I mean in early Feudal age. In Castle age you have to transition into something else…
Castle age crossbows and imperial age skirmishers are usable without thumb ring
“How are Goth one Dimensional???”
Lists build orders that all start with drush or maa rush
3 Likes
They will be dead tech in the Imperial Age, better go with Skirms or Cav Archers.
1-dimensional civs lead to civ wins though.
Britons & Goths are worst at this, in my impression. (At least at my skill-level.)
In feudal age you can go archers with pretty much any civ if it makes sense in that particular situation (at least on open maps). At some point you indeed should transition away from them with civs like Goths but sometimes you just need archers to get to what you want to do later on.
Fistly, civs win can happen with very flexible civs, as well. And unless you are 2k+ there aren’t really civ wins. There is better and worse civs, of course, but strategy and execution is still the way more important part. Also I don’t see how Goths have a lot of civ wins. Even the often cited Goths Mayans matchup isn’t as bad as people tend to claim (Mayans are still the better early game civ).
1 Like
There are a number of civs with which I just can’t beat Britons. Portuguese is one of them. I’m not 2k+ at all 
It’s true I’ve seen some civ wins with ‘more flexible’ civs, for example with Italians vs Vietnamese. But that’s due to Italians being too weak, (doing the same things Vietnamese do worse and not being equiped to exploit Vietnamese weaknesses) which can be discussed separately. Other cases of civ-wins between flexible civs can probably also be discussed separately.
Of course if I’d played those ‘civ-win’ matches better I could still have won, (because a 2k+ player could probably win with any civ against any of my opponents,) but I’d have had to play as if I was much stronger than I am, which doesn’t happen very often.
Well, at least in 1200+ elo games almost every game starts with late dark age or early Feudal age aggression. And Goth have a lot of good option there. Basically for every common early game strategy (except scout rush / on water maps) they have a decent bonus.
2 strategies I forgot:
MAA + Towers and the very risky 24+2 FC.
It seems like the “one dimensional” civs are mostly the original civs, newer civs seem to have more mixture of play styles (I’m generalizing a bit) but the original civs such as Franks, Goths, Britons, Mongols, Celts, turks, and Huns all seem to have their primary strategies, it might not be completely fair to call them one trick ponies but they each have obvious strengths and weaknesses.
Idk if this should be called bad design, but it’s probably not ideal. Though I do like that players can choose to go with civs that are all in on one strat, or they can chose to go with blended civs that might not have the same super strong punch, but are also less predictable.
Sorry you are absolutely right - I meant hunting bonus
You can also say the orignal Civs have a clear identity. As well as I think that Goths are indeed to one-dimensional, as are also the meso civs because of the lack of cavalry.
I miss the identity of newer civs. The DE civs lack an identity, they just have cool or strong UU.
Lithuanians vs Bulgarians will never be as epic as mayans vs goths or franks vs teutons. Even if you know what the gameplan of these civs is, it’s still fun.
I like to have both, versatile civs aswell as civs with a clear identity. But i think the devolepers are out of ideas for civ identities, so the TO shouldn’t bother.
I think having some civs with clear identities, and some with more mixed identities is good.
I never played much Magic the gathering, but it seems like players can build very one identity decks (all red) or mixed identity decks (like blue and white) and it keeps things interesting. Not a perfect analogy but it seems similar.
I haven’t played britons in years, so I wonder, are there different roles for archer line and longbows? I mean, are there situations were one is better than the other? Or are longbows straight better?
It boils down to whether you have the time and money to use castle production and buy elite longbow, or you need to spam faster out of archery ranges .
4 Likes
Ethiopians are not as one-dimensional as Goths. They have one of the best siege weapons in the game, and the Shotels are excellent against a lot of units and strategies. Unlike britons, Ethiopians are not exceptionally weak to rams thanks to Shotels and powerful onagers.
3 Likes
While some comp players may not like 1d civs, in my personal experience they are easy for younger/newer players to play as they only have to focus on one type of unit. Changing/removing them would make the game less accessible imo, though at least there is the art of war to help them now.
3 Likes