As long as not catching any relics, it’s ability is totally useless. It’s not aiding more, not an aoe, even less useful than before. Even worse than it was.
To get back what you have paid 100 gold, u need 4 min, and make sure they are not dead, meaning they wouldn’t go to battle field.
Theoretically the damage debuff is what makes them the pick. Taking crossbows from 21 damage to 10.5 would mean a lot for countering their common counter… but the way the monk casts together keeps a group from spreading over a large army. The relic wololo damage/speed buff seems useful, but it’s more than likely going to give your enemy a relic if you don’t win the engagement.
Shinto is still the autopick for me, free monks, bonus speed health and healing, potentially 450gpm in late imperial (with no pop cost), and +2 line of sight is too good to pass up.
Suggest You produce 5 monk in play. So you have paid 500 gold for this, and their power is to make 10 maa to about 5 in 6 sec, while the enemy would already know this and produce crossbow mainly instead of maa.
Comparing to the other landmark, you have lost +75*4 +500 = 800 gold, in return of 5 maa which is about 600 food resource. Maybe producing more food or so resources would fit more for the melee infantry playstyle. As you choose budd, you are very confident in catching most relics, so you must have produced some units to make u so confident. What’s that? I have no idea.
So your purpose of such landmark is purely deny the comb of melee attack, while enemy could easily focus on range and siege.
Perhaps the monk cast range should be promoted, so long it’s the same as the HRE monk, but it should be a range of 4.5 to 5.5 I think.
If I could change the tech, I would suggest it to increase moving speed from 1.25 to 1.38, or increase the cure speed.
So far the 3 tech is too weird. Say you have 3 relics for them, could you wololo for infinite time? I think seige and range could simply solve this. First the last two useful one is Age4 tech, u have seige and top tech range then, it’s hard not to finish the monks.