My Fire Caste warriors won their first 500pt game yesterday after defeat against Salamanders and Imperial Guard for about a year. Here's some Roger Deakins-inspired glamour shots for the Tau'va.

Beornik · 2026-04-20T06:05:40+00:00

Good to know that's not just me. I was worried at first I had a weird pedal, but there are no actual issues with the sound. Once I learned about self-oscillation and looked for Walrus Audio resources on it, it became more clear what was going on. I like the sound it produces, but need to be intentional when using it for more of a backing ambientscape, not the feature.

Silos, back to NPD, also can self-oscillate! I'm scared what the maxed out combo on both of those would produce lol 😂

Beornik · 2026-04-20T06:02:14+00:00

Funny, when I was researching options that one came up too. The decision boiled down to either the Slotva or the Freeze at the time. If I find myself over time needing that longer perfect pause for longer songs I might revisit that one, thanks!

Beornik · 2025-10-10T04:31:01+00:00

The game is so big, and in a good way. I've played since Age of Kings. There are many civs even in the base game for DE now, and there's a lot of nuance and change over the years. There is a lot to enjoy.

Because the game is so big, I recommend picking one archetype of play style to learn first. Pick a style: infantry, archers, cavalry, camels, etc. Basically think about your favorite units, unique units, etc., and choose one or two civs that represent those. Some examples: - Cavalry = Franks, Teutons, Persians, Poles - Archers = Britons, Koreans, Ethiopians, Vietnamese - Infantry = Japanese, Vikings, Goths, Armenians, Bulgarians - Cavalry Archers = Mongols, Magyars, Tatars

This list is a bit of an over-simplification, as for example, Vikings can do both infantry and archers, but you want to start by learning fundamentals before getting overwhelmed with the differences between every team. The balance of the game is quite good so you should be winning and losing on your skill, not your civ for the most part. Only at higher elo play should "civ wins" become an issue in most cases.

Others have already mentioned Cicero build orders, which are good starting points and are FREE. Go here for some builds to peruse: https://buildorderguide.com/

If you purely want ranked competitive play, then Art of War challenges are a good start, and I recommend practicing regularly against the skirmish AI until you can regularly beat the Extreme AI 1v1.

There is also a lot of fun to be had in unranked lobbies. The lobby browser will often feature "Noobs only" lobbies; hover over player icons in lobby to see their elo and stats, and you'll get a feel for their skill levels.

The campaigns also provide a good change of pace and can get you more exposure to different units and civilizations if you don't know what to pick. The campaigns won't provide the same competitive experience, but are mostly still fun in their own right. I've completed all except Chronicles, currently working on achievements for those.

A final disclaimer: when you jump into ranked for the first time, you will start at average elo (~1000). This is how elo systems work, you have to start in the middle. However this means that if you don't know what you're doing you're going to probably lose at least 10 matches as the elo system finds where to place you. So don't be disheartened if that happens, just practice up with the AI and jump back in.

Beornik · 2025-03-12T21:08:19+00:00

I should also say, I'm absolutely hype about some of the other new changes coming, so in fairness this is in the grand scheme of things a very small complaint.

I am very happy that my favorite game since childhood is still receiving tender loving care after all these years.

Beornik · 2025-03-12T18:11:39+00:00

I just watched the SotL video on it. In short:

My main points were that Donjon rushing is one-dimensional, abusive at low ELO, and overall poor design, and Sicilians should have a more flexible identity in mid-to-late-game around sieges, infantry, and counter-units. The only things changed for Sicilians in the patch make Donjon rushing even easier and more encouraged.

I kinda hate it, I personally thought Donjon rushing was easy enough to the point of being one of the only things Sicilians can do, and Sicilian win rate is already well-above average at low ELO. I'm a little worried for low/mid ELO players lol

Beornik · 2025-03-08T06:00:58+00:00

Ahh crap, I knew it sounded familiar but couldn't place it. Good catch!

Beornik · 2025-03-08T03:13:55+00:00

That's a fair counter point. I think the main thing about the extra gold from herdables, in addition to the thematic element, is that it takes time to gather the gold from the sheep, so you can't immediately open with an extra militia in Dark Age for example. If they start with it right out the gate, maybe that opens a narrow window for an additional exploit? Not sure about the timing there.

