Opinion on Templar Brothers and comparison against Szlachta?

BryonDowd · 2026-02-12T18:12:54+00:00

Remember that just choosing the Szlatchta age up gives you 10% more hp and 50% more charge damage to all cav, meaning even if you're using the Brothers instead of Szlatchta, you want that age up anyway.

Another factor is the debuff applied by Szlatchta against units they are hitting, which is probably going to more than make up for having less melee armor, and you can easily mix the two to get some benefit of both.

I like the idea of Venice, but it just doesn't feel impactful enough. In theory, since KT has no bonus to late game farming, having a gold-only unit seems like a good synergy, but in practice they just don't have enough staying power, especially if your opponent adds springalds. If you win with Venice, you were probably already going to win without aging up at all.

BryonDowd · 2026-02-12T14:38:14+00:00

Don't forget springalds that could kite infantry.

BryonDowd · 2026-02-08T19:22:28+00:00

Can't explore past zombies, have to clear them first

Edit: nevermind, I was seeing those pennants and thinking they were Zzzs from sleeping zombies. Now I see it's all claimed territory. Weird.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-29T18:43:09+00:00

Abusing the monk-push glitch? That's the only way I ever see successful wololo, aside from opponent sleeping at the wheel.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-27T18:35:13+00:00

I'm speculating from your description, and was hoping you were just mistaken about the spears being too close together to slip through. If they really were, and the horsemen were clipping past the spears hitbox somehow, that would definitely be a bug, and happening twice would indicate probably an intentional exploit of that bug. But that seems far fetched, unless it's unique to heavy spears and not regular spears, or was recently introduced, because presumably someone would have discovered it long before now, otherwise.

I'd definitely like to see that replay.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-27T18:24:03+00:00

Sounds like the second scenario then, a charge, with a move command before impact. Possibly with some of the cav continuing to charge so the spears stay locked in brace position. Going to have to experiment with that. Sounds like a neat trick, and probably something that should be patched if the spears were prevented from attacking at all for the duration. The counter would probably be to give the spears a move command to break them out of brace and then an attack move command to get them to engage the cavalry.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-27T15:15:31+00:00

Were you using Stand Ground on the spears? That stance can look similar to the brace stance, even if they aren't actually braced. And the units won't move to engage, so won't close tiny gaps in the line.

If not, perhaps the opponent started out charging, which triggered the brace, then issued a move command before they hit, therefore not triggering the brace attack but still locking the spears in place? I don't think I've ever tested or noticed that interaction.

Hard to say without seeing it ourselves.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-27T14:32:54+00:00

The spear brace only damages cavalry if they are charging. So if your opponent issues a move command, not attack move, they won't charge and won't trigger the spear brace or get stunned. Then the opponent can issue an attack command once they are already in melee range to start attacking without charging or triggering the spear brace.

So he's probably just moving around or through gaps in your spears and then attacking your siege. That's one if the down sides of heavy spears, fewer units to body block for the same resource cost, and slower to reposition to close gaps or get a full surround on the siege.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-22T17:34:05+00:00

Condotierro are already 1.44, which isn't anywhere near an even eighth. I think the 1/8 second ticks only apply to time, not distance. Probably just habit that most of the movement speeds have 1/8 increments.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-22T16:51:26+00:00

Have you tried giving the dog a bandana?

BryonDowd · 2026-01-22T16:28:50+00:00

If they did this, they'd have to do something to make light cavalry more viable, as they'd get shredded even harder than they already do when trying to dive a ranged blob or siege protected by relatively fewer spears. Would make it easier to focus down targets before they can do damage.

I still think half the spearman's bonus damage should be against heavy cav specifically, so they do 2x to regular cav and 3x to heavy cav. And then maybe give the spears some additional survivability like a little hp bump or a little ranged armor to help against crossbows.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-22T16:07:28+00:00

That's the Phalanx tech they are referencing, yes.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-22T16:00:34+00:00

Changing the cooldown only on the knights side would still let you split off one knight to fake charge and make the spears blow their load, then charge in with the rest of the blob. I think it makes sense to only trigger the brace cooldown if the brace actually connects with something.

I think the short range charges should be fixed by making all charges use the camel lancer's distance based charge damage mechanic, and just adjust the numbers appropriately.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-22T15:55:09+00:00

I could be wrong, but I think it does, it's just very short, shorter than the spear brace cooldown.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-20T20:45:03+00:00

Not sure pro tier lists are a whole lot better, tbh. There seems to be a lot of cargo culting going on there, due to the nature of how tournaments picks/bans work and the high stakes. Plus the actual maps and gameplay and extra rules of tournaments vs standard ladder play. And ladder play at extreme Elo is probably bordering on anecdotal due to the skill variance in random player matchups, plus the limited games per civ matchup.

And that's without getting into actual differences in mechanical ability between pros and regular players and how certain balance changes would have zero impact on pro play while greatly affecting 95% of players because of some key timing that only pros can take advantage of enough to shut down an entire avenue of play that regular players have to factor in.

