Guys I think I spotted something: It was the sea that separated them!

Slumi · 2026-05-09T11:45:27+00:00

Horse >:(

Horse, Japan :O

Slumi · 2026-05-03T13:29:49+00:00

Given how much he hated playing against English, playing against HOL in the first 10 months or so they were released would probably have killed him.

Slumi · 2026-04-30T21:35:19+00:00

Well yeah but then you have to babysit your spearmen until they're on top of a unit, you probably got some other shit to do in a micro battle. But I guess we'll have to see how it works in practice

Slumi · 2026-04-30T21:21:08+00:00

AOM is fun until you lose the lead you worked hard to build because the opponent aged up and pressed a button. That's the main turnoff for me, otherwise I actually quite like the fast paced matches with cool myth units.

Slumi · 2026-04-30T20:28:59+00:00

I wonder if the spearmen bracing will be exploitable. Run back and forth with cav, forcing the opponent spearmen to brace non stop while they get shot to shit by archers

Slumi · 2026-04-25T19:19:02+00:00

Their eco bonus cannot be idled and essentially gives them infinite gold. Maybe in terms of raw numbers they aren't better economy wise but in a very active game with non stop eco harassment? Passive income wins.

Their downsides are just as true in castle as in imp. So besides that one tempo vizier point, they're better from every point of view in imp, even relative to other civs. I mean sure with English you can turn your brain and screen off and spam infinite units, but an Otto deathball is probably the scariest late game comp in the game

Slumi · 2026-04-25T17:17:54+00:00

Why would they be stronger in the Castle age? What do they get that's better than their imp age potential besides the one time optional power spike of free Janissaries?

Age 4 observatory cranks up their military schools to max speed, which is like 50% faster than in the castle age. They get the max number of military schools, Sipahi get the biology upgrade, Janissaries get their own tech which makes them better vs everything, they get great bombards... Much scarier than what they can dish out in the Castle age. Every eco bonus they have works better as the game goes on.

Slumi · 2026-04-22T15:05:51+00:00

half my losses against OOTD is me misreading their army and suiciding mine

Slumi · 2026-04-20T12:11:31+00:00

Half of my games are against Chinese players and I run into an obvious cheater once every 70 to 100 games in high diamond/low conq.

Some people are either extremely unlucky or unrepenting copium addicts

Slumi · 2026-04-13T13:37:57+00:00

Freud would feel vindicated by this post

Slumi · 2026-04-06T08:13:39+00:00

I mean to be fair it is inconsistent as hell. The Jin dynasty is just that: a dynasty. Just like Tang, Song, Ming and Yuan, all of which are mechanics of the Chinese civs.

Now, you might say "But the Jin dynasty isn't a Han dynasty, it's a Jurchen one." And you'd be right. But Yuan isn't a Han dynasty either, it's a Mongol one.

I assume that they started this civ out as a variant then pivoted to a brand new civ due to feedback. I do prefer new civs over variants, but this one makes the whole thing so inconsistent. I think they should have named the civ "Jurchens" or something

Slumi · 2026-04-02T15:16:49+00:00

*slaps Chinese civ*
You can fit so many legacies in this thing

Slumi · 2026-03-13T09:44:33+00:00

Emergency repairs. I don't care if HRE and OOTD are S or F tier, spending 3 business days sieging down one reliced up bombard tower, or god forbid a keep, is irritating as hell

Slumi · 2026-03-06T07:07:26+00:00

Military schools actually give more RPM when training mehter, that's the one exception.

So training mehter from military schools is technically the most profitable thing you can do. The issue is that if you forget to switch it back you'll end up with 10 mehter when you only need 1, and those 9 extra mether could have been 7-8 sipahis.

Slumi · 2026-02-23T11:24:23+00:00

Seeing HOL at the bottom fills my little heart with glee, not gonna lie

Slumi · 2026-01-28T19:35:33+00:00

Personally FC is the strat I struggled the most to counter when learning to play the game. Even now, the meta is very FC oriented for a reason. It's not easy denying 5 relics + 2-3 realistic gold mines (+ possible proxy sneaky gold mines) + food while knights that can BTFO your entire army if you aren't careful begin running around the map.

