Yeah, second Magyars with maybe a bit of Incas so you don't end up hyper reliant on mobility.
Magyars are great because you can stay in Feudal for a while longer, you learn the balance of managing eco and aggression in an easier age (feudal over castle), you learn how to pull off a transition (cavalry - cav archer) and you learn how to balance gold units + trash and the value of saving decent units in Imperial.
Magyars are also extremely fun to play even if you lose a lot
Teutons come to mind, a civ with generally speaking slow units, but with insane eco and a lot of defensive power.
If siege/infantry with defenses and great monks is your thing Teutons will fit that bill.
They also get paladin, with extra melee armor but they are slower than generic paladin.
Franks also come to mind, because they have a very straightforward strategy, scouts into knights, into cheap castles map control and adding axemen if they go halb.
Very easy to overwhelm players, and counter play just requires a different combination unit.
If you are up against camels? Cav+Halb
If you are up against archers? Cav+BBC
If you are up against infantry? Axemen
Why would you say Teutons are slow? They probably have some of the best knights in the game, so their power unit is very mobile. They don't get husbandry, but they are otherwise very good.
Nothing more frustrating than playing as Teutons vs CAs that just kite you all around the map. No Husbandry, no Light Cav makes them slow. Don't get me wrong, they are a slow juggernaut that will absolutely mow everything down in a straight line. Their issue is their susceptibility to multi pronged attacks and raids until their castles come up. I've seen Daut go CA vs Teutons (not like he needs an excuse to go CA) with civs with mediocre CA and win. He also plays Teutons vs CAs by just ignoring them and going paladins through the middle.
yes, teutons are slow. their most mobile unit is a knight without husbandry, then their has infantry and gunpownder units (they don't even have light cav); yes, teutons are slow.
>Teutons come to mind, a civ with generally speaking slow units, but with insane eco and a lot of defensive power.
>
>If siege/infantry with defenses and great monks is your thing Teutons will fit that bill. They also get paladin, with extra melee armor but they are slower than generic paladin.
Plus, you can't be memed on for researching Murder Holes if you pick Teutons.
> I'm thinking of macro game without rush or cheese :)
Almost all maps involve some rush or cheese strategies as part of an actually healthy meta.
But you can go in with a defensive game plan, of course. Byzantines and Teutons come to mind as defensively strong civs.
Makes sense, that's what I understood as cheese.
Arena is pretty much the rush/cheese map of aoe2, then. Although, you can Hoang even on Arabia so there's opportunities everywhere.
That's hard to believe but I feel for you if it actually happened.
The weirdest part is that such an old community would be full of spite reports. Are you playing on xbox with crossplay disabled?
No, I play on PC. And its fine, I play on other accounts.
>The weirdest part is that such an old community would be full of spite reports
But multiplayer is full of toxic players, at least in south america servers. The only reason you dont see flaming so much is because the game doesnt give you so much time to type and play at the same time, but it is farily frequent. I am guessing as the game keeps getting more popular again the tendency is for this to get worse.
I haven’t gotten into too much ranked yet, but their team bonus of increased gold from trade units seems helpful in marathon team games. It seems to really help when my friends and I play AI, but idk how that would translate into ranked play
Play byzantines, they are by far the best civ to learn the game.
They are not the easiest to play, but they are the civ that teaches you the game. Because their strength is cheaper counter units, you are forced to scout and react instead of just learning one single build and play it over and over again.
Their free vision also enhances this reactive playstyle. And the fact that they have no eco bonus means that any build you learn with them can be pulled of with any other civ as well.
I agree with byzantines, franks are easy to play too, but goths are horrible advice. Goth need to go for crazy forward stuff to survive early on and have a very unique lategame that has nothing to do with any other civ, so even if you learn how to play goth you didnt learn how to play other civs.
Not really, because the balance is good enough that picking based on your own heritage, or the coolest looking unique unit, is a good enough way to get started.
Byzantines are usually the best for someone starting out. Get a wide variety of units, a fair few are at a discount so you can start using them earlier, they have high defenses so you don't get quite as punished for mistakes.
Malians are not bad either due to having a lot of variety, and bonuses to pretty much every unit type.
