How does China beat HRE? I'm at a loss (no more, actually)

[ARCAGNELL0]

Just play Rus KEKW

Just play Mongols LMAO

French Kinghts and busted trade go Brrrrr

If anything you're going to write starts with either of these 3, I won't read it.

Hello. I'm finally back up to 1200-1100 ELO (ish, had quite a few losing streaks and it probably went down the drain again :P) and I've been training my skills with the Chinese since I find them really fun to play with, but I've come across a rather unusual wall in my path.

While I'll just say "eh, what can you do about it" when Mongols out-eco and out-army me no matter how hard I boom and how hard I harass or "Can't wait until Horse Archers get fixed" whenever I'm run over by an orgy of Rus on horseback from 9 minutes onwards until I die, there's something about fighting tooth and nail against the Holy Roman Empire that bothers me.

This has come to the point of me wondering if I should avoid even playing Chinese in a map where I might have to fight HRE that's not Black Forest. I keep getting a stronger and stronger feeling that the more time passes the more the AOE4 playerbase learns to pick HRE against China and win by sheer attrition.

Now, I've sort of become infamous for writing absurdly long text walls, so I'll stay short:

My in-game nickname is ARCAGNELL0 (with the last letter not being a letter, but a Zero: O=/=0) and my Match History is open, I'd like anyone interested in seeing my point of view to watch the game I played today (21/12/2021) on Altai against a very good HRE player (EndlessCosmos).

Some pointers, then I'll shut up:

1)The map layout was not at all favourable. He had 3 relics close to him while I only had one and, most importantly, he had most of the big gold veins on HIS side. More on that later.

2)I went for professional scouts, into horseman pressure, into double TC into Song dynasty. The horseman harass looked promising until he went castle and I decided to try and play defensive to try and out-eco him (very bad choice, I'll admit). There was a costant voice in my head telling me to build a barracks and deny his castle age units helping him secure the relics at all costs with just spearmen and Horsemen, but I did not feel good about my chances.

3)I've said in a discussion somewhere else that I tend to not use Fire Lancers against HRE/Delhi since they spearmen are bugged and do not brace. I did not do that in this game. I got so bloody pissed at the damnable gold placement more or less DENYING my craved bombard blobs or using any remotely expensive gold unit that I had no other choice but fire lancers.

FLancers only need 14 gold when the stable is around the spirit way. Even Zhuge Nu are more expensive.

4)I did not feel like I had much of a choice in regards to my own army composition. Fire Lancers were more or less hogging all the gold I had left and all I could deploy after that were Spearmen, of the non-hardened kind. I'm fully aware that a Palace Guard+Spearman frontline augmented by a Lancer+FLancer flanking force is absolutely amazing, but again, no gold.

5)I somehow completely went OVER part of the tooltip of the Granary saying that they STACK with eachother. I would've placed all 3 and got a farming blob around them otherwise. Something to do next time I go with the Yuan Dynasty play.

6)I spent a lot of gold getting most (if not all) the Bombard buff techs. I considered forsaking Bombards altogheder and resort to massing Nests Of Bees to both bust walls and eat through the HRE frontline, but the damn things are so buggy right now I did not even consider it. That was a mistake. They still do AOE damage when they function and they're even CHEAPER than Springalds once you get the imperial upgrade, not to mention the increased range really helps keeping them safe.

7)I actually did not spot there was a Trading post. I don't play Altai much and I was too focused trying to get the opening right to spot it at a useful time, which exacerbated my gold starvation. Going for 2 trade posts and getting a mass of traders up instead of going for double TC could be something I could consider if map control becomes difficult. China does not get any trader buffs but the Yuan Dynasty actually makes them go 15% faster, meaning 15% more income. I'll have to try that sometimes.

That's it. It's not that long of a discussion, or is it? I honestly can not tell. Please let me know your own tactics you employ against HRE while playing China, or just to say I suck (since I do). I am not proud of attacking that Prelate with 7 scouts and somehow managing to let him get away. Off I go getting manhandled in 1v1 skirmish again!


Edit:
I've actually found a way to have a chance against HRE while playing china, which I must say works rather reliably. I find this video to sum it up quite nicely:

https://youtu.be/EJbzd6zv3ic

I would like to briefly expand upon this tactic by saying:

1) It works rather nicely against Delhi and Rus aswell

2) You need to see it as a way to cripple your opponent rather than finishing the game. Fully enclosing his base in, making sure he does not get the chance to use rams (or build a barracks to torch it down yourself when it comes up) while out-ecoing him with double TC and Song Dynasty works wonders.

3)Taking the effort to place outposts in the nearest gold veins after you get some turrets up around his base is a very good way to keep denying gold before you fully enclose oppo in

4)You may actually want to get to castle age with the Imperial Palace instead of the Astronomial Clocktower, in order to spot any enemy villager that may have escaped

5) I tend to build an archery range in feudal in my initial outpost blob and then expand with a few stables in castle to hunt down enemy vills using lancers

And that's it, you may take the build where you want after you've done all this, if the enemy can still fight you or has not yet given up. Cheers!

