This will again be a very long thread. And yet I will also only be able to cover stuff very shallow. AOE2 is a very complicated game and it’s just not possible to cover stuff like this in a few words.
Before I begin I want to postpone my own little 4-Piece “Cake of Skills” in AOE2. And the reason for that is I value all of these skills equally. And I see a tendency of the “Meta players” currently to overvalue some of these and devalue the others. Which will be shown in the continuation of this post. The Phosphoru strats require far more “skill” than attributed - which becomes appearant by the sheer fact, that still the vast majority of the playerbase hasn’t succeeded in executing them successfully. Yes, it is possible to “climb” the ladder with it way faster than usual - but for different reasons. Which will also be explained later.
Skill No 1. The currently most “valued” Skill - also because it’s the most important to be succesfull in the current meta. Usually referenced with “Macro”. The ability to pay attention and enact at different spots where you can get value from your action. Notably: This isn’t directly APM. You can do this with comparably low APM. Even at the highest level you can probably get away with like 30 APM or so to have sufficient macro. But it’s also the skill that scales the best with your APM, as there is not a real limit to spend your apm in this category. Ofc there is, but it’s not reached yet.
This is also the skill that appears to be the one which everybody can improve on, where preconditions have the least impact. I don’t think this is necessarily true. The ability to stay “sharp” isn’t given to everybody - it’s usually that those who can’t stay sharp (for me it’s almost like a “meditation” state of mind when playing) have already no chance to climb the ladder.
It’s also the best to “conceptionally communicate” which allows players of all stages of experience to improve with a very direct feedback and reward. But ONLY focussing on it poses the riskt to become a full “metaslave” - meaning the other skills are so underdeveloped and repressed, that you will be completley stuck to only play the meta as trying anything else will immediately end in a disaster - as you never learned the basics why certain tactical moves work in which situations and others not and so on.
Skill No 2. Executional Mechanics. Microing units is one big part of that, but there are also a lot of exectional mechanics that really improve your abilities to macro and stuff.
This is ofc a skill heavily bound to your Motorics. If you’re just not as accurate in your exectution you can’t really improve there. It’s just not possible. You need to have a very good and broad “mustle memory” to reproduce all the different patterns aswell when you need them. The game is too fast to execute them with full awareness.
Skil No 3. Tactics. This is referring to stuff like unit positionin, structuring your base. But also attention control - when to try go for a counter attack and where. Placing forward buildings when and where. Exact transitioning to different ages or unit compositions… A lot of stuff goes in there. It’s probably the least “explanatory” category of all because there is so much possible variation that nobody can be seen as a “full master” of it. There are tactical masterminds like Viper, Vinchester, Daut or Yo, in their respective “realms of expertise” also many of the “amigos”, “clowns” or “suomis”.
It’s very obvious that this comes from experience at the highest level and also a very high analytical recap of a lot of “try and error” - and getting to the right conclusions. This is a skill which is obvious only a few real “masterminds” can really excel in. The impact of this skill is at moment probably at it’s lowest. As many of the determined “strong” tactical plays are implemented in the current meta - and the more “fancy” tactical plays usually just get outtimed and outmassed by the so called “Hamstering”.
Skill No 4. Ofc the strategic part of the game. A lot of this happens in preparation or in the beginning part of the game already. Understanding the Map, What are your win conditions, what are the opponents win conditions. How does the Matchup play out. When are the best timings to hit the opponent. When are you vulnerable. How can you cover your weaknesses, how can you exploit the opponents weaknesses? What is the best opener to get to this points. What are the opponents options to pivot this gameplan and how can you respond to that?
