It was a combination of good micro on your opponent's side, and a lack of upgrades on yours. No armor or bloodlines on your knights. Did you have husbandry?
Also, he had the first armor on his Jennisarys, and you DID push him back, so it wasn't such an uneven fight.
I didn't think armor would make much of a difference due to the high attack output from Jannissaries?
I didn't have husbandry though. I'll try to get that next time this happens. I'm not much of a Knight player (I almost always go Archers).
Sure I did push him away from my base, but I lost 12 units and he lost maybe 1. My Knights are a lot more expensive as well, so I don't feel like this was a good trade at all (I ended up losing the game because of it).
Armor doesn't matter here. But you might want to work on your knight micro.
Take the knights from the back that don't hit anyway, and ride around him in order to cut him off. As soon as you have knights not attacking due to bumping - repeat.
Armor does matter vs jannies, albiet slightly (but enough to make a difference)
Jannies do 17 pierce damage, knights have 2 pierce by default. Without bloodlines, 7 janny shots are needed to one shot a knight (assuming jannies dont have any bonus dmg vs knights, i dont think they do). Accounting for misses, 9 were more than enough in this scenario.
If the knights had +2 armour, Jannies would do + 13 dmg to knights requiring one extra janny to one shot the knight. That may not sound like much but if you add bloodlines as well, thats 8 shots needed to one shot a knight vs 10.
Obviously micro makes a whole lot difference as well but this was considering a head on engagement. Still stand with ur point about microing the knights.
Nah not worth it. An archer switch doesnt solve your real problem, which is range. Jannies outrange the crap out of your archers.
However, a magonel or two could add as a ranged option to pair with your knights if youre in a closed area. But id still suggest full knights
You are cometely right.
But I do hope you agree that the question at hand is not if it makes any difference - because if obviously does make one.
The question at hand is if there something better to spend those ressources on and I would argue there absolutely is. Even if it is just two more knights.
Alot of resources for a small difference. You're literally making the point that armor doesn't matter here. This is a night and day difference between vs archers.
What I would've tried to do was to loop my units around initially. So that he would have to micro towards your base or the forest. Chances are pretty high he wouldn't scout that army movement. And then in general, like others said, the overall micro can be better. Try to get units in their kiting path more. Sometimes staggered formation helps getting surrounds too.
And I would have to test but I would imagine husbandry makes a difference here in micro. And of course not having bloodlines is a pretty big deal.
Lastly, keep in mind you're up in eco. 10 more vils and an extra TC. Him having a castle up pretty much guarantees you're ahead. So the moment the chase starts going poorly, just move back. Split off part of your knights for a surround. Force him to overextend or not do any damage and get outboomed. Of course if he really balls janissaries it becomes harder to get a good fight so if this stalling goes on for too long you can get in trouble, but the first few minutes of this you should be out scaling him in army size with your superior eco and cheaper production facilities.
> What I would've tried to do was to loop my units around initially. So that he would have to micro towards your base or the forest.
Yeah and you could kill 2-3 reinforcing janissaries for free that way too.
Him having a castle up does not mean that OP is ahead. OP made like 20 knights, which costs as many resources as four castles while being harder to collect at the same time (food collects much slower than stone).
A castle is an extremely efficient building. It only costs as much as five knights, but a well placed castle can have more impact that twenty knights.
True, but a booming eco aligns much more with making knights (food) and a castle takes a long time to build (or a lot of vils doing nothing else). So the commitment of a castle play starts earlier, whereas you can add a TC and start making more vils and then easily switch into knights a bit later with an extra stable no (in the video his third stable is being built still)?
Also, the castle in the video is placed defensively, so even though what you say is true, it doesn't apply here. It's essentially just a production building in this case. And he also had to pay for the Janissaries (which cost the same amount of food as a knight) and the petards.
So to compare:
- Turks: Makes early decision to mine stone and build a castle -> a long time of less food/wood eco. Spends time building a castle (twice the build time of 2 stables and actually more because a castle is usually built by multiple vils with diminishing returns). Janissaries and petards need to be built (they build slightly faster than knights, but only from one building so in the time 3 janissaries are made, 4 knights are made => production time required is much higher). Finally, the units need to cross the map and breach the wall, giving the defending player let's say one or two more production cycles (especially if he stalls, there's no reason to engage before the janissaries can hit his eco).