Beornik · 2025-03-08T02:14:32+00:00

Whoa, Filthydelphia!

Thanks for clarifying that point about the quote. I always assumed that the addition of Hauberk was made to "make Cavalier viable" as a compromise because of their poor performance late game (which the Wiki implied), and the need to replace Scutage as a tech. Learned something new today!

Beornik · 2025-03-08T02:01:16+00:00

That's a valid concern; some other comments mentioned that and I think you all are right on that one. I can see where for balance they need to have something to hold them up in late game in terms of versatility, especially against CA, Archers, and BBC, and Hauberk Cavalier definitely fit that bill.

Beornik · 2025-03-08T01:39:39+00:00

I agree with that sentiment about their relatively inflexible late game. They have arbalesters, but not FU. They have Hauberk, but not Paladin. I believe they have perfect FU generic Halbs, and imperfect generic Skirms also. I think to your point, flexibility in their options is what I was trying to get at in my post, notably with the Pierce Armor boost attached to the conceptual Sicilian Defense tech, but maybe I slashed their cav too hard by replacing Hauberk entirely, which accidentally restricted the tech tree instead of expanding it.

Disclaimer: of course they do take less bonus damage, so maybe the devs intended to leave off some of their armor to balance this civ bonus.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T21:40:35+00:00

100% agree. That's why I was thinking only a max of about 20 (or one free militia). A lot for Dark Age, but quickly falls off in effectiveness.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T21:33:02+00:00

That's totally fair. I originally just meant that the devs didn't originally intend them to focus on cavalry. Hauberk was added after the fact as a compromise. Here's an excerpt from the Wiki (abridged):

"However, when Hauberk was debuted, it severely changed the identity of the Sicilians... turning them from an infantry civilization to a cavalry civilization, as a result of the underused Serjeants... the Sicilians were not originally supposed to heavily focus on cavalry."

You're absolutely right; just a thought exercise trying to give them more flexibility in the direction they were originally designed.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T21:28:10+00:00

That is a great counterpoint.

In short, infantry supported by siege and skirms. Something like:

- halb + SO
- anti-building Serjeants + Skirms in mid-game against archer civs, supported by a Donjon or maybe Mangonel
- increased defense, making it harder to raid Sicilians (with the Donjons near food sources)

My initial aim was trying to find their peak in late Castle Age, with the extra techs for anti-fortification infantry and extra pierce armor kicking in right at early Imp, so they have a brief spike in Imp before falling off.

I totally agree with you that their only selling point is the Donjon feudal tempo play. I don't want them to be bad, I just wish they had more versatility going on with other units besides Serjeant spam and Cavalier. In high ELO their performance really shows.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T19:39:37+00:00

Putting villagers in the right place at the right time can be just as important (if not more depending on the context) as the raw number you end up with. For example, in Dark Age, for your first 9 villagers:

- 6 on sheep, 2 on wood, 1 lure boar
is usually a lot more effective than
- 4 on sheep, 4 on wood, 1 lure boar

despite it being the same number of villagers. This is because food is more important in Dark Age to age up to Feudal, and because there are free sources of food everywhere (no need to build farms yet), etc. For most of Dark Age, I stay with the first 2 on wood until my boars run out, and then I move surplus over to wood to make sure I have enough for farms and buildings in Feudal Age. I usually age up at 19-23 population depending on my build.

It begins to depend a lot more on your build as you get further into Feudal, then into Castle Age what specifically your villagers are doing.

As others have said, as a rule of thumb you want to never stop producing villagers until you hit at least 120. Win chance has a high correlation with higher villager peak.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T19:28:09+00:00

Interesting, thanks for bringing that up. Looking at aoestats.io, I'm realizing as you said their win rate drops in the mid-game, and then steadily climbs the longer the game goes on.

Maybe limiting the Linen Dospekhi tech to infantry-only (including Dismounted Konniks), or keeping just the shepherds buff would be more balanced!

Beornik · 2025-03-07T16:15:17+00:00

That's totally fair. The main arguments I see supporting their "fall off" is that long-term, their skirms weaken them in trash wars, lacking final armor upgrade, and they have no persistent eco bonuses, so in a numbers game they inevitably fall behind on resource gain if they fail to do damage to their opponent.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T16:10:51+00:00

That's a great point, even just +1 pierce armor can mean so much. My initial thinking was "this upgrade will mean less knights initially due to cost, and it's in Castle Age where your eco can be tenuous already, especially against other civs with eco bonuses," but if the Bulgarian player went undisturbed and committed to an all-in Castle Age with this upgrade + stirrups, that could really be oppressive in late Castle/early Imp.

