Every other civ that has a Trebuchet bonus or UT without exception lacks Bombard Cannons. This because the devs rightly fear that a civ with good trebs and BBC would be too difficult to contest in a treb war. so why do Saracens have counterweights im not even arguing that it is overpowered, it cost 650f 500g and gives +15% attack to the Mangonel line and trebs which sounds underwhelming but for trebs wars it increases their damage output from 50 to 80 which would be useful except Saracens already have BBC, Hussar, and even Mameluke who all excel at sniping trebs so counterweight is not covering any of Saracens weakness and frankly, I would rather save the resources and build BBC. For their onager line, You have 87 Damage SO and I’m sure they are powerful in 4v4 BF or DM but in a real game they are 3500F and 2600G Which is entirely too expensive I guess you can go with Counterweight onager as a middle ground between Onager and SO which sounds viable, but I would instead give Counterweights to a civ like Cumans and replace Counterweights with Matyrdom which give killed monks a chance to finish the conversion which increases the closer they are to converting I think 25-75% present starting at the minimum conversion time so you can’t get instant conversions.
To be fair, Portugese Teutons and argubly Berbers also got treb boni and bbc+se.
The reason why Sarscens got counterweight is that the community cried to remove madrasah, and the current devs dony mind as much as you about avoiding giving treb bonus to bbc civs.
And for me; a UT dont have to be very useful and a must research for a civ. This includes counterweights.
The examples bonus are not directly Trebuchet bonus bonus Ironclad affect all siege, Kasbah affects all castles, and the portugese discount applies to all military units. I would also not consider Frank cheaper castle or Aztecs faster military units even though both aid in the creation of trebs. I don’t think any one wants to briton, huns or celts to have BBC maybe Japanese but that is only because there imperial age tech tree is kind of lacking without Plate Barding Armor general also it is worth noting that torsion engines does not affect trebs.
Counterweights isn’t even bad, it allows Saracen Trebs to win a treb war, adn take down buildings faster, as for Siege Onagers, isn’t bad too.
As i mentioned before they don’t need it they already have the tools to win treb wars they have BBC, FU Hussar, Mameluke, good monks. And their SO don’t need it because there already delete all and 3500F 2600G is entirely too expensive outside of 4v4 BF and commie games. And this tech would be better serve a civs that is actually bad at treb wars.
it cost 650f 500g and gives +15% attack to the Mangonel line and trebs which sounds underwhelming but for trebs wars it increases their damage output from 50 to 80
15% of 50 is 7.5, and not 30 (ie from 50 to 57.5). If the damage increased from 50 to 80 that would be a 60% increase.
Treb damage is 200. So 15% additional leads to 230.
True but trebs have 150PA armor and only bonus damage vs buildings so it effectively a 60% increase
As SOTL showed in a video, it lets a treb take out another treb with one less shot, which is pretty good. But as said above, the main purpose was removing a more pointless tech with what is at least a situational one. There could definitely be more useful ones, but it’s hard to know what to buff with Saracens without pushing them into really strong territory. They have great camels, fully upgraded archers with a bonus, good siege, OK ships, great monks, pointless infantry, and an eco bonus that can be very powerful if used right. You could give them a different ship bonus but that would be even less useful for the many players who hate water maps. Maybe a different monk bonus would have been a better replacement for madrasah, but as it is, a minor siege bonus isn’t terrible.
On closed maps their SO should not be underestimated, since the tech allows them to bypass certain breakpoints and make even just one shot extremely painful.
Not every civ that’s bad at treb wars needs to become good at them.
Isnt even bad, not exactly what you want for a civ-defining UT in imp
But you dont want to add a civ defining UT to an already good civ, do you?
As was written above, the counterweights UT was added to replace that weird and super useless madrash stuff. However, at that point saracens were already in a pretty good spot power level wise. The civ was already defined, so to speak. Giving them another civ-defining UT would mean they had to be nerfed severly in another spot, which is just not needed. So the devs gave them a UT that was not useless, but situational enough to be added without changing the overall balance.
I think it is the other way around. Every civ that lacks BBC, SO, and SR, has a treb bonus. Okay I know Huns have SR (and Magyars don’t have any treb bonus which is a real exception). Huns don’t even have Onager or SE. So I think the design philosophy was not giving a civ both trebuchet with bonus + BBC. Rather it was to give all civs some decent siege option in the late game.
Yes it isnt bad, as you can always make good use of it in late game (team game closed maps). I mainly wanted to say that it doesnt have to be useful.
Except Magyars… Unless the Magyars hussar counts as a treb bonus. But i also think it is no coincidence that the only 3 civs without SRams, BBC, ans SEle have siege engineers plus better trebs or an OP tech tree.
It’s not like Bohemians not needing good calvary or slavs not needing archers, every civ needs to ablility to push and defend castles.
You would think so I thought they were maybe tournament viable but from 900-1700 there win rate ranges from 40-45% Maybe Non-pro don’t know how to properly abuse the market hard to say I don’t have statistics on pros. But personally I don’t consider UT’s that impactful. Civ bonuses are in play much longer and unless they are broken UT’s are usually not enough to swing games.
I’m not sure why I didn’t consider siege ram to be a factor
BBC needs chemistry and takes long to research.
Makes sense if you go for arbs/skirm, which Saracens can definitely do well. But Saracens can also go Scout Rush into knights+camels and then castle-drop for Mamelukes.
Teching into BBC for siege support would require building a university, which you might want to avoid. (no range, less reason for ballistics)
Also you would need to build a Siege Workshop for those.
Counterweights is a slightly stronger version of Siege Engineers for trebs. You probably want to research it, if you have five trebs on the field already. [and not at all, if your trebs died]
And then you might as well build a uni to get Siege Engineers as well.
It just gives Saracens more flexibility and potentially a smoother way to play cav → camels with long-term viable siege support and that’s appreciated.
there is no reason why civs with good trebs shouldn’t have BBCs. “winning the treb war” isn’t really a thing because it doesn’t play out like, I got generic Knights, he got Lithuanian Knights with 4 relics, it is possible for the civ with the worse trebs to win the game.
I don’t know why Counter-weights is such a big deal. As stated before it was added instead of useless Madrasah UT which personally I would have kept as a Monastery UT. Regarding Martyrdom, it seems like a good tech for a Monastery of the Persians. I do think that the Slavs should have their UT Orthodoxy to be brought back as a Monastery UT as well.
Sure, and by pure virtue of every civ having trebs, they can do that. Some civs have strength in other areas, being very defensive / having BBC etcetera is one strength of many a civ can have.
Counter-weights allow player to win treb wars without bombard cannon. Also your trebs can stay under castle againts enemy cannons. Also counter- weighted trebs can destroy buildings much faster (and opponents need more villagers to keep repairing). With counter-weight, saraces have their own uniqueness: strong ramming ability. That is why saraces have bombard cannon and cw together.
But Yes but why wouldn’t you want BBC they have mobility and can easily snipe trebs before they can run away. also Counterweights research from castle which harms your treb production and cost 500F 600G while chemistry cost 300 f 200G also CW trebs lose to BBC.