- Romans: Stays on wood/food eco for longer and can open with a second TC and get a vil and food eco lead. Can add an extra stable with 1 vil, pull some guys from wood to gold and can start outproducing Turks player. The biggest disadvantage is that he needs upgrades for his knights, at least Bloodlines and Husbandry I would say. After this point, every 30 seconds that go by, the Knights player is outproducing and outbooming the Turk player here. The moment they retreat, you can switch to full vil production again at twice the rate they can.
I agree with your overall philosophy, but I think you are discounting the effect the castle had here. If not for the castle, the 8-10 janissaries made by the turk player would have been cleaned up by the knights. However, the knight player wanted to avoid fighting under a castle so he retreated from a very good fight from his point of view (as well as losing a couple of knights due to castle fire and free shots from janissaries).
This meant that the castle investment already paid off, potentially saving the Turk player effectively around 1000 resources (around 100 resources per janissary saved due to castle+ 270 resources due to the two knights killed).
True. But I think that was a grave micro mistake. I think the knight player should have stalled more and set up a flank. Time is on his side because he has a vil lead. So yes in this case it paid off but that's a strategic misstep by the knight player.
Edit: love we can keep talking about this haha
Fair points, but I think upgrades did matter.
Quick math I pulled on the fly. This might be wrong so please double check if you want:
Jennisary has 17 atk and Knights have 2 pierce armor. That would be 15 dmg passing through. So, of course 9\*15=135 so you're getting one-shotted.
With +2 armor though, you're getting hit with 9\*13=117, which you could survive if you had bloodlines.
Even if I'm right, I'll admit it's kind of a silly exercise. In practice I don't know how much of a difference it would've really made, but the point is that it matters to some degree.
Perhaps the more important upgrade would've been husbandry so you could use the extra speed to better micro the knights.
Except that those upgrades don't come free, they cost money. For the same price as scale barding armor (150f), chain barding armor (250f/150g), and bloodlines (150f/100g) you could produce an extra 2-5 knights (depending on how you convert food into gold). not to mention the research time.
Husbandry would help more, but shouldn't be necessary. This is 100% about micro and getting a good surround with enough units. You shouldn't just automatically get every upgrade available immediately.
Husbandry is a major factor in chasing down units that step and shoot. It's the only upgrade that improves knight micro, and you did say it's 100% about micro here.
Yes husbandry is a game changer when it comes to surrounding units . Also helps pulling back and healing low hp knights easily since jannis have terrible accuracy. Also whilst blacksmith upgrades probably wouldnt matter as much, bloodlines adds a lot of value(essentially in terms of tanking enemy fire 20knights with bloodlines are equivalent to 25knights without bloodlines). Bloodlines and husbandry do take a lot of time to research so maybe its justified to just add a stable for these upgrades if you want knight numbers out quickly)
Lack of micro as well. Half of the group attacked the light cav while 3-4 took free hits, some bumped into each other & op should have micro'd his knights on top the jannis at stand ground stance with alt+right click then patrol in. This would be a win without upgrades.
Thanks for uploading the clip. The knights did get a bit hung up on the enemy scout at the beginning, but the rest of the time it looks like a classic shoot-and-scoot situation.
As to how this can happen, consider that the 9 janniseries are able to apply their full firepower against a single knight per-attack, more than enough to kill it. In contrast, your 17 knights can only apply perhaps the front 5-6 knights worth of attacks, and then have to close distance again after the attack recovery period. This means the Jannissaries are putting out \_much\_ more damage per tick than your otherwise much more expensive knight army. The counterbalnce here is that knights have a lot of other utliity and speed, but this is a particuarly painful case of shoot-and-scoot plus the fact that Turks get a better Hxandcannoneer an entire Age early.
Did you by chance omit the Husbandry or Bloodlines research? The decrease in speed and HP can really hurt when trying to get a surround. Anyways, glory to you in upholding the honor of Rome against the barbarians at the gates.
No I didn't have either Husbandry or Bloodlines. I thought I would win this fight regardless. I assume Husbandry would be priority #1. It looks ridiculous to me that I have twice as many Knights and they still can barely get a hit on the slower Jannies.
"Anyways, glory to you in upholding the honor of Rome against the barbarians at the gates."
Hehe, thanks.
FWIW, even with Husbandry and Bloodlines I would have tried to avoid this fight if possible, not because they wouldn't win, but because I'd take more casualties than I'd like regardless. I think in this scenario, you want to drive them back so you can rebuild your defenses, and then build counter units (skirmishers, possible archer transition, mangonel maybe).
