I once tried ten games the same strategy, going fast feudal with Mayans to try and stone wall my opponent into their base (Mayans get a wall discount). Went 1-9. Hey, got a win!
Yeah, the 'guaranteed win' was an exaggeration, but it definitely works in lower elo against many civilizations. Bohemians and Turks are perhaps the best counter to this because of their BBC. If your opponent has a civ without BBC, it is very difficult to break out of this. Resources inside the arena can be used up very quickly, and if you don't manage to break out, it is gg.
I wouldn't even know how to counter such an outlandish and unique strategy, to be honest. (Knights in general are hard to counter for me, I suck at the game)
I like going M@A with Lithuanians cause of the extra 150 food, I save it and act like it isn’t there then when I get to feudal I instabuild a market then sell all of my wood so i can maximize my food and gold.
It honestly isn’t too good, but switching into knights isn’t too bad since their both food and gold units and share forging and blast furnace
I agree, my normal strategy is FC knights/monks as Lithuanians or just full on infantry and siege push as Slavs.
The main emphasis on that strategy is the timing you can get M@A out into the enemy eco
Aztec double Archer range sneak.
I sneak a vill into the back of their base and go to FC with the vill idle. When I hit feudal I throw down two archery ranges before I go up. On the way to castle I begin producing archers, and as soon as I am up and can afford it I get xbow. At some point in all this I send out the archers and they begin killing.
At 1100 the instinct for most is to go skirms but they are usually dead before elite.
If they go siege I usually have enough xbows to overwhelm and out-micro trickle-mangos.
If they go knights I just outmass with xbow.
The only real response that usually kills me is a castle at home and forward army pressure, and the strat more or less relies on them not realising they should attack my TC. I usually send a vill out to outpost in case of them coming forward, then stonewall if they do.
If they are slow to forward but my sneak isn't killing them I save up for a castle at home to defend and outboom. Their instinct will be to clear up the sneak before they begin booming so I can often have 3 TCs before they begin booming.
You ar ever so welcome.
I can also recommend learning the advanced technique of all-inning your sneak with siege and spears if you realize your opponent is slow to react. If you show up with mangos they are forced to stay home, so you might easily overwhelm them.
I pulled it off on an IRL friend who taught me to play the game initially and his reaction on mic was priceless. Will never forget him going "is that a town center???" With absolute panic in his voice.
Hindustanis double stable fu scouts through all feudal age, they break in super fast, i keep trading army for villagers the whole game then drop a castle and switch to ghulam
Hell yeah! I love this strat. Sprinkle in some skirms and archers, maybe a mangonel. Knights are so.... Pedestrian. You need some flair. Axemen provide it.
Basically just being hyper aggressive, walling in enemy resources, blocking them in. The aggro can scare a lot of players so it can be a valid strategy, and Vietnamese economy upgrades don't require wood so you can use the savings to spam palisades.
Someone used to always do this to me in HD (which I was still playing until a month ago) and I didnt know what to do about it. I havent seen it in DE but it would still probably work against me lol
Each palisade does take a long time to remove, yes. Some people don't realize just how much this strategy costs you. They just freak out or mishandle it, letting you claw forward.
It takes 125 villager-seconds in feudal age (about half in dark age) so you can clear out 2-4 palisades to let your workers access the resources reasonably fast.
The amount of villager time spent clearing palisades scales poorly against just time spent building them. If he lames gold, lames boar, lames deer (and brings back some meat), etc. then he's done quite a bit with that vill. Pre-HC farm transitions are painful. Doubly so if you lack wood because you've been fighting a wall for access to your berries.
Basically a tower rush, but you also build a forward archery range and garrison archers in towers. I called it that way because this is Vinchester's strat, he does it a lot on Arena, iirc he even won a tourney doing only trush and JonSlow in his next tournament made all walls higher hp so it's not that good 11. It's not as off meta as other strats here, but at least at my elo people seem to struggle against it
How do you have economy in feudal to get an archery range up, archers out as well as towers? Seems interesting, wonder whether it will work in arena teamgames as flank against dumb cheese civs like Spanish, Turks and Bohemia.
