Is Maya vs Britains, broken?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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These are the two key factors of brits vs mayans.
You need to use your bonussese to your advantages. Eagles are no prob until they get el dorado. But this sets the mayan player on a timer.

So they are some key things as britons vs mayans you need to understand and execute, then you should deal with mayans very well.

A) Mayans have the better start. It’s no discussion about that. You need to wall early. Fortunately you can as briton player, as you have the sheep bonus.

B) Don’t be too greedy. Mayans have an insane early game, don’t try to skip it completely, this can backfire. Try to hold. Get Information about the mayans amount of archery ranges, try to answer them with your own, but stay below the number.

C) Make use of your range! Stay behind your walls and try to lure your opponents archers to go to close to your walls, try to stay outside of his range.

D) Make advantage of your boom. Mayans boom is one of the worst in the game. Britons is one of the best. A good amount is about 3 TCs running. If the mayan player wants to outboom he has to make 5 TCs, if he wants to push, he has to stay at 1. But He will have probs to push against your range.

E) Beat Mayans with Gold advantage. The 3 TC play should almost alway lead to a faster imp Time, forcing the mayan player into mass eagles + Plumes. A very Gold heavy comp. Try to make skirms + longbows + skorps. The range of longbows will allow your to keep them save, while the skirms soak most of the damage. The skorps are effective against almost everything mayans can throw at you.

F) Stay calm. Britons are very hard to push and the tiime is only going to work in your favor. Once Mayans are out of Gold, they are dead.

Edit: Please understand that mayans are one of the best arabia civs overall. Don’t expect to beat them with a strat like this all the time. But I personally think, that britons are one of the best civs to counter mayans.

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22

Champs and skirms I don’t think would be good Vs eagles plumes. Skirms will only tickle eagles and do good Vs plumes whereas eagles will not just tickle the champs won’t do great Vs them but they have advantage and the plumes will destroy champs quick enough to where the eagles gain advantage also skims usually overshoot a unit I think is right word (where you micro like 20-30 skirms Vs one unit where only 7-10 would kill it making it really slow and inefficient) so the plumes will just pick and choose targets fast on their own at the front automatically, this one of the biggest reasons why skirms suck late game. I think cavalier arb is best. Usually if opponent goes double gold unit you have to go double gold to beat them unless there’s some other big factor at play like bigger army or tech advantage. I also remember once playing arena Britons Vs Mayans when I was much lower Elo and went champs longbow Vs eagles plumes lol not best combo lost fast. Best army would be probably either cavalier longbow or cavalier arb (if you can keep longbow alive they will do better than arb cos of +50% damage all from extra 1damage output +1 range is stronger) cavalier arb on open maps like arabia and cavalier longbow on arena is best. Of course brits shine too cos Mayans will have worse late game army if using best army comps and can’t use onager or scorpions Vs full Brit range another reason why you shouldn’t use skirms in this instance.

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For various reasons I recommend using the comp I mentioned above.
I don’t like LS, knights or even scouts against mayans as britons. I don’t think they are viable.

Maybe on different matchups, but Mayans have so a strong start, you have to thinkt defensive first, before going out and engange. And with this the extra range of britons actually comes in handy.

I know archer players don’t really like to mix in skirms, but in a archer vs archer matchup as britons, it can be very usefull to use skirms instead of scouts/light cav as a meatshield. Especially against eagles as they don’t deal as much damage as knights.

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I think skirms +longbows + scorps is too much of a army comp Vs eagles plumes as you need many more buildings to pull it off and lots of upgrades for three different units and can be destroyed by only massed eagles in spread formation to dodge most of scorps fire. Might be possible on arena to pull this off with so much time and resources and closed map fighting but on arabia you want a more versatile army for all situations which is easier to transition into and that’s straight up men at arms into arch into crossbow into knights. It’s much easier too because at some point he probably loses arch numbers due to range disadvantage or gets sick of you hitting his woodline with Brit range and either counters with skirm or eagle Vs the early castle age woodline crossbow raids, so knight is the foolproof addition in early to mid castle. Even if he doesn’t have eagles you can still break his house walls with knights while ranging his arch with your own arch . Knights usually great Vs Mayans the more I think of this matchup the more I like Brits rather than Mayans. Also stables and ranges as main production is great. Also if you go crossbow knight you usually hit him hard early enough before he has time to make multiple castles and build plumes to deadly amount. He will be forced to try outnumber your arch and maybe use pikes cos eagles won’t work Vs knights and he cant mass them till imp fast enough. It’s very messy and not clear army for Mayans to use. Imo Mayans should do like 4range arch into forward castle or siege workshop Vs Brits cos it seems kinda harder matchup than I thought before. Was a lot easier when they had obsidian arrows 11

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Against mayans, every civ has probs in open maps like arabia.
And I said it above.
It’s a hard task to consistigly deal with mayans with any civ.

But I think that Britons are actually one of the civs which can do it. But you need to make use of the various bonusses which britons have.

As I said before the time should play into the favor of the britons player, so he should think about a defensive (and to some extend greedy game) and try to make use of his range.
I think britons should actually have a quite good matchup with mayans, but as mayans are one of the best arabia civs overall, it will still be hard to execute.

Don’t forget britons excel in many other maps where it is way easier to make use of the range.

I don’t consider Britons to be one of the best arabia civs.

Edit: BTW I don’t think knights without any bonusses with any civ are viable against mayans. Their discount and early eco bonus is just too strong. That’s one of the points why this civ is such a beast in arabia.