[Cacomistle]

Subtle Butt님이 먼저 게시:

Cacomistle님이 먼저 게시:

Eh I'm not so sure.

Like lets say China comes in and starts poking your gold or something. You build towers, they back up. You go to castle age, but around 10 minutes they come in with 30 zhuge nu and 1-2 rams. What can you have by this point?

I think with maa, you just die. You can have what like 5-10 maa at that point, possibly not even the upgrade yet? The zhuge nu are gonna kill each maa in about 2 seconds. 10 maa (if you can even have that many by the time the zhuge nu hit) kill a ram in probably like 7-8 seconds, maybe 10 seconds within range of the zhuge nu? The Chinese eco is better than yours (because they've been song dynasty for 5 minutes already so about a 7-8 vill advantage), so taking a 600 resource trade to kill 300 resources is gonna be really bad.

If you go knights, then you can actually catch up to the zhuge nu, but I don't think you can fight them early castle, and knights kill the ram really slow. So, the question is can they do enough damage before you get out knight numbers. If you sacrifice like 5-10 vills to kill the rams, then get like 4-5 knights and force them to back up and go home, they're probably fine. They just go castle, add in crossbow, and they should be in good shape. You're probably not making to imp, which means you'll have a brief period of being on equal eco but slowly fall behind again.

That's just my theory. Again, never seen it played. Haven't played it myself. I haven't played a particularly large number of games, China vs HRE matchup hasn't been super common, and the one China vs HRE matchup I did play ended with me attacking with 3 archers after going 2nd tc and them resiging because my 3 archers killed all their hunt vills and gold miners. Needless to say I haven't gotten the chance to play an equal opponent in this matchup and test really any theory.

Depends. I've mostly been playing HRE, Abbasid. With pro scouts and Aachen its really easy to get enough food to sustain 1 TC and 1 rax constantly making M@A and getting to castle. With the Aachen you're kinda negating Song bonus with your gather rate. Plus you didn't have to commit extra resources to get into Song dynasty. With a couple of M@A and pulling vills, you can kill the rams and he'll have to back off. The TC fire and outpost will be able to fend off the remaining CKN. Its similar to English vs HRE feudal but I'd rather fight CKN than longbows + network.

I mean against English for example, do you not lose like 5-6 vills doing that? You're not multiple tc, so losing those vills will put you behind in eco. The chapel is nice and all, but it falls off once you gather all your hunt+sheep.

Like I would think you would fall behind vs English in that situation if you didn't add in horsemen or your own archers.

I do see pro scouts as a problem from the Chinese side. Like I don't think Chinese can go pro scouts (to take over half the hunt) into song dynasty into zhuge nu push, because you'll just be castle age already by the time they push. It means you should have more resources, like you'd definitely be able to hold it by staying feudal yourself, but if you stay feudal yourself the achen chapel is not song dynasty. It gives you a lot of extra food wood and gold (probably) early on, then your hunt runs out, your vills start super long distance gathering trees, and then it falls off to barely stronger than a prelate until you farm transition by which point the gold is probably gone too. Song Dynasty is the opposite, it sucks up your resources early on to get in the first place, and then scales into a villager advantage and returns some of your investment back into villages being cheaper pop than houses (plus it gives you the second landmark so either a bit of extra safety or the tax income might be worth like 1 vill).

I have a feeling it's probably not good, but I'm skeptical without seeing it. If this were aoe 2 I'd think there's a reason I haven't seen it, but in this game for example the very first thing I thought on hybrid maps was delhi, and yet we didn't see delhi as the water meta for a long time. Pro scouts took a while to figure out, scouts vs siege took a while to figure out and still isn't abused, and even now when I watch player's like Hera play HRE they still build all their buildings around the chapel and end up with their entire farm eco outside of the chapel's influence.

I would be incredibly unsurprised if this was a valid strategy against HRE that pro players didn't figure out because they were to tunneled on the boom into nest of bees into imperial with bombards meta that HRE is clearly capable of dealing with.

I also haven't seen 1 barracks maa hold an English ram push at high levels so I'm pretty skeptical of that. Like you could maybe wall and then make it work, but if their first longbow are only contested by a slow melee unit that you have in smaller numbers, they're just place their longbows and a scout behind your wood line and you're kind of already dead. To be fair, zhuge nu can't do that, but zhuge nu have other advantages (namely the zhuge nu push starts outnumbering the longbow push by around 9-10 minutes and only gets better from there, zhuge nu do higher dps vs everything in feudal including maa, and they aren't affected by the +1 pierce armor in castle age because they already do 1 damage per hit vs armor anyways).

[ARCAGNELL0]

Sorry guys I'm late to my own discussion :P

Got a feeling this is going to be a LONG reply.

