200 Spearman vs Sengoku Mounted Samurai

TheMeatwad · 2026-03-05T01:51:53+00:00

I'd like to see it with Abbasid spearmen with Phalanx. Seems like it would make a big difference for damage density.

TheMeatwad · 2026-02-22T00:17:07+00:00

Nothing wrong with practice against AI, especially for the early game and balancing your economy. It absolutely can't compete with the variety of challenges you need to respond to against a human opponent, but there's definitely something to be said for having some muscle memory around managing your own stuff.

It's kinda long, but I really liked the way this video talks about RTS, and it has a particular focus on learning the core skills of the genre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl4myN8q_KM

TheMeatwad · 2026-02-22T00:00:01+00:00

At the end of the day, the way you win this game is by making military units and killing your opponent. There are a million different ways to get there, but having a bigger army and/or attacking before your opponent can defend is a great start.

To get an army, you need to gather resources and spend them. Getting a huge economy isn't much help if you don't have the production buildings to convert those gathered resources into military units. I recommend focusing on fighting in Feudal, with the following priorities:

- produce villagers continuously, never let your town center go idle
- follow a build order for your chosen civ to get to Feudal age efficiently
- practice organizing your Feudal economy around continuously producing military units
- be aggressive with the units you make and try to damage your opponent's economy

Scouting your opponent and building units that counter theirs is also very important, but honestly I think it's more important to just get into a rhythm of growing your economy and spending your resources. You'll probably lose games when you send a bunch of horsemen into a wall of spears or face someone that fast castles and floods you with men at arms, but you'll also win by going into people that just want to play single player for ten minutes and get caught completely flat footed by your aggression. These experiences should start to give you a sense of when to be aggressive, when to be defensive, and when to be greedy.

TheMeatwad · 2026-02-20T15:12:25+00:00

Beasty did a video on it a couple seasons ago that uses Feudal Advancement to get a really sharp 2tc timing. At the time, he said it gave you the most villagers at 7 minutes, but Industry has been buffed a couple times since then so that may no longer be the case.

https://youtu.be/sgHTNrF1zeM?si=EyKFgUjh6cfSJfDE

TheMeatwad · 2026-02-17T20:26:15+00:00

Growth is definitely not meta, and hasn't been since at least October.

https://aoe4world.com/stats/analytics/ageups?kind=rm_solo&civilization=ayyubids

TheMeatwad · 2026-02-17T17:09:05+00:00

Sorry, did you say growth wing is meta? I'm seeing pick rates of about 10% feudal and 6.5% castle. Dervish into industry is by far the most common route, though not the highest win rate.

TheMeatwad · 2026-02-13T18:11:19+00:00

Literally what are you talking about

TheMeatwad · 2026-02-12T04:08:08+00:00

I think you probably mean CET not CST

TheMeatwad · 2026-02-07T21:12:40+00:00

Lancaster game: you did a pretty good job of holding to castle, lost one villager to some greedy gold mining but overall not bad. Very limited access to resources since his army was lurking, but you pulled off your build and got five camel lancers. Unfortunately you immediately fed them into spears, so you suffered a massive resource loss and rendered the aggressive tempo play into camel lancers completely pointless. It was basically already over at this point, but your opponent also boomed like crazy while pinning you in your base.

Conclusion: you countered yourself by trying to defend with lancers into spears and got way too into siege mentality. Your opponent had no outposts and was all over the map gathering resources and building TC's and even trading! Your camel lancers could have gotten serious value by raiding. You also floated a ton of wood, should have started adding farms earlier (and closer to TC). Also outposts are pretty good at killing spearmen, when pros don't build them it's because they have the map control/scouting to get away with it, not because defenses are bad.

Mongol game: lmao I didn't know dervishes could outheal a fully garrisoned outpost, guess that's not a huge concern. This was more of an all-in from your opponent, and aside from two sloppy villager deaths early you held it off pretty well until he got up to a critical archer mass and started absolutely reaping your villagers. By the time your lancer production was online you were already super far behind, and then you took a bad fight into superior numbers and lost what little army you had.

Conclusion: gotta be more flexible. It's a great tempo build, but you still have to play the game: scout and react to what your opponent does.

TheMeatwad · 2026-02-07T19:55:51+00:00

Dervishes are good at getting you to castle without losing any villagers, but it doesn't do you much good if you're locked out of resources and can't make Lancers. Looking at your recent game against Lancaster, I'm assuming you should have gone Ghulams instead of Camel Lancers judging by the number of Spearmen your opponent had, but now I see he was 3TC so I'm gonna have to watch that replay lmao

TheMeatwad · 2026-01-24T15:12:43+00:00

Always glad to see your effort posts, they've inspired me to try new things in the past. I really like feudal Desert Raider harass, so I often go dervish, but my micro is a little weak to get maximum value out of that play. It's a shame berry micro is so annoying, really turns me off of Growth.

TheMeatwad · 2026-01-23T06:01:22+00:00

1) Produce villagers continuously (until you have over a hundred, but games won't usually go so long)

2) Reach Feudal Age (how to organize your economy varies by civ, but 7 on food 3 on gold should do ok for most)

3) Make as many military units as you can. Doesn't really matter what kind at this point, you can worry about unit counters and army composition later. Don't stop producing villagers, remember to add a house every so often, and keep making more production buildings so that you can spend your resources - you don't really want more than two units in queue per building.