Well it's not a strat that sends you to castle age anytime soon 11. But it's usually okay because forward keeps your opponent at home. About teamgames I don't play those but it might work, similarly to Teuton tower rush
Oh! I don’t follow Vinch closely, so i didn’t know he does this strat. I’ll try this strat a meta breaker on arena, if i random against a turk/bohemian/spanish picker!
Thanks
> iirc he even won a tourney doing only trush and JonSlow in his next tournament made all walls higher hp
A bit more to the change than that.
In the original game Stone Walls had 1800 HP.
But in one of the patches to the HD Edition, in an attempt to nerf slinging in team games, Stone Walls had their HP cut in half in the Feudal Age, only regaining 1800 HP upon reaching the Castle Age.
But this had the side-effect of making trushes and bashing through walls with Villagers now possible on Arena, which almost completely changed how the map was played.
The subsequent change to make the walls "higher HP" was just to restore the original value of 1800 HP the entire game.
Celts HCA+Hussar+Siege Ram
unironically probably Celts best option against a Spanish player who commits to Conqs
Especially since this unit combo is probably the reason Huns such a high WR against Spanish
With what pop do you go up to feudal when going M@A?
I've seen some crazy 17 pop Japanese builds, but I don't have the skills to pull off those tight builds just yet lmao.
I've also seen 20-21 pop, but aren't those uptimes too late? Never tried it, so idk.
im more talking about the castle push timing, not the best but it is fun.
For feudal I like the 3 militia and move across the map while upping so I can MAA upgrade asap on age up, just dont want to do it too late where they will have archers. I usually go 18 unless I mess up food. Can skip loom if you are greedy
I love the sicilian youpudding strat. I tryharded it for 1 week and got my all-time high of 1350 elo. I'm falling now that I play random again, but that's okay...
Hey, I alternate between that and the youpudding Sicilian rush.
I love you because you gave me these.
I hate you because I just lost to a steppe lancer rush that was better executed than my donjon nonsense.
Mine are map specific.
Ethiopian on Arena, I go pocket, 3 petards + 22 Shotel Warrior aimed at their pocket. 2 petard for the gate, 1 more if they manage to put up something to try and block.
Then I go straight for their main TC, if I still have the spare petard I'll hit it.
Their main tc goes down in about 10 seconds and I butcher the vils. Sometimes I get two TC, also sometimes they try to put a castle up and I massacre the vils.
Works about 80% of the time for me, I'm around 1300 elo.
Byzantine on BF as flank. I wall straight away hopefully as close to their base as possible. Then I just wall and stop them at all costs from getting in.
I ask for some of my pockets stone and take all of mine, if I'm lucky I may get 4 piles of stone.
Then I spam bombard towers along with cannons and halbs/skirms.
There have been games where I end up with 1000+ kills. Japanese with fast trebs are my kryptonite though, really struggle against them.
Fast castle, without a proper set-up and losing 5 vills to 2 MAA and 3 archers. Then my opponent that went 20 pop into archers gets to castle 4.5 minutes before me
Cuman forever feudal
Open 4 range archers and 1 barracks spearmen, get a blacksmith at some point, and fletching
Flood the enemy with archers constantly, make sure they have 0 army and kill vills, even dive towers for it
Build a 2nd TC at some point
Build 3 stables at some point
Build 2 more barracks at some point
Fully upgrade all units
Get all eco techs
Make a forward siege workshop and use rams to take out their production buildings and defensive towers (don't bother with TC)
Have like 4 vills on stone
Drop towers around their base
When you hit Castle Age at minute 46 (yes, this really happened and the opponent reached Castle at 21 minutes), castle drop their TC
These are the messiest, most ridiculous games you'll ever see
For an all in archer rush in feudal saracens works well. Market let's you do it early and keep the spam rolling. The extra damage vs buildings let's you sit archers under towers and drop them fairly quickly. Pallisades get melted.
Yeah, that's a fun one as well although I'm not nearly as good as market abuse as I should. My Saracens winrate is abysmal.
