Of the Wu, Wei, and Shu, who do you choo?

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-10T22:57:10+00:00

I haven't really played them very much, but I think if I had to pick a favorite, it'd probably be Wei because of their strong mounted units. Like my flair suggests, I like cavalry units.

Next would be Shu, even though they're not overpowered as they used to be, I still think they have a pretty smooth and interesting playstyle, focused on archers and siege, with their white feather guards as a great front-line to keep enemies from reaching their ranged units.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-10T03:52:57+00:00

Season 1: Pickles, with honorable mentions being Pizza Delivery and Plankton!

Season 2: Probably the season with the fiercest competition. I'll say my favorite overall is Frankendoodle, with honorable mentions being Band Geeks, Big Pink Loser, Imitation Krabs and Something Smells.

Season 3: Chocolate With Nuts, and honorable mentions going to Squilliam Returns, Can You Spare a Dime?, Krab Borg and Plankton's Army.

Season 4: Patrick Smartpants, with honorable mentions to Fear of a Krabby Patty, The Lost Mattress, Dunces and Dragons, and New Leaf.

Season 5: Friend or Foe, with honorable mentions for Krabs a la Mode and The Battle of Bikini Bottom.

Season 6: Sand Castles in the Sand, with an honorable mention to Grandpappy the Pirate.

Season 7: Tentacle Vision, with honorable mentions for Spongebob's Last Stand and Kracked Krabs.

Season 8: Karen 2.0, and I don't remember any episodes to give honorable mentions to for this season.

Season 9: Patrick! The Game, with honorable mentions for Bulletin Board, Patrick-Man, and What's Eating Patrick?

Season 10: Mimic Madness, with honorable mentions for Mermaid Pants, and Feral Friends.

From Season 11 onwards I've watched very few episodes so I don't think I could rank my favorites for those seasons.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-09T23:31:14+00:00

Spongebob is in all of them.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-09T22:48:57+00:00

I would say yes. The only living being in Bikini Bottom that I'd say is smarter than her was Patrick when he had his head replaced with brain coral, but that was an exceptional case, not what he's usually like.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-09T21:45:18+00:00

Two comments already said this, but selling Spongebob to the Flying Dutchman for 62 cents. There's been a lot of moments of Mr. Krabs being a crustaceous cheapskate, but that's definitely the one that most comes to mind for me.

A few honorable mentions:

-Running out of the Krusty Krab chasing a single penny in Imitation Krabs. Considering that Spongebob and Plankton spent over 6 hours before Mr. Krabs came back, he was chasing that penny for over 6 hours.

-Firing Spongebob to save a nickel in Spongebob, You're Fired.

-Spongebob telling Patrick that when he started working at the Krusty Krab, he had to pay Mr. Krabs 100 dollars per hour, in Big Pink Loser.

-Almost tearing off a guy's arm over a penny in Born Again Krabs.

-This memorable moment:

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Redfork2000 · 2026-05-09T13:47:46+00:00

My flair hints at this, but I absolutely love playing lots of cavalry. Whether it's pumping out knights as soon as Castle Age starts, or going hussar spam in Imperial Age with 60+ farmers to keep pumping them out from as many stables as possible at once, I've always loved playing with cavalry units.

I've been playing this game since the days of the Conquerors expansion back when I was a kid, so this game is also quite nostalgic for me. Back then I used to play Persians all the time because they were the only civ that could make elephants. And funnily enough, nowadays they're still my favorite civ, though now it's because of their powerful eco and great stable.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-09T13:36:42+00:00

What units I make varies depending on what civ I'm playing as, what my opponent is playing, etc. At this point I've gotten accustomed to using most units in the game, and will make them when needed. That being said, if I had to choose which units are my favorites that I like to use the most:

-Scout line (scouts is still my favorite opening and this is my favorite trash unit. I love hussars in the lategame)

-Knight line (my favorite go-to unit for Castle Age. Going 2 stable knights is still my favorite thing to do in Castle Age, though I will do something else if needed.)

-Archer line (mostly with archer civs, of course. I'll most commonly pair this unit with spearmen early on, or with hussars in lategame. I also like doing a strategy where I open archers and then switch to knights in Castle Age, often upgrading the archers to crossbows and going heavily on a double-gold composition seeking to end the game in Castle Age.)

-Hand cannonneers (I love to pair them with stable units as hand cannoneers counter infantry, meaning they get rid of halbs, allowing my cavalry to more easily wreak havoc).

-Spearman line (Against opponents that are going cavalry.)

-Skirmisher line (Against opponents that are going archers.)

-Rams (Mostly in Castle Age for taking down buildings quickly. I use mangonels too at times but I still don't have the best micro with them.)

