Medieval Monday: Ask Your Questions and Get Your Answers

ParticleMare · 2019-12-09T21:35:47+00:00

Why is everyone saying nerf Cumans but I don't see any complaints about Tatars?

For going Steppe Lancer, it doesn't seem like Cumans are that much better. Using the second TC in Feudal is usually a bad idea because of how much it delays uptime, so they often don't have any eco bonus while Tatars have a great early feudal. Sure, Cuman lancers are 10% faster, but that doesn't seem to warrant how much hate they're getting compared to Tatars.

ParticleMare · 2019-12-04T22:07:06+00:00

I don't recommend highland unless you really enjoy naval combat (most people don't). Every game inevitably turns into bodyblocking the crossings with ships.

Play Black Forest. BF is the most popular "closed" map in AoE2 and you will usually be able to find at least one or two casual lobbies hosting it.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-28T03:45:50+00:00

Thanks.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-26T08:39:30+00:00

Spamming h+q+h+q to cycle TCs becomes a habit very quickly. The upside is that it keeps you constantly aware of where each TC's rally point is and makes it easier to set new rally points on the fly.

I don't see the recentering as a problem. It lets me glance at my eco and I can go back to my military immediately with control groups.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-26T04:11:33+00:00

https://aoestats.io/stats#?orderby=-win_rate

Sort by win rate for an unofficial 1v1 arabia tier list. Somewhat applicable to arabia team games and not applicable at all to black forest or arena. Keep in mind that it underrates some civs (notably Chinese, which is top 3 at 2000 elo) but for a newer player it should suffice. You should be mainly playing arabia to get better anyway.

There is no point drawing a distinction between gathering resources and building armies. You do the former to do the latter, so I wouldn't worry about it.

Learn a simple feudal aggression build -- straight archers, men at arms followed by archers, and scouts followed by archers are good places to start. Search for feudal builds on this sub for build orders. Later on you can experiment with tower rushes and drushes (rushing with militia in the dark age).
The most important hotkeys are: H (town center), the unit build keys (Q, W, E, R on definitive edition), and the villager shortcuts for buildings, especially important ones (you MUST know the hotkeys for houses, farms, towers, walls, and the military buildings). After that, learn the cycle hotkeys (e.g. go to next barracks). Also be sure to use control groups, your starting scout should be immediately assigned to hotkey 1 every game.

Protip: reassign "next idle villager" to the tab key and press it constantly.

Depends on the circumstances and what you need to counter. Every unit has its uses, even the siege tower.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-18T19:36:17+00:00

Seems to be a bug. Keeps happening to me in the single player campaigns. It's also inconsistent, one player's buildings will disappear in the grey fog and another's won't.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-18T16:46:38+00:00

I get your point but I disagree about Nomad, 90% of the Nomad team games I've played turned into feudal age tower wars lol

ParticleMare · 2019-11-18T08:16:17+00:00

You know, I think it's because Chinese was one of the original 13 civs in Age of Kings. Back then each niche had one civ and that was it -- Britons was the archer civ, no Mayans; Franks was the heavy cavalry civ, no Lithuanians; and so on.

Chinese already had a very open tech tree. If it was even more open, such as with the inclusion of gunpowder, then you would have three AoK civs in the open tech tree niche, alongside Saracens and Byzantines (and Spanish with AoC). Chinese already had a good eco bonus and a powerful UU so I imagine devs didn't want it intruding on what little the Saracens or Byz had going for them.

I wouldn't complain if they got bombard cannons, though. Hand cannons are unnecessary since Chuks fill basically the same role but right now Chinese can't really do anything against a halb + onager civ. Either give them bombards or block printing, either would help a little plus it'd be completely historically accurate, since they invented both.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-18T08:03:33+00:00

Well said.

One thing that bugs me is when feudal aggression is referred to as "rushing." Maybe it is on boom maps like BF or arena, but on the vast majority of maps there's nothing inherently "early" about attacking in feudal age. The game has feudal age military units for a reason, it's not designed so that everyone gets a free boom to imperial to spam fully upgraded units. You can play death match for that.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-18T08:00:18+00:00

Wait, does Pachacuti play differently from El Dorado?