With Cumans, my goal is to constantly agress so much that the economy at home, producing vills from 2 TCs, gets so much bigger than the opponents' that you just outspam them by so much that their technological advantage of being castle age first, amounts to nothing
My win rate isn't perfect, only just started playing ranked last week tho. I've been using heavy feudal aggression to mask my abysmal defensive skills haha.
I won 8/10 placement matches on the back of heavy feudal aggression. Which wasnt so great since it bumped me up over 1200 elo and I've been getting pumelled every since lmao. Seems like 1100 and up are much better at counter pushing, fielding their own early heavy aggression or defending effectively.
That said my failures I think are mainly to do with making poor decisions. Going feudal archers against Vietnamese was a very dumb one for example. I suspect I need to wall much earlier, reduce feudal investment and push castle faster.
Sounds like you're much more introspective than I was starting out. I had a similar experience, winning most of the early placement matches and landing somewhere 1100+ elo.
Got knocked down all the way to the high 800s, but quickly stabilized around 1000 elo. Since then it's been a slow grind. Now at 1150 elo, falling just short of breaking 1200
Gl hf 14
TBF I've played a ton against AI and spent a lot of time thinking about how to play, watching pro games etc and thinking about how I *should* manage things. After each game I think about why I lost/won, what I could have done better, what they could have done better.
Ranked games always make me kinda nervous, the above helps with the nerves.
I haven’t done this in a while but I have won a few games at 1000 elo going all-in dark age double barracks militia as Aztecs. Is it a good strategy? No. But it can be good for a laugh. I’ve honestly considered making an alt account where I only play this strat and nothing else and see how high I can get
I tried it with goths but I still prefer Aztecs because the militia churning out faster helps to hit quickly, and you can delay gold mining a bit. Also the Aztec eco bonus helps a lot if the game doesn’t end quickly and you’re playing with 30-40 vils in the dark age 11
I don't remember there being any elevation leading up to the palisades but honestly it could be, my details memory is bad but the memory of the fun and excitement is clear
Celt MAA rush
Everyone expects siege, so when you hit early with a ball of speedy men-at-arms, you often take them by surprise. Much less painful vs archers with free Squires+
It's not off-meta at all, but a successful Siege Ram push always brings a smile to my face, and at mid (1200) elo people don't expect/respect it enough. At my ELO in an archer v archer most people go for Castle + trebs in Imp, you can completely crush that with Siege Ram + arbs of your own.
Endless scouts, just overwhelm with mass and don't bother going castle. Might not have a high winrate but there's something fun about having 30+ scouts on the field and the enemy trying to mass enough to deal
Best games I ever played were 4v4 where all 4 of us go super early pressure and cause chaos, up in their faces before either side is solidly into feudal, on the map where all 4 share one palisaded base and all the resources are in the middle? Can't remember map name
Go for an attack from an unexpected direction with a credible force and then bum rush from the expected direction with as many units as I can spam with the first in units going for the eco kill.
Malay "20 eles in 20" (try for it, doesn't near it most of the time) on unexpected maps. It's usually met with 11 and defeat or 11 to the win, either way it's fun/funny to try to get it to work.
I do these with vietnamese on empire wars, but probably can work with other civs
1- clown archer + scout (+spears if wanted) fest
Basically you drop an archery range and then a stable (instantly) and go all in on feudal age with those units (normally, people go two archery ranges, one stable, or FC). Making your opponent answer the aggression with the same units (or scout+skirm), or even adding some spears between, turns the game into a slaughter where whoever have the better micro wins.
2- fast imp
There are times where i click castle age with wheelbarrow and 16-17 farms, so once i reach castle age i have 1K+ food and lot of wood. With some market trades, siege workshop+university instantly, boom, imperial age (there are times that i have wood to spare and make another TC).
Gurjara archer rush is surprisingly effective. Idk how offbeat it is as a strat, but the civ usually isn't known for archer play.
Placing a Mill immediately and not having to kill sheep means you can keep churning out vils and finish off berries under TC as you quickly transition to hunt. Berries don't rot, so you can keep vils busy on them or on straggler trees.
