Just asking, if you can choose between saracens or berbers, why would you pick saracens if you pick it?
I mean, berber civ bonus (15% castle, 20% imperial stable unit cost reduction) and team bonus (genitour) is better. Well yeah saracens got 5% market fee, but is that enough to challenge those berbers bonuses? Berbers also got guilds.
The tech tree is similiar, both have all blacksmith tech available. Berbers got cavalier and saracens got arbalest. Arguably berbers cavalier is better since it sinergize so well with the civ bonus. While saracens arbalest also sinergize with the team bonus, the team bonus itself is just +2 att vs building.
Yeah saracens camel are amazing with +10HP in castle and +30HP after UT, but berbers camel is cheaper. Camel is a counter unit anyway, so being cheaper seems better than +30HP. Is saracen camel can be used as the backbone of an army anyway?
About mameluke, yeah that unit is amazing, but so expensive. Also berber camel archer can be used to counter cav archer, which seems to be frequently encountered, atleast in my experiences.
Well, perhaps the siege onager can redeem saracens, but berbers onager isn’t that bad.
I’m asking cause i’ve been playing saracens for a while. After trying berbers, it seems like a better version of saracens. So i want to look for others opinion as well to decide whether should i switch or not.
Saracens have a better feudal age thanks to the market bonus, they also have better archers and siege. Berbers instead they are a cavalry intensive civ with a better eco in castle age, with a powerful CA.
The 2 civ may seem quite similar, especially because both have a focus on camels, but while berbers also have strong knight/cavaliers, saracens have FU arbs.
They appear the same, but IMHO Berbers mainly focus on cavalry while Saracens are more of a jack-of-all-trades.
The Saracen market bonus gives them a lot of freedom, allowing them to bounce their economy around to fit any strategy they want to use. This is further enhanced by their very open tech tree. Ultimately it comes down to how well one can predict how the game will go and use the market to gain the upper hand.
They are similar, true. Saracens make up for the weaker civ bonuses with a very strong tech tree though.
Saracens get Arbalest, they get Parthian Tactics so they can use CA. So their Archery Range is significantly superior.
Barracks is the same.
Stable Berbers get the upper hand with Cavalier.
Siege Workshop is another huge win for Saracens. Access to BOTH siege ram and siege onager and Berbers lack both. Berbers get heavy scorpion but really who cares about HS when you could have the other two.
Navy is roughly the same. Berbers get Fast Fire ship while Saracens get huge attack speed bonus on Galleys.
Monastery is another win for Saracens as they get all monk techs. Berbers lack Sanctity and Block Printing which makes their monks less than ideal, although they get redemption at least.
Then for economy, Saracens win out again as they get Two Man Saw and miss Crop Rotation whereas Berbers miss Saw and get Crop Rotation. Two Man Saw is by far the superior option of the two.
So summing everything up, Barracks and Navy are basically the same, but Saracens just have sheer numbers of options with both Arbs and Cavalry Archers being fully upgraded, waaaaay better siege units, better monks, and better late game economy.
i agree it comes down to this. saracens are harder to leverage, but the better you are, the stronger their benefits are compared to berbers.
on top of what everyone else has said, berbers still need siege weapons to knock palisades/houses down quickly(saracens can almost get away without them) meaning they can apply greater pressure at certain times than berbers could, especially when coupled to market usage
I always pick Saracens, the Mameluke is much better than the Genitour and less specialised than the Camel Archer, the Saracens really don’t get enough love from anyone but the veterans.
something else i remembered is the camel archer is actually a lot better than generic cavalry archers for cost vs everything except spears
with it’s higher damage, hp (initially), pierce armour (it swings it from 17:20 HCA to arbs down to 12:20 camel archer v arbs, like a free weaker parthian tactics), lower attack delay and much cheaper upgrade (wood instead of food) making it imo a much better all round unit than the fragile (expensive) super micro reliant mameluke…
The Mamelukes high cost is offset by the fact that the Saracens can easily sell other resources in exchange for gold. I think of it as a cavalry version of the throwing axe-men which is one of my favourite UUs.