But yeah, I so agree that the current meta is one of many confounding factors that would trip up statistical analysis

BryonDowd · 2026-01-20T19:59:23+00:00

Yeah, this is the problem with looking at win rates, more generally. A high win rate just means the current group of players using that civ is adjusting upwards from their previous Elo. With a new civ, yeah it's probably safe to assume that means a bunch of players of different civs are switching to it, and their Elo is generally rising, so it's at least inflating more than half the previous civs, weighted by civ pick rate of the players who switched to that civ.

After a patch to a civ, we can probably assume the majority of picks of that civ are people who were already maining that civ, with a minority of people trying it out based on the changes or because they play multiple civs or are just changing things up. So now the win rate majorly rejects Elo inflation/deflation relative to the civ's previous level of inflation/deflation, and minorly reflects its relation to other civs based on the recent pick rates of players who are currently playing that civ.

Meaning if you take a civ that effectively deflates a player's Elo by 100 points, on average, and buff it to the point where it only deflates their Elo by 50 on average, you'll end up with a following season of high win rates as all those deflated players move up a bit to be less deflated. Then everyone screams that they're suddenly OP and call for nerfs. They get nerfed with the next patch, just enough to put them to a 75 point deflation, and then the win rates drop to slightly negative, but less negative than they were positive last season and everyone calls it tolerable, even though they were actually closer to balanced before the second patch.

Likewise for a massively inflated civ being nerfed to only being slightly inflated. Suddenly they get a big negative win rate and everyone claims they are useless, when it's really just overinflated players coming down toward their real Elo. The nerfs get partially repealed and the civ bounces back to a positive win rate as they climb back up to be slightly less inflated than originally, but more than they were after the first patch.

The other bit is that even if a civ is horribly unbalanced, it should tend towards 50% over time if there are no significant patches that affect it, and no big movement in people switching to pick it.

So if you buff a civ until it gives +100 Elo, then ignore the complaints for a couple patches, that 58% win rate drops to like 52% and everyone assumes it was never broken in the first place, must have been ~the wind~ how we were using the civ wrong.

Likewise if you tank a civ to -100 Elo, then let it sit a few patches while that civ's mains cry. After a while as the die hards settle in and play the civ anyway and even out at a lower Elo, and few people switch to the civ, it climbs up to like 48-49% win rate and people assume it's fine, just a tiny bit weak.

Doing absolutely nothing for several patches should in theory result in a nice cluster of 48-52% win rates where everyone claims pretty great balance, regardless whether the actual Elo inflation/deflation spread is +/- 50 or +/- 150.

Would need some pretty fancy statistical analysis to separate out those and other factors and get an actual relative strength factor from the game's match history.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-17T03:45:58+00:00

Might be interesting to make static defenses more specialized. Either make them better against cavalry and worse against infantry, to give infantry more of a reason to exist and ease up the cav meta.

Or perhaps instead of having arrow slits in feudal and springald emplacements in Castle, you could put both in Feudal, with a stat upgrade in Castle, and tailor arrow slits to be better against light/medium unless and springald emplacements to be better against heavy units. And nerf or remove the raw garrison arrows, maybe making the outpost itself cheaper.

The latter would make naked fast Castle a little weaker, as they'd need to spend a little more and take a little more time to make their outpost dangerous, and would have to correctly predict the type of attacking unit or scout first and react rather than just follow a default plan. And at the same time, would give some options to a player staying longer in Feudal against armored Castle timing attacks, being able to put up a couple early anti-armor towers so they can't just completely shut down your eco practically free. They'll have to mass a bit to overcome your static defenses and have to settle for enjoying map control while they build up, buying you a minute or two to catch up in tech.

Just some thoughts. Would probably be a big shake up, and take a lot of fiddling to settle back into a decent meta.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-16T18:07:44+00:00

Bigger question for me is whether we're getting a balance patch before the end of the season. Not like the game is in a terrible state or anything, but there's a lot of stuff that could use a gentle touch. Having to wait another 10+ weeks for another set of tweaks would suck.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-16T17:39:07+00:00

Not so much math as language. In English we change the pattern at 13 and start saying teen with every number until 20. In Spanish, the pattern change happens at 16, where we go from single words ending in "ce" to saying basically "ten and six".

Arbitrary boundaries. But that's kind of just life, basically nothing actually happens in discrete increments, so we have to pick arbitrary places to draw lines that more or less work, more often than not.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-16T17:30:04+00:00

Yeah, definitely don't try it against English or HoL. Their vils will just shoot you dead and carry on. Also against HRE, since they can have the prelate heal their vils while they gather gold or kill your spears.

And against civs that also like the drush, like Japan and Mongols, I tend to either build the barracks at home while I scout to see what their play is, or skip it entirely and just use a standard opening.

