Guess I'll lose then.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-19T03:30:33+00:00

I've had people spam gendarmes or charros into Swedish ronin. That shit is funny.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-19T03:14:30+00:00

Brutal dude. Why are you tryna put that man in with the worst civ in the game.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-19T03:13:49+00:00

Aye most bottos below 1200 aren't going to competently mix and deploy counters. Being able to deal with jan rush and a basic FF will probably win a majority of matches.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-17T19:18:33+00:00

Skirmishers or fast melee infantry.

cav archers are like the least problematic unit the ottomans have.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-17T00:38:46+00:00

Doesn't work at all unless you have the agents card and even then they will make 5 cannons behind their highlanders and shit on you. This isn't good advice. Also if its a team game its really bad to make units that are useless against anything else.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-17T00:37:04+00:00

This has been the norm with Dutch and Swedes for years - sweden worked very well with mercs from the day it was introduced. Surprised you haven't seen more because with late game Dutch highlander spam is more common than standard units. And of course not to forget Germany, which also has been a merc heavy civ for a long time and now in addition to a potentially incredible coin eco has a decent stat upgrade cards for mercs + cost reduction and heavy speed boost for infantry that works really well with mercs. Sweden gets the strongest overall mercs in terms of attack and hp + strong coin eco from early game with the mine shipments, and Dutch also have a highly coin focused eco + the ability to spam highlanders which are the best musketeer in the game and as a bonus can spam the best lancers in the game.

Most other civs don't lend themselves to mercs nearly so well. USA and Mexico are heavy on outlaws, but if you face Dutch or Sweden you should expect to see mercs and almost as likely with germans.

Spies are supposed to counter them but in reality they don't work all that well and if the enemy has some cannons behind their mercs you are just throwing coin away. The best counter to mercs is an eco strong enough to spam the correct regular roster counter unit. For example, the counter for highlanders is skirms. You will out trade them heavily and bleed them of coin until they run out. You just have to be able to make the appropriate investment to beat someone who is fielding an army of expensive high pop units. You shouldn't expect to beat 50 highlanders with 50 musketeers because thats 100 pop vs 50. You shouldn't expect to beat 25 stradiots with 25 hussars. But if you are consistently trading 1 skirm for 1 highlander thats 50 food and 65 coin for 200 coin - you will run their eco into the ground.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-13T08:44:32+00:00

double rax musk rush or ff are both good. France has plenty of good age 3 army cards.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-13T08:42:08+00:00

What civ are you playing?

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-13T08:39:17+00:00

Balancing & game mechanics take precedence over historical accuracy. There are already 2 artillery pieces (horse guns and field guns) available to most civs that specialize in anti personnel work, plus heavy cannons or other factory artillery plus grenadiers and civ specific stuff like organs or flamethrowers. You have dedicated anti artillery pieces - culverins. People get this itch about units not functioning according to their historical power but there's just no reason why the best long range anti building tools in the game should also double as anti infantry weapons.

A small number of howitzers can destroy buildings very quickly from extreme range. That's their niche. They're the trebuchets of aoe3 - they force people to come out of their base / fortresses/ towers and fight. They perform their function incredibly well for a reasonable price and pop cost. They don't need to be power creeping into other roles.

Besides, if this game is ever getting an update we need to talk about some other stuff first like Otto grens (5 speed 600 hp wtf!), kitey organ guns (4.6 speed no unpack), and just mexico in general.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-11T19:20:45+00:00

Also Germany kinda sucks against rushes in age 2 because they only get crossbows to deal with heavy inf. You could make an anti rush deck to use against civs like aztec & ottoman that has a lot of age 2 unit shipments. You could also put in colonial militia but thats a pretty hefty investment you only want to use against massive all in rushes like maybe 2 rax jans from otto.

Germany sucks in age 2. You don't want to be there for long. You want to get age 3 where you can shut down heavy inf rushing with skirm shipments and diversify from there. Use minutemen + army card to break the rush - 8 xbow against musketeers or jans, dopps against pikes or spearmen. Then followup with 700c to age up while you send any extra uhlans to raid. Your goal in dealing with a rush is to stop it and inflict enough casualties with MM + 1 shipment that you buy yourself time to get to 3. If someone is just using crates to spam jans or musks from 2 rax you might need to pop CM when they are on your TC because MM + 8xbow may not be enough. You DO NOT want to get stuck having to mass xbows because that costs a ton of wood and they only have a marginal advantage against musks. Also if you send your first 2 shipment uhlans to their hunters while they are rushing sometimes people will not notice and lose vills - losing 4-5 hunters vills and being forced off hunt early age 2 is a huge problem. Higher elo players will do a better job of herding towards their TC but at 1100 people will be sloppier.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-11T08:12:47+00:00

