Without Nerf, All AOE 2 Matchups will Become Sicilian vs Sicilian

[yuzhonglu]

Yes.

Wall yourself in (or start walled in in Arena). Get 3-5 TCs in Castle Age ASAP, get a Castle, win.

[yuzhonglu]

Like the Burgundians, Sicilians are a very timing oriented civ. No one has the timings down yet, so discussions of "what the pros think" are moot.

They're discovering the timings just like anyone else, and their opinion is subject to change.

[jonoliveira12]

yuzhonglu님이 먼저 게시:

Put 50 Sargeants in 10 rams and move them to your enemy base. Not so easy to stop, especially if you throw in a few pikes and xbows.

Normally this would be cost prohibitive, but with the Sicilians....

What is the other guy doing, that you get enought Stone for 5 TCs + 1 Castles, then enough Food Gold and Wood for First Crusade, 1 Siege Workshop and 10 Rams?

By the time you have all that, he should have 20 Knights and 30 Crossbows.

[🍮]

so it seems you and caco agree that first crusade is a little too good. how is it different to use sargeants in rams than maa in rams? i guess you mean that bc of the flood of sargeants its easier to mass them. when spectating ive seen people creeping with donjons like a tower rush on arabia.

[yuzhonglu]

jonoliveira12님이 먼저 게시:

yuzhonglu님이 먼저 게시:

Put 50 Sargeants in 10 rams and move them to your enemy base. Not so easy to stop, especially if you throw in a few pikes and xbows.

Normally this would be cost prohibitive, but with the Sicilians....

What is the other guy doing, that you get enought Stone for 5 TCs + 1 Castles, then enough Food Gold and Wood for First Crusade, 1 Siege Workshop and 10 Rams?

By the time you have all that, he should have 20 Knights and 30 Crossbows.

Let's say both sides boom to 5 TCs and 1 Castle. Sicilians auto win.

Ok, so the other player counters with a 2 TC push. The Sicilian knows that's the counter, so he plays conservatively, mines stone in feudal, gets castle after his second TC.

Then what?

Both sides boom. Sicilian gets to 5 TCs, other guy gets to 5 TCs. Sicilians win, again, with ram push backed by arbs and 50 sargeants in early imperial.

Get my drift?

The idea is that the Sicilian can play defensively knowing that at some point if he defends well both sides have to boom.

If they're evenly matched, they'll hit imperial with about 5 TCs each at about the same time, with a similar military.

At which point Sicilian wins because 50 EXTRA Malian champions in early imp is NOT easy to stop, especially given that they cost a quarter as much, and so those resources can be put into other military units like rams, or halbs if the other player is the Franks.

And if the other side gets greedy in Castle, he can get punished immediately by a TC drop and a ram push in castle age.

[yuzhonglu]

Again, to reiterate, the Sicilians are a very timing oriented civ. It's either a castle age town center drop/ ram push or a an early imperial I steamroll you with masses of military.

If you understand the timings, First Crusade is completely OP.

[B00P]

I agree with op that first crusade needs to be nerfed. I also think that their buffed castle building speed is too much. But they are not at the level of broken that the cumans were when they were released. The next patch ought to take care of it.
Sicilians are broken only because of these two. I think making first crusade apply to 3 TCS as Jon said (or making 5 TCS spawn 5-6 each) ought to fix that. And they definitely have to remove or at least nerf that castle building speed. There is no way to stop Sicilians from getting a castle up in your face right now.

[Bullet Force]

Sicilians peak in Fuedal and Castle age then decline. They are fairly limited in options late game having no real strengths in any area. A bit of a jack of all trades.

[Sscral]

yuzhonglu님이 먼저 게시:

jonoliveira12님이 먼저 게시:

What is the other guy doing, that you get enought Stone for 5 TCs + 1 Castles, then enough Food Gold and Wood for First Crusade, 1 Siege Workshop and 10 Rams?

By the time you have all that, he should have 20 Knights and 30 Crossbows.

Let's say both sides boom to 5 TCs and 1 Castle. Sicilians auto win.

Ok, so the other player counters with a 2 TC push. The Sicilian knows that's the counter, so he plays conservatively, mines stone in feudal, gets castle after his second TC.

Then what?

Both sides boom. Sicilian gets to 5 TCs, other guy gets to 5 TCs. Sicilians win, again, with ram push backed by arbs and 50 sargeants in early imperial.

Get my drift?

The idea is that the Sicilian can play defensively knowing that at some point if he defends well both sides have to boom.

If they're evenly matched, they'll hit imperial with about 5 TCs each at about the same time, with a similar military.

