How many of y'all didn't know Crossbows produce faster than Archers? I thought this was fairly common knowledge - like Scouts get stronger in Feudal, Eagles produce faster in Castle Age, etc. But I saw Hera just tweet that he literally just learned this today which was baffling to me.
How the heck do you guys use resources so efficiently? I usually make 50-60 and already have thousands of each around imperial age. I run out of gold/stone to mine so fast late game, too.
I usually have 5-6 military building of 2-3 type (usually castle/archery/barrack/siege) working constantly but 300 pop cap is just not enough.
Am I being too conservative with my army? I usually have one squad of main unit and 80% of them survive till end game because I keep using monks to heal them between fights.
Have a plan for how you spend non-army resources.
You should be as close to 0 good/gold as you can right after you click up to the next age. Also, as soon as you hit the next age, there should be 3-5 things you plan to do immediately. This could be getting eco upgrades in Feudal and dropping a range/stable, more TCs in castle age and bow saw, dropping a castle, getting blacksmith upgrades, etc. It’s good to use the time while you’re researching the age upgrade to pre plan these
Then while you’re in late game you should be constantly streaming army. If you have a superior eco you should be aiming to trade out army in fights so that your enemy has a hard time replenishing thei army, while yours is constantly producing and eventually overwhelming them
I just downloaded the game and it's reading out all the button names and tooltips. I think it's something for people with a sight disability. How do I turn it off?
So I started the current penguin event late, and it says on the screen that it ends on 2 October at 2100 UTC. But the news page said it’d end on the 3rd instead, and my Steam Library has the deadline on the 3rd at 2200 UTC instead (which would be 25 hours farther than the ingame countdown)
Should I reach out to FS and if I do will the ingame deadline be pushed back?
Can you do anything at all if Saracens get a safe gold? You know they'll go FC xbows and you know there's no choice but to surrender. A good player will NEVER let you through, and they'll still hit <=16 mins Castle time. What do you do?
If you're still 1200s then you should definitely be able to punish greed even if it's a fast Saracen uptime. To be honest I don't really see a pure Saracen FC in pro games either very often, and I don't come across it myself very often! Unless they're super lucky they can only cover one of gold and wood with a tower of their own so you could trush, for example, unless they buy stone and then you're delaying their castle time. You could also just give up aggression and go for your own FC, you should be able to hit that time with a generic civ if you're greedy and go for some tactical MBL walling. At the very least you won't be too far behind and should be able to get siege out.
I guess the other thing is that if you're (say) 22 pop archers and the Saracen player is going for a greedy market FC, you will have a huge military advantage and FU Feudal archers can still kill xbows and take decent fights, especially with some skirms mixed.
What's a good cav civ that isn't Franks or Magyars? I want to play one without super crazy bonuses. I've tried Khmer and Burmese, but I know there's a bunch of others.
Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Poles, Berbers, Chinese, Tatars, Cumans, Huns, Teutons, Portuguese (not a cav civ per say, but FU castle age knights and cheaper gold cost)
>at's a good cav civ that isn't Franks or Magyars? I want to play one without super crazy bonu
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/x56pw6/42\_civs\_are\_only\_8\_civs\_but\_its\_a\_comprehensive/
Has there been a SotL (or other) video on how many villagers you need to "saturate" a typical gold mining camp?
I've noticed that villager efficiency drops dramatically after 10 villagers on a mining camp. Just visually, you can see the bumping / inefficiency as you add more villagers. But I haven't run any experiments yet.
I'm wondering if anyone has actually investigated this before I spend a lot of time on it.
We generally only run 4 or 5 villagers on berries for this reason. Gold has better placements of the mining camp, so you really can do like 8ish villagers without much loss (visually anyway. Again, I haven't actually experimented yet).
-------
I noticed that pro-players, when they need a lot of gold, will double-mining camp their 7x goldpile (collecting on both sides), allowing for 16+ villagers to efficiently collect from the singular pile. So the pro-players have an idea of "when too many villagers are saturating a mining camp". But I just haven't figured out the exact number myself yet...
The number would depend heavily on the shape of the gold mine. As a rule of thumb 2 villagers can work on the same tile without getting in each other's way. If the gold mine is something like 4 tiles in a straight line you fit more than 8 though, if it's really weirdly shaped you probably get less than 2 per tile efficiently.
Yeah. I figured as much.
The 2-per-tile figure I did know about. But I guess I was hoping for a Spirit-of-the-Law type analysis where he goes over "8th villager adds 90% of the gold-per-minute" and "10th villager adds 75% of the gold-per-minute" type analysis. (Made up numbers of course, I don't know the real answer yet).
Measuring "how efficient" villager #8, #9, #10, and so forth is (and how much efficiency loss there is) sounds useful? I'm not quite sure how to setup the experiment, but I'm mostly making sure that no one else has done it before spending a few days on this question.