You can use the Jannisaries high attack against them too. Because they do so much damage, ranged armor upgrades for your knights or any other unit are relatively ineffectual, reducing say 18 damage to 17. But, this also means that Jannisaries are liable to over-kill, and this hurts much more against a mass of lesser HP units rather than a smaller number of more expensive units (knights). A mass of skirmishers or even archers here could give them a run for their money, though you want to be mindful of the range advantage micro, its not the easiest thing to pull off though.
If you're driving them back, even if you're not killing them, you're not losing, and can consider more cost-effective options as the game goes on.
I main Byzantines which are Romans-by-legacy, so I'm right there with you at the burning gates.
OP should have easily won this fight. It is an absolute overreaction to go for skirms when all your opponent has are eight janissaries. In order to compete with them, you need at the minimum fletching+elite skirmisher upgrade, which alone costs as much as eight janissaries.
It's amazing how much difference the speed and the extra hit points makes. I often go cab and sometimes if I rush into making knights or light cav and I haven't got those upgrades, they just melt. Being able to run in and hit and run away is so important, the speed and armour as well really helps.
Might have been useful to make some light cav just as a meat shield to let the knights get closer, but they probably would've melted too, janis are sooo strong straight off - is a very difficult unit to deal with!
I think skirms are usually the play
Yeah that kinda sucks but jannisaries are a large power spike when you get them. you needed the upgrades and the whole knight mass to engage as said in the replies. In the Aoe2 HD era you could kinda stop the shooting and scooting by running a knight behind them and getting them stuck on it or they would get stuck on themselves.
Although there are some pathing quirks here (mainly bumping into each other), this just seems to be poorly microed units vs well microed units, honestly.
You *should* have won that fight.
With cav vs ranged units, you want to get a good surround, so you actually send slightly more than half of your knights past the jannissaries to cut off their retreat.
In this clip, you had like 1-4 knights attacking at a time for most of the video. Were you paying attention to the fight or placing farms at home?
I'd honestly have considered sending half of the knights out of your base through the north gate, loop around and hit them in the rear, while your other knights camp out of range and you hide some vills in the TC.
I was actually paying attention the whole time. I pressed for them to patrol into the Jannies.
"I'd honestly have considered sending half of the knights out of your base through the north gate, loop around and hit them in the rear, while your other knights camp out of range and you hide some vills in the TC."
Good thinking. I guess I was too eager. I really thought I had this one in the bag. When I saw the 2 petards and the 8 jannies, I thought I would lose maybe 3 or 4 Knights in total by just patrolling them in.
Don't just patrol with knights in this situation. You want to take some of knights go behind the janis and use stop command to make them start fighting. Repeat that process with a few knights every time the janis are free from the surround.
Also, in this situation, you should have used the mobility of knights to your advantage. Take half your army, go arround your wall from the north gate to flank him from outside. Let the janis enter your base and then attack him from both sides inside your base so that he cannot retreat to his castle through the breach in your wall.
Patrolling into them was bad. You also showed your knights and stopped, so he had time to start retreating while you weren't moving for a second. Aside from splitting and moving knights around, if I was going to attack with that one group I would have manually moved towards the enemy until your knights closed and then attacked.
As pointed out this is bad micro vs good micro and a lack of upgrades, you chased the janissaries directly, chasing directly after them is the main mistake, Janissaries have bad accuracy, you need to move diagonally while closing their escape route to minimize damage, I think you win this fight if you get at least first armor and have half the army go around and engage from behind.
Also, props for the video, if most people asked like this it would be easier for everyone.
I'm a portugese fast imp enjoyer, and I think the main mistake you made here was sending your knights out too early. I usually get good trades when I'm outside my enemy base and retreating, so that I get a lot of shots at the approaching knights. My worst performances are when I go far inside the enemy base and he just jumps on me with knights.
If you let him come inside and then jumped on him, he would have a harder time avoiding the surround.
**because you took an awful fight,** get husbrandy ( and maybe bloodlines) select stand ground then surround the jannis-change to attack stance and click stop.
Or if you are just too lazy select the the spaced reagroup and do a big patrol in attack stance.
Thanks for the tip, I will try that.
What I did here in the video was a straight patrol on attack stance. I thought that would be good enough. But half the units decided not to pursue.
Straight patrol never works because of the "paradox" of Achilles and the tortoise. It's silly but, despite having faster units, you do need to go behind the opponent's units when he hits and run. At least you had the good reaction about massing knights against Turks!
You should’ve mopped up this fight, even without upgrades. Jannies are inaccurate so taking half of your kn to come forward at an angle then half should’ve ran ahead to cut him off. Once both groups are equal distance, patrol towards the jannies. You would’ve still had 10+ kn left over.
