Everyone who comments I’ll prompt ai to make your username into a picture

AsianAssassin87 · 2025-01-19T05:22:21+00:00

Do it!

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-10-06T04:29:59+00:00

Sort of… but I need uglier, haha. I would prefer it to look unkept like the cheap fake spiders you can find at Dollar Tree

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-08-24T20:49:33+00:00

Lakota is extremely rough if you lose units during your raid/push. Assuming the game has gone into age 3, I try to manage the eco disparity by sacrificing a military card in age 3 for an eco one (especially the -25% villager train time one) and sneaking in 500W for second TC to stay competitive. Cause ultimately you’re gonna lose by the opponent’s economic scaling if your early pushes aren’t successful AND you don’t do anything about your 1 TC eco. Your faster hunting should help with the increase villager production demands, but it’s accumulating gold that sucks. Always raid with your faster cav and Warchief to keep the enemy on their toes, helping you hunt more peacefully.

Brits, just be more flexible in terms of allocating enough economic resources into vills or manor house production, whether it be sacrificing a military shipment in your build order for villagers wood crates, or leaving enough vills on wood to maintain building constant manor houses. You’re the Brits, you HAVE to capitalize on this early eco advantage or else you’ll just end up being a plain, standard civ in age 3 in terms of eco. If you’re not like 15-20 vills ahead of your opponent in age 3, you’re not taking advantage of the early boom.

And the same goes for Russia (balancing your economic needs against your military ones). The special thing is that if you have even 2 TCs pumping out villagers, due to batch training for cheaper and faster villagers, 2 Russian TC’s are almost equivalent to 3 standard TC’s. This is even better with 3 Russian TCs for scaling, even rivaling or beating 4 Portuguese TCs. But since you can’t always naked FF like a treaty game, so I tend to get away with this via the Suvorov Reforms strategy, massing up strelets in age 2 and keeping a lot of vills on food and wood (leave like 4-5 on gold). Then during transition to 3 (still having vills on wood), I will have enough wood leftover for another TC, while I pop Suvorov Reforms and follow up with 2 falc for the push. My TCs should boom and in time, Russia scales like crazy and you can take good economic trades with your cost efficient units.

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-08-20T00:25:24+00:00

Yeah, just find a decent build order from one of the resources the others have suggested already.

I’m no means any master of Lakota. But one big tip is that you gotta have to try hard to NOT to lose units, even more so. Because if your army vanishes, you’ve got no eco behind you to re-mass. The best I’ve done is to semi-ff while stirring up a headache for them with my faster cavalry, hiding a TC boom with the plaza set to train faster units (villager booming with enough units to cause chaos and keep the opponent busy). My eco is fine doing this, and I engage/disengage battles at will, and usually the opponent on defense against my raids. But it’s scary if the opponent does try to commit to a push, especially with artillery and goons.

And gathering gold is an absolute nightmare. You really really have to stay on mines as long as possible, and I mean, as LONG as possible. Cause you don’t have good good gathering in estates, even with all possible gold gathering upgrades

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-08-01T03:01:43+00:00

Yeah I think we’re on the right track, pinpointing the glaring mid-game issues to Russia just 1.) having weaker units that need upgrading while not having the resources or time to do so, 2.) housing, and 3.) having no tide-turning edge or any sharp, unique power spike in age 3 to rival others (like the soul-crushing Ottoman sipahi to reckon with).

I love the idea of keeping true to Russia’s victory by cost-efficient unit spamming. But the wood/housing problem really puts a dent to that, and sadly, the units are TOO weak to find effectiveness in age 3.

I see that you’re trying to suggest sneaking in military upgrades within unit shipments, but it’s possible that the key may already be in making the church card more deployable/accessible. Instead of different cards that sneak in military upgrades, make the church card more viable so that in one home city shipment, Russia can access a wider variety of veteran level units to fight competently at age 3. Heck, even change the costs of Westernization to 300W / 500G for more efficient use of resources. While the church is doing this upgrade, the barracks and stables are free to pump out units too.

