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.