Here's how to win everytime

Don’t know why nobody talking about this. But to me this strategy seems broken against any civ that doesn’t have either age 2 knights or age 2 MAA.

So it works extremely well against Ottoman, Abbasid, China, Mongol, Delhi. Especially against the 3 civ without horse archer.
It doesn’t work against French, Rus, or Mali (they are lucky to get Musofadi Warrior, or Knights).
Against English or HRE, they can do the same thing so it more fair.

But basically you pick the HRE, and if you play against Ottoman, Abbasid, China or Delhi, you’re almost guaranteed to win. All you need to do is go age 2 and mass MAA, and build 3-4 rams. And destroy their base. They have 0 counter. The MAA will crush everything: archer, spearman, horseman… HRE MAA run faster than archers.

As soon as you start building your age 2 landmark (build the tech one), you send like 5 on gold, 10 villagers on wood to build 3 barracks and a few houses. And everything else on food.

First tech you need are the mill techs, to boost food production, then after that you get military tech in that order:
Infantry Speed, Siege Construction, Ranged Armor, Melee attack, melee armor

Spam MAA non-stop, go near their base and build 3-4 ram. And destroy everything.
They can’t do anything because they don’t have knights or crossbow yet.

Sure they could try fast age 3 but when the game has basically only one strategy i think it’s flawed. And they probably won’t have time anyway.

My favorite age is Feudal Age because there aren’t any siege engine yet and I think the battles are more interesting. I usually go age 3 only when I see my opponent going age 3. But when playing Delhi or Ottoman, the game is basically telling me, if you play age 2 vs age 2 it will be extremely unfair, so you have to play the other ages otherwise you lose.

There’s a reason why in the recent league stats the HRE and English are the 2 most banned civs. Because if you play any of the civs I mentioned, you just can’t do anything against MAA age 2.

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I usually play ottoman, and switched to HRE to try this strategy in hope my opponents can show me how to counter it, and so far 100% winrate against ottoman, china and delhi, really feels broken. Abbasid can kinda survive with camel archer (aka camel crossbow) because the attack is so high

Which rank are you? This strat you mention is easily countereable by any civ.

China outposts have handcannon and barbican will defend you from early maa rush.

Abbasid has camel archers, nothing you can do with only maa composition vs them.

Delhi will probably suffer a bit more.

Ottoman’s can extremely mass trops.

By the way, as any civ, this strat is easily countereable because you need tons of food to keep the maa push, once sheeps are done your villagers will get exposed and can be raided by horsemen, stopping your push. Also your gold villagers will get harassed easy.

As HRE is stronger the fast castle + maa in my opinion.

The strategy you mention works very fine up to gold rank, but I’ve checked in platinum people starts to know how to counter this strat.

I’ve also tried vs this strat to not have my villagers in my base. I use abbasid a lot, and when I spot an HRE doing a fast castle or doing this you mention, I usually move my gold and food villagers to a far source. Maa are slow and they will come your base, but you can secure your age up decentralizing your economy. Then massing xbows qnd spears and cleaning.

Spears are so important in xbows comp… Because a good HRE knows you will mass xbows in castle and he will get horsemen or even knights to kill your xbows.

Im telling this like months finally people start to realize it either man at arm needs a lower melee armor or this need to happen :

@joanka93val i dont want to explain all of this one by one but early man at arms needs a nerf or every civ needs a counter for them.(Even if they only make all your villagers go in to town center or outpost they win because your eco will stop while he keep producing man at arms)

Also unit producing landmarks needs to go away they are huge advantage too maybe they can move to the other ages.Ottoman bonus resource needs to go away too.

Maybe just spearmen needs more buffs. I don’t encounter normally problems against early maa, but the damage buff to spears last patch did help fighting the maa with spears, they are cheaper, faster to produce, and you don’t need gold.

This kind of strat usually works when the other player suddenly spots a blob of maa in his base and then it’s late, but if you check enemy base and look he is doing barracks and you have the time to prepare yourself, I think is fine.

look at my last game for example my game name is same with the forum name they destroy everything even if they dont they just making villagers go idle damages enemy eco so much its already gameover

I am glad MAA have stages of the game in which they feel half-satisfying. If you play HRE a lot of opponents blindly spam Crossbows when they reach castle and if you happen to have massed MAA it makes you feel you have a shit “unit” then you have to counter crossbow spam. MAA are super slow even with the roman movement speed tech.

we are talking about feudal man at arms you are aware of that right?

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it’s true that china has the defensive landmark. And Abassid have camels crossbows. But the landmark can easily be defeated with 3-4 rams.

This leaves Ottoman and Delhi completely vulnerable.

I think i really struggle against it because i play delhi and ottoman a lot (im Gold 3) and they just have nothing to fight it. mass army of archer and horseman doesn’t work. When i try this strategy with HRE against ottoman i litterally tell my opponent at the start of the game im going to rush MAA so it’s not a surprise and they lose every time.

