LetswaveaBook

Also it needs to be said that if towers fire multiple arrows, they don't focus them on a single target. Which means that instead of killing 2 out of 3, all might escape and be healed from their injuries.

A game with plenty of rushes where these top 20 player face off against each other. Dakeryas played Seleucids and had access to the praised combination of pikemen and skirmishers, wheres vinme was able to put Carthaginian mercenaries to good use. vinme vs. dakeyras.zip

I think loot does not really make that much of a difference. I just rushed with 3 cavalry and killed 5 women early, for an amazing 50 food early. The main thing it did is probably cause significant idle time and set my opponent back. The loot is not a consideration, even not if it was tripled. Also extra loot is nice if you get good engagements, but it does not really help to get those good engagements in the first place. A faction good for rushing will probably be one that helps to get those good engagements and the loot can be disregarded.

I think most of these in 1v1s are more like pro snowballing features. -Wood is plentiful on the map, but having only 1 CC for the entire game might stress you. -The static defenses are difficult to overcome, but on the other hand, they do not really endanger most opponents. A unit garrisoned in static defense has only 5 damage per second, which is mediocre at best. On top of that, they don't focus their arrows on a single target, which means that instead of taking out a few units, the army has a chance to escape without casualties. -garrisoning units does not stop an attack. It keeps some units save, but most often there are kills to be found. -Again, I think buildings are difficult to take out, but neither do these buildings harm the opponent to much. -Soft-counter is really pro-snowballing IMHO. It means you still need a decent force before it can be effective. It is not like good use of a few units results in taking out a larger force, as in games such as age of empires 2(mangonels, siege onagers) and Red Alert 3(war dogs). I think it could be better.

Considering this topic was aimed at beginner players I would say that the best factions for beginners are those who start with javilineers. I would recommend factions that have multiple siege options. I think there are some disadvantages about starting with the pikeman. So that leaves us with Romans and Seleucids, which are the ones I would recommend for new players. Maybe it is better to leave two options, so these players can decide what strategy suits them best.

I saw a cool strategy that could totally change standard build orders.

That is not a disadvange. You could use those houses as walls, so cavalry does not raid you to death in A25. Also the extra build time is not that much and if you are (about to be) housed, small houses solve your problem easier.

I think there is indeed a bunch of them that are close and I wouldn't say that I can give an accurate ranking. One thing I do know, is that Ptolemies are at the top. 1 Very good eco. 2. Pikemen and Slingers are not bad starting units. 3. Camel archers can be useful, though they are not as OP as in A24. 4. Nice special building such as the Colony and Library 5. 3 Excelent heros which are on top of that available from the CC. They are available early as Ptolemies can advance quicker due to their better eco. I think there are factions who do not have a single hero as useful as any of the Ptolemies. 6. Full siege and elephants. 7. Mercenaries, which are useful in this alpha.

I don't think spear cav is OP, it is just sword cav, who have 55% more DPS than spear cav and on top of that they deal full hack damage. @Jofursloft Also I think the palisade fell, but it did a decent job of buying time. If there would be no pallisade, you would have lost 15 women in the situation.

Hi, I wanted to provide an answer for the question if javelin cavalry can defend camel archers.

I knew batch training made it more efficiently, but never knew the formula. Whenever I tried to do some analysis on batch training, I just looked in game for what it would look like. So great that you have found the formula. @Jofursloft Batch training is more efficient if you have the resources for it, but you are conveniently ignoring the costs. For a civilization with barracks of 200 wood and 100 stone and a build time of 150 seconds, I use in my following calculations a cost a 300 resources. Now that means if you look 1 barrack training units 1 by 1, you need are faced with the costs of the barracks and the units that are in the queue (100 resources per unit), which I represent here by a total cost of 400 resources. If we look at 1 barrack batch training 2 units, then we are faced with a cost of 300+2*100. So a more fair comparison would be comparing 3 barracks with training 1 by 1 (cost=1200) vs. 2 barracks with a batch size of 3 (cost=1200). In this case the 3 barracks training 1 by 1 perform better. If you want 2 barracks to produce as many as 3, you need to have queued in each barrack 7 units. So I think having more barracks has some merit for booming.

Now I understand why you need to get Alexander the great. He makes it easier to gets such a string of houses.

What is more peculiar to me is that we build markets and blacksmiths at the edge of our territory to make it bigger.

However one thing that is an issue, is that champions aren't used regularly. There is few reasons to train champions in 1v1s. So I think first we should make champions more viable. What I would like to see is moving buildings like Gallic assembly of princes, Athenian council hall, and Spartan mess hall to p2 and allow them to train champions in p2. Since the number of these buildings could be limited, it also allows for some but limited champion training. Also I would like 1 type of champion per faction being selected as the favoured champions, which can be trained in the fortress and does not require any technologies to unlock them.

I agree that this is undesirable. On the other hand, I do not want to introduce a " mostly fantasy" unit like the Mauryan Visha Kanya champions. In many fantasy games we see more weapon diversity, but I have failed to see any references of axes being used as main weapons in the Hellenistic period, apart from the axe cavalry and the Cantabrians. I have seen some mentions of axes being used by "barbarian tribes", but I did not find anything that points out if that was as a main or side arm. So maybe there is from a historical point of view no reason to add more axemen. If there are people that would say that for certain factions it makes historically sense to add axemen, then I would welcome some statements.