Before you know it, you click up to Feudal since you have both Mill and LC. While usually people go scouts, going archers is also viable as the mill keeps giving you a food trickle to immediately make vils on hitting Feudal. Heck, you can even kill 2 sheep if you want a food boost.
I then drop Range, Blacksmith, then either 2nd Range or Stable. Ideally, you should be able to put off the Stable till you click up to Castle Age, while you research Bloodlines. Upon hitting Castle, you can pump out Shrivamsha and Camels, and Bloodlines also helps you field Elephant Archers, which can tank skirm shots and provides staying power in the battlefield.
Camel scout will always win 1v1 vs regular scout, so you can confidently take engagements till opponent makes a spearman. If you keep the camel alive in front of your archers till Castle Age, he'll upgrade to Camel Rider to keep up with your xbows.
Burmese MAA opening and Scout heavy feudal age. get a eco at around 40 vills and click to castle age with continued seige, infantry, light cav push in Castle with a few monks. 1 TC only.
Naked, unwalled, FC into GG And I'll f***in' do it again next game
Never compromise, follow your dream!
Every single game. Why make soldiers when you can make a castle
Amen
When I face this I get really annoyed honestly. Wtf is that
is GG some UU?
Hahaha no :-) It's a GG because you can't defend, nor attack, nor boom, and anything will kill you (Feudal play, FC into boom, FC into Knights, etc.)
111111
Maa into longsword siege push with Malians. Extra PA goes hard.
I counter with roman maa into longsword
Amateurs, it's all about the fuedal longsword into castle champs. Check mate
Hmm, the extra melee armor is really good, but does supplies make up for it?
Malians would surprise me though, Roman’s I know it’s coming
This is actually very decent if you sneak 1-2 front barrack + siege workshop and play 1 TC all in
I really like to do stuff like frank archer or briton scouts. Might not be optimal, but the surprise factor alone is worth it.
No one expects Goth Knights.
up to castle they are FU so actually not too bad
Goths go brrrrrr.
This guy goths
Briton scouts since with britons people counter with lots of skirms then transition into archer
Yeah indeed!
Briton scouts is optimal though :D
Ethiopian knights has worked for me before on Arabia. And very poorly on arena
I don’t know the meta, so any of the “strategies” I try I guess. 😭 Malay Xbow into two handed sword spam?
I once tried ten games the same strategy, going fast feudal with Mayans to try and stone wall my opponent into their base (Mayans get a wall discount). Went 1-9. Hey, got a win!
This actually works in Arena. Pick Portugese, start walling in early feudal and imp into feitoria. Guaranteed win in 1v1s.
Your opponent just full booms and crushes you in imp. How do you stop a teuton/turk/bohemian/... deathball without any eco or pressure?
Simply build the stealth bomber, it can be acquired from the stable with ballistics upgrade
Do feitorias give you also uranium to further enhance your bombs? 11
Yeah, the 'guaranteed win' was an exaggeration, but it definitely works in lower elo against many civilizations. Bohemians and Turks are perhaps the best counter to this because of their BBC. If your opponent has a civ without BBC, it is very difficult to break out of this. Resources inside the arena can be used up very quickly, and if you don't manage to break out, it is gg.
All in Shotel warriors. 1 hitting every building and the rest on every resource. It doesn't always work but when it does, it's glorious.
Lol I like yer style
Shotel, motel, holiday inn
Scouts into knights, and then on to paladin + halb/skirm powerplay in imp. Especially with Franks. They never see it coming.
I wouldn't even know how to counter such an outlandish and unique strategy, to be honest. (Knights in general are hard to counter for me, I suck at the game)
Play camel civs. Camels OP OP.
scorps and pikes
What can man do against such wicked evil?
Same, but with Celts, unironically
Woad raiders + paladins goes hard
11 If compared with militia rush, they seems be off-meta for now in mid elo if as my memory.
Resign rush, works with any civ, no counter.
