It’s time the Dev’s give a stronger feudal age counter to MAA!! Especially given the buff to English MAA that train faster than normal.
Yes I understand that civs with specialized units have responses that are adequate but there needs to be something done so there is a clear counter to feudal MAA–something alone the lines to Camel archers getting an hp nerf!!
I suggest as an easy fix that feudal MAA lose 30 HP (90 HP 3/3 armor 1.125 walk speed 10 melee damage 1.25 attack delay).
Currently 1 MAA in Feudal dies to 60 standard archer attacks assuming all blacksmith upgrades are balanced between the MAA range defense and the archer’s attack upgrade. Meanwhile a Feudal age MAA would die to 24 strikes by a spearman. And lastly a Feudal age MAA dies to 20 swings by a horseman.
In the reverse a Feudal age MAA kills a standard archer in 7 swings. Kills a spearman in 9 swings. And kills a horseman in 13 swings.
None of these ratios suggest a cost effective trade to counter the Feudal MAA. The closest is the horseman but the same total resource (120 resources), but in the case of the English MAA, you can make an English MAA in 15 sec, but it takes 22 sec to make a horseman. Then if you want to really get into the nitty-gritty, wood cost are more expensive than gold. So 100f 20w is MORE expensive than 100f 20g AND IT STILL GETS WORSE… English farms are extremely efficient by comparison to all other food sources (with MAYBE an exception on well placed sheep carcasses). This means 100 English food is “cheaper” than 100 everyone’s food.
Take the Feudal MAA HP down to 90 HP and you’ll have a scenario where 2 spearman would STILL lose to 1 Feudal age MAA but they would lose BARELY, and micro 2 vs 1 could make the spearman win out. Likewise 2 horsemen vs 1 Feudal MAA would still result in the horsemen team winning but with micro you could kill the 1 MAA and not lose any of the horsemen. Lastly the 60 shots the archer would need to kill the MAA would go down to 45 shots.
Reasonable nerf that would NOT completely undo the benefits of Feudal age MAA, but would help make the counters more cost effective.
The man-at-arms is the typical versatile unit that soft counters all trash units (and now also siege), but it has a weakness, its speed.
Also comment that, except for Delhi and China without a dynasty, the other civilizations have units that can face the MAA.
The problem with English is that siege in moderate numbers hardly does anything to archers and crossbows and they have that power they didn’t have before.
Yea? Why do people keep defending it with this argument. I made a post about MAA already. The main problem isn’t that it can’t kill your units neither can your units kill it in feudal. The main issue is, its isolating your resources. It might not kill your army but it can kill your villagers effectively. Now gold mines spawn far away you just can’t do anything if 1 or 2 maa appears.
do what? First make archery range and get 5+ archers and waste a minute to kill them? And then start mining stone/gold. MAA are not expensive units. Its same as getting a horsemen. Just put your wood villagers on gold.
Wait how? You cant make knights if MAA are already at your gold mine and you barely got gold to age up. Also china has no issue at all facing MAA. No one would waste MAA on china. Simply because they can make barbican of sun to secure resource and unlike TC/Tower its fire penetrates armor.
I think solution is indeed to reduce ranged armor for dark age and feudal.
except for knights and MAA themselves none of the factions have a COST-EFFECTIVE way to counter MAA; yes you can kite them but at high levels you will be facing composition fights so arrows wasted on tanky MAA is arrows not killing spears and other units that are coming at you.
Did you watch the 3rd round of the Golden League finals between Viper and MarineLord? Basically it was a multiple play of English vs Abbasid over and over…
MAA MAA MAA; obviously not a single comp but feudal MAA saved they day over and over it was sickening.
2 games is not enough to jump to conclusions though. Also you will rarely see hre going for that type of play.
I understad what you are saying though, but also you gotta look at how incredibly well viper played these games. Game2 he pretty much won by denying totally stopping marinelord from even getting his 2nd tc up. Game3 is more debatable, but viper managed to hit an insane timing against ML right as he hit age3 and aged himself behind that.
If english maa becomes a big problem devs could start by reverting the train time back to what it was instead of straight up making them useless.
Make 1 more scout, with one you scout around his base and with another around the map. If you see the barracks, put more villagers to collect gold (5) until you have 200 and then go to food to age. The problem they mention in the thread is not that.
I want to start by comparing Feudal MaA to Feudal Knights.
The main difference is that Feudal Knights have a fairly strong & cheap counter in Feudal spearmen. So not only is the counter strong, but the unit can be constructed in Feudal & they’re cheap. Yes the spearmen are slow, but it’s a great defense and if used well, can bigly shut down early game Knight harass without much hassle.
Now look at MaA. What are MaA countered by - like the hardest possible counter? Castle Mangos? Castle crossbows? Apparently Xbows are the hardest counter, but I find this hard to believe. Xbows feels like a very weak counter if it’s a counter at all.
TBH, I’m kind of okay with the counter to Feudal MAA to be trying to get up to Castle asap to unlock a unit right. Like that part’s a little hurdle, but it’s not insurmountable.
But then to offer me such a soft counter? I just feel like it’s hardly a deterrent at all. Added insult to injury is that the Xbow is fairly pricey as a unit. Seems like a rip off if what I’m paying them for is to counter MaA’s and they can’t actually do it effectively. At least if I’m paying for spearmen to stop horses they actually do the job, and it doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg.
