Castles: the counter to Phosphoru strategies?

The Phosphoru strategy is very easy to perform, but very hard to counter (I’ve even done it a few times, and quite successfully). Everyone has different ideas on how to counter it, but… usually the only counter is using a Phosphoru strategy yourself. So what is the true counter?

Well, if you think about it, what kills almost every unit? Castles. They have long range, high attack, and fire many arrows. If you place them around your base (or around your opponent’s base), your opponent is unable to attack with unique units, and his economy will likely be much weaker.

Could this possibly be the answer to the Phosphoru strategies?

i haven’t been following this too much. but isn’t phosphoru strat to go FC and then make units. If you are also going FC but are collecting stone for a castle you’ll probably be slower

Going fast castle yourself is a common strat that can work against Phosphorus.
But it’s definitely not enough to just drop a castle, castles are immobile objects and can only give you so much prtoection. It would be very bad to just run UUs into your castles as a ########## … idk why someone would expect this.

Yes you might be a bit slower but usually you have set up a better eco and therefore can get an advantage over time.

It’s not always the right concept to drop a castle yourself and very dependent on the UU you get.

Phosphorus are no stranger to add Rams when they face defensive structures, so you need to have an answer to those.

If you have a good monk civ, fast castle monk rush is usually good enough

So what do civs with terrible monks do against it?

Easy - pick civs that have strong monks /s

heavily civ (and opponent civ) dependent, but e.g. against organ guns I may play with knights+light cavs if possible

it’s actually similar to how to deal with arena monk rush with a terrible monk civ - actually counter castles are also good in this case (build a few mangos to stall time)

Phosphoru strats aren’t the meta yet, and I shouldn’t have to use monk civs, because I like playing civs like Goths and Dravidians.

I see this the word everywhere, what is the phosphoru strategy?

It’s a fast-castle strategy that abuses unique units that cost wood and gold, or sometimes siege units.

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Nothing is easy to perform. It worked for you because it seems to be an anti-meta strategy, something that’s working against the current passive feudal meta. Castles kill every unit but are not cheap, the player has to hit castle age and gather enough stone for a castle. I remembered this game from warlords 3 qualifiers where one player tried to go for a Phosphorus build but was stopped with forward towers. So maybe you’d have to take some risks yourself against such high risk high reward builds.

Unless militia line become the meta, your chances of winning are anyways quite low.

Unique units that are too powerful with 0 upgrades. Something that should get balanced.

I don’t understand why “good” monks are necessary anyways. Hera used Goth monks in The Giant Falls campaign mission, and they were still decent. The only case in which you need redemption is against hussite wagons and organ guns.

Single player is different, AI is not going to pull back units and regroup with mangonels or other units to get a better fight. I think monks with redemption and sanctity are even needed against non-siege uu to counter uu + mangonel play.

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Huskarls are still good against siege, and especially against most units that cost wood and gold (for many reasons, mainly because most are classified as archer units).

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Dravidians are actually really terrible generally, but just go skirms/mangos should be fine
The problem is get into castle age, not really the unit choice (most of the time^atm)

Also you can scout a Phosphoru strat really easily before feudal age

Good monks just counters the strat insanely well - but it’s so far away from auto lose even if you get bulgarians

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My scout always dies to the enemy tc, even when I try to steer clear from it.

It could work but Huskarls cost a lot of food. There’s monk rng, melee pathing etc that could make these difficult to work in early stages.

I still think castles could work, but it would have to be a castle drop on the opponent’s gold.