You shouldn’t counter Sicilian knights with camels, just like you shouldn’t counter Malian longswords with crossbows. You counter Sicilian knights with raw power. For literally every camel civ, you have raw power options against Sicilian knights: CA or your own knights (Except Ethiopians, which has fast firing xbow and free pikeman).
So? Hauberk cavaliers also aren’t as strong as paladin (even vs arbs, although they take 10 more hits, they also need 33% more hits to kill, 4 instead of 3).
This is a bad comparison. Whike Malian infantry is indeed way better vs archers they still dont get to counter crossbows who are still a better unit in general (a and the militia is still an slow niche unit
Meanwhile in the case of Sicilians you get a massive bonus for one of the most meta units which makes the niche unit (the xamel) irrelevant. Its a bonus that instead of making a unit more interesting it makes it less interesting. It literally makes a unit irrelevant for most civs
Hauberk Cavaliers are way more harder to counter, cheaper and faster to upgrade
A lot of civs are archers + pike civs inthe late game and those die to Sicilian Hauberk knights badly. Im only using camels as an example
But why should camels counter knights?? The game can have a little diversity in it like how Dravidians infantry (with Wootz Steel) counter Teutonic Knights while Teutonic Knights counter every other infantry unit.
You are right.
Yes. I won’t say archer civs have no chance. Most of them have better eco bonus than Sicilians, and could prevent a decisive knight mass. But it’s hard for archer-pike. I’m perfectly fine with nerfing or removing Hauberk.
So why is the Sicilians’ win rate mediocre? Because knight is more prevalent on ladder and they lose to most knight civs?
i think the problem of the sicilians cavalier is the bonus reduction in conjunction with hauberk and first crusade monk resistance. if you tone down a bit either of those things, they get much easier to counter. i would have preferred a nerf to hauberk to +1/+1 to make them still susceptible to archers, rather than the bonus damage, since it now impacts the whole sicilians military and even if the magnitude of the nerf is much smaller on infantry and archers, is still a nerf to basically all their units, instead of only the problematic part (the cavalier)
all this is coming with no compensation whatsoever, and for an average civ