Today's time for yet another Friday Update, where we'll give you a shower of Byzantine gold and some Saracen Mujahideen. Both of them are turtling civs, which means they greatly rely on defensive behaviour, ready to crawl back into their shell whenever the enemy once again threatens to attack their base.
The Byzantines are the perfect example of a turtling civilization. First of all, Byzantine Houses slowly generate coin, automatically. This leads to a decent amount of coin already very early in the game, without the need of risking one's villagers to go outside the gates looking for mines. These villagers - the ones who would normally be gathering coin - can now be tasked on trees to gather wood for the construction of Walls, Outposts or other defensive buildings to. As another plus, Byzantine age-ups only cost coin, which goes along perfectly with their previous bonus. The starting Gold or Silver Mine is still need however, but fortunately it's close to your Town Center.
Another bonus of the Byzantines, this one being even more defensive, are stronger Walls. All buildings, including Walls, are built quicker as well. Towers and Castles are not built quicker, to prevent possible balance issues, but as a compensation, the Byzantines receive 2 free Tower Wagons with each age-up, this being their fourth major defensive bonus. Another, though small, bonus (more of a simple uniqueness), is an earlier availability of Cavalry Archers. Normally, Cavalry Archers become available once you've reached Age III, but the Byzantines can already use them in Age II. This, however, removes the Light Cavalry (normally available from Age II and onwards) from their Stable.
The Saracens are another turtling civ, but in a completely different way. The Saracens can build Walls, Towers and Castles to set up a proper defensive position, but these are no stronger than those of other civs. There is a peculiarity to them, as instead of wood they cost only coin, but other than that, they are pretty much the same. No, Saracens have a much more "Come in if you think you're hard enough" attitude to defending their base. Once one of their buildings gets destroyed, it automatically spawns Mujahideen, which aren't the most powerful unit in the game, but they aren't half bad either. When playing as the Saracens, you can send you Mujahideen against the enemy army as soon as they destroy one of your buildings, which slowly but surely decimates the enemy assault force. Also, as a Muslim civ, they have the Race Track, which allows for quick spawning of infinite numbers of Militia, much like Native American civs can spawn Warriors in TWC. Militia are reasonably strong fighters, but do lose HP over time. Still, combined with Mujahideen, they're pretty well capable of avenging any lost buildings, and giving the enemy a seriously difficult time in your base. Saracens don't always have to lose their buildings though. When an enemy moves towards their base, most of their buildings will remain where they are, but as they have House Wagons instead of Houses, they can move them out of harm's way, preventing the enemy from taking away any available population.
Unusually for a turtling civ, the Saracens have no issues at all with gathering resources outside of their base. Their Peasants have much more hitpoints than those of any other civ, and they also get an attack bonus against enemy infantry, meaning they are far better suited to standing their ground and defending themselves than any other kind of Villager, even the Pilgrims that the Crusaders get. While Peasants obviously cannot take on an army, they are very much use in fending off raids, as well as early rushes, which gives them another bonus. Because their Peasants can fight rushes with good success, there's the possibility of aging up to Age II later, having first secured a decent start to the economy in Age I. Finally, the Saracens have another bonus, the Slave. Might, by lack of fortune, some of your Peasants get killed, and you don't have the resources to train some more, behold the Slave. Slaves are cheaper than Peasants, and while considerably weaker, they are a very viable option for short-term economic recovery. Even after the Saracens have been dealt a great deal of damage, they can have their economy up and running again in absolutely no time, which is a major advantage.
This finalises our short two-Update series on the strategic advantages and disadvantages of each civ, which hopefully has given you some insight into how differrent civs will play. I know it's still a bit early for that, having seen nor played any of K&B's civs, but with the information that we've been giving you over the past months, you should have a pretty clear idea about what civ will likely be your favourite in the Prologue. Mine will probably be the Turks, but what will yours be? Tell us!
Given our apparent lack of action over the last few days, you may think the team forum is equally quiet. Not so. This week, with a huge overestimation of my activity:
Pepp wrote: Decided!
Pepp happy, Iliander agree, and Robert is still busy.
K&B salutes... Anonymous. Apparently they commited some more mass DDOS attacks when SOPA and PIPA were circling the internet, and while not as large as the Assange ones, they must have helped...
K&B refutes... the mind of Robert Faber. As it turns out, NE's FTP server wasn't hacked at all, Elpea had simply not been reminded of paying his bill. Note to self: Think before acting.
- Quoted from peugeot407