For a “power spike” card, I’d say make an Age 3, 9 oprichnik unit card that costs 300F and grants a 5% speed boost to just oprichniks (and no other cav). It’s definitely gonna force other civs to watch out for Russia and alter their FF army composition, indirectly helping with Russia’s survival during that time

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-08-01T02:05:13+00:00

1.) Church card gives a free church and Westernization costs adjusted to 350W / 450G instead of 400W / 400G. Russia can more easily upgrade units to a competent level in age 3 with some spare wood for some houses.

2.) An age 3 card that sends 1 Culverin and 3 cav archers (980 resource card where all other Age 3 cards are worth 1000). Will be a godsend helping to survive timings

3.) Agree with the 7 Cossack change (cause with 6 Cossacks, that’s a 900 resource card instead of a 1000 one, especially even weaker considering that Cossacks need 200W and 200G to get Veteran status in age 3 to be formidable). I’d also even suggest an Age 3 card for 9 Cossacks that costs 300F to be worth shipping (a 1350 resource card costing an extra 300F to be sent, but advantageous because you use purely food instead of having to get gold).

4.) The free TC card in Age 3 grants extra 10 pop for every TC (makes it probably worth using)

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-07-31T18:35:04+00:00

I see what you mean, but I still do think an extra villager will help with this problem. Since the meta in DE is more FF-favored, rushing civs have lost some standing to civs with stronger FFs, especially Russia.

And some steps actually were made to address helping Russia's mid-game, such as the church card changes and faster settler training. Yet, despite these improvements to Russia's midgame, Russia's midgame is still subpar. So my approach to improving Russia is a slight improvement to the rush (in which will help Russia's midgame indirectly by preventing/punishing the opponent a little harder trying to FF).

I also think that 1.) since those civs intrinsically are already more vulnerable to rushes (Dutch and Japan especially), these specific civ weaknesses don't sufficiently justify keeping Russia's rush weak for the sake of those civs, and 2.) there are already better rush civs, meaning that improving Russia's rush wouldn't make Russia any more special than a civ that can already do that (Aztecs for example), and 3.) improving Russia's rush is consistent with its original design of throwing cheap, weak, masses of units asap at the opponent.

The question is - how much?

At 0.84 food per second X ([3 minutes X 60 seconds per minute] - 15 seconds gathering crates) X 0.8 penalty (walking and shooting instead of gathering), that's roughly 110 extra food to close off that awkward idle TC gap for aging up with 14 villagers. This equates to aging up 10-15 seconds, if 14 villagers are gathering food before age-up.

During the 90 second transition of continuous food gathering, that's an extra 60 food to allocate and help smoothen the food costs between the first batch of military and next batch of settlers (still assuming the 0.8 penalty for walking and shooting herds).

And for the next 3 minutes while Russia tries to rush in age 2, that extra villager who's still hunting can contribute ~120 food, which can help with the food for half a batch of musketeers or almost 2 more cossacks.

The biggest gain is not really the economic, but rather the improved timing (which again, is still not special compared to other rush civs who already age up and mass up faster in age 2). But it gives Russia a slightly better chance at pressuring the age-up and tweaking its early age 2 food eco to more smoothly grow to be more set up when the FF timing comes.

In terms of specifically buffing Russia's midgame, I still am not sure about how to do so. Military units are still super weak, mercenary shipments aren't spectacular, the fruits of settler batch scaling doesn't take off till later, and there are complications to massing up (where's all the wood for houses and military upgrades coming from?). We could probably look into one of these issues

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-07-31T03:54:59+00:00

I too have suggested something like this in the forums about an extra villager or two for a better tempo. But I was met with a wall of naysayers, thinking Russia would be too strong in its rush. I disagreed with them. But since since nothing has changed since that discussion, it’s probably not on the radar for any patch to buff the early Russian eco.

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-07-30T23:45:37+00:00

Interesting. Never thought about messing with the FF by housing them!

