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You mean skimishers, spearmen are the ones that die horribly to them.
15 Arbs in the... Castle age? You mean crossbowmen?
Crossbowmen in the Castle Age... yes, that is a downright pain. The trick is to amass about 20 units against their 15 (or even better, 30 units) and then march all out. Of course, the problem is getting 20 units in the first place...
Crossbowmen are also actually able to punch their way through Feudal defenses, such as Watch Towers (& Guard Towers, too), walls (yep!), and TCs (even when fully garrisoned - Crossbowmen have 1 more range anyway). They're surprisingly powerful.
There's a reason for this. Consider... practically any unit. Take infantry.
We have cheap counters - massed Halbs & Skirms & towers back. These don't work very well.
We also have expensive counters - HCs and other UUs. These work much better.
Take cavalry:
Cheap counters (Halbs)
Expensive counters (Camels)
although in this case Halbs are much, much better at shredding Paladin spams than Camels...
Siege weaponry:
Cheap counters (massed Halbs again, will eventually do enough stuff)
Expensive counters (BBCs, Knight-spam)
But there's no such thing for archers. There's only cheap Skirms, which are surprisingly useless against Arbs - which is what you expect for a cheap counter. But there's no expensive counter, unless you mass enough of it - but mass enough of ANYTHING and you'll be fine.
Furthermore, on hitting Castle the AI will immediately research Crossbowmen (which is a very cheap upgrade) and Bodkin Arrow (which is only slightly more expensive). Armor upgrades usually only come later.
That's why I modded my version and decreased Crossbowmen attack by 1 - it makes a lot of difference
What to Attack them with:
Siege Weaponry:
- Rams. If you're against the AI, then sending out a ram will cause all the Crossbowmen to shoot your ram. You can then shoot the crossbowmen - however this is expensive.
- Mangonels. Not a very good choice, because of their low range - FU crossbows (easy to do) have 7 range, so do Mangonels
- Scorps. Nope. Until I modded 'em, I'd never found a use for these.
Infantry
- Pikes will get murdered. Don't bother.
- Militia-line is too expensive to use in this situation
Cavalry
- L-Cav line - Decent, but hefty in food price for the Castle Age and not all THAT effective.
- Knights. When they've got 40 crossbows, don't send knights - they'll focus-fire them down. Knight are surprisingly bad against massed crossbowmen.
Archers
- Whatever you're going to send, make sure you outnumber them. 15 Crossbows of yours vs 20 of theirs - you'll lose.
- Skirms NEED the range upgrade before you even think of using them.
Defenses:
- This is your salvation. Crossbows can and will shoot down towers - don't build em! (Insanely expensive stuff too - for five towers you could have a Castle). Build walls instead, and make them Fortified if you can. Then, stuff ranged siege weaponry behind the walls and attempt to shoot anything you can. You'll still lose units, but you should be able to kill more of them. Hopefully. You'll also need these up in advance, as it's impossible to build with crossbowmen-fire on your tail.
- Also note that Crossbowmen can't shoot down a Castle. However, the AI loves its Ram-Spams - you'll want some Mangonels lurking behind your castle to get rid of these.
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You're a decent Feudal player, I can see - 10 min. Why not try and rush THEM? Instead of waiting for them to come to you, why don't you go to them? If they're Castling at 17 then they're DEFINITELY booming. And of course a nice juicy flush is the way to stop any booms you like. It's all about stopping those crossbowmen from reaching critical mass. You're beating him to Feudal - snatch that time!
Chances are the AI doesn't create archers in the Feudal - he [?] creates them when he's already Castling.
Getting to Feudal age in 10 minutes (sometimes even less) seems pretty simple. Send the scout to gather sheeps, while constantly creating new villagers, building houses and chopping the wood nearby. When I'm close to running out of sheeps, I just call back the scout and let him pull a boar to the town center, where the villagers can shoot it and get free ~200 food from it.
I just can't get the economy rolling after that. I'm typically at 15 units when I start the research for Feudal, but after that I just keep on running out of rescources.
Not enough food, not enough wood and I keep forgetting to build new houses.
This is exactly why you're losing right here. 15 units = 14 vills + scout with 10 minute Feudal? You can get Feudal in 10 minutes with 20 vills + scout. That means you had almost 3 minutes of idle TC time in the first 8 minutes of the game. That's a huge eco disadvantage, and that disadvantage will snowball over the course of the game.
Each villager gathers around 100 resources every 5 minutes. So 5 extra villagers working for 5 minutes means an extra 500 resources. 500 resources could be something like 8 extra military units, or whatever else you want to put it into.
- Experts favor going feudal with 21 villagers. Try that strategy. You'll run into the following problem: you'll get food pretty fast as you kill your boars (don't use your scout unless he can't search for the opponent's base, as in islands), but then it takes practice to transition to farms - it's never smooth. You'll have to adjust eco so that you have enough wood to make farms (it's a common mistake to abuse on woodcutting unless you're going for a wood-intensive eco, with siege, archers or navy), a decent idea is to mill a few deer (if you build the mill near shorfish, it's quite good) or send villagers to gather berries (traditionally you'll have 4 villagers gathering there) while your lumberjacks gather more wood (berries = farms in terms of food gathering, but mind the civ bonuses - Aztecs farm scandalously fast, even faster than Slavs). You'll need experience to fine-tune all this, but it's not hard to use a trial-and-error strategy here.