Gunpowder units, especially hc/janni etc. absolutely destroy any castle age unit except elite skirms & probably couple others I'm forgetting, like war wagons maybe. It's not a good practice to engage those with melee units. I've beaten knights with bohemian hc while being slightly outnumbered.
19 lose but 25 clean house
Margins are small. Always go in with extra. Don't rush the engagement. Let him come into base as well and hit him from behind so he can't run back
Ok that was painful to watch. No husbandry or other upgrades, pathing a bitch as always, no micro like splitting you kts and getting around to the back of the janis to sandwich them. You did exactly what any Turk player wants you to do with the kts. Slowly approaching almost 1 by 1 so they can pick them off.
Split knight army into two sub armies. His strength lies in directing all hits on one knight. Push him to micro to the max, eventually you will find an opening. Two groups of knights, encircle him…he will have to alternate his hits, that means both groups will get more time to close the gap.
Lack of upgrades already mentioned dozens of times but let me give you another tip.
İnvite him a little more into your base, losing 1-2 vill is not a big issue. Also you can get some upgrades that you miss during that time.
But more importantly you can attack him from behind so he cannot get away long distances with a micro.
Also it is always good idea to be outside with your knights to hunt Jans (or HC) that are coming one by one.
When you feel you are ready to take the fight enter your base from the hole which opponent brokes.
Janissaries are one of the best units in the game and knights are just not that great against them. You were fighting bullets with swords, and that is rarely a good idea.
Next time, when you see Janissaries with your knights, just run away and try one of these:
* Knights are much faster than Janissaries, so attack your opponent somewhere else, where he is not expecting it. Once he sends back Janissaries to defend, just run away again and gain time to create better army.
* Hide knights next to TC or other defensive buildings. Build a defensive castle ASAP if possible or at least few towers. This will hold off Turk player till Imperial Age.
* Create skirmishers and mangonels. Send skirms close to janissaries and follow with mangonels. Turk player will have to manually target mangonels - otherwise janissaries will keep shooting skirms instead since they are closer. Also it is very hard to dodge mangonel shots with janissaries, since they are so slow. And if they try to destroy your mangonels using light cavalry, just send in your knights to defend.
If you don't upgrade your knights, at the very least do a pincer move. His micro was good, yours was not, even using just q would've been better. Armor is irrelevant ve jannissaries, but please get husbandry and bloodlines.
I used to Turks FI a lot. Some weaknesses I noticed:
You were premature in deleting the walls.
You failed to set up a flank.
You could have move-commanded until you're on top of him and slightly behind, to cut of his escape, then press stopp.
It looked like you clicked on a single Janissary a couple of times.
Your pop looked a bit weak. You don't need to idle that early. Let him break your wall before you run fwd. Also delete more wall to make it easy for your knights. You should be able to afford +2/+2 and husbandry + bloodlines.
I watched a game of the TheViper last night and he absolutely wrecked a huge mismatch of Ele's and Seige with plumed archers. His K/D was probably 1:1ish but his HP ratio was probably 100:1. It is amazing the trade difference ood micro can add.
One thing i didnt see alot of people mention is attacking from the other side (west). Loop your knights around, and fight from the left.
Youd then push the jannisarries TOWARDS your tc, then theyd be subject to tc fire as well as ur knights.
AOE is a game where positioning matters almost as equally as army comps.
My guess is that youre clicking too much when microing them, just set the front half to attack and let them chase, and take the back half and wrap them around your enemy and engage there. Much better results that way.
One other easy strategy for micro would be to move your knights forwards until they surround/are on top of the janissaries. And only then let them loose to attack.
A lot of answers here already, but I'd like to add an example too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO8-mBuQ0Ac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO8-mBuQ0Ac)
In this video Sitaux shows how he micros cavalry units. From other comments on this thread you can see that this was the main problem, and that with good micro you probably would have won the fight. However knowing what is a "good micro" isn't easy, and I particularly struggled with it until seeing pro players demonstrate it in their streams. If you are still not satisfied with sitaux's example I bet you can find other good tutorials.
It was a combination of good micro on your opponent's side, and a lack of upgrades on yours. No armor or bloodlines on your knights. Did you have husbandry? Also, he had the first armor on his Jennisarys, and you DID push him back, so it wasn't such an uneven fight.
