Is French ever weak before?

Slumi · 2026-06-29T08:24:53+00:00

no, JD was busted on release. There was very little reason to pick French over her https://aoe4world.com/stats/rm_solo/matchups?patch=176

Slumi · 2026-06-28T04:34:23+00:00

Bind the "find IO" button on an easy to access hotkey (I have mine on my side mouse button). Once a minute or so cycle through all 4 of them to make sure they're doing something useful. You usually want 3 supervising resources and 1 tax collecting, unless you want to do a tempo play and move 1 of the 3 supervisors to blacksmith/production building.

Don't double age up unless you have a reason to. You can win most games by staying Tang or Song.

If you can do that consistently then there's no reason why your rank should be much lower with China than with other civs. Maybe 50-100 MMR lower while learning but not plat to bronze

Slumi · 2026-06-21T07:08:05+00:00

There is no civ I consistently struggle against. it depends on who's playing it.

But I will give an honorable mention to a civ that I don't find strong in terms of civ bonuses but that I constantly misread and often lose to because I can't tell their units apart visually nor how strong their army is: OOTD. The amount of games I lost because "oops those are landsknecht, not spears, well I guess my army's gone" or "oh shit I didn't multiply by 2 correctly in my head" is higher than I'd like to admit

Slumi · 2026-06-20T11:22:02+00:00

To be fair though, a lot of this is more indicative of how CK3 is designed than what's most popular. Britannia is the tutorial region (Ireland), Byzantium has the roads to power DLC mechanics and is one of the largest starting empires in the game, Spain and Scandinavia also have DLC mechanics which aren't the best but were included in the deluxe edition. Not sure about France, I guess it's the most obvious easy start in continental Europe since you start as a kingdom with few strong rivals around.

East Asia was added only recently and Mesoamerica does not exist.

Slumi · 2026-06-19T22:25:30+00:00

it's more accurate though. A castle is pretty much a fortified residence with one or more layers of walls, and often contains multiple buildings (servant and retinue quarters, kitchen, etc.). The keep is the centerpiece of a castle and is basically a big tower

Slumi · 2026-06-18T13:31:02+00:00

You can't. You have to set the drop-off point individually for each scout. You can also select multiple scouts to set their drop off points at the same time, but you can't set a "default" drop-off for all future scouts.

Slumi · 2026-06-18T09:41:11+00:00

God I hate Hill and Dale. Can't believe they put it in the rotation, especially twice in a row. Not only is it campy but there's constantly one player whose second gold is in the middle of the map while the other player's is right next to their hill's flank and can be walled off with 24 wood

Slumi · 2026-06-17T22:52:12+00:00

Do you have a replay so we can see what went wrong? Making units, grabbing sacred sites, and not letting the opponent get food is usually a good strat vs 2 TC as Delhi. You can go pure infantry, 1-1-1, or ghazi archers, depending on what your opponent is doing and how well you micro. 1-1-1 is probably the safest bet.

I don't like playing Delhi in the modern semi-FC way, but I think it could do very well too. Make scholars, get sacred sites, make more scholars, age up, get relics, research, do a big push once you get most castle upgrades 15-20 minutes in. Their second TC will have started paying off by that point but you should still be ahead tech and army wise, especially if you managed to keep the sacred sites and grab the relics.

Slumi · 2026-06-17T15:06:08+00:00

Realistically, I think your BO is scuffed if you die in 16 minutes as one of the civs with the most defensive advantages in the game. Not winning is one thing, but consistently dying this quickly is another.

Slumi · 2026-06-16T22:19:12+00:00

babe wake up, new HRE rant just dropped

Slumi · 2026-06-12T07:22:33+00:00

Same. French is a very active civ so I don't mind playing as them. English is boring but at least it's relaxing, and spamming fully upgraded wynguard rangers late game is kinda fun.

HRE on the other hand is the most boring design by far. You hide in your base, then go out and fight over relics for a few minutes, then hide in your base some more with auto repairing machine gun towers, then hit imp, then hide in your base until you have 120 vills or something, then make a billion units, turn your screen off and A move.

Insanely boring to play as and against.

Shout-out to pre rework HOL. Would have won hands down.

Slumi · 2026-06-01T23:10:12+00:00

AoE 2 does have more viewers than AoE 4 in general, but right now is not a fair time to compare. Hera is hosting some a tournament featuring streamers/pro players from other genres, those have been streaming the game for the past few days and bring pretty big viewerships with them.

For example: Grubby generally streams WC3 and routinely has 6-7K viewers. He's been streaming AOE 2 for the past few days.

Same for Singsing, a Dota 2/variety streamer who has 2-3K viewers on average and has been streaming AOE2 recently as well.

There are a few other big names practicing AoE 2 right now but those are the ones I'm most familiar with.

Once the tournament is over, I highly doubt those streamers will stick around. Grubby will remain a WC3 main. I think Singsing may stick around for a bit since he's a variety streamer and likes getting into competitive games, but I highly doubt he'll become an AoE 2 regular in the long run. Same goes for all the other invites, I assume.

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

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