I’ve tried FC with knight rush and man-at-arms rush at 10 min with the Goths and while I can inflict some good damage on one of the opponents economy, the other comes to his rescue and nullifies my raid efforts.
It’s also very difficult if not impossible to try and harrass both AI Civs at once.
I saw a video of Viper beating 2 or 3 Extreme AI, but in that video they didn’t come to each others recue for some reason. Maybe its a older version of the game.
In the latest game I tried to keep making villager while sending MaA ans skirms to one of the AI but the other massed archers to defend his ally and attack me and made it to castle way before I could do it.
Versus 2 should be no problem… wall in and castle defensively. This will draw the AI into chokes points where you get better trades off for kill/death. Play a race that has good siege onagers and waste the mass troops outside your walls. When you get to full strength and can field your best army stay in a close group and let them come to you… onagers and scorpions are great for this. The AI will mass attack you so make tons of military buildings and have a strong economy to refill your ranks very very quickly. When they get drawn to your trebs you will cluster bomb them with onagers, scorps, and a nice meat shield (Paladins, elephants, pikes… depends on the attacking force…) sometimes skirms are appropriate as a meatshield day against the Britons or Mayans. Good luck
Versus 7 AI all teamed together I still haven’t figured it out…
So, basically rush and aggressive strats barely work?
It always seemed to me that no matter how many defences I build the 2 AI will send so many troops it would be almost impossible to defend. I like to turtle, though.
To best build this defense would it be best to do a FC around 17 min?
Also, how do you manage to get enough gold to last to beat 6 Hard AI?
Yes turtle up and collect relics… when you go on offense focus on one AI’s base and leave the market or dock to trade with… that will give you some gold. I like playing a race with really strong trash and siege like mongols or Magyars… raid them but keep your base walled off and you only need to protect with a few onagers. The market trick is the same with 7 AI teamed up but it really hard to leave your base at all because your against about 500ish more troops than 2 AI
I tried walling off with 1 or 2 castles and about 4 towers but by the 35 - 45mins they just send too many troops and archers with Rams and sometimes 4-8 onagers.
Gonna keep trying but beating 2 of them seems almost impossible and I can’t even imagine how it would be like with 3.
They barely let you wall up and build a castle before sending several xbow.
They work great, if you do them well, and all the more so if you’re only playing 2. I recently beat 3 Extreme AI on Arena with Khmer, I’m going to go for 4 next. I’ve beaten 7 hardest in HD (without relic/wonder nonsense), and will go for that in DE at some point. Here are some random tips that might be helpful;
-Early archer rushes can be very helpful if you use them to deny resources from multiple players. There’s a chinese player who used this strat to beat 6 extreme AI (obviously he’s very good, but many players could pull it off vs. fewer opponents).
-If you don’t mind cheesing, AIs don’t deal with towers well until Castle. A well placed tower or two can idle most of an AI’s eco and kill vills, so you can either finish them off, or focus on attacking another player.
-Malay or Khmer fast castle into elephants is a really strong strat if you’re good at build orders, (especially Malay) due to malay’s faster age up and cheaper eles (the strongest unit in castle besides the war elephant). With a good BO you can have 4 eles out (enough to destroy a garrisoned TC if you have armor) before any of the AIs reach Castle, then with one out of the way you send your eles to deal with the next opponent.
Turtling isn’t always a bad idea, but I think aggression is more often a good investment. Even in games vs. large numbers of AI, in which I eventually end up having to turtle, I try to rush and kill one or two of the AIs as soon as possible.
It really seems like we are playing a different game, though. The Ai rapidly responds to my rushes and even If I destroy their tower and kill/disrupt some villies their ally comes in with full archers/skirms.
I managed to defend for quite some time and amassed an army to destroy one of the enemy bases but there were too many elite camel archers there, I managed to destroy 1 TC + Castle but they killed my whole army(bulgarian UU + Halberds + Rams + 2 Trebs) and counterattacked in such a force that destroyed my walls, Castle and 4 Kreposts
I had my ■■■ handed to me like more than 20 times by now, but I’ll keep at it until I find a way to win .
I seem to be missing something crucial to my success though. I’m doing a FC at around 17:00 with 29 villagers and keep making vills after reaching castle age.(around 10-12 for each resource and 16 on farms)
Just for fun, here’s a rec of an arena game where I beat 4 extreme AI in a little over an hour (in game time), and without too much of a struggle. Not that I’m a pro by any means, but the AI definitely has some weaknesses you can exploit, and rushing with towers can take them out of the equation pretty fast. If I had opted for turtling instead, the game would have taken way longer and I probably would have lost. This was simple enough, I might go vs. 5 Extremes next.