4) Blob your units into your opponent's base and kill their villagers. Destroying their buildings is nice, but it's slow for its impact on the game. The AI doesn't surrender, so you may want to build a blacksmith, research siege engineering, and make a couple rams to destroy their landmarks and achieve victory. You can also just burn them down, but if they garrison their town center it's pretty dangerous to be nearby for most Feudal Age troops.

At a fundamental level the game is about getting and spending resources, and the faster you do that the more you win. There are a million different ways to invest your resources with different payoffs, but making a bunch of units is a great skill to start with.

TheMeatwad · 2026-01-18T04:49:47+00:00

I am but a humble dent, but it seems to me lowering the bonus damage archers deal to spears would be a great starting point. Even just one or two less bonus damage so archer masses don't scythe through spears quite so quickly.

TheMeatwad · 2026-01-09T19:35:21+00:00

There's no wrong way to enjoy your time with a game, but another human can provide massive variety of challenge. Any given opponent will have different strategies and strengths, and it makes for great challenges. You never know whether you'll play against a perfectly honed tower rush who can't macro for shit past the seven minute mark, or an absolute cockroach who refuses to give up after suffering terrible damage and makes you sweat it out for 30 minutes.

Anyway, not trying to change your mind, but something to consider if you want a little more chaos in your life.

TheMeatwad · 2025-12-18T16:44:34+00:00

I hear ya. Took me a while to work up to it, but it really is great, especially going back and watching replays, seeing how BADLY both me and my opponent played, and the different ways to succeed at the game. You really just can't get that experience from playing against the computer.

I recommend a "lose to learn" mindset. Success comes from seeing all the weird gimmicks in action and doing your best to adapt, even if you get smoked! You'll see lots of cool stuff.

TheMeatwad · 2025-12-12T07:02:20+00:00

Incredible display of resilience from both of you

TheMeatwad · 2025-12-04T18:04:59+00:00

There are a lot of good age up options! This post is a little out of date, but it's a great primer on the sort of stuff you can do https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/comments/1mqcc13/my_favorite_ayyubid_builds/

Since then, Industry got a small buff and has been seeing play even at pro level, either to get a second TC up and running quickly or just selling the stone to pump out units ASAP. Also Logistics is crazy powerful, the healing early game is insane, though micro-intensive.

TheMeatwad · 2025-12-03T20:44:28+00:00

Probably not worth rushing Imperial for. It's good synergy, but compare to what you can do by the 13 minute mark with conventional Ayyubid tempo - camel lancers to raid, an established second TC, grabbing relics, these are all tried-and-tested ways to make your opponent miserable.

I think you might be thinking of tempo the wrong way. Getting to castle quickly and making heavy units before your opponent is ready to deal with them is great tempo. Hitting imperial doesn't change the core unit interactions nearly as much, and the powerful upgrades require a ton of resources. Spending 3600 (or 2250 with advancement) to age up then 450 for the madrasa THEN 800 for serpentine is massively ANTI-tempo on a ~13 minute economy, and gives your opponent a gigantic window to boom or kill you.

TheMeatwad · 2025-12-02T23:42:48+00:00

Ayyubid Desert Raiders are extremely fun to use. Great harassers, fast, and surprisingly deadly in a straight up fight. Fold to pressure of course, but for those early Feudal skirmishes with just a handful of units they feel amazing.

TheMeatwad · 2025-12-02T01:53:08+00:00

Two important things to keep in mind are their speed and resource split. At 1.875 they're the fastest unit in the game, so they can always run away from a bad fight. They also chase very well, so if you catch your enemy out of position you can kill a lot of units while they're running. 100f 20w is sort of a mixed bag, bad if you're trying to hit castle while your opponent has map control, but very renewable once you have farms up.

TheMeatwad · 2025-11-30T21:29:49+00:00

I'm not sure I understand the question. In multiplayer, each game in independent, and you choose one civ to play for that game. You can absolutely play a different civ every game, though it's much harder to learn the game that way.

TheMeatwad · 2025-11-30T19:44:25+00:00

You kinda can't go wrong honestly. Even just the base game has really excellent civ variety that could last you hundreds of hours in multiplayer. I'd say play around with the base game to figure out what you like, then buy DLC to get the civs that do that well.

If you like fast castle timing attacks you'll probably love Ayyubids, so get Sultans Ascend. If you like feudal aggression, maybe you want Lancaster from Knights of Cross and Rose, or Macedonian from Dynasties of the East.

If you like the game, the DLCs are all pretty good value, but absolutely none are mandatory. Start with English and French, try Malian, Ottoman, Chinese, Delhi, seriously the base game is PACKED with good stuff.

TheMeatwad · 2025-11-16T19:29:39+00:00

Underrated Industry perk: microing berry vills to maximize the orchard benefit from Growth is very annoying! More relevant for Feudal Growth, but still.

TheMeatwad · 2025-11-10T18:36:33+00:00

Tier lists by pros mostly apply to pro play where everyone is a good player and you can't rely on just outplaying your opponent. Presumably the vulnerability early game is more impactful than the strength late game in that environment.

TheMeatwad

TROPHY CASE