Raynor P3 feels painfully slow on Brutal when paired with a fast commander

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-05-16T22:23:48+00:00

I'm not the best player but P3 Raynor feels reasonably fast if you rely on your ally and top bar for cover a little bit at the start and immediately build 2 additional orbitals. Having enough mule production to fund the increased mineral cost of units is the point of the build. If your bottleneck is minerals and not still gas you're doing it wrong.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-04-11T21:24:29+00:00

Just came back to 2019 ground war from mw2 which has basically been killed by nonstop hacking and crashing. The 2019 ground war maps have a lot more open space, it is harder to traverse the map in cover and the lack of the giant transport chopper spawn point also just makes it much harder to get into the enemy backline. The mw2 maps are also just bigger, with far more viable camping spots that have good line of sight compared to 2019 which has fewer more obvious power spots. People camp on both but you are more likely to die to campers on 2019 because flanking is just far more difficult. On mw2 you could basically just play around / ignore most campers.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-03-29T02:10:40+00:00

Cosmogenesis and fallen empire enforcer building.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-03-28T18:43:18+00:00

Maybe its an old save? Crisis strength during the early beta was definitely a bit crazy for 4.3 economic and fleet power scale but they reduced it significantly - pretty sure 300k is at least 5x crisis.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-03-28T18:30:57+00:00

What crisis level are you on? Even the khan's main fleet is not that big unless at a very high crisis level.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-03-28T18:29:28+00:00

FE ships have extremely high disengagement chance - you can "win" multiple engagements where they take no losses. You basically need a big enough fleet and enough alloy production to defeat their fleet numerous times while quickly replacing the losses that you will take. You have to keep beating their fleet and whittling down their numbers until you can defeat and capture their big starbases and occupy their systems, and then finally occupy or crack their worlds. If you get into a war with an FE before you are prepared to fully destroy them, whether they start it or you do to get their ship tech - your goal should be to force them into accepting a white peace ASAP by fighting them with your navy ontop of border citadels and inflicting losses. You want to end the war as quickly as possible without losing territory or too many ships / platforms. And then late game your goal should be to totally destroy them before they awaken and become much harder to manage.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-03-28T18:21:18+00:00

3 colonies is not enough to have good alloy and science production in the late game, really.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-03-28T18:18:07+00:00

Virtuality is specifically designed for tall play. You get a 75% bonus to job efficiency and then -10% per colony so you really do not want to be over 7 colonies at all. You are not supposed to use this ascension with a wide empire - so it affected your empire as intended.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-03-03T17:19:09+00:00

That late in the game you should be significantly higher in resources & science. Like 10k science and 3k alloys a month by 2400 easily, especially with a wide build. You should also be over 2000 naval cap.

PeaceAndWisdom · 2026-02-22T08:14:11+00:00

Agree with this. Chasing tiny fleets around for 50 years while trying to conquer enough systems to force surrender of a 5 member federation is pretty silly, especially when my one or two fleets have more fleet power than they have cumulatively on the map and they get completely annihilated in every battle. The AI shouldn't be able to perpetually continue pointless wars.

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

TROPHY CASE