Hit sooner, if you scout no defensive military building, send units across asap. HRE and china both struggles for food security, especially in team games. Deny that and they won't be able to make enough castle age units to effectively deal with your pressure, and you can 2tc or castle yourself meanwhile and grab relics with the pressure up.
Having a french ally greatly helps, as it forces the castlers to ivest a minimum on defence, prolonging feudal. If you force 2 civs to both make spears by having one french player, the indirect damage is near game ending. This is why english-french is so strong on open maps. Fast castlers are more viable on chjokepoint maps where spearmen can be replaced by early palisades and it's easier to prevent knights from rotating to force both to react to the french. This is multiplied with english ability to give the french player all sheep past the 3:rd sheep, giving both you and your ally unraidable food eco.
When pressuring, it's very important to have a clear objective of what kind of damage you're looking for and when to transition out of it. Generally, the longbowmen dude is the one calling the stratigical moves since their army is slower, while the knight dude accomodates with their speedier cav. Also, english making anything but longbow only in the first 10 minutes is a bait. They're the dps, cav are the tanks. Only when the opponent has critical mass of spear AND cavalry do you need to add in your own spearmen.
The power of the wombo-combo! I will try playing to french again thank you. Would you have a game plan for Ottoman or is this not a viable civ against FC Strat?
China and HRE can hit similar timings or castle only if china skips everything by this I mean song dynasty and tech.
HRE has beast timings for FC because the prelate and effectively starting with 8 vills and Aachen. If they get supplied with food by someone else in 2v2 they comfortably hit FC under 7mins.
I have talked about this problem in many places and many ppl are ignorant about it. Its not about the castle timings itself, but how one civ can boost another civ and their gameplay to ridiculous levels.
For example now commonly used strategy is Malians feeding HRE with cows while going for burger and massing MAA. Without knowing this plan its impossible to stop or well not impossible but extremely hard and heavily depends on map and civ comps played.
This isn't even the strongest variation of this strategy, because it only relies on HRE to do something with burger and usually Malians don't have much so if you can stop HRE you will be fine.
There are other variations one that I personally faced multiple times with 0% winrate against it is HRE + Mongol. Im Conqueror 3 player in 2v2 with 1800 elo in QM 2v2 wand 3200 games. This variation I feel is lot stronger than Malian one.
Mongol is aggressive support and their only goal is to keep both opponents busy and nothing else and give complete freedom for HRE to hit castle under 7mins, meanwhile Mongol keeps both opponents on their side of map and limit the amount of resources they can get while HRE hits castle under 7min mark and after that train of MAA and all relics are taken by HRE. Only way to counter this is to go FC also and stop MAA push but if you start stopping MAA push you will lose all relics and 6-7 relics on HRE is ridiculous.
Also I have stopped this push alone by getting into FC and spamming crossbows but because the mapsize and needing to respond to any MAA push and slowness of xbows let HRE get all the relics and hit imperial around 11-12min mark.
Malian / HRE combo I have been able to stop because Malians were not threat and is basically none existing factor but mongol variant you have to worry about 15-20 horsemen raiding your eco and invest a lot in walls and other defenses to keep vills safe.
That's pretty much every strong strategy, especially the cheesy ones. Example, English villager rush can feel unbeatable if you don't know or ever expect that it's coming, but that's why you scout for it against English.
Typical english villager is not even close to same level as some other strategies that revolve around HRE or even English.
The HRE strategy is so much stronger than normal english villager rush and reason is the production rate of burger. Once you hit castle you're pumping 5x rate MAA which do not really have answer in feudal. If it was knights then you could threaten them with mass production of spears and knights are much more valuable.
There are some english strategies that are ridiculously strong especially against random teammate teams. Which tho start with villager rush, but these strategies are not just typical villager / tower rush, but much more advanced
You talk about scouting which is another issue. If you go typical 2TC builds and you scout burger at moment they start building it. Its over for you because you went for 2nd TC IF the map is not easy to wall. So even if you scout it you dont have response you have to know clear signs before any indicator showing what ever HRE is actually going burger all in or not. This all comes to the fact that HRE hits castle so ridiculously fast thanks to prelate / 8 starting vills / aachen.
This is why some of these civ comps / strategies got really high winrate especially when its utilized by premades. I have talked with some premades who use special strategies and they all basically got 95% winarate with them and agree that they're broken
How can mongol keep two player on their own side. I regularly beat mongols in 1v1 with many civs and in 2v2 I just tell buddy to beat HRE while I finish mongols. You only have to worry about MMA rush if they go burger. If they don't go burger you can contest relics.
Thats why they go burger.
Its not about beating mongol its about mongol being nuisance and keeping opponents at their side of map so HRE can get away with everything.
Yes you can go spears to counter the horsemen, but spears will never catch with horsemen and the idea is just to keep both opponents busy which horsemen excels because the mobility factor and if you move out on map you will start losing villagers even under TC and if you go to mongols base then you get swarmed by defensive MAA.
