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Best late game - Chinese:
- bombards get +2 range, fire 33% faster, 50% more health from clockwork tower and get 20% damage upgrade for free
- fire lancers that melt landmarks in seconds, the current cheap team games meta
- cannoneers also benefit from 20% more range that lets them perform better as a solid general-purpose unit
Worst late game - English:
- longbowmen are obsolete late game when everyone fields knights/m@a/siege, if you invested into them before it's just resources wasted
- all other units are generic and trivial (save for an armor upgrade on m@a)
The all-rounder - French:
- solid economy with no particular focus lets you do whatever you want throughout the game
- best knights in the game and very good crossbowmen
- get to train all cavalry and ranged units up to 30% cheaper, diversifying your roster
Getting to the castle age can be quite an challenge though, if you play against English or France.
Post-imperial would be Chinese. Access to the best bombards in game and grenadiers. To note, if you just make mono comps of bombards and grenadiers you will lose to knights and culverins. They are strongest in chokepoint fights when cavalry cant outmaneuver or surround their gunpowder.
I ranked Delhi to be rock bottom in post-imp. Elephants die to handcannoneers and siege. Their siege is absolutely generic and sure they can get a 15% attack speed bonus but its weaker compared to everyone else's siege.
English would be second worse just because their siege is totally generic, aside from the ribauld (which gets ♥♥♥♥ on by every other siege). However network attack speed bonus is very strong and gold farming is good so they have a leg up over Delhi.
HRE are is up next. The HRE is redeemed by good gold income due to Regnitz and access to culverin which will win you big siege wars in chokes.
Rus have very good springalds and streltsy, but if you're in post-imp they have trouble vs massed culverins and mangonels.
Mongols have really strong economy with their traders and you'll be constantly spamming outpost with bombards on them. They also have the strongest springald and mangonels in the game and you can batch train them. If you create a breach in the enemy defense, your cav can run in and destroy their eco with their increased torch damage or kill traders with mangudai.
Abbasid and French are about the same. The Abbasids really excel with their very strong late game eco and traders and access to culverin. They have extra HP on handcannoneers and camel archers are a very powerful support unit. They will win against the most common comps of Knights + Siege. They are quite flexible and you can go cavalry yourself and you'll often win cav wars with your camel support.
French of course has cannons, royal cuverins and ribauldequins along with royal knights. Their biggest bottleneck late game is that they can only make culverins at the College of Artillery. You'll probably lose a sustained siege fight, however royal knights do make up for this. They will be worse in a map like Black Forest if you're going to fight in a choke.
Note that the Mongols, Abbasid, French and Chinese are really close with each other and while thats my general order, you can outplay anyone depending on your unit composition and deployment.
Next best, could be a lot of civs. I'd probably say rus because of streltsy, amazing springalds, great knights, having free gold generation from hunting cabins, and a 10-15% villager food gathering rate increase, and because of warrior monks they probably go into late game with relics. Even against culverins, they should beat those with springalds (rus springalds have longer range, are noticeably cheaper, and you can build them earlier so it will hard to ever match numbers), and in the case that the game is actually slow enough for an opponent to mass up culverins rus has time to build hunting cabins everywhere and should have a free +1000 gold income from cabins+relics combined. It depends on the map though, because if there's no trees rus will be weaker.
After that, French have pretty good unit options and can get cheaper units, but don't have any sort of bonus to gold generation. Abbassids have pretty strong late game eco, and if you can get trade set up with trade wing its pretty insane, but that's very hard to do. Delhi is very strong early on in imperial because they save several thousand gold on all the techs (including the last 3 eco upgrades which are very rarely worthwhile), but super late game they don't have as much. Mongols have very good trade that's easier to set up and can continue to have that 15% speed but they're probably not as great super late. English have enclosures so I think they're a pretty good contender. And HRE I think are good if they get 3 relics, otherwise I think they're not that great.
If we call late game say 5-10 minutes into imperial, like enough for you to get all the core upgrades but not enough for you to just get every single thing possible, I'd probably tier it like this
1: Chinese
2:Rus
3/4/5/6: French/Abbassids/English/Delhi in that order imo but its hard to say
7/8: Mongols/HRE.
It kind of depends on game state. Like if trade is really hard to secure, English becomes stronger. Delhi is probably better the less people can afford in imperial since they get all the eco upgrades for free (so heavy fighting might favor delhi whereas slow waiting for all eco upgrades might favor other civs). Who gets relics has a big impact and civs like Delhi/Rus are generally better at getting relics (and to a lesser degree HRE but prelates are slower than warrior monks and less spammable then later on slower than scholars, and both those civs tend to be stronger early on than HRE). Whether or not you can safely wall makes a big difference.
