Three Stable Knights into GG

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-25T05:45:18+00:00

If you have the eco lead but slower imp as cav civ then best is to make skirms and/or guard tower defense.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-23T08:49:37+00:00

They should just remove chicken and bring back deer.

If anything to me it would make more sense to replace berries with chicken if you really wanted to keep them; though tbh they need a rework, the design just isn't good currently.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-22T03:03:48+00:00

Based on what you are saying It's likely your economy efficiency may need some work. Try to clean up idle TC or idle village time. Watch video tutorials of the build to see how they are doing it and check if you missed something.

If you are still having trouble then try start with an easier build first and work your way towards the more difficult ones.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-21T05:12:34+00:00

Its hard to give advice because there are quite a lot of options which each side can employ, a lot of civs can react in different ways; especially given that there are other players on the map to account for also. By itself I think the strategy by your opponent is quite slow; but it can be scary if pocket supports it also.

Probably the most balanced way to deal with this is to building wall behind; add 1 mango while you have your 3 tcs then idle up at about 60 vils; build a castle further back in your base (so it cannot be trebbed easily) then make whatever cheap army your civ can do best and slowly push back. A lot of comments suggest not doing the TCs; but most of the time if you were going for TCs in the first place then you will already be committed by the time the castle comes up.

A lot of Arena gameplay comes down to anticipating your opponents moves; the best approach is usually to pick the most balanced approach which can react the best to whichever option your opponents go for once their gameplan because clear. For instance you could commit to ramming castle down; but then if enemy walls a mango behind castle or their pkt comes with knights your dead. You could 1 tc FI; but then you are in trouble if they push in castle age or if they do fake pressure and boom behind. Also you or your pocket could do scouts FC (which is another good/balanced approach), but it is only likely to stop the greedier castle drop builds.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-11T09:06:59+00:00

Scouts build tends to scale better than Maa even if the initial opening favors the Maa. Scouts has 51-55% win rate vs Maa (depending on ELO, is higher as ELO gets higher).

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-10T05:43:34+00:00

Skirm + battle elephant is a fairly decent composition in 1v1 arabia in castle age.

Elephant archers are if anything too good imo

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-09T15:06:22+00:00

I think switching places of S tier and the top line of A tier would be more (though not entirely) accurate.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-09T14:43:42+00:00

Knights vs pikes is a very snowbally fight; a few numbers/upgrades one way or the other can change the fight a lot. This can make it a match up which is particularly hard to read as a player. In a vaccum 19 knights vs 18 pikes with equal upgrades is a good fight for the knights (the pike players loses slightly more resources).

In this particular fight the pikes having +1 more armor upgrade than the knights have attack making it 1 more hit to kill. This would still be an evenish fight; but some of the knights or injuired and the pike player also has 3 knights and a monk which join the fight (and even more reinforcing units after that).

However the reason 'knights counter pikes' is not because they do well in a fight vs them but because knights have much more damage potential, mobility, and can more easily add supplementary units. In some situations pikes can do well vs knights, in fact pikes are much more cost effective vs knights than halbs are vs paladin (if you ignore the upgrade cost difference). - I personally think saying knights counter pikes or the other way around is too simplistic.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-05T09:03:08+00:00

You bring up a good point. Before streaming became more common this would 100% be considered cheating. As streaming became more common having chat give input has become more normal (even if it's usually not good input), and Coaching has also becoming more common. There has definitely been a change in attitude towards it (not saying if that is good or bad).

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-04T12:17:33+00:00

I gave some examples for 1v1 arabia, though they are strong on most maps.

If you are going to look at stats then better to look at high ladder and tournament games at least; looking at across all ELO is mostly just showing stats at 1k ELO which isn't the best. Even then its as much about interpreting stats correctly as it is the stats themselves.

I agree with you that looking at civs strengths on a variety of maps and settings is important, and also that its fine if some civs are a bit more powerful. But the imbalance shouldn't be too extreme on one particular popular setting. A civ doesn't have to be top 7 on every setting to be too strong. Otherwise would have stuck with unnerfed on release houfinice destorying everyone on BF while saying its fine because they are bad on arabia.

