He picked it as an arabia civ.
It’s commonplace in draft situations to pick your Arabia civs last. Don’t actually know why, just know it’s the case.
They are great!
10% more walking speed is wheelbarrow-lite. I find it to be very significant! Of course the main aspect about wheelbarrow is carrying more (and therefor reducing walking at all), but still, depending on what I’m doing, I find that skipping wheelbarrow for faster castle age time doesnt hinders my eco as much as on other civs.
Cheaper stable units is strong early castle when you are also booming… and the Camel Archer is an amazing UU.
I find that they are favorites against most cavalry civs, due to cheaper knights & the option to get camels and strong against most CA civs due to Camel Archer. They also have FU Skirms, Hussar, Champions, decent siege, HC, full blacksmith… If Chinese is not available and I want to play with a civ that has alternatives, I usually go for Berbers.
Kinda have to agree with @WoeIsToWho about Berbers being a very fun civ on Arabia 1v1. They can do really ridiculous Castle Age all ins with the cheap knights. Although against certain civs it is not that effective, as some civs have very good answers to it. I’d personally put them either very strong B or weak A, but S doesn’t feel it for me. Their eco is nothing special until the knight discount and for me that isn’t S tier worthy.
2 Likes
Berbers, Indians, Bulgarians are easily above Tatars. Their win rate on Arabia is up the roof. Tatars kinda just sitting there at 45%
If you check SOTL farming rate videos you’ll see that faster working villagers are almost irrelevant for farming rate, something like 2 or 3% if I remember correctly, which should be roughly 1/3 or 1/4 the effect of slavs, khmer and aztec bonuses or wheelbarrow and I think comparable to incas TB effect. Basically if you’re Berbers, every 30-40 non wheelbarrow farmers you get an extra farmer, honestly quite negligeable effect.
You know there’s stuff called monks, right? Literally every civs going kts would also mix in pikes and monks. Pikes and kts beat the shit out of camels + pikes. There also the fact that berbers tends to be bad against literally every S tier civ.
I’d take Franks every day of the week (better eco overall and better feudal), burgundians (better eco), Khmer (better eco), Huns (cav archers still kill camels once they are massed + they have halbs + siege ram, the bane of berbers), Slavs (way better eco, and overall amazing counters to what the berbers do best).
They are not S tier even by a long shot tbh, even tho they are still a pretty good arabia 1v1 civ. They have their shots at taking down many of those civs, but they are not even close to be a civ win
He said he wanted it counter his defensive playstyle with mayans, not as a counterpick for mayans. Berbers can apply a very strong early pressure with stable + siege, but if Hera doesn’t go for the straight 3 boom, gets his defensive siege shop faster, if he doesn’t get sttubborn with the full xbows play and adds some spears, it’s a whole different story.
Those weren’t the berbers, it was Viper who played way better better than Hera. Mayans are still the better civ by far, and the reason the game went the way it went was because of how amazing he played in feudal (coming on top of the man at arms fight, blocking the house wall with the scout that let him inside Hera’s base, the fact that Hera didn’t close that gap allowing Viper to enter again in castle deying his defensive siege shop (who tbf should have been build way behind) and the amzing fight under Hera’s tc who none could have taken better. If that castle goes up (a castle that he should have bought way earlier tbh, like when he had 450 stone and 1k gold), Viper is dead, remember that.
It was a counter to the combo of playstyle + civ, not to the civ and it has worked so well because it’s Viper behind the berbers, not because the berbers are op. In fact, he could have done the same thing with the Slavs, for example. Don’t overrate the civ because of one game. We aren’t exactly here saying that Huns counters Byz just because Viper won on cross a game that only Viper could have won, right?
2 Likes
Britons should be ‘S’ or maybe ‘S++’ tier if possible. Or God tier idk.12 range archers aren’t joke .
Franks should be ‘A’ tier (totally predictable) +12 HP paladins are overrated for my opinion.