Cacomistle님이 먼저 게시:

I hate doing plays like this, but I think if you're gonna boom the answer is to wall in their relics. Like pro scouts, 2nd tc and/or song (idk about both cause I think if HRE pulls off fast imp with relics they win), horsemen and stay feudal a bit longer, wall in relics, buy time maybe even yoink a relic or 2 if they don't commit to castle age units and fight you, go aggro in castle to try and keep them from doing a free fast imp, and if you can keep them 1 tc castle age while you're more than 1 tc (either song or 2 tc or both), you should be fine.

That's easier said than done.

Honestly, the way I'd personally do it is similar to your approach, maybe a bit more castle age aggression. In aoe 2 at least, most of my opponent's play fell off a cliff the moment a pro build order guide ended, whereas I never got my build orders down perfectly but continued to macro well. So I kind of just won if it went late at my level. I'd probably take a similar approach to the matchup because of my personal playstyle until I got opponents who could really challenge me mid-late game.

So that being said, at the top level it kind of looks a slightly positive matchup for HRE in the current meta on maps like hill and dale. HRE as a Chinese counter on closed maps seems to be a pretty recently developed thing though, so I don't know what the Chinese player counter is yet.

The problem with going with early pressure, relic denial, then song and an attempt to fast imperial against HRE is that you're likely getting a 2-3 minute window when you're both in feudal, after that HRE that's been put under pressure will just go Castle age at 11-13 minutes while you're busy getting Sing Dynasty and trying to contest him on land.

China is not able to compete with Castle Age HRE, even if they invest double the resources in military units. Horsemen and Spearmen and/or Zhuge Nu have a modicum of success when HRE is still in feudal but it all goes down the window when HRE has just one stable and one barracks pumping out MAA and Lancers. MAA will obliterate anything that can counter Lancers and those will ensure map control.
Horsemen do not counter Lancers now. It's a good way to waste 100 food and 20 wood each time one of those glass cannons goes down.

I've seen this proposed before China got a plethora of buffs (no-one talks about it now, which is pretty sad), but nerfing some aspects of late game China (looking at you bombards) while ALSO giving them the "Early Crossbowman" at feudal age would actually give them a good shot at contesting map control, altough slow infantry like crossbowmen and Zhuge nu won't do that all that well.

As a final addendum to this specific reply, I suggest you watch this match between HRE and China on Hill & Dale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9vbfB1BCII

China won't be able to contest relics for long at all, HRE is more or less Guaranteed to get to a fully operational Regnitz Cathedral no matter how hard you try and contest(which is going to add a virtual 30-35 villagers mining gold for all eternity) and the only way you can ever beat that is to go double TC Song, get double their worker count to make up for the 900 gold/min relic income and SOMEHOW get enough of a military presence as soon as you hit castle and try your damnest to keep HRE away from getting the Palace Of Swabia, which more or less will make any boom attempts any other civ gets against them useless.

Can we just talk about how HRE litterally gets all the best landmarks across all civs by the way?
-Aachen chapel is the best feudal economic landmark
-Reignitz Cathedral is the best castle economic landmark
-Palace Of Swabia is litterally 4 Town Centers strapped togheder pumping out 13 food villagers. It also makes eco raiding 100% useless since even using Spirit Way Fire Lancers to kill double their number in vills and then dying is going to end up being a loss for China instead of HRE

I've got a feeling that both the current siege meta and the plethora of bugs HRE still has are the only two things keeping the civ down. They'd be S tier otherwise.

Cacomistle님이 먼저 게시:

A Jerking Ape님이 먼저 게시:

Isnt this your first time reaching 11+?

Nah I think he was like a month ago. When he put up that thread on song dynasty or whatever, I think I looked at his elo and he was like 1.1k. Maybe like 1080.

He is correct, I was around 1100 ELO before 8234 hit and I got hardcrashed over a dozen times. It would thecnically be the SECOND time I'm entering the endless cycle of ELO hell :P

Cacomistle님이 먼저 게시:

Subtle Butt님이 먼저 게시:

I find CKN to be too pitiful against M@A to be any threat. Its good if you know HRE is going to FC. But all it takes is double rax M@A to kill off your song dynasty push.

The thing is, if they commit to double rax and start pumping maa, they're not going castle, which means they're not picking up relics.

The thing is, it requires 2 upgrades for them to be able to beat zhuge nu, the pierce armor upgrade so they don't take 6 damage, and the speed upgrade which costs like 400 resources just to make it so the maa can run down zhuge nu. Which means you can just poke in, see 2 barracks and a blacksmith, and just leave. If you see that they lack both upgrades, just stay and start trying to poke in and kill vills, but don't commit to a ram push. You can just not get siege engineering until you see them build the castle age landmark (then supervise it out so you can start ram pushing before they get any noticeable mass of units).

If we imagined a game without pro scouts, a feudal HRE I think would just pretty much die. They commit to feudal, they gain nothing, they can't really push you because you've got the barbican and zhuge nu honestly tear rams to shreds (which forces them to actually full on dive), and you'd just have better eco. But because they've got pro scouts, they might just take a tiny bit of damage, maybe idle a bit or sacrifice 1-2 units to slow you down, and then just get like 1000 food you don't have and make it to castle while you're stuck feudal.

