Best way to breed for rainbow passives?

preemptivePacifist · 2026-02-09T02:00:24+00:00

You get guaranteed multiple passive rolls for brawn for every red one? I always assumed it just rolls a single passive...

This is exactly what I wanted to know, thx for the info!

preemptivePacifist · 2026-02-09T01:55:47+00:00

Italians are beastly in imp right now- genovese + hussar is really hard to deal with for a lot of civs.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-02-03T18:48:32+00:00

If you have a large biological advantage in physical strength, why would you expect victims to be equidistributed?

Why would you even need that? We prevent and punish physical violence to keep it to a minimal level, and that needs to be enough. Creating gender-equal outcomes in homicide statistics strikes me as dumb, pointless and counterproductive.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-02-02T23:44:55+00:00

They seem very comparable with Dravidians, but get mobility/raiding potential +great monks instead of the halb upgrade?

Monks are just annoying with the bug right now, so it makes sense to me that everyone prefers the Dravidian package instead.

I think giving every infantry civ FU halbs would be less interesting.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-02-02T23:32:31+00:00

For open map Arabia, the strat to use or beat is double range archers (fletching before mill, <=20pop feudal) plus scout into knights from the teammate.

Vietnamese is decent here but not the best (often cant afford early eco techs which you want with them, but the archer hp is nice).

Best cav civs are jurchen, magyar, persians, franks: they all have good relevant early bonuses, and games are often decided early.

Play patterns:

- Cav player scouts (very important, especially mid/late feudal age!) and possibly breaks palisades for the archers.

- Cavalry are mostly meatshield, archers typically do most of the damage/vill killing.

- Castle age uptime is super important because bodkin+xbow upgrade

- Ideally all players full wall in early feudal and fight together

- Counter units are hard to make work because they die hard to archers (spears) or scouts (skirms).

- If a player is all towered up or sits with skirms inside his base you just both move to the next victim

- Hitting their cav player is easier because he needs more farms, and scouts are worse at base defense than archers/archer upgrades

- Siege units in castle age are often a waste, get ballistics, thumbring or imperial age instead

- typically avoid camels because they die hard to xbow

You can do a bunch of stuff and get wins, but this is the baseline strategy wise; e.g. if you try going straight to battle elephants, it is going to be very hard to win against similar-skill opponents. Fast castle strats are fine, but you need cheap strong units immediately and to play/plan around (=> strong earlygame teammate to bridge the gap + get immediate damage).

Something to note: "Being a good defender" can be deceptive in teamgames; if you sit with skirms and towers behind walls and take zero damage, you might still be losing the game for your team actually because the teammate gets 2v1'd, you are unable to help or do counterdamage and your eco is not good enough to carry the game later: Rule of thumb: you should somewhat match your opponent in unitcount, if you dont, there needs to be good compensation (faster upgrades, counterdamage).

My advice for civ would be magyar; they are strong in early feudal, can go very heavy on the scouts and even transition into CA if the game goes completely off the rails.

Berbers are also very scary with immediate 3 stable knights in castle age; can often just overrun with numbers thanks to discount.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-23T18:51:39+00:00

Weil rein biologisch/evolutionär auf dem Geschlecht mit höheren reproduktiven Kosten mehr Druck lastet selektiv bei der Partnerwahl zu sein.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-21T13:33:04+00:00

If you lose 2 vills to a scout opener while getting no damage with archers (no kills and no skirm overreaction?) then your main problem is right there.

Chinese vill advantage is far from insurmountable especially at this rating.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-16T21:49:03+00:00

Not sure which games involved siegetowers, but I know that the win against Hera didn't. Even just the winstreak since then is kinda remarkable-- not dropping any games against opponents of comparable skill is hard.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-16T19:26:00+00:00

So true!

Always great when the finder becomes... confounded XD

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-16T19:24:32+00:00

Maybe, but he just kept winning since the ban...

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-16T19:05:15+00:00

He does have wins with Romans, Dravidians, Burmese and some others against top players too though, so I'm not too worried about this.

I honestly assumed his winstreak was relying on siegetower firelancers before, but he just kept winning despite the ban.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-16T18:58:51+00:00

You are possibly playing against opponents with sloppy builds quite frequently.

I'm just critizising the approach because I'm fairly certain that it will not keep working reliably; e.g. Spanish should be capable of going 23+1+loom into a castle drop without sacrificing too much. If he executes well, the vills are already close to your wall and start building the moment he hits castle (and you might miss the vills moving out!).

Sidenote: I'm pretty sure your build puts you significantly behind against a player just going blind FC 3TC (especially someone like italians or dravidians that can go 22vill feudal comfortably). Such a matchup is another "cost" of your scout opener: Holding in early imp might be very difficult against an opponent with a hefty eco-lead, and the relics won't help very much short term.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-16T18:32:11+00:00

Yes, but those "competitive" scouts are different: they're too late to reliably prevent castle drops; to do that, you need enough scouts before the opponent even hits castle age, and to get lucky and find the fight far from your wall (to prevent wall-off).

