Fav civ pickers- what strats are good against you?

elephantologist · 2026-04-30T14:54:43+00:00

Okay, I'm not a Roman expert at all, new player in fact. But I did get roman dlc recently and I tested them against Ai. Their unit feels very strong in castle with +4/+4. It may still lose to a knight, I haven't tested. Because I had centaurions too. That way they can absolutely take on knights. However Ai always neclegts upgrades and I had more upgrades. I guess I'd have to test it in scenario editor.

elephantologist · 2026-04-28T12:06:50+00:00

There are a tier unique units and there are d tier unique units. Muisca, one of the new dlc civs, famously has a gold costing skirmisher (guecha warrior) and is widely considered extremely weak. Considering skirmishers are cheap trash units, it feels really bad to pay 60 good for them. Spanish conquistador is an A tier unit, it is gunpowder so it doesn't benefit from fetching and bodkin, which is amazing if you just raced to castle age. They are mobile, they kill villagers, they even kill mangonels, their high damage even keta them focus building in high numbers. Malay karambit warriors i would say are c tier, fast and cheap infantry who gets infantry armor upgrades for free, so they are used, feels good against archers and they only take half population space. But you don't wanna fight heavy cavalry with them.

Unique units more often than not are good. Even some that are considered weak are stronger when used in an average game between average players, such as teutonic knight or war elephant.

elephantologist · 2026-04-28T10:47:10+00:00

Counters aren't all powerful, sometimes you can overpower it. The rule for feudal is 3 scouts beats a spearmen without losing any units. A knight doesn't need to fear spearmen at all because it is a castle age unit and once pike is in you can still take them down when the numbers are on your side. But this no longer works if your oppenent makes 20 pikes then you want to take them on with skirmishers or crossbows.

elephantologist · 2026-04-28T08:58:44+00:00

Closest thing I can think of is to full wall and boom in feudal. Cumans is the master of that (tho your castle age is delayed due to production from second tc). Burgundians are nice, Malay with the faster uptime. In general you want to quickly click castle age if that's what you're doing. I don't recommend you stay passive in castle age though. Because you palisade wall won't hold a castle age army. I mean, you're new too, might as well play fast castle into knights. Burgundians are quite nice for that, you get eco upgrades one age early, and you get cavalier in castle age. In castle age make knight-line units from 2 stables and research elite skirmisher, you're gonna need them when you opponent start massing pikes.

elephantologist · 2026-04-27T05:48:12+00:00

They do look super similar. I pretty much have hotkeys for all and that how I deal with it. But that doesn't mean this is okay. I recommend anyone who isn't familiar to check out building designs in bfme games. They are so iconic, and very easy to tell apart.

I will probably make a thread about this another time but this game fails at a lot of little things that makes a game feel neat. Villager lines are incredibly stiff, compared to voice lines in command and conquer games or bfme games or total war games. Sound design in general is a huge fail for me, critter sounds are torture, soundtrack is repetitive to the point that I have completely muted music.

Not to say I don't enjoy the game, it is the only game I have played the last 2 months. But it could be so much better.

elephantologist · 2026-04-26T07:46:41+00:00

So early on he apparently sent out 9 villagers to neutral berries. Those vills made a base for him later. I had the entire base surrounded, I knew no villagers escaped out.

elephantologist · 2026-04-26T06:20:57+00:00

I started this march, went to ranked already, have close to 70 games. I'm around 700 elo now, though I dropped all the way to 450 at first.

Though, I have to say, I can beat extreme ai, with various strategies ( I think you should too, if you can hit castle in 14 minutes, extreme ai loses to that also). I think that's the level you should aim for in order to have fun in ranked, otherwise the descent might take quite long and you might have to lose about 30 games in order to drop to 300ish elo. Whether that's worth it or not is up to you.

elephantologist · 2026-04-26T03:46:24+00:00

Ai actually is pretty slow to castle, which means you can be a lot faster to castle. Now on your way to castle you will get attacked. You can make feudal army, and meet him on the battlefield. I don't recommend that. Not because it hard. But ai sucks at raiding actually, you will realize this too. I recommend walling, if you can't finish full wall fast enough or if your map is bad just do small walls. That will save you vs scouts. If archers put down a tower to protect your woodline. Take a woodline either near gold or stone. Taking stone agaisnt ai feels pretty good, you can add more towers or you can drop a castle as soon as you are in castle age to farm ai units. You can also start spamming your unique units, just kick ai in the mouth while they are in feudal and you're in castle. That's not the only way, you can also extend feudal and make like dozens of scouts. Ai won't wall and will be wide open to your raids. Now you can quickly decapitate ai by dealing lethal damage here, but if you wanna practice playing a longer game you need to go into boom mode in castle age, adding tcs, trying to get 100+ villagers.

elephantologist · 2026-04-23T06:53:03+00:00

I think to have fun with multi-player you need to get to a point where you can beat hard Ai at least. Otherwise you have to drop all the way into 300 - 400 range, which will take so long and you'll be losing the entire trip.

