Still reskinned spanish for the same reason the US in campaign is reskinned british then a pseudo-revolution faction later on
>custom factions unique to the scenarios they are in, restricted by the means at the time >scenarios would have to be reworked to accommodate for the wildly different decks and buildings (the maltese stationary gun/commandery come to mind as elements that can break the flow of the maps) >the actual factions are behind their respective pricetags, campaign mainly ease you into how to play and it would be weird to learn about a faction you can't use in skirmish/multiplayer
Malta and the tutorial were broken up until like a month ago because the devs refused to fix a bug with the infinite 8 Crossbowman shipment that wouldn’t send any units unless you were playing as the Portuguese. The broken tutorial had you play as the French. Their late game economy is also kinda ass, but they ramp up really nicely in Age II because they have a card that jacks your natural resource gathering near defensive buildings sky high, and Malta builds a lot of those. Just beware, they, like United States, have a truly hopeless matchup into Ottomans unless you can somehow knock the Turks out before the 15-minute mark with Pike-Bow.
I know comparatively VERY little about how to play Italians, other than the fact that they don’t really have any good unit buff cards and perhaps the worst musketeers of any Euro civ that gets them. This now includes the Dutch, who can train Royal Guard musketeers out of Forts. Halberdier/Bersagliere might be fun, even if it’s not super viable, since your skirms toot a horn and the entire enemy army just…freezes up for the Halbs to snare.
Why hasn't any other game taken up the "unlockable citybuilder" angle for in-game experience?
Most just give new icons, which is shit; adding new civillians and little doodads is where it's at
Aztecs got nerfed in the last patch. Arrow Knight gay will be pleased to hear that AKs are now heavy infantry (as if Aztecs weren't already weak to skirmishers), and that as a siege unit they take extra damage from culverins now, lmao. Speaking of the patch, I like how most Chinese units got a speed boost, disciples especially.
>France and Japan
Cuirassiers and Samurai are memes for team games, because they make you too vulnerable for cost >Portugal
Real power is in their Town Center spam, not mortars >Sweden
Nerfed to hell, but people still IKEA spam >Inca
I think they removed magical transformation into cannons, it was a meme strat anyway.
Its all about Zapotec rush in Age 2 anyway
>Cuirassiers
If you let them full upgrade, the game is already lost.
Instead focus on their vulnerability early on, get Steppe horseboys card to harass them on age 2. Some builds even meme-on with disciple builds to counter early musket protection.
Also, do not sleep on that monastery card that gives you heavy archer mercs. They look like pikemen, but they are super heavy archers, with great bonuses vs cav, that have combined health of 4 pikemen.
>monastery card that gives you heavy archer mercs
You mean Iron Troop? More like iron poop. Your normal infantry is more cost and pop effective. Also, they don't have an anti-cav bonus.
Wikia says they were never nerfed, and they're basically just Jaegers with slightly different stats. I guess their high range resist makes them situationally useful against other ranged units, but otherwise I don't find them remarkable and by industrial age they're borderline obsolete. They'd be more useful to the Chinese if they acted as musketeers or grenadiers, or at least benefited from Repelling Volley.
I main French when I play because once you get fully upgraded Cuirassiers and can insta-spam them the game ends. It's so satisfying to reach that point.
Well…yes, that’s how it works. China’s big weakness is hand cavalry, though in recent months, people have figured out that the Keshik’s DPS per population space is, IIRC, higher than that of any other non-mercenary dragoon bar the Tatar Archer recruitable from Tengri Native sockets.
Massed cuirassiers in gener are a nightmare for any civ, and I’ve used the French Langue shipment for Malta to finish games by mixing Order Hussars with Order Gendarmes. You really only need 8-14 of them tossed into a comp to be efficient, any more and it’s rapidly diminishing returns.
Yeah, Keshiks seem like a critical Chinese unit that's difficult to replace, and the Mongolian Army might the most versatile banner that gets a bunch of cool upgrades.
It has been almost two years since the last dlc, has aoe3 been abandoned again? Or might they return with one more dlc? I thought Knights of the Med had sold fairly decently and was better received than the kangz.
Is AoE 3 worth trying? Every time I see some create a post here I think "hmm, I should probably try it" but the next day "nah I have better games to play".
If you want something that's completely different than 2 - basically the complete opposite - and at the same time very similar to AoM, then sure. The game is free to try anyway.
3 has hundred of units dressed in detailed uniforms that change on upgrade, including unique upgrades, and it had several DLCs worth of content. Surely it pads the filesize.
4 looks like it has far less variety in units, less content, and I rarely hear anons praise its graphics. And are you sure it's actually that compact?
Early game Dutch is definitely slow, but late game Dutch are unstoppable. Factories / banks gives you some of the best passive resource gen in the game.
do you guys feel that merc contractor could be better? I feel that dutch mercs are overall subpar compared to sweden or germany, they are only held together by dutch gold generation which is indeed great. but lack of silversmith hurts dutch imo
Best Dutch mercs are sent via cards. States Army gets you highlanders and royal horsemen. Waardgelders gets you swiss pikes. Religion Freedom gets you red lancers. I rarely bother with the merc contractor and instead go for the 400 wood for another bank.
I remember pike and skirm rushing the frick out of b***hes back when AoE3 released
Can't this still be done effectively?
It is, but there are better strategies now. You can go early halberdiers or send buckriders. That lets you save wood for banks or a stable if your rush stalls. I really love the new cards and minireworks of the old civs. Spain, Germany, France, and especially the Netherlands are so much more interesting now.
4 months ago
Anonymous
age3 merc contractor sucks balls even for treaty or ffa modes. unless we are talking very long treaty and even then the eco loss isnt really made up for in terms of utility which says a lot because they get an amazing pair of mercs at elmetti and fusiliers
my favorite build was mercantilism rush but they nerfed it
4 months ago
Anonymous
>mercantillism rush
uh what? all it does is give you xp. you might as well build extra tps early on
4 months ago
Anonymous
this was a really old strat. the idea was that you would fast fortress and then get mercantilism right away and use the instant xp on 20 muskets + 2 falconets or whatever the best cards were and try to kill your opponent while he was still in colonial or before he could get his production going.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>sending a thousand gold age3 to sent merc to get 2k xp
eh. I guess japan would be the best for this type of thing since double shipments means their deck cards can have slightly lower value per se while still retaining long term utility
4 months ago
Anonymous
japan or spain since their shipments cost less xp
i could see double tp ottoman with silk road pulling it off too
4 months ago
Anonymous
this was from the first year the game was out. japan didn't exist. also I don't know how it is now but you could only make trade posts in certain locations along the railroad that went through the map.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah, the game has changed a lot man it's been nearly 20 years
There are trade routes and native sites to build trading posts on
the original game was great but the expansions fricking ruined it. I hope the aom devs are smart enough to realize that they need to remove the expansions for the game to be good.
That's what I'm wondering also. AoE3 is essentially AoM whose unique mechanics were expanded in every possible direction to the extreme, so I say it would make sense if Retold kept it lean and tight. But if I were to bet, they'll go crazy with new addons instead, porting various ideas from AoE3 wholesale. Also, I think it was said that they won't be removing anything.
I think aoe3 was actually a worse case than aom. with aom the expansions were just badly executed. with aoe3 they completely discarded the original vision for the game.
Colonizing the new world.
Natives being allies to get units from based on maps, not civs for themselves.
New world focus entirely, all aspects of leaving the old world behind make sense in the 'build up from a single town center and a few villagers + explorer'
It was the perfect setup but expansions required going elsewhere and revisiting what was already in AoE2 but a few centuries later.
It's for sure the most versatile of all factions due to ability to change entirety of the unit roster every age.
This obviously makes it one of the hardest to play since you need to remember all the potentials every age/revolt gives.
Nothing more satisfying than countering some turtler with sudden monopoly victory in age 3.
So apparently I found that fast tp with export trickle is the basic opener for china nowadays
The question is do you take northern refugees and use it in age2 or age3?
Then play some RTS before asking silly questions. You don't really conquer the world in an RTS unless it's one of those with a turn-based campaign map.
Honestly, that wouldn't be a terrible idea for a DLC, though some of the civs aren't exactly a good fit for world conquest.
Here you go AoE3 bros >Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition: After giving our players a new way to play for free in 2023, we are excited to reveal a new DLC with new civilizations.
https://www.ageofempires.com/news/new-year-new-age-announcement/
Personally I think Ottomans and Persians should have an african civ type of age up mechanic and unique techs. It makes more sense imo. Also, an additional Asian civ with wonders and perhaps the ability to rebuilt them
The developers killed it, dogshit patch after dogshit patch, cheese galore.
Natives being nerfed to hell and back, Mexico being unfun to play against (they have FF and FI on steroids), feitoria, Humbaraci, SWEDEN refusing to die, Gatling Guns, etc., etc.
I uninstalled this shit after they change the Arrow Knights, how dare you have reliable anti-art., when every single unit in your roester it's shit... but hey, let's give Dutch muskets because every single civ doesn't need weaknesses except for aztecs. >RUSH? how fricking dare you Black person!? We can't have you Rushing slower civs!?(gives Humbaracis to Ottos, gives Greenwich Time to Brits)
He meant the 30 blue guards you get from the church, because that's the only source of musketeers for the dutchs.
Anon is a homosexual regardless for thinking dutchs have a weakness when they have the only good halberdier unit in the game, skirmishers and ruyters to spam with their near infinite gold income.
Back at you, ESL-kun >let's give Dutch muskets because every single civ doesn't need weaknesses
You strongly implied that dutch getting access to a one-time limited number of musketeers at age 4 somehow made the dutchs have no weakness whatsoever when in reality their unit roster is perfectly "balanced" and complemented nicely by their coin-based economy, the fricking blue guard is flavor at this point
The part about aztecs being shit is just you being bad at them, you have fricking coyote runners as a better alternative to hussars, jaguar/skull knights demolish anything that get in their melee range, arrow knights still counter artillery hard with their range (absurd damage modifiers, you need heavy cavalry to sneak up on them and you still run the risk of getting demolished by the melee knights)
If you want factions that are genuinely weak, look at the african ones, as funny as it may be to suddenly shit out 4k gold and food just by selling a few cattles you forgot about, the unit roster of hause and ethiopia is abysmal, their "best" units chug a frickton of influence which is just reskinned export with the same terrible trickle rate
>I assume you mean the Merc version cause lmao otherwise
Nope, i do mean the stadswacht
Halberdiers suffer from being too expensive for what they bring (somewhat tougher pikeman exchanging some of its cavalry damage modifier for versatility against infantry/whatever dare to get in melee)
The dutchs have standard cards that buff them up quite a lot alongside skirmishers, as well as the military reform card which give them enough speed for a negligible reduction to infantry damage modifier, needing 50 food and 70 gold they are easy for dutch players to spam due to how little food they actually need and how much gold they fricking vomit
Only reason you wouldn't field halberdiers as dutch is if you are brain damaged and only make ruyters or if you choose the meme strategy of highlander/royal horseman spam
Influence is export done right imo
Also, both hausa and Ethiopia are top tier right now
>Also, both hausa and Ethiopia are top tier right now
Usually by peoples who get dazzled by how "OP" their economy can get, in truth their eco is a slow and fragile one that can easily get disrupted by early raids and their only responses is a small batch of javelin riders or being proactive and using raiders
Even if i repeat myself, the good, strong, viable endgame units you want to field are locked behind influence which suffer from a terrible trickle rate like its export predecessor, getting artificially locked out of your best units, artillery and researches by a resource you have little control over is not what a "top tier" civ should be
Personally my gripe with export is the trickle rate, which mean spending it on consulate unit instead of the research is self-sabotage
However consulate stuff is practically optional, you can play the asian factions without building a single consulate and still manage to win games but getting a factory as the chinese or making a batch of 10 units as japanese can really help in the long run
How often do you field halbs as Dutch unless it's late game and you got tons of artillery and the opponent has tons of cav? Also >25 percent damage is negligible reduction
How often do you see people have the card in deck let alone actually sending it?
And Hausa is objectively a top tier civ right now, stop coping. Elo?
3 months ago
Anonymous
>How often do you field halbs as Dutch
Frequently, so do others >How often do you see people have the card in deck let alone actually sending it?
Frequently when their deck isn't purely focused on braindead ruyter spam or isn't a merc deck >>25 percent damage is negligible reduction
It is, you got a mass of halberdiers with 440 health, 20% melee resist and 62 damage (46,5 against infantry because you care, somehow) that are all going as fast, if not faster, than pikemans or samurais
They'll soak any damage coming their way, close the gap too quickly for the musk/skirm's liking, absolutely demolish any moron making a frontline of hussars and they let your skirms and artillery ravage the enemy's ranks in peace
If they field arty, your answer should be a mad ball of ruyters going around or culverine backline
You have the economy to spam them, they're a core unit to a dutch army composition, if i see you fielding pikemans past age 3 instead of halbs i will find your house and shit in your mailbox
>And Hausa is objectively a top tier civ right now, stop coping.
You're the one coping in this case, your only argument is that hausa is "top tier" (according to some literally who e-celebs i'm sure) which is subjective as frick and repeating that again and again isn't going to make it magically true.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I didnt say you wont get some halb unit, I specifically mentioned the merc version of them in fact who are cheaper in res overall per pop an stronger per unit count
Realistically as dutch you are generally pinned back for most early and mid game unless your opponent tries to go for some insane FI or greed. Banks are nice but are also expensive and take time to gather res for, build and pay back.
And most dutch players rely heavily on merc units/shipments (not necessarily the age3 card that allows royal horsemen and highlanders, just shipments in general). Your main comp is skirm+goon (plus mercs of various types)
3 months ago
Anonymous
>I didnt say you wont get some halb unit, I specifically mentioned the merc version of them in fact who are cheaper in res overall per pop an stronger per unit count
The main drawback is that they can only be obtained through shipments and you only have a choice of getting 8 of them once or 4 of them through the holy roman army, the dutchs have no card that would allow them to be recruited reliably, just like the blue guards once they are gone they are gone and you'll be on the backfoot if those were important to your strategy
Some guys immediately field irish brigadiers or pikemans when reaching age 2 to prepare for any rush while they work on building skirms in urgency or work toward age 3 for ruyters, they usually don't have any other merc card unless they're experimenting with harquebusiers and the likes, the dutchs will always be more comfortable with mercenaries than any other civ which is why the royal horseman/highlander deck is legit
If the banks were any cheaper the game would be unplayable for everyone else, they are a big investment meant to gate your early game hard that pay off much more earlier than you'd think, hell i'd argue that a factory take longer to pay off the opportunity cost of a shipment used for it, especially if it is a late shipment
3 months ago
Anonymous
700 res just to make a bank unless you take east india company which is an extra early shipment (inb4 dont send 3 vils at start). Half of said 700 is wood. All things considered I would argue that the bank has paid for itself truly after at least 800+ gold. Realistically we are talking 300secs or 5mins. Granted it's a pretty good payoff but still. I think the best build is to take early tp and your first two shipments should be 3vils into east india banks. Build 2 banks or so during the age1 to age2 transition. After that get 700wood or a military shipment depending on situation
3 months ago
Anonymous
You cannot start an early TP with Dutch without greatly delaying your Age up time. Dutch do not open with any wood crates at all. So you would need to build a market and sell coin for wood to get an Age 1 TP.