This is a skill that requires a lot of preparational work and also a determination towards it. People who have a generally strategic mind ofc have an advantage as they will usually do this “work” with passion. Like I did in preparation for this topic. I looked up all different civs that can possibly pull off a “phosphoru” and evalueated them how they would possibly fare practically. What requirements are there, what is conceptionally benefitial? Are there some “hidden gems” which haven’t even be revealed yet? And ofc this takes time and you have to even calculate some stuff sometimes. This is stuff you can’t see in the game - and is also very tough to communicate as theres is a lot of “fundamental” knowledge which only grows over time you should explain, but it’s just too much to do on a single occasion. Which leads in the end unfortunately to a “split” community about this skill - those who love it and want to see it having more impact. And those who hate it cause they just want to play a game and never got into it. As it has indeed a quite high initial burden until you get revarded for your investment into it. Especially when climbing the ladder in “mid elo” theres very little you can get from it - and most of it then doesn’t even work anymore at higher level or vice versa. And when the meta shifts you have to reassess stuff… it’s very easy to understand why not everybody likes it.
Given the current Meta on Arabia the Skills are very much ordered in Value: Macro > Mechanics > Tactics > Strategy. Too such an extend, that strategy is almost not seen as a skill anymore. Because there is also almost no impact. It comes into play way too late where the games are usually already decided. And Tacics is accepted, but very restricted to the few very few powerful moves like adding forward Siege and ofc… getting the timing advantage! (But the moves are only in one direction, they are not “optional”).
Now when we look at the Phosphoru, the Skillset is Tactics > Mechanics > Strategy > Macro. The strategic part isn’t really big, as the vast majority of it is done before the game even started. There is still some involved which is mostly protracted on the opponent. The strategical analysis - which now - interestingly - has been attempte by Hera. And actually very well, given the lentgh of the video. He only really forgot to say A) Melee units don’t work, cause they just get miniture walled out of the few spots where they could do damage, or even fought against by the vills as there are enough vills to fight off units at each of these spots and B) How much feudal aggression is the “right amount”. Which I also can’t say exactly here. I would say about 6-8 Archers is actually enough. You don’t want too much, cause they will die to the opponent UUs - which also NEED to be effective in killing archers. It’s a requirement. But here is Hera’s video and I really advise you to watch it:
Notably Hera isn’t right in all points. Especially when he tries to conceptionally design his own Phosphorus. Idk if that’s possibly even intentional. But I will just leave it at that, stating that with Heras approach you will probably not come very far. And this also shows again how tactically demanding the Phosphoru actually is, if even the best Player in the World doesn’t gets it right at first.
But now I can refer to the first forecast I made. I said the Phosphoru is way harder to execute than people say and see it. And still you can climb the ladder with it, if you don’t get stuck immediately. Which makes almost no sense at first glance. But the key point here is, that the strat whilst having a high requirement in tactical and mechanical skill, these are repetitive tactics and mechanics. They occur in basically every game you play it in basically the same manner. And therefore you can really focus in improving in this skills for this one single strat. Therefore you can get a very steep learning curve initially and reach your limitations quite fast.
If you watch phosphoru you will notice that his defending skills with no army are exceptional. They are as sharp as the pros. And that’s quite simple to understand cause he has to do it every single game. If he wouldn’t be so good in it, he had simply no chance of competing at that level he does. And you have to respect that. It’s NOT as simple as just executing the buildorder. You have to be able to not take too much damage against feudal rushes. Especially against scout rushes you have to be able to basically just absorb it. Because mass scouts with bloodlines are threatening against your UUs. If there are enough of them you just can’t get a competitive mass. So you need to make sure to not take a lot of damage from the scouts so you can build up the mass of UUs you need. That’s precondition 1.