At which point Sicilian wins because 50 EXTRA Malian champions in early imp is NOT easy to stop, especially given that they cost a quarter as much, and so those resources can be put into other military units like rams, or halbs if the other player is the Franks.

And if the other side gets greedy in Castle, he can get punished immediately by a TC drop and a ram push in castle age.

There is little difference here between the play style of any civilization that gets a large power spike in early imperial and have a major boost in win rate at that time of the game, they all have poor win rates <40 minutes and not so great/average overall win rates but exceptional win rates in games that last that long - aggression play styles will not have to deal with the power spike in a large amount of games because the game will be over in early castle age, defensive play styles will have a bonus to compensate for the Sicilian one, if playing someone at my elo even as it stands currently with this tech if they just let me boom with 5 tcs as goths into early imperial I am 100% not getting rolled over by 50 serjeants and whatever other junk they throw at me

I think the tech is a bit too strong but it just needs to be reduced a little bit in number of units, as it stands they seem completely sub-par in all aspects until they reach First Crusade and not even really great if they get to it and can't use it to close the game out, they don't have many effective early game options besides a feudal age scout rush that can mostly ignore spearmen

[yuzhonglu]

Sicilians actually do really well against Goths that boom. You complain about the Sicilians not getting much of an econ bonus. Well, what econ bonus do Goths get?

If Goths boom and Sicilians boom, guess who gets to imperial faster?

And once there, the Goth player is going to get overrun by First Crusade because that's 50 almost free units on top of whatever champions and rams the Sicilian builds. It's all about the flood, and the Goth player is going to get outflooded in early imperial. Also, arb-sargeant is tough to stop for both Goths and Meso civs. Arbs wreck champions, and sargeants wreck Eagle warriors and huskies.

Sicilian econ bonus is on par with the Tartars. It's not the best thing ever, but it's pretty solid.

The other issue is that immediately get up to 50 of their UU with their tech, bypassing the Castle Production build time issue.

[Sscral]

yuzhonglu님이 먼저 게시:

Sicilians actually do really well against Goths that boom. You complain about the Sicilians not getting much of an econ bonus. Well, what econ bonus do Goths get?

If Goths boom and Sicilians boom, guess who gets to imperial faster?

And once there, the Goth player is going to get overrun by First Crusade because that's 50 almost free units on top of whatever champions and rams the Sicilian builds.

Goths
Villagers have +5 attack against Wild Boars and carry +15 food from hunting.
Loom is researched instantly.
Infantry are 20%/25%/30%/35% cheaper in the Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age.

Sicilians

Castles and Town Centers are constructed 100% faster.
Farm upgrades provide +100% additional food to Farms before they need to be reseeded.

Hunting bonus is situational and map dependent, goths will be 1 villager ahead of Sicilians from instant loom, and their rush(Which is advisable to perform if you plan to boom) is cheaper and delays their age up less

The farm upgrade food bonus literally has no impact on gather rate whatsoever and does extremely little to speed up progress, it may let you turn one lumberjack into a farmer but that might even be pushing it

So the only economic bonus that they possess is faster TC construction, which is not the limiting factor on villager production, that would be the food cost of the villagers after the town centers are built

There is no reason that Sicilians would reach imperial faster other than individual player skill

[yuzhonglu]

Uh. No. Totally, mathematically wrong. And it's really obvious once you think about it.

Their farm bonus means they reseed their farms less. One of the things I've noticed with Sicilians is I'm always floating lots of wood even though I put the same number on wood as other civs.

Consider: an extra 200 food per farm (after horse collar and heavy plow is researched) means their farms are 60% better than anyone else in Castle. This saves 70 wood for every 2 farms, which is a SUBSTANTIAL bonus. For 30 farms that's a wood saving bonus on par with the Huns (1050 wood). Since you're going to place/reseed somewhere around 100+ farms in a 40 minute boom game, we're talking about 3500 wood saved. That's a substantial bonus. Not quite as good as the Celts, but its close. I'd say the Sicilian wood bonus from better farms is arguably the second best wood bonus in the game.

100% faster build time for TCs means an extra 2 villagers of production. It also means the 4 villagers who were building the TC can gather resources earlier, which pays for at least 1 of the villagers.

[Sscral]

yuzhonglu님이 먼저 게시:

Uh. No. Totally, mathematically wrong. Their farm bonus means they reseed their farms less. One of the things I've noticed with Sicilians is I'm always floating lots of wood even though I put the same number on wood as other civs.

