Hi i think there is big problem at the game, i play mostly 1vs1 arabia, and I can’t deal with the mass archers civs (britons ethiopians and such), there isn’t really good defence for that they crush me at feudel age, skrimsh cost food, while archers not and at feudal it’s harder to mass skrimsh then to mass archers. Every time i take big hit at feudal age vs those civs and can’t recover, until we at castle age they have 25+ archers . I think the cost of the archers is to cheap, the fact that they don’t cost food is crucial for feudal age. Any solution for that problem?
I play mostly 1vs1 arabia at staem.
Elo 1000-1200.
So what edge i can find if i know my opponent gonna mass archers at feudal age??
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how is it harder to mass skirms then it is to mass archers? not only do skirms cost less overall, they take significantly less time to train.
no, they just cost gold instead, and a lot of it, by feudal standards.
skirms and scouts are your best option - yeah they cost food but your opponent is sinking a lot of economy into wood and gold in order to make those archers.
This is probably because you make your archery range too late and probably 2 i suppose ? if so just make only 1 archery but sooner when you can afford it without idling tc etc (for scout rush u can do it in about 13min depending of civ and opening
+1 attack and defenses both needed but you can make less scouts than usual and up castle really fast even with skirms to make elite skirm tech then adding tc or combo with kts
making a lot of scout bloodlines +1/+1 which works well if you can counterattack after if opponent not full walled , not many spears or just want control map
If you are new to the game, or on lower elo, I would avoid Arabia for the time being. The new map-gen is really not “friendly” for low skill levels
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you can try to keep the archers far away from your base, so that they don’t immediately start killing villagers if they are faster than you to castle age
but you cannot chase, surround, and defeat 25 crossbows without spending more resources than it costs to make 25 crossbows. congratulations on correctly identifying a big problem with the game
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Archer builds require them to go up on 21 or 22 pop, vs scouts at 19. That’s at least a minute of time you can use to get 2 or 3 scouts out and into their base before archers are massed. If you make a single militia and use them with your starting scout on your way up to feudal to keep them from walling and waste their eco time, you can gain even more time, plus make a hole to get your scouts into their base. You are letting them get to mass archers, which is the problem at the 1100ish ELO, but scouts are just a faster build in general if done correctly. Also, if they are massing archers, always get the armor upgrade for scouts before the attack upgrade.
If you don’t know they are building archers till it’s too late, then you need to scout their base more. If you do know, you don’t have to fully wall until you hit feudal, vs them needing to wall in dark age to keep scouts out. A single archery range when you can afford it with 3 skirms is all you should need to kill a few spears and archers.
If you go scouts and you get them into their base, one of two things typically happens, they are going to try and mass archers somewhere where the scouts can’t pick them off, or they are going to make spears to try and deal with the scouts. Either way, 3 skirms will force his archers to stay in place and kill any spears they make. If you force them to mass spears, they can’t make near as many archers and their eco will suffer. Just don’t over commit if they are, get to castle and into knights asap.
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Mathematically, not accurate. If you initially mass 25 xbows with full upgrades, and take the same cost for fully upgraded knights, you end up with 21 knights vs 25 crossbows. At worst, you’ll lose 8 knights against the 25 xbows, and that’s with some pretty good micro skills on the xbows. The cost of 25 xbows is equivalent to 13 knights after the initial upgrade point.
Thank you all for the answers, i will to scout more to realise sooner that arch are coming. Abd try to harass them as well
food and wood aren’t the same
if i remember correctly, only the eagle warriors and franks could actually counter them, and they didn’t even end up way ahead after doing it. the other civs had to spend more than the xbow player. maybe they had some units left over (usually not), but it was too much expense just to trade with some army from feudal age
and it’s not just knights vs xbow. to keep the archers away and buy time, people often have to make something in feudal age, and then can’t really afford to upgrade it, so it’s a sunk cost
it might just be 5 skirms and 5 scouts or something small like that, but it all adds up