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With Mauryas you could do it almost the entire game, dancing around nearby woodlines. Of course you need to really work it to the point where the enemy pocket comes to help. Thereby giving your ally all the time advantage to roll them at minute 12-13. In 1v1s you can do both. Slowly adding melee when you're ready to capture. But it needs to be quick wherein enemy does not get eco time to tower all sides of the base. You could also do a small 3-4 minute rush and possibly take a barrack, retreat back and ecobot. I've also tried doing Mercenary archers with Athens, Seleuids, Ptolemies and Macedonians and have had relative success and failure. Latter being due to my own mistakes. But all are fun strategies.

I think all archer civs needs boosting to encourage better and diverse strategies. We can exclude Persians since they have javelinners, but then we could keep them as an outlier archer civilization since they don't need to rely on archers. Same with the Carthaginians who have mercenary slingers, but Carthaginian players who ecobot are almost always a burden on the team. But I'd like archers to be boosted in some way to encourage archer-centric strategies.

@ffm2Interesting statistics. Do you know what the numbers are for active unique players per day, week and month? (Maybe 1 game and/or more)

Yes. When metal surplus, also with Agis Neodomades are extremely cheap. Very very cheap. 50 food 35 metal. You could use them to quickly repop all spearmen maybe little javs. But usually the game never lasts that long and Neo Hoplites do not provide any decisive advantage to break end game.

@Classic-Burger in more high-level multiplayer games, 200 population might be reached by 11-13 minutes. Typically rushes in these games are between 2 and 5 minutes.

Not a long one. I don't know how long an archer rush would take in practice. Many matches last 30-40 minutes.

shouldn't game be close to over around 20 min!?! at least 1x1 IMO

I think I should clarify that the concept of "archer rush" I have in mind is in a early stage between phase 1 and 2. Probably within 20 minutes or so.

athens champ archer spam is viable no? maurya champ archer spam is good too. Some persians play immortal (cheap archer champ) Kush are ok tiers. Merc cav available. Champ cav in stable, feature of pyramide, bonus heroe ok, large choice of infantery melee, siege tower available, tanky building with tech. Maybe one die we see a proplayer use elefant? but other civ do it better i think but stone dependant for go in a lot of way.

According to @Nescio, the genius that brought us a24 and all the most hated features of a25, that makes it a useful building. What was done to the wonder made zero sense and it should change back or be made otherwise useful. Personally, I think wonder should be made cheaper so there is actually a decision point at the start of p3 where a player decides to (1) push fast with CS, (2) spam champs, (3) get wtf, or (4) get extra pop with a wonder. All four should be valid choices but right now only the first two are viable

you should check out historcal mod, we worked on some of these, and Ill talk to the group about incorporating even more!

Neither of them excels in archery. There should have been one and the Kushites had that reputation as tough warriors for centuries. What are the Kushites good at?

We are now on mod.io!! Please if anyone wants to try it out let us know what you think! Also if you are a history buff or just enjoy history and want to give us more ideas/help us improve the mod you can join our discord server! https://discord.gg/Kg7b8bKr

Wonder give passively ressource income, and in the past gave a little amount of maximal pop. Today you have to build it with a lot of builder and they waste ressource for 2Min tech, instead spam champ. It useless in basic game, only useful on long game for average player. It only good for win by wonder in funny game. And have a big temple -- Many old technologies have already been removed, and the game is evolving. Maybe we can come up with something better.

We've already given the Maurya some interesting features, like the fish effect. Many ancient civilizations were strong in BOW. So I vote for not making more differentiation on such a basic unit. Furthermore, if we boost champion archers too much (I find them decent in TG pocket but a bit below the others), we'll be rewarding people without skills. Their strength is their range. This is invaluable in stats, like a unit's speed. --- lets reduce all resistance of woman to 0 also ! they should die easier for improve the skill

I forgot that the Macedonian champion was Hoplite style and not a phalanx, I must be thinking of the Ptolemaic champion.

I think the Macedonian spear champions are quite useful at countering enemy melee Cavs. The upgrade into silver shield is expensive but worth it. Overall, Macedonian civ is a bit op right now, but is reasonable. They are better than other civs because of the diversity: you can play any strategy you want. If your eco is failing, you can save yourself with Mercs. However, I am still more of a Celtics player than a Macedonian player

Okay, but how do you know who I'm replying to? Archers along with ranged cavalry are very good units for hunting villagers.

@Classic-Burger, the only reason Archers are good in AoE games is because they are faster than infantry. AoE also has no latency and faster atack animations, which allows hit-and-run micro. EDIT: You don't need to full quote people all tha time, and you don't have to fully quote the last reply either.

Other technologies are also needed. We'd need to nerf the default LoS and then add two or three techs for buildings and units.

The game also needs a good archer rush. I mentioned this in another post.

I. E. Conscription. For Glorious Expansion tech. Why should we delete these techs? GE is one of the only reasons you build a Wonder, and it allows you to have more units. Conscription decreases batch training time, nothing complicated there. Please, don't delete techs that have a purpose just because someone finds them "boring".

Yeah, Its unfortunate that archers need the archery tradition tech to feel at all worthwhile, which leaves carth archers in a terrible spot. At some point I think we need to do more to differentiate ranged units (more than just range+damage).

Thank you @real_tabasco_sauce for your work! Yes, I missed the onager population cost. Regarding the capture strength, I hovered over the structure tree of mercenaries and it showed 2.5, but yes, their building and the units itself show the correct value. Great to see a discussing evolving. @DakaraCurrently, the consensus is that archers are too weak, no? @ffm2showed statistics, that archer civs are not often taken and they perform badly. So the question is how to buff them. I agree, a careful approach is better. Maybe testing in the community mod is best.

Kushites need improve their archers because history matter and gameplay-wise.