Is Maya vs Britains, broken?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I am a newer player here, I’m not going to pretend I’m super knowledgeable, so humor me.
In my first game vs the Maya playing as the Britons, I had such a bad experience, and this was before they got the new skirmisher upgrade, that I now refuse to play them in 1v1 when I am British, and I feel like this is one of the few truly broken match ups in the game, I am not saying this is a fact I am saying that this is how I feel, so please hear me out, and lets discuses this for augments sake.
Basically in my first match up everything I did and tried, ended in eagle warriors, and plumed archers having no viable counter that I could find, ever ranged unit I built was rendered 100% ineffective by eagle warriors, I also found it literally impossible to block them from getting to my archers/skirmishers, and any amount of champions I built would be killed by there archers, I tried scorpions as well as catapults to and the same thing happened.

Here is my problem with this match, I feel like the Maya have every possible advantage over the British, I feels like I’m playing vs the goths, but with the best archers, and now skirmishers in the game, I would play vs goths any day over the Maya; further more Eagle warriors seem to be comically broken in this match up countering almost every unit I can create, only a small hand full of unites seem to be viable that kind of, sort of, counter them a little, unless they have archers, in which case most of theses unites become useless’ this is not mentioning that they now have possibly the best skirmishers in the game now.

I am not saying that this is all facts its just how I see the match, and I welcome any explanation or comment that any one may have, but when I think about this match up I can not come to any other conclusion, I play an archer race with little options besides archers, and the enemy has a race with better archers, among the best anti archers unites the game, and now possibly the best trash unite in the game, I can not in any way see how this is an even match, I feel like I am out gunned on every level, please help lol.

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Briton Champions are excellent against Eagles. You can also use Light Cavalry to raid.

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that was the first thing I did, but the plumed archers, would always kill them, My own archers were useless vs eagle warriors, I feel like I lost partly because its melee unites, and arches, vs melee unites that are immune to arches, supported by better archers.

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It sounds like you’re avoiding the knight line just because the Britons don’t have any bonuses for cavalry and miss bloodlines. But just because a civ has a weaker version of a unit doesn’t mean it can’t be the best tool for the job. Importantly the Britons are not missing the last cavalry armor tech.

In general, plumes cost too much (even with the discount) in castle age and do too little damage in imperial age to be cost-effective vs knights/cavalier with the last armor. It’s a little harder without bloodlines but it still works. The real issue is regular xbow and arbs which can be massed in large amounts very quickly due to their discount. Either have to take advantage of your extra range or make skirms and bleed the gold.

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Britons are stronger in feudal and castle age, even the post imperial army composition is a bit stronger on the britons side, you just need to use your advantage in time, other than that all meso civs counter archer line badly.

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The Eagle Warrior line would like to have a word with you.

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The champion would like to have a word with you as well. Also i watched one of heras streams a while ago and a user asked what to do against mayans as britons. He mentioned going for double gold unit in castle age i think and you should be able to overpower them

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Don’t get disheartened. Mayans are tricky to beat for new players. The Mayan bonuses make for a very smooth and easy gameplay/gameplan, while also being able to often outlast enemies in terms of gold.

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Mayans are high tier civ. But they also struggle against civs like Malians, Aztecs, etc. Britons and Mayans are definitely a very good match up, it’s definitely not a civ win.

Btw, concerning the Mayans Skirms, they are not even that good at all. The silver crown gives a 50% of applying a 1 damage. It’s not a double damage like Khmers Scorpions or the 3 damage per extra arrow on the Kipchak and Chu Ko Nu.

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Skirmishers counter archers; swordmen counter eagle warriors. You need to stop thinking that the only unit you can produce as Britons are archers.

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as someone else pointed out, knights + xbow together can be very strong vs meso civs.

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You also have to throw in some swordman against Eagle warriors.

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Try also being defensive - adding in wall bunkers to allow your archers/siege less chance to be sniped via melee and hold down an area - may be used offensively as well - go for longbows to gain maximum range advantage

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Tldr; one of the reason why people die so much to eagles below 1k5 elo (even above to be fair) is because they either try to stick to kts, xbows or, even worse, to longswords. The best way to deal with them is having decent micro and go for kts having massed 15/20 xbows behind. Yeah, this is true even if you are playing brits.