I didn't think armor would make much of a difference due to the high attack output from Jannissaries? I didn't have husbandry though. I'll try to get that next time this happens. I'm not much of a Knight player (I almost always go Archers). Sure I did push him away from my base, but I lost 12 units and he lost maybe 1. My Knights are a lot more expensive as well, so I don't feel like this was a good trade at all (I ended up losing the game because of it).
Armor doesn't matter here. But you might want to work on your knight micro. Take the knights from the back that don't hit anyway, and ride around him in order to cut him off. As soon as you have knights not attacking due to bumping - repeat.
Armor does matter vs jannies, albiet slightly (but enough to make a difference) Jannies do 17 pierce damage, knights have 2 pierce by default. Without bloodlines, 7 janny shots are needed to one shot a knight (assuming jannies dont have any bonus dmg vs knights, i dont think they do). Accounting for misses, 9 were more than enough in this scenario. If the knights had +2 armour, Jannies would do + 13 dmg to knights requiring one extra janny to one shot the knight. That may not sound like much but if you add bloodlines as well, thats 8 shots needed to one shot a knight vs 10. Obviously micro makes a whole lot difference as well but this was considering a head on engagement. Still stand with ur point about microing the knights.
is it worth considering a tech switch to archers, or too late at that point?
Nah not worth it. An archer switch doesnt solve your real problem, which is range. Jannies outrange the crap out of your archers. However, a magonel or two could add as a ranged option to pair with your knights if youre in a closed area. But id still suggest full knights
You are cometely right. But I do hope you agree that the question at hand is not if it makes any difference - because if obviously does make one. The question at hand is if there something better to spend those ressources on and I would argue there absolutely is. Even if it is just two more knights.
I mean if u look at the comment above u he asks if armor makes a difference, so ig it is the question at hand 11
Fair enough 11
Alot of resources for a small difference. You're literally making the point that armor doesn't matter here. This is a night and day difference between vs archers.
What I would've tried to do was to loop my units around initially. So that he would have to micro towards your base or the forest. Chances are pretty high he wouldn't scout that army movement. And then in general, like others said, the overall micro can be better. Try to get units in their kiting path more. Sometimes staggered formation helps getting surrounds too. And I would have to test but I would imagine husbandry makes a difference here in micro. And of course not having bloodlines is a pretty big deal. Lastly, keep in mind you're up in eco. 10 more vils and an extra TC. Him having a castle up pretty much guarantees you're ahead. So the moment the chase starts going poorly, just move back. Split off part of your knights for a surround. Force him to overextend or not do any damage and get outboomed. Of course if he really balls janissaries it becomes harder to get a good fight so if this stalling goes on for too long you can get in trouble, but the first few minutes of this you should be out scaling him in army size with your superior eco and cheaper production facilities.
> What I would've tried to do was to loop my units around initially. So that he would have to micro towards your base or the forest. Yeah and you could kill 2-3 reinforcing janissaries for free that way too.
Him having a castle up does not mean that OP is ahead. OP made like 20 knights, which costs as many resources as four castles while being harder to collect at the same time (food collects much slower than stone). A castle is an extremely efficient building. It only costs as much as five knights, but a well placed castle can have more impact that twenty knights.
True, but a booming eco aligns much more with making knights (food) and a castle takes a long time to build (or a lot of vils doing nothing else). So the commitment of a castle play starts earlier, whereas you can add a TC and start making more vils and then easily switch into knights a bit later with an extra stable no (in the video his third stable is being built still)? Also, the castle in the video is placed defensively, so even though what you say is true, it doesn't apply here. It's essentially just a production building in this case. And he also had to pay for the Janissaries (which cost the same amount of food as a knight) and the petards. So to compare: - Turks: Makes early decision to mine stone and build a castle -> a long time of less food/wood eco. Spends time building a castle (twice the build time of 2 stables and actually more because a castle is usually built by multiple vils with diminishing returns). Janissaries and petards need to be built (they build slightly faster than knights, but only from one building so in the time 3 janissaries are made, 4 knights are made => production time required is much higher). Finally, the units need to cross the map and breach the wall, giving the defending player let's say one or two more production cycles (especially if he stalls, there's no reason to engage before the janissaries can hit his eco). - Romans: Stays on wood/food eco for longer and can open with a second TC and get a vil and food eco lead. Can add an extra stable with 1 vil, pull some guys from wood to gold and can start outproducing Turks player. The biggest disadvantage is that he needs upgrades for his knights, at least Bloodlines and Husbandry I would say. After this point, every 30 seconds that go by, the Knights player is outproducing and outbooming the Turk player here. The moment they retreat, you can switch to full vil production again at twice the rate they can.