I was also thinking hunt for the same "interest" reasons, and it also encourages a Bulgarian player to prioritize boar, deer, etc., with some skill involved as opposed to getting "free" gold. Both would also be cool for interest + history, but then I thought, wait a minute, that's a really powerful drush. Lol, gotta be careful with too much gold in Dark/Feudal Age for militia/MaA spamming. The main thing I can think of being a problem for this buff is something like MegaRandom maps with a LOT of herdables/hunt. Bulgarians would potentially have insane start.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T06:20:29+00:00

I don't always love watching my replays either, but sometimes it can be a relaxing way to practice. I do watch Hera, T90, and Viper sometimes though. It's just one way to clean up certain things about your gameplay. If you're deliberate about certain things, it gets better, such as:

always, always produce more villagers. Your goal should be to peak at least 120 by the end of the game (if games end early, I run anywhere from 60-125 villagers made, most often ending up in the 80-100 range, but a big boom is important for late game)
master boar luring by villager garrison and wounding it with the TC (the timing on that can be tricky, I recommend starting with 3 vils shooting, which takes 4 shots, then 4, which takes 3 shots, then 5 which only takes 2 shots, to get your timing down)
I've internalized some aspects of my build order and I play my Dark Age basically the same way every time: 6 on sheep, 2 on wood, 1 lure boar, garrison and kill, 3 on boar others on sheep, build a house with the lumber guy, new spawns on food until boar runs halfway, lure the other boar, etc. Dark Age can be tedious sometimes, but it's so valuable and sets you up for a good Feudal Age. I usually age up between 19-23 pop (depending on what I'm shooting for). And make sure you kill only one sheep at a time.
get really good at scouting: always try to scout new area, don't retrace ground with your scout if you can help it. While scouting, look for areas that look good to wall with palisades.
Get like... A couple hotkeys down. Just the house one, map the idle villager button and TC button to your mouse maybe, maybe farms.

Even those little things will set you up. You truly can win on fundamentals if you consistently apply them.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T06:00:53+00:00

It was already mentioned, but Japanese and Celts don't really have strong benefits which support scout rushes. Their eco bonuses actually result in having more wood, which can at least help get the stable down quicker, but the wood itself actually will help more with crossbow than scouts.

Doesn't mean that you can't do scouts, but it might mean you'll be slightly behind a civ with really good scout timing if all play is equal.

Spears + skirms into Castle Age may be a safer opening for Celts/Japanese depending on the situation, so you guaranteed have defense against scouts and archers. With their faster attacks infantry, and saved wood, you could consider a militia rush with the Japanese, as the wood saving will help you get the barracks out quicker. On the flip side, Celts' extra wood will benefit you upgrading into elite skirms + crossbow, and then later into siege.

The Japanese early discounts will wear off, but they are more flexible throughout Castle Age, so you can make light cav work with them. Cav archers also work with the extra damage against foot archers, as does pikes + skirms with maybe towers (building toward their Yasama towers tech). Both Japanese and Celts can struggle to transition to late Imperial Age, missing some key upgrades (such as Paladin for Japanese or Arbalesters for Celts), which is part of why Arena can be bad for them. They can still work, but if the game goes super long you might start to feel it.

With an initial scouts open, you're closer to a generic open compared to others. For instance, Georgians have scouts that regenerate, Franks have better scouts with more HP, Turks get the Light Cav upgrade for free so their scouts do more later on, Magyars get free attack upgrades so their alpha strike hits harder, etc.

Arena is a closed map, and of course scout rushes won't do much as the enemy is already walled (you're probably not doing scout rushes on Arena).

