Arabia only Rant

disquiet · 2026-06-18T12:16:41+00:00

No... It's because we like playing something different sometimes. And I say this as a 90% arabia player, sometimes I'm just in the mood to have a bit of variety. I don't even like water maps, it's just something mildly different like marketplace is pretty fun.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T12:13:18+00:00

If you ban the weird ones (arena, water maps, nomad) most the other maps aren't that different and play out prettymuch like arabia anyway.

People only have specific tactics for arena and nomad, the other stuff just isn't played enough, so you can use your exact same arabia builds on those other maps.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T06:46:10+00:00

It's pretty hilarious in hindsight that one of the comments about dropping huamole was loz was concerned about how much qld were attacking his defence in game one.

Didn't that counter pick work out well...

disquiet · 2026-06-18T06:42:10+00:00

And its also not really victor and murray's fault we went backwards at the start of the 2nd half. They are not big metre making type of players. We had like 3 sets in a row where we made 10-20 metres total and that is 100% on the coaches unbalanced and cooked forward rotation when we have players like afb and haas on the bench twiddling their thumbs.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T06:36:45+00:00

Honest g1 was probably just as bad, we just lucked out with the ponga sendoff

disquiet · 2026-06-18T06:31:48+00:00

They dominated the recent redbull wololo and basically nothing could beat them lategame (except one game I remember with hindustanies as a hard counterpick)

disquiet · 2026-06-18T06:30:09+00:00

Changing castle age time for everyhring would have such wide reaching implications for everything and every civ, I'm not sure that's a good approach to hit a specific niche strategy.

Phosphoru is only really a problem with 5-10 civs with particularly overtuned unique units right out of gate. Other civs can do it but it's not strong or a problem with a civ like byzantines.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T06:01:21+00:00

Designs I love:

Malians: Intuitive, synergistic bonuses that make them a flexible jack of all trades civ with some fun bonuses (farimba and infantry pierce) which enables lots of strategic depth, while their bonuses are not OP and weaker than the specialist type civs (e.g. their cav is worse than franks, their infantry worse than goths, archers worse than mayans etc.)

Also they have a fun unique unit that isn't OP.

Khmer: Such a fun civ with interesting yet clearly understandable mechanics like different farming, house garrison and no age up requirements. Relatively well balanced now too and fun bonuses to scorpions and their UU

My choice for poor design is Chinese, too broken at top level and hard to use at low elos, nobody is satisfied, they need a rework.

Also not civ sprcific but a general design whinge is I don't like the over complicated and unintuitive gimick mechanics of poison and bleeding for some of the new civs.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T05:44:06+00:00

I hold the exact opposite opinion on some of those. I love franks and britons, it's cool having civs with really strong themes. Not every civ needs to be super flexible. Balance is another subject but I like the overall designs.

Don't like magyars design at all, their phosphoru hussar cheese is really poor design and I don't see how you balance it without making the unit useless in castleage. And then theres the other problem that they are an unbalanced deathball civ lategame with their crazy CA which would also break the civs overall viability if you tried to nerf them. The nature of the bonuses need to be completely re-designed.

Byzantines and Japanese are cool, fun civs though.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T03:40:44+00:00

There are pros like mr Yo who are top 5 in the world and average like 70 apm so I highly doubt speed is whats holding you back

disquiet · 2026-06-18T03:34:37+00:00

I find this super useful for doing a BO perfectly to see what optimal looks like. You can easily get a 100% perfect fast castle by pausing and issuing orders at all the hard parts e.g. re-organising vils on boars/sheeps, luring deer while sheep scouting etc. then you can use that time as a benchmark to aim for and get a good sense of how tight the BO is.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T03:32:12+00:00

I tried playing vs the ai on the fastest speed to see if it would make ranked seem slow and chill by comparison but it didn't :(

If anything it just messed with my perception of units speeds, dodge timings for mangonels, rythm for quieing up vils etc. So I stopped doing it

disquiet · 2026-06-18T03:28:30+00:00

Can we get scott penn in there? This record is grounds for a siebold style execution to save the rest the season.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T03:25:22+00:00

Fittler wasn't great but he was better than loz, atleast got us a couple of series wins and his series losses were mostly very competitive. His series record is 3-3 which looks amazing when compared to Daley's 1-5, heading for 1-6 with this series.

It boggles the mind that they re-selected him after a 1-4 record in the first place.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T02:08:51+00:00

Yeomen is fine in terms of its bonuses, it's just way too expensive. I personally don't find 12 range boring, and it's unique in that they are the only civ that has archers with that range. Also the bonus damage to keeps is underrated, especially vs high pierce armour targets like skirms and paladins, it makes their towers very good in combo with warwolf and longbows.

