I’m a relatively new player hovering around 1100 elo.
I am learning a lot about the game, but recently I started playing more Meso civs (especially Aztecs and Mayans as I don’t really like Incas and I think they are underpowered with no clear bonuses to take advantage of atm) because they pose an additional challenge for me as I often use Scouts/Knights (in early castle age) to have map control and gain a positional and scouting advantage.
One thing that I always notice with Meso civs is how common an Archer opening is and how often the opponents either mass Scouts or Skirmishers into Knights (often both or a mix of all these). While this is a good strat, particularly the Skirmisher line makes me go either Skirmishers myself (and I don’t like countering a unit with same unit because it becomes a game of numbers, micro and economy, all of which I don’t feel incredibly strong at atm), or Eagle Warriors.
Eagle Warriors are the focus of this thread, because while I think they are an excellently balanced unit, costing about 1/2 resources of a Knight while being slightly stronger than 1/2 a Knight, I can’t help but notice that they have one of the highest gold/total resources ratio in the game (at about 71%). While I’m not necessarily stingy on gold, I am often wary of massing Eagles early on, since Eagle Warriors in Castle Age are not necessarily a powerhouse unit (get hard countered by mass knights, for example), and waiting to imp is often hard.
How do you guys feel about the Eagle Warrior line in terms of Gold expenditure? I often feel that teching into them pre-emptively makes me burn gold too fast, put too many villagers on Gold and as a result have a very unbalanced economy. I’m really not used to having some 25+ villagers on Gold by mid-castle Age and only 15 or so on Food, but that’s how Meso economies naturally tend to play out.
Do you guys think that Meso civs are more Gold-intensive than other civs?
Do you guys think Eagle Warriors could be rebalanced around being a 25f 45g unit? (Perhaps 30f 40g but that would maybe be too strong).
The low food cost is their advantage, since gold is easy to mass at that time of the game, while food is needed for basically everything (upgrades, vills, age ups, skirms/pikes…).
Anyway, this is the section for the aoe1, I’ll flag your post only to get the attention of a mod, so that it’ll be brought to the aoe2 section.
You’ll see that there you’ll find even more people that’ll help you.
When I go for eagle warriors, to balance my eco I go for a similar approach than the one I use for archers, but by having less lumberjacks and more farmers. It’s not very hard as eagle production doesn’t require many farmers in the first place. Probs not a 100% foolproof strategy but it’s quite easy both to remember and perform.
Just go aggressive,keep up a constant pressure, don’t let go. You usually want to avoid the late game, cause the raiding potential of meso civs once gold has ran out is not great. Especially with the cheap mayan archers/plumed archers you should be able to get in a lot of damage really fast.
Meso civs are designed to be Gold intensive civs, but they have bonuses to help them before gold runs out
Mayans have 10/20/30% discount on Archers, which helps with saving gold, on top of a really good eco bonus - 15% longer lasting resources bonus. Which means Mayans get 15% more Gold and Stone than any other civ. This is meant to help you have enough gold to spam eagles, archers, plumes for as long as you want. And Mayans also have fully upgraded halbs and skirms with a special bonus, so they are not that bad in trash wars either.
Aztecs don’t have as good of a lategame gold bonus or versatile tech tree like Mayans do, but their really strong early economy coupled with faster military creation almost always allows them to end games in castle age or early imp thanks to their powerspikes. Aztecs have a really good castle age all in of just spamming eagles and trying to overwhelm the opponent. Or getting imperial age slightly faster and just destroying enemy with the arbalest or elite eagle timing. Aztecs also have the best monks in the game which can be used for both agressive or defensive purposes vs cavalry civs. Even if it comes to trash war, they still do have a chance, with atlatl skirms and garland war pikes, and if they grabbed a couple relics, they can dish out eagles every now and then even with no gold left on map.
I wrote many topics about how sick and trash their food cost, a unit like Eagle cost only 20 food is not balanced at all, so yeah indeed they need a food addition cost like to be 30food at least and no change on gold, or maybe 30f, 45g will be good.
Archers take no gold as well but it is better unit than eagle warrior from many fields. It has more damage output, kill villager very fast and if they massed, they beat every melee unit including knights. Eagle is equivalent of scout line but scout line is stronger than eagles in castle age. Light cavalry 30% faster (eagle’s speed is 1.15 and light cav’s 1.5) and 45% more hp. Eagle warior’s extra 1 PA armor make only equal against archers but in melee fights, light cav is clearly better. Light cav’s high speed make it better at raiding and chasing enemy’s archers, monks and siege units. In castle age, Eagle’s are really slow. Eagle’s low food cost make them cheaper in castle age but it is temporary advantage. If game stand until late game, all these spent gold will be needed.