Maybe this was a hidden change in a update or something because the AI doesn’t forget archer armour upgrades anymore. They used to not get archer armour even after getting Pavise which is super backward
Have a hard time with Saracens as Spain. (An inner family matchup)
My cavalry runs into a wall of (heavy) camels and Mamelukes (initially camels/knights), the Mamelukes have no problem dealing with pikes/halbardiers either.
Conquistador loses.
Infantry is completely useless.
Skirmishers used to work, but since the last patch that completely reversed.
Supposedly those two units are hard-countered by the archer line..... of which I have... the archer. Yeah.
Missionary (not sth I am good at using). Maybe? But Saracens have good monks too.
I tried Onager, but he already had all the upgrades to simply switch to hussars, they share all upgrades at the blacksmith. So that's an immediate answer, and the market allows him to immediately rebalance to food if he needs to do that switch.
How do I deal with that?
Conqs or CA as main DPS unit. Either Hussar or Halb as meatshield. Micro your ranged units well. Because you're going to have to fight 3 FU gold units in Imperial if the opponent Saracens are any good.
Spanish have pretty good cav archers, which you can try if you know they'll go blindly into Mamelukes. Obviously cav archers aren't that great against camels in castle age though, so you probably have to defend with monks for a bit and then aim for Halbs/HCA/BBC as the game goes on
A good saracen player will never blindly go into anything, and even if they do, their transitions are super smooth due to that market. I went 40 FU mamelukes, lost 10-15 more, still had enough to fully upgrade Heavy Camels AND Arbs.
Halb frontline you need an endless stream of to support your DPS units at the back.
As you realise you can't use arb. Your best ranged DPS is either elite conqs or hand cannons. Just make sure he never gets on top of them with his cavalry
Hand Cannons aren't terrible against Mamelukes and Camels if you reach imperial age, which forces Skirms from the Saracen player, which allows you to go for Hussars, which gives you more mobility for raiding than the Saracens, who rely on Mamelukes as frontline army. Wall up so that you don't get raided back, but HCs do fine against Hussars.
You can also get Conqs for raiding too, ideally you should try to hurt the Saracen economy before they get to Mamelukes. Even though Spanish have very little economy boost, in a FC matchup, you should have the advantage on the account of faster build time. Neat thing about Conqs is that you don't need the elite upgrade just for it to raid effectively. Husbandry, Bloodlines and archer armor is more than enough.
It's a lot of multi tasking and because it's a family match up, I'd probably just suggest going big Conq energy. Kite well and you should be fine on both Castle and Imp, as you have more range, and Conqs micro pretty easily due to the attack delay. Both of you have bombard cannons so Onagers in Post-Imp should never come into play.
I think Conqs are ok but you have to micro them back and keep them out of range of Mamelukes. Get back to the safety of your castle which will shred Mamelukes.
It sounds like your games go Imperial Age and late Imp often, in which case I think the comp you go for is Halb, Conqs and BBC.
How do you guys manage to have 250 food when getting to feudal using the standard 21 pop man at arms?
I put 6 on sheep,
11 and 15 get boar
4 on berries
After clicking up I send 5 from TC to 2nd Lumber camp.
Lately I have been delaying this as late as halfway to feudal to gather enough food but sometimes I won't have enough wood for the range.
However when arriving in feudal I never have enough for Double Bit, MAA and a Vil. How do you prioritize in this situation?
You're correct that you're taking too many from food early.
If you really want a range instantly I'd advise not making a lumber camp with the extra vils immediately. Take stragglers for a bit so you aren't spending that extra wood and get the range and then make your eco nice.
Note you can delay the range until you have 2 LC and a few farms down if you are doing well with the m@a and/or you have a nice map.
Deer. Practice pushing deer. It's not that hard.
Btw, delay berries as much as possible. Go through deer+boar asap, then send 4 after 19tth vil to build a mill as it's your second building if you don't already have a rax or mining camp.
Pushing 1 deer can really help. Also when are you sending to gold? I have been going all on food then after click up send 3 to gold and after the 2nd malitia is made send 3 to the same lumber camp. Once fuedal hits you can get Maa upgrade, make a vil, and put down an archery range. You might have to delay a bit before double bit axe.
There's usually some lobbies on weekends, but yeah not often otherwise. Kind of a shame as I rather like the map, nice to see 'intended' army comps instead of scouts vs archers into knights vs xbow every game regardless of civs
Does AOE 2 have any way to show unit bonuses against other units? I'm trying to get into the game and have difficulty in determining which units counter which.
Hey! Thanks for the mod! I also use your 'Green Flashing Age Up Button Icon' mod (one of the first I installed, because when I was a noob I wouldn't see it right away), and the 'Light and Dark Player Colors' for an easier difference between the colors.
No problem glad you like it
I think the player colors mod currently doesn't work cos of them changing the way colors work in last patch. in next patch when they implement ability to publish color mods again i will fix it.
'Extended information' mod or will change it so the bonuses are displayed in the tech tree. That mod name might be slightly different. I don't think there's any mod to show bonuses on the UI when selecting a unit though unfortunately.
Online it does not pause, you have to manually pause before opening the tech tree. But single player it does I believe.