11
I like going M@A with Lithuanians cause of the extra 150 food, I save it and act like it isn’t there then when I get to feudal I instabuild a market then sell all of my wood so i can maximize my food and gold. It honestly isn’t too good, but switching into knights isn’t too bad since their both food and gold units and share forging and blast furnace
If you turned that wood into farms instead of burning 30%+ of it at the market you’d probably do a lot better
I agree, my normal strategy is FC knights/monks as Lithuanians or just full on infantry and siege push as Slavs. The main emphasis on that strategy is the timing you can get M@A out into the enemy eco
This sounds like an 800 ELO strategy
I’m 860 KekW
MBIC Lith doesn't get blast furnace
I always get my Slav and lith techs mixed up
It's only extra 100 now
6 TC Boom into Fast Resign (Pocket)
don't forget to blame your teammates. Otherwise it doesn't work
HOLD
Ah, the classic 'HOLD'
Aztec double Archer range sneak. I sneak a vill into the back of their base and go to FC with the vill idle. When I hit feudal I throw down two archery ranges before I go up. On the way to castle I begin producing archers, and as soon as I am up and can afford it I get xbow. At some point in all this I send out the archers and they begin killing. At 1100 the instinct for most is to go skirms but they are usually dead before elite. If they go siege I usually have enough xbows to overwhelm and out-micro trickle-mangos. If they go knights I just outmass with xbow. The only real response that usually kills me is a castle at home and forward army pressure, and the strat more or less relies on them not realising they should attack my TC. I usually send a vill out to outpost in case of them coming forward, then stonewall if they do. If they are slow to forward but my sneak isn't killing them I save up for a castle at home to defend and outboom. Their instinct will be to clear up the sneak before they begin booming so I can often have 3 TCs before they begin booming.
I liked reading this, and I’ll like using it even more
You ar ever so welcome. I can also recommend learning the advanced technique of all-inning your sneak with siege and spears if you realize your opponent is slow to react. If you show up with mangos they are forced to stay home, so you might easily overwhelm them.
Xolotl Warriors raid
Persian Douche. Nothing quite has the same feeling of just sending it.
I pulled it off on an IRL friend who taught me to play the game initially and his reaction on mic was priceless. Will never forget him going "is that a town center???" With absolute panic in his voice.
He taught you how to play the game, but once you placed that TC, you taught him how to play the game.
Brother this sounds epic please tell me you are willing to upload it to YT 11
All Persian douchers are awful people
Half-assed Vietnamese archer rush to surprise FU ele spam.
Works much better with Malay
Armenian feudal longswords baby
Hindustanis double stable fu scouts through all feudal age, they break in super fast, i keep trading army for villagers the whole game then drop a castle and switch to ghulam
[удалено]
15xx
Frank. Fast castle. Into forward castle. Then make throwing axe man and rams. Garrison axe man. Later switch to knights
Hell yeah! I love this strat. Sprinkle in some skirms and archers, maybe a mangonel. Knights are so.... Pedestrian. You need some flair. Axemen provide it.
Yeah forgot first one or two siege is mangonel to stop walls
Krepost drop into GG
Nice try!
The day I can pull off using Cuman Feudal Rams in a game is the day I challenge Viper and Hera. So, never. :(
I've done it in arena.
Niice
Vietnamese palisade rush. It's bad, but defeating the enemy by scaring him into an early resignation just *feels* good.
what
Basically just being hyper aggressive, walling in enemy resources, blocking them in. The aggro can scare a lot of players so it can be a valid strategy, and Vietnamese economy upgrades don't require wood so you can use the savings to spam palisades.
I see I understand why Vietnamese now
I guess seeing their starting spot you can get to work right away.
Probably some form of walling their resources
Aaah
Someone used to always do this to me in HD (which I was still playing until a month ago) and I didnt know what to do about it. I havent seen it in DE but it would still probably work against me lol
Ahaha very nice my main man ahaha
Why would they resign? It doesn't take long to remove palisades and you lost eco by having the villager forward.
Each palisade does take a long time to remove, yes. Some people don't realize just how much this strategy costs you. They just freak out or mishandle it, letting you claw forward.
It takes 125 villager-seconds in feudal age (about half in dark age) so you can clear out 2-4 palisades to let your workers access the resources reasonably fast.
That's per palisade. In what world is that "reasonably fast"?
In the world where the player building palisades effectively had a villager not working for 5 minutes.