Unless you are playing on some special map, the Dutch build for the first 5 minutes in a 1v1 is very straightforward. 3 vils is first shipment. Age up with Quartermaster and hit Age 2 before 4:30. You can only make 1 Bank in Age 1 to Age 2 transition. If you are playing some stupid game mode like 4v4 or Free for all then yeah, you can meme around with meme build orders where you hit Age 2 at 6 min. I used to be a 1600 elo Dutch main btw.
3 months ago
Anonymous
dude what? pretty sure the dutch start with 400g 200w crates
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Dutch do not open with any wood crates at all
Sorry, I forgot the word "extra" before word crates, someone distracted me while I was writing that down.
So yeah, 200 wood start but you usually need the 100 wood for a house. What are you gonna do, 10/10 with Dutch and use all the starting 200 wood on a TP? That sounds horrible. If you plan to buy wood with coin then you also need to invest 100 wood in a market first. If you chop 100 wood with vils then you are gonna hit Age 2 late.
So Dutch openings are usually either 100 wood house + leave 100 wood alone until age 2 OR 100 wood house + 100 wood market and then try to get hunting dogs with treasures. Exceptions include maps like Florida where everyone starts with a market anyways or maps like Deccan where you start with a bunch of extra crates.
3 months ago
Anonymous
you can have most of your starting vils chop wood from the start and one or two on gold till you get 100 extra wood. that's how all people do it even these who start with 500crate res
3 months ago
Anonymous
>you can have most of your starting vils chop wood from the start
Try it and tell me the time you hit Age 2 when you do that. I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just saying that's way more risky to do with Dutch than a civ like France for example. In a competitive 1v1 at 1500+ elo, you can get punished pretty hard for such an opening.
3 months ago
Anonymous
true it is risky. but really, I think it's probably better to take a risk for as much extra xp into crate shipments to convert into banks/buildings/etc asap
now mind you, I am not saying to do that each and every time especially vs civ like lakota or haude
but vs civs that ff or even FI you cannot avoid some greed on your own as dutch. it's not as if you have some impressive rush or age2 play without banks anyway
3 months ago
Anonymous
The biggest mistake Dutch players make is going full greedy on banks. Shipping 700 wood crates in Age 2 first and not having the 700 food to actually build two banks because the opponent has 10 hussars right under their TC while going Age 3. You are adding a TP to that build which makes Dutch even slower. Unless you can show me a 1v1 game where you do this TP opening with Dutch, I'm not convinced, haha.
If you play Dutch a lot, you will quickly realize that this civ is all about tempo. If you want to be greedy, you ship 700 wood and build two banks as soon as you hit Age 2 but the much safer and better option is shipping a bank wagon instead. In team games though, you do the opposite. That's why Dutch is S tier in team games but C tier in this
thoughts on this tier list?
tier list. That tier list was made by Top 10 ranked players on the ladder I think.
3 months ago
Anonymous
it's kinda true, dutch have probably one of the best greed systems, I wish that the banks of rotterdam and amsterdam were one card that you could send twice for treaty. or that the dutch had a slightly higher base vil max count
anyway, I think another issue that the dutch have is lack of decisively good age2 shipments outside some mercs, which feeds back into the bank/defensive playstyle till you have a large army size
3 months ago
Anonymous
They have tried to give Dutch better Age 2 options like Highwaymen Outlaws and Swiss Pikes or whatever but yeah, those are really just things you meme around with in team games or against players with a lower skill level than your own. Anoher cheesy Age 2 Dutch build is going for Logistician Halbs and then adding the Halb speed card on top of them. I have actually won 1v1s at 1500 elo by spamming nothing but Halbs in Age 2 lol. Although I saw Aizamk do this first.
I play Russian alot but i just dont know what to do versus china, they seem to hard counter everything easily in a rush. If i go strelets or cossacks to fight off the early rush, their meteor hammers just fricking destroy them. If i try to harass its easy pz to keep their villagers safe while mine get raped, if i get muskets to fight off the hammers they just make their own onfantry and pick them off... Am i missing an obcious defense against this bullshit?
Nah, at the moment China is just a stronger civ imo. Age 2 China is definitely better than Age 2 Russia. China FF is also better. Obviously it depends on the players but generally China vs Russia is considered China favoured. If you manage to win against China as Russia, you are the much better player.
3 months ago
Anonymous
age2 halbs eh, might try that for fun
I just wish that with musks being non accessible and already good halbs as well access to swiss pikes, that the other royal guard unit the dutch have would be skirmishers
ryuters and halbs both come online age3 generally and dutch skirmishers dont have anything particularly interesting about them
3 months ago
Anonymous
>age2 halbs eh
It's good against civs that only have the option of making 4 speed Crossbows to counter Halbs in Age 2 and that doesn't work so well lol.
^That's a 2v2 where Aiz does this but I have seen 1v1s with Logistician Halbs too.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>age2 halbs eh
It's good against civs that only have the option of making 4 speed Crossbows to counter Halbs in Age 2 and that doesn't work so well lol.
^That's a 2v2 where Aiz does this but I have seen 1v1s with Logistician Halbs too.
I had forgotten that halbs come automatically veteran even in age2, that's actually amazing for age2 play which the dutch are lacking in generally speaking.
I havent used the logistiacian seriously for a long time now
3 months ago
Anonymous
>that's how all people do it
Unless you are playing treaty, that's not absolutely not how people play Dutch on the ranked ladder. TP start with Dutch is extremely rare.
>that's the only source of musketeers for the dutchs
Nah, a couple of patches ago they gave Dutch an Age 4 card that enabled some African musketeers to be trained with no build limit. Those dudes have an area damage at range and the card enables their age 4 upgraded version right off the bat. This led to many players just going fast industrial, shipping already upgraded musks and then going full musk cannon on the opponent's ass. I think the latest patch added a build limit to the African musks to end this cheese but people abused the fast industrial for a long time.
I don't know why you are so angry but at the very least, you are completely wrong that the church card is the only source of musks for Dutch.
You are also hilariously wrong about african civs being weak but whatever, everyone pretends that their favorite civ is F tier on the AoE 3 forums.
Back at you, ESL-kun >let's give Dutch muskets because every single civ doesn't need weaknesses
You strongly implied that dutch getting access to a one-time limited number of musketeers at age 4 somehow made the dutchs have no weakness whatsoever when in reality their unit roster is perfectly "balanced" and complemented nicely by their coin-based economy, the fricking blue guard is flavor at this point
The part about aztecs being shit is just you being bad at them, you have fricking coyote runners as a better alternative to hussars, jaguar/skull knights demolish anything that get in their melee range, arrow knights still counter artillery hard with their range (absurd damage modifiers, you need heavy cavalry to sneak up on them and you still run the risk of getting demolished by the melee knights)
If you want factions that are genuinely weak, look at the african ones, as funny as it may be to suddenly shit out 4k gold and food just by selling a few cattles you forgot about, the unit roster of hause and ethiopia is abysmal, their "best" units chug a frickton of influence which is just reskinned export with the same terrible trickle rate
It isnt a one time though, the Dutch can train more blue guards in the fort if they took the card and built one.
I think you guys are confusing the church card for blue guards with the age 3 card that enables blue guards in forts. The church card only lets you get a one time "shipment" of blue guards in age 4. It doesn't make them trainable. But there is also an age 3 card that ships some blue guard and makes them trainable in forts. Dutch can get easily get 1 fort in age 3 via a shipment and another when they age up from age 3 to age 4. Blue guards are good because they shadowtech, you don't have to spend any resources to upgrade them.
I don't account for the akan akobias since you're limited to FRICKING 18 of them, age 3 dutch state army give you musketeers and cuirassier on steroid that only need gold and can be trained instantly with the right cards and yeah there's the blue guard you can train at forts with no limit but only your explorer can built those at a slow space and only after you send the age 4 card for it, otherwise your only source of fort are fort wagon card and age up >I don't know why you are so angry
Because the post before that was anon b***hing that aztecs were suddenly F tier because of a slight nerf to the arrow knights while everyone else got massive "buffs" which is an hilarious display of victim complex
The part that actually made me angry was the claim dutchs not having musk in their unit roster was their one and only weakness, which is wrong on so many level already that i felt obligated to start a stupid internet fight
>You are also hilariously wrong about african civs being weak
Then explain to me what actually make them top tier, i can admit i struggle to play them right and its a skill issue (again i really don't like influence being a struggle to obtain when most of the good shit is locked behind it and the unit roster being meh overall), but that does not explain why i win against hausa/ethiopian players reliably whenever i face them
Are they just as bad as i am with them? Or do they never truly expect someone to split units into multiple groups attacking from multiple angles, too small to win any engagements with a blob but big enough to force villagers to run away or die? a lot of players seem deadly afraid of losing a single settler that they'd willingly risk the stagnation of their economy just to save 100 food and whatever res that settler could've gathered in the future
>you're limited to FRICKING 18 of them
That's what I'm saying, man. We had like 6 or more months where you could make UNLIMITED number of them after the Age 4 Dutch shipment. They added a limit just a few weeks ago in the latest patch. You can read the patch notes to confirm. >age 3 dutch state army
If you mean the church card, it gives 5 Stradiots in Age 3 for 1000 coin and some blue guards in Age 4 for 2000 coin. I think the Stradiots are become trainable but the blue guards do NOT. >only your explorer can built those
No, dude. He can't. You are thinking of the USA explorer. Dutch cannot rebuild forts if they lose them.
>aztecs were suddenly F tier
Every civ is either F tier or S tier according to most forum posters. There is no in-between. But Aztecs are definitely not "F tier". They just made insanely bad changes to Aztecs. Arrow Knight are fricking heavy infantry now so skirmishers hard-counter them. Just hilariously stupid.
Right now, mid elo Aztecs is just spamming Jaguar prowl knights because while they nerfed the Arrow knights, they overbuffed JPKs.
Aztec players are now trolling the devs saying, "The JPK change is great and was much needed. But please revert the nerfs to Arrow knights" lol.
>that does not explain why i win against hausa/ethiopian players
What elo? Is this the 1v1 ranked ladder? Ethiopia and Hausa are considered top tier across mid to high elo by pretty much every reasonable person I have played against. Both civs have decent build orders for influence booming, it's nothing like Export. Ethiopia is the only civ in the entire game that upgrades 3 fricking units with a single upgrade i.e, shotel, gascenya, neftenya. These 3 units make a perfect unit combo in early Age 3. Hausa have a very strong Age 2 influence boom. Hausa is one of my main civs along with Dutch, I literally got to 1800 team elo with that civ and even I know I'm around 1500. I cannot write entire build orders here but I can link some good videos if you want.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>If you mean the church card
Nah, the dutch state army card is something else and it is mean to be a curveball meme, nearly every dutch player in existence has it in their deck just in case >No, dude. He can't.
Without the age 4 card that is common to other european civs, yeah he can't, only malta and US can built fort at age 3 natively
Still not a really good card to ship tho', explorers build forts very slowly, they are expensive and a very big juicy target for mortars, once you lose them you pretty much have to use skirms/halb/ruyter from then on to try and stall whatever push is happening now that your defenses are down >Every civ is either F tier or S tier according to most forum posters.
Official forums of a game is where you go when you want your braincells to die a painful death that much i already learned since the days of WoW's forums, i never visit those under any circumstances
Still, arrow knights are meant to be your culverine equivalent, their range is still big enough to snipe arty and skirms would have to go through or really close to jaguar/skull/coyote frontline if they want to remove arrow knights from the engagement.
>I cannot write entire build orders here but I can link some good videos if you want.
Build order is only half of the problem and that's the easiest to fix for me, the harder part really is the unit roster >fulani
Feel like yumi archer made worse as "balance" for their herding capability >javelin rider
A good anti-cavalry and that's it, they are a bad matchup against anything else >raider
Shit cav whose only saving grace is the mad multiplier against villagers, they are pigeonholed into a specific role that fall off really hard later on >lifidi/oromo
Really good cav, expensive and come late >Maigadi
Even with the dane guns, they feel too expensive for musketeers that get shit on by skirms AND cavs >levied/desert units
LMAO >artillery
Probably the biggest weakpoint.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>comment too long
Anyway, the fact the africans have a harder time fielding fricking artillery because of influence baffle me, even the native americans have an easier access to them (granted for most case only captured mortar but it still won't hurt their growth to field more than one, can't say the same of the fricking sebastopol mortar)
Gascenya/neftenya/shotel is much closer to "traditional" unit comp like the haudenosaunee, still doesn't make the civ good in my eyes
I'm [...]
You can check out this channel
The guy playing Hausa is a very active, high-elo team game player. Unless you are some big shot having trouble with African civs at very high elo yourself, you can learn how good the African civs are from this guy. He's got a frickton of videos where he is playing Hausa, I just picked one at random. He is not an e-celeb with obnoxious commentary or anything. I have played a few games with him too, I'm not as good as him but I'm also not as active currently.
In my opinion, if you're having trouble getting used to a civ then it is always a good idea to first get comfortable with those civs in team games like 2v2s and 3v3s. The meta in team games is slightly different from 1v1s but you get to learn to boom with that civ and take it into late game more often. That's a good thing.
In case you are playing treaty then forget about everything I said and please stop playing the game.
>that game
Raxefal carried the game really fricking hard tbh, eric couldn't commit to most engagements
Props for the maigadis, even if he burned through a wealth of influence for little in return (his ass was definitively not winning those musk fights)
Still his gameplay and flow is not too dissimilar to my experience (albeit slightly faster obviously since he's booming), i guess its a skill issue in the end and i'll never be good with africans
>In case you are playing treaty
I'd rather play fricking tycoon than the coward's choice of crutch
3 months ago
Anonymous
Imo, your problem is that you have not embraced Influence. Learn to Influence boom. Age 2 Hausa age up. Get the tech from the University that increases TC build limit. Get multiple Univerisities and TCs going in Age 2. Influence is by far the most important res for African civs. If you play these civs thinking that they are somewhat optional like Asian export, you are gonna lose. >that game >Raxefal carried
Okay, but like I said, I picked one at random. Eric is definitely not carried in every game he plays lol. Check out his other Hausa games if you want to. I looked at it and in this one, he boomed with Berber vils in Age 2. There are videos where he did the Hausa age up in Age 2 and did an influence boom.
