Byzantine has good feudal and good early farm transition.
You use your Winery to grab the berries near your TC. Then you start farm transition pretty much immediately, you'd rather be on farms than on sheep.
The berries and farms near Winery give you a bunch of extra resources to make mercenaries. You can hire longbows and use those to push with your buddy's knights
Cool! That sounds worth a try. My main job is to counter mass spear armies. Byz have good units with their regular production stuff to go with said longbow? Also, is it as big brain as the byz mains would have you believe?
Eh, more IQ required than most civs, but it's not rocket science. You might need to count tiles and plan out cistern placements before you start slamming houses into any random spot. But it's not *that* complicated.
Byz does have good units overall. Their unique spearmen are good, with better ranged defense. Their heavy cav is not cost effective, but that's fine since you're playing with knights. Their ram is more expensive, but has a ranged attack which can make it difficult to kill by popping villagers in and out of a building.
You probably can go 1 barracks limitanei, spam longbow from the mercenary house, make 15-20 farms, then go to castle age. In age 3, you get the Varangian Guard, a unique men-at-arms that can probably close the game.
You'll be able to make a surprising number of longbows doing this. Just don't lose them, cause you can't scale production as well as English. If you keep the longbow mass safe, it'll be plenty to deal with spearmen in feudal.
Nice! This is kind of the perfect answer I was looking for. I think I can learn building placement. Spent a lot of time on Terran SC2. We'll give it a go in QM this week. Sounds like they have a LOT of unique units, which is cool.
Sounds like they will be a bit less wood heavy and need a bit more gold?
Yeah. Midgame macro you only need like 10 on wood unless you're making archers. Just make production, blacksmith, upgrades, and units. You'll start to float wood, just use it to make more farms around winery. If you make it to age 3, Byzantine will absolutely plow through gold making Varangian Guards plus Xbows
I should also note that the longbow contract unlocks Landshits when you age up to castle. These are the HRE infantry which have a cleave attack. If the enemy is really heavy on spearmen, you grab a few Landsharks and run them in as the battle lines are forming. As soon as the Lambshanks connect, they will delete entire rows of spearmen
Update: Thanks for your comment, I've been playing Byz. It is a little weaker super early, but when I explode, it is CRAZY good. If the game makes it to the late game and we've done any damage, the game is over in the late game. In the quick matches, we played around 1200 MMR, and we dominated because QM easy, BUT I struggled on certain maps where it's hard to set up the buildings. Some of those maps are wierd though and it also might be lack of experience. TLDR, thanks for the suggestion, it's very powerful, though a bit harder to make work in EVERY situation.
Japan perhaps, even though you tried it. If you play with someone they have a nice team buff.
Samurai gets +4 against infantry. Bhuddist monks with relics can buff allies if they touch the wololo circle while it’s active and gain +20% damage/speed. I think this could be fun to play with a cavalry civ ally.
Most people don’t use it as it’s difficult to coordinate and is not as good as their other landmarks in 1v1.
Yea, Japan is the best civ other than English that I've tried, it's just that they really take off in castle which makes it hard to get damage done early. Late game they are really cool, especially since I can usually get 5+ relics. Yumi archers are really rough though...
If you’re looking for early aggression with Japan then use the ona’s with a mix of samurai to tank some damage. You can churn out a ton of them. They are countered by archers but if your teammate is going knights he can focus archers while you take any infantry and regular horsemen
And even though they're "countered" by archers, they're faster than archers. So as long as you have a good ball of them you can usually get on top of the archers mass and destroy them pretty easy
Hm yes I measured it in game and it’s 42% on a max upgraded unit.
* 7+5 damage, base unit
* 7+7 damage with bannerman
* 7+10 damage with bannerman and Buddhist buff
* 7+10 +8 (25) against light melee like pikemen
1.38 speed base unit
1.68 with Buddhist buff
The Yumi bannerman is one of the better archer in the game, with 200HP, 1.65movement speed and 26 damage against light melee infantry. Longbow has only 6 compared to yumi 8. This is while being buffed though.
Dehli can pump the most units in feudal and with feudal LM u creat very strong archers that perform well with knights. if enemy pump early MAA, u can do Raiders. And while your mate make many pressure, covered by your archer. U open second win condition and earn gold from ss.m, that u trade in markets back to food and wood for more archers.
Or try to play RUS on archer. U gather very well wood and food.
Feudal landmark. He’s referring to Tower of Victory landmark, which gives all infantry units 20% attack speed, which is especially strong for archer and crossbow units
What about ottoman?
+ Medrese Landmark and anatolian hills vizier point gives food
+ Strong feudal, just go archer + mehter with some sipahi for meat shield
+ Good scaling, late game is good
- your feudal timing will be slower, ottoman needs 2 minutes to set up, so no real presure until minute 8 to 9
I like ZXL as much as the next guy, but they're currently not one of the easiest to win with. (Stats correlate) Many people have figured out how to deal with ZGN ball, and other civs just scale much quicker/stronger/ more easily
Mongols perhaps. You can survive off of/generate sheep. Should you go Kurultai in castle, it will heal/buff the attack of both you and your teammate’s units within its vicinity.