That’s why everybody says: Open Archers against it. Which is right, when the preconditon 1 is met. With archers you always can make sure to get some guaranteed damage. Delay the opponent so he can’t hit you with the absurd timing. But you also should be very careful not to overinvest into archers. No 1 defence against archers is adding towers. You want to make enough archers to force the towers, but not invest more than you force in reaction from the opponent. It can be helpful to have just enough archers to be able to split them, so you can attack multiple spots at one which is really hard to defend even at pro level. But i would still never do more than 8. You need to accept that the towers get up, limiting the area you can damage, but also the UUs made are usually chosen they are very effective against archers. Because of exactly that reason. Before the UU stratter can attack the opponent, he has to clear all leftover army at his base. Scouts are then less of an issue if they aren’t in high numbers, as they don’t pose a direct risk to the low eco, as it then will be protected by a castle. But archers will almost always find an angle.
Which then leads to precondition 2: You need to be able to micro your UUs against the remaining archers - already in low numbers. This isn’t as easy as you think. 6 archers can still do some work in lowering the UU numbers if they don’t have like 2 armor already. Ofc there are UUs who don’t have issues with archers whatsoever (which are also the most often with this strat: War Wagons, HW and Organs - understandably).
And then we have a set of precondtionis which have to be fullfilled simultanously. Which is where the hardest part of the strat. It’s not enough, that you manage to not take a lot of damage, You now have to deal damage with this strat to the opponent. And you have to begin doing so with only a few UUs at first. You have to keep them alive, you have to make sure you can reinforce. You have to idle or kill vills. You have to be able to micro against all the differnt units/stuff the opponent can do. Cause usually the opponents will also try to get to castle age fast. To make stuff like Knights, Monks, Siege… They can also try to make some defences. Walls, Towers, potentially even their own Castle. You need to be able to defeat all this with basically losing nothing. Depending on the situation you may need forward Siege or Monks also - you need to be able to use it effectively! And accurate. You have no eco, you can’t afford to lose stuff!
At higher levels you also need to be prepared to transition into a “normal” game of empires when you manage to deal a lot of damage to the opponent but at the same time couldn’t manage to keep up your mass. But at lower or mid level the games are usually so volatile anyways that this doesn’t matter really.
As you can see, there is a lot of skill, espeically in the tactical department. How to move your units, where to place your structures and so on… The difference to the more common strats in AOE2 is that these skill requirements are very specific - you can list them quite easily like this. In “normal” games the spectrum is broader, but you don’t have to be as clutch in each, as there will be several encounters of different skirmishes you can afford to lose once or twice and stil be in a solid spot.
In the current state of the game, the FC into UU strat has 2 main advantages over the “Hamster” meta. A) It hits at the “weak” timings of the Hamstering and B) It uses Units the metaplayers aren’t used to facing whilst facing the meta units itself. So it is just better prepared and dictates the game. It’s an anti-meta strat, exploiting the specific weaknesses and repetitive unit choices of the current - strategically heavily deprived - meta. Which I forgot to mention: Bascially killed the “standard” FC. Which is a legitimate counterstrat to the Phosphoru, when you go for the right unit choices and defend the initial timing well.
And I have to admit that I find it atm very annoying, that the Hamsters which lead us to this strategic bottleneck are complaining about a strat that is even more onedimensional than their own “strat of choice”. I never really liked the Hamstering, but at least I respected it - if people chose to play the same game over and over again… it’s their choice. But now they complain about another strat that “does the same thing over and over again”… This really feels like a double standard here.
Especially as the main reason why Hamstering took over was that it gave a better improvement curve than the usual try and error. As it is so heavily outlied what to do in what situation already. And now the main complain about the Phosphoru is that it enables to climb the ladder quicker. You chose Hamstering for exactly that reason, buddy! Now you complain that it seems to you another strat would be better in that regard? The community allowed you to climb the ladder with Hamstering, so it should also allow to climb it with phosphoru. I don’t see why these strats should be treated differently in that regard.
It would be different if the Phosphoru was a “noob basher” strat. But it isn’t. There are skill requirements that only make it achievable when you already got to a certain level.
I see at moment an ignorance towards the tactical complexity of these “off-meta” strats. Which becomes also very appearant by the blatant “market abuse cheese shaming” of the phosphoru. It turned out Phosphorus often don’t make more than like 4 market transactions of which often only 1 is buying food. It’s obvious that there are very vocal parts of the community that don’t even try to understand what other people are doing.
