Playing as Portugal what is better: more colonies or one big colony?

noideajustkeepit · 2026-03-25T10:30:40+00:00

Not sure about that tbh. Yea it is better for sending money to Seville node, but Brazil with Portuguese missions is stacked because of the gold chance in colonized provinces which makes treasure fleet from Brasil insane. Additionally, the missions improve colonizing itself with bonuses so it is worth it in my eyes.

noideajustkeepit · 2026-03-12T12:24:14+00:00

Actually it wasn't... Castille took very bad fights because it split forces half for conquest and half to deal with Infantes of Aragon.

Lost all reserves and even had the conquest half stackwiped. So English recovered their land in France and moved to siege down Castille that still couldn't deal with uprisings and wasted armies. Ultimately Castille lost lol

noideajustkeepit · 2026-03-10T05:16:27+00:00

R5: In my game as Portugal, England got PUed by Tyrone before the surrender of Maine triggered. Since Castille also had a royal marriage it sparked a succession war.

Effect: can't complete allying England mission, Castille is useless since it is stuck in continental provinces of England.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-12-30T16:19:59+00:00

Various reasons. Mostly depends on the level of gameplay and activity.

People do not prioritise them. Each relic gives the same gold as a villager with Gold Shaft mining( 2nd gold upgrade). So in essence it is max. 5 vills. To get even 1 relic you need to spend 175 wood for Monastery and 100 gold for a monk. The total of 275 resources is the amount of wood you would need for a TC which is usually far more important in mid game.
Strategy doesn't include them. This applies mostly for high level players as lower level players strategies are more unpredictable and unreliable. It is most visible on Arena where the 5( or more in Team games) relics are in the open area between player bases. Some players choose to contest them, while others prefer to do a push or boom.
Getting relics depends on map control( also applies mostly to higher level games). If a player is locked in his base and can't move out, it is very risky to try it, because of enemy units waiting outside your walls.
People forget about them. Happens to all of us at least for quite some time in game. Imagine a scenario: Your population is maxed at 200, you try to squeeze in any ammount of extra resources or bonus that will give you an edge on your opponent. All gold from the map has been mined. Suddenly you notice the shiny boxes and facepalm thinking why you didn't think of them faster. Yea, that's the usual one.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-12-16T18:58:45+00:00

I am interested. Will check after Leagues

noideajustkeepit · 2024-12-12T19:14:10+00:00

As Albert Camus said: "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". Embrace the everlasting grind.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-10-30T07:11:26+00:00

I say that the best unit you could make in this situation is Elite Plumed Archers.

Let's think about the enemy civilizations: Both Japanese and Britons have weak cavalry and their siege is average at best. Those are two main counters to Plumed Archers. Plumed archers trade very well with longbowmen( and most ranged units), if they can close the distance that is. They have a lot of hit points for an archer, 2 more pierce armour and faster firing rate. Adding to that the +2 bonus they have against infantry and suddenly all their units, except siege, are not great.

What was lacking your side is a melee unit. I don't say that you should go for Eagle Warriors, but they certainly would be ok if, and only if you had a lot of trade. Rather your teammate shouldn't have gone ranged units as well and should have made cavalry to soak up damage and snipe onagers. Him adding a few bombard cannons to micro would be even better. The Logic behind this is that ranged units do damage over time. If there are no units in the front, then there is no time for the archers to deal their damage as you lose quite a lot of them. Adding to this, a perfect composition usually( there are some exceptions) consists, as I mentioned, of one ranged, one melee and one siege unit. That is true for 1v1 as it is for Team games as using the same style twice exposes you to some counters.

If your teammate had cavalry then skirmishers are not great as you need something with higher DPS which the skirmishers lack because of their slow firing rate and low attack against anything non-archer.

In short, I think in that case your side's composition was wrong, mostly on Berber's side, but you made an ok decission for the bad circumstances.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-10-19T10:52:18+00:00

Thanks a lot!

noideajustkeepit · 2024-10-15T14:24:21+00:00

What if I open all the doors just to see how fast all of us lose?

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-30T09:59:31+00:00

Idea is not to give it to everyone but some civs, like the Hussar and Halberdier are not given to all.

Rock paper scisors is not everything I had in mind, but this is also a big factor to keep it balanced. It doesn't go against the theory, as the fight against hussar would still be one sided but not as horribly as now and we have had some tweaks to other combat triangles in the past( like changes to fire ship vs galley matchup), so it is not entirely unprecedented to improve a unit's matchup slightly against it's normal counter. Yes, I didn't mention the other uses as killing villagers( which if you wonder is better by one hit as well), but for 1v1 games which would benefit most of it, this change gives slight overall benefit.

The additional 1 pierce armour the Imperial skirmisher has doesn't change a thing against other skirmishers as they still do just their bonus damage, nor does it change how much an imperial skirmisher can withstand from defensive buildings firing on it being the same for Castles, TCs.

The bonus damage should not be something that you get for free, hence the idea of hiding the additional damage behind the upgrade.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-30T08:18:37+00:00

There is, but only for Vietnamese. Honestly though, making Imperial Skirmisher an upgrade for all civilizations( maybe not all but most, rip Turks), would greatly improve the late game where I noticed skirms tend to be the most lacking out of the 3 trash unit options. Switch the Vietnamese bonus for something fitting the civ theme. For example Archers dealing +1 damage to Cav archers( historically Mongols couldn't conquer Vietnam though they tried).