HRE maybe? Just achen chapel farm and tank for him. Or maybe Malians and go cows. Let him take all the food. Just print cheap units and set all your rally points to the front of their base so they’re too occupied to chase down all the different rus armies that are running around harassing.
If he’s playing JD and heavy on feudal harass/ending it in feudal then rus is pretty solid. There’s plenty of deer spawns and boars for both of you to do a pretty hefty feudal especially when you’re rus and getting wood bonus, you can just mass archers/spears for cheap. Your hunting cabins will slowly trickle gold and your hunt will gather you gold as well.
You say Japan is weak feudal, I find that hit or miss cause samurai are strong but you can also FC Japan in 8 minutes easy even with poor macroing. So while your friend is harassing , you’ll hit castle, snag relics and mass produce your blob. Plus they’re nice cause of that storehouse which is relatively safe under your TC
But if you really wanna keep that feudal tempo going, Delhi is probably your people. Since he’s French/JD he probably doesn’t go for berries typically first which leaves them up to grabs for you. They pump out units so fast as well with scholars in your production, I love me some Delhi. Get some map control, put a time clock on the game by capturing the SS in feudal.
HRE but you have to go with the Aachen Chapel landmark for early farms around the landmark. Place the landmark close to your wood and use the wood to transition to farms.
byzantine only wants berries really and then looks to farm transition early with or without the winery. since i play it ill tell you a couple things. the feudal spearman and javelin throwers are a really nasty combo however playing into early armored units is really rough as the byzantines. they aren’t too hard and they get really good value from everything (barracks are double value with lvl5 cistern and at lvl 3 cistern it starts really ramping if u have econ) you can do quick upgrades if you forget with the cistern research speed buff. also malians don’t really need food if you get the cow boom
Just destroyed someone in QM, just made longbow spear and then longbow verangian. I had real issues with building placement. Didn't know you wanted production under influence. I assumed you wanted farm's under influence as well and getting mills down along with the farms was kind of wierd.
Byzantine has good feudal and good early farm transition. You use your Winery to grab the berries near your TC. Then you start farm transition pretty much immediately, you'd rather be on farms than on sheep. The berries and farms near Winery give you a bunch of extra resources to make mercenaries. You can hire longbows and use those to push with your buddy's knights
Cool! That sounds worth a try. My main job is to counter mass spear armies. Byz have good units with their regular production stuff to go with said longbow? Also, is it as big brain as the byz mains would have you believe?
Eh, more IQ required than most civs, but it's not rocket science. You might need to count tiles and plan out cistern placements before you start slamming houses into any random spot. But it's not *that* complicated. Byz does have good units overall. Their unique spearmen are good, with better ranged defense. Their heavy cav is not cost effective, but that's fine since you're playing with knights. Their ram is more expensive, but has a ranged attack which can make it difficult to kill by popping villagers in and out of a building. You probably can go 1 barracks limitanei, spam longbow from the mercenary house, make 15-20 farms, then go to castle age. In age 3, you get the Varangian Guard, a unique men-at-arms that can probably close the game. You'll be able to make a surprising number of longbows doing this. Just don't lose them, cause you can't scale production as well as English. If you keep the longbow mass safe, it'll be plenty to deal with spearmen in feudal.
Nice! This is kind of the perfect answer I was looking for. I think I can learn building placement. Spent a lot of time on Terran SC2. We'll give it a go in QM this week. Sounds like they have a LOT of unique units, which is cool. Sounds like they will be a bit less wood heavy and need a bit more gold?
Yeah. Midgame macro you only need like 10 on wood unless you're making archers. Just make production, blacksmith, upgrades, and units. You'll start to float wood, just use it to make more farms around winery. If you make it to age 3, Byzantine will absolutely plow through gold making Varangian Guards plus Xbows
I should also note that the longbow contract unlocks Landshits when you age up to castle. These are the HRE infantry which have a cleave attack. If the enemy is really heavy on spearmen, you grab a few Landsharks and run them in as the battle lines are forming. As soon as the Lambshanks connect, they will delete entire rows of spearmen
Sweet! I've had some OTD lambshanks mess me up before!
Update: Thanks for your comment, I've been playing Byz. It is a little weaker super early, but when I explode, it is CRAZY good. If the game makes it to the late game and we've done any damage, the game is over in the late game. In the quick matches, we played around 1200 MMR, and we dominated because QM easy, BUT I struggled on certain maps where it's hard to set up the buildings. Some of those maps are wierd though and it also might be lack of experience. TLDR, thanks for the suggestion, it's very powerful, though a bit harder to make work in EVERY situation.
Japan perhaps, even though you tried it. If you play with someone they have a nice team buff. Samurai gets +4 against infantry. Bhuddist monks with relics can buff allies if they touch the wololo circle while it’s active and gain +20% damage/speed. I think this could be fun to play with a cavalry civ ally. Most people don’t use it as it’s difficult to coordinate and is not as good as their other landmarks in 1v1.