I think the fix is to actually have a proper hard counter - increase the damage multiplier for Xbows vs MaA. Actually make it a hard counter & see if that resolves the issue.
The MAA is slow. The only civ that may have real problems in Feudal against that unit is Delhi (I would have to use scholars to heal and have a balanced matchup). The rest of the civs have weapons to defend against MAA in Feudal. The crossbowman must hit and run, basic to make a correct counter to the MAA.
I have two copies of the game so I can run it on 2 PCs and test scenarios like this. I just tested 10 maa vs 10 xbow, both without upgrades, other than upgrading the maa to the feudal version. I just attack moved the maa into the xbows, and did no micro of the xbows, so the outcome would be even better for the xbows with some micro. The xbows won with 4 remaining, with about 3.5 units worth of total hp.
That’s the scenario where both players have gone to castle age, obviously if the maa player remained in feudal and instead spent the resources on more maa, they’d easily win that fight. If there’s a specific scenario you’d like to know the result of, let me know and I’ll test it.
The two units are the same cost and that’s an OK outcome not a great one. The Xbows took heavy losses. I feel like this is backing up what I’m saying - I don’t know, having to rush castle & build an expensive hard counter only to lose 60% of my army anyway doesn’t really sit right with me.
Can you please try 10 feudal knights vs 15 feudal spearmen.
Spearmen cost 80 total, Knights cost 240 (with 100 of that being gold). So if it were equal spend it should be 30 spearmen = 10 knights.
Also, yes Micro would help in MaA vs Xbows. But in a real game the enemy isn’t just going to charge at you infinitely over an open field taking heavy losses - they’ll just retreat and take a better engagement later. In other words, both players are microing - I think it’s safe to assume that in a real game Xbow micro may be a limited advantage at best, but it’s not a given. I think it’s safest to just ignore it for the time being.
10 feudal knights vs 15 feudal spearmen, the spearmen won with 5.5 units of hp remaining. I attack moved them into each other, so the knights charged, and the spears braced.
I do actually think you have a reasonable point in that when I play co-op against AI, I often go maa, and I’ve been puzzled when people on here talk about how OP knights are because whenever I make them they get destroyed by spears.
Once again, very interesting results. Thanks for running those tests.
It’s likely with a bit of good micro, the knights would do a little better, and so would the xbows, but the contrast between the two is still pretty stark.
Yeah, I consider Xbows to be more of a soft counter, and that MaA don’t really have a hard counter at the moment, which I think is a shame. Like if I’m on the back foot in a game, and the enemy goes mass MaA early, I feel like I’m basically screwed, as there aren’t really any levers I can pull to get the game back in my favor.
Imo it is necessary though to micro the xbows. If im not mistaken xbows and maa have the same movement speed. With xbows one should aways hit and run and there’s nothing the maa player can do against it except for retreat. I assume it’s a different story for knights and spearmen. They can charge and brace but their micro is very limited. French knights healing is a bonus though but idk how to put that into the equation. Would certainly need some time to make profit of it.
I think there’s a lot of things the MaA player can do. Maneuver to attack from two directions, push the Xbows into a corner, attack from stealth or fog of war, etc. And that’s not including a real match where protecting other units, zoning, and enabling other units becomes an important factor as well.
It’s necessary to micro any unit to use it effectively. Since all units require micro to use well I don’t understand why we use it as an excuse for Xbows but not for MaA? Do we not also have to micro the MaA effectively to increase the odds against Xbows? Do we not need to micro spearman to intercept and fight knights? Or use the archers to kite the spearmen? All units benefit hugely from good micro.
I think to assume that kiting is always an option - and for it to be a requirement for Xbows to be an effective counter just doesn’t sit right with me. Yes, I get that good micro play really does help the Xbow, maybe more so than most units. But to have that as a linchpin? Like what if you don’t have the APM to spare because I’m raiding on multiple fronts? Like, I can use you having an APM heavy unit to my advantage - In other words, it’s a disadvantage that the Xbows require heavy APM micro to get the most out of it.
If Xbows were as good against MaA as Spearmen were against knights you’d be able to hold off 10 of them with just 5 (given the cost to produce). I think that’s a tough ask if both players are allowed to macro, and impossible without macro.
All that said, It would be interesting to see how Spearmen vs Archers performs. For some reason that match-up feels better as a counter to me. Who knows, maybe I’m way off base, but I think seeing that match up would help put things into perspective more.
In theory it is true, only the civilizations with heavy cavalry defeat them, but they are also vulnerable to the micromanagement of mangudais archers and camel archers, also I do not see in tournaments making a rush of men-at-arms in feudal, men-at-arms are ineffective to raid villagers unlike cavalry, camels and mangudais
I just tested 10 maa vs 10 xbows and 10 spears vs 10 archers (equal resources in both cases). In both cases I attack moved the melee units to beyond the ranged units, then used hit and run with the ranged units until they caught up, then target firing to make them all hit the same unit. No units had upgrades except the maa and spears were upgraded to the feudal units. The archers had 7 units of hp remaining, and the xbows 5.5 units of hp, so you are right, archers are a harder counter to spears than xbows are to maa.