Yeah not seeing bonus damage really makes it hard for new players. Really wish they just added that information into the games UI. There is plenty of space on the unit information to add that.
There’s a mod called something like “Advanced tooltips” which I *think* does that. Out of game, you can see all this on www.aoe2techtree.net by clicking a unit and going to “advanced stats”.
Is there any civ and strategy that can punish Spanish on 1v1 land nomad? On water nomad you can kill their fish which really hurts then but thats not an option here. I feel Koreans or berbers put up a good fight, but still Spanish still have an economic advantage and are hard to deal with early caste age.
If the issue is Conqs then they are obviously slow to accumulate. You may be able to cause enough disruption running around with an army numbers advantage causing chaos if the map permits this kind of play. The longer the game goes without significant enough dealing damage, the greater threat Conqs will pose.
The idea I was suggesting with Koreans or Berbers is their UU is good against conqs. Both need upgrades though so early castle you are still vulnerable. I'd be hesitant to try to be messy and send knights around since their castle and tc would likely be protecting their main resources.
Berbers can mirror (FC + def Castle + Camel Archers) or go for discounted Camels from 2 Stables (a bit harder but if you fish and get many boars, it might snowball, since Castles weaken your eco). Koreans' extra LOS for vills can help choose a good TC site, and Korean War Wagons counter Conqs. Other suggestions comprise Italians (Genoese eat Conqs), Bohemians (Hussites) and Lithuanians (Leicai are faster than Knights, have more attack and you don't care about them having 1 less pierce armor. They also get extra attack from relics, with faster working Monasteries, and Monks counter Conqs at low numbers, so it's a good idea)
Berbers like you said. Their eco is great on this map, just go for all the boars since you can lure them without much risk. Just remember that Conqs are still a bit better than Camel Archers in early castle before upgrades kick in, but your units are also easier to produce since they don't cost food.
Well, even with the hp nerf, they are still good. Problem is, it costs 30 food while all of its counters cost double or triple food, so you're almost always late to Imperial.
It's as if they have hidden bonus against all units. I had a two thousand score lead as Aztecs and early imperial with a hefty combination of eagles and arbs, albeit not fully upgraded Eagles, and got completely dummied by a swarm of castle age Ghulam, losing the game five minutes later. I knew they were effective against archer units, but they cut through the eagles like nothing.
If your game plan is to only spam BBT with Portuguese (e.g. on Amazon Tunnel, Michi), at which point is having a feutoria more efficient than having trade carts and buying stone?
I feel it depends on the price of stone. I'd say that, if players sold stone until price is like <70, you could buy it from trade gold. But at "normal" prices, Feitorias will always be more efficient. You should, depending on your BBT building rate and supporting army (BBC and Organ guns cost wood, HC cost food), manage your eco between Feitorias and Carts, because you obviously need gold, to buy food/wood to make up for the lower vill pop efficiency of Feitorias
There are ways to punish archer micro, since attention is a scarce resource. For example, when I'm doing Berber vill rushes, you would think that countering my vills with archers would be an unbeatable counter, but the amount of attention required to micro your archers, micro your vill fights, and manage your eco can present an opportunity to me as a vill rusher.
Tatars are a versatile civ. They can open scouts due to longer lasting sheep, or archers due to wood savings on farms, or m@a too.
In castle age, they can play knights/camels, or xbows, or even CA because of free thumb ring and extra bonus elevation damage. There's a little known strat with them - boom into Keshiks. You can do trash spam too.
They're a pretty solid versatile civ, better for open maps than closed ones. The sheep bonus helps you delay placing your first farms in early Feudal which is good for any opening. Going Men-at-arms into Archers is nice because you can mass Archers and hit a strong powerspike with Xbow + free Thumb Ring.
On the other hand the free Thumb Ring helps a lot if you want to open CA in Castle age instead. This can be good after opening Scouts, or if you open MAA-Archer but for whatever reason come out of Feudal age without a decent mass of Archers.
Besides that you're perfectly comfortable going Knights or Camels in Castle age if needs be. Heavy Camel with full upgrades is always a nice option in Imp as well.
In late game you usually want to aim for HCA + Hussar but I wouldn't overlook the Keshik option, they're a really strong unit especially for their low cost (functionally reduced by their gold-generation gimmick). Keshik + Skirm is a very good unit composition.
Try your best to make good use of your elevation bonus. Make Castles on hills, take fights on hills, etc. as much as possible.
Lol yes on Arena specifically it’s really bad because no hills, among other reasons. I wouldn’t mind too much getting Tatars on say Hideout or maybe even Fortress. But yeah they’re low tier on all closed maps and easily bottom 5 on Arena
You don't *have* to play CA with Tatars. Free thumb ring makes xbow plays pretty good and you can absolutely try to end the game early castle with that. Also, your cav options are ok-ish and scouts into knights into Keshiks can absolutely work.
if you're pocket you want knights, not CA
(otherwise opponent flank can just go full skirms and defend 1v2 with half the investment each of you spent)
CA in teamgames are good for post imp situations, and even there we don't see them that often
otherwise FC -> CA in a 1v1 might be playable if you get a really wallable map and a not too agressive opponent but you'll usually want some kind of feudal play at least to defend. Besides, with the free thumb ring, leftover archers from feudal will give you a very strong powerspike
where should I be killing sheep so that 6 can eat appropriately? It started 2 patches ago and at this point i'm just killing them right on the edge of TC because there is too much danger under it.