So I would say only Chinese have a consistent imperial advantage, and rus commonly have one.
Side note: don't listen to people who tell you delhi is bad late game. Delhi is only bad if they literally just sit there doing nothing for 5-10 minutes while the opponent gets every single post imperial upgrade, then another 5-10 minutes for them to bank up gold so they don't die off of 1 fight. Otherwise delhi should at minimum have the eco upgrades lots of extra gold they didn't spend to work with and more flexibility in unit comp at the downside of having worse unit options. They're only bad super late in defensive enough games that you can afford literally everything, and that describes like 1% of games or less and is uncommon even in games that go to imp so its pretty irrelevant.
To note, Rus springalds will trade effectively when there are massed springalds and a small amount of culverin. But people will usually bring up their culverin with villes on it to instantly repair. It takes 9 shots to kill a culverin, while 8 vills repairing will heal it really fast to the point that if you dont have them shoot at the same time, it would outheal them.
Delhi's advantage is their initial imperial push with their elite elephants. If you're behind tech at this point (which you often are because free tech), you're going to die. Otherwise, if its rebuffed they become the weakest post imp. Definitely strong on a 1v1/2v2 with your imp timing push. But yeah, if you're waiting to max out on elephants, at that point your enemies would probably have enough siege and handcannons to kill you.
As for delhi, I strongly disagree. I first of all think elephants are total garbage outside of early castle. Tower ones aren't terrible but they die to bombards, they get next to nothing out of their imperial upgrade, they're slow af so you can't abuse any sort of mobility, and they're not that strong for their cost in the first place. The only good thing about them is its a lot of hp for 1 unit so you can keep them alive with scholars.
But as for the "if you fall behind in tech"... HOW? How is your opponent going to afford all the blacksmith upgrades, the upgrades for siege, the upgrades for at least 1 unit type probably 2-3 if they want to not easily get countered, and at least 1 university tech for their chosen unit and probably 2 to cover all the units they might use in the like 2 minutes before you get them for free? You don't even research slower by that point, its like 9 scholars to have a normal research rate and that's easy as ♥♥♥♥ to get before imp age.
I don't understand why you think delhi would be behind in tech because their techs are free. Delhi is ahead in tech because their techs are free. What is this logic?
Just go for like maa+siege or something to open and throw in whatever unit counters theirs after instead of sitting there for 10 minutes trying to max out on trash elephant units that don't improve at all since castle age (where they're already less useful than maa/knights with honed blades), and use the gold you get from sacred sites/relics and the probably 3000 gold you save not upgrading things (plus the extra 15% gather rate from the last mining upgrade that no one else would bother getting) to spam bombards or something. They're not weak if you actually interact with your opponent instead of trying to elephant doomstack.
I can't see Rus anywhere higher than I placed them as they have a critical flaw that severely limits their viability. No stone walls. This means their ability to defend is limited. They are weak to Fire Lancers. Wonder is probably out of question for them either. 3k hp on palisades is nothing compared to China's 9k stone walls, and even poor HRE gets some 6k ones.
Besides, springalds are so castle. They don't fly in imperial and especially post imperial when only bombards, cannons and culverins are viable forms of siege. It's all about unit performance and effeciency. Springald and bombard take the same pop, yet bombard is infinitely better. Springalds are only good when you massed them, which greatly hits your pop cap and limits your map presence.
Delhi is never ahead in tech per se, as its techs are slow to research, unless you go out of your way to dump all gold into scholars, which you'll be punished for. Delhi needs to make a choice of tech, which makes it inflexible. It can't just quickly bring say their m@a to viable level, without planning for it some 10-15 minutes ago.
With elephants, they're not only inflexible, but also slow. Elephants can defend a spot alright, but they're garbage on offense, as they just get focused and here go your resources. They can't rapidly relocate, they can't come to your teammate's help on time.
But you, playing 4v4, might be thinking "how do I deal with fire lancers without stone walls. If I attack they can just counter attack and have a teammate defend them". Have a teammate stone wall you. Literally that simple and you're defended from fire lancers.
I'm pretty confident here that you have no idea how delhi is played. Scholars cost 75 resources. Do you know how good scholars are in combat? They have 140 hp and heal at the rate of like 40 health per second... for 75 gold. They also ofc take sacred sites and pick up relics.
But that aside, IMPERIAL AGE. If you couldn't afford the 600 gold that it takes to get to 9 scholars, how did you afford all the castle age upgrades, imperial age, and imperial age upgrades? Literally just the maa upgrade costs more than the 9 scholars it takes to get normal research rate, let alone blacksmith upgrades, supporting units, eco upgrades, university upgrades, and whatever unique upgrade the opponents civ has to make their unit of choice better.