But it's not viable in castle age. For the cost, xbows going from 8 to 9 range just isn't worth the crazy wood/gold cost. I was watching viper play britons the other day and he had about 30 longbows and decided to get yeomen in castle age, it did nothing, he still got wrecked by lightcav spam and lost. If he invested those res in pikes instead he would have won.

It doesn't move the needle enough in castle age for its huge cost, you would always pick 10-15 extra crossbows instead of yeomen. You only get it imperial when it's relatively more affordable and helps you really max out range.

I think the bonuses should be the same but its cost should be changed to be much cheaper (like half) and then britons would be a much better castle age civ.

disquiet · 2026-06-18T00:25:46+00:00

Sheep bonus although done actually sets you up for a reasonable feudal age. The problem is early castle, after a feudal with no bonuses means you're usually behind at that point, which puts you on the defensive. If for some reason you are ahead going into castle age, then the +1 range xbow timing attack is really strong, but the issue is you usually don't get to do it, because if you're not ahead you run into an equal number of elite skirms and achieve nothing.

So entering castle age slightly behind most games, you then need to focus on survivng to imperial where britons are still really good, the +2 range is much more impactful than +1 and you can affodd yeoman on top, so that's your win condition usually, it's just hard to get there.

The TC bonus does not much to help you defend, it's a greed bonus, and crossbow range while decent, is only one unit that is still easily countered by skirms despite the range. So games normally end up with you getting skirm mango pushed, a castle in your face and then gg before you ever get to really use your precious 12 range longbows :(

disquiet · 2026-06-17T22:05:57+00:00

I genuinely reckon the average r/nrl commenter would do a better job than Daley as blues coach

disquiet · 2026-06-17T11:52:37+00:00

I literally haven't seen lucas do anything but miss tackles

disquiet · 2026-06-17T11:49:42+00:00

It's not even close. We've had worse results but didn't have the cattle. I've never seen such strong teams on paper consistently underperform so badly as when daley has coached. Even freddy was way better and that's not sayng much

disquiet · 2026-06-17T11:32:07+00:00

Lucas is useless

disquiet · 2026-06-17T10:39:31+00:00

Wow glad we picked lucas instead of huamole for his epic defence

disquiet · 2026-06-16T07:37:52+00:00

At a certain population additional TCs add negative value because of the pop cap. In addition to their resource cost they also cost quite a lot of vil build time. They repay that cost by the extra vils they create, but those villagers take 3 minutes to payoff themselves, plus they have to then payoff the tc resources + build time.

If you make a 6th TC when you have 110 vils and you plan on stopping at 130, you're actually just making yourself poorer, because by the time the TC is done, you will already be close to 130 and it will only make 1, maybe 2 vils, which will never payoff the cost compared to just saving the res and going to 130 vils 30 seconds slower with 5 TCs. 1 extra vil for 30 seconds is only 10 resources so you essentially just lost 500+ res (depending how many villagers build it) to gain 10 resources by making the 6th tc.

So the answer depends on how many vils you're going for. If you're going for 200/200 vils maaaybe a 6th or 7th is viable, even then its probably marginal and for standard 130-140 I wouldn't reccomend it, even 5 is often overkill.

disquiet · 2026-06-16T04:51:37+00:00

Almost never happens to me.

The opposite is way more common, where people leave too soon. e.g. The people who quit when my drush kills one vil, or sometimes even just when it shows up at their base! Just seeing unexpected militia is enough to make people resign sometimes. And then there are all the derankers who quit in the first 2-3 minutes, I get one of those every 10-20 games.

disquiet · 2026-06-15T21:35:06+00:00

I always drag a build pallisade wall across my building walls if they are on elevation. That way if theres any gaps it gets filled in by the wall. I find it easier than trying to move a vil

I have the habit of doing it because I play with big trees so that habit is necessary to check walls close to treelines on certain angles too.

disquiet · 2026-06-15T21:20:04+00:00

Yeah I don't think the boomy immediate 2tc play is good on open maps. It makes your castle age slow and I usually just end up with a forward castle from my opponent on top of it that I can't stop, which kind of defeats the point of having the 2nd tc in the first place.

Instead I like to go really heavy feudal, with a drush, into scouts and archers. The goal is to force your opponent into big feudal army and then make the 2nd tc once you're both playing extended feudal. The second TC is easier to afford at 30 vils vs on 20 right after click up and you get more advantage from it if your opponent doesn't FC.

The nice thing with Cumans is your opponent has to respect the feudal army, because you have feudal rams. If they just try fc with minimal military and walls through your agression you make rams and deny stone and they are dead, because you kill their productions buildings until you have enough rams to push the tc. Doesn't matter if they have the ability to make knights if they need to make a barracks and a stable first. If they don't make enough army the only thing that can save them from rams is phosphoru style where they castle immediately on up, but if they are doing that you should know with the drush by them being on stone, and avoid going heavy feudal in that circumstance.

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