They can still harass plenty in my experience. Idle farms, and very good at harassing woodlines (which can’t be protected by TC and particularly in early Feudal, are crucial to get your Farm eco going).
This seems impractical at my elo, in general I don’t think you can fully wall on new Arabia unless you get a lucky map generation. MAA, for example, come faster than you can get full walls, unless you commit 6+ vills to it at which point your eco suffers for MAA that might not even be there. More generally, on new Arabia you almost always have to fight to get walls down, you get them eventually but it’s not an early Feudal thing.
the problem is that this seems a very hard Feudal transition. In early Feudal, you need to make your building of choice (let’s say here for example’s sake I open Stable). Then you need to plant at least like 3-4 farms immediately, depending also on how much hunt you pushed. If by any chance you are taken off of Berries, make that Farm count 7-8 which is a huge food investment. Making an Archery Range before this can be hard. Let’s even say you squeeze it in, because the mass of Spear/Skirm doesn’t build immediately, still you need to sustain constant Skirm production + vills which assumes at least 10+ farms I guess. Then at some point he gets Fletching and you need to mirror that. When I died to this last time, granted my macro might have been less than ideal, let’s say I did 4 Scouts with a civ without eco bonus and wasted too much HP on them. Still, I don’t feel that alone should mean I’m no longer able to win the game (was against Byzantines who did MAA into CONSTANT production of Spear/Skirm).
Oh they do? It feels on paper they shouldn’t. Based on past experience I would guess they wouldn’t. My Castle Age micro is OK but my Feudal micro is less than ideal. I struggle with those archers at short ranges, maybe that’s the issue.
I guess I need to treat Scouts like Knights, and not waste them trading HP vs Vills and so on if I see such an army coming. I generally treat them like “nuke them into vills”, clearly I try to pick isolated vills but I gladly will trade HP. I need to learn that those early Scouts are precious just like early HP on Knights in Castle age is.
I saw Hera once do Knight + Pike (matchup was something like Magyars vs Burgundians or Franks vs Saracens, Hera has the “Christian cavalry civ” while opponent had the Camel civ iirc). When I asked him he pointed out that “it’s just a few Knights mixed in and not full Knights” meaning that his goal was to hold the Camels with Pike and add Knights just for potential harass in case of a good fight, or to snipe Mangonels.
I guess it’s more useful to talk in terms of production buildings. I like to think that in Castle age, you should be on 3 production buildings, 2 to make your main unit, and 1 for the auxiliary unit. If you really go all in you can also add a 4th (Siege). I guess though if you have great macro like the pros, you can have 2 production buildings, do Knight + Pike and 3 TC boom. Effectively playing defensively. So maybe it’s safe to call the “Knight + Pike” that we sometimes see pros do, just “defensive Pikes that potentially turn aggressive at some point with a few Knights mixed in”?
In any case, for my example I reckon I was talking about 2 Stable Knights and 1 Barrack Pikeman. I guess indeed Pikeman is too expensive, you need at least like 10 to support a fight if you got the weaker cavalry (e.g. you are Franks vs Burgundians Cavalier), but then you likely also need Squires, and probably both armor upgrades (2nd one especially is very expensive but at the same time you sort of need it to counter the +2 attack).
makes sense, ty. In general I feel Pikeman needs a small buff, there are games where they go full Knights on me, and literally nothing else with a civ that has a bonus (generally Franks or Berbers), I go 3 Barracks Pikes, inevitably I get 1 hole in my walls, he clears the first Pike mass and after that it’s GG because you never get a 2nd mass rolling, particularly since he idles your farms with +2 Knights so your Pikeman production stops). I could be better at walling sure, but it feels my opponent literally is playing on 10 APM and that’s irritating.