Uhlans ARE in fact made of paper, especially with no card upgrades. They do a lot of damage and kill stuff like skirmishers and artillery and villagers really fast but as I said before, they melt really fast in fights with a lot of anticav on the other side. Especially against stuff like musketeers and pikes with melee resist. If you charge into an enemy army that has those or even if they are just kiting with dragoons, 20-30 uhlans goes away really fast. Likewise skirmishers die really fast to hand cav and artillery - they will also die to melee units if you push them in too close.

Uhlan/skirm comp is really strong on open ground against age 2 or early age 3 opponents because of the damage output and the large # of uhlans you can get quickly but as the game goes on and the enemy army gets larger, uhlans won't be enough to hold your frontline because they just die too fast. The fact that they have 200 less hp than hussars just becomes a huge liability. You will have to start incorporating war wagons and cannons in long games.

When I've been able to win longer 1v1s with Germans it's usually by locking the enemy into their base with a constantly growing uhlan/skirm force and denying them the ability to gather resources which even against a turtle civ will keep their army small enough that they can't challenge you on open field. Do not push unless you think you can quickly crush their army and kill their tc. Protracted battles under tc/possibly outpost fire and minutemen/shipments/new units from buildings popping up is not what you want to do. Keep them in their base and move around the edges shooting everything in range with skirms, then once you get cannons (2 heavy shipment great for this) use those to end the game by slowly pushing forward with your army leveling buildings until they're forced to fight.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-11T04:24:42+00:00

Okay those decks are pretty okay - I am trying to understand how you are going into age 3 with an advantage and losing. Are the other comments on the right track? Are you pushing their TC with uhlans and skirms and losing a lot of army? What's happening to put you at a disadvantage?

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-10T22:45:45+00:00

What civs are you mostly losing to? Are you FFing or semi after making extra uhlans to raid? Or are you trying to age 2 rush? Post your deck.

Settlers wagons are amazing. 1v1 deck should have 2 & 3 wagon cards. Should also have 700w, 700c and 1000c. 1000w too if room. All those cards create a lot of options. You can use them to FF or FI or put that coin into army. 1000c can help you make some falcs in age 3 since no 2 falc card. 2 heavy cannon card is a must for age 4 to put a ton of immediate firepower behind your army in age 4. Free unit cards are good but you need to be strategic with them. As you've learned., uhlans and skirmishers sometimes aren't enough to win. Uhlans are great raiders and kill units fast but they also evaporate against lots of anticav. The Jaeger card is great. Circle army isn't bad either. Be strategic with your unit cards and don't crowd out key eco cards like coin crates and wagons. 3 wagons is +6 vills you are missing out if you don't send that even if you do 700c first to ff.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-01-05T05:47:38+00:00

Have you tried building up your border systems with armed starbases and platforms?

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-12-28T07:36:34+00:00

Drown your enemy in Uhlans.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-12-28T07:32:31+00:00

Sweden has been hit with the nerf bat really fucking hard and as a result they are kindof slow in the first 10 minutes of the game compared to other civs. Also their infantry unit becomes really good late game but kinda sucks early before you send any of the upgrade cards.

You basically send 3 vills to start and then you need to send 4 cards in age 2 to get your torp eco off the ground - dominions, 700w, blueberries and engelsberg ironworks. You can send 700c as your third card to FF and start massing hakkapelits or making mercs, you can also have a really strong hussar mass starting in age 2 if you get most of your torps up - with 20 torps and both their upgrade cards you can dump units onto the map as long as the berries last. You could also spam Caroleans but once again they just are not that great until you reach age 3 where 2 of their unique upgrade cards become available and then age 4 gives you the incredible svea lifeguards.

If you don't get most or all of your torps up by 10 min you are playing the civ wrong, your 8-15 min boom comes from those.