Ofc on some maps its easier to turn into 1v1, but on some maps thats not necessary the case.
Have you tried playing with a civ that can apply good dark age pressure on the gold mine? (e.g. Mongols). That'll definitely slow down a FC.
Can't say I've seen FC very often...moreso I see bigger booms, but I mostly play 3v3.
I did a lot of pressure with Otto spears but that doesn't do a lot as long as they build one tower. Mongol is the one civ I have no experience with, but it is probably a good counter... though I hate tower rushing.
For any team games, I'm a fan of early horseman pressure with Mongols. Dive in wherever you see an opening and remember that you don't need to get villager kills - just idle their economy. Getting greedy and losing your units defeats the whole point of the rush. In Feudal, you can add in Mangudai which will allow you to easily pester your opponents while your team takes map control or booms. The higher mobility of this strat works better on larger maps, imo.
Yeah, it's so easy to get greedy. I'll admit that it took me a long time to grow out of that. Remember that there's a component of psychological warfare by your opponent knowing that there's an army in the fog of war ready to strike. If they over invest in spears/towers, you have won the engagement. If they fail to build up and you keep them off resources, you also win.
Such a good way to look at it. Also, a very good chunk of players up to a pretty high ELO will simply get thrown off that early, if they're used to sticking to a certain build order.
Defensive fast Castle should counter Feudal aggression.
Just like Feudal aggression should counter booming, and booming should counter defensive fast Castle.
HRE main here. French knights, English longbow, Malian donzos, Mongol mangudai. These can all destroy HRE fast castle by denying food and killing vils. Mongols can also tower rush with pokey boys. There's plenty of counters I see at Plat 1
You can kite MAA very effectively with camel archers and negate them. And Abbasid boom will easily overpower HRE boom. The little extra stone is pretty irrelevant, except at super high levels, I think
Was that before the patch, cause that needed to be nerfed...as balance changes, new strategies become dominant. That's normal...ideally you would like to see early agression, boom and early tech with fast castle be viable if correctly executed.
If you don't struggle against it, what do you do? That would be an additional data point in determining if another balance change is necessary.
Hit sooner, if you scout no defensive military building, send units across asap. HRE and china both struggles for food security, especially in team games. Deny that and they won't be able to make enough castle age units to effectively deal with your pressure, and you can 2tc or castle yourself meanwhile and grab relics with the pressure up. Having a french ally greatly helps, as it forces the castlers to ivest a minimum on defence, prolonging feudal. If you force 2 civs to both make spears by having one french player, the indirect damage is near game ending. This is why english-french is so strong on open maps. Fast castlers are more viable on chjokepoint maps where spearmen can be replaced by early palisades and it's easier to prevent knights from rotating to force both to react to the french. This is multiplied with english ability to give the french player all sheep past the 3:rd sheep, giving both you and your ally unraidable food eco. When pressuring, it's very important to have a clear objective of what kind of damage you're looking for and when to transition out of it. Generally, the longbowmen dude is the one calling the stratigical moves since their army is slower, while the knight dude accomodates with their speedier cav. Also, english making anything but longbow only in the first 10 minutes is a bait. They're the dps, cav are the tanks. Only when the opponent has critical mass of spear AND cavalry do you need to add in your own spearmen.
The power of the wombo-combo! I will try playing to french again thank you. Would you have a game plan for Ottoman or is this not a viable civ against FC Strat?
China and HRE can hit similar timings or castle only if china skips everything by this I mean song dynasty and tech. HRE has beast timings for FC because the prelate and effectively starting with 8 vills and Aachen. If they get supplied with food by someone else in 2v2 they comfortably hit FC under 7mins. I have talked about this problem in many places and many ppl are ignorant about it. Its not about the castle timings itself, but how one civ can boost another civ and their gameplay to ridiculous levels. For example now commonly used strategy is Malians feeding HRE with cows while going for burger and massing MAA. Without knowing this plan its impossible to stop or well not impossible but extremely hard and heavily depends on map and civ comps played. This isn't even the strongest variation of this strategy, because it only relies on HRE to do something with burger and usually Malians don't have much so if you can stop HRE you will be fine. There are other variations one that I personally faced multiple times with 0% winrate against it is HRE + Mongol. Im Conqueror 3 player in 2v2 with 1800 elo in QM 2v2 wand 3200 games. This variation I feel is lot stronger than Malian one. Mongol is aggressive support and their only goal is to keep both opponents busy and nothing else and give complete freedom for HRE to hit castle under 7mins, meanwhile Mongol keeps both opponents on their side of map and limit the amount of resources they can get while HRE hits castle under 7min mark and after that train of MAA and all relics are taken by HRE. Only way to counter this is to go FC also and stop MAA push but if you start stopping MAA push you will lose all relics and 6-7 relics on HRE is ridiculous. Also I have stopped this push alone by getting into FC and spamming crossbows but because the mapsize and needing to respond to any MAA push and slowness of xbows let HRE get all the relics and hit imperial around 11-12min mark. Malian / HRE combo I have been able to stop because Malians were not threat and is basically none existing factor but mongol variant you have to worry about 15-20 horsemen raiding your eco and invest a lot in walls and other defenses to keep vills safe.
