How are Boyars shredded by berserks?
Some nerd stuff incoming:
If we assume FU units on both sides,
Berserks do 18 + 5 = 23 damage.
This gets reduced by 11 MA of boyars for a total of 12 damage per hit.
Meanwhile, Boyars do 18 damage which gets reduced to 13 by 5 MA.
Berserks have 74 hp but regen helps a tiny bit.
Boyars have 150 hp and slightly faster attack speed.
Taking everything into account, An elite boyar will win 1v1 with 52% hp left.
On a total resource basis, (gold + wood + food), the boyar has 21% efficiency
If you just consider gold, then the berserk wins by 9% which makes them a tiny bit more efficient gold wise.
However, this is 1 vs 1.
If we are talking about late game were dozens of units are fighting, a group of boyars will wipe out a group of berserks, quite easily.
If we use 3000 total resources for each group, we end up with 33 berserks and 23 Boyars
They Boyars will win this fight with about 6-7 remaining, which is about 30% total resource efficiency.
In terms of gold cost lost, the fight is about even.
So yes berserks can take fights vs boyars gold efficiently, however, they will lose.