@King_Marv Nobody used the arguments that you're responding to. I've never said that mayans are bad on arena, you're choosing from a poll of turks/spanish/mayans, overall 2 of the strongest arena civs and 1 above average + mayans are still good vs turks, which still makes them interesting choice there. I've never said that plums sux now with the increased cost, for me maya is one of the best ara civs just due to plums. You're 19x arena player, you likely know very well, why mayans are weaker compared to aoc on arena and it's definitely not due to 2 minor changes.
1) Sara isn't a good arena civ, because they lack major eco bonus and they don't have optimal imp units, missing halbs is really huge on arena, camels are far from optimal substitute in many situations, saracens don't have heavy scorps, and their first good army vs magyar combo is onagers + mamelukes, which in combination with not a good eco is too expensive. Magyars should have the upper hand vs saracens, also because they should get all 5 relics. The way dnoob played the sara vs you seemed good to me, if he finished his 2nd castle fwd or add arba faster he'd most likely win.
2) I agree that Magyars need to play longer castle age and delay enemy imp push as long as they can, their boom is poor and they need quite expensive army to deal with halb+sr/halb+scorps, if they up with 70 vills they gonna struggle. BBC + heavy scorp + halb/halb + sr is very cheap early imp army because of how few upgrades it requires to be efficient, unlike magyar hca which needs pretty much every upgrade to be strong unit + the eco for persians is way better. I'd pick huns over magyars too and I'm not even sure if I'd go for CAs in castle and get map control and most relics and then pala or straight boom, early imp cas, sr, fwd castle trebs and likely tarkan switch if enemy would go for mostly range army.
3) The reason why maya is weaker in wk arena compared to aoc arena aren't the changes, but combination of 4 other facts.
a) In AoC Maya was top civ, because many aoc civs struggled vs maya (britons, huns, persians, turks, mongols, saracens, korea) and more. Then came wk, and maya got heavy counters in burmese, malay, ethiopians, malians, slavs - except goth and aztec, those are better counters for maya than any aoc civs.
b) Because some wk civs were really strong, most aoc civs got buffed at least with 2nd good UT, which especially on arena has great usage (teuton ironclad, briton warwolf, huns marauders) some like franks got even huge regular buffs, UU units were buffed (tarkans, axemen) which made huns very playable vs maya/franks became another counter civ. Maya is about the same compared to aoc and their 2nd UT is useless, unless you're doing troll challenge.
c) The most common play as maya in aoc used to be FI, mayan wars were 80+% 1tc FI vs 1tc FI and it used to be the strongest strategy. The reason for that is, because you don't need that much skill+experience to do a nice 1tc FI BO, but you need a lot of skill and experience to defend it, similar as monk rush. As the overall skill and experience is climbing, people can defend 1tc plays better and better, while you can't put same amount of skill into 1tc plays, there's no room for it with 35 vills and 20 plums microing vs enemy army.
d) Onagers. People started to use onagers way more on arena and for maya that alone is their best counter.
ofc man he is top 2 arena brain and he just proved itWhen Dracont is not clowning around, he can be pretty knowledgeable.