3 months ago
Anonymous
...i fricking forgot the screenshots of the cards, my bad
3 months ago
Anonymous
Ohhh Dutch States Army is the new merc card. I didn't care to learn the name, I just remember the card icon.
It's only good for team games and FFAs imo, I don't see any competitive 1v1 game making use of this card. Obviously if you are playing against someone of far lower skill level then you can meme around with it but otherwise it's a card which adds "flavour".
It is not sustainable to spam merc only unless you have 7 or 9 banks in Age 4 + most of your vils on coin. Even then, banks are kinda overrated. Every bank is roughly worth 4 Dutch vils on coin...for 700 res. It's balanced. Nothing insane but most new Dutch players make the mistake of greeding on the banks too heavily.
>Castrametation
Oh. Age 4 Fort card also allows Explorer to build forts. Okay, I have literally never used that card in my 10 years of playing AoE 3 lmao. Thanks for letting me know. I'm probably never gonna use it anyways.
I have tried the Blue guard build order before. I don't know how familiar you are with Dutch but even before this Blue Guard card was added in Age 3, many Dutch players used to have the Age 3 Fort card in their 1v1 decks. Dutch is a civ that has to often push out for map control in Age 3, that's why the Age 3 fort card is more valuable for them. Although, the meta in the last few patches was just fast industrial in your little corner and then get bullshit shadowtech units.
Oh and btw, make use of natives with African civs too, especially the native unit shipments that cost influence. African civs get shadowtech for all natives. Ethiopian FI with native unit shipments is one of the dirtiest build orders to win 1v1 ranked ladder games.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Africans ability to get native techs and units (that also shadowtech) in a small single resource that's not finite in terms of map resources is bs, even if they have to boom for it explicitly
3 months ago
Anonymous
African civs are bullshit in general. I won't say the the game is "pay to win" but DLC civs in general are stronger and badly designed. Italy was hilariously broken last year and it took the Rank 1 player going on a 100+ win streak on the ranked ladder with that civ for the devs to admit, "Okay, maybe it's too strong" lol.
Like I said before, the devs are not mega concerned with the game balance in this game. It's a very niche RTS game with no official competitive scene. They are mostly concerned with adding "cool, fun to play" content.
>Worst part is that Treaty and Supremacy coexist
Yes, thank you! Inca are rightfully getting dumped on in sup but it's also ruining them completely for treaty for example
I think even the devs admit that treaty balance is completely broken at the moment. I don't play treaty AT ALL but I have heard regular treaty players say that Mexico and Ethiopia are simply unfair to play against and they just have a gentlemen's agreement to not queue with those civs in treaty.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Sad thing is both mexico and Ethiopia have very interesting strats especially mexico if they can get extra tps
They can do all sorts of builds (outlaw mercs, maya, generic wood to gold trade with more or less a typical euro style fighting force) while ottos and spain and rissia for example are very straightforward and standard 9/10 times
Also imagine italy/Britain/spain getting fast age up politicians for age3.
3 months ago
Anonymous
The flavour is cool, the devs just have a very bad habit of overtuning stuff. Maya revolt has tons of ridiculous shit, I don't know why it's a thing. The Hacienda is a rice paddy that can also get shipments, garrison villagers, train villagers, train and fatten livestock and so on. Just WTF game balance. The overtuning is definitely intentional to get people to buy the DLCs. >Also imagine italy/Britian/spain getting fast age up
I am legit afraid that the devs will give Spain The Exiled Prince politician someday. It will be hilarious seeing almost every ranked 1v1 become a Spain mirror lol.
Meanwhile asian civs and native civs also don't have factories but their export and plaza systems are far more impractical to take advantage of in non treaty games
Japan especially has notoriously bad eco in treaty games for example
Yeah, whenever I see new players the first advice I give them is to stay away from treaty mode. It's just not worth it. Unfortunately, most people don't listen to this.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Spain players will still complain that Spanish gold was overnerfed
3 months ago
Anonymous
Meanwhile asian civs and native civs also don't have factories but their export and plaza systems are far more impractical to take advantage of in non treaty games
Japan especially has notoriously bad eco in treaty games for example
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Fulani
Fulani are fricking insane, they have this ridiculous insta shooting animation and afaik, they have base 4.5 speed. Add a Griot and they get almost 5 speed. That already makes them the best archer unit in the game. Yumi can probably get better than Fulani in late game but Age 2 Fulani is objectively better. Far, far better than european crossbows and native civ archers like Cetan bows or Aenna. >Javelin rider
Age 2 ranged cav unit is already a huge advantage. Ranged cav is simply better when defending from cav raids. Javelin Riders were widely considered THE BEST UNIT in the game for a long time after the African DLC was released. It was only after multiple small nerfs over the last couple of years that they have become somewhat okay now. They are still a very good unit. >raider
No, Raiders are good. They are China's Steppe Riders but far better. Their high seige also makes them super useful against civs like Japan and Sweden where you want to run around and take down their shrines and torps. In age 4, you can ship them a card which gives them area damage which imo, every Hausa player should use. >Lifdi
In 1v1s, I tend to rely on their shipments or make only a few batches of them. Your main hand cav unit is always the Raider. Lifdi is the support for tanking. >Maigadi
I have not relied too much on them in 1v1s but in team games, Maigadi spam after an influence boom just feels unfair for the opponent. I don't know what you are doing. Hausa's influence boom is stronger and easier to pull off than Ethiopia imo. At least in my hands. >levy units
Yeah, they are trash I agree. It's the one weakness of African civs but the Palaces are usually enough to defend early rushes. Still, I agree that the levy system is bad. >artillery
They need influence to unlock it but you also get free upgrades for artilery. They also added an upgrade where you can split the cost into coin and influence. Most of my Hausa 1v1s wins are Akan + Falconets + Griots after a FF
>you're limited to FRICKING 18 of them
That's what I'm saying, man. We had like 6 or more months where you could make UNLIMITED number of them after the Age 4 Dutch shipment. They added a limit just a few weeks ago in the latest patch. You can read the patch notes to confirm. >age 3 dutch state army
If you mean the church card, it gives 5 Stradiots in Age 3 for 1000 coin and some blue guards in Age 4 for 2000 coin. I think the Stradiots are become trainable but the blue guards do NOT. >only your explorer can built those
No, dude. He can't. You are thinking of the USA explorer. Dutch cannot rebuild forts if they lose them.
>aztecs were suddenly F tier
Every civ is either F tier or S tier according to most forum posters. There is no in-between. But Aztecs are definitely not "F tier". They just made insanely bad changes to Aztecs. Arrow Knight are fricking heavy infantry now so skirmishers hard-counter them. Just hilariously stupid.
Right now, mid elo Aztecs is just spamming Jaguar prowl knights because while they nerfed the Arrow knights, they overbuffed JPKs.
Aztec players are now trolling the devs saying, "The JPK change is great and was much needed. But please revert the nerfs to Arrow knights" lol.
>that does not explain why i win against hausa/ethiopian players
What elo? Is this the 1v1 ranked ladder? Ethiopia and Hausa are considered top tier across mid to high elo by pretty much every reasonable person I have played against. Both civs have decent build orders for influence booming, it's nothing like Export. Ethiopia is the only civ in the entire game that upgrades 3 fricking units with a single upgrade i.e, shotel, gascenya, neftenya. These 3 units make a perfect unit combo in early Age 3. Hausa have a very strong Age 2 influence boom. Hausa is one of my main civs along with Dutch, I literally got to 1800 team elo with that civ and even I know I'm around 1500. I cannot write entire build orders here but I can link some good videos if you want.
You can check out this channel
The guy playing Hausa is a very active, high-elo team game player. Unless you are some big shot having trouble with African civs at very high elo yourself, you can learn how good the African civs are from this guy. He's got a frickton of videos where he is playing Hausa, I just picked one at random. He is not an e-celeb with obnoxious commentary or anything. I have played a few games with him too, I'm not as good as him but I'm also not as active currently.
In my opinion, if you're having trouble getting used to a civ then it is always a good idea to first get comfortable with those civs in team games like 2v2s and 3v3s. The meta in team games is slightly different from 1v1s but you get to learn to boom with that civ and take it into late game more often. That's a good thing.
In case you are playing treaty then forget about everything I said and please stop playing the game.
The devs are indeed stupid but AoE 3 is a more niche game compared to AoE 2 and AoE 4 so I doubt they care about game balance that much. A lot of times they make absolutely braindead decisions and you later find out that the change was made for treaty mode or that they will revert the change in the next patch which is 6 months away. The worst part of AoE 3 is that treaty and supremacy exist together. Ideally both gamemodes should have different patches or the devs should just completely ignore treaty when considering game balance.
The thing is, devs who are balancing the game today are homosexuals who used to make mods like Napoleanic Era and Wars of Liberty for the old version of the game. They are good at things like unit textures and history or whatever but these guys have never really played the game at a competitive level at all so they don't even understand the basics of how to balance the game. For example, if you ask them why the original AoE 3 civs, British and Spain don't have a fast age politician, they would not be able to give you a decent answer even though this question is the equivalent of 2+2 to any decent AoE 3 player. This game doesn't have a competitive scene anyways so smart players just play it for fun with friends now. Anyone actually taking this game seriously at a competitive level is moronic. Right now, game balance is controlled mostly by AoE3 e-celebs on youtube / twitch and almost all of them are extremely biased and make bad suggestions to troll the devs. Lionheart on twitch is a good example of such a player.
>Worst part is that Treaty and Supremacy coexist
Yes, thank you! Inca are rightfully getting dumped on in sup but it's also ruining them completely for treaty for example
I play Russian alot but i just dont know what to do versus china, they seem to hard counter everything easily in a rush. If i go strelets or cossacks to fight off the early rush, their meteor hammers just fricking destroy them. If i try to harass its easy pz to keep their villagers safe while mine get raped, if i get muskets to fight off the hammers they just make their own onfantry and pick them off... Am i missing an obcious defense against this bullshit?
well executed china builds are very hard to fight off in general. try to go as fast as possible and avoid trading armies with him unless it's to defend imo. a smart china player should go aggresive vs russia to not give him enough time to benefit from his higher vil count passive bonus and other good greed cards
one thing to remember is that early china cant make high amounts of one singular unit no matter how much they might want to, due to the banner army system (granted the home shipments make up for that)
nor can you truly match them in value by going for multiple unit types early on. focus on a singular unit (usually strelets) while trying to get to age3 fast. send the falconets quickly
AoE3 plays a bit like warcraft 3, its a pretty big leap away from AoE 2, micro is still important but the games have more focus on macro and a tense tug of war kinda feel that i find aoe2 lacks. AoE 4 is basically a step back, its like aoe 2 but manages to fall short in many ways. There improving, slowly.
AoE2 can be fun and created its own rts style, but man are the players ever sweaty, and theres a huge emphasis on micro, like fall 2 archers behind and bend over and kiss your ass goodbye kinda micro. May be a skill issue for me i just dont like microing boars and stutter stepping archers feels cheesy and irritating.
AoM was a fricking hoot back in the day, but it really shows its age now, like it has quality of life issues that have been polished out of the other remasters, and both its expos felt rushed and bolted on and never got the tlc they needed.
Macro is also important for aoe2; I would say its main issue is that it gets stale fast in terms of map style and objectives outside of the campaign but thankfully the lobbies are actually decently varied
I have to admit I have little experience with aoe1 and aoe4. While aoe4 does some gameplay issues right (it somewhat fixes the "empty map feeling" that aoe2 has) it overall feels like a recasted aoe2
>part of the new explorer skin batch released last summer >got removed from the game at some point >Everyone forgot
I hope we get more actually good skins like william the silent, warwick or celebi and not the goofy ass ones like nanib sahir being a fricking hunchback on an elephant or the personification of the french revolution wacking peoples with a comically large caveman club
werent all those skins we could see ended up becoming the monthly ones we unlock now ? so she probably gonna show up again or they are preparing a new skin pack at some point
tp start, explore with travois, use your early travois for forward war huts, make kanye and tomahawks for age2, fast age up for age3, that's it. in water maps make dock at the start
>3v3 >2 of us (Dutch + Indians) focus on rushing the enemy >the other one (also Dutch) focuses on the economy first >enemy team (Ottoman, French, Mexicans) doesn't coordinate >we two can take each enemy player 2v1 in small skirmishes across the map >we control 2/3 of the map now >3rd team player builds walls and outposts, also starts pumping out units now >enemy team turtles themselves in around their starting region >me and the indian player focus on the Ottoman base >destroy his army in no time >only one of the French player sends reinforcement >we destroy the reinforcements while demolishing the Ottoman base >the other Dutch player sends his troops in >French and Mexican player surrender
honestly if all team matches would as fun as this, I wouldn't have to play 1v1
Seems like that since Africa they are only picking civs that they already have the architecture for.
This basically makes me think we will get maybe Brazil or Persia latter and then that is that. Korea and others would need unique architecture.
I will bet on more melee and early game units (like Italy, Spain) and more focus on maritime stuff. Alternatively, I guess they could go for a more 19th century set but idk.
Or focus on mercenaries and cash, be the equivalent of native spammers for EU
That's because you only get cuirassiers through the french tongue shipments and everyone agree that those cost way too much for what they deliver (except german)
You'll only see malta players using german or english (if they're stupid) in their deck because those two are BARELY worth the investment but useful in a pinch
Also they are order/consulate units, which mean more expensive and longer to train than their normal counterpart just for the benefit of shadow upgrades
Finally, malta is not that strong of a civ and frequently lose in 1v1 or become a burden in team games, very few peoples play them and some of them play the civ for the first time so they frick around with stationary guns and gunpowder depots
>english (if they're stupid)
isn't english tongue used primarily against ottoman players? There are better options against other civs but you have to go archaic vs otto
Malta is already an archaic civ with a focus on the crossbow(arbalester), a longbow only has range and firerate advantage over a crossbow but this also leave them more vulnerable to heavy cav flank that your pikes might not intercept in time
German is an excellent choice, english is redundant, spanish fill a niche that malta really doesn't struggle with (also too expensive), portuguese is... acceptable if you want reliable access to skirmishers late game (still not really worth it), french is inferior to what the actual french can do on top of being too expensive and why the frick would you ever consider russian
all tongues except german are for timing pushes or situational necessity. You dont get english tongue for training longbowmen, you get them to bolster your big dick archaic all in push
It was a pretty big deal before it got partitioned, wasn't it? I guess it wasn't included before because it didn't exactly go with the colonial theme, and even though that aspect got less important in DE, it still sticks out among other European civs.