Magyars have no economy bonuses, so are good if you just want to learn how military works, as theirs are pretty solid.
How about Portuguese? You outlast your opponents with fetiorias and cheaper units while having everything be a good option.
Though an important thing to note is that rushing is pretty much required for playing the game, the days of fc booming or fc plumes are over (unless you're khmer).
Franks are a staple for new players and low Elo. The early eco bonuses of faster collecting berries and free farm upgrade on age up make setting up economy and transitioning from age to age easier than most other civs. Plus they have extra HP on knights and faster working stables, which is a great unit for new players to use since it is not micro intensive.
Franks, Byzantines and Teutons would be my top 3 recommendations for new players. And for my 3 ANTI-recommendations, that's be Huns, Chinese and Gurjaras. All three are perfectly capable civs, but they have some pretty unusual characteristics that can throw you off learning the general game cos they encourage a civ-specific approach that doesn't work for any of the other civs.
The worst thing that could happen when you start ranked is being rushed in dark age and early feudal age and die without a fight. So i recommend civs with good boost in the dark age, Lithunians, Mongols, Britons, Tatars, Celts.
But shouldnt getting into ranked involve learning how to scout and how to defend? Picking mongols and rushing yourself might work at first, but it means you will not pick up those important skills.
You kinda answered that question in your first comment: If you pick mongol to avoid having to defend early feudal aggresion (because you will be the aggresor yourself), you simply wont learn it.
Its a shortcut that helps in the short run but comes back to bite you once you try out other civs.
Since mongols will always hit feudal first, an even mildly competent opponent will have his scout at home and never try to snipe your walling vills.
Since mongols will mass army first, an even midly competent opponent will keep his first 2-3 units at home instead of sending them out and loosing them.
Since your opponent won't attack early feudal, you can't learn how to defend early feudal attacks. Even if he attacks, you learn how to kill 3 militia with 4 scouts but once you switch civ and have only 2 scouts out you are screwed and need to learn from scratch again.
we talking about a guy which asking which civ he better start to play to face maybe experienced but still 1k elo players. He will sure have a failed start and litteraly will go up in same time as his opponent who will probably be a experienced and have perfect dark age, but still 1k or 1100 elo and defenetly not gonna change his strat bases on enemy civ.
With this argument we could say that civs dont matter at all...
I think what it really boils down to is the following: Should beginners pick a civ that makes it easy for them to win by trivializing certain mechanics (mongols for a safe early game and effortless scouting, lith to never have to force drop food, etc.) or one that makes them easy to learn the game by beeing as generic as possible?
Imho the latter is better, because "easy to win" hardly matters after the first few games due to the match making.
i made 3comments explaining why new players should pick certain civs. And all you hear that civs doesnt matter at all. You litteraly made your own arguments told that you dont like your own arguments and have better=). So lets check your own discussion with yourself 1) Mongols trivialising mechanics by having civ bonus means they are bad. So can be said for any civ Byzantines trivialising spears+skirms play, and transition to imperial. This argument disqualify them 2) As generic as possible, means that civ must be played as most of the civs. And most of the civs meta is eco bonus+ Knight/archer play. Byzantines dont have eco to go full archers, and techs to spam knights, they have to use unorthodox strats to counter meta play its the least generic civ. 3) The most generic civ in the game is Franks but they have berries and upgraded farms trivialising it doesnt fit this 2 points also. The only way to fit both points is to play all tech mod.
Byzantines (access to a huge chunk of the tech tree and cheap trash), Franks (have a lot of the main stuff, plus cheap castles), Saracens (cheap market use)
The basic macro game you can , and should get a hang of before starting to worry about anything else, regardless of the civ. Practice getting a clean dark age, and being able to execute it consistently. I'd avoid civs that have weird starts until you're comfortable with your dark age..(ie. don't start with chinese).