I could see this ending up poorly if for example the HRE player for example commits to several horsemen to shut down your first push and you don't add spears. Or if you do add spears and they add maa and do get the speed upgrade. You don't necessarily win just because you kept them in feudal longer, since foregoing professional scouts means they'll have loads of hunt if they recognize you're going song and take your hunt first. But idk, I've never really seen it play out.

I'll disagree on this on Cacomostle. Zhuge-Nu are only usable in certain matchups, HRE is definetly not one of them.

The first problem with Zhuge is that they're the only ranged unit that performs worse against horsemen after they got NERFED, which is hilarious. If HRE goes professional scouts into horsemen harass to start getting map control then the entire Zhuge-Nu play goes out the window.

The second problem is that the unit becomes an active gold sink as soon as the opponent gets to castle age. Lancers and Mangonels hardcounter repeater crossbowmen even harder than regular archers due to their lower speed.

The Third problem is that China as a whole after Feudal age needs fodder in the frontline to shield their expensive siege, meaning that an archer unit that costs 30 gold out of the 80 resources required to produce it is NOT the way to go about it. 90% of Casle Age China army compositions are Spearmen/Palace Guard as a frontline and then a choice between cavalry to go raid/snipe siege and rams to bust down enemy positions or siege spam. There's no actual place for a Zhuge Nu in there.

The Fouth and final problem is that the Zhuge has perhaps become the only gold intensive trash unit, and I'm not kidding on this one. The unit is supremely cheap and can do some mean ram pushes in Feudal Age backed up by spears against Delhi, Abbasid, other Chinese and even factions like Rus or French is played properly. It however all changes after feudal age, since as I said before the current state of the unit makes it unfit for any useful army comp.
What is even funnier about all this is that the old, 120 resource Zhuge-Nu was actually able to trade supremely cost effectively against Handcannoneers and Strelzy in imperial age given all ranged upgrades were researched, even better if it came out of the Spirit way. It used to have A LOT of hitpoints for a ranged unit, while now it's the same as an archer.


I'm pretty sure there's an actually viable way to beat HRE in feudal tough, and it involves the Chinese cosplaying as Mongols and doing a Handcannoneer Slits Outpost rush on the HRE gold and Wood, as shown here:

https://youtu.be/EJbzd6zv3ic

I'll probably attempt it myself next time I'm against HRE.

Subtle Butt님이 먼저 게시:

Cacomistle님이 먼저 게시:

-snip-

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I mean against English for example, do you not lose like 5-6 vills doing that? You're not multiple tc, so losing those vills will put you behind in eco. The chapel is nice and all, but it falls off once you gather all your hunt+sheep.

Like I would think you would fall behind vs English in that situation if you didn't add in horsemen or your own archers.

I do see pro scouts as a problem from the Chinese side. Like I don't think Chinese can go pro scouts (to take over half the hunt) into song dynasty into zhuge nu push, because you'll just be castle age already by the time they push. It means you should have more resources, like you'd definitely be able to hold it by staying feudal yourself, but if you stay feudal yourself the achen chapel is not song dynasty. It gives you a lot of extra food wood and gold (probably) early on, then your hunt runs out, your vills start super long distance gathering trees, and then it falls off to barely stronger than a prelate until you farm transition by which point the gold is probably gone too. Song Dynasty is the opposite, it sucks up your resources early on to get in the first place, and then scales into a villager advantage and returns some of your investment back into villages being cheaper pop than houses (plus it gives you the second landmark so either a bit of extra safety or the tax income might be worth like 1 vill).

I have a feeling it's probably not good, but I'm skeptical without seeing it. If this were aoe 2 I'd think there's a reason I haven't seen it, but in this game for example the very first thing I thought on hybrid maps was delhi, and yet we didn't see delhi as the water meta for a long time. Pro scouts took a while to figure out, scouts vs siege took a while to figure out and still isn't abused, and even now when I watch player's like Hera play HRE they still build all their buildings around the chapel and end up with their entire farm eco outside of the chapel's influence.

I would be incredibly unsurprised if this was a valid strategy against HRE that pro players didn't figure out because they were to tunneled on the boom into nest of bees into imperial with bombards meta that HRE is clearly capable of dealing with.

I also haven't seen 1 barracks maa hold an English ram push at high levels so I'm pretty skeptical of that. Like you could maybe wall and then make it work, but if their first longbow are only contested by a slow melee unit that you have in smaller numbers, they're just place their longbows and a scout behind your wood line and you're kind of already dead. To be fair, zhuge nu can't do that, but zhuge nu have other advantages (namely the zhuge nu push starts outnumbering the longbow push by around 9-10 minutes and only gets better from there, zhuge nu do higher dps vs everything in feudal including maa, and they aren't affected by the +1 pierce armor in castle age because they already do 1 damage per hit vs armor anyways). [/quote]

Aachen chapel does not fall off in the slightest. It's 100% doing to be in range of Gold/wood and even after that is gone it's going to end up being surrounded by farmland which is going to net HRE amazing food income even after all resources around it run out. I was not kidding when I said I was sure it was the best age 2 landmark.