You used to matter before getting fricked by the two germans and ruskies, its the danes who I find strange, they stopped being relevant centuries before the period the game is set in and lost their chance to be relevant again early on with the Kalmar "union"
That is shit though, why would anyone pay for something that has a free, very similar alternative? I say again that it should have either been Austria to begin spliting up Germany or just not cared about sharing a location and going to another continent, Europe is pretty much complete now.
no idea but half of the civs in the game should only exist as campaign only npc factions. playable factions should have been limited to ones who had actual new world colonies or at least had an imaginary possibility of one.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Nah thats fricking stupid, if the game had stayed limited to early new world colonization it would have been lame af, the early modern era focus is far superior.
3 months ago
Anonymous
yeah how could they not have influential early modern civilizations like the sioux and the ethiopians
3 months ago
Anonymous
Yes but at least those had somewhat interesting things going for them, the danes did nothing that I am aware of, don't quite think they'll make them vikings.
3 months ago
Anonymous
The danes had cool uniforms, so there's that.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I cannot dispute that yeah, maybe they'll use the northern musketeers? (not sure if thats the name) did they have any kind of renowned soldier? the Poles will surely end up having the winged hussar thing as their shtick (maybe some mechanic around elections for their age up too?) so what could be denmarks?
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Sioux
The American-Indian wars of the Great Plains were a 150+ year long conflict. If you include the Sioux civ to represent the other Great Plains tribes like the Apache, then you have them fighting the Spanish for 250 years. What's the "imaginary possibility" of the plains tribes fighting against the "imaginary possibility" of a Russian America? >Ethiopia
I'll admit they were self contained, but that doesn't mean that they didn't have their impacts. With their Alliances, they can also represent the Somalis and the Sudanese, who impacted the east coast Spice/Slave trade and Egypt, respectively.
Why not remove Japan, since they were self-insulated and their only "colony" was the Shimazu subjugation of the Ryukus and failed conquest of Korea, which was as local of a struggle as the Kanem–Bornu Empire's conquests (which can be represented by the Hausa)? The colonization of Ezo wouldn't really take place until after Meiji--hell, Japan wasn't relevant to the world AT ALL until 1894
3 months ago
Anonymous
japan is a stretch too, but it fits into the framework of the game better. they had musketeers and cannons they got from the portuguese, and even though they got rid of them at least they had oceangoing ships at one point, which is more than you can say for factions that never built a boat bigger than a canoe.
You used to only revolt into the US and Mexico, but now the Inca can fight Napoleonic France.
To deny the PLC a chance to fight against the Deluge isn't gameplay. There'll probably be cards about the Partition for the flavor of foreign mercs, but entirely option
>Poland disappeared partway through the period.
you're skipping past all the "rekt and dominated the region economically, culturally and militarily for 200 years before finally getting buckbroken by ~~*magnates*~~ and gangbanged by all neighbors combined as punishment"
also how is right before the napoleonic wars "partway through the period"? Pick up a history book
I agree with you anon, Poland is like the Roman Empire of Central Europe. Rich history, high culture, technological innovation, unmatched military might for a good while, regional center of trade and bastion of catholicism. Later conquered and partitioned by barbarians. Stopped the Ottoman Empire when no one else could.
Fully warranted inclusion in AoE3 my friend, 100% agreement here.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>saved austria from the ottoman >austria helped partition it anyway
kek the absolute state
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Ottomans refuse to recognize the partition and accept all Polish refugees
If only they had teamed up together to rape Austria and Russia...what coulda been.....
Poland may have disappeared, but there were also Polish soldiers everywhere in every random war from Moscow to Haiti. Fits the game's colonial conceit better than fricking Malta.
is there a tierlist for this game? It was pretty much the only game I played growing up, but it was all singleplayer and lan games. wondering if exclusively playing france and ottomans over the years has made me an unintentional tierprostitute or not.
As dumb as it was, it still leaves a precedent for a possible Byzantine faction in AoE3.
Another argument in favour of such would be the inclusion of the Mexicans, even though they overlap and succeed the Aztecs (even the Mexican's capital is built on top of the Aztec's).
AoE2 had already opened the gates with the Huns faction and a lot of 400 to 600 content. Western Rome had already shown up in the game so they were justified as the faction from 1 that went to 2.
Meanwhile 3 is much more firmly set after Constantinople fell. The one exception is the Chinese campaign which is set around one decade before.
3 months ago
Anonymous
As dumb as it was, it still leaves a precedent for a possible Byzantine faction in AoE3.
Another argument in favour of such would be the inclusion of the Mexicans, even though they overlap and succeed the Aztecs (even the Mexican's capital is built on top of the Aztec's).
>just as the fall of WRE kickstarts aoe2 >so no
*Ahem*
nah bros, aoe3 "tries" to be a bit more realistic with its narratives
3 months ago
Anonymous
>aoe3 >realistic >narrative
the campaign of 3 has you fight the Illuminati for the Fountain of Youth.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>implying the illuminati dont exist >implying the fountain of youth isnt adenochrome
I should say that at least it isnt as anachronistic or atavastic as aoe2 instead of "realistic"
No, Byzantines make literally no sense unless you headcanon guns for them, Rome, while prior to most of the civilizations in aoe2 still had a more sophisticated army than them, to even discuss the possibility of Byzantines in aoe3 is stupid.
3 months ago
Anonymous
The Aztecs are in the game even though they got wiped out in the 1500s. I'm perfectly fine with them making an alt-hist Byzantine civ that never falls and co-exists alongside the Ottomans.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I'd honestly rather they made the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom playable in some way, shame they didn't give China any revolts, they honestly would have fit with the Mexico method of revolts.
3 months ago
Anonymous
what we really need is Prussia. Germany is blatantly just the HRE with some lips service paid to Prussia.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I've said it before yes, Germany should be split into Prussia and the Habsburgs, then you also have some room for other german minors.
AoE2 is gay Black person shit carried by nolstagia
AoE3 is simplified AoE2, but it's carried by the card system which lets you customize your playstyle.
AoE4 is AoE3 but with some complexity added back from 2, but minus the card system. Graphic is shit but can be fixed by reshade.
AoE1 is true unfiltered kino, made even better by the AoE2 DE dlc (make sure to play at 100 pop max games). Very comfy music and ambience.
AoE2 is very good, has extremely nice campaigns and tons of content but isn't as clean and perfectly balanced like AoE1. Great music specially the Conquerors remastered OST.
AoE3 is all over the place. Units aren't cleanly designed and things don't make sense (villagers have more melee attack than pikemen, who have less melee armor than musketeers)
Way too many conflicting mechanics for new civs to make them 'different'. BEST music of all the franchise though, hands down.
AoE4 is missed potential to reboot the franchise from AoE1 period. It does everything AoE2 does but worse in favor of being more "historically accurate". WORST music by a landslide.
homie are you kidding me? AoE1 is fun, but has absolutely awful balancing. More than half the units available are worthless and the other half are so overpowered that they can take on 20x their number. There's no kind of balancing between unit types, it's just raw "Bigger stats win"
AoE 2 (and AoE 1 since it's pretty much the same thing but lesser): Lots of campaigns based on real history with little liberties taken to add more battles/opponents, if you like being competitive then there is lots and lots of stuff to che- I mean 'master'. Civs general design follows an set template with some different mechanics and units added for each on top of the cosmetics.
AoE 3: Main Campaign now has a more 'fantastical' touch, with the Asian campaigns and Historical Battles treading back to the history accuracy, mostly. Civs now tend to be more unique from each other, even the Europeans. Mechanics encourage the player to be more experimental, specially with the Card System. Sadly this does not sit well with competitive players and the balance is way more wack.
AoE 4: "How about we make Age of Empires 2... 2!", and there we go, that what this is BUT WORSE, except they borrow some ideas from 3 (not the cards) and desperately try to be 2 de-facto replacement.
>listening to AOE3 OST while studying
The most SOVL ever put into a game OST?
Also, is there a mod that changes 'Estate' back to 'Plantation'? I hate hate hate "cultural correspondents" like the ones DE devs hired with such a burning passion it's unreal
You are free to search it homosexual, that was literally said by an employee on ensemble studios which I forgot his name but he is one the most famous. The interview is probably still somewhere.
very real info of microsoft being scared of natives in 2005 lmao stupid vatBlack person, read up what bill gates did as microsofts CEO. You might actually learn some factual truth for once in your life
AoE4 is much less woke, btw. You can use the power of Jesus to wolololo muslims to your side and all villagers are homogenous rather than mixed-race like in 3.
I wish ottomans got their age up systems to be similar to african civs. Maybe with satrapies or provinces run by beys. I also wish that the mosque and Turkish TC were given further importance similar to universities (kek) and mountain monasteries
They would if the devs had the balls to add the Khanate of Crimeia as a revolution.
I hope that they do the same thing as before and offer Brazil as standalone limited freebie, since I think Poland and Denmark is end of the year material.
I dont think Greeks seethe that Ottomans exist or Austrians that Hungary exists etc. Posts like this screams of westoid braindead consumerism and state propaganda
I like this game a lot but it's utterly incomprehensible. >Cannons that do vastly different things and are functionally identical >On foot units counted as cavalry >Every single civ is fighting game character levels of relearning the game when picking up a new one >Decks massively decide what your gameplan is capable of so it sometimes feels like 1v1s are just slamming your decks against each other to see who hard countered who
Mad fun though.
that do vastly different things and are functionally identical
Falconet for anti infantry/general purpose, culverin for anti arty, mortar for anti building, horse gun for fast falconet, heavy cannon for falconet but bigger (and free from factory) >>On foot units counted as cavalry
Shock troops are an attempt at giving cavalry to factions that never had mounted troops in their history, this only apply to the aztec/inca, rule of thumb is that if you see their "infantry" move fast, bring out the pikes
pikes/halbs + skirms + artillery vibe checks anything that either tries to camp heavily or doesnt have artillery and tries to bum rush you even with strong units like cuirassiers
>So wait, is AoE3 actually f2p now?
The Demo is free, plus a few factions to play skirmish with. >Can I play through the campaign without buying the game?
Don't believe so, only a couple of missions.
imperial needs so many resources in general that there isnt really a "fast" way to do it in a somewhat realistic scenario. even minimal pressure as the opponent also ff or fi would put you in a brutal spot. USA and someone like like Incas/Lakota/Dutch/French/Haude would be your best bets (either a food to gold trade or insane resource buildings)
Also, the victorian era building reduces its cost based on xp gathered. You would need absurd xp gathered even in a teamgame to make it worth it (granted it also sends one extra factory) But there is no way to do that "fast"
Yeah, i get what you mean. But i think considering some players even on ladder want to boom for 10 minutes or more maybe I could do it for the lolz. And if one was able to click up with victorian era it would essentially mean using all that XP as a resource twice.
That being said it being limited to building XP, I cant think of a strategy to maximize those numbers.
even with something like japan going for seven lucky gods or usa going for philadelphia and multiple tps and ohio federal card, you would need 60000xp to bring the cost down to 4k food and 4k coin. granted you would also get a factory for all that but still. for context, 2.5k is the maximum xp cap for shipments, that scale 1.15 multiplicatively, so that means you would need the xp for about 30 shipments from the start of the game. As I said, it's not realistic to use the victorian age up just for the age up especially due to the xp cap
That's an ffa thing at best.
Edit: had a small power cut here which gave me a bit of time to check a few things. It's actually even worse than I thought: the only xp that reduces the upgrade cost (that has 90secs research time just like a proper age up) is only for building units and buildings. It doesnt get reduced from your own trickles or killing enemies or getting things like bulliionism. It's literally far more likely for a jap player to use japanese isolation for 4k export to age than you ever realistically doing this
There is actually a 13 minute-ish fast imperial build order with USA. It's pretty decent too because going imperial like that with USA gives you access to imperial outlaws and marines, both of which shadowtech so you never have to pay anything to upgrade them. Just need New Jeresy when going to Age 4 and either of 1600 food and 1600 coin in you deck.
If the cost of that tech is related to building XP then I would look at Haudenosaunee. You can spam down Estates using their travois + there's also a card that increases the build XP
Just read it myself. >While free, African-Americans struggled to improve their livelihoods in a system where the odds remained stacked against them, an issue compounded by the rampant xenophobia directed towards foreign immigrants who entered the United States in droves during the 19th and 20th centuries.
How is this relevant to the game's setting in the 1700s to 1800s? Absolute state of the Kneel Nation.
I just got this dlc, since I've read good things about it. hope it's good.
It has some neat ideas, but the actual maps are fricking awful.
Italy is cool. Malta is moronic. Otherwise p good.
I think Malta is great; it's a great expansion on the faction, initially seen in the campaign.
Was the campaign updated to feature the Malta faction or just reskinned spanish forever?
Still reskinned spanish for the same reason the US in campaign is reskinned british then a pseudo-revolution faction later on
>custom factions unique to the scenarios they are in, restricted by the means at the time
>scenarios would have to be reworked to accommodate for the wildly different decks and buildings (the maltese stationary gun/commandery come to mind as elements that can break the flow of the maps)
>the actual factions are behind their respective pricetags, campaign mainly ease you into how to play and it would be weird to learn about a faction you can't use in skirmish/multiplayer
Malta and the tutorial were broken up until like a month ago because the devs refused to fix a bug with the infinite 8 Crossbowman shipment that wouldn’t send any units unless you were playing as the Portuguese. The broken tutorial had you play as the French. Their late game economy is also kinda ass, but they ramp up really nicely in Age II because they have a card that jacks your natural resource gathering near defensive buildings sky high, and Malta builds a lot of those. Just beware, they, like United States, have a truly hopeless matchup into Ottomans unless you can somehow knock the Turks out before the 15-minute mark with Pike-Bow.
I know comparatively VERY little about how to play Italians, other than the fact that they don’t really have any good unit buff cards and perhaps the worst musketeers of any Euro civ that gets them. This now includes the Dutch, who can train Royal Guard musketeers out of Forts. Halberdier/Bersagliere might be fun, even if it’s not super viable, since your skirms toot a horn and the entire enemy army just…freezes up for the Halbs to snare.
Why hasn't any other game taken up the "unlockable citybuilder" angle for in-game experience?
Most just give new icons, which is shit; adding new civillians and little doodads is where it's at
>Why hasn't any other game taken up the "unlockable citybuilder" angle for in-game experience?
idk but I love how they did it
agreed
>Anonymous 01/05/24(Fri)03:52:05 No.1639724
AoEO did and failed so I guess that's why AoE4 and new titles outside the series didn't bother.
how accurate is this?
Aztecs got nerfed in the last patch. Arrow Knight gay will be pleased to hear that AKs are now heavy infantry (as if Aztecs weren't already weak to skirmishers), and that as a siege unit they take extra damage from culverins now, lmao. Speaking of the patch, I like how most Chinese units got a speed boost, disciples especially.
