The host set the game to start in Imperial Age, 3v3, in Amazon Tunnel.
Me and one of my allies are Tatars, while the third ally in my team is Persian.
My opponents are Italians, Byzantines, and Slavs.
I made Cav Archers and Keshiks, while the Persian player made paladins
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just to see them get beaten to a pulp by mass Byz cataphracts, skirms, Italian Genoese XBows, and Slavic Boyars, onagers, infantry, especially halbs. And, we lost the match 11
Are the Italians, Byzantines, and Slavs such a nightmare for Persians and Tatars?
Italians in imp are a great counter to cavalry civs with their genoese xbows.
Even to war elephants, so yes for them.
Slavs are a powerhouse in imp with their super strong siege workshop, boyars and infantry.
Byzantines, while not that strong they are flexible enough to adapt their composition to what the team needs.
An honourable mention goes to the Cataphracts, that without stronger cav or cav archers is pretty hard to counter and italians are there to counter that.
Hard matchup for sure.
Maybe the best thing to do is to try to force some 1v1, at least is easier to figure out what to do.
By picking the same civ you and your ally limited your choices, this is something I’d try to avoid next time.
I would have picked a siege civ (a civ with good siege + bonuses or UT for siege) to complete your team, Teutons or Ethiopians probably, since they have bombard cannons, FU halbs and Siege Onagers. Teutons can also go Paladins if the situation demands it, while Ethiopians Bombards and (Siege) Onagers are devastating with Torsion Engines… Other valid options would have been Portuguese or Bohemians, if you wanted more gunpowder. Houfnice is a beast and more accurate Cannons (Arquebus) is always welcome.
Which map did you play?
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Then you definitely needed a civ with bonuses for siege in your team.
Amazon Tunnel is not as closed as Black Forest, but not really as open as Arabia or other maps, you can push on a line and siege definitely helps with that.
Amazon tunnel is actually a lot more closed than most bf generations - you have 1 tunnel which is always easy to wall off - on bf the flanks often play sokotra and can keep a side open or easy to push as the own walls are at the opponent base making walling behind hard - there is a lot of castleage agression in bf actually just look at rage forest 3.
And tartars are a pretty bad civ on that map - bad siege options - CA get rekt by Siege in that closed Tunnel if you want an archer unit go longbows - they outrange everything except houfnice enough. Italians arent great either so. If I needed to pick civs on that map I’d go civs like Britons, boehmians, Celts, Teutons, Mongols, Ethiopians, Koreans e.g.
Persians can be strong here if you get to the eco that you can spam war eles - but hard to get there 
. You also want to cut for better trade on amazon tunnel.
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Yeah, Italians eat Persians like candy if you don’t have any Siege on your team.
One civ that could be great as well is Sicilians, their Cavalier are somewhat more resistant to Genoese and they also get SO.
I have no idea why you’d have Tatars twice though, that alone means you’ll have nightmare matchups. Maybe you could have spammed Bombard Towers if they only made Onagers, but you’ll still be fighting an uphill battle. Persians player also has to rely on BBC to clear out Genoese mass or Siege.
Nothing special about the enemy. Your own team composition was terrible for Amazon tunnel
Nevermind the likely issue of whether your opponents were actually better players because they used a more diverse army composition
Tatars want open maps, and if anything their keshik is meant for smaller TGs. Leaving only their CA.
Imo the currently best team comp for tunneling maps is Koreans, Britons, Persians and Bohemians.
Another intersting comp is Saracens, Goths, Turks and Spanish (Vietnamese).
I am not a big fan of Italians there tbh as the only thing they can really add is GC and GC besides having ice damage against Eles can be picked of kinda easily by BBCs.
For a 3-civ combo I would probably stick with Koreans, Persians and Bohemians.
Mongols, Turks + Vietnamese also is an option there or Britons, Teutons, Persians - Saracens, Goths, Spanish - Ethiopians, Goths, Burmese.
Note, the units I value the highest are BBC / Siege Onager. Elephants + At least one > fu arb civ. Then the comb should have a (ranged) counter to infantry and cavalry aswell. I tried to chose the comps in a way they cover each others weaknesses and can build some kind of unstoppable deathball where the individual units synergize well with each other.
I think there could also be some interesting comps with incas, indians or malians, but I don’t have good concepts how to combine them currently. Their UUs are insanely strong but hard to implement in a 3- or even 4-civ deathball. They are probably better in 2-civ combos and/or more open maps.
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