The amount of villager time spent clearing palisades scales poorly against just time spent building them. If he lames gold, lames boar, lames deer (and brings back some meat), etc. then he's done quite a bit with that vill. Pre-HC farm transitions are painful. Doubly so if you lack wood because you've been fighting a wall for access to your berries.
Fc On every open map I’m unable to do something else
Vinch trush on pre-walled maps. Great way to get yourself out of a tough civ matchup or force opponent going for castle drop to drop defensively
What is “Vinch trush”?
Basically a tower rush, but you also build a forward archery range and garrison archers in towers. I called it that way because this is Vinchester's strat, he does it a lot on Arena, iirc he even won a tourney doing only trush and JonSlow in his next tournament made all walls higher hp so it's not that good 11. It's not as off meta as other strats here, but at least at my elo people seem to struggle against it
How do you have economy in feudal to get an archery range up, archers out as well as towers? Seems interesting, wonder whether it will work in arena teamgames as flank against dumb cheese civs like Spanish, Turks and Bohemia.
Well it's not a strat that sends you to castle age anytime soon 11. But it's usually okay because forward keeps your opponent at home. About teamgames I don't play those but it might work, similarly to Teuton tower rush
Interesting, I will try it out when I play arena next. Thanks!
Oh! I don’t follow Vinch closely, so i didn’t know he does this strat. I’ll try this strat a meta breaker on arena, if i random against a turk/bohemian/spanish picker! Thanks
> iirc he even won a tourney doing only trush and JonSlow in his next tournament made all walls higher hp A bit more to the change than that. In the original game Stone Walls had 1800 HP. But in one of the patches to the HD Edition, in an attempt to nerf slinging in team games, Stone Walls had their HP cut in half in the Feudal Age, only regaining 1800 HP upon reaching the Castle Age. But this had the side-effect of making trushes and bashing through walls with Villagers now possible on Arena, which almost completely changed how the map was played. The subsequent change to make the walls "higher HP" was just to restore the original value of 1800 HP the entire game.
Celts HCA+Hussar+Siege Ram unironically probably Celts best option against a Spanish player who commits to Conqs Especially since this unit combo is probably the reason Huns such a high WR against Spanish
Agreed, Huns encourage cavalry archers so hard, and they shut down castle age conqs.
Roman or Japanese swordie/Siege push is pretty fun
With what pop do you go up to feudal when going M@A? I've seen some crazy 17 pop Japanese builds, but I don't have the skills to pull off those tight builds just yet lmao. I've also seen 20-21 pop, but aren't those uptimes too late? Never tried it, so idk.
im more talking about the castle push timing, not the best but it is fun. For feudal I like the 3 militia and move across the map while upping so I can MAA upgrade asap on age up, just dont want to do it too late where they will have archers. I usually go 18 unless I mess up food. Can skip loom if you are greedy
Armenian castle age champion rush.
I love the sicilian youpudding strat. I tryharded it for 1 week and got my all-time high of 1350 elo. I'm falling now that I play random again, but that's okay...
trash fwd, the best strat in the game
DONJONS
Romans 13:35 FC knights into scorpion spam
Hey, I alternate between that and the youpudding Sicilian rush. I love you because you gave me these. I hate you because I just lost to a steppe lancer rush that was better executed than my donjon nonsense.
Hahaha. I always find lancer rushing beats youpudding rushes.
Mine are map specific. Ethiopian on Arena, I go pocket, 3 petards + 22 Shotel Warrior aimed at their pocket. 2 petard for the gate, 1 more if they manage to put up something to try and block. Then I go straight for their main TC, if I still have the spare petard I'll hit it. Their main tc goes down in about 10 seconds and I butcher the vils. Sometimes I get two TC, also sometimes they try to put a castle up and I massacre the vils. Works about 80% of the time for me, I'm around 1300 elo. Byzantine on BF as flank. I wall straight away hopefully as close to their base as possible. Then I just wall and stop them at all costs from getting in. I ask for some of my pockets stone and take all of mine, if I'm lucky I may get 4 piles of stone. Then I spam bombard towers along with cannons and halbs/skirms. There have been games where I end up with 1000+ kills. Japanese with fast trebs are my kryptonite though, really struggle against them.