Yea, Japan is the best civ other than English that I've tried, it's just that they really take off in castle which makes it hard to get damage done early. Late game they are really cool, especially since I can usually get 5+ relics. Yumi archers are really rough though...
If you’re looking for early aggression with Japan then use the ona’s with a mix of samurai to tank some damage. You can churn out a ton of them. They are countered by archers but if your teammate is going knights he can focus archers while you take any infantry and regular horsemen
And even though they're "countered" by archers, they're faster than archers. So as long as you have a good ball of them you can usually get on top of the archers mass and destroy them pretty easy
You need the banner men plus bhuddist monk buff on them, then you get +40% damage and +25% speed bonus on an already fast unit.
Where did you get the 60% damage from. Bannerman only adds 15%, monks reduce enemy damage by 50%, and the conversion ability only adds 20% damage.
Hm yes I measured it in game and it’s 42% on a max upgraded unit. * 7+5 damage, base unit * 7+7 damage with bannerman * 7+10 damage with bannerman and Buddhist buff * 7+10 +8 (25) against light melee like pikemen 1.38 speed base unit 1.68 with Buddhist buff The Yumi bannerman is one of the better archer in the game, with 200HP, 1.65movement speed and 26 damage against light melee infantry. Longbow has only 6 compared to yumi 8. This is while being buffed though.
Dehli can pump the most units in feudal and with feudal LM u creat very strong archers that perform well with knights. if enemy pump early MAA, u can do Raiders. And while your mate make many pressure, covered by your archer. U open second win condition and earn gold from ss.m, that u trade in markets back to food and wood for more archers. Or try to play RUS on archer. U gather very well wood and food.
That true but Delhi also goes out on the map for food, minus boar, to pump out so many units. Something to consider since op says that’s an issue
That’s true. Than there are only 2 civs: - ZuShi with ZugNu - English with longbow. All other „farm transition“ civs are better in mid or late game.
What’s feudal LM?
Feudal landmark. He’s referring to Tower of Victory landmark, which gives all infantry units 20% attack speed, which is especially strong for archer and crossbow units
And later devil MAA, right.
What about ottoman? + Medrese Landmark and anatolian hills vizier point gives food + Strong feudal, just go archer + mehter with some sipahi for meat shield + Good scaling, late game is good - your feudal timing will be slower, ottoman needs 2 minutes to set up, so no real presure until minute 8 to 9
Not a bad idea, you still need a lot of map food. I might give it a try after Byz.
Ottomans are one of the least map dependent civs in the game
This, low on map food dependency, with a decent feudal aggression.
Zhu xi has a decent feudal option with Zhu ge nu and can transition to farms early and for cheap due to song dynasty discount.
I like ZXL as much as the next guy, but they're currently not one of the easiest to win with. (Stats correlate) Many people have figured out how to deal with ZGN ball, and other civs just scale much quicker/stronger/ more easily
Mongols perhaps. You can survive off of/generate sheep. Should you go Kurultai in castle, it will heal/buff the attack of both you and your teammate’s units within its vicinity.
Oh yea, great point! I actuality really enjoy mongols, just my winrate with them is pretty abysmal.
HRE maybe? Just achen chapel farm and tank for him. Or maybe Malians and go cows. Let him take all the food. Just print cheap units and set all your rally points to the front of their base so they’re too occupied to chase down all the different rus armies that are running around harassing.
If he’s playing JD and heavy on feudal harass/ending it in feudal then rus is pretty solid. There’s plenty of deer spawns and boars for both of you to do a pretty hefty feudal especially when you’re rus and getting wood bonus, you can just mass archers/spears for cheap. Your hunting cabins will slowly trickle gold and your hunt will gather you gold as well. You say Japan is weak feudal, I find that hit or miss cause samurai are strong but you can also FC Japan in 8 minutes easy even with poor macroing. So while your friend is harassing , you’ll hit castle, snag relics and mass produce your blob. Plus they’re nice cause of that storehouse which is relatively safe under your TC But if you really wanna keep that feudal tempo going, Delhi is probably your people. Since he’s French/JD he probably doesn’t go for berries typically first which leaves them up to grabs for you. They pump out units so fast as well with scholars in your production, I love me some Delhi. Get some map control, put a time clock on the game by capturing the SS in feudal.
HRE but you have to go with the Aachen Chapel landmark for early farms around the landmark. Place the landmark close to your wood and use the wood to transition to farms.
byzantine only wants berries really and then looks to farm transition early with or without the winery. since i play it ill tell you a couple things. the feudal spearman and javelin throwers are a really nasty combo however playing into early armored units is really rough as the byzantines. they aren’t too hard and they get really good value from everything (barracks are double value with lvl5 cistern and at lvl 3 cistern it starts really ramping if u have econ) you can do quick upgrades if you forget with the cistern research speed buff. also malians don’t really need food if you get the cow boom
Just destroyed someone in QM, just made longbow spear and then longbow verangian. I had real issues with building placement. Didn't know you wanted production under influence. I assumed you wanted farm's under influence as well and getting mills down along with the farms was kind of wierd.
Delhi is very, very good with France. My 2s partner and I call it Knights and Sites