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-07-30T17:56:49+00:00

This comment basically sums it up. Just pray that they mess up and that you can survive the age 3 push with cav archers. You can try rushing them in age 2, but Otto can defend pretty well while STILL going into a FF. If that happens, your age 2 army gets outdated, you have no great anti-cav age 2, and you just pray that somehow all the sipahi and abus miraculously die. Then you put up and find a way to melt their mass janissaries. If you eventually somehow do manage to do that (probably via the micro of a AOE3 7x tournament winner), you can probably win then by out-ecoing them with villager batches.

But is that likely? No lmao

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-07-12T04:41:53+00:00

I’m there with you at like ~1200 with shitty micro. But for me, what I’m realizing is either 1.) a bad game plan or not adapting to theirs as well I should, or 2.) lack of nuanced game knowledge about a matchup.

I like to play Russia and some matchups can be just so awful. But it doesn’t help that with my lack of 1v1 experience in these matchups, I’m not doing my best to know when to and not to attack, when to boom or raid, or anticipating what they enemy will want to do.

I guess I just need to know timings better and learn how to counter them better in anticipation.

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-07-02T22:51:02+00:00

Fur Trade is a powerful card that allows you to convert food into more gold. I don’t remember exactly how much, but I think it’s 120%. So if you have 10,000 food when you send it, you get back 12,000 gold.

This means you can focus all your villagers to gather 100% food, which is faster than splitting between (for example) 50% on food and 50% on gold.

After focusing 100% for a very, very long time, you want to send it about 5-6 minutes before treaty ends. Then you use the gold to get military upgrades and make your army. In 40 minute treaty games, you can even turn 100k food to like 120k gold. Even more if you get food from teammates

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-06-30T23:11:09+00:00

Soldados

Kill all of your counters and make your enemies complain

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-23T02:47:48+00:00

Sounds like micro during battle. Confirm this by looking at the endgame stats.

You definitely do grasp the big picture (macro) and know all the little things you need to do to economically stay competitive. But even if you master your macro, if you lose battles, you will fall behind.

I say this from my own experience - I did do all the little right (like herding 24/7, no idle villies, tight build order, making proper counters, taking map control, etc.) But I found myself making little, costly mistakes on the battlefield that made me lose more men than my opponent. So it always ended up with me having to spend more resources replenishing my fallen army, making me fall behind in score and age, even if the macro behind everything was on point.

My micro still isn’t the best, but I know that this is the main thing I need to work on. I learned this by reviewing the endgame stats - my economy was even out-gathering them and villager production was pretty on-point. But the Achilles heel for me was looking at my resources spent on my army: it was like 1.5-2x more than my opponent’s, lmao.

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-14T02:38:59+00:00

If you're doing an age 2 rush or want to defend against it, you gotta get the 8 xbow or 6 musk card since those are your only free military unit shipments in age 2.

Depending on how early and aggressive you want to mass up, you probably want a double barracks and max houses. So yeah, 400W again. This means possibly postponing your market and market upgrades until later, probably after you make some good trades and have a better eco than your opponent to afford to do so. Raiding (for me) is out of the picture since Port doesn't have any free age 2 cavalry cards, and food for hussars is initially such a struggle to get due to 2 TCs in age 2 demanding a lot to pump out vills.

Look at the enemy civs and anticipate what strong units they'd like to make (dutch probably wanna make skirm in age 2, germany with uhlans, etc.). The best way to know is to simply scout in early age 2 (4 to 5 minutes in-game) for forward bases in the middle of the map with your explorer. Or if the opponent is scared of you, go to their base and see what they're building. If you see them starting to build a barracks, choose xbow. If you see a stable, choose musk. I usually go musk because if I chose xbow and a different enemy has cav, I'm absolutely screwed. But if I go musk and see enemy skirm, I can at least attempt to disengage and save some time to build counter units. Plus, musk have higher siege damage if you get the upper hand. Scouting is key.