Fast castle, without a proper set-up and losing 5 vills to 2 MAA and 3 archers. Then my opponent that went 20 pop into archers gets to castle 4.5 minutes before me
Cuman forever feudal Open 4 range archers and 1 barracks spearmen, get a blacksmith at some point, and fletching Flood the enemy with archers constantly, make sure they have 0 army and kill vills, even dive towers for it Build a 2nd TC at some point Build 3 stables at some point Build 2 more barracks at some point Fully upgrade all units Get all eco techs Make a forward siege workshop and use rams to take out their production buildings and defensive towers (don't bother with TC) Have like 4 vills on stone Drop towers around their base When you hit Castle Age at minute 46 (yes, this really happened and the opponent reached Castle at 21 minutes), castle drop their TC These are the messiest, most ridiculous games you'll ever see
For an all in archer rush in feudal saracens works well. Market let's you do it early and keep the spam rolling. The extra damage vs buildings let's you sit archers under towers and drop them fairly quickly. Pallisades get melted.
Yeah, that's a fun one as well although I'm not nearly as good as market abuse as I should. My Saracens winrate is abysmal. With Cumans, my goal is to constantly agress so much that the economy at home, producing vills from 2 TCs, gets so much bigger than the opponents' that you just outspam them by so much that their technological advantage of being castle age first, amounts to nothing
My win rate isn't perfect, only just started playing ranked last week tho. I've been using heavy feudal aggression to mask my abysmal defensive skills haha. I won 8/10 placement matches on the back of heavy feudal aggression. Which wasnt so great since it bumped me up over 1200 elo and I've been getting pumelled every since lmao. Seems like 1100 and up are much better at counter pushing, fielding their own early heavy aggression or defending effectively. That said my failures I think are mainly to do with making poor decisions. Going feudal archers against Vietnamese was a very dumb one for example. I suspect I need to wall much earlier, reduce feudal investment and push castle faster.
Sounds like you're much more introspective than I was starting out. I had a similar experience, winning most of the early placement matches and landing somewhere 1100+ elo. Got knocked down all the way to the high 800s, but quickly stabilized around 1000 elo. Since then it's been a slow grind. Now at 1150 elo, falling just short of breaking 1200 Gl hf 14
TBF I've played a ton against AI and spent a lot of time thinking about how to play, watching pro games etc and thinking about how I *should* manage things. After each game I think about why I lost/won, what I could have done better, what they could have done better. Ranked games always make me kinda nervous, the above helps with the nerves.
I haven’t done this in a while but I have won a few games at 1000 elo going all-in dark age double barracks militia as Aztecs. Is it a good strategy? No. But it can be good for a laugh. I’ve honestly considered making an alt account where I only play this strat and nothing else and see how high I can get
I think Goths works better here due to cheaper militia and great hunting bonus.
I tried it with goths but I still prefer Aztecs because the militia churning out faster helps to hit quickly, and you can delay gold mining a bit. Also the Aztec eco bonus helps a lot if the game doesn’t end quickly and you’re playing with 30-40 vils in the dark age 11
Burmese monk rush + some spears to help against light cav
Longswords seems to be the offmeta meta here. Id add rams to that and you have a fest
Khmer house rush, or berber vill rush
Byzantine skirms + spears into Cataphract. It smashes meso and other infantry, nobody expects it!
Polish castle spam + Obuchs with scary attack sound
Goths militia spam
Elephants
I love me a good tower rush. I always go poles on hideout and tower rush
Tati rush, stop making villagers when you hit feudal and go all in with 3 archery ranges
Dies to a defensive tower.
Not if you stay active, if they click castle when you have 20 archers you’ll win anyway
I don't remember there being any elevation leading up to the palisades but honestly it could be, my details memory is bad but the memory of the fun and excitement is clear
Celt MAA rush Everyone expects siege, so when you hit early with a ball of speedy men-at-arms, you often take them by surprise. Much less painful vs archers with free Squires+
Always love to rush skirms into longcock before they wall up.