And yes it is absolutely legitimate not to want to engage yourself with the complexity of the game and instead orient on the metasetters like Hera. But playing only meta without reflecting or even respecting other players who ACTUALLY try to build up strategies themselves doesn’t give the right to criticize or even cry for nerfs. Only because you aren’t capable of finding an answer cause you are a Metaslave and are not even trying doesn’t give you the right to demand from the devs have to “solve the issue” for you.
And esepecially when the “issue” isn’t even there yet. The phosphoru hasn’t - after months, probably even years - still not arrived in the meta. Most people still just play the “Hamster” meta. And they chose Hamsterting because it’s obviously atm the best way to be successfull, to get to the maximum potential.
Yes there are a few players who climbed the ladder with the phosphoru. But this is heavily affected by the “survivorship bias”. A lot of people tried it and failed miserably. Only those who were capable to adapt to the different skill requirements and were also willing to push through the first losses (yes, you will lose the first few games with this strat, as you aren’t used to defend with no army - and some people will also never be able to learn it). These are the Phosphoru players you see on the ladder. But you don’t see all those who failed.
So it’s easy to say “look how they climb with that strat! it’s so OP!” by only showing the players who actually DO climb with it. But it’s completely neglecting those who don’t and give up a after a few tries.
I wouldn’t even be surprised if some of those who now cry for nerfs actually tried the strat themselves and failed. i’ve seen this behaviour already too many times.
Lastly there is also the general issue that at mid elo it’s actually very easy to climb the ladder with spamming one optimized build over and over again. This has nothing to do with the Phosphoru, but the sheer fact that when you improve in execution there is only so much players with less optimized execution can actually do against it. I mean even at the highest level you see how easily the top guys just outexecute their opponents - and they are reaching the practical ressouce limits of the game. That’s why Hamstering is so popular because it focusses on that executional part.
Yes the off-meta strats are usually less executional demanding. But we have to see that that’s exactly what the Hamster Meta is focussing on. It’s the epiphemy of execution. This doesn’t mean, the other playstyles “require less skill”, they just have different skill requirements. And it’s very unfair to neglect the Tactical and Strategical skills just because you are focussing only on Macro and Mechanics. You don’t have the right to undermine these skills.
And the Phosphoru is actually very tactical demanding. I only got the opportunity to watch phosphoru once. But it was immediately appearant how deep his tactical adaptions are. Ofc he has faced like 100 different attempts to counteract his strat, so he had to adapt to a lot of these. But he did. And he has developed a set of tactical manouvers to cover up most of the weaknesses of his build. And there are many. Because it’s so tight in eco you don’t have a lot of strategical options. So he used his tactical mastermind to find solutions which brought him up so high on the ladder.
But that required a lot of work and that tactical skill which is so often neglected to get there.
And I miss the respect given to that determination, work and probably even genius. Most people aren’t capable of doing what he did. Yet exactly these people who don’t even try to create either a strat on their own or elaborate how to counter it accuse the Phosphoru players of “Cheesing”, “Exploiting” and “being easier to execute and climing the ladder”.
This isn’t fair. And it’s disrespectful.
Yes I see how much work wents into the Hamstering. I have to respect that. And I do. I feel a bit sorry that it’s atm so dominating the ladder that you have the same games over and over again. And i feel something should be done about that. Because it’s just too dominant and repetitive. But still, I respect the executional skill that goes into executing that strat.
I just wish the Hamsters would have the same Respect for the other Playstyles and the non-executional skills that are required for them to be successfull.
