My favorite strat with Malay is to go 1TC Castle drop into Karambits. You’ll need to use the market to get the blacksmith upgrades, but the Karambits are so cheap you can make lots of them and they’ll destroy everything your enemy builds, especially if you nail the timings. Arson becomes a key upgrade as well, this works really well on Arena 1v1 and 2v2 (don’t know above these, i only play 1v1 and 2v2). If your opponent is booming he’s dead. Your base is pretty much unprotected, so if you don’t do damage you’re screwed, keep that in mind xD
sounds like it dies to full Crossbow. Maybe on Arena it could work idk (Arena is a clown map anyway and not worth anyone’s time). But on any other map… Karambits counter archer units when u have like 50-100 of them, if it’s an early group of 8-20, sounds like 8-10 Crossbows, even without Bodkin, rain on your parade extremely hard.
But tbh even on Arena getting a free forward Castle and opponent doesn’t scout it out or doesn’t react seems very optimistic imo. The question is also how many spears will you make to beat early Scouts/light Cav coming your way, and also since you have to go to stone while opponent doesn’t, you probably do like 26-27 pop vs some 24-25 pop so the Scouts are already on the map as you walk up to drop Castle. Idk.
Arena not being worth anyone’s time is just your opinion, and it’s an unfair claim to make. If people enjoy it, why shouldn’t they have every right to play it without others making disparging comments?
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people can like arena all they want, it’s an unbalanced mode where approximately 80% of strategies are not viable, leading very often to civ wins. But regardless of this, the way I meant my post is that Arena shouldn’t be a metric to judge the viability of a strat, being an unbalanced mode in itself.
If people enjoy spamming Monks and booming behind walls, props to them, who am I to judge them. People have different preferences but the game is balanced mostly with a map like Arabia in mind.
spam elephanto and karambit warrior
I wouldn’t say this is totally accurate. More that 80% of Arabia or similar map based strats aren’t viable or at least not as viable. The Arena meta is different, and has different strats. Also, pretty sure Arabia kind of only has 1 strat for most games, some variant of Militia into archers, maybe M@A into archers, maybe just archers, not sure, depends on the game, but don’t most games start roughly like that now?
I do agree with this, but at the same time, you can’t ignore that there are reasonable player bases for other maps, so although infrequent, there are times where balance changes do have to be made with them in mind, like the recent (ish) Bohemian changes.
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on Arabia, you see all units. Sure, 2-militia drush or MAA → Archers is most popular, and Scouts are suffering a bit, but take Arabia Castle age, you see Skirms, Crossbows, few Knights mixed in for Mangonel snipe (with the occasional full Knights), Camels if it’s 2 melee/cavalry civ going at each other, Mangonels, Scorpions, Monks.
What units do you see on Arena in Castle age? Monk, Scout and unupgraded Spearman. That’s it.
Also it goes without saying that every strat you can do on Arena, you can do on Arabia, too. Mass Monks isn’t exactly popular on Arabia, but it’s not a bad strat per se, either. But on Arena, strats like 18 pop Mongol Scouts, Tatoh rush etc. are not viable. Which is why I say that the subset is smaller.
sure but I am curious how one is supposed to beat Bohemians with a mid-tier civ like say Ethiopians on Arena.
Or the Poles and their fast Imp Obuch/Arbalest/Bombard Cannon play.
Arena has less “outplay potential” than Arabia, nearly every civ that sucks on Arena has something going for them in Feudal or early Castle on Arabia to give them a fighting chance.
You can’t even make the case that late game Arabia is made too boring by Hussars because late game Arena is made too boring by which civ gets Bombard Cannon and which doesn’t. And at least Hussars are countered by full walls and Castles, Bombard Cannons are countered by nothing.
It’s kinda crazy that civs like Burgundians or Britons USED TO be very good on Arena but virtually disappeared from that map because in spite of being far stronger than everything else, they don’t stand a chance vs the top 2 dogs.
Fast Imp into Arbs + BBC
BBC are the best friends of Arbs as they counter siege and buildings. Vikings get good eco and decent archers but they do not have BBC.
Yes your options are limited. Yes you do not have a power unit. Yes, and this is also true that Malay civ bonuses do not follow standard build orders.
But you have good units. Against melee heavy civs like Teutons, Franks, Lithuanians and Bulgarians (if the latter two are not making CA), your Elephants dominate. Malay Elephants are essentially Leitis - suck against archers but the value you get in melee combat is unparalleled. The cost is very similar too - 84F 49G in Castle, 72F 42F in Imperial (though the latter is much closer to the cost of Steppe Lancer).
Edit: Gurjaras and Hindustanis are also melee heavy (if they are not making CA/EA). Celts, Burgundians, Slavs and Malians are also melee heavy.
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Exactly, Arabia at this point is almost solely inhabited by desperate civ pickers who poorly imitate the exact same build orders they’ve memorised from youtube videos. At least with Arena you can actually get to the later stages of the game which require strategy, rather than just building 3 man at arms archers, or putting your scout cavalry in box formation in minute 11
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Arabia and Arena are different ways to play the same game
And both are balance pretty good right now
Arena is a race to Castle Age
Arabia is a race to make damage as soon as possible
TBH, I like more maps like MegaRandom, similar to Arabia but without BO
Both maps, Arabia or Arena, would be OK-ish if wasn’t for civ pickers
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You gotta use the market, and you’re up way before your opponent so there are no xbows. make the castle next to his gold and make karambits inside the castle, wait for the castle to make a hole in the wall and then you swarm with the karambits. If the enemy has archery ranges you should destroy them, that will take a lot of wood to rebuild and make archers. At my elo it works pretty well, but if your enemy already has crossbows when you arrive then you messed up xD
Of course this is for arena, doing this in arabia won’t work because you’ll be open and defenseless. Arena has many specific strats that won’t work for other maps. Double castle Arambai comes to mind too xD