Cheap hand cannoneers usual counter infantry.
Genoese Crossbowmen counters cavalry.
Condottieri counters all form of gunpowder!
As a Goth, Hindustani, Tatar, Turk, and Frank main, trust me on this: I have no way to counter such an Italian comp!
Take Hindustani for example: I always go Camels and Hand Cannon with some bombards, and they will get disposed by their Italian comp like garbage!
When do you start attacking Italian player? Early imp when their power spike kick in?
I agree that Italians are almost unwinnable with the civs you mentioned in late game. You better play agressive at early game and even go all in super aggressive.
Mayans can tell the same about Goths.
It’s what we call a bad match up, it’s also part of the game.
The most important is to guess the strategy of your opponent. For example on Arena team games, Turk flank opponent getting feudal age super late, it’s 100% fast imperial. And you will get destroyed 99% of chance. So you send 4 rams at early castle and you win him.
Normally, for any open map or some closed maps, I would start attacking early like what @LKAOE4 said, like around Feudal or early Castle Age. However, maps like Michi and Arena then early attack is impossible, and they have all that time to reach their powerspike unharmed.
Italians are really underrated in closed maps, most times like to go Hussar (fully upgraded btw) instead of Condo to save gold
On Arena, Castle Age pushes remain viable through various means.
Best Counter is to hit Italians early. Genoese Crossbow may be hard for Franks to deal with, but until an Italian castle is up, Franks are the stronger civ (with berry bonus, free farming upgrades, cavalry hp bonus, and cheaper castles). Even once a castle is up, it would still take some time to mass Gen-bows. Goths can use huskarls (they do fine even against hand cannons if they can get close, but that’s assuming they can close in), but really would be better off hitting the Italians player early (when Italians are practically a generic civ on land maps). Italian bonuses don’t really start kicking in until mid-late castle age.
Not in my experience. Janissaries and Conqs are pretty good at dealing with condos (so long as they don’t allow the condos to get close, which isn’t a hard thing to do - hit-and-run with Conqs, meat shield with Janissaries).
Hindustanis should have options in the late game. Their hand cannons and bombards have longer range (a significant advantage from UT/Siege Engineers), and Ghulams can deal with any archers (including Gen Bows). Camels likely wouldn’t be a good option due to the gold cost (they may be good against a hussar meat shield, but you’d be trading a gold unit for trash units, which isn’t a winning strategy). Camels would be solid if you were facing knights/Cavaliers, but you likely won’t see those after castle age. If the Italians player isn’t using Gen Bows, then Hussars would be a good option (and would be ok as a meat shield even if there are Gen Bows). And Hindustanis have fully upgraded skirms (which are a good unit against all types of archer units, especially Gen Bows since Gen Bows have -1 range).
I’d also note that Hand Cannons, Gen Bows, and Condos are a triple gold comp, so of course it’s strong. If you’re opponent can field a triple gold-comp, then you’ve given them way too much time to build up, but could win if you survive until they run out of gold. Also, Condos generally get beaten out by another unit in whatever role they play (hussars are better for raiding/meat shield, Cavaliers for a power front-line unit, Champions for an infantry front-line unit). Also, Italian units are practically generic, so feel free to use your own generic units against them.
For Turks against Italians, I think a normal Turk game plan would work just fine. Janissaries are a good unit (even against Condos, since Janissaries don’t rely on bonus damage) and can be created starting in castle age (so you should have a mass of Janissaries before the Italians player can even get Condos out), Hussars are a great meat shield (very spammable - you might lose a lot of them, but you’re only losing food), and their BBC have longer range (a great option against a civ missing siege engineers). So long as you don’t throw away your gold units, Turks should do just fine against the Italian late game.
Best way to counter Italians is to stop playing closed maps / fast castle maps. Go super aggressive early before they have time to get their deathball with upgrades going. Italians are kind of weak 1v1 on open maps like Arabia.
Okay… but what if the host set up a closed map himself and chances are someone from the other team gets Italians? Not that I chose to play such a map or something.
And sometimes I may get a map that starts in Imp/Post-Imp.
Just play ranked with standard settings