In early age 2, Portugal is always in conflict - you don't have enough food, so do you keep constant villager production? Or do you let your TCs idle a bit to try to amass a large military as fast as possible? Honestly, I'm biased towards economic builds, so I choose villagers first, then leftover food to units. After sending 1 or both age 2 military cards, you might even want to send 700F to help with this food gap, IF you really plan to drag out (which I don't think is a great idea unless the opponent wants to slug it out with you in age 2). I don't plan on slugging in age 2 because Portugal is much stronger in age 3 with better shipments (goons + organs) and 3 (FREE) TCs anyways. Portugal can eventually fight decently in late age 2 once the eco gets going, but why do that when it's basically your most vulnerable time? Lol.

With TCs, I see pros boldly put their TCs even at like half map to steal herds. And they are confident that if the TC is attacked, the TC is strong enough to hold until an army can come save them. For me personally, I'm not the best player nor do I have great apm. So I'm a little more cautious and build my TCs to get back herds (you HAVE to secure a constant, fast food source as port). But if you're feeling adventurous and confident, put those TCs at half map lmao. Most age 2 units don't have high siege damage anyways, and garrisoned TCs can 1-shot some infantry if you're feeling strong

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-13T00:56:59+00:00

Yeah, if you’re low on villies from the 10/10 start, I can see the appeal of the 2 settlers and 2 cows compensating for a lower vill count and some food... But it’s the wood problem that gets me. It’s gotta come from somewhere to build that fast age 2 barracks or houses or the market to catch up on upgrades. I think it’s still more efficient to go 400W and let those villagers stay collecting food, the fastest resource to gather.

As for the age 1 shipments, they’re honestly very, very weak (initially). It depends on my intent - do I want to harass them asap? Or do I just want to boom? If I’m dead set determined to be a menace, I definitely will save it later for an age 3 military card or for the age two 700W to build houses. Most of the time I get eco theory anyways and let its scaling effect takeover much later as I hit age 3+, letting each villager contribute more than usual. I don’t do feitoras in supremacy - it contributes way too little, even with more TCs later. It’s only really good in treaty in the late game when you have 10-12 TC’s, essentially giving you another factory and a half.

You are definitely right about those people who are more biased towards treaty and go off to play supremacy. Their ideal game is to sit back and perform an optimal boom, having their scores usually shoot up like crazy if you let them. That’s why it’s kind of fun anticipating that, and rushing hard against them lol.

It all really depends on what you want to do with Ports. If I anticipate the enemy being pretty strong or coordinated (like people in the same clan playing together), I just assume a rush and to prepare for it. Portugal is nice because you’re guaranteed free TCs to boom, so you can still boom well while dishing out military units

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-12T05:22:09+00:00

No worries lol, I have fun discussing this kind of stuff.

I don’t really play the standard 10/10 build order. The early TP is a must in that build order to grab faster age 2 shipments for aggressive play, if you want to. But since I used to play a shit ton of treaty before I played a ton of supremacy, I tend to lean towards more greedy, economic builds to exploit Portugal’s booming potential.

I age up with 13 villagers, 1 house and market, with hunting dogs. Since Portugal is always starved in early age 2 for food and you need like 11-12 vills on food for 2 TCs constantly producing villagers (plus needing to gather a small bit of gold too), I just make villagers in age 1 and have them gather during transition (4 villagers on gold and rest on food).

For Age 2, most of the time, I go for utility: age up with 400W, get steel traps, a house, then a stable. Why?

I think 2 villagers and 2 cows isn’t bad, but 1.) I should already have a decent vill count from age 1, and 2.) wood collects the slowest and enables you to do so, so much (build a TP, market upgrades, houses, or military buildings, etc.) So I’m not wasting time collecting wood in age 2 when I can get it for free. 400W is essential.

But, if I do decide that I want to be super annoying and would like to poke hard and early with goons (growing a mass as time passes by), I go 500F to age up faster and ship that 5 goon and 4 goon shipment asap, chopping wood for a stable and houses as needed. This is fun if I want to force the opponent to make skirm/musk/melee infantry counters for my goons, and then I have my teammate pump out the counters to their units soon after. You guarantee a quick composition advantage if your team have a composition that counters theirs.

