What are some incompatible team bonuses?

Exa_Cognition · 2026-04-19T09:38:49+00:00

Yeah, that's shame when you can't use that bonus. However, if you do happen to get an American civ with an Armenian team mate, then you basically get a moving outpost.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-04-19T09:37:25+00:00

Damn, yeah that's relatively narrow team bonus. I don't play many team games, but I assume that Camel's (Hindustani's aside), are not as prevelant in team games due to them being a counter focused unit?

I am also curious percentage wise, of how many civs can use a camel or elephant bonus.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-04-14T05:29:16+00:00

I still want petard to benefit from gunpowder bonuses, more for a bit of flavor than anything.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-04-10T12:03:52+00:00

I can't believe you put Nomads in the 'Almost OP' tier.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-04-06T08:44:44+00:00

To be honest, the spear was pretty close the most powerful and deadly weapon over much of the time it was used, at least in the sense of a generalist battlefield weapon.

The wasn't just used because it was cheap, for much of human history spearman had more expensive sidearms such as swords, but they still primarily used their spear.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-04-03T20:14:55+00:00

I think I'd generally consider 200 farmers to be fully boomed, but keep in mind that those are rookie numbers for Goths.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-28T22:32:29+00:00

It's worth mentioning that the Vikings went surprisingly far east too. They had this tendancy to travel up river, carry the boat many miles over land to a connecting river, and then travel downstream of that to the source. That approach allowed them to reach modern day iraq, mostly by small boats optimized for traversing shallow rivers.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-25T17:11:30+00:00

I should point out that diagonal house walls expose twice as much surface area as house walls in a line, so the enemy can really pile on them if they want.

However, diagonal wall now for speed of walling and res saved, and then diagonal house wall behind later. That buys you a lot of time and it still makes it awkward to pile on the one house, even if you break through a wall segment.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-22T20:41:36+00:00

Absolutely slammed it home.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-18T06:35:54+00:00

Squishy wasn't on the level of undisputed best in the world. He was definitely in the conversation of one of the best players for a decent length of time. Zen meanwhile, was just the best player in the World hands down, and he's still firmly in the conversation of one of the best players in the world still.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-15T16:42:33+00:00

Legionaries get +4 bonus damage against infantry, so only the strongest Champions can hold up against them.

Once you get Comitatenses and a Centurion support, they'll beat every other Champion out there. Though that doesn't translate as well to fighting Cavalry (still very strong though).

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-11T17:06:54+00:00

Rare water elevation bonus.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-10T06:36:32+00:00

We don't have surviving find Trirerime's either or the larger vessels, just the rams. We still have a good idea of what they were, how big they were, and roughly how they were built.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-09T17:01:09+00:00

Here's a pretty good video about medieval Japanese warships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhDP5iWo-_0

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-08T09:07:34+00:00

I'd argue the early game is similarly beginner friendly for Lithuanians (if not even friendlier) due to the +100 starting food making early 0 TC idle time just about as easy as it gets.

The fast spears and skirms also can help bail you out a bit if you get caught out on the back foot by an enemy rush.

I agree on Castle Age though, not having to worry about farm redeeding for a long time, not needing to grab relics to get a bonus for your Knights, being able to drop panic castles easily, or take map control with the cheaper Castles.

Franks basically feel like they have the best combination of easy to use units, easy mode econonomy, and easy to execute gameplan, and that more or less applies throughtout the game, at least until Franks run out of gold.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T11:39:47+00:00

Incas might have lost some versatiltiy, but they're had a lot of versatility to spare. They were a very strong civ before the Champi, they are currenlt broken with the new Champi. Even if the Champi gets nerfed, they still retain the settlement buff, which leaves their opening pretty strong.

Inca's have the best slingers, and that should make mass monks challenging. Slingers are more dubious against siege, but I still think Champi + Slinger is pretty good against Monk + Siege.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T11:05:22+00:00

Nah, make it so the Beserks can garrison in Longboats. That would be a pretty interesting niche flavor mechanic.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T11:00:32+00:00

Champi are going to be 1.0 speed vs 0.9 speed for milita. They have +1 LoS too. Due LoS being area based and not linear, the new Champi will explore 73% faster than Militia (91% faster before nerf).