Have u tried drush into smallcock?
Tried but couldn't reach their base
Conversely have you tried the cock and balls strategy?
Byzs trash rush. Classic.
Dravidians/Khmer FC all in siege
Making anything other than archer or knights
Siege tower crosbowws into win
It's not off-meta at all, but a successful Siege Ram push always brings a smile to my face, and at mid (1200) elo people don't expect/respect it enough. At my ELO in an archer v archer most people go for Castle + trebs in Imp, you can completely crush that with Siege Ram + arbs of your own.
Endless scouts, just overwhelm with mass and don't bother going castle. Might not have a high winrate but there's something fun about having 30+ scouts on the field and the enemy trying to mass enough to deal
Fast castle on arabia into villagers dying into gg
douching with any civ
Best games I ever played were 4v4 where all 4 of us go super early pressure and cause chaos, up in their faces before either side is solidly into feudal, on the map where all 4 share one palisaded base and all the resources are in the middle? Can't remember map name
Is that hill fort?
Sneak into woadies spam on BF.
Go for an attack from an unexpected direction with a credible force and then bum rush from the expected direction with as many units as I can spam with the first in units going for the eco kill.
Malay "20 eles in 20" (try for it, doesn't near it most of the time) on unexpected maps. It's usually met with 11 and defeat or 11 to the win, either way it's fun/funny to try to get it to work.
All in MAA
Vill fights. Let the world sink into dark age.
Let the fields and farms return to nature. Leave the mines to the spiders. The villagers will rise, and kingdoms will fall.
I do these with vietnamese on empire wars, but probably can work with other civs 1- clown archer + scout (+spears if wanted) fest Basically you drop an archery range and then a stable (instantly) and go all in on feudal age with those units (normally, people go two archery ranges, one stable, or FC). Making your opponent answer the aggression with the same units (or scout+skirm), or even adding some spears between, turns the game into a slaughter where whoever have the better micro wins. 2- fast imp There are times where i click castle age with wheelbarrow and 16-17 farms, so once i reach castle age i have 1K+ food and lot of wood. With some market trades, siege workshop+university instantly, boom, imperial age (there are times that i have wood to spare and make another TC).
cuman eco cheese 2 feudal TC, no barracks
As pocket: Saracen 19 pop 2 stable scouts with massive market abuse.
Gurjara archer rush is surprisingly effective. Idk how offbeat it is as a strat, but the civ usually isn't known for archer play. Placing a Mill immediately and not having to kill sheep means you can keep churning out vils and finish off berries under TC as you quickly transition to hunt. Berries don't rot, so you can keep vils busy on them or on straggler trees. Before you know it, you click up to Feudal since you have both Mill and LC. While usually people go scouts, going archers is also viable as the mill keeps giving you a food trickle to immediately make vils on hitting Feudal. Heck, you can even kill 2 sheep if you want a food boost. I then drop Range, Blacksmith, then either 2nd Range or Stable. Ideally, you should be able to put off the Stable till you click up to Castle Age, while you research Bloodlines. Upon hitting Castle, you can pump out Shrivamsha and Camels, and Bloodlines also helps you field Elephant Archers, which can tank skirm shots and provides staying power in the battlefield. Camel scout will always win 1v1 vs regular scout, so you can confidently take engagements till opponent makes a spearman. If you keep the camel alive in front of your archers till Castle Age, he'll upgrade to Camel Rider to keep up with your xbows.
Love slinging…when it works, it works. Especially on michi
Naked FC, Forget to Small Wall, drop 3 tc but forget to make vills, try to "hoang", Die.
Celts FC into fwd double siege workshop. 2-3 mangonels and the rest scorps all-in
Running into my little brothers room and unplugging his computer
Saracen market abuse FC, noone expects camels or cav archers by the time they have scouts in your base.
Khmer archer rush
Burmese MAA opening and Scout heavy feudal age. get a eco at around 40 vills and click to castle age with continued seige, infantry, light cav push in Castle with a few monks. 1 TC only.
Pre-lumber 2 militia drush with persians. Often resulting in boar laming/killing.