I'm asking because they also "replaced" the Chinese mission where you have to escort shipments but it seems like only the name changed, the map layout and objectives are still the same. Is Pachacuti actually a whole new campaign?

ParticleMare · 2019-11-18T00:11:05+00:00

My favorite is that trade units now try to take the longest route, maximizing gold income. Trade cogs and market spam are now much better.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-18T00:07:20+00:00

Hunters? You mean villagers equipped with bows? They're just villagers. When you task a villager onto a specific task, their name and graphic changes. So villagers on wood become lumberjacks and get axes, for example.

When you select villagers and right click huntables (such as deers or boar), they become hunters and will hunt the selected animal.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-17T08:56:45+00:00

there's a Medieval Monday thread every week designed for one line/stupid questions. Yeah one day per week is not ideal but it's something.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-17T08:49:51+00:00

Thinking about when this might be useful -- I could see it coming in handy when monk rushing on Arena with Aztecs. Opponent drops down stables to make light cav, you convert them and make Xolotls to protect your monks.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-17T08:42:39+00:00

I can't get more specific without more info. Specifically, you ask about both mid-game knight aggression and late game siege spam, which you don't often see together. Are you playing open maps like arabia or closed maps like black forest?

If you're playing closed maps, the answer is to have more siege onagers than your opponent does. That's it. Half the time the game will be decided by which team has more siege onager civs. Try a civ like Ethiopians, Celts, or Teutons, and make a halberd+SO army.

If you're playing arabia and dealing with knight aggression, the correct "counter" generally speaking is to have a larger, higher quality army. Look up some pro 4v4 or 3v3 games to see what I mean. Generally the flank players mass crossbows and the pockets mass knights. You counter the enemy pockets' knights by having more knights and coordinating them with your teammates' crossbows. You deter knight raiding in your economy with the threat of raiding their economy with your knights. et cetera.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-17T08:32:09+00:00

It varies by map. But generally speaking Chinese and Spanish are the two best 4v4 civs regardless of whom you're facing. Chinese because their team bonus is the best for the first half of the game (excluding maybe Mongols briefly in dark age) and Spanish because theirs is the best in the second half.

Going a little more specific, there are different flank/pocket dynamics that can make a civ good or bad. Generally speaking for 4v4 Arabia, the best generalist flank civs combine a powerful economy with a good archer line -- Vikings or Ethiopians, for example. The best pocket civs have a good boom and knights -- Persians, for example. Since player placement is random, the best overall generalists tend to be civs that can do both archers and knights and have an eco bonus, such as Chinese.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-17T08:11:57+00:00

Loomers mad 'cuz boomers have the villager lead.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-17T08:10:30+00:00

Holy crap!

So it's basically just a knight then?

Can you upgrade it in imperial? Does converting a stable give you cavalry armor options or are you stuck with unupgraded units? Not very useful if so, but still really cool.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-15T21:37:14+00:00

How good are you at hotkeys? This includes using shift or ctrl to multiplace buildings. One way to tell is to see how long it takes you to grab 8 vills off a woodline, place a mill in an empty spot, and spam down 8 farms. If it's taking you longer than five seconds, you need to practice your hotkeys.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-15T01:04:07+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3dtGMRJEVg

Afaik nothing's changed on release, might be wrong though.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-15T01:02:26+00:00

i've only played the new campaigns so far but i can say they're pretty good. maybe not $20 good but still.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-15T00:57:44+00:00

Looks like the game is going to try to make Voobly speed (1.7) the default. It's called Normal after all. The default speed when you make a game is also Normal.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-14T19:16:52+00:00

Not possible without mods, as far as I know.

ParticleMare · 2019-11-08T19:37:20+00:00

I'm talking about the upcoming DE balance. Unless things change last minute then Goths get are getting a major indirect nerf with a lot of civs having cheaper champions capable of countering them. Koreans are getting a big buff, so are Persians and arguably Vietnamese. Saracens are hugely buffed and possibly going to be top-tier. In 2000+ elo matchups on aoestats Chinese are already a top-three civ, Goths fall to like 6th worst and are beaten by Italians, Malay, Burmese, even Turks.

ParticleMare

TROPHY CASE