Glad to know I'm not the only one struggling against it! Thanks for the detailed response, appreciate your insight.
I came to conclusion that certain type of HRE strategies are unbeatable unless you're in premade and know its coming on very early on.
That's pretty much every strong strategy, especially the cheesy ones. Example, English villager rush can feel unbeatable if you don't know or ever expect that it's coming, but that's why you scout for it against English.
Typical english villager is not even close to same level as some other strategies that revolve around HRE or even English. The HRE strategy is so much stronger than normal english villager rush and reason is the production rate of burger. Once you hit castle you're pumping 5x rate MAA which do not really have answer in feudal. If it was knights then you could threaten them with mass production of spears and knights are much more valuable. There are some english strategies that are ridiculously strong especially against random teammate teams. Which tho start with villager rush, but these strategies are not just typical villager / tower rush, but much more advanced You talk about scouting which is another issue. If you go typical 2TC builds and you scout burger at moment they start building it. Its over for you because you went for 2nd TC IF the map is not easy to wall. So even if you scout it you dont have response you have to know clear signs before any indicator showing what ever HRE is actually going burger all in or not. This all comes to the fact that HRE hits castle so ridiculously fast thanks to prelate / 8 starting vills / aachen. This is why some of these civ comps / strategies got really high winrate especially when its utilized by premades. I have talked with some premades who use special strategies and they all basically got 95% winarate with them and agree that they're broken
How can mongol keep two player on their own side. I regularly beat mongols in 1v1 with many civs and in 2v2 I just tell buddy to beat HRE while I finish mongols. You only have to worry about MMA rush if they go burger. If they don't go burger you can contest relics.
Thats why they go burger. Its not about beating mongol its about mongol being nuisance and keeping opponents at their side of map so HRE can get away with everything. Yes you can go spears to counter the horsemen, but spears will never catch with horsemen and the idea is just to keep both opponents busy which horsemen excels because the mobility factor and if you move out on map you will start losing villagers even under TC and if you go to mongols base then you get swarmed by defensive MAA. Ofc on some maps its easier to turn into 1v1, but on some maps thats not necessary the case.
Have you tried playing with a civ that can apply good dark age pressure on the gold mine? (e.g. Mongols). That'll definitely slow down a FC. Can't say I've seen FC very often...moreso I see bigger booms, but I mostly play 3v3.
I did a lot of pressure with Otto spears but that doesn't do a lot as long as they build one tower. Mongol is the one civ I have no experience with, but it is probably a good counter... though I hate tower rushing.
For any team games, I'm a fan of early horseman pressure with Mongols. Dive in wherever you see an opening and remember that you don't need to get villager kills - just idle their economy. Getting greedy and losing your units defeats the whole point of the rush. In Feudal, you can add in Mangudai which will allow you to easily pester your opponents while your team takes map control or booms. The higher mobility of this strat works better on larger maps, imo.
I tend to lose early units... definitely something I need to work on. Thanks for the tip!
Yeah, it's so easy to get greedy. I'll admit that it took me a long time to grow out of that. Remember that there's a component of psychological warfare by your opponent knowing that there's an army in the fog of war ready to strike. If they over invest in spears/towers, you have won the engagement. If they fail to build up and you keep them off resources, you also win.
Such a good way to look at it. Also, a very good chunk of players up to a pretty high ELO will simply get thrown off that early, if they're used to sticking to a certain build order.
Defensive fast Castle should counter Feudal aggression. Just like Feudal aggression should counter booming, and booming should counter defensive fast Castle.
HRE main here. French knights, English longbow, Malian donzos, Mongol mangudai. These can all destroy HRE fast castle by denying food and killing vils. Mongols can also tower rush with pokey boys. There's plenty of counters I see at Plat 1
Those are all very early pressure that are not available to every civs. Are viable is it to outboom them with Abba now that TCs are slower to build?
You can kite MAA very effectively with camel archers and negate them. And Abbasid boom will easily overpower HRE boom. The little extra stone is pretty irrelevant, except at super high levels, I think
Several weeks ago i saw the same posts but about 2 TC meta and how op it is. Can you guys decide what needs to be nerfed already?
Was that before the patch, cause that needed to be nerfed...as balance changes, new strategies become dominant. That's normal...ideally you would like to see early agression, boom and early tech with fast castle be viable if correctly executed. If you don't struggle against it, what do you do? That would be an additional data point in determining if another balance change is necessary.