This is absolutely ridiculous. The notion that you get punished for paying 600 gold for a monstrous combat unit that also picks up relics and gives you insane gold trickles from sacred sites but you don't get punished for paying several thousand gold for all the upgrades up to imperial age is ridiculous.
In other words, no you're just wrong, you're so wrong you probably shouldn't even be discussing this. They can fall behind in upgrades in feudal age where upgrades are affordable for other civs and 9 scholars takes way too long to get to even without the gold cost, not imperial. Imperial age they save stupid amounts of money.
On elephants, as I wrote I think they suck. Just don't build elephants. I think there's only 2 reasons to build them, a castle age push, and from the imperial age landmark that you're forced into building because hisar academy is bugged.
So I'm not discussing this idea that scholars are too expensive. I apologize I don't know how to say this in a less offensive way, but you're too incredibly wrong about scholars being too expensive compared to upgrades for me to even remotely consider your viewpoint. I don't want to discuss delhi with people who don't know how delhi works.
Back to discussing rus though, the point is you have the springalds already from castle, the civ also has streltsy, 13.5 range means they outrange those other units, and its a nice thought that you can just sit there massing 10 bombards to kill 10 springalds but it doesn't usually play out that way. My experience with imperial age both playing it and watching streamers play imperial age is that, at least in 1v1s, it is hard to create a doomstack of superior units without falling far enough behind that losing it even once costs you the game. It is on the other hand very easy to create a bunch of springalds and not fall behind as a result. Even if you get that 15 bombard+culverin+mass hand cannon doomstack, if your opponent comes at you with 25 springalds and a slightly larger army of streltsy than you have hand cannons (which they can afford because rus springalds are like 1/3rd the cost of bombards and streltsy obviously 3/4th the cost of hand cannons), there's a decent chance you lose.
That's why I think rus is good, they can easily afford all their good stuff. Same with delhi (but their good stuff isn't as good). The lack of stone walls does start to hurt in imperial age but I think a strong army+eco is far more important than stone walls (except maybe vs fire lancer landmark snipe in team games only, but seriously just get a teammate to stone wall for you and this point is entirely gone).
No you misread, when you're up against Delhi and you're behind in tech (which you probably would be) you die. And again you misread, you train up elephants in castle then when you reach imp you get your free elite upgrades and thats the strongest they'll be.
Not impressed with the Rus however. Also, I'm going to assume 4v4 instead of a 1v1 which rarely even gets into Imperial. Culverins definitely perform better against units than springalds just from having more than 2.5x the damage and same pop cost. Its also not that hard to micro culverins to shoot individual springalds. Lastly, one would be a fool to match handcannons against streltsy, mangonel + cav is a far more effective comp.
Idk about 4v4, but in 1v1 imperial is uncommon but its not nonexistent. Its pretty rare on like arabia but its not that uncommon on some other maps. Rus for example are pretty good on french pass and that map goes to imp a decent amount. In 4v4 I would figure a full army of culverins would be more affordable, but in 1v1 better springalds in imp will get you map control sooner which will get you more money which will probably translate into the opponent never maxing out on culverins.
Its also not as easy as you think to micro that. I've done it (with chinese bombards) against 10 range springalds (got to imp against a castle age french). When they're running like 30 horsemen at your siege with like 12 springalds and 3 mangonels insta wiping your spearmen, its pretty damn hard to micro everything. And that's kind of what's likely to happen when you've got a slow expensive unit with lower range that does 0 damage to units and you can't build till imp (chinese bombards actually damage units at least). I eventually did get get my line of units under control enough to protect my bombards enough to snipe the springalds, but it was because I went into imperial off a massive lead and could remax 3 times into the springald army and my opponent ended up with 60 idles microing everything so I could have killed him without the bombards at all.
If it goes to a really passive imperial where both civs are allowed to just doomstack whatever they want, I'd honestly still pick rus over a lot of civs. It depends how the game went up to that point (for example if its a standard fast castle rus with the warrior monk landmark, rus are the best civ in the game for getting the relics, and if you go into imp with 3-4 relics and hunting cabins everywhere you'll just have way more gold). Being pop efficient doesn't matter that much if rus can afford 2 armies for the price of your 1 and every unit they have wins in a cost for cost battle. Especially in this game where units instantly finish building when pop is free (so you could for example have 20 stables near the front line, and as you start losing units they'd immediately be replaced by 20 knights, and your army would still probably be cheaper than an opponent with enough culverins to kill your springalds and enough other siege to kill the rest of your army).
Idk it depends on a lot of stuff. That's why Chinese are the only ones I'd actually definitively place somewhere.