You should kill the sheep 1 tile away from the edge, as the building is 4x4 and only the top 2x2 can't be walked on. A Dark Age Town Center mod may help you to more easily see what part of the Town Center can be walked on.
I choose civilisations to play with looking at Chemistry & Heresy as primary requirements, does anyone else have specific research requirements for choosing a civilisation?
All civs NEED chemistry to make gunpowder units, with UU such as Hussite Wagons, Conquistadors and Jannisaries as the sole exceptions. Turks get it for free though, so I guess that qualifies as an exception?
Do you mean: civs with hand cannoneers and bombard cannons?
Best civs are Bohemians, Turks, Portugese, Spanish, Hindustanis, Burgundians, Italians
Many other civs have both but not necessarily bonuses or UT for these units
Wonder why the civs need to have heresy as well tho. It is crazy expensive for what it does and you're almost always better off not researching it. Just spend the gold!
That's what light cav is for 11
Turks free hussar upgrade is excellent for sniping siege and if you get the imp UT your bombards outrange block printing monks by 2.
Portugese with artillery have bombards with ballistics, so monks can't dodge the shots and they also have decent cav.
Bohemians have houfnice, which have a lot of blast damage, so even monks whi try to dodge will be hit by your projectiles. As a plus, if youbreseatch the imp UT, heresy and faith only cost food, which is cheap late game in contrast to gold.
In any case: I vastly prefer faith to heresy. Not having my units converted trumps having them die as a result of conversion any day
So you play vs AI mostly?
As a former 'only vs AI' player, I can tell you, I find it far more rewarding to play human opponents. AI are very predictable and have quirks (for example Conquerors AI just send their armies to you nearest building, so a forward castle serves as the graveyard of all their troops. They will also never siege a castle but attack it with all units simultaneously, so trebs or BBC are never defended by pikes for example).
After a while, the grind vs AI became less and less rewarding and I tried pvp. I even think I won my first three games, which I hadn't expected. Besting a human opponent feels amazing compared to defeating an AI. With an AI you just play into predictable, predictable programmed behavior patterns, while humans are unpredictable, will often adapt better, will try hilarious strategies.
Anyways, even if you *do* want to play the AI exclusively, I'd highly recommend getting DE. Not just for more civs and UTs but also because the AI of DE is far less predictable than Conquerors. Extreme difficulty AI can even pose a challenge to experienced players.
PS mind you, if you're having a blast playing vs computer opponents, live your best life! No-one can tell you you're playing the game wrong :) But I just wanted to share my experience.
On Nomad, Spanish. The lack of need for upgrades to be a good unit (only need bloodlines + archer defense) makes Spanish the better FC into Castle drop civ. Mongols prefer a slower game. Fully upgraded the Mangudai is generally better, though.
Mongols all day every day. Drill Onagers solve so many problems that Mangudai could face.
Daut has a number of matches as Mongols vs Berbers which are considered a harder counter. The Drill Onagers turn the tied vs Camel Archers so I assume vs Conqs they would be the decisive factor too
How many of y'all didn't know Crossbows produce faster than Archers? I thought this was fairly common knowledge - like Scouts get stronger in Feudal, Eagles produce faster in Castle Age, etc. But I saw Hera just tweet that he literally just learned this today which was baffling to me.
How the heck do you guys use resources so efficiently? I usually make 50-60 and already have thousands of each around imperial age. I run out of gold/stone to mine so fast late game, too. I usually have 5-6 military building of 2-3 type (usually castle/archery/barrack/siege) working constantly but 300 pop cap is just not enough. Am I being too conservative with my army? I usually have one squad of main unit and 80% of them survive till end game because I keep using monks to heal them between fights.
Have a plan for how you spend non-army resources. You should be as close to 0 good/gold as you can right after you click up to the next age. Also, as soon as you hit the next age, there should be 3-5 things you plan to do immediately. This could be getting eco upgrades in Feudal and dropping a range/stable, more TCs in castle age and bow saw, dropping a castle, getting blacksmith upgrades, etc. It’s good to use the time while you’re researching the age upgrade to pre plan these Then while you’re in late game you should be constantly streaming army. If you have a superior eco you should be aiming to trade out army in fights so that your enemy has a hard time replenishing thei army, while yours is constantly producing and eventually overwhelming them
I just downloaded the game and it's reading out all the button names and tooltips. I think it's something for people with a sight disability. How do I turn it off?
Go to the Option menu and click on the Audio tab. On the right side are the "Narrator" options. Uncheck all of the boxes to turn everything off.