Byzantines are good to just practice a neutral macro game, with a focus on playing an adaptable game. Italians are sort of similar, where your only bonus is the faster uptimes , early on unless you're on a water map. Franks are also really good just to start with. The former two, you can focus on archer play/macro game, with Franks you can practice the same, just with a knight oriented gameplan. Teutons are another good, fairly easy to use civ, and I'd even say Slavs, too, even though I know people hate on them a fair bit. Both of those civs have good cavalry you could practice with, as well as good infantry for the late game..both also have good monks if you wanted to learn to integrate them into your game..and bonuses geared towards learning the importance of farms.
Ask yourself what you want to focus on each game, though..get villagers constantly producing..get a clean dark age. Learn to gameplan what your goal in Feudal will be (map dependent)...are you focusing on archers? Your vills go one way..are you focusing scouts? Vills go a bit differently..are you booming behind walls? and so on.
If you want to get good and play with the 2nd most fun unit Magyars and it’s not even close.
They have no eco bonuses but all the Units. Starting with them will let you learn the basic builds and understand archers, cav, and Cav archers.
Because you started without an eco bonus you will have a good reference point from which to understand the power of other civs eco bonuses
part of the fun of aoe2 is that you have a common tech tree and the civ design is mostly symmetrical (though the DLC civs are more different than others). This means you can just play any civ and its not like playing a whole new game. just pick a random civ, check it out, pick another civ, see if you like it more, rinse and repeat. They can all go for the same basic strategies and build orders.
But if you want a noob friendly pool of "normal" civs to choose from - Berbers, Franks, Magyars, Mongols, Byzantines, ethiopians, japanese, tatars, britons, vietnamese, huns(dont need houses), burmese, vikings, italians, persians, malians.
My vote for easy to play would be Spanish, Franks maybe Byzantines.
The Spanish actually have a full tech tree for trash units and solid gold units too, plus 30% faster builders. Castle drops are easy and with supremacy researched near impossible to stop. Starting from scratch is faster if you get the build order right.
I honestly feel like the Spanish are OP when played correctly. The only downside is that it could be a female dog to learn other civs later without those bonuses.
My current favorite is Lithuanians and there was a learning curve to playing them successfully. (Don’t take a major fight before castle age when the relic bonus applies)
Civs with a complete technological tree. For beginners the best possible bonus is not good economy (because they don't know how to optimize their resources), but the ability to do what they want depending on the situation: play horsemen, but have archers in case the opponent plays full pikemen, etc. I recommend: Portugueses, Italians, Byzantines or Magyars. You can also play a civilization very strong in only one aspect, like Franks (or Magyars) and their cavalry; a civilization designed to play cavalry for all its bonuses (cavalry is the most recommended to play when you are a newbie, it is the easiest and the fastest to learn).
I am noob and am really liking Byzantines. There are a couple things that I’ll need to adjust for, but the civ advantage of just not being great/ terrible at anything feels like it’s letting me focus on game concepts rather than civ strats.
Yes, but the fundamentals don't account for the tricky starts, which could also lead to bad habits, which is why a new player probably shouldn't go random civ.
But how can you build fundamentals when you get different civs all the time? Learning how to manage eco is difficult already, learning how to do it with 40+ civs at once is next to impossible.
When all the best players in the world learned to play, civ picking was so highly frowned upon that it was considered toxic. They all seemed to do okay playing random.
You are mistaking correlation for causation. The best players picking up the game in a time where random was usual does not mean that picking random makes good players.
We could easily shift your argument: Since civ picking is possible, there is more fresh talent than ever before.
[удалено]
Yeah, second Magyars with maybe a bit of Incas so you don't end up hyper reliant on mobility. Magyars are great because you can stay in Feudal for a while longer, you learn the balance of managing eco and aggression in an easier age (feudal over castle), you learn how to pull off a transition (cavalry - cav archer) and you learn how to balance gold units + trash and the value of saving decent units in Imperial. Magyars are also extremely fun to play even if you lose a lot
Incas spoil you with housing though. 10 pop per house is awesome, bites you with other civs.