You're correct in saying Professional Scouts is not compatible with any rush tactic from basically any civ that's not the Rus. Zhuge are also going to require spearmen to fend off Horsemen. You can't possibly fill all that with prof scouts and still rpessure your opponent within the 10-11 minute mark.

I don't think I need to say much more about Zhuge, apart from saying that you should not even consider using them against ANY enemy civ that has access to heavy infantry/cavalry in Feudal. The only use I can see for them after feudal is to maybe contest Horse Archers, Mangudai and to cover your chinese cavalry against spears, altough in a very pop inefficient way.

[Cacomistle]

A few things.

First of all, the fact zhuge nu perform worse than pre-parch doesn't really matter vs horsemen. Horsemen barely beat longbow once the numbers get high, and zhuge nu still do around double the dps. I wouldn't be even slightly scared of horsemen.

Besides, why can't you just add spears if they add horsemen? That's what english does. Works really well.

What I would be scared of is castle age, stuff like mangonels, because the zhuge nu push does hit later than a longbow push and its harder to get damage against things like towers. That's why I'm not sure it would work well, but I think if you get a bit of damage fall back and don't straight up die to a castle age allin I feel you'd be fine.

That game you showed though kind of is how I think China would win the matchup. I feel like HRE probably could have just gone imperial, but if you get a game where you delay the HRE relics to like 12-13 minutes, by the time they get relics you're probably up 20-25 villagers, so you're still ahead in eco and have better units (specifically clockwork tower siege).

The issue I saw in steel series is that HRE got the relics and just went straight up to imperial, which means they actually will catch up and eventually surpass in eco, just without actually investing any resources in eco, which gives them a huge lead.

If you can force HRE to actually play castle age, I still think an early 2nd tc Chinese is better off than HRE.

Also on the idea HRE will go castle at 11-13 minutes, if HRE goes 11-13 minute castle age and you're song dynasty since 5 minutes, you're up like 10-12 vills, and you can quite obviously get castle around that time too.

Now I don't think that's how it would play out. I think HRE would just go up to castle anyways on maps like hill and dale, but on more open maps I think they'd have to invest a bit into feudal, maybe some towers, and then it would delay their relics by a bit.

As I said I haven't seen it play out. Chinese players at the top level either boom or fast castle every game. But, it seems to only have been figured out recently that Chinese lose this matchup with defensive play, because most of the time they're up against stuff like mongols/rus/french/english instead who can't outboom them.

[Cacomistle]

Oh and on the chapel, no it doesn't scale amazingly. It starts strong, stays strong for a while, falls off to ok mid game, and then gets strong again late.

The most vills you'll ever have under the chapel is around 10 minutes. After that point, your hunt under the tc runs out and your vills start having to gather from like 3-4 tiles away to get wood. Your gold might still be buffed for the next few minutes, but that's because you don't have many vills on gold in the first place.

Yes it will eventually be surrounded by farms, but not at the 11-12 minute mark when their food runs out. If HRE goes for 30 farms by 12 minutes, just go kill them. Its a free win. At minute 13 or so, it might by 6 gold miners and 3-4 farmers, which makes it basically just a prelate (aka useless).

Its good, but its not that good. Later, the buff on farms ends up to be something like 25% so if you put say 32 farms around the chapel... 8 villls. Pretty good for an age 2 landmark, nothing special for the 15-20 minutes into the game you get those farms.

Basically its pretty good, really good at the 10 minute mark, then never gets any better than that. Vill advantage from extra tc or song dynasty gets bigger and bigger and bigger until you hit 120 vills. If you keep them from imp, your economy will easily outscale the chapel (I think literally the game you linked shows that).

[Cacomistle]

I'd also like to say the song dynasty idea would be an open map thing. On closed maps they'd just wall. I'd do what vortix did in that replay on closed maps, maybe with a vill to wall off the relics too. Idk about song though, I feel like 2 tc into castle age might be better because I feel like HRE can get relics and imperial if you hard boom, whereas if you go more military heavy you can probably either force them to play castle go imp without 3 relics (I think the game you linked his opponent could and should still have just gone imp).

Last thing, zhuge nu are literally better vs horsemen and maa than longbow are. They're cheaper and higher dps (yes even vs armor, in fact they're way better vs armor because you don't even need +1 to deal 3 damage armor, you deal 6 if you get +1 and they don't, and if they get to knights in castle you still do 3 damage). If HRE plays feudal with you, to beat your zhuge nu they need +1 pierce, +speed upgrade (or you just kite them), and numbers. So... just go home. You've got a scaling bonus (1.5x vill production), and they've got a temporary bonus (pro scouts), so if they just use that to spam feudal units that can't kill you, you're happy.

[ARCAGNELL0]

Imagine trying to go 1 TC into fast Yuan Against HRE on black effing forest.