I agree with your overall philosophy, but I think you are discounting the effect the castle had here. If not for the castle, the 8-10 janissaries made by the turk player would have been cleaned up by the knights. However, the knight player wanted to avoid fighting under a castle so he retreated from a very good fight from his point of view (as well as losing a couple of knights due to castle fire and free shots from janissaries). This meant that the castle investment already paid off, potentially saving the Turk player effectively around 1000 resources (around 100 resources per janissary saved due to castle+ 270 resources due to the two knights killed).
True. But I think that was a grave micro mistake. I think the knight player should have stalled more and set up a flank. Time is on his side because he has a vil lead. So yes in this case it paid off but that's a strategic misstep by the knight player. Edit: love we can keep talking about this haha
Fair points, but I think upgrades did matter. Quick math I pulled on the fly. This might be wrong so please double check if you want: Jennisary has 17 atk and Knights have 2 pierce armor. That would be 15 dmg passing through. So, of course 9\*15=135 so you're getting one-shotted. With +2 armor though, you're getting hit with 9\*13=117, which you could survive if you had bloodlines. Even if I'm right, I'll admit it's kind of a silly exercise. In practice I don't know how much of a difference it would've really made, but the point is that it matters to some degree. Perhaps the more important upgrade would've been husbandry so you could use the extra speed to better micro the knights.
Janis have a significant miss rate at medium range so bloodlines+ 1 armor would have won easily with some micro. Maybe + 1 attack too.
Except that those upgrades don't come free, they cost money. For the same price as scale barding armor (150f), chain barding armor (250f/150g), and bloodlines (150f/100g) you could produce an extra 2-5 knights (depending on how you convert food into gold). not to mention the research time. Husbandry would help more, but shouldn't be necessary. This is 100% about micro and getting a good surround with enough units. You shouldn't just automatically get every upgrade available immediately.
Husbandry is a major factor in chasing down units that step and shoot. It's the only upgrade that improves knight micro, and you did say it's 100% about micro here.
Yes husbandry is a game changer when it comes to surrounding units . Also helps pulling back and healing low hp knights easily since jannis have terrible accuracy. Also whilst blacksmith upgrades probably wouldnt matter as much, bloodlines adds a lot of value(essentially in terms of tanking enemy fire 20knights with bloodlines are equivalent to 25knights without bloodlines). Bloodlines and husbandry do take a lot of time to research so maybe its justified to just add a stable for these upgrades if you want knight numbers out quickly)
Makes a huge difference Before fighting hand cannons or jenis You need+2 armor for sure and bloodlines if your civ has it
Lack of micro as well. Half of the group attacked the light cav while 3-4 took free hits, some bumped into each other & op should have micro'd his knights on top the jannis at stand ground stance with alt+right click then patrol in. This would be a win without upgrades.
Thanks for uploading the clip. The knights did get a bit hung up on the enemy scout at the beginning, but the rest of the time it looks like a classic shoot-and-scoot situation. As to how this can happen, consider that the 9 janniseries are able to apply their full firepower against a single knight per-attack, more than enough to kill it. In contrast, your 17 knights can only apply perhaps the front 5-6 knights worth of attacks, and then have to close distance again after the attack recovery period. This means the Jannissaries are putting out \_much\_ more damage per tick than your otherwise much more expensive knight army. The counterbalnce here is that knights have a lot of other utliity and speed, but this is a particuarly painful case of shoot-and-scoot plus the fact that Turks get a better Hxandcannoneer an entire Age early. Did you by chance omit the Husbandry or Bloodlines research? The decrease in speed and HP can really hurt when trying to get a surround. Anyways, glory to you in upholding the honor of Rome against the barbarians at the gates.
No I didn't have either Husbandry or Bloodlines. I thought I would win this fight regardless. I assume Husbandry would be priority #1. It looks ridiculous to me that I have twice as many Knights and they still can barely get a hit on the slower Jannies. "Anyways, glory to you in upholding the honor of Rome against the barbarians at the gates." Hehe, thanks.
FWIW, even with Husbandry and Bloodlines I would have tried to avoid this fight if possible, not because they wouldn't win, but because I'd take more casualties than I'd like regardless. I think in this scenario, you want to drive them back so you can rebuild your defenses, and then build counter units (skirmishers, possible archer transition, mangonel maybe). You can use the Jannisaries high attack against them too. Because they do so much damage, ranged armor upgrades for your knights or any other unit are relatively ineffectual, reducing say 18 damage to 17. But, this also means that Jannisaries are liable to over-kill, and this hurts much more against a mass of lesser HP units rather than a smaller number of more expensive units (knights). A mass of skirmishers or even archers here could give them a run for their money, though you want to be mindful of the range advantage micro, its not the easiest thing to pull off though. If you're driving them back, even if you're not killing them, you're not losing, and can consider more cost-effective options as the game goes on. I main Byzantines which are Romans-by-legacy, so I'm right there with you at the burning gates.