>France and Japan
Cuirassiers and Samurai are memes for team games, because they make you too vulnerable for cost
>Portugal
Real power is in their Town Center spam, not mortars
>Sweden
Nerfed to hell, but people still IKEA spam
>Inca
I think they removed magical transformation into cannons, it was a meme strat anyway.
Its all about Zapotec rush in Age 2 anyway
the only meme unit spam that I have problems with is the samurai
plus the daimon making them in my base plus mortars
Uhhh sauce?
replace the US with gatling guns and heavy cannons
PERO QUE QUIERE LA REPUBLICA PLURI NACIONAL DE BOLIVIA????????????????????'
Bajito pero ancho.
I wish I was good at playing Sweden
Spain is accurate to how I play them when I don't try and fail to forward barracks rush
Easily the best graphics in an RTS tbh
True. Even before DE, the game still looked better than AoE4.
Pretty wild how they would add more eye candy via regular patches, e.g. new uniforms for unique upgrades.
this game with the histroical skins mods was peak
made rushing imperial worth
too bad recent updates broke the mods
The tropical visuals in this game are actually better than in modern Tropico games.
>EaSiLy tHe bEsT GrApHiCs iN An RtS!
>tHe GaMe sTiLl LoOkEd bEtTeR ThAn A0E4!!
>Venice on the Moon
>Astronaut skin for your explorer
Are other AoEs even trying
At least this game is not based (again) in the Medieval ages like 4.
How does one even beat the frogs as China? their anti cav is terrible and once France gets Cuirassiers out you are almost doomed.
Won't the Mongolian Army clean them up? Or better yet, clean up their eco so that they can't even make any.
>Cuirassiers
If you let them full upgrade, the game is already lost.
Instead focus on their vulnerability early on, get Steppe horseboys card to harass them on age 2. Some builds even meme-on with disciple builds to counter early musket protection.
Also, do not sleep on that monastery card that gives you heavy archer mercs. They look like pikemen, but they are super heavy archers, with great bonuses vs cav, that have combined health of 4 pikemen.
>monastery card that gives you heavy archer mercs
You mean Iron Troop? More like iron poop. Your normal infantry is more cost and pop effective. Also, they don't have an anti-cav bonus.
Wait, I didn't play for some time but they were already nerfed?
I remember owning frenchmen with them, especially the turtling ones.
Wikia says they were never nerfed, and they're basically just Jaegers with slightly different stats. I guess their high range resist makes them situationally useful against other ranged units, but otherwise I don't find them remarkable and by industrial age they're borderline obsolete. They'd be more useful to the Chinese if they acted as musketeers or grenadiers, or at least benefited from Repelling Volley.
Must be the Bernstein Bears effect then.
The Iron Troop named fast fortress isn’t BAD, but I feel like several better builds exist.
I main French when I play because once you get fully upgraded Cuirassiers and can insta-spam them the game ends. It's so satisfying to reach that point.
Well…yes, that’s how it works. China’s big weakness is hand cavalry, though in recent months, people have figured out that the Keshik’s DPS per population space is, IIRC, higher than that of any other non-mercenary dragoon bar the Tatar Archer recruitable from Tengri Native sockets.
Massed cuirassiers in gener are a nightmare for any civ, and I’ve used the French Langue shipment for Malta to finish games by mixing Order Hussars with Order Gendarmes. You really only need 8-14 of them tossed into a comp to be efficient, any more and it’s rapidly diminishing returns.
Yeah, Keshiks seem like a critical Chinese unit that's difficult to replace, and the Mongolian Army might the most versatile banner that gets a bunch of cool upgrades.
It has been almost two years since the last dlc, has aoe3 been abandoned again? Or might they return with one more dlc? I thought Knights of the Med had sold fairly decently and was better received than the kangz.
I keep getting a bug where the music stops working in this game. I've googled and I've seen other people with the same issue but couldn't find a fix
Is AoE 3 worth trying? Every time I see some create a post here I think "hmm, I should probably try it" but the next day "nah I have better games to play".
If you want something that's completely different than 2 - basically the complete opposite - and at the same time very similar to AoM, then sure. The game is free to try anyway.
yea its not bad, just different imo. its a more arcadey rts, not a high speed asiaticclicker like aoe2 or starcraft
Does it really have to be 50 gigs though? Even 4 is more compact.
3 has hundred of units dressed in detailed uniforms that change on upgrade, including unique upgrades, and it had several DLCs worth of content. Surely it pads the filesize.
4 looks like it has far less variety in units, less content, and I rarely hear anons praise its graphics. And are you sure it's actually that compact?
age3 is twice the size of age2 and 32% more than age4. It is the 9th largest of the 136 games I have installed on my PC
thoughts on this tier list?
>Japan in D
It's shit
> Dutch isn't S+
It's shit
dutch have solid midgame but their early and late game is a bit too meh imo
Early game Dutch is definitely slow, but late game Dutch are unstoppable. Factories / banks gives you some of the best passive resource gen in the game.
do you guys feel that merc contractor could be better? I feel that dutch mercs are overall subpar compared to sweden or germany, they are only held together by dutch gold generation which is indeed great. but lack of silversmith hurts dutch imo
Best Dutch mercs are sent via cards. States Army gets you highlanders and royal horsemen. Waardgelders gets you swiss pikes. Religion Freedom gets you red lancers. I rarely bother with the merc contractor and instead go for the 400 wood for another bank.
It is, but there are better strategies now. You can go early halberdiers or send buckriders. That lets you save wood for banks or a stable if your rush stalls. I really love the new cards and minireworks of the old civs. Spain, Germany, France, and especially the Netherlands are so much more interesting now.
age3 merc contractor sucks balls even for treaty or ffa modes. unless we are talking very long treaty and even then the eco loss isnt really made up for in terms of utility which says a lot because they get an amazing pair of mercs at elmetti and fusiliers
I remember pike and skirm rushing the frick out of b***hes back when AoE3 released
Can't this still be done effectively?
people ff and then sent falcs
my favorite build was mercantilism rush but they nerfed it
>mercantillism rush
uh what? all it does is give you xp. you might as well build extra tps early on
this was a really old strat. the idea was that you would fast fortress and then get mercantilism right away and use the instant xp on 20 muskets + 2 falconets or whatever the best cards were and try to kill your opponent while he was still in colonial or before he could get his production going.
>sending a thousand gold age3 to sent merc to get 2k xp
eh. I guess japan would be the best for this type of thing since double shipments means their deck cards can have slightly lower value per se while still retaining long term utility
japan or spain since their shipments cost less xp
i could see double tp ottoman with silk road pulling it off too
this was from the first year the game was out. japan didn't exist. also I don't know how it is now but you could only make trade posts in certain locations along the railroad that went through the map.
Yeah, the game has changed a lot man it's been nearly 20 years
There are trade routes and native sites to build trading posts on
>Play brits
>They keep screaming about Lions
What the frick
>IRMENOSAUR
sweden and japs that low? meanwhile india and malta that high? china a tier? eh
the original game was great but the expansions fricking ruined it. I hope the aom devs are smart enough to realize that they need to remove the expansions for the game to be good.
That's what I'm wondering also. AoE3 is essentially AoM whose unique mechanics were expanded in every possible direction to the extreme, so I say it would make sense if Retold kept it lean and tight. But if I were to bet, they'll go crazy with new addons instead, porting various ideas from AoE3 wholesale. Also, I think it was said that they won't be removing anything.
I think aoe3 was actually a worse case than aom. with aom the expansions were just badly executed. with aoe3 they completely discarded the original vision for the game.
What exactly did they discard?
Colonizing the new world.
Natives being allies to get units from based on maps, not civs for themselves.
New world focus entirely, all aspects of leaving the old world behind make sense in the 'build up from a single town center and a few villagers + explorer'
It was the perfect setup but expansions required going elsewhere and revisiting what was already in AoE2 but a few centuries later.
true, but it would be too european(ish)
honestly outside of the ottomans and maybe persians (safavids?) who else could pull it off?
I don't think there was really a need to keep adding new factions
This a hundred times.
Give us new maps, new cards, new campaigns but frick adding new factions forever.
Is Mexico worth buying?
It's for sure the most versatile of all factions due to ability to change entirety of the unit roster every age.
This obviously makes it one of the hardest to play since you need to remember all the potentials every age/revolt gives.
Nothing more satisfying than countering some turtler with sudden monopoly victory in age 3.
imho yes, absolutely. it's only a few bucks and has loads of tricks and builds and fun
So apparently I found that fast tp with export trickle is the basic opener for china nowadays
The question is do you take northern refugees and use it in age2 or age3?
>be malta
>boom early
>start massing hospitaliers
>it work
>why the frick does it work
Anyone else still play the 2007 collection because they don't want to spend money to buy the game twice?
anonymous added to the game
Aren't outlaws flawed enough already to be bullied by designated 'police' units?
reminder that the church cards are mandatory now
use them noob
I've never played this or any RTS before
Is it possible to conquer the world as Basques
Then play some RTS before asking silly questions. You don't really conquer the world in an RTS unless it's one of those with a turn-based campaign map.
Honestly, that wouldn't be a terrible idea for a DLC, though some of the civs aren't exactly a good fit for world conquest.
No Sir
Europa Universalis is not RTS
Here you go AoE3 bros
>Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition: After giving our players a new way to play for free in 2023, we are excited to reveal a new DLC with new civilizations.
https://www.ageofempires.com/news/new-year-new-age-announcement/
fingers crossed for denmark and poland like the leak suggested
aren't they implied to be revolution options?
If we have to get even more civilizations than we need, I'd like Persia and Korea.
Personally I think Ottomans and Persians should have an african civ type of age up mechanic and unique techs. It makes more sense imo. Also, an additional Asian civ with wonders and perhaps the ability to rebuilt them
I agree with you
That's true, but I don't see the capital gain having those as standalone
Its not like we didn't have nations that are both rebellions and "standalone"
By leaks you mean the flags? Those could very well be just custom civs for Historical Battles, just like with Moroccans or Tatars.
my biggest hopes are for overall data optimization, age3 shouldn't be larger than age2 and age4
I wish they dismembered Germany into Prussia and Austria/Habsburgs.
This is why I don't care about multiplayer for AoE games. Making your cool buildings look like a little town is part of the fun
The developers killed it, dogshit patch after dogshit patch, cheese galore.
Natives being nerfed to hell and back, Mexico being unfun to play against (they have FF and FI on steroids), feitoria, Humbaraci, SWEDEN refusing to die, Gatling Guns, etc., etc.
I uninstalled this shit after they change the Arrow Knights, how dare you have reliable anti-art., when every single unit in your roester it's shit... but hey, let's give Dutch muskets because every single civ doesn't need weaknesses except for aztecs.
>RUSH? how fricking dare you Black person!? We can't have you Rushing slower civs!?(gives Humbaracis to Ottos, gives Greenwich Time to Brits)
>give dutch muskets
huh? you mean the nassau regiment or the church card?
He meant the 30 blue guards you get from the church, because that's the only source of musketeers for the dutchs.
Anon is a homosexual regardless for thinking dutchs have a weakness when they have the only good halberdier unit in the game, skirmishers and ruyters to spam with their near infinite gold income.
>because every single civ doesn't need weaknesses except for aztecs.
learn to read, Black person.
Back at you, ESL-kun
>let's give Dutch muskets because every single civ doesn't need weaknesses
You strongly implied that dutch getting access to a one-time limited number of musketeers at age 4 somehow made the dutchs have no weakness whatsoever when in reality their unit roster is perfectly "balanced" and complemented nicely by their coin-based economy, the fricking blue guard is flavor at this point
The part about aztecs being shit is just you being bad at them, you have fricking coyote runners as a better alternative to hussars, jaguar/skull knights demolish anything that get in their melee range, arrow knights still counter artillery hard with their range (absurd damage modifiers, you need heavy cavalry to sneak up on them and you still run the risk of getting demolished by the melee knights)
If you want factions that are genuinely weak, look at the african ones, as funny as it may be to suddenly shit out 4k gold and food just by selling a few cattles you forgot about, the unit roster of hause and ethiopia is abysmal, their "best" units chug a frickton of influence which is just reskinned export with the same terrible trickle rate
Influence is export done right imo
Also, both hausa and Ethiopia are top tier right now
Export is less of a proper resource and more like extra experience for a separate deck of shipments.
It isnt a one time though, the Dutch can train more blue guards in the fort if they took the card and built one.
>Only good halberdier
I assume you mean the Merc version cause lmao otherwise
>I assume you mean the Merc version cause lmao otherwise
Nope, i do mean the stadswacht
Halberdiers suffer from being too expensive for what they bring (somewhat tougher pikeman exchanging some of its cavalry damage modifier for versatility against infantry/whatever dare to get in melee)
The dutchs have standard cards that buff them up quite a lot alongside skirmishers, as well as the military reform card which give them enough speed for a negligible reduction to infantry damage modifier, needing 50 food and 70 gold they are easy for dutch players to spam due to how little food they actually need and how much gold they fricking vomit
Only reason you wouldn't field halberdiers as dutch is if you are brain damaged and only make ruyters or if you choose the meme strategy of highlander/royal horseman spam
>Also, both hausa and Ethiopia are top tier right now
Usually by peoples who get dazzled by how "OP" their economy can get, in truth their eco is a slow and fragile one that can easily get disrupted by early raids and their only responses is a small batch of javelin riders or being proactive and using raiders
Even if i repeat myself, the good, strong, viable endgame units you want to field are locked behind influence which suffer from a terrible trickle rate like its export predecessor, getting artificially locked out of your best units, artillery and researches by a resource you have little control over is not what a "top tier" civ should be
Personally my gripe with export is the trickle rate, which mean spending it on consulate unit instead of the research is self-sabotage
However consulate stuff is practically optional, you can play the asian factions without building a single consulate and still manage to win games but getting a factory as the chinese or making a batch of 10 units as japanese can really help in the long run
How often do you field halbs as Dutch unless it's late game and you got tons of artillery and the opponent has tons of cav? Also
>25 percent damage is negligible reduction
How often do you see people have the card in deck let alone actually sending it?
And Hausa is objectively a top tier civ right now, stop coping. Elo?
>How often do you field halbs as Dutch
Frequently, so do others
>How often do you see people have the card in deck let alone actually sending it?
Frequently when their deck isn't purely focused on braindead ruyter spam or isn't a merc deck
>>25 percent damage is negligible reduction
It is, you got a mass of halberdiers with 440 health, 20% melee resist and 62 damage (46,5 against infantry because you care, somehow) that are all going as fast, if not faster, than pikemans or samurais
They'll soak any damage coming their way, close the gap too quickly for the musk/skirm's liking, absolutely demolish any moron making a frontline of hussars and they let your skirms and artillery ravage the enemy's ranks in peace
If they field arty, your answer should be a mad ball of ruyters going around or culverine backline
You have the economy to spam them, they're a core unit to a dutch army composition, if i see you fielding pikemans past age 3 instead of halbs i will find your house and shit in your mailbox
>And Hausa is objectively a top tier civ right now, stop coping.