After all that I will now come to the points where most people are probably interested on in this topic. And yes I know this is late in the post, but I also only wanted it for the people who are willing to invest that time to get here. There are still a lot of misconceptions out there about the strat. And I hope I can give some more inside what are the requirements to meet to be successfull with the phosphoru, I won’t give the details, because I don’t want to make the phsophoru a “no brain meta strat” but I will try to give some key understandings what it requires. And what phosphorus are viable. I will only focus on the Castle UUs though.
The first thing to understand is that every little step is important. It begins with where you even place your few buildings. It’s very important. You need to be able to “absorb” melee rushes. There are various ways to do so and you need to figure out which is the best for you. You can use your villagers to fight them off. Which is often even the best way to do, cause the builds are designed in a way you can lose a few - and reducing the enemy army mass early is very benefitial.
Depending on if you want to use your vills or to wall out the melee attackers the placements of your buildings are very different. And you need to be very aware of the different threats the opponent army poses with the different approaches - and often act preemtpively.
Against enemy Archers you will get some idle time. You can try to micro your vills, but that is very tough and if you’re unlucky the opponent is just a micro monster. Usually against Archers you want to use Towers. And you need to learn the skirmishing play that will come from that. Jumping in and out of towers requires a lot of skill which you only will get when playing this against other players on the ladder.
You also need to understnad how crucial the timing is for this strat - and how to get the ressources needed for each step, even when you take economical damage from the opponent aggression. I’ve seen a lot of “improved phosphorus” which are actually terrible because of exactly that reason, they sacrifice timing for a better eco or adaption or whatever. It’s not an improvement. Your timing is the only advantage you have and it’s worth a sacrifice. It’s ok to have TC idle time. It’s ok to have vill idle time. It’s ok to have vills fighting. Damn, it’s often ok to lose 3-4 vills even. Most Phoshporus don’t need more than 18-19 vills in Castle age.
The main reason for that is the limitation of the Castle as a production building. It can only produce so fast. Ofc having more vills is always benefitial, especially as you possibly want to add forward Siege or Monks - but it’s not a “basic” requirement for the strat, this mostly comes into play at higher levels.
Much more important is actually to get a somewhat competitive feudal timing. Because you want to be able to add towers. They are the only defence you have available against archers. You don’t need to rush feudal, but it’s important to understand that adding more eco in dark age can kill your whole gameplan, just because you can’t place a tower when you need to.
THIS is the main reason we see the phosphoru clicking up with like 21 or 22 pop. Way faster than “normal” FCs and then accumulating TC idle time. The timing is more valueable than the vill numbers. And as I said, you don’t need more than 18-19 vills anyways.
Finally you need to be aware that there are several counterstrats you have to adapt to. And I already know some tactical manouvers to counteract them. But I feel it would be actually decremental to the development if I “spoil” them. Figuering out stuff is a crucial part of using this strat. Especially as it is so determined to one single strategical choice. It’s what keeps it entertaining.
One major weakness I intentionally didn’t cover is a normal blank FC. I leave it to you to figure out how to adapt to that. It’s not complicated, just one tactical move that’s only possible in this special situation.
Now some civs that may look like you want to Phosphoru, but don’t work well.
Berbers, Mongols, Cumans (and Mayans). All don’t work despite having an amazing UU. These CA UUs just don’t produce fast enough. You just don’t get enough offensive value from your Castle, it’s that simple… Same for Chu ko Nus.
Chakram and Gbeto unfortunately need too much Food eco and die too easy to archers. If it was only one of them it could possibly be compensated, as they are actually amazing units, but two of these weaknesses are just too much.
Compbows Armor piercing isn’t influential enough at this stage of the game to make them a valid choice. They also die to archers.
Rattans also generally produce a bit too slowly. But they are the one unit which is probably slept on a bit atm. i feel with good preparattion and adding some siege they can be very dangerous.
The well known Phosphorus ofc are Ratha, Hussite Wagon, War Wagon and Organ Guns. They all have in common that they are good units and they also produce comparably fast in the castles, needing about 17-19 Vills to be spammed. Optimal.