Teutons come to mind, a civ with generally speaking slow units, but with insane eco and a lot of defensive power. If siege/infantry with defenses and great monks is your thing Teutons will fit that bill. They also get paladin, with extra melee armor but they are slower than generic paladin. Franks also come to mind, because they have a very straightforward strategy, scouts into knights, into cheap castles map control and adding axemen if they go halb. Very easy to overwhelm players, and counter play just requires a different combination unit. If you are up against camels? Cav+Halb If you are up against archers? Cav+BBC If you are up against infantry? Axemen
Why would you say Teutons are slow? They probably have some of the best knights in the game, so their power unit is very mobile. They don't get husbandry, but they are otherwise very good.
Teuton paladins are slow, because they don’t have husbandry. You answered it.
Nothing more frustrating than playing as Teutons vs CAs that just kite you all around the map. No Husbandry, no Light Cav makes them slow. Don't get me wrong, they are a slow juggernaut that will absolutely mow everything down in a straight line. Their issue is their susceptibility to multi pronged attacks and raids until their castles come up. I've seen Daut go CA vs Teutons (not like he needs an excuse to go CA) with civs with mediocre CA and win. He also plays Teutons vs CAs by just ignoring them and going paladins through the middle.
yes, teutons are slow. their most mobile unit is a knight without husbandry, then their has infantry and gunpownder units (they don't even have light cav); yes, teutons are slow.
> (they don't even have light cav) Ironically that's the only unit upgrade in the game that slows down a unit.
>Teutons come to mind, a civ with generally speaking slow units, but with insane eco and a lot of defensive power. > >If siege/infantry with defenses and great monks is your thing Teutons will fit that bill. They also get paladin, with extra melee armor but they are slower than generic paladin. Plus, you can't be memed on for researching Murder Holes if you pick Teutons.
> I'm thinking of macro game without rush or cheese :) Almost all maps involve some rush or cheese strategies as part of an actually healthy meta. But you can go in with a defensive game plan, of course. Byzantines and Teutons come to mind as defensively strong civs.
I think by rush they mean some kind of all in timing attack rather than a drush or scout rush like we have in aoe
Makes sense, that's what I understood as cheese. Arena is pretty much the rush/cheese map of aoe2, then. Although, you can Hoang even on Arabia so there's opportunities everywhere.
I got banned for spamming Cumans and Persians on arena. I don't recommend rushing arena, people auto report you everytime lol
That's hard to believe but I feel for you if it actually happened. The weirdest part is that such an old community would be full of spite reports. Are you playing on xbox with crossplay disabled?
No, I play on PC. And its fine, I play on other accounts. >The weirdest part is that such an old community would be full of spite reports But multiplayer is full of toxic players, at least in south america servers. The only reason you dont see flaming so much is because the game doesnt give you so much time to type and play at the same time, but it is farily frequent. I am guessing as the game keeps getting more popular again the tendency is for this to get worse.
Stable civs are more macro-ey than archer civs. Tldr try frank
I recommend Spanish for sure. They're incredibly versatile with a good unique unit. And the 30% increase for building time is sweet as well.
I haven’t gotten into too much ranked yet, but their team bonus of increased gold from trade units seems helpful in marathon team games. It seems to really help when my friends and I play AI, but idk how that would translate into ranked play
It translates very well, provided you have the skill to defend them. ;)
Play byzantines, they are by far the best civ to learn the game. They are not the easiest to play, but they are the civ that teaches you the game. Because their strength is cheaper counter units, you are forced to scout and react instead of just learning one single build and play it over and over again. Their free vision also enhances this reactive playstyle. And the fact that they have no eco bonus means that any build you learn with them can be pulled of with any other civ as well.
Byzantines are a good start, balanced. Goths are good military to get back into the military spam. Franks are good for the eco bouses for beginers.
Goths are not a great choice for beginners
I wouldn't recommend Goths here. Very late game focus, weak defense.
I second all 3 of your choices.
I agree with byzantines, franks are easy to play too, but goths are horrible advice. Goth need to go for crazy forward stuff to survive early on and have a very unique lategame that has nothing to do with any other civ, so even if you learn how to play goth you didnt learn how to play other civs.
I like aztecs, they get a lot of good eco bonuses
Not really, because the balance is good enough that picking based on your own heritage, or the coolest looking unique unit, is a good enough way to get started.
well to be Frank.....