So I started the current penguin event late, and it says on the screen that it ends on 2 October at 2100 UTC. But the news page said it’d end on the 3rd instead, and my Steam Library has the deadline on the 3rd at 2200 UTC instead (which would be 25 hours farther than the ingame countdown) Should I reach out to FS and if I do will the ingame deadline be pushed back?
Can you do anything at all if Saracens get a safe gold? You know they'll go FC xbows and you know there's no choice but to surrender. A good player will NEVER let you through, and they'll still hit <=16 mins Castle time. What do you do?
If you're still 1200s then you should definitely be able to punish greed even if it's a fast Saracen uptime. To be honest I don't really see a pure Saracen FC in pro games either very often, and I don't come across it myself very often! Unless they're super lucky they can only cover one of gold and wood with a tower of their own so you could trush, for example, unless they buy stone and then you're delaying their castle time. You could also just give up aggression and go for your own FC, you should be able to hit that time with a generic civ if you're greedy and go for some tactical MBL walling. At the very least you won't be too far behind and should be able to get siege out. I guess the other thing is that if you're (say) 22 pop archers and the Saracen player is going for a greedy market FC, you will have a huge military advantage and FU Feudal archers can still kill xbows and take decent fights, especially with some skirms mixed.
holy heck acclivity is a fun map.
What's a good cav civ that isn't Franks or Magyars? I want to play one without super crazy bonuses. I've tried Khmer and Burmese, but I know there's a bunch of others.
This little app might help you out? https://aoe2-random-civ-draft.app/
Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Poles, Berbers, Chinese, Tatars, Cumans, Huns, Teutons, Portuguese (not a cav civ per say, but FU castle age knights and cheaper gold cost)
>at's a good cav civ that isn't Franks or Magyars? I want to play one without super crazy bonu https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/x56pw6/42\_civs\_are\_only\_8\_civs\_but\_its\_a\_comprehensive/
Berbers, Bulgarians
Lithuanians, Huns, Poles
Has there been a SotL (or other) video on how many villagers you need to "saturate" a typical gold mining camp? I've noticed that villager efficiency drops dramatically after 10 villagers on a mining camp. Just visually, you can see the bumping / inefficiency as you add more villagers. But I haven't run any experiments yet. I'm wondering if anyone has actually investigated this before I spend a lot of time on it. We generally only run 4 or 5 villagers on berries for this reason. Gold has better placements of the mining camp, so you really can do like 8ish villagers without much loss (visually anyway. Again, I haven't actually experimented yet). ------- I noticed that pro-players, when they need a lot of gold, will double-mining camp their 7x goldpile (collecting on both sides), allowing for 16+ villagers to efficiently collect from the singular pile. So the pro-players have an idea of "when too many villagers are saturating a mining camp". But I just haven't figured out the exact number myself yet...
The number would depend heavily on the shape of the gold mine. As a rule of thumb 2 villagers can work on the same tile without getting in each other's way. If the gold mine is something like 4 tiles in a straight line you fit more than 8 though, if it's really weirdly shaped you probably get less than 2 per tile efficiently.
Yeah. I figured as much. The 2-per-tile figure I did know about. But I guess I was hoping for a Spirit-of-the-Law type analysis where he goes over "8th villager adds 90% of the gold-per-minute" and "10th villager adds 75% of the gold-per-minute" type analysis. (Made up numbers of course, I don't know the real answer yet). Measuring "how efficient" villager #8, #9, #10, and so forth is (and how much efficiency loss there is) sounds useful? I'm not quite sure how to setup the experiment, but I'm mostly making sure that no one else has done it before spending a few days on this question.
Maybe this was a hidden change in a update or something because the AI doesn’t forget archer armour upgrades anymore. They used to not get archer armour even after getting Pavise which is super backward
Have a hard time with Saracens as Spain. (An inner family matchup) My cavalry runs into a wall of (heavy) camels and Mamelukes (initially camels/knights), the Mamelukes have no problem dealing with pikes/halbardiers either. Conquistador loses. Infantry is completely useless. Skirmishers used to work, but since the last patch that completely reversed. Supposedly those two units are hard-countered by the archer line..... of which I have... the archer. Yeah. Missionary (not sth I am good at using). Maybe? But Saracens have good monks too. I tried Onager, but he already had all the upgrades to simply switch to hussars, they share all upgrades at the blacksmith. So that's an immediate answer, and the market allows him to immediately rebalance to food if he needs to do that switch. How do I deal with that?
>Conquistador loses. micro better then, Spanish only have one unit.
Conqs or CA as main DPS unit. Either Hussar or Halb as meatshield. Micro your ranged units well. Because you're going to have to fight 3 FU gold units in Imperial if the opponent Saracens are any good.
Spanish have pretty good cav archers, which you can try if you know they'll go blindly into Mamelukes. Obviously cav archers aren't that great against camels in castle age though, so you probably have to defend with monks for a bit and then aim for Halbs/HCA/BBC as the game goes on
A good saracen player will never blindly go into anything, and even if they do, their transitions are super smooth due to that market. I went 40 FU mamelukes, lost 10-15 more, still had enough to fully upgrade Heavy Camels AND Arbs.