- With a decent eco (AI is excelent at this, so you'll have to beat them on the battlefield), it's time to go to war. Options? 1) Wall. If you do, they will attack you walls/buildings. Best strategy is to use a mangonel (obviously you'll need a fast castle stretegy if you wall). Proper answer on their part would be to boom, making many town centers, but they'll have to adjust, since they are rushing (the opposite strategy to boom in terms of rock-scissor-paper).
2) Rush them back. You like early feudal? Here's you chance to shine, because if you attack enemy villagers, let's say with 1 scout, they'll all chase you (therefore they won't be working). Run away and harass as much as possible. No such thing as a mighty army marching towards victory here: like in real life feudal age, it's minor skirmishers to kill his gold units first and prevent the AI from going Castle. Mixed armies offers lots of benefits, but you'll need archery range and stable (and micromanaging skills). Your chances will be better, in my experience, with just skirmishers (avoid trying this against human player) and 3 to 4 spearmen (since sending scouts is the obvious feudal age thing to do against skirmishers). You won't kill many villagers unless you're on a cliff or hill (always abuse elevations, if necessary fall back so your archery range units are on top of one, but the AI will try to go around and take higher ground itself!), but try instead to prevent them from gathering gold, then wood, and slowly you'll see the AI will get weaker. Keep focusing on those farms, adjust eco, and you'll be there. Once in castle, a couple of rams into his TC and it'll resign.
3) Feudal age tower rush. Focus on stone and build towers around them. Enemy AI is a sucker for this one, and unlike against a human player don't bother building, before your tower #1 (hopefully within range of their gold), a tower #0 to protect tower #1 in case it gets attacked (you won't have murder holes by then).
Good luck. By the way, which civs are you fighting against?
Uhm ... actually feudalism was the "prime time" of the crusades and the whole expansion of the Mongol Empire.
I tried interrupting him with meele units and killed ~8 of his villagers by baiting them like I typically bait the boar: Keeping aggro on the Scout, while 2-3 Scouts or Spearmen kill the villagers. Sadly the AI was prepared and drove me off with like 10 Man-at-Arms and then started to raid my town with archers and man-at-arms a minute or two later.
I set the AI on random, while practicing Teutons and Byzantines myself.
That might actually be a bit late. A few more villagers make a lot of difference. 25 to 28 is advised for fast castle.
True, but I'd say those events are, in game, "Castle Age" or, from a less european point of view, quite "Imperial" (Mongols are indeed a good example) - I meant feudal age as an earlier, more warlord-driven moment, before knighthood even existed.
Good job with the villagers. Another option would be to run to another place and do the same, keep on the move so they never catch you.
Anyway, that's a very agressive AI right there. Walls have to be in place by then if their army goes towards you base and, while maintaning at least some villager production, insist on making your army. Archers are good to attack with from behind walls but, if you're attacking with scouts, you shouldn't face a large group of m@2 and archers directly. Scouts are fast, search his base and kill more villagers and, if attacked, run away and attack somewhere else. Keep the scouts alive.
The AI usually comes back with his army with this much pressure (but they'll return as soon as possible). If not, you'll have to build an archery range; you should have the wood for it, since scouts cost no wood (directly)
One should be able to manage no matter the civ, but taking into account what I said above and the problems you're running into, consider Mayans: cheaper archers and walls, and that great eco bonus as well. They don't farm as fast, though.
PAHAHAHAHA- wait what?
Drove... me... off... with Men-at-arms?
Those things are not only expensive but also useless. If they're not upgraded, Spears + Skirms will take 'em down. If you've got enough.
:P
Of course you can't keep up with the AI's economy - they can micromanage much, much better than you. What you can do is AI-abuse in return. Top of the list is abusing the heck out of the pathfinding - wall off your base with palisades except for one frontier (preferably the closest to them), then delete those walls (don't build a gate) and the AI will usually run through the gauntlet, meaning you can quietly expand behind yourself.
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Try playing a 2v2 - you + AI vs AI + AI. You can then see what your AI does. In particular, you can see what your AI doesn't do and exploit the heck out of this on the other AI.
I tried that and messing with it's pathfinding on walls works quite well, however by the time I've got my own army ready, the AI is sitting on max population with a constant supply of Paladins, Halberdiers and Elite Skirmishers.
Even when I completely anihilate the AI's army on my walls with Skirmishers and Onagers, it has already built a new army by the time I open the gates and try to push towards it's town center (most likely because the AI has around 5 of each military production building), making the game a continuous back and forth, since neither me nor the AI can end the game.
That's worth a shot.
So far I've tried playing solo vs. a team of old AI+oldAI vs. new AI. (1/2/1)
The result was that the 3 AIs joined together against me and I had to defend for like 3 hours, until the new AI finally killed the two old ones and I was able to push through, while it's main army was busy.
Seriously? MAA absolutely destroy a trash rush. Goth was my favorite civ when I used to play a lot, and I developed an MAA + tower rush that I was able to beat 2k+ HD players with (even though I wasn't quite 2k myself).
But I totally agree if you're not Goth, MAA aren't worth making after early Feudal. I know from experience though that they completely destroy a trash rush, unless maybe the other guy is a very good Voobly player that can micro skirms incredibly well.