What an absolute joke of a rice eating civ this is. I got 3 of the 5 relics but that did not even matter in the slightest.

Can't punish him going fast imperial. Can't get enough of a lead by opening with a dock against him, while he did not. Barely manage to hold his MAA push in Castle Age by having Nests Of Bugs behind a bloody stone wall. Can't even get a decent enough mass of Fire Lancers to even dent the absolute sea of Men At Arms by the time he busts down my walls. He litterally only built 1 unit type plus 3 bombards to win. I am livid.

I'm playing HRE instead of China in turtle maps from now on. I'm not subjecting myself to this uncounterable match-up garbage anymore, at least until they fix the damnable Nest Of Bugs.

Oh, can you tell when he got the Palace Of Swabia? Such a balanced landmark making any boom attempt from ANY dedicated boom civ completely and utterly USELESS.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2690013472

I am done with this infuriating gimmick civ for the time being.

Cacomistle님이 먼저 게시:

I'd also like to say the song dynasty idea would be an open map thing. On closed maps they'd just wall. I'd do what vortix did in that replay on closed maps, maybe with a vill to wall off the relics too. Idk about song though, I feel like 2 tc into castle age might be better because I feel like HRE can get relics and imperial if you hard boom, whereas if you go more military heavy you can probably either force them to play castle go imp without 3 relics (I think the game you linked his opponent could and should still have just gone imp).

Last thing, zhuge nu are literally better vs horsemen and maa than longbow are. They're cheaper and higher dps (yes even vs armor, in fact they're way better vs armor because you don't even need +1 to deal 3 damage armor, you deal 6 if you get +1 and they don't, and if they get to knights in castle you still do 3 damage). If HRE plays feudal with you, to beat your zhuge nu they need +1 pierce, +speed upgrade (or you just kite them), and numbers. So... just go home. You've got a scaling bonus (1.5x vill production), and they've got a temporary bonus (pro scouts), so if they just use that to spam feudal units that can't kill you, you're happy.

I dare you to try it yourself if you don't believe me telling you IT. DOES. NOT. WORK.

He'll spot your push, build a barracks, get 10 men at arms and just torch the stupid battering rams while your peashooter army can't do a single thing to stop it, at which point your push has done exactly 0 damage to him.

Oh, and it gets better, because he'll get to Castle Age MILES before you and train 3-4 Knights as a response, completely wiping you since getting 20-30 Zhuge to push within 11 minutes means cutting down everything else, including a Barracks for the spearmen too.

[Cacomistle]

I watched the actual game you played. Your second tc doesn't go down till like 10 minutes. If you're trying to go pro scouts into boom, you can get the 2nd tc at like 7-8 minutes and song by like 9. You could have had probably an extra 5-10 vills on him compared to what you did.

Then you just... stone wall. Why? This goes for any civ matchup, if you spend a significant amount of resources on defense, and your opponent just booms, they'll get a lead. He actually didn't even get a lead, he got about even eco cause he was pretty slow to imperial (and kind of slow to castle even).

But then the last problem is that your map was just trash. Idk why the map generation put one of the big neutral golds basically in his base and the other on his side, but it did. You're gonna lose late unless you're playing rus in that situation.

Instead I think what you could have done is get your eco up earlier, don't stone wall defensively (pallisades are good enough in most situations), maybe wall off the gold up top to secure it, and then play aggro in castle age to try to punish his fast imperial before you lose to the map.

As for this other game you're talking about, 1 tc into fast yuan on black forest sounds really bad. I'd like tower, stone wall them in and stone wall off all but their second gold, forward barbican, etc. Its just a ♥♥♥♥ map and even if you win its not fun. You can probably beat them by 2 tc song into imp into bombard spam too, pretty hard to kill that when there's no way to flank the bombards. I personally would rather just lose than play bombard+wall in tiny chokepoints.

[Cacomistle]

ARCAGNELL0님이 먼저 게시:

Imagine trying to go 1 TC into fast Yuan Against HRE on black effing forest.

What an absolute joke of a rice eating civ this is. I got 3 of the 5 relics but that did not even matter in the slightest.

Can't punish him going fast imperial. Can't get enough of a lead by opening with a dock against him, while he did not. Barely manage to hold his MAA push in Castle Age by having Nests Of Bugs behind a bloody stone wall. Can't even get a decent enough mass of Fire Lancers to even dent the absolute sea of Men At Arms by the time he busts down my walls. He litterally only built 1 unit type plus 3 bombards to win. I am livid.

I'm playing HRE instead of China in turtle maps from now on. I'm not subjecting myself to this uncounterable match-up garbage anymore, at least until they fix the damnable Nest Of Bugs.

Oh, can you tell when he got the Palace Of Swabia? Such a balanced landmark making any boom attempt from ANY dedicated boom civ completely and utterly USELESS.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2690013472

I am done with this infuriating gimmick civ for the time being.