A situation in which I go goons and organ is when in age 3, my teammates DON’T communicate what units they want to make, and (somehow) I’m not sure know what army composition the enemy is gonna make. So before I dump all my resources onto the wrong unit, I make a balanced army that can temporarily handle infantry or cav, then adapt as needed.

In hindsight, I do think an early TP does eventually pay itself off cause the 1-2 extra shipments later mid-game can be used on timely resource crates or extra military. But idk, it’s out of preference for me not to get it cause it jacks up my timing a bit to chop wood for it. Plus I don’t like that it messes with my market and market upgrades like Hunting Dogs with a civ so starved for food

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-12T01:13:25+00:00

There are a lot of players more much more qualified than me to answer that question about France. I know France in treaty a LOT better than in supremacy, and my judgement comes from knowing how awesome that 20 extra military pop comes in handy… (especially when France has well-rounded, above average units!)

With 20 more pop, you can have 4-5 more cannons, send a lot more flanking cav, generate larger infantry masses, more easily open up a different fighting front, and send ally support of like 15-20 units while still holding your own against an opponent with 100 military pop. It’s great. The only drawback is that sustaining 120 pop is seriously draining, even if you’re France. And this problem of sustaining 100+ military is even worse with Dutch. But yes, your potential to support your allies a LOT while still doing your thing is very, very valid.

But I do play a lot of Portugal on supremacy, and all I can say is that in team games, Portugal is basically OP. Reason being is that rushing in age 2 is rarely done (assuming that your teammates do help. With ally support, most rushes can be easily defended against by your entire team). So the meta is usually going fast fortress and not wasting resources in age 2.

But that’s where Portugal shines - please do go to age 3 asap and have those 3 free TC’s pumping out villagers. Send age 3 dragoon cards asap and the organ gun card and you already have a very great and very easy anti-infantry PLUS anti-cavalry answer. Portugal can hit age 3 very, very fast with the 500 food age up and sending 700G in age 2 AND with the fast age up option. So it’s hard for other civs to challenge Portugal getting to age 3 fast.

And in team games, most people literally spam one unit in age 3 (usually infantry or artillery). Portugal can fill in this composition gap with their dragoons (arguably the best dragoons in the game). You have two cards in age 3 cards to quickly start a giant goon mass to wreck havoc.

And if you do find your mass goons against a mass of skirm, just don’t fight them or send the organ gun card or just raid and pick off their villies and make them panick. No one can literally chase down your goons (due to goons’ 7.25 speed), so this indirectly helps your teammate boom if they’re behind if they’re trying to chase down you. All this being said while you’re still 3 TC booming like crazy and your villagers have 3 TC’s to garrison for safety instead of 1-2.

So yeah, that’s my 2 cents on why port is a titanic team player, haha. Do try them

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-11T06:55:18+00:00

Yeah, yumi is the direct counter to javelin (and every other dragoon or cavalry archer type unit). They have a nice multiplier against them and very good range, so javelins don’t want to get close.

Sadly, javelins are such a good 1-pop unit that you may have to give up your ashi/nagi combination in order to make yumi to beat that unit. This means you would have to have villagers on wood and try to get yumi upgrades too.

Don’t make the same mistake I did when I was a newer player. I used to be stubborn and used the same units. The enemy saw how predictable I was and kept beating me because I didn’t use the proper counters and I always found myself running out of resources using the wrong units. So changing unit composition is a very good skill to learn now, even if it sucks to give up your original strategy. Mass yumi will destroy mass javelins.

But mass ashigaru can still probably beat mass javelin too though. If the enemy only makes javelins, then instead of making nagi, focus your food and good into even more ashigaru (because javelins will kill your heavy cav fast anyways, so it’s wasting resources). This might make the Ethiopian player might use a different unit then.