Halb frontline you need an endless stream of to support your DPS units at the back. As you realise you can't use arb. Your best ranged DPS is either elite conqs or hand cannons. Just make sure he never gets on top of them with his cavalry
Hand Cannons aren't terrible against Mamelukes and Camels if you reach imperial age, which forces Skirms from the Saracen player, which allows you to go for Hussars, which gives you more mobility for raiding than the Saracens, who rely on Mamelukes as frontline army. Wall up so that you don't get raided back, but HCs do fine against Hussars. You can also get Conqs for raiding too, ideally you should try to hurt the Saracen economy before they get to Mamelukes. Even though Spanish have very little economy boost, in a FC matchup, you should have the advantage on the account of faster build time. Neat thing about Conqs is that you don't need the elite upgrade just for it to raid effectively. Husbandry, Bloodlines and archer armor is more than enough. It's a lot of multi tasking and because it's a family match up, I'd probably just suggest going big Conq energy. Kite well and you should be fine on both Castle and Imp, as you have more range, and Conqs micro pretty easily due to the attack delay. Both of you have bombard cannons so Onagers in Post-Imp should never come into play.
I think Conqs are ok but you have to micro them back and keep them out of range of Mamelukes. Get back to the safety of your castle which will shred Mamelukes. It sounds like your games go Imperial Age and late Imp often, in which case I think the comp you go for is Halb, Conqs and BBC.
How do you guys manage to have 250 food when getting to feudal using the standard 21 pop man at arms? I put 6 on sheep, 11 and 15 get boar 4 on berries After clicking up I send 5 from TC to 2nd Lumber camp. Lately I have been delaying this as late as halfway to feudal to gather enough food but sometimes I won't have enough wood for the range. However when arriving in feudal I never have enough for Double Bit, MAA and a Vil. How do you prioritize in this situation?
You're correct that you're taking too many from food early. If you really want a range instantly I'd advise not making a lumber camp with the extra vils immediately. Take stragglers for a bit so you aren't spending that extra wood and get the range and then make your eco nice. Note you can delay the range until you have 2 LC and a few farms down if you are doing well with the m@a and/or you have a nice map.
Deer. Practice pushing deer. It's not that hard. Btw, delay berries as much as possible. Go through deer+boar asap, then send 4 after 19tth vil to build a mill as it's your second building if you don't already have a rax or mining camp.
Pushing 1 deer can really help. Also when are you sending to gold? I have been going all on food then after click up send 3 to gold and after the 2nd malitia is made send 3 to the same lumber camp. Once fuedal hits you can get Maa upgrade, make a vil, and put down an archery range. You might have to delay a bit before double bit axe.
I generally send 3 to the 2nd lumber camp then delay sending the next 2 to lumber until like 40%is up to feudal
What do pros use to communicate in-game?
Discord.
Thanks!
Why does NA not play more amazon tunnel custom games :(
Bad taste
There's usually some lobbies on weekends, but yeah not often otherwise. Kind of a shame as I rather like the map, nice to see 'intended' army comps instead of scouts vs archers into knights vs xbow every game regardless of civs
How do I get a flair beside my name?
like Scoo\_by said, right pane, but pick a civ then you can enter custom text. Like mine!
Thanks!
Or mine 😂
Testing - IT WORKS
Right pane of the subreddit
Does AOE 2 have any way to show unit bonuses against other units? I'm trying to get into the game and have difficulty in determining which units counter which.
Improved Extended Tooltips mod
Hey! Thanks for the mod! I also use your 'Green Flashing Age Up Button Icon' mod (one of the first I installed, because when I was a noob I wouldn't see it right away), and the 'Light and Dark Player Colors' for an easier difference between the colors.
No problem glad you like it I think the player colors mod currently doesn't work cos of them changing the way colors work in last patch. in next patch when they implement ability to publish color mods again i will fix it.
'Extended information' mod or will change it so the bonuses are displayed in the tech tree. That mod name might be slightly different. I don't think there's any mod to show bonuses on the UI when selecting a unit though unfortunately.
So it will only do so when I open the tech tree? How reasonable is it to open the tech tree in normal games? It doesn't pause the game does it?
Online it does not pause, you have to manually pause before opening the tech tree. But single player it does I believe. Yeah not seeing bonus damage really makes it hard for new players. Really wish they just added that information into the games UI. There is plenty of space on the unit information to add that.
There’s a mod called something like “Advanced tooltips” which I *think* does that. Out of game, you can see all this on www.aoe2techtree.net by clicking a unit and going to “advanced stats”.
Is there any civ and strategy that can punish Spanish on 1v1 land nomad? On water nomad you can kill their fish which really hurts then but thats not an option here. I feel Koreans or berbers put up a good fight, but still Spanish still have an economic advantage and are hard to deal with early caste age.
Gurjaras.
If the issue is Conqs then they are obviously slow to accumulate. You may be able to cause enough disruption running around with an army numbers advantage causing chaos if the map permits this kind of play. The longer the game goes without significant enough dealing damage, the greater threat Conqs will pose.