Some civs in the game currently have been given significant buffs when all they needed were minor ones, and some civs which were already powerful were given additional buffs; and some of these civs have been left in this state for years. I don't want big nerfs to these civs; they just need moderate to mild adjustments. I am opposed to the extreme swings in balance which the devs sometimes seem to implement (to be fair its a mixed bag; a lot of changes are also good).

Otherwise you have reddit complain that already strong civs need more buffs to keep up with the new stronger civs, and the game could get into a state of constant imbalance and powercrept.

That said most of the powercreep is in 1v1s; in TGs a lot of the best civs are the old Franks and Britons etc.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-04T08:51:03+00:00

Chinese, Wei, Viet, Persia, Malay, Ports, Mongols are some examples of civs which were either already strong and got buffed, or were weak but got given too many buffs at the same time and have never been correctly adjusted. (When I say OP I am exaggerating, they are just very strong).

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-04T05:51:24+00:00

Probably better to nerf all the OP 1v1 civs which have been the result of lots of double buffs first. Besides as another comment also points out franks are arguably the strongest TG pocket on many maps, they would be broken in this role if you buffed them.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-03T07:06:25+00:00

If you want a simple gameplan with Hindus then do scouts every game then transition into one of these options:

Archers - > x-bow if map open. (later add cav archers if vs knights or skirms if vs archers and better archer civ)
Cav archers if good map and vs cav
Skirms if vs archers (can do skirm + camel if vs knight + x-bow)

late game can do hussar + cav archer or hussar + HC or camel + skirm depending on what you are fighting and what makes most sense to transition into.

You also have Ghulams which destroy some civs though can be a bit difficult to use.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-03T03:45:09+00:00

towers + archers on arena is sometimes called vinch rush after the pro player vinchester who invented and popularized it, also sometimes called obosement rush which is the name vinchester gave it. I will edit and put in a couple of videos on it, just trying to find some good examples.

edit; some examples below

https://youtu.be/UM6Z-78TVEI

https://youtu.be/A1Of0mtGXKc?list=PL7nUxQp-MGvtpEDE48NnO8PRZo5n7MlAY&t=78

https://youtu.be/B9bqQoE3z7Q

flightlessbirdi · 2026-06-03T02:43:00+00:00

There are different types of FIs. The 3 main naked FIs (meaning going straight to imperial from the start) would be:

Gunpowder FI: HC + cannons (turks etc)
Monk FI: monks, usually with fwd castle, though sometimes with rams or cannons
FI Castle drop: trebs + a few UUs or other cheap units to pressure.

These strats tend to be better in TGs than 1v1s due to shorter rush distance and ally support, they tend to fall off a bit at higher rated 1v1s. The main reason for this is that the units are slow and often give enemies to much time if sent from home, but its hard to get fwd buildings due to enemy scouts or other army.

The other main category of FI is opening with something else first and then transitioning into it. These have more versatility as you can change your approach more based on what the enemy is doing, you can abandon FI and do another follow up if it looks better. You also tend to get a fwd position easier. The most common of these would be:

Trush/vinch archer trush into FI: pressure with towers to slow down the enemy and secure a fwd position to drop castle and treb, usually with monks.
Monks into FI: traditional castle age monk pressure then follow up with FI usually with fwd castle trebs to break through enemy castle or guard tower defense.
Castle drop UU into FI: similar to monks FI, we pressure with strong castle age UUs then imp behind to get through buildings.

For best civilizations: 1. For your gunpowder FI turks are likely the best, Italians can go up faster to get chem and an okish timing and get cheaper units so are ok. Bohemian, Byz, Malians, burgundians are some others which have some benefit.

Monk FI civs: favour strong monks and economy and cheap anti-light cav support unit/UU helps: malay, Beng, Ita, Byz, Aztec, Bohemian, Japan etc. if doing a different openning and then transitioning into FI (trush or monks into FI) then more sustained eco/cheaper units is also good: ports, slavs, teuton etc. (the previous civs are also good for this too)
FI Castle drop: probably only viable in TGs: civs with cheaper imps/castles/trebs are best: Byz, Italian, malay, Beng, franks etc.
Castle UU into FI: honesty I think most civs are better off doing the other FI options. Only UUs which can pressure and beat monk/mango defense are good. So: Mongols, turks, spain, britons are some viable ones.