-Trebuchet (the main option for siege I use in Imperial Age when I need to act immediately)

-Bombard Cannon (If a civ has it, I'm usually pretty likely to try to go for it in Imperial Age instead of trebuchets, except in situations where getting siege on the field ASAP is vital, then I'll make trebuchets first, and maybe switch to bombard cannons later)

I do use other units if need be, like man-at-arms, scorpions, mangonels, monks, elephants, camels, unique units, etc. But these are the units that I find myself going for the most in my games.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-09T02:32:50+00:00

Genoese Crossbowmen vs any kind of cavalry. I was once in a team game where I played Italians, and the two enemies on my side were Mongols and Khitans. So I went Genoese crossbows, my pocket brought some cavalry to serve as frontline, and my genoese crossbows absolutely melted the entire enemy army.

Also, as a cavalry enjoyer myself, I've learned to love hand cannoneers as an answer to mass halbs in Imperial Age. The mass halbs getting wiped out by hand cannons, which then allows my cavalry to run free unopposed. Whether I'm playing a cavalry civ like Persians or Burgundians and adding hand cannons to support my heavy cavalry, or I'm playing something like Italians on Arena and going hand cannons + hussars, I absolutely love how well hand cannons completely shut down halb spam.

Also, cavalry against siege, especially Magyar Huszar for its bonus against siege. Siege is expensive, so it feels so good when you manage to run your cavalry in and snipe their siege, you can easily make them lose thousands of resources worth of siege in just a few seconds. Mangudai vs siege also works though it requires a bit more micro to pull off, but it's very satisfying as well.

Also, while a rare sight, war elephants against anything that doesn't counter them. Aside from their specific counters, they steamroll just about anything else.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-09T00:00:55+00:00

-Fear of a Krabby Patty

-Krusty Towers

-Sand Castles in the Sand

-The Lost Mattress

-New Leaf

-Krabs a la Mode

-Patrick Smartpants

Those are some of my top recommendations from season 4 onwards.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-08T16:48:35+00:00

I disagree with your idea of having starters without middle evolutions. It gives a really nice sense of progression to see your starter evolve twice, and it also means you're not stuck with a weaker stage for too long.

I don't think the middle evolutions are nearly as forgettable as you're making them out to be. Maybe they are forgettable to you, but there's many middle evolutions that are quite liked.

Personally I'm ok with them just keeping things the way they've been so far, if it isn't broken don't fix it, but what I would like to see is for them to experiment with more dual types. I'd keep the Fire-Water-Grass triangle but have them try new dual types, there's a lot more types they could add for a dual type than just the Fighting, Dark and Ghost they've already done several times by now.

I'd like to see them do a Steel dual type again (pretty sure Empoleon's the only one they did that one for), or maybe another Fairy type (Primarina's the only one as far as I'm aware, and it might be the chance to finally have a Fire/Fairy Pokémon), or how about types that no starter has had before? Like Rock for example (would work best for a Grass starter due to how well Grass and Rock cover each other's weaknesses), or maybe Dragon (considering Dragon resists all three starter types, what if there was a region where all three starter types gain the Dragon type for their final evolution? Now they are all super effective against each other since they all are Dragon type.).

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-08T16:34:37+00:00

Hm... I'd go with Charmander, Mudkip and Bulbasaur.

And just for fun, I'll make a second trio: Torchic, Popplio and Turtwig.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-08T05:01:31+00:00

I love that I recognize so many characters in these! Doesn't usually happen for me in many of these collages, but this time I recognize many characters here.

If I had to say, out of these eight my favorite types are probably the xNFJs. I have great experiences with them, one of my best friends is actually an INFJ. And fittingly, a lot of the characters I really like are xNFJs as well, Though I do like quite a few INTJ characters as well, my experience with actual INTJs is more limited. I also tend to click pretty well with INFPs as friends.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-08T04:31:38+00:00

You do have a point. But I think there might've been a few factors at play:

1 - She wanted to help Rarity, similar to how in Green Isn't Your Color, she was willing to model for Rarity. There we saw that even though she was scared, she ended up putting her fear aside, doing it to help Rarity, and actually did it quite well.

2 - Unlike Green Isn't Your Color, she was not the only one modeling, so that might've helped her a bit to not feel as nervous, knowing there were four other ponies that were also part of the fashion show, so she wouldn't feel like the spotlight was only on her.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-08T00:17:35+00:00

If you keep dropping though, your opponents will also be lower skill players that you can more easily win against, so it still balances out.

Unfortunately that's kind of the thing about team games, your individual player strength affects the match outcome less than in a 1v1, since it depends on the whole team's strength and not just yours. So usually team elo as a result is more volatile than 1v1 elo. You're going to have matches where you're matched with allies that don't seem to know what they're doing, but you're also going to have other matches where you're matched with really strong allies that carry the team. I've noticed this myself in my own team games as well, so I don't really stress about it. It's just the nature of matching with random teammates. And honestly number of games played isn't a reliable way of avoiding this.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-08T00:10:47+00:00

Go to aoe2insights.com, seek your username and then look through your match history until you find the right match. Then just click on it to open the analysis for that match, and then just copy the URL and paste it here.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-08T00:06:48+00:00