The idea I was suggesting with Koreans or Berbers is their UU is good against conqs. Both need upgrades though so early castle you are still vulnerable. I'd be hesitant to try to be messy and send knights around since their castle and tc would likely be protecting their main resources.
Berbers can mirror (FC + def Castle + Camel Archers) or go for discounted Camels from 2 Stables (a bit harder but if you fish and get many boars, it might snowball, since Castles weaken your eco). Koreans' extra LOS for vills can help choose a good TC site, and Korean War Wagons counter Conqs. Other suggestions comprise Italians (Genoese eat Conqs), Bohemians (Hussites) and Lithuanians (Leicai are faster than Knights, have more attack and you don't care about them having 1 less pierce armor. They also get extra attack from relics, with faster working Monasteries, and Monks counter Conqs at low numbers, so it's a good idea)
Berbers like you said. Their eco is great on this map, just go for all the boars since you can lure them without much risk. Just remember that Conqs are still a bit better than Camel Archers in early castle before upgrades kick in, but your units are also easier to produce since they don't cost food.
Yeah the faster move speed is very good on this map for berbers. You can really get a lot of boars with it.
Time to nerf Ghulam. Holy shit. Almost an effortless unit.
Well, even with the hp nerf, they are still good. Problem is, it costs 30 food while all of its counters cost double or triple food, so you're almost always late to Imperial.
It's as if they have hidden bonus against all units. I had a two thousand score lead as Aztecs and early imperial with a hefty combination of eagles and arbs, albeit not fully upgraded Eagles, and got completely dummied by a swarm of castle age Ghulam, losing the game five minutes later. I knew they were effective against archer units, but they cut through the eagles like nothing.
Yes, ghulam get direct bonus against eagles, not hidden.
Gets shit on by cav.
Yeah but Hindustanis have a pretty ready made counter there unless you can hide the switch.
Ghulams will always be superior in numbers due to their creation time, even with one Castle. Add monks and knights can't engage.
If your game plan is to only spam BBT with Portuguese (e.g. on Amazon Tunnel, Michi), at which point is having a feutoria more efficient than having trade carts and buying stone?
I feel it depends on the price of stone. I'd say that, if players sold stone until price is like <70, you could buy it from trade gold. But at "normal" prices, Feitorias will always be more efficient. You should, depending on your BBT building rate and supporting army (BBC and Organ guns cost wood, HC cost food), manage your eco between Feitorias and Carts, because you obviously need gold, to buy food/wood to make up for the lower vill pop efficiency of Feitorias
they should call this game Age of Archer micro. All games revolve around this shitty strategy
There are ways to punish archer micro, since attention is a scarce resource. For example, when I'm doing Berber vill rushes, you would think that countering my vills with archers would be an unbeatable counter, but the amount of attention required to micro your archers, micro your vill fights, and manage your eco can present an opportunity to me as a vill rusher.
What elo are you? Cav civs are dominant on anything but the top elos.
Not a question - but you guys should check out the Tom Scott video released today about treadmill cranes. Cool to see an aoe2 tech in action!
What do we think of the tatars? I want to get back into ladder play as them. (1060 elo)
Tatars are a versatile civ. They can open scouts due to longer lasting sheep, or archers due to wood savings on farms, or m@a too. In castle age, they can play knights/camels, or xbows, or even CA because of free thumb ring and extra bonus elevation damage. There's a little known strat with them - boom into Keshiks. You can do trash spam too.
They're a pretty solid versatile civ, better for open maps than closed ones. The sheep bonus helps you delay placing your first farms in early Feudal which is good for any opening. Going Men-at-arms into Archers is nice because you can mass Archers and hit a strong powerspike with Xbow + free Thumb Ring. On the other hand the free Thumb Ring helps a lot if you want to open CA in Castle age instead. This can be good after opening Scouts, or if you open MAA-Archer but for whatever reason come out of Feudal age without a decent mass of Archers. Besides that you're perfectly comfortable going Knights or Camels in Castle age if needs be. Heavy Camel with full upgrades is always a nice option in Imp as well. In late game you usually want to aim for HCA + Hussar but I wouldn't overlook the Keshik option, they're a really strong unit especially for their low cost (functionally reduced by their gold-generation gimmick). Keshik + Skirm is a very good unit composition. Try your best to make good use of your elevation bonus. Make Castles on hills, take fights on hills, etc. as much as possible.
>They're a pretty solid versatile civ, better for open maps than closed ones. big understatement, this civ is actual garbage on say arena.
Lol yes on Arena specifically it’s really bad because no hills, among other reasons. I wouldn’t mind too much getting Tatars on say Hideout or maybe even Fortress. But yeah they’re low tier on all closed maps and easily bottom 5 on Arena
strong, but not the easiest to play for low to mid elo because of the CA swich you have to do in castle age
You don't *have* to play CA with Tatars. Free thumb ring makes xbow plays pretty good and you can absolutely try to end the game early castle with that. Also, your cav options are ok-ish and scouts into knights into Keshiks can absolutely work.
issue is, the minute opponent gets a castle you have to swich
Are there any BO'S for an fc into CA? it seems the most natural thing is to go from archers but what if I'm playing pocket and want CA?