It’s either age 3 or fighting in feudal means the battle is extremely unfair.

I don’t know why you think this only works gold or less but it’s not true, it even works in conqueror against Ottoman or delhi you can check this video:

I don’t think a skirmisher is necessary. Horseman do the job very well against archers in age 2 and everyone have them.

The maceman make more sense, i guess it would be a light infantry to take extra damage from archer. Basically the equivalent of what mali have but less strong.

But honestly if the age 2 maa have juste 1 less melee and ranged armor it wouldn’t be as much of an issue. And we wouldn’t need a new unit. Too many units makes the game confusing and hard to manage. Already the mali sometimes i struggle differentiating spears and javelins. Javelins always look like they could destroy my cavalry with their long sticks.

But this is english maa rush, it’s different from HRE maa rush because english doesn’t go out of food whereas HRE does when sheeps and berries go out of existences, and deers or others food sources are exposed to raids.

Also HRE can’t spam farms as english can do in the transition to castle age without compromising the rush.

Also I think 3-4 rams costs a lot of wood and time to collect resources and build them, IMO a defender would have enough time to prepare himself.

I want to practice the rush defend against HRE using abbasids, if you want we can train the rush and the defense.

PS. I’m right now unranked, but elo between plat I - diamond I

Yes English works well too. HRE have the advantage of faster maa and also the tech landmark which help with this strategy. If you have a map with a lot of food like a map next to fish you won’t run out. Just need to hunt for deers and fish.
By the time they come destroy your fish boat or hunting villagers you are probably already destroying their base.

I think would be better to try to find a counter with Ottoman or delhi, since Abbasid camels are almost crossbows with their high attack.

I’ve seen some players with Ottos and Delhi rushing HRE gold, even in dark age using spears and towers.

Towers don’t work that well it’s easy to destroy them with your maa.

In the video they show a good trick with Ottoman it’s to use the drums on melee armor. Which is really cool idea, you could have a second drum with attack speed also and use sipahi as main unit. But in the video even doing all that didn’t prevent the English player from winning with just MAA and nothing else.

horseman counters archer well but they are not countering longbows with council hall.Longbow numbers increase too fast nearly one shots your horseman just for the english longbow rush it is needed

I disagree with that. If you have equal resoures horseman and longbow the longbow lose for sure. And even if it was really an issue, i think its just the longbow that would need a nerf, we don’t need a new unit just because longbow exists.

What @KnowingLamb8370 is trying to say I think is that is easier to mass longbows than horsemen, and longbows in certain point can one shoot your horsemen, making them extremely bad against longbows if they can’t engage well, for example, if you simply mix a few spearswith your longbows.

Also horsemen are harder to micro than archers

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I’m an abba player and I agree that pure-MAA rush from burgrave is one of the hardest things for me to survive against. Camel archers take a MASSIVE amount of food and wood. Besides elephants, camel archers cost the most food and most wood of any unit. They’re tied for the most expensive unit in the game among knights and hand cannoneers. Except you’re expected to spam them on a pressured feudal economy. As soon as there’s 20+ MAA taking map control there’s not much I can do. Like others have said, they just tank arrows while chopping down villagers.

Abba used to have the camel aura upgrade available in feudal military wing and that was the only way to balance against MAA balls since a few camels could buff up your spearmen with enough armor to stand a chance. Basically the same effect as Mehter’s drum aura for melee armor. But the way it is now, camel archer is not enough.

What any smart HRE player does is they split their MAA, let 10 chase the camels while another 10 kill villagers. Camels HAVE to kite or they die super easy so they can’t defend the villagers, and it takes a couple volleys to kill one MAA so that’s 30-50 seconds of your economy getting pillaged while you focus all APM on killing just half of their MAA. Meanwhile they collect relics and keep pumping out MAA.

Town centers need an upgrade to crossbows or something. MAA are fine in the field or in late game, but their ability to stand on your TC at 10 minutes and mow down everything is too powerful.

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I’m abba main, try new culture wing, you can fast castle super fast, and out research him.

I struggle also using camels vs MAA rush, but I think it’s just skill and timming. I’ve seen streamers defending against maa rush using camels perfectly, whereas I’ve seen also others just falling to this rush.

New military wing gives +15% health to your infantry, which is very strong, but I would not go for military vs HRE or english, I would go culture wing then military, to get your maa and xbows +15% health and out research HRE, and culture also reduces your age up, so you will age up so so fast to castle, even researching wheelbarrow and fresh foodstuffs.

Horseman + archer is better than spear + longbow at equal resources. It may be hard to micro but they still have a counter. Also longbow cant really come and destroy your base like MAA can, so you can defend easily against longbow until you have mangonels. While MAA don’t really have any counters if youre delhi, ottoman, china or abasid.