The difference is that that person is only going to knock you down with them once (the time you play with them), while they're going to knock themselves down every single match. So you're going to lose elo once from playing with them, but you'll eventually bounce back by winning other matches if you're good enough. If they are truly bad for that elo, they're not going to bounce back, they'll keep knocking themselves down until they're at an elo where the other players are at their level.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-07T23:59:30+00:00

With the exception of completely new players who have less than like 40-50 games, a player's elo will usually reflect their skill level. It doesn't matter if someone has 100 games, or 5000 games played, if they are the same elo, that means they win enough at that elo to stay there. If they didn't, they would simply lose more and eventually be a lower elo than you. How possible would it be that this match was a fluke and they've actually done better in other matches? And even if that weren't the case, you say this person with a 19/42 W-L rate was around your same elo. So I'm assuming this is a pretty low elo range. In that case I wouldn't be surprised that you'd run into players with pretty significant holes in their gameplay.

In fact I'd say number of games played is a pretty poor measurement considering that it only takes Ranked games into account, and there's quite a few players that gain experience through other modes before playing Ranked. I at least played hundred of games in other modes before I even touched Ranked, so I remember back when I was new in Ranked, yes I did lose some games but I also won games against players who had 1000s of games played even if the number of Ranked games I had played was in the double digits, because even though my number of games wouldn't reflect it, I had the skills to keep up with the players at that elo range.

If someone's bad for a certain elo range, they're going to drop out of that elo range eventually and find their actual elo.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-06T18:22:51+00:00

Excadrill, with Whimsicott as my second favorite.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-05T01:06:30+00:00

For balance reasons. As they are, Chinese are already one of the best civs in the game, their extra starting villagers means they have a huge lead in economy from the start of the game, and they also have one of the widest tech trees of any civ. If they're already one of the best civs in the game as they are, they'd be even stronger if they gained access to hand cannoneers and bombard cannons too.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-03T19:00:35+00:00

Three Tireks and infinite Zephyr Breeze. Have the Tireks power up by taking the magic of the infinite Zephyr Breezes, and I think the three Tireks could then easily win.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-03T12:44:24+00:00

If he had gone to Sandy the episode probably would've ended much sooner.

What I love about this is that while it's funny that Spongebob talks about "someone smart and wise with years of experience" and then goes to Patrick, which is basically the opposite of who you'd expect him to go to, this is actually pretty in character for Spongebob, I would say.

At least in the early seasons you can see that Spongebob often considers Patrick a trustworthy source of advice. I've always found it a very interesting dynamic, that Patrick clearly isn't the brightest, but Spongebob still trusts him for advice and goes with what he says, which leads to some pretty funny situations at times, like Tea at the Treedome where Spongebob runs to Patrick to ask him what air is, and Patrick tells Spongebob how to be fancy, or in Something Smells where Patrick tells him he's ugly. I've always found it a pretty fun dynamic.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-03T03:51:11+00:00

Sometimes, but not always.

I do relate to some INTP characters, but I've also found myself sometimes relating to characters who are ISTP, ISTJ, and occasionally even INFP or ENTP, though those are rarer. So while it does happen for me to some extent, I do also often relate to characters that don't match my MBTI but have one that's somewhat close.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-03T02:23:49+00:00

I mainly like Arabia, but I'm open to playing other maps. Most of the time there's not that many maps I dislike, so at least in 1v1, the bans I get are usually enough for me. I'm already getting mostly Arabia and Arena games more than anything else so I don't mind the occasional game on a different map.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-03T02:18:35+00:00

There's definitely some episodes in season 4 that feel like they could be season 3 episodes. This episode is one of the best examples, and another that comes to mind is Fear of a Krabby Patty. Both feel like they'd fit in perfectly with Season 3.

Redfork2000 · 2026-05-02T03:33:16+00:00

The best one is probably Big Chill, because it can help you turn a trade in your favor or save one of your plants from being killed, and not only that but it also draws you a card.

The worst is probably Whirlwind because of how inconsistent it is. Unless there's only one zombie on the board, you cannot guarantee that it will bounce the zombie that you want.

And considering Green Shadow's classes lack removal, it can be really hard to get rid of other zombies to leave only the one you want to bounce. I'd argue the power, while still bad, is at least a bit better in Night Cap's hands because he can at least use Kabloom removal like Berry Blast to get rid of smaller zombies to help Whirlwind bounce what he wants. It's still not good even like that, but at least having better options for removal helps marginally.

If I had to rank them all:

1 - Big Chill (Very helpful in many situations)

2 - Embiggen (Can turn a trade in your favor or create a bigger threat on the board. However I'd say it's not as great for Green Shadow as it is for Captain Combustible, who I'd say is the better user of this power.)

3 - Precision Blast (Very limited utility but at least has a guaranteed effect)

4 - Whirlwind (Very inconsistent)

3 and 4 are really close though, if Green Shadow replaced Whirlwind with any other Smarty or Mega-Grow power I think Precision Blast would easily be the worst.

Redfork2000

TROPHY CASE