You're the one coping in this case, your only argument is that hausa is "top tier" (according to some literally who e-celebs i'm sure) which is subjective as frick and repeating that again and again isn't going to make it magically true.
I didnt say you wont get some halb unit, I specifically mentioned the merc version of them in fact who are cheaper in res overall per pop an stronger per unit count
Realistically as dutch you are generally pinned back for most early and mid game unless your opponent tries to go for some insane FI or greed. Banks are nice but are also expensive and take time to gather res for, build and pay back.
And most dutch players rely heavily on merc units/shipments (not necessarily the age3 card that allows royal horsemen and highlanders, just shipments in general). Your main comp is skirm+goon (plus mercs of various types)
>I didnt say you wont get some halb unit, I specifically mentioned the merc version of them in fact who are cheaper in res overall per pop an stronger per unit count
The main drawback is that they can only be obtained through shipments and you only have a choice of getting 8 of them once or 4 of them through the holy roman army, the dutchs have no card that would allow them to be recruited reliably, just like the blue guards once they are gone they are gone and you'll be on the backfoot if those were important to your strategy
Some guys immediately field irish brigadiers or pikemans when reaching age 2 to prepare for any rush while they work on building skirms in urgency or work toward age 3 for ruyters, they usually don't have any other merc card unless they're experimenting with harquebusiers and the likes, the dutchs will always be more comfortable with mercenaries than any other civ which is why the royal horseman/highlander deck is legit
If the banks were any cheaper the game would be unplayable for everyone else, they are a big investment meant to gate your early game hard that pay off much more earlier than you'd think, hell i'd argue that a factory take longer to pay off the opportunity cost of a shipment used for it, especially if it is a late shipment
700 res just to make a bank unless you take east india company which is an extra early shipment (inb4 dont send 3 vils at start). Half of said 700 is wood. All things considered I would argue that the bank has paid for itself truly after at least 800+ gold. Realistically we are talking 300secs or 5mins. Granted it's a pretty good payoff but still. I think the best build is to take early tp and your first two shipments should be 3vils into east india banks. Build 2 banks or so during the age1 to age2 transition. After that get 700wood or a military shipment depending on situation
You cannot start an early TP with Dutch without greatly delaying your Age up time. Dutch do not open with any wood crates at all. So you would need to build a market and sell coin for wood to get an Age 1 TP.
Unless you are playing on some special map, the Dutch build for the first 5 minutes in a 1v1 is very straightforward. 3 vils is first shipment. Age up with Quartermaster and hit Age 2 before 4:30. You can only make 1 Bank in Age 1 to Age 2 transition. If you are playing some stupid game mode like 4v4 or Free for all then yeah, you can meme around with meme build orders where you hit Age 2 at 6 min. I used to be a 1600 elo Dutch main btw.
dude what? pretty sure the dutch start with 400g 200w crates
>Dutch do not open with any wood crates at all
Sorry, I forgot the word "extra" before word crates, someone distracted me while I was writing that down.
So yeah, 200 wood start but you usually need the 100 wood for a house. What are you gonna do, 10/10 with Dutch and use all the starting 200 wood on a TP? That sounds horrible. If you plan to buy wood with coin then you also need to invest 100 wood in a market first. If you chop 100 wood with vils then you are gonna hit Age 2 late.
So Dutch openings are usually either 100 wood house + leave 100 wood alone until age 2 OR 100 wood house + 100 wood market and then try to get hunting dogs with treasures. Exceptions include maps like Florida where everyone starts with a market anyways or maps like Deccan where you start with a bunch of extra crates.
you can have most of your starting vils chop wood from the start and one or two on gold till you get 100 extra wood. that's how all people do it even these who start with 500crate res
>you can have most of your starting vils chop wood from the start
Try it and tell me the time you hit Age 2 when you do that. I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just saying that's way more risky to do with Dutch than a civ like France for example. In a competitive 1v1 at 1500+ elo, you can get punished pretty hard for such an opening.
true it is risky. but really, I think it's probably better to take a risk for as much extra xp into crate shipments to convert into banks/buildings/etc asap
now mind you, I am not saying to do that each and every time especially vs civ like lakota or haude
but vs civs that ff or even FI you cannot avoid some greed on your own as dutch. it's not as if you have some impressive rush or age2 play without banks anyway
The biggest mistake Dutch players make is going full greedy on banks. Shipping 700 wood crates in Age 2 first and not having the 700 food to actually build two banks because the opponent has 10 hussars right under their TC while going Age 3. You are adding a TP to that build which makes Dutch even slower. Unless you can show me a 1v1 game where you do this TP opening with Dutch, I'm not convinced, haha.
If you play Dutch a lot, you will quickly realize that this civ is all about tempo. If you want to be greedy, you ship 700 wood and build two banks as soon as you hit Age 2 but the much safer and better option is shipping a bank wagon instead. In team games though, you do the opposite. That's why Dutch is S tier in team games but C tier in this
tier list. That tier list was made by Top 10 ranked players on the ladder I think.
it's kinda true, dutch have probably one of the best greed systems, I wish that the banks of rotterdam and amsterdam were one card that you could send twice for treaty. or that the dutch had a slightly higher base vil max count
anyway, I think another issue that the dutch have is lack of decisively good age2 shipments outside some mercs, which feeds back into the bank/defensive playstyle till you have a large army size
They have tried to give Dutch better Age 2 options like Highwaymen Outlaws and Swiss Pikes or whatever but yeah, those are really just things you meme around with in team games or against players with a lower skill level than your own. Anoher cheesy Age 2 Dutch build is going for Logistician Halbs and then adding the Halb speed card on top of them. I have actually won 1v1s at 1500 elo by spamming nothing but Halbs in Age 2 lol. Although I saw Aizamk do this first.
Nah, at the moment China is just a stronger civ imo. Age 2 China is definitely better than Age 2 Russia. China FF is also better. Obviously it depends on the players but generally China vs Russia is considered China favoured. If you manage to win against China as Russia, you are the much better player.
age2 halbs eh, might try that for fun
I just wish that with musks being non accessible and already good halbs as well access to swiss pikes, that the other royal guard unit the dutch have would be skirmishers
ryuters and halbs both come online age3 generally and dutch skirmishers dont have anything particularly interesting about them
>age2 halbs eh
It's good against civs that only have the option of making 4 speed Crossbows to counter Halbs in Age 2 and that doesn't work so well lol.
^That's a 2v2 where Aiz does this but I have seen 1v1s with Logistician Halbs too.
I had forgotten that halbs come automatically veteran even in age2, that's actually amazing for age2 play which the dutch are lacking in generally speaking.
I havent used the logistiacian seriously for a long time now
>that's how all people do it
Unless you are playing treaty, that's not absolutely not how people play Dutch on the ranked ladder. TP start with Dutch is extremely rare.
>that's the only source of musketeers for the dutchs
Nah, a couple of patches ago they gave Dutch an Age 4 card that enabled some African musketeers to be trained with no build limit. Those dudes have an area damage at range and the card enables their age 4 upgraded version right off the bat. This led to many players just going fast industrial, shipping already upgraded musks and then going full musk cannon on the opponent's ass. I think the latest patch added a build limit to the African musks to end this cheese but people abused the fast industrial for a long time.
I don't know why you are so angry but at the very least, you are completely wrong that the church card is the only source of musks for Dutch.
You are also hilariously wrong about african civs being weak but whatever, everyone pretends that their favorite civ is F tier on the AoE 3 forums.
I think you guys are confusing the church card for blue guards with the age 3 card that enables blue guards in forts. The church card only lets you get a one time "shipment" of blue guards in age 4. It doesn't make them trainable. But there is also an age 3 card that ships some blue guard and makes them trainable in forts. Dutch can get easily get 1 fort in age 3 via a shipment and another when they age up from age 3 to age 4. Blue guards are good because they shadowtech, you don't have to spend any resources to upgrade them.
I don't account for the akan akobias since you're limited to FRICKING 18 of them, age 3 dutch state army give you musketeers and cuirassier on steroid that only need gold and can be trained instantly with the right cards and yeah there's the blue guard you can train at forts with no limit but only your explorer can built those at a slow space and only after you send the age 4 card for it, otherwise your only source of fort are fort wagon card and age up
>I don't know why you are so angry
Because the post before that was anon b***hing that aztecs were suddenly F tier because of a slight nerf to the arrow knights while everyone else got massive "buffs" which is an hilarious display of victim complex
The part that actually made me angry was the claim dutchs not having musk in their unit roster was their one and only weakness, which is wrong on so many level already that i felt obligated to start a stupid internet fight
>You are also hilariously wrong about african civs being weak
Then explain to me what actually make them top tier, i can admit i struggle to play them right and its a skill issue (again i really don't like influence being a struggle to obtain when most of the good shit is locked behind it and the unit roster being meh overall), but that does not explain why i win against hausa/ethiopian players reliably whenever i face them
Are they just as bad as i am with them?
Or do they never truly expect someone to split units into multiple groups attacking from multiple angles, too small to win any engagements with a blob but big enough to force villagers to run away or die? a lot of players seem deadly afraid of losing a single settler that they'd willingly risk the stagnation of their economy just to save 100 food and whatever res that settler could've gathered in the future
>you're limited to FRICKING 18 of them
That's what I'm saying, man. We had like 6 or more months where you could make UNLIMITED number of them after the Age 4 Dutch shipment. They added a limit just a few weeks ago in the latest patch. You can read the patch notes to confirm.
>age 3 dutch state army
If you mean the church card, it gives 5 Stradiots in Age 3 for 1000 coin and some blue guards in Age 4 for 2000 coin. I think the Stradiots are become trainable but the blue guards do NOT.
>only your explorer can built those
No, dude. He can't. You are thinking of the USA explorer. Dutch cannot rebuild forts if they lose them.
>aztecs were suddenly F tier
Every civ is either F tier or S tier according to most forum posters. There is no in-between. But Aztecs are definitely not "F tier". They just made insanely bad changes to Aztecs. Arrow Knight are fricking heavy infantry now so skirmishers hard-counter them. Just hilariously stupid.
Right now, mid elo Aztecs is just spamming Jaguar prowl knights because while they nerfed the Arrow knights, they overbuffed JPKs.
Aztec players are now trolling the devs saying, "The JPK change is great and was much needed. But please revert the nerfs to Arrow knights" lol.
>that does not explain why i win against hausa/ethiopian players
What elo? Is this the 1v1 ranked ladder? Ethiopia and Hausa are considered top tier across mid to high elo by pretty much every reasonable person I have played against. Both civs have decent build orders for influence booming, it's nothing like Export. Ethiopia is the only civ in the entire game that upgrades 3 fricking units with a single upgrade i.e, shotel, gascenya, neftenya. These 3 units make a perfect unit combo in early Age 3. Hausa have a very strong Age 2 influence boom. Hausa is one of my main civs along with Dutch, I literally got to 1800 team elo with that civ and even I know I'm around 1500. I cannot write entire build orders here but I can link some good videos if you want.
>If you mean the church card
Nah, the dutch state army card is something else and it is mean to be a curveball meme, nearly every dutch player in existence has it in their deck just in case
>No, dude. He can't.
Without the age 4 card that is common to other european civs, yeah he can't, only malta and US can built fort at age 3 natively
Still not a really good card to ship tho', explorers build forts very slowly, they are expensive and a very big juicy target for mortars, once you lose them you pretty much have to use skirms/halb/ruyter from then on to try and stall whatever push is happening now that your defenses are down
>Every civ is either F tier or S tier according to most forum posters.
Official forums of a game is where you go when you want your braincells to die a painful death that much i already learned since the days of WoW's forums, i never visit those under any circumstances
Still, arrow knights are meant to be your culverine equivalent, their range is still big enough to snipe arty and skirms would have to go through or really close to jaguar/skull/coyote frontline if they want to remove arrow knights from the engagement.
>I cannot write entire build orders here but I can link some good videos if you want.
Build order is only half of the problem and that's the easiest to fix for me, the harder part really is the unit roster
>fulani
Feel like yumi archer made worse as "balance" for their herding capability
>javelin rider
A good anti-cavalry and that's it, they are a bad matchup against anything else
>raider
Shit cav whose only saving grace is the mad multiplier against villagers, they are pigeonholed into a specific role that fall off really hard later on
>lifidi/oromo
Really good cav, expensive and come late
>Maigadi
Even with the dane guns, they feel too expensive for musketeers that get shit on by skirms AND cavs
>levied/desert units
LMAO
>artillery
Probably the biggest weakpoint.
>comment too long
Anyway, the fact the africans have a harder time fielding fricking artillery because of influence baffle me, even the native americans have an easier access to them (granted for most case only captured mortar but it still won't hurt their growth to field more than one, can't say the same of the fricking sebastopol mortar)
Gascenya/neftenya/shotel is much closer to "traditional" unit comp like the haudenosaunee, still doesn't make the civ good in my eyes
>that game
Raxefal carried the game really fricking hard tbh, eric couldn't commit to most engagements
Props for the maigadis, even if he burned through a wealth of influence for little in return (his ass was definitively not winning those musk fights)
Still his gameplay and flow is not too dissimilar to my experience (albeit slightly faster obviously since he's booming), i guess its a skill issue in the end and i'll never be good with africans
>In case you are playing treaty
I'd rather play fricking tycoon than the coward's choice of crutch
Imo, your problem is that you have not embraced Influence. Learn to Influence boom. Age 2 Hausa age up. Get the tech from the University that increases TC build limit. Get multiple Univerisities and TCs going in Age 2. Influence is by far the most important res for African civs. If you play these civs thinking that they are somewhat optional like Asian export, you are gonna lose.
>that game
>Raxefal carried
Okay, but like I said, I picked one at random. Eric is definitely not carried in every game he plays lol. Check out his other Hausa games if you want to. I looked at it and in this one, he boomed with Berber vils in Age 2. There are videos where he did the Hausa age up in Age 2 and did an influence boom.
...i fricking forgot the screenshots of the cards, my bad
Ohhh Dutch States Army is the new merc card. I didn't care to learn the name, I just remember the card icon.
It's only good for team games and FFAs imo, I don't see any competitive 1v1 game making use of this card. Obviously if you are playing against someone of far lower skill level then you can meme around with it but otherwise it's a card which adds "flavour".
It is not sustainable to spam merc only unless you have 7 or 9 banks in Age 4 + most of your vils on coin. Even then, banks are kinda overrated. Every bank is roughly worth 4 Dutch vils on coin...for 700 res. It's balanced. Nothing insane but most new Dutch players make the mistake of greeding on the banks too heavily.
