focused on Imperial Age? The dynamics leading up to imp is where most of the problems and balance issues are going to be.
And Sic have basically no bonus until castle age. The more resistant scouts have rarely any influence til that. The small donjon buff doesn’t make them any better to this point except vs tower rushes. But experienced players can also defend those with sic (except inca ones).
They need something to make their early game better, not a rarely decisive upgrade in their lategame or buffs to their UT and UU.
What matters if the civ is buffed to maybe 60% win rate after 1 hour if it loses at least half of all games in the first 20-25 minutes? And it’s even not classified as a defensive civ like the well known lategame powerhouses.
I feel Halberdier or Serjeant or Champion + Siege Onager might be really strong with sicilians, because their units take reduced bonus dmg from archers, skirmishers, hand canoneers.
Also not to mention the new first crusade tech which is basically a discount faith technology, making it so hard for the enemy monks with redemption + block printing to convert it, which is like one of the main counters to SO
This doesn’t seem generic to me
I think it’s hard to justify this until first crusade and Sicilian openings are more thoroughly tested.
Like given the options sicilians have in castle age and their mid game win rates being spot on 50% I dont think wise to risk making their midgame OP with a new bonus. Then you’re in the pickle of deciding if the new bonus is the problem or if players finally just figured out good ways to use their current bonuses.
What about this?
- Give them the feudal tower AND
- Replace one of the effects of first crusade by “all towers becomes donjons”
Donjons are a larger building - it’d be rough to implement and units under the growth radius would react badly probably.
Lacking heresy isn’t much of a loss - better to be able to convert your units right back.