Cacomistle님이 먼저 게시:

I'd also like to say the song dynasty idea would be an open map thing. On closed maps they'd just wall. I'd do what vortix did in that replay on closed maps, maybe with a vill to wall off the relics too. Idk about song though, I feel like 2 tc into castle age might be better because I feel like HRE can get relics and imperial if you hard boom, whereas if you go more military heavy you can probably either force them to play castle go imp without 3 relics (I think the game you linked his opponent could and should still have just gone imp).

Last thing, zhuge nu are literally better vs horsemen and maa than longbow are. They're cheaper and higher dps (yes even vs armor, in fact they're way better vs armor because you don't even need +1 to deal 3 damage armor, you deal 6 if you get +1 and they don't, and if they get to knights in castle you still do 3 damage). If HRE plays feudal with you, to beat your zhuge nu they need +1 pierce, +speed upgrade (or you just kite them), and numbers. So... just go home. You've got a scaling bonus (1.5x vill production), and they've got a temporary bonus (pro scouts), so if they just use that to spam feudal units that can't kill you, you're happy.

I dare you to try it yourself if you don't believe me telling you IT. DOES. NOT. WORK.

He'll spot your push, build a barracks, get 10 men at arms and just torch the stupid battering rams while your peashooter army can't do a single thing to stop it, at which point your push has done exactly 0 damage to him.

Oh, and it gets better, because he'll get to Castle Age MILES before you and train 3-4 Knights as a response, completely wiping you since getting 20-30 Zhuge to push within 11 minutes means cutting down everything else, including a Barracks for the spearmen too.

Dude if I try it myself, I'm either gonna get a better player and lose, or get a worse player and win. I don't buy into this idea that you win or lose games based on the civ matchups below high elo. Regardless of the strategy I play, I'm gonna look at it and think "wow I got outplayed" or "did I really not see that raid for 15 seconds and let 5 villagers die" or "my fishing ships were idle legit 20% of the game" (or if I win "what was he even doing"), not "this strat doesn't work".

Every single game I have played so far I think was won or lost on obvious blatant mistakes from one or both players. Not a single one has been won or lost based on balance between strategies, let alone civs. I watch how strategies play out in top level games to answer whether or not they work, not my own mistake ridden games. I'd have to at minimum lose with it several times, and I simply do not play enough ladder for that to happen.

I imagine I'd win though, the reason being that zhuge nu spam is something easy to play I already created a build for. Plus there's matchmaking, so if I have stupid solutions to problems then I'll just get lower elo and they'll still work 50% of the time.

Besides, that's just flat out not true. If I bring 30 zhuge nu and my opponent gets 10 maa, I'll just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ kill the maa. They 2 shot maa in those numbers. Even if I just didn't micro at all, he played perfect and didn't have so much 1 vulnerable vill and ran maa at my ram, if I just fire back, I'll kill 4-5 maa before the ram goes down (maa would take like 10 seconds to kill the ram, zhuge nu would take 2.5 seconds to kill a maa, and that's with massive overkill). 4-5 maa costs more than a ram, so I just build another ram.

He'd have to go castle into probably knight, or go full feudal. I do think that an hre who properly responds would probably come out on top. But 10 maa won't do it. An HRE player who does some half assed stalling defense that takes inefficient trades (which still wouldn't prevent idle vills) and delays their castle age will not defend the push. I feel like everyone here is massively overestimating maa. They're just not that special in feudal without the speed upgrade.

[ARCAGNELL0]

Looks like I'm not the only one believing China has no chance against an HRE player that knows what he's doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQIO94KOCrQ

I don't even think professional scouts into double TC into SOng Dynasty into triple TC boom could have saved him here.

Sigh, I guess I'll have to tower rush HRE or something next time I see them against me. Handcannoneer Outposts are pretty nasty!

[Cacomistle]

ARCAGNELL0님이 먼저 게시:

Looks like I'm not the only one believing China has no chance against an HRE player that knows what he's doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQIO94KOCrQ

I don't even think professional scouts into double TC into SOng Dynasty into triple TC boom could have saved him here.

Sigh, I guess I'll have to tower rush HRE or something next time I see them against me. Handcannoneer Outposts are pretty nasty!

Did drongo actually say that, or is that just the title of his video?

Because some of his videos have incredibly incorrect titles that have legit ♥♥♥♥ nothing to do with what actually happened.

For example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs6pBJIyEYY&t=1147s&ab_channel=Aussie_Drongo

This one is particularly egregious. The title says abbassids are good, the thumbnail says pros are picking abbassid against rus, whereas reality is that demuslim had to use abbassids in that series because its a bo7 with 1 civ banned so the threw away his worst civ against vortix's best civ, and as expected, got demolished.

Statistically its their second worst matchup (after mongols which is basically everyone's worst matchup), and I think a lot of high level players would agree its not great for Chinese. But they have a 46.7% win rate right now against HRE.

That's not even remotely close to having no chance. You're not losing because the matchup is unwinnable. Sure its below 50/50, but if you find yourself consistently losing, you're losing because you play the matchup poorly not because of the matchup itself. You can tell yourself that excuse vs mongol tower rush but not here.