>Castrametation
Oh. Age 4 Fort card also allows Explorer to build forts. Okay, I have literally never used that card in my 10 years of playing AoE 3 lmao. Thanks for letting me know. I'm probably never gonna use it anyways.
I have tried the Blue guard build order before. I don't know how familiar you are with Dutch but even before this Blue Guard card was added in Age 3, many Dutch players used to have the Age 3 Fort card in their 1v1 decks. Dutch is a civ that has to often push out for map control in Age 3, that's why the Age 3 fort card is more valuable for them. Although, the meta in the last few patches was just fast industrial in your little corner and then get bullshit shadowtech units.
Oh and btw, make use of natives with African civs too, especially the native unit shipments that cost influence. African civs get shadowtech for all natives. Ethiopian FI with native unit shipments is one of the dirtiest build orders to win 1v1 ranked ladder games.
Africans ability to get native techs and units (that also shadowtech) in a small single resource that's not finite in terms of map resources is bs, even if they have to boom for it explicitly
African civs are bullshit in general. I won't say the the game is "pay to win" but DLC civs in general are stronger and badly designed. Italy was hilariously broken last year and it took the Rank 1 player going on a 100+ win streak on the ranked ladder with that civ for the devs to admit, "Okay, maybe it's too strong" lol.
Like I said before, the devs are not mega concerned with the game balance in this game. It's a very niche RTS game with no official competitive scene. They are mostly concerned with adding "cool, fun to play" content.
I think even the devs admit that treaty balance is completely broken at the moment. I don't play treaty AT ALL but I have heard regular treaty players say that Mexico and Ethiopia are simply unfair to play against and they just have a gentlemen's agreement to not queue with those civs in treaty.
Sad thing is both mexico and Ethiopia have very interesting strats especially mexico if they can get extra tps
They can do all sorts of builds (outlaw mercs, maya, generic wood to gold trade with more or less a typical euro style fighting force) while ottos and spain and rissia for example are very straightforward and standard 9/10 times
Also imagine italy/Britain/spain getting fast age up politicians for age3.
The flavour is cool, the devs just have a very bad habit of overtuning stuff. Maya revolt has tons of ridiculous shit, I don't know why it's a thing. The Hacienda is a rice paddy that can also get shipments, garrison villagers, train villagers, train and fatten livestock and so on. Just WTF game balance. The overtuning is definitely intentional to get people to buy the DLCs.
>Also imagine italy/Britian/spain getting fast age up
I am legit afraid that the devs will give Spain The Exiled Prince politician someday. It will be hilarious seeing almost every ranked 1v1 become a Spain mirror lol.
Yeah, whenever I see new players the first advice I give them is to stay away from treaty mode. It's just not worth it. Unfortunately, most people don't listen to this.
Spain players will still complain that Spanish gold was overnerfed
Meanwhile asian civs and native civs also don't have factories but their export and plaza systems are far more impractical to take advantage of in non treaty games
Japan especially has notoriously bad eco in treaty games for example
>Fulani
Fulani are fricking insane, they have this ridiculous insta shooting animation and afaik, they have base 4.5 speed. Add a Griot and they get almost 5 speed. That already makes them the best archer unit in the game. Yumi can probably get better than Fulani in late game but Age 2 Fulani is objectively better. Far, far better than european crossbows and native civ archers like Cetan bows or Aenna.
>Javelin rider
Age 2 ranged cav unit is already a huge advantage. Ranged cav is simply better when defending from cav raids. Javelin Riders were widely considered THE BEST UNIT in the game for a long time after the African DLC was released. It was only after multiple small nerfs over the last couple of years that they have become somewhat okay now. They are still a very good unit.
>raider
No, Raiders are good. They are China's Steppe Riders but far better. Their high seige also makes them super useful against civs like Japan and Sweden where you want to run around and take down their shrines and torps. In age 4, you can ship them a card which gives them area damage which imo, every Hausa player should use.
>Lifdi
In 1v1s, I tend to rely on their shipments or make only a few batches of them. Your main hand cav unit is always the Raider. Lifdi is the support for tanking.
>Maigadi
I have not relied too much on them in 1v1s but in team games, Maigadi spam after an influence boom just feels unfair for the opponent. I don't know what you are doing. Hausa's influence boom is stronger and easier to pull off than Ethiopia imo. At least in my hands.
>levy units
Yeah, they are trash I agree. It's the one weakness of African civs but the Palaces are usually enough to defend early rushes. Still, I agree that the levy system is bad.
>artillery
They need influence to unlock it but you also get free upgrades for artilery. They also added an upgrade where you can split the cost into coin and influence. Most of my Hausa 1v1s wins are Akan + Falconets + Griots after a FF
I'm
You can check out this channel
The guy playing Hausa is a very active, high-elo team game player. Unless you are some big shot having trouble with African civs at very high elo yourself, you can learn how good the African civs are from this guy. He's got a frickton of videos where he is playing Hausa, I just picked one at random. He is not an e-celeb with obnoxious commentary or anything. I have played a few games with him too, I'm not as good as him but I'm also not as active currently.
In my opinion, if you're having trouble getting used to a civ then it is always a good idea to first get comfortable with those civs in team games like 2v2s and 3v3s. The meta in team games is slightly different from 1v1s but you get to learn to boom with that civ and take it into late game more often. That's a good thing.
In case you are playing treaty then forget about everything I said and please stop playing the game.
The devs are indeed stupid but AoE 3 is a more niche game compared to AoE 2 and AoE 4 so I doubt they care about game balance that much. A lot of times they make absolutely braindead decisions and you later find out that the change was made for treaty mode or that they will revert the change in the next patch which is 6 months away. The worst part of AoE 3 is that treaty and supremacy exist together. Ideally both gamemodes should have different patches or the devs should just completely ignore treaty when considering game balance.
The thing is, devs who are balancing the game today are homosexuals who used to make mods like Napoleanic Era and Wars of Liberty for the old version of the game. They are good at things like unit textures and history or whatever but these guys have never really played the game at a competitive level at all so they don't even understand the basics of how to balance the game. For example, if you ask them why the original AoE 3 civs, British and Spain don't have a fast age politician, they would not be able to give you a decent answer even though this question is the equivalent of 2+2 to any decent AoE 3 player. This game doesn't have a competitive scene anyways so smart players just play it for fun with friends now. Anyone actually taking this game seriously at a competitive level is moronic. Right now, game balance is controlled mostly by AoE3 e-celebs on youtube / twitch and almost all of them are extremely biased and make bad suggestions to troll the devs. Lionheart on twitch is a good example of such a player.
Imagine giving Spain a fast age up for age3. Brits got GMT which is somewhat similar to a fast age up for ff or fi
>Worst part is that Treaty and Supremacy coexist
Yes, thank you! Inca are rightfully getting dumped on in sup but it's also ruining them completely for treaty for example
>wow they changes some unit stats
>now it's complete garbage!
DUD
I don't care what the MPtroons say, AoE III is kino.
i thought it was mostly mp players who enjoy the wacky things you can do
I play Russian alot but i just dont know what to do versus china, they seem to hard counter everything easily in a rush. If i go strelets or cossacks to fight off the early rush, their meteor hammers just fricking destroy them. If i try to harass its easy pz to keep their villagers safe while mine get raped, if i get muskets to fight off the hammers they just make their own onfantry and pick them off... Am i missing an obcious defense against this bullshit?
well executed china builds are very hard to fight off in general. try to go as fast as possible and avoid trading armies with him unless it's to defend imo. a smart china player should go aggresive vs russia to not give him enough time to benefit from his higher vil count passive bonus and other good greed cards
one thing to remember is that early china cant make high amounts of one singular unit no matter how much they might want to, due to the banner army system (granted the home shipments make up for that)
nor can you truly match them in value by going for multiple unit types early on. focus on a singular unit (usually strelets) while trying to get to age3 fast. send the falconets quickly
which AoE is the best? Steam wants 120 bucks for the entire collection and I don't know if I want to spend that much.
Skip aoe4 or buy them cheaper from g2g or other retail sellers
Regardless I would say that aoe3=aoe2>aom>aoe4>aoe1
AoE3 plays a bit like warcraft 3, its a pretty big leap away from AoE 2, micro is still important but the games have more focus on macro and a tense tug of war kinda feel that i find aoe2 lacks. AoE 4 is basically a step back, its like aoe 2 but manages to fall short in many ways. There improving, slowly.
AoE2 can be fun and created its own rts style, but man are the players ever sweaty, and theres a huge emphasis on micro, like fall 2 archers behind and bend over and kiss your ass goodbye kinda micro. May be a skill issue for me i just dont like microing boars and stutter stepping archers feels cheesy and irritating.
AoM was a fricking hoot back in the day, but it really shows its age now, like it has quality of life issues that have been polished out of the other remasters, and both its expos felt rushed and bolted on and never got the tlc they needed.
Macro is also important for aoe2; I would say its main issue is that it gets stale fast in terms of map style and objectives outside of the campaign but thankfully the lobbies are actually decently varied
I have to admit I have little experience with aoe1 and aoe4. While aoe4 does some gameplay issues right (it somewhat fixes the "empty map feeling" that aoe2 has) it overall feels like a recasted aoe2
>part of the new explorer skin batch released last summer
>got removed from the game at some point
>Everyone forgot
I hope we get more actually good skins like william the silent, warwick or celebi and not the goofy ass ones like nanib sahir being a fricking hunchback on an elephant or the personification of the french revolution wacking peoples with a comically large caveman club
werent all those skins we could see ended up becoming the monthly ones we unlock now ? so she probably gonna show up again or they are preparing a new skin pack at some point
Soldier is back and climbing!
How do I Haudenosaunee? I've got an itch to Iroquois.
tp start, explore with travois, use your early travois for forward war huts, make kanye and tomahawks for age2, fast age up for age3, that's it. in water maps make dock at the start
>3v3
>2 of us (Dutch + Indians) focus on rushing the enemy
>the other one (also Dutch) focuses on the economy first
>enemy team (Ottoman, French, Mexicans) doesn't coordinate
>we two can take each enemy player 2v1 in small skirmishes across the map
>we control 2/3 of the map now
>3rd team player builds walls and outposts, also starts pumping out units now
>enemy team turtles themselves in around their starting region
>me and the indian player focus on the Ottoman base
>destroy his army in no time
>only one of the French player sends reinforcement
>we destroy the reinforcements while demolishing the Ottoman base
>the other Dutch player sends his troops in
>French and Mexican player surrender
honestly if all team matches would as fun as this, I wouldn't have to play 1v1
my team matches never lasted long enough to get like thisl
Euros rejoice
i was fully expecting it ever since their flags had been leaked some month ago as "revolution flags"
kek koreans and persians btfo
Denmark and who else?
Poland-Lithuania
Seems like that since Africa they are only picking civs that they already have the architecture for.
This basically makes me think we will get maybe Brazil or Persia latter and then that is that. Korea and others would need unique architecture.
fricking nice. Great news after aoe2 disappointment
What would the do Danes do differently than the Swedes? I've had my Swedish home city named København and used the red buildings this whole time
I will bet on more melee and early game units (like Italy, Spain) and more focus on maritime stuff. Alternatively, I guess they could go for a more 19th century set but idk.
Or focus on mercenaries and cash, be the equivalent of native spammers for EU
>...AND THEN THE WINGED HUSSARS ARRIVED!!!
Seeing that the dlc are on sale, which civs are more fun, Mexico or kangz?
Why call Ethiopian kings Kangz when their actual title is Negus.
Ha, didn't know that one, either way, are the two africans more than mexico?
I'd say so, Mexico is just Mexico, but the African pack also adds maps in Africa which is more content.
Hm, I think I'll buy Mexico this time around and africa next time, thanks anon.
team games are either 4 players working each other for victory or one player ruining the entire game with nothing in between
>everybody still seethes about french cav
>Malta get's them too
>no one cares
That's because you only get cuirassiers through the french tongue shipments and everyone agree that those cost way too much for what they deliver (except german)
You'll only see malta players using german or english (if they're stupid) in their deck because those two are BARELY worth the investment but useful in a pinch
Also they are order/consulate units, which mean more expensive and longer to train than their normal counterpart just for the benefit of shadow upgrades
Finally, malta is not that strong of a civ and frequently lose in 1v1 or become a burden in team games, very few peoples play them and some of them play the civ for the first time so they frick around with stationary guns and gunpowder depots
>english (if they're stupid)
isn't english tongue used primarily against ottoman players? There are better options against other civs but you have to go archaic vs otto
Malta is already an archaic civ with a focus on the crossbow(arbalester), a longbow only has range and firerate advantage over a crossbow but this also leave them more vulnerable to heavy cav flank that your pikes might not intercept in time
German is an excellent choice, english is redundant, spanish fill a niche that malta really doesn't struggle with (also too expensive), portuguese is... acceptable if you want reliable access to skirmishers late game (still not really worth it), french is inferior to what the actual french can do on top of being too expensive and why the frick would you ever consider russian
all tongues except german are for timing pushes or situational necessity. You dont get english tongue for training longbowmen, you get them to bolster your big dick archaic all in push
french also get powerful cav upgrades and are overall more robust and reliable than malta
As a pole, inclusion of PLC is kinda... weird to me?
It was a pretty big deal before it got partitioned, wasn't it? I guess it wasn't included before because it didn't exactly go with the colonial theme, and even though that aspect got less important in DE, it still sticks out among other European civs.
You used to matter before getting fricked by the two germans and ruskies, its the danes who I find strange, they stopped being relevant centuries before the period the game is set in and lost their chance to be relevant again early on with the Kalmar "union"
Danes can reuse Swedish shit though. It's the least unique faction at this point so there will be less need to come up with new assets.
That is shit though, why would anyone pay for something that has a free, very similar alternative? I say again that it should have either been Austria to begin spliting up Germany or just not cared about sharing a location and going to another continent, Europe is pretty much complete now.
its perfect for the setting historically speaking, and poland is a very popular civ in aoe2
it's not at all. Poland disappeared partway through the period. Is Poland just going to turn into Germany or Russia upon aging up to Age IV?
You are aware that this is a video game, right?
yes and Poland being utterly shit at war should be reflected in gameplay. They literally got wiped off the map by people they used to rule.
can you really say poland is less relevant in the 19th century than civs like aztecs or hausa that are already in the game?
Aren't the Hausa supposedly working as a stand in for the Sokoto Caliphate too? supposedly that thing was relevant in the region.
no idea but half of the civs in the game should only exist as campaign only npc factions. playable factions should have been limited to ones who had actual new world colonies or at least had an imaginary possibility of one.