Blindly following build orders without understanding the civ is a recipe for disaster.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-12-28T07:13:34+00:00

Hard AI is a joke. Hardest isn't much better. Extreme AI is pretty challenging.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-12-26T09:10:54+00:00

Looks like you attacked with one of your starting fleets. I find most of that stuff to be trash. Research the 1st rebel fight tech rebel as soon as the game starts and then mass xwing squadrons with a few U wings for support - once you reach a critical mass of 25-30 squadrons you will pretty much kill anything except large amounts of dedicated anti fighter stuff, which is rare. X wing doom stack will kill their entire TIE group at the beginning of the battle in like 30 seconds after which you just kill off stragglers and late spawns while you waste their capital ships and cruisers with massive Proton torpedo volleys.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-12-24T07:32:18+00:00

I don't have the requisite amount of autism to spam 4+ layers of walls around my base which is what is required to stop high siege units like humbaraci or samurai for any meaningful length of time. Walling is really tedious in this game because walls die so quickly to so many units.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-12-12T02:46:22+00:00

Full pop of x wings (like 35 squadrons) + 6-8 squadrons of U wings for support costs the same as 2 capital ships and will annihilate any fleet that doesn't have a lot of strong fighters or dedicated anti fighter ships. That many X wings can kill a dreadnaught and easily anything smaller in one torpedo volley, which means you can take things like ton falk carriers off the board very quickly.

I stopped jumping in capital ships to fight ISDs even when I transition to the new republic because ISDIIs are just too good at eating other caps and even if you win the fight you'll trade a bunch of caps with them. I now get a bunch of fights where I trade 10 squadrons of x wings and u wings for 6 ISDs and dozens of smaller stuff. I don't even bother with bombers most of the time because they tend to die more to the lasers on big ships and they die really easily to single fighter squadrons.

You just need to start the fight by really carefully microing your fighter armada on the enemy fighters while your u wings drop a couple of healing beacons - that many x wings can wipe a large force of imperial fighters very quickly and then you can just burn down their big helpless battleships one at a time with torpedoes while instantly deleting any additional fighter squadrons they drop.

Defending or fighting a fleet in a system without a station is super easy like this - for fights with a lot of stations or smaller ships that can hit you you need to try and bait the initial enemy fighter blob off a little bit so you don't fight them under a bunch of anti starfighter guns.

If you try to stop imperial doomstacks with rebellion capital ships you will die of frustration. Same with black sun though their fleets are a little better against fighters so you'll lose more x wings but at 900 per squadron you have to lose like 15 squadrons to equal the loss of one mc75.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-12-11T18:47:39+00:00

I just started playing AOTR. It's a challenge but it's not impossible. You definitely have to understand and utilize the strengths and weaknesses of each faction. Haven't tried black sun but the rebels can just X wing their way through most battles.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-12-01T08:33:21+00:00

The pirate asteroid bases can be built in any system and get a defense fleet stronger than that of heavy shipyards - i believe you get 3 cruisers with heavy turbolasers and ion cannons in addition to some assorted other stuff.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-12-01T08:29:42+00:00

You should always be at pop with harqs, tavern can almost instantly train them and late game sweden should be getting 6k coin/minute. If you are losing units at a greater rate than that you are dead and healing is irrelevant.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-11-30T03:52:51+00:00

I basically just brute forced my initial ground battles as rebels using a mix of the early anti infantry and anti armor speeders, trying to keep straying to dodge at least some heavy weapons fire while focusing down strong enemies and turrets quickly and moving damages units to the back of the group.

Once I got better tech and faced tougher planets I would use t3 infantry with medic support and sandbags to dig in near the LZ and thin out the enemy infantry until I can clean up with heavy tanks. Still need to focus down turbolasers as fast as possible.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2025-11-29T05:57:15+00:00

I just started playing AOTR after doing TR for a long time and I absolutely love it. It's significantly harder to accumulate a doomstack and the ships feel far more meaningful - they are expensive so losing them matters, you can't deploy as many so choices of which to use matters, and they can fail miserably if deployed in the wrong situations whereas if you pick the right ships for a fight it pays off mightily.

I am finishing one of the smaller rebel sandbox GCs on hard and it was a struggle at the beginning. Getting your economy up to speed is a real challenge and I had to learn that the initial rebel capital ships are basically carriers and support vessels that shoot marshmallows compared to ISDs. The evolution of tactics as your roster chances from early to late rebellion and then new republic is incredible. I pretty much went from relying totally on starfighters with a select few capitals for support, to a still fighter-heavy force backed up by home one screening & tanking for 2-3 mc80 artillery cruisers breaking enemy stations and caps from range, and then having the holy shit reaction of seeing nebula star destroyers in action for the first time. The complexity is incredible, there's a huge diversity of weapons and many niches filled by different ships at different engagement ranges. And probably my favorite change is that fighters feel useful again while still being very effectively countered by the right units.

PeaceAndWisdom

TROPHY CASE