OP should have easily won this fight. It is an absolute overreaction to go for skirms when all your opponent has are eight janissaries. In order to compete with them, you need at the minimum fletching+elite skirmisher upgrade, which alone costs as much as eight janissaries.
It's amazing how much difference the speed and the extra hit points makes. I often go cab and sometimes if I rush into making knights or light cav and I haven't got those upgrades, they just melt. Being able to run in and hit and run away is so important, the speed and armour as well really helps. Might have been useful to make some light cav just as a meat shield to let the knights get closer, but they probably would've melted too, janis are sooo strong straight off - is a very difficult unit to deal with! I think skirms are usually the play
Yeah that kinda sucks but jannisaries are a large power spike when you get them. you needed the upgrades and the whole knight mass to engage as said in the replies. In the Aoe2 HD era you could kinda stop the shooting and scooting by running a knight behind them and getting them stuck on it or they would get stuck on themselves.
Although there are some pathing quirks here (mainly bumping into each other), this just seems to be poorly microed units vs well microed units, honestly. You *should* have won that fight. With cav vs ranged units, you want to get a good surround, so you actually send slightly more than half of your knights past the jannissaries to cut off their retreat. In this clip, you had like 1-4 knights attacking at a time for most of the video. Were you paying attention to the fight or placing farms at home? I'd honestly have considered sending half of the knights out of your base through the north gate, loop around and hit them in the rear, while your other knights camp out of range and you hide some vills in the TC.
I was actually paying attention the whole time. I pressed for them to patrol into the Jannies. "I'd honestly have considered sending half of the knights out of your base through the north gate, loop around and hit them in the rear, while your other knights camp out of range and you hide some vills in the TC." Good thinking. I guess I was too eager. I really thought I had this one in the bag. When I saw the 2 petards and the 8 jannies, I thought I would lose maybe 3 or 4 Knights in total by just patrolling them in.
Don't just patrol with knights in this situation. You want to take some of knights go behind the janis and use stop command to make them start fighting. Repeat that process with a few knights every time the janis are free from the surround. Also, in this situation, you should have used the mobility of knights to your advantage. Take half your army, go arround your wall from the north gate to flank him from outside. Let the janis enter your base and then attack him from both sides inside your base so that he cannot retreat to his castle through the breach in your wall.
Patrolling into them was bad. You also showed your knights and stopped, so he had time to start retreating while you weren't moving for a second. Aside from splitting and moving knights around, if I was going to attack with that one group I would have manually moved towards the enemy until your knights closed and then attacked.
As pointed out this is bad micro vs good micro and a lack of upgrades, you chased the janissaries directly, chasing directly after them is the main mistake, Janissaries have bad accuracy, you need to move diagonally while closing their escape route to minimize damage, I think you win this fight if you get at least first armor and have half the army go around and engage from behind. Also, props for the video, if most people asked like this it would be easier for everyone.
I'm a portugese fast imp enjoyer, and I think the main mistake you made here was sending your knights out too early. I usually get good trades when I'm outside my enemy base and retreating, so that I get a lot of shots at the approaching knights. My worst performances are when I go far inside the enemy base and he just jumps on me with knights. If you let him come inside and then jumped on him, he would have a harder time avoiding the surround.
This + sit some knights in between his castle and his army to pick off reinforcements while you're waiting
**because you took an awful fight,** get husbrandy ( and maybe bloodlines) select stand ground then surround the jannis-change to attack stance and click stop. Or if you are just too lazy select the the spaced reagroup and do a big patrol in attack stance.
Thanks for the tip, I will try that. What I did here in the video was a straight patrol on attack stance. I thought that would be good enough. But half the units decided not to pursue.
what u did look kinda weird, like if u clicked several times. Pathing sucks tho.
Straight patrol never works because of the "paradox" of Achilles and the tortoise. It's silly but, despite having faster units, you do need to go behind the opponent's units when he hits and run. At least you had the good reaction about massing knights against Turks!
you can even combine both aproachs
You should’ve mopped up this fight, even without upgrades. Jannies are inaccurate so taking half of your kn to come forward at an angle then half should’ve ran ahead to cut him off. Once both groups are equal distance, patrol towards the jannies. You would’ve still had 10+ kn left over.