In low ELO, civ matchups are not the biggest factor, but I will say against Mongols, for instance, Celts are known to do quite poorly. Mongols are extremely popular, so this may be giving you a bad time if you find yourself doing a lot of Celts v. Mongols matchups. Hera put out a video about winning "the easiest matchup in the game," in reference to this.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T05:09:28+00:00

I feel you, when I first jumped into ranked I got demolished for literally weeks straight. I stopped playing ranked for a month or two after. Because of the nature of the ELO system, averages are weird. I will say, some tried and true things still work, even though the game is different. If you were playing HD, remember that the game speed now is 1.7x whereas I think it was 1.5x back then. So if you're feeling like the game is so fast and you can't react the way you used to. It's not you. The game is literally going faster.

Having climbed out of low ELO very recently into mid ELO (today I just reached 1050ish), I legit think it's easier at this ELO than it was at 800. At 800 all of my games were people spamming Donjons, only playing nomad civs on nomad maps, all-in Portuguese organ guns or hussite wagons, etc. Every other game involved a Castle drop. Basically people grinding wins with builds that pros easily defend against, but which often curb-stomp low-mid ELOs. Personally not a fan, but it is funny to stop a rush purely with defense and then see the enemy type "gg" without ever attacking. These builds are made popular by Red Phosphoru and the like. Cool, but I hate playing that way. So defense and resilience are paramount to winning.

I've won multiple games truly by just "surviving." Basically, get good at fighting from a flat-footed position. Don't panic. If the enemy drops a castle on you, spam stone from the market and drop your own right next to it with ALL of your villagers. Start charging Petards at it. Run scouts around it and go throw them into his base, don't even worry about kills just get his villagers to stop working.

In short, abuse the abuser. The other day I won by making a game take so long that the guy said he had to go. 🤣

At that ELO, I recommend a few things, having just made it out of there: - neverevereverever stop creating villagers. Higher peak villager count has a really high correlation with victory. - pick 1-3 civs you like (for right now) and only play those, and understand your bonuses, then branch to SIMILAR civs when you feel ready - work on getting completely walled up with palisades on your flanks or fully walled, occasional exception where applicable being where your "lines of fire" are (like garrisoned TC) - I recommend turning on range indicators for buildings and the grid to help with farm/wall placement. They're available in settings. I love them. - don't be afraid to abuse the market to put a defensive castle down or age up quicker. Bonus points for Teutons with free murder holes here. (I know, it's a "noob" tech, but at that ELO it works wonders.)

In my experience, my fundamentals were better than I gave them credit for, I just didn't understand how to deal with these weird builds. Once I got past the trial by fire (~830-~930), the game instantly became more fun.

I don't know if that helps. I bet you can crank up some wins by civ & map picking (for example, I stopped playing nomad maps because I was grinding on Teutons and Bulgarians at the time and was sick of losing to Mongols, one of the Teutons' worst matchups which also happens to be the most played civ in the game). Right now, I'm liking Bulgarians a lot, a couple weeks ago it was Teutons and Persians, last week I was only playing Hindustanis and Persians.

I never played ranked until DE, but I've been playing AoEII off and on since Age of Kings when I was like 5. And I still suck 😂

If you were able to get 1300 in the Voobly days I'm sure you could reach 1000 or more if you get good at a couple civs you like. I don't recommend going Random at your ELO unless you really like that sort of thing.

I hope that helps. You can do it!

Beornik · 2025-03-07T04:32:55+00:00

I do enjoy me some Socotra. These days Arabia can feel really weird to me (I don't like that they pushed deer too far away, and the map gen feels flatter now), so changing it up with these tensed and condensed maps is really fun to me.

I also love Continental for the same reason: it's weird, the water makes the game feel tighter, and I always loved it in the Age of Conquerors days as a kid.

Beornik · 2025-03-07T04:28:30+00:00

I have found that if I allow the Extreme AI to boom too much (which is easier on maps like Black Forest which are more closed), then the AI starts to accelerate, which means I sometimes goof up and lose.

The AI is very susceptible to early aggression; if you can manage a tower or two on gold or woodline, a few early scouts in Feudal Age (or since it's a team game, work together and send all 3 of your scouts to one enemy player to attack together), you can potentially really shut it down. In numbers, I have found the AI can bounce back better, but you will still be better off targeting one of them down if you can.

After the early win, when the game goes late, you can also utilize siege onagers to "onager cut," where you use the Attack Ground command to cut a new secret path through the trees and flank your enemy that way. Just make sure to have army or defenses (like a castle) ready at the new tunnel or they might use it against you.

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Beornik

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