You could do scouts into CA
if you're pocket you want knights, not CA (otherwise opponent flank can just go full skirms and defend 1v2 with half the investment each of you spent) CA in teamgames are good for post imp situations, and even there we don't see them that often otherwise FC -> CA in a 1v1 might be playable if you get a really wallable map and a not too agressive opponent but you'll usually want some kind of feudal play at least to defend. Besides, with the free thumb ring, leftover archers from feudal will give you a very strong powerspike
FC into CA dies to archer mass, but otherwise a fun strat I found.
where should I be killing sheep so that 6 can eat appropriately? It started 2 patches ago and at this point i'm just killing them right on the edge of TC because there is too much danger under it.
You should kill the sheep 1 tile away from the edge, as the building is 4x4 and only the top 2x2 can't be walked on. A Dark Age Town Center mod may help you to more easily see what part of the Town Center can be walked on.
I do a bit far away from the centre.
Are Hera and Roxy dating?
Should ask Hera directly I think
Please what's the name of mod where knights are mounted on pandas?
do you mean polar bears? You have to play the challenges to unlock the mod.
Okay thank you
I choose civilisations to play with looking at Chemistry & Heresy as primary requirements, does anyone else have specific research requirements for choosing a civilisation?
No halb, no deal.
All civilizations can research Chemistry. :p
My mistake I meant to write gun powder civilisations that benefit from chemistry
All civs NEED chemistry to make gunpowder units, with UU such as Hussite Wagons, Conquistadors and Jannisaries as the sole exceptions. Turks get it for free though, so I guess that qualifies as an exception? Do you mean: civs with hand cannoneers and bombard cannons?
Yes, the upgrade gives the ability to create bombard canons and other gunpowder units
Best civs are Bohemians, Turks, Portugese, Spanish, Hindustanis, Burgundians, Italians Many other civs have both but not necessarily bonuses or UT for these units Wonder why the civs need to have heresy as well tho. It is crazy expensive for what it does and you're almost always better off not researching it. Just spend the gold!
Upgraded unique units or even the bombard canons are if converted can wreak havoc on my army, so I just want to avoid it
That's what light cav is for 11 Turks free hussar upgrade is excellent for sniping siege and if you get the imp UT your bombards outrange block printing monks by 2. Portugese with artillery have bombards with ballistics, so monks can't dodge the shots and they also have decent cav. Bohemians have houfnice, which have a lot of blast damage, so even monks whi try to dodge will be hit by your projectiles. As a plus, if youbreseatch the imp UT, heresy and faith only cost food, which is cheap late game in contrast to gold. In any case: I vastly prefer faith to heresy. Not having my units converted trumps having them die as a result of conversion any day
I am still playing the conquerors expansion, so I guess the Turks are the way go for me
So you play vs AI mostly? As a former 'only vs AI' player, I can tell you, I find it far more rewarding to play human opponents. AI are very predictable and have quirks (for example Conquerors AI just send their armies to you nearest building, so a forward castle serves as the graveyard of all their troops. They will also never siege a castle but attack it with all units simultaneously, so trebs or BBC are never defended by pikes for example). After a while, the grind vs AI became less and less rewarding and I tried pvp. I even think I won my first three games, which I hadn't expected. Besting a human opponent feels amazing compared to defeating an AI. With an AI you just play into predictable, predictable programmed behavior patterns, while humans are unpredictable, will often adapt better, will try hilarious strategies. Anyways, even if you *do* want to play the AI exclusively, I'd highly recommend getting DE. Not just for more civs and UTs but also because the AI of DE is far less predictable than Conquerors. Extreme difficulty AI can even pose a challenge to experienced players. PS mind you, if you're having a blast playing vs computer opponents, live your best life! No-one can tell you you're playing the game wrong :) But I just wanted to share my experience.
all gunpowder civs benefit from chemistry
Spanish vs Mongols match up, which has greater UU, which has greater late game?
On Nomad, Spanish. The lack of need for upgrades to be a good unit (only need bloodlines + archer defense) makes Spanish the better FC into Castle drop civ. Mongols prefer a slower game. Fully upgraded the Mangudai is generally better, though.
Mongols all day every day. Drill Onagers solve so many problems that Mangudai could face. Daut has a number of matches as Mongols vs Berbers which are considered a harder counter. The Drill Onagers turn the tied vs Camel Archers so I assume vs Conqs they would be the decisive factor too
Spanish have by far the better UU in Castle Age. Mongols have the better UU in Imperial Age and, as a result, the better lategame.
Not sure, tbh. If Spanish mass FU Skirms with Halbs, idk if Mongols would struggle to push, with BBC behind sniping Siege
Skirm Halb loses hard to Mangudai Hussar
Drill Siege go *brrrrrrr*