True, this could break the game…
Well, thank God for that.
Their knights already resist against pikes better and can beat camels in equal numbers. Monks should stay as a counter at least in the early castle age, so it’s perfectly fine that the conversion resistance is locked behind a castle and a tech.
If it would be a bonus from the start like the teutons one it would be OP for sure.
Their onagers (not SO) already resisted a direct BBC shot without dying, 25% on units like SO and SR it would be too much, you wouldn’t be able to stop their siege push with anything, considering that all your units too take less bonus damage.
FU LC that takes less bonus damage kill both, and the new first crusade would affect also siege units, so monks with BP aren’t that good. Also, their cavaliers would basically be able to kill monks before being converted.
BBC are still effective, but about half of the civs have them, and again about half of those can get to them in a decent time.
In reality, the reason why infantry+siege isn’t that much used, is because the meta is more towards feudal aggression (a strong strategy for the sicilians), while the this strategy requires to turtle up and boom (again, sicilians have bonuses for this too), and this usually isn’t a popular strategy.
I would say it’s probably amongst the worst feudal aggression civ. Donjons really aren’t great in feudal. Even 175 stone is expensive, and a 2x2 base still has its disadvantages. Just not being able to simply tower behind a woodline or tower a gold or stone really sucks for them. Plus as a civ you have no bonuses for the very early eco.
Yeah I wasn’t referring to the donjon rush, but to their scout and archers rushes.
Both takes less bonus damage from counter units and are both helped by their farm bonus, that either gives you more wood for archers, or free up some lumberjacks to gather either food or gold.
All in all those aren’t top tier rushes, but are for sure solid and way above average. Then in castle age they can keep up with xbows, go for knights or boom, and have a bonus that help for all 3 strategies. They aren’t that bad.
The farm bonus won’t start paying off during the time you make the attack. It helps a lot later on, but doesn’t help you in pulling off any feudal attacks. The earliest rush that can actually do any meaningful damage with this civ is pretty much First Crusade.
It helps because you know that your farms will reseed later on than with another civ. Meaning that in that time you are more free to invest your wood into something else.
You don’t have to wait for you wood to flooding for make use of the bonus.
It takes 20 minutes before sicilians farm bonus has any impact.
Do you really think that helps in the early to mid game at all?
Yes it helps for booming and then transition into military, but that’s basically it.
Even the faster build tcs come often earlier into play than the loer lasting farms.
Look up sotls farm upgrade bonusses and you will understand why the sic farm bonus is way worse than it looks.
That’s why I proposed to change it to “Farms provide 60 % more food” becaus this can come into play earlier by skipping farm upgrades and/or placing farms earlier because of the higher efficiency.
In my estimation of civ’s booming potential the farm bonus gave a 0.6 % increase, whilst the faster building TCs gave a 6% increase for the sicilian boom. To put it in a persepective.
This isn’t the right way to look at it. You get the bonus when the enemy reseeds their farm. It opens up a window where you are at a resource advantage, which then closes when you reseed your own farms. See this graph for a visualization of the difference for F farms built every 18s (0.3min). The graph shows the temporary wood advantage garnered by regular horse collar and Sicilian horse collar compared to a civ that skips horse collar for those F farms.
You can see that the integral of the temporary wood advantage they get is 2x, which makes sense as the bonus is 2 times larger. However the more interesting property is that it has a higher peak and longer duration at any level. This means if you do something like skip horse-collar against Sicilians you are putting yourself on a timer. They are going to have a window which is slightly higher and lasts much longer where they can apply pressure. More importantly a good player knows exactly when this window opens because their first farms will show 150 resources left.
So it does affect their feudal age because it limits the opponents options, lest they subject themselves to a rather long window of disadvantage.
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No the right analysis for the bonus is to look when you would have to reseed the farm without it.
And that’s about the 20 minute mark. Before the bonus can’t have any positive impact for the sicilians. It’s just not possible.
As you can see here:
https://aoestats.io/civ/Sicilians/RM_1v1/1650+
Sicilians lose in 65 % of all games ending before that mark. In all theses games the bonus had no influence at all. And this is why the bonus is comparably bad, because it takes at least 20 minutes to have any impact and is even hidden behind an investment. Besides most people get horsecollar usually, it can actually be a good choice to deliberately skip all eco upgrades against sicilians because of their bad early game and the eco bonus being hidden behind an investment.
If enemies get more for the same investment it can often be tactically benefitial to skip that investment as you know the enemy wil go for it and you might have a powerspike skipping it, as you would lose momentum by playing into the opponents strenght.
I wouldn’t recomment doing it, but it is a viable strat against sic to take exactly advantage of their bad early game by delaying upgrades in favor of early pressure. If you can kill some of their vills early the game is practcally already won. I think we will see this a lot when the burg reduced upgrade costs are in the core game. Burgs immediately try to get the upgrades, the enemies try to punish them for that investment. It’s how the game mechanics work. People will know that this is the time to damage their eco - because it is also the time where they would get the biggest advantage IF the opponent doesn’t does anything against it.
And I think that’s exactly why burgs win rate is so terrible atm because they are punished so heavily for going for the upgrades way too early.
And the Sicilian bonus is deceiving in the same manner, besides it doesn’t punishes you by going for it. But it also gives you basically no advantage over other civs until that 20 minute mark. And you can see it in the stats, it’s exactly as described.
Your assertion here amounts to “Future income streams for the opponent don’t affect a player’s present decisions”. We know this isn’t true as you said pretty explicitly the Sicilian player can expect more aggression. So it does have an impact before 20m. It makes the opponent more predictable on average.
Sure the actual time that the ‘bonus’ takes shape occurs after 20m. But what’s more important is:
- The marginal advantage that extra 75 food gets you. This is the difference between the 0 and S functions or the difference between H and 0 (depending on if the opponent gets horse collar)
- When that bonus occurs and how it’s identifiable (when the enemy reseeds their farms)
- How that affects the decision to get or skip horse collar.
This is why you have to plot out the H and S functions like in the graph. You need to see if it materially affects the incentives the opponent faces to obtain a tech in equilibrium. By my interpretation it definitely does change the incentives the opponent faces. Therefore it has an effect on decisions made in feudal age, making the opponent more predictable.
There’s a ton of statistical reasons you can’t really use those stats to support your assertion that their early game is somehow so fundamentally flawed that they are going to be unbalanced without it being changed.
- Confounding effect 1: Weakness to tower rushes
- Confounding effect 2: It has more unique openings which people tried out (and obviously they had lower win rates because they’re unpracticed)
- Confounding effect 3: People don’t realize yet that they should expect a lot more feudal pressure.
There’s also counter-example civs like the Spanish with way higher feudal age win rates despite having very similar generic openings.
I’d say just let the current changes go through, give people the opportunity to keep converging toward equilibrium and iterate more next patch.
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No, i basically say the opposite: If the enemy has an advantage later on, you should take into consideration adjusting to it by damaging your own later eco for a powerspike.
And to make it the other way around potentially just plays more into the strength of the opponen.
You wouldn’t also try to outboom indians if you see them adding multiple tcs, do you?
I know that’s what the rest of your post implies but your assertion that
Implies that making the opponent more predictable isn’t somehow an advantage. Like the Sicilians have the potential for one of the strongest power-spikes in castle age, which is amplified by their more valuable horse collar. Yeah strictly speaking it doesn’t let the Sicilian player do more in feudal but that’s not the same as not having a positive impact.
Of course it has an impact, but only after the timeframe until it first gets any advantage, not before. Because the outplay potential works in the opposite direction: Better in lategame => facing more early agression.
The sicilian lategam is already quite strong, what they need is something in the early game.