Consider: an extra 200 food per farm (horse collar and heavy plow) means their farms are 50% better than anyone else in Castle. This saves 60 wood for every 2 farms, which is a SUBSTANTIAL bonus. For 30 farms that's a wood saving bonus on par with the Huns (900 wood). Since you're going to place/reseed somewhere around 100+ farms in a 40 minute game, we're talking about 3000 wood saved. That's a substantial bonus.

100% faster build time for TCs means an extra 2 villagers of production. It also means the 4 villagers who were building the TC can gather resources earlier, which pays for at least 1 of the villagers.

It does not begin saving wood until the farm reseed overlaps with the farm reseed of non-bonus farms and has massive diminishing returns as the quantity of food per farm increases, which is why crop rotation is useless in any standard length game, you can not take a direct multiplication and get an appropriate result it needs to be put on a graph, Yes, it is a bonus, No, the bonus does not have a large effect during the time period it takes to reach imperial age

There are several youtube videos that deal with farming rates and all of them come to similar conclusions that horse collar takes 20-25 minutes before it has any impact on your wood total, and heavy plough has no impact until almost 1 hour, the +75 food from horse collar you receive as Sicilians is not going to kick in to your wood income until right before you should be reaching imperial age (IE after you click the button to start researching it)

[yuzhonglu]

Ok, well when Imperial is hit the wood bonus kicks in, meaning the Sicilian player has an extra 3500 wood to get arbs and rams, to back the 50 or so Sargeants they get from First Crusade. As it stands, the timing of the Sicilian wood bonus from their farms is perfect.

Good luck stopping that in early imperial as the Goths.

I've played a bunch of games against boomy Goths as the Sicilians and the Goths always lose in early imp. Also, Goths don't get stone walls, so it's not like you can wall it out, and Castle fire does little against Elite Sargeants.

[Cacomistle]

Sscral님이 먼저 게시:

yuzhonglu님이 먼저 게시:

Uh. No. Totally, mathematically wrong. Their farm bonus means they reseed their farms less. One of the things I've noticed with Sicilians is I'm always floating lots of wood even though I put the same number on wood as other civs.

Consider: an extra 200 food per farm (horse collar and heavy plow) means their farms are 50% better than anyone else in Castle. This saves 60 wood for every 2 farms, which is a SUBSTANTIAL bonus. For 30 farms that's a wood saving bonus on par with the Huns (900 wood). Since you're going to place/reseed somewhere around 100+ farms in a 40 minute game, we're talking about 3000 wood saved. That's a substantial bonus.

100% faster build time for TCs means an extra 2 villagers of production. It also means the 4 villagers who were building the TC can gather resources earlier, which pays for at least 1 of the villagers.

It does not begin saving wood until the farm reseed overlaps with the farm reseed of non-bonus farms and has massive diminishing returns as the quantity of food per farm increases, which is why crop rotation is useless in any standard length game, you can not take a direct multiplication and get an appropriate result it needs to be put on a graph, Yes, it is a bonus, No, the bonus does not have a large effect during the time period it takes to reach imperial age

There are several youtube videos that deal with farming rates and all of them come to similar conclusions that horse collar takes 20-25 minutes before it has any impact on your wood total, and heavy plough has no impact until almost 1 hour, the +75 food from horse collar you receive as Sicilians is not going to kick in to your wood income until right before you should be reaching imperial age (IE after you click the button to start researching it)

That 20-25 minutes is for when you're a full farm ahead. You have an advantage the moment a non horse collar farm would expire. Its just that advantage isn't permanent yet, as you'll have to reseed soon.

That being said its still not the type of bonus that is gonna get sicilians to imperial age significantly faster than goths. Probably they hit around the same time (maybe like 20 seconds faster for sicilians on a map like arena), then they have like a brief 1-2 minute window to deal significant economic damage where they have elite serjeant (and maybe like supporting arbs) and goths don't have champion or a decent number of hand cannons.

After that sicilians just lose the matchup. Serjeants are not at all good vs goth champs (or hand cannons), and sicilian arbalest aren't super impressive without thumb ring or the last armor upgrade. They have nothing against the goth flood except to go their own champs and put arbs behind them, but with no bonuses to their champs and underwhelming arbalest they're just working with worse units.

At low elo where the goth is gonna transition slowly they're probably gonna die, but in a high level game I think it could go either way. Goths kind of suck so they're just not the civ I would use to say they beat sicilians.

[yuzhonglu]

There's also the minor point that the Sicilians can instantly get 30 Sargeants in mid-early Castle boom (both sides have 3 TCs and a Castle), throw in a few rams, and kill the Goths instantly that way, when they're busy booming and don't have much of anything.

EDIT: Both Sicilians and Burgundians are timing oriented civs. "If" the Goths can survive early imperial without taking significant damage, they win." But again, that's a pretty big if.