I am not a historian, but the two handed axe also makes you very vulnerable. If there is a soldier with a long spear, you do not have the best ways to defend from that. Two handed axes were used by the English housecarls of the viking age, known as the english long axe. The dane axe is also well known. However there remain some difference between the units. The housecarls were an elite group and only used them because they had armor that protected them and thus they did not need a shield. Also the type of warfare really affects the efficiency of the weapon. It seems difficult to me to fight a phalanx with two handed axes. However these two handed axes are not an overly complicated design and if the ancients wanted them, they could have produced them probably. We all ready have kush axe champs and persian axe cavalry and there exist allready a template for them. I would model them to have similarities with the axe cavalry in therms of attack. Stats: 6 hack attack, 1.5 crush attack, repeat time 1s, 100 hp, 4 hack armor(axes make parrying more difficult), 5 pierce cost: 50 food, 45 wood, 5 metal. These stats put them in infantry combat between spearman and swordsmen. If you compose an army of 2x axemen, you spend as much resources as an army of x swordsmen and x spearmen. You would get similar combat effectiveness apart from lacking the cavalry counter. In return you get crush damage to destroy buildings. I think it would be nice to give an axemen infantry to some Celtic faction, as the lack CS swordsmen. That way they get an extra unit against siege and with some purpose against buildings (in combination with slingers). Also I would like to give them as a mercenary to either or both Macedonians or Seleucids. Seleucids have the "problem" of difficulty to get access to mercenaries and placing a new mercenary in the barracks might help with that. The 'stronger' sword mercenary would remain in the colony. However I do not like to add things just because of gameplay reasons. It also needs to have some historical connection. However it is not unlikely that there would be a Celtic tribe that used battle axes more than others.

I was involved in some 1v1 small mainland games and it was time to get an overview on the different biomes. I hope this video makes you think about which biome suits competitive play best and it informs about you what to expect from each biome.

The game would benefit if it had an option to turn eye-candy object off. They do not affect the state of the game and are limiting vision and it can't be good for performance.

Someone has to upload a video about camel archers...

@LetswaveaBook Stupid nub, you should use all the game functionalities! On a serous note, I never used the attack move command before I reached a rating of 1700 on the ladder.

Age of empires 2 and then monk rush your family members with Christmas.

In the game citizen soldiers make up the bulk of your army, yet there are 4 factions (macedonians, athenians, carthaginians and ptolemies) that have only 2 types. In addition, 3 more factions(britons, gauls and persians) do have multiple ranged citizen infantry but only 1 type op melee citizen infantry. For 5 factions it is like you get a spearman as nearly all others and we add 1 type of ranged unit to. I would like there to be a little more diversity. It this something which bothers more people? What unit type I would like to be added is an citizen soldier axeman. If I am correct, the most common melee weapons types would be pole arms, swords and then axes. So it does not seem strange to add an axeman. In game the infantry axeman could function as the poor mans swordsmen. I would like to hear what our historians have to say about axes and if they ever were a main weapon (possibly with a shield or not). I have to admit that I have been looking through tinted glasses in the hope for spotting some historically plausible axeman references as I would like an option for an extra unit type.

I think that is overdoing it. Lets consider an example. If we want to produce 5 women, and we have either 5 big houses or 10 small houses. Then with a train time of 15, 5 of the women are produced after 15 seconds and get to work for 15 seconds until the "competitors are produced in the small houses". In those 15 seconds, they can collect per unit around 10 wood making them effectively 10 wood cheaper. I think this gives to much of an advantage to the big houses. With a train time of 25, 5 of the women are produced after 25 seconds and get to work for 5 seconds until the "competitors are produced". In those 5 seconds, they can collect around 3 wood making them 3 wood cheaper. I think this gives an acceptable advantage to the big houses. So if you want to produce limited amount of women, the big houses have a small economic advantage for production. On the other hand if you want to train lots of women, small houses are better in this example. So I would advocate not halving the training time for big houses but giving them a more modest reduction, which is still a reduction.

All of these above options limit player option in some extent. What I would suggest, is that if a unit misses a certain amount of shots, it will switch to a different target. That new target should preferably be something that is easier to hit (close, big or stationary).

It must be admitted, in a24 I used fertility festival in almost every game. The reason is because it makes your economy easy to manage: Short on wood, make mainly women and when there is a wood surplus build a few fields and buildings. It always was tricky in the sense that you had a significant portion of the population that was not good at fighting. Now in a25 researching fertility festival is not viable strategy anymore and it is better to boom with infantry. 3 reasons for this are: 1. Infantry had their training time reduced by 2 seconds, while for women it was only 1. Also training time from houses stayed the same. 2. Rushes are more useful, so that makes players with many women more vulnerable. 3. Infantry cost wood and trees are more abundant now. I always like the idea that making women meant booming, making infantry meant turtling and making cavalry meant rushing. Currently booming can be done better with infantry. Also if we want the game to be realistic, having 50/50 ratio between men and women should not be bad. I would like to hear your ideas on which place fertility festival (or producing women) has and should have in competitive play.