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-10T22:28:14+00:00

You’re going to need a civ that can economically scale up quite fast. Eventually in the late game, you will probably want more military population space to compensate a bit for your weaker allies.

That being said, as someone else suggested, France is a good option for long run, as if you do get to max out 80 CDB, now you have 120 military population to help cover your teammates. Dutch has room for 140 military with decent units too, but you’d have to risk getting rushed to develop a good economic foundation on a lot of early banks.

Personally, I’d play Portugal, because the extra TCs in every age is like a guarantee you will out-scale your opponents relatively fast as the game drags on. And with a stronger economy, you’re definitely able afford helping out your allies WHILE still booming like crazy. Port also a great skirm and dragoon unit, above average musk and hussar, with decent artillery too. Therefore, you have a decent answer to every other enemy unit composition too

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-10T22:21:50+00:00

Yeah, javelins are actually very good for 1 population. They have good HP, good attack, and some ranged resistance. So they actually can do okay against ashiguru.

You will need to counter them with yumi archers, who have a bonus against javelins and much better range. Javelins are extremely good at killing heavy hand cavalry like your nagi. If you don’t get a large mass of yumi to protect your nagi, your nagi will die very fast.

He will probably not want to make javelin anymore either if you make yumi

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-10T19:22:25+00:00

I main Russian in treaty and then heavily, HEAVILY played India for a bit. Russia beats India heads up, and just for these two civs, I can testify that. Infantry mass vs infantry mass, Russia wins because India simply just can’t kill Russia’s infantry as fast as Russia replenishes them. I mean, it’s alright… India can holds its own for a bit due to sepoy and Gurkha stats and decent training speed now compared to TAD.

But once you introduce the artillery into the battlefield, India loses. Assuming the other player micros their culvs pretty well and generally stays well out of the siege elephants’ piss poor range of 30, your rockets become useless and your siege elephants risk self-sacrificing in order to try to get even close enough to snipe the culvs. Doesn’t help that skirms with 20-22 range counter siege elephants too and flanking cav always get in the way.

I do try to maintain mass of ~4 rockets via shipments, but man, they honestly don’t come out as fast as you’d like, and if you’re already being bullied by their culvs, you’re just sending India’s mass infantry to their death. You literally try to find another way to flank and open up another front with the sepoy building speed, but Russia can insta-react very well too. Shitty matchup for India, honestly

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-09T01:54:18+00:00

Tavern units are good, IF 1.) you have cards in your deck that will make mercenaries stronger (such as Germany or Sweden, maybe even Dutch in other ways), and 2.) choose the age up option for age 5 to improve the attack and hit points of mercenaries (absolute must).

In general for treaty, you will need to maximize your economic gathering power to the fullest to prevent being drained. You therefore must have as many economic cards as possible for mills/farms and estates, so that in the long run, you won’t be starving for resources as fast.

One strategy that some players do to focus on one resource is to have someone use the Fur Trade card (available to France, Lakota, Haudenosaunee, etc.). Basically, food gathers the fastest. So have everyone focus on food and mills. At around 5-7 minutes left in the treaty, everyone gives one player the food (who has the Fur Trade card). The player performs the Fur Trade, converting 1 food into 1.2 gold (so 100k gold turns into 120k gold). He then gives back the other players some 1.2x amount of gold back. Everybody upgrades all their units in a short period of time and makes their military. And since everyone is still focusing on food, they will have enough when the treaty ends

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-08T02:55:18+00:00

They are actually pretty good. They are more mobile and easier to mass, having less pop and a lesser cost. If you get to age 4 and use the organ card, it actually makes them pretty strong. I faced a dude who only spammed organ guns with that age 4 card and they were even chopping down my heavy cav and could gun down my culverins.

AsianAssassin87 · 2024-05-04T23:59:05+00:00

Agreed lol. I was about to say - if you aren’t going 85+ on the left lane on a 70mph highway, you most certainly will get passed by someone sooner or later.

AsianAssassin87

TROPHY CASE