If eagle warrior was great as some claim, Mayan eagle would destroy everything. I don’t think any unit with huge 66% hp bonus can’t dominate game. 300 hp paladin, 233 hp cavalier, 158 hp hussar, 117 hp champion, 133 hp cav archer would break the game. Devs nerfed Celt’s 50% hp bonus to siege units, though siege units is still weak against melee units despite of huge 50% bonus but they keep 66% hp bonus still. Also Celts don’t have no bonus in late game other than 5% fast infantry and siege units.
All Meso civs are beastly in the early game. Eagles are the strongest Feudal units if you account for counter units and unit cost. Dont be afraid to aggressively use up all the gold, because Meso civs optimally wanna win long before gold runs out either way and if you spend gold more sparcely you’re not slowing down the game but yourself and letting your opponent catch up and you dont want that.
Just dont worry about gold and go for the kill as soon as you can and you’re good!
It’s a faster gather rate for Gold than any other resource besides Wood, so having a unit extremely heavy on gold (as opposed to another resource) makes it easier to mass produce them.
If the resource requirement was Food heavy, for example, like the other infantry options, it would be extremely difficult to spam them with the same number of villagers, simply because of the wood costs for farms combined with the slower farming rate compared to gold mining. Less farms means more production buildings. More production buildings means more unit production.
It’s not a great thing for the later stages of the game, but having the option to try to go all-in on a dime by just pushing your villagers to gold and pumping 3-4 barrack eagle is a powerful option in the midgame to make a surprise ending for a player going slightly too heavy into a boom. If that’s not on the cards, just don’t do it. Play siege monk, or archers in the midgame, then transition into it when you think it’s right or forego it entirely until the lategame where elite eagle kicks in and try to raid them to death.
The key is knowing when to put your foot on the gas, because after you do, letting up is probably a bad call.
Feudal eagles have a 60 second creation time. You don’t want to attempt to mass them at all in Feudal. You can sprinkle in an extra one or two for scouting or specifically to handle too many skirms made by an opponent, but you really don’t want to try to go eagle heavy in feudal.
Once you get to castle age, the creation time is halved, and making them en masse becomes possible. If your opponent is trying to go for a greedy tc boom, this can be a reasonable play.
Yes, even I feel that they are too gold heavy. Maybe 25F 45G or 30F 45G would be better.
Speaking about the unit, Eagles receive +1 from Spearmen and +2 from M@A, so countering them is actually hard. The real problem with Eagles is that they are created in 51/60/60 seconds for A/I/M. That’s a pretty long time. For reference, monks are created in 51 seconds for Non-Lithuanian civs.
The cost makes them massable in Feudal to Early Imperial Age. The biggest power spike is with Elite Eagle Warrior, giving it +2 attack, +5HP, +1p armor and 75% faster creation. Flooding the map with Elite Eagle Warriors is a legit strategy which can only be countered by massed 2HS+/Teutonic Knight+/Cavalier+/Elite Berserk/Elite Jaguar Warriors. Notice infantry units won’t be massed at this stage of the game except Hun Longswordsmen.
One good strategy would be to drush+fc and start producing eagles from 3 barracks after clicking up to Castle Age. They recieve a big power spike with Castle Age (not Eagle Warrior) and you can win at that stage. The only thing stopping Eagle Warriors at this stage will be stone walls though. Aztecs are the best civ for this strategy because of creation speed boost and economy, but the difference isn’t huge.
@HumzaCrumza has made a video about this strategy. He uses Mayans in the video. They are a civ which have a stable economy (gold lasts long) and have the strongest eagles in game in Imperial Age (game may end before that).
No, it’d be a nerf, because if your opponent has a strong answer to eagles, the longer the game goes on, the more chance they’ll have to tech into it to handle you. You do not want long-term sustainability out of your eagles, you want overwhelming numbers, the last resource you want to be dependent on for overwhelming numbers is food.
Food is too hard to come by in the midgame and increasing the food cost of the Eagle takes away it’s main benefit of being easy to spam with very low eco numbers. You are advocating for increasing the food cost by 25~50% and that’s an absolutely horrendous nerf for a 10% discount on the gold cost that doesn’t matter for the purpose of what the unit does.
I am not going to attempt to explain this any neater than I have. You are not making the unit better. In any age. End of story.
They do cost a lot of gold but their food cost is a huge advantage when it comes to massing them early on. Food is usually needed for everything other than siege units, archers, monks and dock units.