Best defensive civ?

[Sezostris]

Hi! I want to ask more experienced players, which civs do Your consider strong/best on the defense side? I'm asking mainly about games vs AI (im quite sure such passive strategy cannot really work on MP) I love to turtle and defend myself from hordes of enemies. Personally im enjoying a lot Koreans/Teutons in that position, but looking for some inspiration from You guys to test something else!

[WSlord]

Well as you have said:
For turtling:
Teutons: Castle range by +3, and garssioaned infantry shoot arrows, and they have their double garrison bonuse
Koreans: 33% wall construction and +2 tower range

Byzantine: Buildings having up to 40% more HP
China: Walls and Towers 30% HP with upgrade.

Franks: 25% cheaper castles allowing for easier map control
Mayans walls 50% cheaper
Incans all stone buildings cost 15% less
Bulgrians: Krepost being mini half price castles for better faster map control.

Cumans and there extra town center and 50% palisade walls if you want to think in that.
Against moderate and below AI; especially original AI or campaigns or matches with low pop: A box: 5 monks, 20 halberdiers, and 20 archers on stand ground box formation can make a lot of work of things. The original AI will select for archers first so you can make a lot of headway, plus experimenting with things like ChunKu, and Kamluks/slingers can be good here.

Orignal AI has a glitch where they don’t attack gates or rarely attack them so this can be used to mess them up.
Orignal AI also will stream through any hole in a wall, so you can use this to create death funnels. This will have mixed results with newer AI depending on the map. Blackforest and highlands are an old standbye for this.
For upper difficulty new AI the better to hamstring and kill them fast as defenses cannot hold.

[Sezostris]

Thank You for detailed response, appreciate it! Will try civs You've mentioned :)

[Cacomistle]

On top of the civs mentioned, I'd add in Britons. they've got a good economy cause of cheaper tcs in castle age (and the ai's feudal pressure is terrible so there's no issues getting there, plus they'll just run into tcs so you're almost safe until imperial age). And then when the ai starts getting trebs, the war wolf upgrade gives british trebs 100% accuracy, which makes it easy to just snipe all their trebs You're vulnerable to rams, but ai doesn't go around castles, and if you've got like 3 castles in 1 location its hard for them to get enough rams to overpower you.

I'd say overall Byzantines are the best. Trash units are also really good defensively, and cheaper trash means you'll win out in the late game usually. And the extra building hp applies to your building in fuedal age, which means you buy even more time while they sit there just attacking houses. No eco bonus can make it hard to outmass the ai though, and getting down a fast castle doesn't feel great when their castle units is unimpressive in most matchups.

Cheaper trash also makes for good defense if you ever go for multiplayer games, whereas most of the other civs listed are either trash (like teutons), or have to be at least somewhat aggressive (like korean towers are usually used aggressively).

[Sezostris]

That for Your input Cacomistle, will try Britons for sure!

[Marva]

Originally posted by Sezostris:

Hi! I want to ask more experienced players, which civs do Your consider strong/best on the defense side? I'm asking mainly about games vs AI (im quite sure such passive strategy cannot really work on MP) I love to turtle and defend myself from hordes of enemies. Personally im enjoying a lot Koreans/Teutons in that position, but looking for some inspiration from You guys to test something else!

I believe Malians are one of the best. They have archer-resistant infantry, ranged units who can easily destroy siege units, a strong archer corps, the ability to use their TCs as low-investment towers, and many University upgrades come quickly, allowing you to react quickly to just about any situation.

[fmalfeas]

If you do it well, Malay.

The ability to spam two-handed swordsmen for just food, and infinite food fish traps means that you can literally play defensive and grind them down to the point where they have to sell food to get gold to buy wood to make trash.

It's a long method though.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by fmalfeas:

If you do it well, Malay.

The ability to spam two-handed swordsmen for just food, and infinite food fish traps means that you can literally play defensive and grind them down to the point where they have to sell food to get gold to buy wood to make trash.

It's a long method though.

That's not defensive. That's just strong late game. And you have to wait till the opponent is completely out of gold for it to work.

And quite honestly, ai is already pretty bad at trash wars, they don't build forward buildings, let their few gold units die, don't go around castles, and don't wall so they're incredibly open to raids. Its very unlikely you make it to trash wars in a position where you actually need free 2 handed swordsmen to win. And malay have nothing else (except on water maps, obv harbors make them good defensively).

Might as well say mongols. They're super good when you hit siege ram + elite mangudai.