[ARCAGNELL0]

Cacomistle님이 먼저 게시:

ARCAGNELL0님이 먼저 게시:

Looks like I'm not the only one believing China has no chance against an HRE player that knows what he's doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQIO94KOCrQ

I don't even think professional scouts into double TC into SOng Dynasty into triple TC boom could have saved him here.

Sigh, I guess I'll have to tower rush HRE or something next time I see them against me. Handcannoneer Outposts are pretty nasty!

Did drongo actually say that, or is that just the title of his video?

Because some of his videos have incredibly incorrect titles that have legit ♥♥♥♥ nothing to do with what actually happened.

For example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs6pBJIyEYY&t=1147s&ab_channel=Aussie_Drongo

This one is particularly egregious. The title says abbassids are good, the thumbnail says pros are picking abbassid against rus, whereas reality is that demuslim had to use abbassids in that series because its a bo7 with 1 civ banned so the threw away his worst civ against vortix's best civ, and as expected, got demolished.

Statistically its their second worst matchup (after mongols which is basically everyone's worst matchup), and I think a lot of high level players would agree its not great for Chinese. But they have a 46.7% win rate right now against HRE.

That's not even remotely close to having no chance. You're not losing because the matchup is unwinnable. Sure its below 50/50, but if you find yourself consistently losing, you're losing because you play the matchup poorly not because of the matchup itself. You can tell yourself that excuse vs mongol tower rush but not here.

Drongo does indeed have very egregious thumbnails, but that one is actually legit, he thinks HRE is the worst matchup for China, besides Mongols of course.

Those are some interesting statistics, is there a site to check them thoroughly?

I believe HRE has the defensive advantage over China in Feudal and Castle age, which are the "normal" times at which you "could" punish them, but it does not happen.

1)Going full greed has you beat by the combination of Reignitz and Swabia

2)Going for a feudal push gets you hardcountered by litterally one unit type of his choosing, depending on what army you get since you're NOT getting a proper rush up before the 8 minute mark, at which point they're already 1 minute away from getting castle age and having you suffer terrible economic trades.

Zhuge-Nu gets in too late and is deleted by Lancers, since getting a critical mass of them plus siege engineering plus the wood required for Rams takes the option of putting in spearmen out of the question.

Archer + Spearman more or less does no damage with just a few MAA to sweep the battering rams, after which you can't really do much eco damage considering most of the HRE base is near the TC

Horsemen + Archers can't do squat against Lancers

Horsemen + Spears gets poked to death by archers that you can't pressure because of the Town Center covering for them whenever you go in, not to mention you'll just get harassed by the TC trying to cover the ram from enemy villagers

3)The only way I see an aggressive action working against HRE is to Handcannoneer Outpost rush him within 4 minutes.

HRE really likes to keep wood chopping, food gathering and gold mining as close to eachother as possible, therefore allowing some good old Outpost Creep with emplacements very viable, to at least negate the Aachen.

Getting an additional scout and stationing them on the other corners of the base to see if he's trying to sneak villagers out to mine gold or chop wood would be imperative.

There's a very nice video showing how this is done, sending out 5 villagers and later an Imperial Official to supervise a Barracks/Archery Range into the Outpost is quite the nice touch. Somewhat clickbaity title tough.

https://youtu.be/EJbzd6zv3ic

He uses it even against Mongols, but I only realistically see it being worth it against HRE and Rus, since they tend to rush to Castle Age in a way more "naked" way than other civs.

[Cacomistle]

https://aoe4world.com/stats/civilizations shows the civilization statistics.

Unfortunately it only shows matchups in general rather than matchups by elo, so the matchup for Chinese vs HRE might get worse at 1400+. But it also might get better. Both civs go down noticeably in win rate at high elo (every civ except for delhi rus and mongols goes down significantly, while mongols go way up).

[ARCAGNELL0]

Cacomistle님이 먼저 게시:

https://aoe4world.com/stats/civilizations shows the civilization statistics.

Unfortunately it only shows matchups in general rather than matchups by elo, so the matchup for Chinese vs HRE might get worse at 1400+. But it also might get better. Both civs go down noticeably in win rate at high elo (every civ except for delhi rus and mongols goes down significantly, while mongols go way up).

And that's a bookmark, thank you for sharing it with me!

Shame about the lack of varying winrates per ELO for every civ matchup, it would be an amazing metric to have!

Edit: It's also interesting to see that China has a 46% and a 46.7% chance of beating Mongols and HRE respecively, making HRE the second best pick against China after the most blatantly overtuned civilization in the game. Thrilling stuff.

[Tizon]

HRE is hard countered by Mongols, French and then Rus according to the stats on the link. The common theme seems to be strong mobility and early unit deployment to deny relics in my opinion

[Subtle Butt ( >ω<)っ ♡]

Yep, thats been my experience as well. Early cav civs will usually dominate feudal and establish map control which makes relics hard to get.