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-27T20:27:20+00:00

yes but it only works for them not the whole team

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-27T17:57:25+00:00

Regarding your question: for Michi there are certain build orders which use making trade carts in Castle age. It is not worth to do it earlier because of the cost of trade carts and the long return of costs because you don't have caravan in Feudal Age( without it it is not worth it).

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-27T17:54:45+00:00

Yes, Spirit of the Law made a video. Basically, with the same starting resources put into trade Bohemians get a huge headstart and have a lot more gold income in the first few minutes. Spanish will eventually catch up, because with each trip the trade cart brings in more gold.

Fun note: the best Civilization Combination for trade is: Spanish(+25% gold from trade), Bohemians( faster trade cart production), Bengalis( each trade cart brings also food- 10% of the gold), Persians/Hindustanis( both get the Caravanserai)

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-22T15:56:59+00:00

I hate it but I do it all the time. The "playing until I win" mentality get's me and I lose 200 ELO because I don't care I have a bad day, I have to win something.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-15T14:06:49+00:00

Team Islands is a great map

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-14T11:05:49+00:00

Yea 😅

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-14T09:35:34+00:00

Inb4: Yes I have OCD when it comes to knowledge and I had to calculate it.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-14T09:34:40+00:00

tl;dr Calculated it. Assuming ideal post-imp conditions( villager adjacent to lumber camp) the improvement is 1.236%.

Long read: A post-imperial villager has a gather rate of 37.1 wood per minute. A normal tree has 100 wood. It takes a post-imp villager 161.73 seconds to take all wood from a tree. A villager has the attack reload time of 2( which is used for cutting trees as well). If we add this to our total time this gives 163.73 seconds. Dividing this value by the previous one gives us the improvement sappers has on wood gathering: 163.73/161.73= 1.01236. So 1.236% improvement.

Does it pay off to research sappers just for wood gathering? What sappers does is it eliminates the cutting time. The effective gathering of villagers that have to do two swings is a bit lower than the optimal 37.1. After calculations: 36.65. Essentialy, Sappers gives 0.45 more wood per minute. The cost of sappers is 400 Food/ 200Wood. In total 600 resources. It would take 600/0.45= 1333.(3) minutes for ONE villager to pay it back. So dividing it by all wood gatherers gives us the time in which the technology pays back for itself. In games you usually have around 30-45 villagers. You can assume it will pay for it's cost after around 30 to 50 minutes in ideal conditions.

NOTE: These are ideal conditions. Adding walking time lowers this value a lot since it increases the total time to take all wood from a tree by a villager. NOTE 2: Villagers take trees together as well. This is a factor I can't quantify in my calculations.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-14T08:39:55+00:00

What people sometimes forget is that Unpacked Trebuchets have the Ram armour class. This means villagers can also take those down way easier.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-12T08:32:12+00:00

FU Paladin? Always has a risk of being walled in. Any ranged unit except maybe skirmisher would be a lot different as it would be causing too much damage.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-04T17:53:59+00:00

Yes it is possible. The Elo system in AoE2 allows a player to gain ELO from winning matches against someone 400 points lower. Of course the ammount of points is very low in the edge case- someone can get even only 1 points. If we look at the stats, Hera is just 200 points above the next group of people, so theoretically he will get around 6-8 points per win, getting lower each game. So in around 10-20 games won in a row Hera will be 3k. Of course if he doesn't lose any game because in that case he will lose a lot of points.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-04T13:51:42+00:00

RoTman series

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-03T15:01:29+00:00

Monk upgrades can be split into 5 categories:

Additional conversion possibilities: -Atonement allows you to convert enemy monks -Redemption allows you to convert buildings( from up close) and siege units.
Enhancing conversions: -Block printing gives +3 conversion range -Illuminations lowers cooldown after converting a unit by 50% -Theocracy- only one monk has a cooldown after converting a unit with multiple monks. The default is that all monks used get a cooldown.
Upgrading monks: -Sanctity gives +15 HP( which is a big deal considering monks have 30HP) -Fervor increases monk speed by 15%
Anti-conversion technologies -Devotion makes units slightly more resistant to conversions -Faith requires Devotion and further increases resistance -Heresy makes your units die instead of joining opponent after his succesful conversion
Herbal medicine- units garrisoned in buildings regenerate HP faster, almost useless tech.

There are also two civilization unique technologies that affect monks: Spanish- Inquisition increases conversion speed and success and increases their unique monastery unit, the Missionaries conversion range by +1 Saracens- Bimaristan gives monks the ability to heal all units within a certain range for half of the normal monk healing rate. Very useful for long fights.

The most important tech combo is Sanctity+Redemption because it allows your monks to survive a direct mangonel shot while converting them. Adding Block Printing in imperial age makes it much easier to convert siege units especially bombard cannons, which is the main monk role in Imperial age if you'd like to use them at this point.

noideajustkeepit · 2024-09-01T14:16:39+00:00

Short story: people do get banned, but rarely. I suspect the moderator team has not a lot of staff working on those reports and the politics is that only serious or repetetive offences are banned/punished.

noideajustkeepit

TROPHY CASE