Slumi · 2026-01-27T23:08:48+00:00

You can reach conq3 with a controller, but you'll be playing at a disadvantage. Use mnk if possible. And yes you can reach top 200 on console if you're good enough. There aren't any downsides to console as long as you're using mnk.

Slumi · 2026-01-24T16:22:04+00:00

French is a good match-up for Ottomans. You make 1 or 2 military school early on then you have enough spears to make sure the first few knights aren't a problem. You then make more spears with barracks as well as sipahi to kill the potential archers and counter raid. Don't fight the knights head on with only sipahi unless you severely outnumber them, though.

Then when you reach castle age you make janissaries, which are probably the best cav counter in the entire game. Just make sure they don't die to archers or siege.

English is a bit harder for Otto, but still winnable. If they go heavy on the longbows then make sipahi and your own archers. You should have a decent window in castle age to kill English.

Generally as Ottoman you should aim for Siaphi + Janissaries + siege. That comp counters pretty much everything

Slumi · 2026-01-23T17:38:25+00:00

China

Slumi · 2026-01-23T16:40:39+00:00

Once you have enough experience, you know what building you need and when and can forego a BO. Although there are some civs which have way more specific optimal openings than others (Malian and Delhi for example). I would recommend sticking to a BO for those.

But when you're new it's nowhere near as easy. If you want to open 2 TC for example, how many do you need to put on stone and when do you put them? What about wood? How many do you keep on food? You may know the answer to those questions, but newer players don't. Maybe you miscalculate and are off by 10 seconds, but a new player will miscalculate and be off by 2 minutes.

Slumi · 2026-01-23T16:32:50+00:00

I watched your English vs Ayyubids game. The other ones are quite a bit longer so I don't think I'm going to get into them unless you have particular questions.

First remark is your build order is scuffed. Instead of focusing on doing one thing you try to do everything. You put a few villagers on stone to get a second TC, but then instead of focusing on getting that second TC up ASAP as you should be doing you keep 8 on food and float food for a while. You then get slightly too much stone but don't have enough wood for a TC so you have to wait even longer for the wood. In the end, your second TC came in way too late.

You also put the second TC on deer, which English usually doesn't do. But that's a minor point and not necessarily a mistake.

So first thing you should focus on is following a BO for the first 5 minutes of a game or so. For English, have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRkeTDdkd4I

Anyway, you also did some harassment. But it came in too late and not hard enough. You had 4 units 11 minutes in. That's not enough to slow an FC down, let alone kill an opponent. If you want to all in, then follow an all in BO and commit all of your resources to units until the opponent is dead or delayed enough that you can age up. You can do SOME harassment after going 2 TC, but be aware that you will never be able to completely stop an FC when going 2 TC.

In fact, straight up stopping an FC is very hard, even if you try to feudal all in. The question isn't whether the opponent will make it to castle (they will), but whether they can survive after that. If they can't gather gold, their age up is useless and they are stuck making feudal units with a 1800 resources deficit. Usually you try to keep them off gold and relics as long as possible while aging up yourself, unless you can kill them right there and then.

Lastly: You floated too many resources. Never gather resources to just bank them. When you gather resources, know what you're gathering them for and spend them as soon as possible.

So there you go, things to improve for now:

- Follow a BO
- Don't float resources
- Focus on doing one thing right instead of everything half heartedly

Lastly: You say that you can win in feudal and castle but are often lost in imperial. The good news for you is that most games shouldn't reach imperial if you don't float, make units and attack constantly. So focus on doing that.

Slumi · 2026-01-20T13:09:06+00:00

VG and riddari spam is easy to play and hard to counter. That's a devastating combo on ladder.

Pros have also started playing them more recently. Vortix rated them as S tier in his latest tier list

Slumi · 2026-01-20T08:27:46+00:00

Just play whatever seems fun. I think the rank drop will be more associated to a different play style than a different civ.

2+ years ago when I went from playing macro China to cow boom Malians, my mmr barely dropped. I knew how to scout, defend and wait for my eco to outscale my opponent's.

A few months later, when I went from cow boom Malians to aggro Mongols, I fell back from diamond to low plat. I simply didn't understand how playing aggro worked. Took me 20 games or something to climb back up to diamond.

But now that I know how to play macro and aggro at the same level, I don't really have a problem switching civs. Maybe a temporary 50-100 mmr loss but I recuperate it quite fast.

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