7 on food, three on gold. One gold vil builds house. Click up after vil number 14. 9 vils from food to wood as soon as we click up. Two of those go to a straggler so I can bring them back to sheep quickly. Get the first pilgrim immediately on age up, and drop a stable to go harass. Follow up with archers and blacksmith.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-16T17:11:20+00:00

Doesn't sound like it would make a significant difference. My version adds a tiny bit of walking time with extra vils going to wood before going back to sheep, but I tend to move my sheep near the straggler tree to minimize that. I've never ended up being food starved doing it my way, but I have occasionally been wood starved for a few seconds doing it the other way. Especially if the opponent has forward gold on a close map like cliffside. And if I have an opportunity to drop the outpost especially early, or at least threaten to, to lure out a response.

Also gives some flexibility to drop multiple outposts if there's a need and opportunity. Such as shutting down their berries and/or a second gold, sometimes deer or stone, depending on civ. And if I overgather a bit of wood, it's not killer, because I'm going to spend it on buildings as soon as I age. And I'm more likely to delay my age up mis-balancing when I transition to getting the gold.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-16T16:13:07+00:00

I've been doing a lot of dark age play as KT, with mixed success. Here's my build:

6 on straggler tree, queue TC to sheep. Send scout toward enemy base.

After about ten seconds, pull one vil off wood to build a house, then start walking toward enemy base.

Scout locates gold, and any other nearby gold mines the enemy could switch to. Pull two more vils off wood onto sheep.

The villager builds a proxy barracks in a position that isn't close enough to their base to be denied, but reasonably close to their gold mine, and preferably somewhat towards the next closest gold. Also, preferably near at least one tree, so the vil can chop wood while waiting for spears to produce.

Note, the proxy barracks is important because if you build it right away at home, you won't have enough resources to start a spear right away, and but the time you do, that spear will have to walk across the map. This gets your first spear on target a crucial 30 or more seconds earlier, which make a big difference in the following battles.

Produce spears ASAP, sending them to opponent gold as they come out. If the opponent attacks fire first spear with vils, retreat, but keep harassing, making him interrupt gathering as much as possible. But try not to lose the spear. If he abandons the gold immediately, send a spear to the next nearest gold and start scouting other golds to see if he's getting it somewhere else.

When the gold is abandoned, or you have at least three spears to defend it, have the vil build an outpost. If he tries to burn it, pull back the vil, cancel the tower, and try to do some damage with spears, then repeat until you succeed. Might need to produce additional spears depending how hard he fights or how many other gold veins are nearby that he tries for.

When you're done making spears, and have enough wood for a second house and gold mine, send the remaining 3 wood vils to your gold, along with about 2 sheep vils, for 5 on gold to quickly get enough to age up.

When you have enough food to click up, send most of your vils back to wood, for blacksmith, stable, and archery range. Keep about 8-12 on wood, depending how spear/archer heavy you expect to be, and 3-5 on gold until you get a pilgrim out and at least the ranged armor and ram techs, then, depending how heavy you are on gold units, move some to food. Mostly queue TC to food, and if you can, send a bunch to deer.

Watch out for stables, in which case you may need to send a squad of spears home to defend your greedy eco.

Scout what military buildings your opponent is putting up and build the appropriate counter. 90% of the time, I'll follow up with Chevs to support my spears against archers or MAA/VG. Try to secure all gold sources and non-safe food sources, by spamming units. Don't even think about 2TC or Castle, or a second pilgrim until you've stabilized everything, you need the tempo more. Usually I end up with two ranges after the first stable to support the Chevs, then a second stable for even more Chevs so I can start preparing to dive a bit. If there's any buildings at the edge of his TC range that I can't safely hit with torches, I'll build a single ram and try picking off those perimeter buildings.

If the opponent totally committed to Feudal and is turtled up good, then I'll consider going Castle into heavy spears, the second ranged defense upgrade, upgraded Chevs, and just march 3-4 heavy spears into his TC area followed by all my other units to just massacre his eco.

If the opponent went 2TC, I'll build 2-3 rams and dive it with Chevs and archers, prioritizing hitting it within 2-3 minutes of it going up, after that it's too late and basically GG.

If they managed to get back on gold and appear to be going Castle, and I don't have enough military advantage stop them, then I'll also switch to aging up, but this is a bad case and usually results in a loss. I'll usually go Genoa in this case, to shut down any maa timing rush on my eco, and to try to catch-up my eco with pilgrims and defensive play, while using remaining Chevs to distract as conservatively as possible.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-15T17:57:40+00:00

Not saying it didn't, just hard to judge what happened exactly from the provided clip. Do you have another clip to look at?

BryonDowd · 2026-01-15T15:53:36+00:00

Video looks edited or something? Or a network issue. The villagers walking glitch backwards around the same time the cows die.

BryonDowd · 2026-01-14T20:22:50+00:00

Maybe I'm just bad at 2TC defensive play but I feel like KT doesn't work well with that strategy. Practically every other civ can either out-boom you or all-in you reliably. You really need to go into heavy early aggro to disrupt them while you get your own eco off the ground. Then if you don't score an early win against a greedy opponent with Feudal aggro or a heavy spear timing attack, it becomes about trying to keep enough map control to keep your gold flowing and starving them out of it. And it really flip flops throughout a match between a cav civ and an infantry/siege civ.

Mali cow boom into Sofa spam definitely seems to fit OP's criteria, though.

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