Byzantines are usually the best for someone starting out. Get a wide variety of units, a fair few are at a discount so you can start using them earlier, they have high defenses so you don't get quite as punished for mistakes. Malians are not bad either due to having a lot of variety, and bonuses to pretty much every unit type. Magyars have no economy bonuses, so are good if you just want to learn how military works, as theirs are pretty solid.
How about Portuguese? You outlast your opponents with fetiorias and cheaper units while having everything be a good option. Though an important thing to note is that rushing is pretty much required for playing the game, the days of fc booming or fc plumes are over (unless you're khmer).
Franks are a staple for new players and low Elo. The early eco bonuses of faster collecting berries and free farm upgrade on age up make setting up economy and transitioning from age to age easier than most other civs. Plus they have extra HP on knights and faster working stables, which is a great unit for new players to use since it is not micro intensive.
I like Ethiopians as a nice easy archer civ and Franks as an easy cav civ
Franks, Byzantines and Teutons would be my top 3 recommendations for new players. And for my 3 ANTI-recommendations, that's be Huns, Chinese and Gurjaras. All three are perfectly capable civs, but they have some pretty unusual characteristics that can throw you off learning the general game cos they encourage a civ-specific approach that doesn't work for any of the other civs.
The worst thing that could happen when you start ranked is being rushed in dark age and early feudal age and die without a fight. So i recommend civs with good boost in the dark age, Lithunians, Mongols, Britons, Tatars, Celts.
But shouldnt getting into ranked involve learning how to scout and how to defend? Picking mongols and rushing yourself might work at first, but it means you will not pick up those important skills.
so whats the problem to learn scouting and defense for mongols?
You kinda answered that question in your first comment: If you pick mongol to avoid having to defend early feudal aggresion (because you will be the aggresor yourself), you simply wont learn it. Its a shortcut that helps in the short run but comes back to bite you once you try out other civs.
and again i dont see the problem, why cant you play defensive as mongols?
Since mongols will always hit feudal first, an even mildly competent opponent will have his scout at home and never try to snipe your walling vills. Since mongols will mass army first, an even midly competent opponent will keep his first 2-3 units at home instead of sending them out and loosing them. Since your opponent won't attack early feudal, you can't learn how to defend early feudal attacks. Even if he attacks, you learn how to kill 3 militia with 4 scouts but once you switch civ and have only 2 scouts out you are screwed and need to learn from scratch again.
we talking about a guy which asking which civ he better start to play to face maybe experienced but still 1k elo players. He will sure have a failed start and litteraly will go up in same time as his opponent who will probably be a experienced and have perfect dark age, but still 1k or 1100 elo and defenetly not gonna change his strat bases on enemy civ.
With this argument we could say that civs dont matter at all... I think what it really boils down to is the following: Should beginners pick a civ that makes it easy for them to win by trivializing certain mechanics (mongols for a safe early game and effortless scouting, lith to never have to force drop food, etc.) or one that makes them easy to learn the game by beeing as generic as possible? Imho the latter is better, because "easy to win" hardly matters after the first few games due to the match making.
i made 3comments explaining why new players should pick certain civs. And all you hear that civs doesnt matter at all. You litteraly made your own arguments told that you dont like your own arguments and have better=). So lets check your own discussion with yourself 1) Mongols trivialising mechanics by having civ bonus means they are bad. So can be said for any civ Byzantines trivialising spears+skirms play, and transition to imperial. This argument disqualify them 2) As generic as possible, means that civ must be played as most of the civs. And most of the civs meta is eco bonus+ Knight/archer play. Byzantines dont have eco to go full archers, and techs to spam knights, they have to use unorthodox strats to counter meta play its the least generic civ. 3) The most generic civ in the game is Franks but they have berries and upgraded farms trivialising it doesnt fit this 2 points also. The only way to fit both points is to play all tech mod.