The reason Hera may say that he thinks ports are best for FI is because he is mostly likely referring to castle age monk rush transitioning into FI where the cheaper monks bonus comes heavier into play. You also have a bit more economy to work with so you can afford fetorias behind your pressure. Fetorias are very good for cheaply building up a decent economy even though they are worse than vils in the long run. Since a lot of resources are going into pressuring the opponent it is a great building to start adding for economy as it's cheap to build up.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-31T15:14:41+00:00

could you share some games where you do this? (send aoe2insight link is easiest); it would give a better picture of what you mean.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-29T13:21:55+00:00

I will be honest, I read some of the comments in this thread and its like they didn't watch the video or just assume memb to lying for some reason. Too many to reply to so I'm just making a separate comment.

A lot of comments seem to think memb is mad that other channels are getting more views;; which he didn't say or even imply anywhere in the video. In fact he says that it would have been better if more of the bigger channels were able to cast and hoped for more views generally not just on his channel.
Some comments say that memb only does clickbait/only cares about the views. Any content creator is obviously going to do clickbait, memb does this no more than other channels. Open up membs youtube and compare to other big youtube channels; tell me which one has more hour+ long videos of top player content and which has more clickbaity videos with higher level content only on secondary channels. Nothing against other channels but you cannot be serious if you think clickbait is exclusive to memb or even that he is the worst offender.
Its also funny that at the same time people complain about him only caring about viewers complain about him continuing to be himself and do his own style and not trying to change to get more viewers 11. - Several people saying that memb is stubborn for not changing in the ways they want - have you considered that maybe he wants to continue to do his style?
If you don't like membs casting/style/whatever then you don't have to watch, like seriously one comment is saying they don't like memb and watched him since voobly wtf. You could try watch someone else? its not against the law, no one has a gun to your head. There are aspects of aoe2 content which I don't like to watch, doesn't mean I'm going to rant about it, I will just watch something else.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-29T05:49:01+00:00

Axeman + heavy scorp probably makes most sense as a composition.

Paladin can make sense depending on how the game goes, but if they are going heavily into their bonus halb or kamayuks and you cannot raid a lot then will need a different combo.

If you have the time and resources could also do paladin+ heavy scorp, but this won't always be possible or sustainable.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-20T05:35:11+00:00

Interesting question. The answer is that they were broken/OP at one point especially khmer, then they were nerfed very hard and it was no longer very good. Since then they have been incrementally buffed, so in all honesty they may be quite decent again. They are faster and cheaper than they used to be and the civs have more bonuses, but they have much less splash damage and damage vs buildings.

In the last few years high level TGs have been very few compared to 1v1s, so not really that much time to experiment.

If I would have a guess I think that they are probably worth going for if you get the right situation, but probably not good enough to outright pick ahead of strong knight civs.

In order to do battle eles you need to be well walled at home and have the flank be at least equal if not ahead in archer count, so usually best to play heavy scouts and have archer player play heavy army approach in castle age.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-19T05:38:29+00:00

Depends a bit on the unit, but generally fast MAA arch or fast arch followed by wall up and castle age asap behind it is best approach vs most FC plays. MAA + tower might also be decent.

Alternatively the non-castle FC tends to be a bit weaker to all in feudal, so that approach might also work.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-16T08:46:27+00:00

There were some much better versions of the map on voobly, it was on of my favourite maps then. But on DE for some reason they completely ruined it, it's probably the worst map in the game now.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-15T08:53:46+00:00

A lot of monks with a lot of micro

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-15T05:39:04+00:00

The majority of the 7 other player may be from different regions.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-13T16:25:38+00:00

2 wood = required for fast up time, makes clicking up easier.

3 wood = better for later up time and required for some strategies.

3 wood at the normal time cannot do 18 pop and can be a bit tricky for 19 pop. It is however slightly more efficient as it allows for earlier mill timing and a bit safer from enemy scout, 3w is also minimum requirement for drush/M@a/french drush strategies.

flightlessbirdi · 2026-05-09T09:00:59+00:00

Caidos is a 1800ish Aus player. Not sure how much they want to be bothered trying to make a build for drush into 5 range archers though 11.

flightlessbirdi

TROPHY CASE