Janissaries are actually just too expensive for this strat, esepecially with the Turks having almost no eco bonus. Which is kinda ironical as Turks are famous for their low eco play - just not that low eco. The comparably low production time of the jans is in many arena games benefitial - you just get a lot out of them fast. But here you can’t make use of it cause your evo is too low.
Huskarls and Ghulams generally need a bit too much Food and are vulnerable to Cavalry. They clearly can work, especially Ghulams thanks to the food savings of Hindustanis. But you generally want to have a better rounded UU.
And then there are 3 units which for today seem to need too much food eco: Conqs, Mamelukes and Karambit. They are amazing UUs. And they have the right amount of vill occupation to spam. You just don’t have the ressources with the current phosphorus to place enough farms.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future there will be phosphorus for one of them. I personally think that Malay is probably the best guess. The biggest issue for Malay is atm to figure out the perfect feudal timing. As explained you want to get quite a competitive Timing there to be able to place towers. And this is in direct competition for the requirement to place early farms so you can produce karambits right away. The number of vills isn’t an issue cause you play malay - just put a few more on gold and wood so you can smoothly adjust your farming eco with the market ###### ### the problem rn is to find the right spot, the right amount of early farms to get that perfect feudal timing.
But with the free armor Karambits are possibly the most terrifying UU to face when you’re still in feudal - you have basically no answer to them.
Cavalry UUs are not preferable in general, cause they are too similar to Knights. They also need too much eco. Especially the best UU of all time, the Monaspa. You need like 12 Farms and 25 Vills to support the production. Unachievable. If you want to use Cavalry for your FC strat just do the good old Hoang.
Finally a note IF we at some point want to nerf one or the other of the Phosphoru strats. The easiest way to do so is to slightly increase the production time of the UUs. Possibly compensated by minimal buffs in other parts of the unit. It’s very appearant that for this strat to work it’s required the UUs can get out very fast - and even a very minor increase of the porduction time will heavily nerf the viability of a unit for this strat and have way lower impact on most other strats.
Atm I don’t see this being necessary though. Ofc there are some UUs like Organ Guns which are really good in various strats currently, not only for the Phosphoru. But for me, most of the Phosphorus actually don’t look overpowered. Maybe annoying. But this isn’t the same thing. Especially when it is still quite uncommon to face. Sometimes you have to push through annoying strats, and Phosphoru is just one of them. That’s life, you don’t get always what you want. And you have learn to live with that.
In general it would be a big mistake to nerf the phosphoru rn. Because for me it’s appearant that the strat has allready reached is ressource limitation. As touched earlier it has a steeper learing curve at the beginning, but opposite to the “hamstering” there is a hard cap for the current builds how much can be achieved by them. Meaning it becomes increasingly difficult to push beyond a certain level. When you watch phosphoru you can see there is really very little room for further improvement. And he is still quite far from reaching in pro level.
Yes we have seen the strat working at pro level, but once it comes up there frequently there will be an intensified search to find answers - which will also be found, as the strat has really some weak points that can be targeted.
And I strongly advise to wait at least until this happened before taking any actions to be taken specifically against the strat. Only if the pro community really struggles to find an aswer actions should be taken - and atm there is seemingly no need to even try looking for them. Whilst it seems the strat has already almost reached it’s limitationis.
This ofc can change as there might be structural improvements that could swing in. Like I saw attempts of pros to add eco in it which didn’t killed the timings required. But it needs to be shown first before taking action to “nerf it”. It’s not broken yet, so there is also no need to “fix” it.
PS: Though I couldn’t and even don’t wanted to get into the deeper details here I hope you could take something from this post. It took me a long time of trying to understand and analyzing to be somewhat able to make it. Unfortunatley I also see for myself the lmitis here, as I haven’t played Phosphoru or against Phosphoru strats enough to call myself an “expert”. But given my currently quite restricted time to spend on AOE2 at least I tried to give my best here.