Strategy Thesis Of the Week: Sicilians win every fight (just mirror your opponent)

Alright guys, I started that before Hidden Cup and liked the discussion around it, so I think, I'll try to make that a regular thing.

Disclaimer: That stuff is rather supposed to be thought provoking than 100% true and I'll go for some clickbaitish headline now and then to get the discussion rolling. So, feel free to give your opinion and don't be too angry about me. ;)

Here we go: Sicilians are actually good. Hera put them in F-Tier? Well, I am not sure if they are good on the absolute top level but I just won a tournament game against a 1700 (while being rather 1600) with them and, uhm, I actually have a 100% win rate in ranked with them too (5 out of 5), so I am convinced they are absolutely fine for 98% of the player base. (Obviously, it might be that I overrate them a bit based on my experience)

The deal with Sicilians is that they have nothing to get ahead early, like early early, until minute 12-15. They will always be even or slower in getting army out.

BUT: Once you get to army compositions, you just win every fight with Sicilians. What you do with them is, that you mirror your opponent. And add counter-units.

• Opponent goes Archers? You go Archer-Skirm. You force him into Skirms. You win.

• Oppont goes Scouts? You go Scouts-Spears. You force him into Spears. You win.

Same with Xbow and Knights. Because their bonus damage reduction makes their unit not-counterable.

You just got to adjust the army composition a bit: Against Franks, focus on getting Pikemen out, then you start Knight production behind that. Against Ethiopians, probably go a bit more into Skirms than when you face Chinese or Malians, because Ethiopians

Also, Infantry and Meso civs are kinda dead against them, because they have nothing to counter Knight-spam. Try to go full Celt Pikemen against their Knights. You just get eaten. They're also a counter civ to Aztecs imo, even Monkrush can be countered by their Light Cav which won't die to Pikemen.

What they struggle with are strong, hard to kill units that don't rely on bonus damage and full gold compositions: Cataphracts, Konniks, Teutonic Knights will wreck them pretty much, Arambai and Conqs (but they MIGHT die to Skirm-Xbow), Bojars and Leitis should be good, everything that can beat Knights by pure strength basically. Portugese Xbow-Knight-Siege play should kill them too. Rattans also do fine, so should Britton Xbows, Warwagons and in general CA if you have time to mass them.

Sounds like a lot but I actually mentioned not more than ~13 of the 37 civs. Also, here it gets a bit tricky: All those units come into play once you're mid or late Castle Age. From that point onwards, the Sicilian eco actually starts to roll like crazy. With the extra food on the farms, you save a lot of wood during Castle Age and especially around late Castle/early Imp. With that, you can sustain a sick boom on 4-5 TCs and it's also much easier to spam some buildings and transition into mass army production. You also have the faster built TCs and Castles now to quickly secure areas. At this point, the Sicilians become some kind of more flexible Goths.

I think in general, the Knight play is stronger because they win against Xbows when massed, so when you go Xbow as Sicilians you could simply struggle with Knights, rather than the other way around, kinda standard AoE in that moment - that is also, why you rather want to have the mirror situation. Also, you'll miss out on your eco bonus when you skip/delay farm upgrades.

Absolutely worth mentioning, that they can be absolutely amazing on maps that tend to play out as full scout war as Acropolis or Land Nomad. Usually, you'll build some Spears to defend in those scenarios. But they get eaten by Sicilian Scouts. The opponent will never be able to defend cost efficiently, so either he can't attack you or he leaves his base unprotected. Honestly, it's almost broken. In that situation, I'll prefer Sicilians over literally any civ.

On pro level, I figure there might be too many time windows, where you can push in and solidify an advantage over the Sicilians: Early Feudal, then posibly early Castle Age if you manage to click up quicker, also when Siege and Monks get involved, before mass armies. But you need to push this strong and clean, otherwise you will be mirrored to death. On lower level, were people make more mistakes and are way worse in punishing time windows, they are actually a pretty amazing civ when played the right way: Because then, they will just win every fight.