Now, to the longer answer. On arabia mesos can pull out some crazy all ins with eagles or even a good number of eagles + eco, I think we all know that.
The problem is the answer: generally speaking, a meso civ will always open with some sort of archer opening, be it drush-arch/fc, man at arms-arch or very low pop straight archers: that’s because eagle scout are not exactly viable in feudal due to high time creation they needed. That’s the main and actual reason why longsowrd are not a viable counter to eagles in early castle: because most of the time the mayans/meso player will already have a bunch of archer that he can just upgrade and then he has the counter to the longswords.

Kts on the other hand are pretty amazing against eagles overall, but they also have a weak point: you’ll need a bit of time to mass them, while the eagles production usually starts while going up to castle age, and they are easily countered by mixing some pikes in.
If he stays 100% full eagle kts only is fine, provided you upgrade them at the blacksmith.

But you are brits, and you have probably gone archers in feudal, so here’s the key: upgrade your archers to xbows + bodkin and avoid losing them: once you have kts, you can force whatever fights you like against the mayans’. Your xbows will be there mostly to kill the pikes and/or the monks he’ll eventually mix in. Ofc this requires a bit of micro, but it’s the best way you have to deal with these kind of pushes in castle.

In imp it’s a whole different story tho

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If yoi go longswords + skirms against mayans in castle you are 100% dead

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Could you expand on that? I said longswords and skirmishers based solely on the counter-units for Eagles and Plumed archers. Maybe you have more experience in such scenarios and you can with all certainty say that it’s a bad strategy.

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The main reasons are two:

  • lack of mobility
  • effectiveness of the engagements

If you go for such an army comp you have to chase them and your opponent can pick whatever fight he pleases.

The second reason is that, while plumed archers kill longsword, the same can’t be said for skirms with eagles. Your longsword would get picked off by the plumes, while yojr skirms would just tickle the eagles. Even if you manage to engage, eagles + plumed literally kill longswords + skirms with no micro neeeded.

Also, what I wrote remains 100% true even if you switch the plumes out and sub in xbows in their place

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One way to deal with Mayans imho is just to pressure them very fast. You can also go full Hoang on them. Works for me, and it’s what I recommend in general.

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I had a Brits Vs Mayans 1v1 recently and i did men at arm’s arch he also did same open. Forced him into skirm defence went home with arch once he shows his skrims then and just saved up for castle as he invested so much into skirms (which can’t hurt me behind walls and delay his own castle time) hit castle did bodkin xbow upgrade and made two knights and cleared his army of skirms then he just masses tonnes of arch after and we trade slightly better for me and I take him off woodlines. At some point I have him vastly outnumbered with arch and it’s obvious that he has no other option than eagles and I notice he doesn’t make arch anymore and doesn’t fight me head on so I instinctively make cavalier switch and stop making arch completely and he hits imp two mins later streams eagles at my arch army where I’ve hidden cav out behind them out of sight at that point he cant outrun the cav and is drawn away from his own castles. I just took really small game decisions to win the best thing I did was anticipate the eagle switch. And have FU imp cavalier ready for those eagles. I found this match very theoretically interesting. The key facing Mayans is spotting the transition. Usually making knights aswell as arch can be good too as Brits normally you don’t want to do this having two gold units but the Mayan player will also be going double gold too so it’s not bad and you have more manoeuvrability with cav than he does with his meelee unit and more range with your ranges units so together should give the advantage if you keep his arch numbers from reaching a big number which Mayans can easily do.

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You cannot win against plumes and eagles as britons without pulling off some micro and weird unit composition. You probably need champions as your gold unit and 9 range skirms as your trash to kill the plumes. You would need to micro skirms to plumes sjnce they are useless against eagles. Using couple of scorps, rams and/or warwolf trebs against the plumes would be useful. I would not make single arbalester or longbow against mayan composition.

One thing to note is that mayans need a lot of gold to make that army. One better option than microing could be to raid their eco before they get to that combination.

PS: I am a noob 11

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