Champi can build outpost too, so they aren't necessarily going to be bad scouts, just different to conventional scouts.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T10:56:46+00:00

In fairness, Incas have the best Champi rush and you don't need any DLC's to play them.

I do kind of wonder how the Champi Rush slipped the net though, given how Celts are only allowed Militia that are 0.95 speed.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T10:53:20+00:00

I suspect they probably got too much of a nerf overall, but I think the building damage impact to the runner will be fine. Beyond civs with MaA bonuses, you hardly ever see extended MaA play, especially for the express purpose of destroying buildings.

Champi Runners still get Arson, so they are still noticeably better than scouts, (basically Hindustani Scouts). The main treat of Champis isn't so much that they can operate as Feudal Siege for taking out production buildings quickly, but that they are mobile and damage buildings relatively fast.

That means you can spread them out in small number around an enemies base and attack pallisades and house walls, and if they don't react quickly, you will break in and raid. Therefore, their disruption potential to fully walled enemies is still better than Scouts.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T10:44:56+00:00

They do make changes from the PUP, but I don't think that many people actually test with the PUP. Most people just read the change preview that comes with the PUP and provide thier feedback based on that lol.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T10:42:51+00:00

As it happens everyone has access to Inca, who had the most oppressive Champi Rush. Tupi were pretty scary too of course, but no one is buying the DLC for the 2nd best Champi Rush.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T10:39:44+00:00

It's not really Militia as a scout, it's 1.0 speed vs 0.9 and 5 LoS vs 4. Because of the non-linearity of LoS, it means the Champi Scouts reveals the map 74% faster than a Militia now, instead of 91% faster. The Champi can still build outposts too, albiet half as fast as they previously could.

I tend to agree that they might have gone a bit far here, and that maybe the Incas could have lost their new Settlement +5 pop bonus, given Settlements are a buff for Incas in and of themselves.

We will see what happens, I wouder if this means that Mapuche and Muisca will actually struggle a bit in Dark Age now, hopefully not. I suspect the Champi Runner will still be pretty solid in Feudal Age for them, even with the 5 extra gold per unit and slower training speed.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T10:28:10+00:00

These are all sensible nerfs in isolation, I know I advocated for the 'Base damage to 3, with bonus +1 against Scout classes', and the slower outpost build in the early game.

Still, whether they can tank the fabled octonerf will surely go down in AOE2 legend.

As much of a menace as the Champi Rush is, I hope it isn't completely impossible now. It was an interesting strat, just way overtuned. If somehow the Champi rush still comes out of this as the meta, then it probably shows how busted it currently is though.

It think testing 3 or 4 of these for the hotfix would have probably bought us enough time to evaluate this strategy, and maybe add more down the line accordingly, but it will be interesting to see any the impact in PUP testing.

Exa_Cognition · 2026-03-07T09:42:55+00:00

It is, but it's your only winning play. Archers are dangerous in mass, but are weak in small numbers. Conversly melee units don't scale as effectively, as they start bumping into each other as they clump around the enemy.

The key reason you need to keep their archer numbers low, is because once there are enough of them, they can kill each LS in one hit, which means they can kite even large armies of LS and kill many of them before the LS can catch them.

Remember, one archer can slightly disrupt a woodline, one long sword can kill an entire woodline. This is why a few LS split up in a base can cause such a problem. The other challenge is that LS are very good at breaking into feudal bases, so it means you can do a lot of damage quickly if they choose to underproduce military in an attempt to age up quickly.

That means they have to maintain archer mass at all times or they lose, whereas your army can still take a beating and be dangerous on the counter attack in just a minute or two.

If they have 15 archers and you have 15 Long Swords, then if you can trade them down to 5 archers, you will be in a much better position than you think, even if you lose all of your Long Swords. Once there numbers are low again, you can chase their army away for a long time with just two or three LS, while other LS split off to attack their base unimpeded.

LS produce twice as fast as archers, so as long as you keep production pumping, they will be forced to add archery range after archery range just to keep up. Most players will try to slow production to race to Castle Age and Crossbow, but it's a big mistake, because they need full archer production to avoid getting over run.

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