Basically the question in the title.
With Vietnamese or another archer civ, what would you do if your opponent makes knights+skirms, eagles+skirms, or even eagles+archers?
That really depends on the civ matchup and situation, however Knights and Skirms is kind of all in to counter archers so you are forced to go out of your archer comfort zone. With Vietnamese I would probably go Knights in these kind of situations.
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Halberdiers and Onagers could be an option against Knight+Skirm (the Halberdiers defending the Onagers), but depends on the exact composition, match-up and situation, as mentioned above. Eagles + Skirms can be countered by infantry or cavalry. Archer civs often have strong Skirms themselves (especially Vietnamese), so they can even counter Skirms by their own Skirms, plus a counter for the other unit.
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I have to add, that if your eco allows it viets elephants could run over knights and skirms. You can, eventually make youe own skirms to counter halbs from your opponent
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One thing to note here is that if your opponent invests into skirm + knight upgrade he is behind economically but has much superior army so you really should play defensively and add stonewalls and castles to survive the next 10 minutes. If you can manage a fast Imp Arbs are good again and it is probably what I would try with Britons. Against eagles + skirms longswordsmen are not a bad idea.
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Heavy disagree with this. If opponent has gone knights firstly they already have more knights. So you have a lot of tech besides the obvious production to catch up. There’s also a high probability they actually have either an eco or civ bonus that is helping their knights.
Agree with this though. One of the issues archer haters have with archers is that they don’t burn food as fast as knight builds so they can tech like bosses nevermind food is one of the slowest resources to obtain.
Agreed, but imo then you kinda either have to stone wall so his eagles don’t run circles and nail your base. Or you have to be aggressive on his base to force an engagement since LS are so slow.
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Don’t forget monks are also a hard counter to kts. It takes a bit of practice but if you can learn to use them every civ has access to a knight counter…
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If he goes knight + skirm he doesn’t have more knights or he didn’t add TCs so you only need to defend your base with the knights (or he lacks crucial upgrades). Monks and pikemen of course counter them better but not the skirms. The part with the longswordsmen I agree, that’s just how you play them against meso.
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Eagle Skirm is countered by longsword line. Knight skirm is countered by monks or pike ram or pike onager, or camels if your civ has it available.
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Eagles+skirms doesn’t seem hugely sensible, because both counter archers, and both can be countered by the man at arms line. Eagles+archers is more sensible, because the archers counter the man at arms line that might be used to counter the eagles. I watched a game recently along those lines with Mayans vs Britons. Mayans made eagles and plumed archers, and Britons made skirms and champions. So the Britons player wanted to engage the plumed archers with the skirms, and the eagles with the champions, while the Mayans player wanted to engage the other way round. So it all came down to which player was most effective at microing their army to engage in the way that favoured them.
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There are a lot of specifics the answer depends on, I’d say. Firstly, are you Britons or Vietnamese? Britons have an easier time playing defensive with just archers while Vietnamese have better knights. Then, are you playing vs knight/skirm or eagle/skirm? If the latter you can also go for knights (at least with vietnamese), if the former it depends on the knight numbers of your opponent. If someone goes for an aggressive knight/skirm strategy you usually should be aware of that by late feudal age. This composition is so costly in terms of food that you can’t start producing both when you arrive in castle. Mostly, it results from one player going scouts and skirms in feudal. If you as viets/britons made a lot of archers in feudal age and you manage to keep them alive you can stay defensive with your xbows and add tcs. You probably will be the first player to reach castle age in that scenario. If your map is okay, defend and boom (both civs are actually really good in that). If you face an 1 tc all-in keep producing archers, keep them close to your tcs and maybe add mangonels and/or monks depending on your numbers. Also you can make an extra tc on stone to get an early defensive castle which oftentimes can straight win you the game. So there isn’t a really a general answer but the most important stuff are the usual defensive steps like locking down certain areas with buildings and keeping your army around the exposed areas. And oftentimes it is advisable not to rush to imp but focusing on expanding your base and your vill lead. If you survived to the point where you have multiple tcs and a good farming eco you can add light cav to raid your opponent or catch off reinforcements.
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