Nah thats fricking stupid, if the game had stayed limited to early new world colonization it would have been lame af, the early modern era focus is far superior.
yeah how could they not have influential early modern civilizations like the sioux and the ethiopians
Yes but at least those had somewhat interesting things going for them, the danes did nothing that I am aware of, don't quite think they'll make them vikings.
The danes had cool uniforms, so there's that.
I cannot dispute that yeah, maybe they'll use the northern musketeers? (not sure if thats the name) did they have any kind of renowned soldier? the Poles will surely end up having the winged hussar thing as their shtick (maybe some mechanic around elections for their age up too?) so what could be denmarks?
>Sioux
The American-Indian wars of the Great Plains were a 150+ year long conflict. If you include the Sioux civ to represent the other Great Plains tribes like the Apache, then you have them fighting the Spanish for 250 years. What's the "imaginary possibility" of the plains tribes fighting against the "imaginary possibility" of a Russian America?
>Ethiopia
I'll admit they were self contained, but that doesn't mean that they didn't have their impacts. With their Alliances, they can also represent the Somalis and the Sudanese, who impacted the east coast Spice/Slave trade and Egypt, respectively.
Why not remove Japan, since they were self-insulated and their only "colony" was the Shimazu subjugation of the Ryukus and failed conquest of Korea, which was as local of a struggle as the Kanem–Bornu Empire's conquests (which can be represented by the Hausa)? The colonization of Ezo wouldn't really take place until after Meiji--hell, Japan wasn't relevant to the world AT ALL until 1894
japan is a stretch too, but it fits into the framework of the game better. they had musketeers and cannons they got from the portuguese, and even though they got rid of them at least they had oceangoing ships at one point, which is more than you can say for factions that never built a boat bigger than a canoe.
Black folk were never relevant in any way to anything.
You used to only revolt into the US and Mexico, but now the Inca can fight Napoleonic France.
To deny the PLC a chance to fight against the Deluge isn't gameplay. There'll probably be cards about the Partition for the flavor of foreign mercs, but entirely option
>Poland disappeared partway through the period.
you're skipping past all the "rekt and dominated the region economically, culturally and militarily for 200 years before finally getting buckbroken by ~~*magnates*~~ and gangbanged by all neighbors combined as punishment"
also how is right before the napoleonic wars "partway through the period"? Pick up a history book
>conquered by people it used to conquer
top-tier humiliation. and Poles wonder why no one takes them seriously.
I agree with you anon, Poland is like the Roman Empire of Central Europe. Rich history, high culture, technological innovation, unmatched military might for a good while, regional center of trade and bastion of catholicism. Later conquered and partitioned by barbarians. Stopped the Ottoman Empire when no one else could.
Fully warranted inclusion in AoE3 my friend, 100% agreement here.
>saved austria from the ottoman
>austria helped partition it anyway
kek the absolute state
>Ottomans refuse to recognize the partition and accept all Polish refugees
If only they had teamed up together to rape Austria and Russia...what coulda been.....
Absolutely Angloid
As weird as Aztecs and Italy being in game.
the polish colonial effort was built on the back of the mighty polish navy
lol. lmao
I mean royal france technically shouldn't be able to reach age 5 unless than revolted
Aztecs more or less the same
Poland may have disappeared, but there were also Polish soldiers everywhere in every random war from Moscow to Haiti. Fits the game's colonial conceit better than fricking Malta.
You think Austria and Hungary or Morocco is next?
Not sure if Morocco would really work but Austria should absolutely be included.
Screenshots of this game do indeed always look comfy, although I've never played it
It's free to try.
how is this game online? dead? still kicking? fricking loved this game as a kid, so many good memories.
Literal worst wait time for a match is 3 minutes, normally I get one in a 1:30, so fairly alive I suppose.
2 vs 3 vs 4 which one?
is there a tierlist for this game? It was pretty much the only game I played growing up, but it was all singleplayer and lan games. wondering if exclusively playing france and ottomans over the years has made me an unintentional tierprostitute or not.
currently, imho
s tier
germany/ spain/ usa/ hausa
a tier
italy/ france/ ports/ ottos/ incas/ haude/ ethiopia/ mexico/ aztecs/
b tier
brits/ india/ lakota/ russia/ china/ sweden
c tier
japan/ dutch/ malta
haudenosaunee is SSS tier. Nothing can stop a 5 minute tomahawk rush.
if poland is in, the byzantine empire should be in too.
They're already in the game, since the original game's release.
>if a country that ceased to exist in 1795 is in the game, then a country that ceased to exist in 1453 also MUST be in the game
The fall of the ERE is what kickstarts aoe3, just as the fall of WRE kickstarts aoe2 so no
>just as the fall of WRE kickstarts aoe2
>so no
*Ahem*
This was dumb however.
As dumb as it was, it still leaves a precedent for a possible Byzantine faction in AoE3.
Another argument in favour of such would be the inclusion of the Mexicans, even though they overlap and succeed the Aztecs (even the Mexican's capital is built on top of the Aztec's).
AoE2 had already opened the gates with the Huns faction and a lot of 400 to 600 content. Western Rome had already shown up in the game so they were justified as the faction from 1 that went to 2.
Meanwhile 3 is much more firmly set after Constantinople fell. The one exception is the Chinese campaign which is set around one decade before.
nah bros, aoe3 "tries" to be a bit more realistic with its narratives
>aoe3
>realistic
>narrative
the campaign of 3 has you fight the Illuminati for the Fountain of Youth.
>implying the illuminati dont exist
>implying the fountain of youth isnt adenochrome
I should say that at least it isnt as anachronistic or atavastic as aoe2 instead of "realistic"
No, Byzantines make literally no sense unless you headcanon guns for them, Rome, while prior to most of the civilizations in aoe2 still had a more sophisticated army than them, to even discuss the possibility of Byzantines in aoe3 is stupid.
The Aztecs are in the game even though they got wiped out in the 1500s. I'm perfectly fine with them making an alt-hist Byzantine civ that never falls and co-exists alongside the Ottomans.
I'd honestly rather they made the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom playable in some way, shame they didn't give China any revolts, they honestly would have fit with the Mexico method of revolts.
what we really need is Prussia. Germany is blatantly just the HRE with some lips service paid to Prussia.
I've said it before yes, Germany should be split into Prussia and the Habsburgs, then you also have some room for other german minors.
Is this screenshot from AoE2DE?
Yes, it's an official screenshot.
>how to speedrun causing massive butthurt
What are strengths,weaknesses and unique features of each AoE game compare to each other?
AoE2 is gay Black person shit carried by nolstagia
AoE3 is simplified AoE2, but it's carried by the card system which lets you customize your playstyle.
AoE4 is AoE3 but with some complexity added back from 2, but minus the card system. Graphic is shit but can be fixed by reshade.
AoE1 is true unfiltered kino, made even better by the AoE2 DE dlc (make sure to play at 100 pop max games). Very comfy music and ambience.
AoE2 is very good, has extremely nice campaigns and tons of content but isn't as clean and perfectly balanced like AoE1. Great music specially the Conquerors remastered OST.
AoE3 is all over the place. Units aren't cleanly designed and things don't make sense (villagers have more melee attack than pikemen, who have less melee armor than musketeers)
Way too many conflicting mechanics for new civs to make them 'different'. BEST music of all the franchise though, hands down.
AoE4 is missed potential to reboot the franchise from AoE1 period. It does everything AoE2 does but worse in favor of being more "historically accurate". WORST music by a landslide.
>isn't as clean and perfectly balanced like AoE1
homie are you kidding me? AoE1 is fun, but has absolutely awful balancing. More than half the units available are worthless and the other half are so overpowered that they can take on 20x their number. There's no kind of balancing between unit types, it's just raw "Bigger stats win"
AoE 2 (and AoE 1 since it's pretty much the same thing but lesser): Lots of campaigns based on real history with little liberties taken to add more battles/opponents, if you like being competitive then there is lots and lots of stuff to che- I mean 'master'. Civs general design follows an set template with some different mechanics and units added for each on top of the cosmetics.
AoE 3: Main Campaign now has a more 'fantastical' touch, with the Asian campaigns and Historical Battles treading back to the history accuracy, mostly. Civs now tend to be more unique from each other, even the Europeans. Mechanics encourage the player to be more experimental, specially with the Card System. Sadly this does not sit well with competitive players and the balance is way more wack.
AoE 4: "How about we make Age of Empires 2... 2!", and there we go, that what this is BUT WORSE, except they borrow some ideas from 3 (not the cards) and desperately try to be 2 de-facto replacement.
why the frick does dutch need 4 cards JUST to equallize workers in late games (2 bank cards, church card, age4 bank production buff)
>listening to AOE3 OST while studying
The most SOVL ever put into a game OST?
Also, is there a mod that changes 'Estate' back to 'Plantation'? I hate hate hate "cultural correspondents" like the ones DE devs hired with such a burning passion it's unreal
Aoe3 was born woke anyway, the reason the original campaigns are fictional (and bad) is they didn't want to offend native americans.
>source: I made it up
You are free to search it homosexual, that was literally said by an employee on ensemble studios which I forgot his name but he is one the most famous. The interview is probably still somewhere.
zoomer doesn't know shit about frick, thinks someone giving him real info is making it up. many such cases.
very real info of microsoft being scared of natives in 2005 lmao stupid vatBlack person, read up what bill gates did as microsofts CEO. You might actually learn some factual truth for once in your life
That's a real shame for them considering AOE3 provides the noblest expression of the Western Faustian spirit ever put to CD:ROM
AoE4 is much less woke, btw. You can use the power of Jesus to wolololo muslims to your side and all villagers are homogenous rather than mixed-race like in 3.
I am just waiting for that Poland-Lithuania DLC
can't wait for the only Age IV age up options to be either Germany or Russia
I wish ottomans got their age up systems to be similar to african civs. Maybe with satrapies or provinces run by beys. I also wish that the mosque and Turkish TC were given further importance similar to universities (kek) and mountain monasteries
can't wait for PLC because it makes vatBlack folk seethe like no tomorrow
>russians will seethe because poland will enter aoe3
I doubt it
They would if the devs had the balls to add the Khanate of Crimeia as a revolution.
I hope that they do the same thing as before and offer Brazil as standalone limited freebie, since I think Poland and Denmark is end of the year material.
I dont think Greeks seethe that Ottomans exist or Austrians that Hungary exists etc. Posts like this screams of westoid braindead consumerism and state propaganda
>seethe about this shithole they wiped off the map twice
uh huh
Can't wait for PLC because it will make npcs seethe like no tomorrow after ukraine.
I like this game a lot but it's utterly incomprehensible.
>Cannons that do vastly different things and are functionally identical
>On foot units counted as cavalry
>Every single civ is fighting game character levels of relearning the game when picking up a new one
>Decks massively decide what your gameplan is capable of so it sometimes feels like 1v1s are just slamming your decks against each other to see who hard countered who
Mad fun though.
that do vastly different things and are functionally identical
Falconet for anti infantry/general purpose, culverin for anti arty, mortar for anti building, horse gun for fast falconet, heavy cannon for falconet but bigger (and free from factory)
>>On foot units counted as cavalry
Shock troops are an attempt at giving cavalry to factions that never had mounted troops in their history, this only apply to the aztec/inca, rule of thumb is that if you see their "infantry" move fast, bring out the pikes
pikes/halbs + skirms + artillery vibe checks anything that either tries to camp heavily or doesnt have artillery and tries to bum rush you even with strong units like cuirassiers
Swedish falcs can be underrated with 1 less pop and caseshot. Strongly recommend trying them out for funsies a couple of times
What's the best way to play British?
So wait, is AoE3 actually f2p now? Can I play through the campaign without buying the game?
>So wait, is AoE3 actually f2p now?
The Demo is free, plus a few factions to play skirmish with.
>Can I play through the campaign without buying the game?
Don't believe so, only a couple of missions.
I really like AoE4, but gotta admit 3 looks better in many things. How the frick i do not know.
Would it be possible to make a build order for Fast Imperial using the "Victorian Era" native upgrade ?
imperial needs so many resources in general that there isnt really a "fast" way to do it in a somewhat realistic scenario. even minimal pressure as the opponent also ff or fi would put you in a brutal spot. USA and someone like like Incas/Lakota/Dutch/French/Haude would be your best bets (either a food to gold trade or insane resource buildings)
Also, the victorian era building reduces its cost based on xp gathered. You would need absurd xp gathered even in a teamgame to make it worth it (granted it also sends one extra factory) But there is no way to do that "fast"
Yeah, i get what you mean. But i think considering some players even on ladder want to boom for 10 minutes or more maybe I could do it for the lolz. And if one was able to click up with victorian era it would essentially mean using all that XP as a resource twice.
That being said it being limited to building XP, I cant think of a strategy to maximize those numbers.
even with something like japan going for seven lucky gods or usa going for philadelphia and multiple tps and ohio federal card, you would need 60000xp to bring the cost down to 4k food and 4k coin. granted you would also get a factory for all that but still. for context, 2.5k is the maximum xp cap for shipments, that scale 1.15 multiplicatively, so that means you would need the xp for about 30 shipments from the start of the game. As I said, it's not realistic to use the victorian age up just for the age up especially due to the xp cap
That's an ffa thing at best.
Edit: had a small power cut here which gave me a bit of time to check a few things. It's actually even worse than I thought: the only xp that reduces the upgrade cost (that has 90secs research time just like a proper age up) is only for building units and buildings. It doesnt get reduced from your own trickles or killing enemies or getting things like bulliionism. It's literally far more likely for a jap player to use japanese isolation for 4k export to age than you ever realistically doing this
There is actually a 13 minute-ish fast imperial build order with USA. It's pretty decent too because going imperial like that with USA gives you access to imperial outlaws and marines, both of which shadowtech so you never have to pay anything to upgrade them. Just need New Jeresy when going to Age 4 and either of 1600 food and 1600 coin in you deck.
If the cost of that tech is related to building XP then I would look at Haudenosaunee. You can spam down Estates using their travois + there's also a card that increases the build XP
>Read through the civ history page in-game for fun
>Get to United States
Holy frick the description for US is utterly pozzed lmao
lmao this
>lets talk about native americans for 3000 words
>oh btw the united states as a political entity uhh yeah happened
Did they change this in the definitive edition? I kinda remember it being shorter in game (Warchief), although it's nearly two decades so...
Its fricking stupid but at least most of the moronation is kept on the edges of the game rather than given the spotlight.
Just read it myself.
>While free, African-Americans struggled to improve their livelihoods in a system where the odds remained stacked against them, an issue compounded by the rampant xenophobia directed towards foreign immigrants who entered the United States in droves during the 19th and 20th centuries.
How is this relevant to the game's setting in the 1700s to 1800s? Absolute state of the Kneel Nation.