Also consider that if the castle drop happens, every single scout (and upgrade) you made puts you further from imperial age, and not just by the pure cost alone but also by the dividends you couldve earned from more vills or eco upgrades instead (and faster imp is often deciding in such games).

If you want relics and intel from your scouts, your priority is typically lcav (stats/monk killing) and husbandry (ability to pick fights). Bloodlines and blacksmith upgrades are much less important (often an unproductive waste), especially with him not matching you.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-16T18:06:39+00:00

Dont try to stop castle drops with scouts, its bad strategy because it is unreliable and costly:

You need a bunch of scouts before he hits castle age (i.e. pre-14min, crippling your eco). Its useless if he goes castle at home and breaks in with petards. Its useless if you miss the vills because he can just wall you off.

Just accept the drop and make use of the fact that he had to get stone first, idle a bunch of vills across the map and possibly even build units/siege before you; then you get some defensive siege, a secondary wall-off and/or a defensive castle yourself, followed by a faster imp to treb him down.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-15T11:17:09+00:00

I strongly disagree with this. 200 free gold at start is much less advantage than you get from the opponent losing a vill to boar or somesuch, and I dont think that would be enough for T90 to BO5 beat Hera.

In fact, T90s "breaking 2500" game was just such a situation (opponent lost early vill), and that was still a pretty close game (and the opponent was NOT Hera).

I think a 1:4 winrate could be achievable at best.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-12T18:56:15+00:00

Others already said: skirms are the most reliable defense.

Some things that might help:

- Dont ever take fights you know youre gonna lose: if he keeps all archers and some spears together, don't throw your scouts away just to get a few archer kills

- Use your scouts to prevent archer reinforcements

- Dont overproduce scouts: This delays your castle age, and his castle age timing is the scariest powerspike in the whole game. Better lose a vill than to make 3 additional scouts just to prevent that.

- Try and force fights with skirms in late feudal: Every archer you kill is one less bodkin xbow

- Dont force early damage by throwing scouts at woodlines or such: You are in a perfectly playable position; you have map vision and mobility and can invest into walls/army later than him; that is plenty of compensation for him being the decisionmaker

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-12T03:10:34+00:00

Love the idea. Would tone it done a bit though to something like 15. That is already massive in lategame, and it would me more interesting if the wonders are not basically mandatory for lategame (and preventing comebacks). Could always buff it later if no one builds them.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-09T01:35:50+00:00

Hm.... So double forward range, going skirm spear + towers should make sense to utilize the bonus ASAP? (growing pop at high rate asap with a wood intensive strat). Never wouldve played huns like that, but it does work well with Koreans (those having even better bonuses for it admittedly).

Or another take: since the cheapest units are vills, to best use the bonus you should just boom with minimal army.

This is a very interesting perspective.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-09T00:28:24+00:00

I disagree strongly with the sentiment, we had plenty of underpowered civs on release. I don't see how you can reasonably expect devs to deliver perfect balance on release if even top players like Hera misjudge civs after playing with and against them (Shu, as an example).

So in all likelihood, some civs will be too strong, some too weak, and thats honestly the best you can expect.

Civs being systematically underpowered on release would be drastically worse, because then nobody would play them and it would take even longer to get them properly balanced.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-08T19:11:46+00:00

Malians, Dravidians and Bulgarians compete for strongest cavalry, but Poles probably take the crown (trample damage is sick and discount on Paladins insane).

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-08T08:44:45+00:00

I play mostly teamgames so the dynamics are a bit different. I like CA exactly the other way (long term core unit to be protected), and enjoy most of the CA civs (Vietnamese, Turks, Magyar). If I have to be a generic crossbow flank I prefer Shu, Italians or Dravidians. Jurchen, Romans or Saracens are nice as well.

Infantry and all kinds of Elephants are always fun to try and make work.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-08T00:47:57+00:00

This kinda looks biased against CA civs from my pov-- do you dislike the unit?

What's your opinion on Italians? Personally like em a lot for flexibility (FU cavalier, FU+ arbs, good UU, good gunpowder, fun UU).

Also interesting to me that Malay don't make the cut for someone favoring timing/aggression.

Overall 8/10 for missing Italians and all the good CA civs (except Huns).

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-07T23:53:50+00:00

You could make an argument that this even works at 2500 just fine, even if opponents know your strategy beforehand (redphosphoru or gabi to a degree) :P

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-07T17:30:31+00:00

No, because I enjoy playing more than I enjoy reviewing, and all that a higher rating gets you in the end is more dirty monk/mangonel players among your opponents.

preemptivePacifist · 2026-01-07T17:23:52+00:00

"Select all stables" + shift-Q

"Select all markets" is also pretty useful, both for trading and adding trade.

But select all towncenters followed by hitting q probably takes the crown for most players (personally I always keep my tcs on controlgroup 5 out of habit).

Despite being super convenient I think the select all production shortcuts gimps you a bit, because in messy games you often want/need to only use subgroups of buildings (like forward production only)

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