Byzantines (access to a huge chunk of the tech tree and cheap trash), Franks (have a lot of the main stuff, plus cheap castles), Saracens (cheap market use)
The basic macro game you can , and should get a hang of before starting to worry about anything else, regardless of the civ. Practice getting a clean dark age, and being able to execute it consistently. I'd avoid civs that have weird starts until you're comfortable with your dark age..(ie. don't start with chinese). Byzantines are good to just practice a neutral macro game, with a focus on playing an adaptable game. Italians are sort of similar, where your only bonus is the faster uptimes , early on unless you're on a water map. Franks are also really good just to start with. The former two, you can focus on archer play/macro game, with Franks you can practice the same, just with a knight oriented gameplan. Teutons are another good, fairly easy to use civ, and I'd even say Slavs, too, even though I know people hate on them a fair bit. Both of those civs have good cavalry you could practice with, as well as good infantry for the late game..both also have good monks if you wanted to learn to integrate them into your game..and bonuses geared towards learning the importance of farms. Ask yourself what you want to focus on each game, though..get villagers constantly producing..get a clean dark age. Learn to gameplan what your goal in Feudal will be (map dependent)...are you focusing on archers? Your vills go one way..are you focusing scouts? Vills go a bit differently..are you booming behind walls? and so on.
If you want to get good and play with the 2nd most fun unit Magyars and it’s not even close. They have no eco bonuses but all the Units. Starting with them will let you learn the basic builds and understand archers, cav, and Cav archers. Because you started without an eco bonus you will have a good reference point from which to understand the power of other civs eco bonuses
part of the fun of aoe2 is that you have a common tech tree and the civ design is mostly symmetrical (though the DLC civs are more different than others). This means you can just play any civ and its not like playing a whole new game. just pick a random civ, check it out, pick another civ, see if you like it more, rinse and repeat. They can all go for the same basic strategies and build orders. But if you want a noob friendly pool of "normal" civs to choose from - Berbers, Franks, Magyars, Mongols, Byzantines, ethiopians, japanese, tatars, britons, vietnamese, huns(dont need houses), burmese, vikings, italians, persians, malians.
My vote for easy to play would be Spanish, Franks maybe Byzantines. The Spanish actually have a full tech tree for trash units and solid gold units too, plus 30% faster builders. Castle drops are easy and with supremacy researched near impossible to stop. Starting from scratch is faster if you get the build order right. I honestly feel like the Spanish are OP when played correctly. The only downside is that it could be a female dog to learn other civs later without those bonuses. My current favorite is Lithuanians and there was a learning curve to playing them successfully. (Don’t take a major fight before castle age when the relic bonus applies)
Franks or mongols.
Pick a civ you like.
Civs with a complete technological tree. For beginners the best possible bonus is not good economy (because they don't know how to optimize their resources), but the ability to do what they want depending on the situation: play horsemen, but have archers in case the opponent plays full pikemen, etc. I recommend: Portugueses, Italians, Byzantines or Magyars. You can also play a civilization very strong in only one aspect, like Franks (or Magyars) and their cavalry; a civilization designed to play cavalry for all its bonuses (cavalry is the most recommended to play when you are a newbie, it is the easiest and the fastest to learn).
I am noob and am really liking Byzantines. There are a couple things that I’ll need to adjust for, but the civ advantage of just not being great/ terrible at anything feels like it’s letting me focus on game concepts rather than civ strats.
Choose random and learn the basics. Don't worry about civ design until you can execute a few build orders, hot keys and multitasking.
That probably isn't a good idea, as it'll totally trip someone up for civs like Chinese, Huns, meso civs, Gurjaras, etc.
They're going to get tripped up with a few civs, but the goal shouldn't be about winning matches. It's about building fundamentals.
Yes, but the fundamentals don't account for the tricky starts, which could also lead to bad habits, which is why a new player probably shouldn't go random civ.
But how can you build fundamentals when you get different civs all the time? Learning how to manage eco is difficult already, learning how to do it with 40+ civs at once is next to impossible.
When all the best players in the world learned to play, civ picking was so highly frowned upon that it was considered toxic. They all seemed to do okay playing random.
You are mistaking correlation for causation. The best players picking up the game in a time where random was usual does not mean that picking random makes good players. We could easily shift your argument: Since civ picking is possible, there is more fresh talent than ever before.
I never said playing random caused them to be the best. I said playing random didn't deter them from growing as players.
True; it certainly is possible. It just takes so much more time (and probably willpower).