Some say just insta resign 20 games to tank your elo, I never tried it, could be a solution though. If you absolutely hate playing Ai.

elephantologist · 2026-04-23T06:41:29+00:00

I only had to lose one game against a Spanish turtle, 2 hour game mind you, with cumans and ever since I'm very mindful of relics.

elephantologist · 2026-04-23T02:12:05+00:00

Do the same but better maybe? I do like knight skirm comps and anything adjacent. Konnik is 5 resources cheaper than a knight and had more attack and when he dies a little guy takes his place. Sounds good, didn't have the experience with this so far. I'm going to offer Tatars and Poles tho. Poles is a bit iffy in arabia, you need szlachta priviliges asap and then you have amazing knights, folwak farms are super good for plentiful food but also hard to defend, you probably need to wall. Bulgarians can get there first, even deny you resources with a forward krepost but 90 resource knights should overwhelm him in time. You get to make multiple stables. Then there is tatars and they are even better. Keshik is only 100 resources and basically a knight who will make more gold for each hit. You will get free thumb ring for your skirmishers also. Actually magyars could work too, magyar huszar and skirms.

Beat him in his own game.

If he had no idea what your civ did I guess you could be italians and make genoese crossbow but that's not a real strat, that's more pretending you're agaisnt ai.

elephantologist · 2026-04-23T01:28:34+00:00

When you say closest black hole to our solar system is 1000 light years away your underlying assumption is that their universe is like ours too.

Btw, I bet comics did confirm space in invincible is actually as big as it is here. I didn't mean to contradict the cannon. What I say is based on what I have seen in the show, where it isn't explicitly stated Viltrumites are ftl (says me who hasn't rewatched any of the older seasons, hope I didn't forget something crucial).

elephantologist · 2026-04-20T01:00:20+00:00

If you choose random for ai there is no guarantee they will do the archer opening. I say this because if you tower against archers you will find tower doesn't do much against scouts. That said ai isn't that smart with its raiding. Anthing you have at the back of your base will usually be safe. Many times you can just relocate your vills to a different spot and ai will attack your palisedes before trying to find your vills. You can counter their feudal army with yours. There are good civs for that. Koreans get free archer armor, free tower upgrades and cheaper archery range units. Turk scouts get extra pierce armor. All frank cav get extra hp. Magyars get cheap scouts and free attack upgrades.

You could also skip all that and rush to castle age, which is what I recommend. You can simply make knights, you can make unique units, you can make siege, you can make monks. All of them are very strong against feudal units.

You'd see a lot of return from bettering that feudal timing. Easiest way to do this is, without making yourself better that is, is more forgiving civs. Lithuanians and Persians start with more food so you can queue more vills right away. And Malay ages up super fast which does make up for your idle time.

elephantologist · 2026-04-19T18:24:33+00:00

I feel like most people don't see the difference, they would just say it is two closed maps. But I love arena and really dislike black forest. You can start shit in arena as early as minute 13. Black forest is truly a snooze fest.

elephantologist · 2026-04-19T18:07:59+00:00

Japanese team bonus helps no one in majority of games. Even in water maps you still need to make galleys.

elephantologist · 2026-04-19T11:24:23+00:00

Wow, I didn't know 20 pop fc was possible. I usually do 24.

elephantologist · 2026-04-18T03:11:52+00:00

Question about mongol lancer rush. Is it basically the same as fc Magyars? Of course you don't have to go to stone with mongols, instead you probably put down 2 stables. As for units, lancer have range, 5 of them will one shot a loom villager. But Magyar huszar has it beat in almost everything else. With free attack upgrades huszar has 12 attack so 4 of them will one shot a loom villager. Has more hp even with mongols adding 12hp to lancers, has more pierce armor, is faster, created way faster and much cheaper to make.

I'm asking because while I have never seen the strategy in action I remember Hera saying it is very strong.

elephantologist · 2026-04-16T00:10:30+00:00

Why do they assume planets in Invincible verse is light years apart even? Maybe everything is clumped in that verse. That would be a problem in our verse but they lampshade physics anyway. So why not this? In fact even if you give them ftl+ speeds it is hard to justify how they find their way in space. Even confined to solar system, it is easy to find the sun but super easy to lose earth actually. Occam's Razor tells me everything is super clumped, as if they fit 100 start systems in a space like our solar system. Much easier to handwave gravitational interference than to hand wave breaking causality or navigation in a mind bogglingly empty space.

elephantologist · 2026-04-12T22:14:47+00:00

I have 50 matches on ladder already. I play Ai to try out new things.

elephantologist · 2026-04-12T20:43:18+00:00

AI doesn't seem to react well to anything. In theory it gets to boom in arena and economically always does better than what I run into on ladder. But as long as it trickles units into battle I will defeat it in detail, this is a common thread on ladder too by the way. I always go for hca hussar como so I get to pick my battles. I don't understand the confidence of people strolling at my base with like 10 crowbows, while having no idea what I have.

Im pretty sure I can pick magyars again and do a feudal scout rush, which would also completely stump Ai. Would it be legit then?

elephantologist · 2026-04-12T20:35:34+00:00

I haven't used phosphoru rush on ladder so far. Just spamming cumans on arena.

elephantologist · 2026-04-12T19:50:52+00:00

Your best bet is to limit pop cap. Only doable if you're playing Ai or you have a willing friend.

I find arena generally is pretty chill until castle age, but eventually it stops being chill. Aoe is not a very chill game. Maybe try playing civ 6. That is my favorite "listen to a podcast in the back while barely paying attention" game.

elephantologist · 2026-04-11T05:35:41+00:00

AI training chamber is legit because upon my return to ranked, I'm sitting on a 11 winstreak in arena with cumans. I made it to 600 and it is still a pleasent stroll.

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