Heya I was playing a 3v3 the other day and it ended up with me and a Turk against a Mongol and a Paladin civ. I had earlier teched into elite cata with trample and just kept a flurry of trash going, use the catas as kinda shock troops. I noticed that when they caught the mangudai they did actually kill them which I didn’t really expect. But should I have just gone full camel or even paladin. Byz paladins aint much stronger, but have more archer armour than elite cataphracht and no trample. Heavy camels are a lot cheaper but have even worst archer armour than cataphrachts. It seams that in large numbers Cataphrachts do ok vs Paladins, I feel like byz paladins would probably lose about the same or worst vs a FU paladin as a mass of catas does.
We won the game cos the other side pushed through but it just felt like a stalemate, my trash was working and id throw my 40 or so catas in when I wanted to push and they did ok vs the enemy compo but eh wondering if camel or paladin would have been better.
Paladin - Mangudai is a 2 civ combo and a powerful one at that, don’t expect any one civilisation to have an effective combo to counter all by itself. In your scenario I’d personally go Byzantine camels and Turk HCA (with BBT BBC if possible).
Byzantines isn’t a great 3v3 civ but in the late game you should focus on Halbs and Heavy Camel. Your job is basically to counter the enemy cavalry and while Byzantines Camels aren’t the most pop-efficient (lacking 2 upgrades, Blast Furnace and Bloodlines), they are also cheaper which means you can play Byzantines from a low-eco setup like a 110-115 vills instead of the typical 130+. In general for Byzantines, in 1v1 and in Team Games, the principle applies of “quantity over quality”, you win by having a larger army proportion over the enemy and more production buildings hence faster reinforcements.
In TGs generally a small subset of units is viable and some principles apply:
-
you need some cavalry unit that can raid enemy eco if they win a big fight. Generally this is Paladin because it’s the most versatile (Camels can die to mass Halbs which are played in TGs sometimes, while Paladins can fight Halbs to a degree), but occasionally it’s Heavy Camel (Malians and Hindustanis ones being particularly good for TGs), Battle Elephants (good in TGs but take slightly too long to tech into). This cavalry unit is the meatshield generally in big fights and a damage dealer (not the main one though the emphasis is more on protecting your ally’s ranged units over dealing damage)
-
you need a ranged unit (Arbalest is too weak in late Imp so generally in TGs it’s used but generally if you have an Arbalest-only civ like Mayans you need to win fast as Mayans suck in mid- and post-Imp). This is due to the interaction with Paladin and their 7 Pierce Armor, so here you favor more units like Genoese Crossbowmen, Heavy Cavalry Archer, these are all better ranged units for TGs.
-
lastly you need some form of Siege, in TGs particularly on closed maps Siege Onager and BBC are very strong, generally the civ that spams this siege also supplies the Halbs so Celts, Teutons, Bohemians are all solid choices in this regard.
Overall in TGs there is a strong emphasis on Gold units (2x Gold comp is viable due to possibility of trade) and on playing the very best units the game has to offer. For example Italians get a discounted BBC and this is fairly good in 1v1, but in TGs you want a BBC with Siege Engineers (Turks, Bohemians, Ethiopians being the 3 best ones) and BBCs without SE are considered barely acceptable. Likewise fully upgraded Cavalier is a fairly decent tech in 1v1 but bad in TGs where if you are a cavalry civ, you MUST have Paladin (so something like Sicilians is not very good in TGs for example).
On open maps, it goes without saying that Siege is weaker, so civs like Bohemians or Teutons are not necessarily good, while on closed maps, cavalry is weaker so Siege civs become stronger.
Also in TGs it’s far easier to get to UUs than in 1v1s so civs like Mongols, Spanish, Berbers, Portuguese, Turks are more valuable than in 1v1s.