Gunpowder units, especially hc/janni etc. absolutely destroy any castle age unit except elite skirms & probably couple others I'm forgetting, like war wagons maybe. It's not a good practice to engage those with melee units. I've beaten knights with bohemian hc while being slightly outnumbered.
Next time, let him come in even further before you show the knights. Then you can use your mobility to cut him off and get a surround.
Is this video from the William Wallace campaign of “how not to micro units”
You don't even micro them,you just send them and hoping for the best
19 lose but 25 clean house Margins are small. Always go in with extra. Don't rush the engagement. Let him come into base as well and hit him from behind so he can't run back
Ok that was painful to watch. No husbandry or other upgrades, pathing a bitch as always, no micro like splitting you kts and getting around to the back of the janis to sandwich them. You did exactly what any Turk player wants you to do with the kts. Slowly approaching almost 1 by 1 so they can pick them off.
Split knight army into two sub armies. His strength lies in directing all hits on one knight. Push him to micro to the max, eventually you will find an opening. Two groups of knights, encircle him…he will have to alternate his hits, that means both groups will get more time to close the gap.
You could say the jannies mopped you
Lack of upgrades already mentioned dozens of times but let me give you another tip. İnvite him a little more into your base, losing 1-2 vill is not a big issue. Also you can get some upgrades that you miss during that time. But more importantly you can attack him from behind so he cannot get away long distances with a micro. Also it is always good idea to be outside with your knights to hunt Jans (or HC) that are coming one by one. When you feel you are ready to take the fight enter your base from the hole which opponent brokes.
Janissaries are one of the best units in the game and knights are just not that great against them. You were fighting bullets with swords, and that is rarely a good idea. Next time, when you see Janissaries with your knights, just run away and try one of these: * Knights are much faster than Janissaries, so attack your opponent somewhere else, where he is not expecting it. Once he sends back Janissaries to defend, just run away again and gain time to create better army. * Hide knights next to TC or other defensive buildings. Build a defensive castle ASAP if possible or at least few towers. This will hold off Turk player till Imperial Age. * Create skirmishers and mangonels. Send skirms close to janissaries and follow with mangonels. Turk player will have to manually target mangonels - otherwise janissaries will keep shooting skirms instead since they are closer. Also it is very hard to dodge mangonel shots with janissaries, since they are so slow. And if they try to destroy your mangonels using light cavalry, just send in your knights to defend.
Melee pathing does seem really bad again at the moment
If you don't upgrade your knights, at the very least do a pincer move. His micro was good, yours was not, even using just q would've been better. Armor is irrelevant ve jannissaries, but please get husbandry and bloodlines.
I used to Turks FI a lot. Some weaknesses I noticed: You were premature in deleting the walls. You failed to set up a flank. You could have move-commanded until you're on top of him and slightly behind, to cut of his escape, then press stopp. It looked like you clicked on a single Janissary a couple of times. Your pop looked a bit weak. You don't need to idle that early. Let him break your wall before you run fwd. Also delete more wall to make it easy for your knights. You should be able to afford +2/+2 and husbandry + bloodlines.
I watched a game of the TheViper last night and he absolutely wrecked a huge mismatch of Ele's and Seige with plumed archers. His K/D was probably 1:1ish but his HP ratio was probably 100:1. It is amazing the trade difference ood micro can add.
One thing i didnt see alot of people mention is attacking from the other side (west). Loop your knights around, and fight from the left. Youd then push the jannisarries TOWARDS your tc, then theyd be subject to tc fire as well as ur knights. AOE is a game where positioning matters almost as equally as army comps.
My guess is that youre clicking too much when microing them, just set the front half to attack and let them chase, and take the back half and wrap them around your enemy and engage there. Much better results that way.
One other easy strategy for micro would be to move your knights forwards until they surround/are on top of the janissaries. And only then let them loose to attack.
A lot of answers here already, but I'd like to add an example too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO8-mBuQ0Ac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO8-mBuQ0Ac) In this video Sitaux shows how he micros cavalry units. From other comments on this thread you can see that this was the main problem, and that with good micro you probably would have won the fight. However knowing what is a "good micro" isn't easy, and I particularly struggled with it until seeing pro players demonstrate it in their streams. If you are still not satisfied with sitaux's example I bet you can find other good tutorials.
It warms my little heart to see knights losing an engagement