it’s cool and im sure it works for a lot of people, but i dont think it works for the majority(including higher elo), we hardly ever see them in matches, maybe now with the buffs (discount, hp etc) we will see more of them.
but on that same note not sure how often camel archers appear either, as much as i prefer using them since they stack well with gen and CA as opposed to mamelukes that almost need to be in their own group
Perhaps the devs should try catering to the small community that likes big battles once in a while rather than only focus on the community that does everything the pro-players do. Build orders and strategies may help you win but it’s tiring to do the same thing over and over again because there will never be a different outcome, it’s not truly a victory if you didn’t have fun trying to accomplish it.
Of course the outcome can and will change, since your opponent isn’t supposed to leave you in peace, and the map generation can make you change your plan halfway through your build order.
Also i heard the camles archer is more tanky due receiving less bonus damage since it’s affected by anti-camel bonus damage instead of anti-cavalry, which tend to be lower. So is camel archer is superior than generic cav archer in the end?
Another advantage of Sarracen are their monks and siege rams, especially on Arena. Berbers are actually the absolute worst civ on this map, while saracen can perform their signature market fueled monk rush.
Strong, and using it in the early game is easier since their market costs only 75 wood.
They don’t have parthian tactics, which allows CA to kill spears faster, so moot point. It must be nice against camels ig.
This being said as Berbers camel archers are better than their CA since said CA don’t benefit from their UT (regen on a ranged mobile unit is quite bonkers) and aren’t a huge middle finger to enemy CA.
It’s really strong, but difficult to use. You need to really plan it and calculate how much you want to use it to avoid the abuse or to not using it to its full potential.
most games into late castle and defo into imperial you will end up selling wood(since it is gathered so quickly and easily and theres so much of it on the map), so already saracens gain a benefit here since they will get more gold out of selling wood, the longer the game goes on for the bigger their bonus becomes, since their bonus is even ahead of the civs using guilds and of course hugely ahead of civs with no guilds. and thats just wood into gold, nevermind buying the resources you actually want is cheaper
it also allows you to do tech changes much easier.
for example you are spamming archers and switch to camels. you will need a ton more food than your eco was set up for, and vice versa for a switch from knights/camels into archers. this is a niche case but is definitely something usuable. as well as for cheese builds, like selling your starting stone to age up faster than most could ever hope for besides khmer. or gathering stone/gold (because its faster than food) selling it at the market, and buying food or wood depending on what you need, because food is often the most important in castle age, even more so than gold
but again all of that requires civ knowledge on top of game skill and an actual plan to work towards. like their team bonus of extra damage is only beneficial if you are being very aggressive, most players arent that aggressive so the bonus is basically useless to them
Yes, more HP (now allowing them to tank 1 onager/ BBC/ siege ram shot), 25 more attack coupled with an even larger blast radius making them a much more threatening unit
Yes, they have less frame delay, better fire rate and accuracy, more attack. They do take less damage from halbs and camels than cav archers
It is very strong. For other civs the market fee is 30%, down to 15% after Guilds is researched. That means for Saracens the starting price for selling Food or Wood is 95 instead of 70, and 105 instead of 130 for buying. As @phoenix1089 said, it has a lot of applications and allows you to switch and fix your strategy with little loss compared to other civs.
Camel Archers take less anti-cavalry damage since they are camels, but still take the same anti-archer damage as Cavalry Archers. Also since Berbers lack Parthean tactics, their Camel Archers end up having 1 less melee and pierce armor than Cavalry Archers. Lastly, Camel Archers are created in Castle, which make them harder to mass early in the game.
I wouldn’t call Camel Archers superior to Cavalry Archers, they are more like a side-grade.
If you really want to learn that, you need to know some specific BO. You can find some in pro players like Hera’s discord. Market (ab)use into archer or scout - both are very very strong in early feudal where Berbers 10% faster villager bonus is not that big of impact.