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Ya I agree i am not crazy good at 1v1 but I think that Brits Vs Mayans is a skill matchup with slight edge to Brits. Probably very close. Could honestly go either way. Brits will have faster creating arch initially to snowball their army early fuedal. Should force Mayans into skirms or eagles where first few knights even zero upgraded knights will tear through them (don’t need much upgrades Vs skirms and eagles in early castle ). Mayans played by pros should make it hard to get to this point though I think, cos they make better use of their starting eagle scout power over horse scout of Brits for early opening advantage and maybe when Mayans arch rush early they add one eagle only to offset the bigger Brit arch army. Bearing in mind that Brits will need to make a whole extra building the stable to counter this. Really think like stable to make 2knights at start of castle age is really strong Vs Mayans assuming you have taken the arch lead and forced them to skirms eagles not really an option yet. Also stable nice for just making knights to surprise raid or maybe scout for scouting number of ranges/ plume transition. If I saw him go stone I probs have to go crazy aggro and go all in tbh cos late game your screwed as Brits Vs plumes in imp, cavalier will do not much might even go all in 3-4 stable knights castle age cos will be fully ungraded knights at that point and prevent him from imping this way or kill him if he imps lightly 3-4 stable knights would give enough damage to kill TCs. I think early castle drop won’t be possible anyway as Mayans cos you just give up any army advantage when you should already be behind in numbers.

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I don’t understand why it’s imperative to believe that Britons have a tough time against Mayans. Swordmen kill Eagles. It’s simple as that. Some users above twisted my words and stated the obvious: that Plumed Archers defeat Swordmen and Skirmishers do nothing against Eagles. That’s why I’m suspecting that there’s a mandate to put the Mayans as superior.

Of course Eagles are faster than Swordmen, but saying that Swordmen are a bad choice against them, is like saying that Pikemen are ineffective against Cavalry because horses outrun them.

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If it’s just swordsmen Vs eagles only your right it’s good. Think we above were saying that if their are arch behind on both sides it’s not good anymore.

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The other thing you’re not factoring is creation time. Eagle Scout takes 60 second to create, while Men-at-arms only 21.

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Keeping up both plumes AND eagles production is very gold heavy. Even with the longer lasting resources, that will burn through the gold piles real quick. So that does put the mayan player on a timer. As missing either of these units will put the mayan player into a weak position. No eagles means getting outranged and kited by LB. No Plumes means Champions will handle Eagles.

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Mayans have both better eco and units in 1v1 arabia. That’s the reason mayans are favourite in this matchup. This thing is a whole different story on arena.

And yes, longswords do kill eagles, but eagles and xbows is a way better comp than longsword + xbows. Also, Eagle warriors take 35 sec to create, just the scout version takes a lot of time

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People don’t go longsword Vs Mayans though they go knight xbow. Longsword Vs an arch civ is bad in almost all cases. It’s domination one way or another if longsword involved but think it’s more even with optimal army comp can’t say I’ve been in Brits xbow Knight fight with eagles Xbow enough times Vs equal opponents to say which is objectively better though

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That’s what I already explained in another comment tho :slight_smile:

Mayans are still favourite, but that’s the best shot you have as Brits

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Oh ok sorry I forgot your comment thought you were implying Mayans better because longswords suck in the general matchup for Brits. Can you explain why specifically Mayans have the better matchup? I would have thought that Brits having faster drush, earlier men at arms, faster arch production, better drush FC, good boom imo with cheaper TCs for affording eco and army simultaneously in early castle and I think Brits have better overall army comp slightly with Xbox knight. Especially since eagles are weak enough in castle compared to knights. The places I think Mayans shine over Brits are early dark age pressure from stronger scout and late imperial age where Mayan eagle line will stand best chance Vs it’s counter the cavalier. +1vil great too. I like Mayans eco efficiency bonus on woodlines etc but I honestly feel like the power spikes from Britain’s might be better. Oh ya I forgot that Brits drush won’t be as threatening as Mayans will have loom from start. Great strat for Brits to play is pre mill drush Vs Mayans harrass mill Vils and FC into 3 TC boom. Will be way ahead eco wise and even if Mayans tries to mangonel you you have crossbow range. Also feel like Brits men at arms and follow up is better tbh (with earlier timing and scout fuedal advantage) and scout rush Vs Mayans is good too.

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Mayans have better eco overall, and better military options. It’s hard to kill them in castle age and when they reach the elité eagle upgrade usually the brit player is dead.

Since drush-fc on arabia is really hard to pull off nowadays, mayans will have the striaght up better eco for the whole feudal, while also having cheaper units. The Mayans shohld be first to castle age and they are probably gonna go full defensive (it’s not really common to see eagles + xbows for Mayans in castle age, it’s more of an aztecs thing), since the only moment where the Brits have an actual edge is the castle age.

The most common openings in these matchups are drush-archers and man at arms-archers, which Mayans do a bit better because of the long lasting resources (more food on boara, deers and sheeps) while also having the vill lead. From there it’s usually a one archery follow up. Again, brits will have a couple more units, but that’s it.

The castle age +1 range is your best bet, but remember that this goes mostly in early castle, since the longer it goes the more the mayan player will have skirms mixed in with xbows. For the Mayan is just a matter of defending himself till elité eagles, that just completely mop the floor with everything the brits will have early imp. That’s the big reason why they are favourite: they have a better dark and feudal age and all they need to do is reaching early imp

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Yep I need to play Mayans more often I’m more of a fan of Brits since I play them so much in TG. Nice detailed reply thanks :slightly_smiling_face:

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Part of the trick to using Champions to support Archers is learning to use staggered formation, followed by bringing the Champions into the gaps when needed.

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Coming in a bit late to this topic, but I recommend you watch the grand finals of ‘The Open Classic’ between Mr. Yo and Liereyy, more specifically, game 1 (Arabia). Mr. Yo was Britons and he beat Liereyy, who was Mayans. This might give you a better idea of the potential of Britons. :slight_smile: