I play a lot of practice matches, 3v3, against hard AI. I have been able to go up against any other civilization thus far without much trouble, but I cannot for the life of me manage to get ahead of the Koreans. The first problem is that they rush me so quick that I can barely hold them off, but the bigger problem is that the War Wagon is impossible to deal with. They get so many of them and they tank so much that I simply waste all my resources just trying to get to them. They overwhelm me with so many wagons that multiple castles in the same place cannot even hold them off.
As the war wagon is a castle unit you might want to harass them earlier, before castle age. If you can do FC and hit castle before Koreans you should be able to create enough rams and other units to keep on the pressure. In order to mass war wagons the Koreans need a lot of castles. So scouting where they get stone in feudal and start harassing them there is a way to hold them back a while longer. And there are other ways to counter them later, but the Koreans are indeed a very strong civ. Most important is that you get their castles down asap and block their gold supply after they got in castle. Some more strategies with different combinations of units depending on the situation.
Elite skirm and onager. A lot of players don’t seem to realize that War Wagons are classified as cavalry archers and not siege units. It’s a lot like Throwing Axemen and Mamalukes where players just assume their unit type incorrectly (in those cases you need archers and not skirms).
Yeah, I was using skirms and pikes with Portuguese bombards in the rear, but they just kept overwhelming me, and I could not use my bombards for their range. I will try onagers next.
This reminds me. Do tech upgrades done at the Blacksmith and upgrades done in the archery/barracks/stable buildings benefit Castle-made unique units? If so, is a War Wagon considered a cavalry or an archer when you do said upgrades? Is a Throwing Axeman considered infantry or archer? Knowing will help me research the correct technologies in the correct buildings. It’s tough to know when units cross disciplines like this.
Or if tech upgrades never impact unique Castle-made units, then I guess my question is easily answered as something I don’t need to worry about with regards to tech upgrades.
It depends. Look up Zero Empires’ video about it on YouTube and he has a diagram that you may find helpful. The tech tree shows what can be improved, but it’s not like you have a ton of in game. Unit class matches for Blacksmith upgrades, but there are a few noticeable exceptions. I honestly can’t remember offhand on the war wagon. Throwing axemen and gbeto both use infantry techs for their units.