Tatars should be ‘‘C’’ tier. (only decent Turco civ in game but not strong as it seems.They have good options)
Magyars should be ‘‘A or S ‘’ tier. (Magyars are great civ with best light cav and 2nd best cav archer in game have paladins and decent archers also UU is one of the best by far free Blacksmith upgrades ROCKS generally they are very fierece civ LOVE EM ! )
Portuguese should be ‘‘B or A’’ tier. (They are really strong and superb nowadays with perfect bonuses when i pick them no matter what civ my enemy is i feel pretty confortable.)
Japanase should be ‘‘A’’ tier. (they got anything you may need)
Saracens should be ‘‘C or even D’’ tier. (No eco bonus besides market system general archer gameplay predictable camels are weak in most circumstances)
Cumans and Turks should be ‘’–F’’ tier or should not be on tier list.(Zero eco bonus besides gold mining bonus which is unreliable in most situations +1Pa light cav seemed ok but in practice it doesn’t work because of worst eco in the game plus no skirm no pike that hurts +20 Hp cav archer only good in map editors or unit vs unit situations when it comes to practice it is not something like curve bow UT of magyars so generally speaking Magyars are 90 times better then Turcos when it comes to Hussar+Cav Archer things so why would i pick Turcos besides its arena ? no thanks.When it comes to Cumans, because of weirdo civ desing i think its very hard to balance them.If u touch them little as they have strong potential to be exact broken and op if not they are worst civ by far with other Turco civ Turks.)
in 1000 iq hands all civs even Turco civs (Cumans,Turks) can be really strong i saw many pro games in which Britons have been beaten by Turks but its not the case.
In no tournament Turco civs besides Tatars would be picked (1v1)
Sicilans and Turco civs are unreliable and very weak in open maps they are only arena pick civs.Also they are not superb in arena also.Even if u got endless gold it may took 5-6 hours to beat ur oppoment xD.These civs are not picked in serious games they are only for fun :))
Brits are A tier, arabia is not a drush-fc map anymore
You are forgetting literally evrything else that make them S. Bottom S tier, but still S
They have not eco bonus. Not a single one. They are B tier at best considering all the duration of the game, they become S in late game because of CA + trash
Saracens can literally beat every single civ because of the all in market strats. Not S tier, but certainly not C tier
Turks atm are a solid B tier on arabia
with franks its not about how much health they have, its about how their berry bonus + free farm upgrades + free extra health all streamline to make them a powerhouse.
they have no economy bonus, which makes them very slow. and free attack isn’t that valuable.
ever seen turcos picked in 1v1 open map tournaments ? What makes them solid B ? +1PA scouts ? What makes them better than Magyars ? Magyars are superior compared to turcos if u ask me.Jannissaries need 7/24 baby sitting and dense micro very bad design.If u micro jans especially in castle age they can beat all units if u dont micro them they are beaten by all units easyly.In imp age jans are beaten by allmost every unit.Skirms arbalest + most of UU and cav archers eleps hussars eagles siege heavy cavarly even champs may beat them provided they can catch them.Basicly all units are HARD counter to jans xD while they counter only halbs but due to lack of ROF even generic xbows or eskirms do better then jans when it comes to counter halbs.(rof and overkill with gore attack of 22)No eco bonuses makes it even harder.Maybe worst eco in game by far.Only good option in arena yet in tournament or in serious game turks could be picked in close maps. as they are one trick pony.Predictable
just check their win rate dude.
i may agree it. What u said is logical but for me its still A+ tier not S tier.Just as i said totally predictable.
no matter what it is 12 range archers aren’t joke they beat everything.Herd bonus is huge.Perfect barracks good siege god tier archery so so so so…
Not really, they lack thumb ring and have lower accuracy then even arbs do. how often do you honestly see Longbows? most the time i don’t even see them until imp and even then i don’t see them every game.
Are Britons good? yes. is 12 range Longbows good? yes. is it broken? no.
No way. They have great options, eco is passable and their castle age power spike and their late game are amazing.
Too much for civs with issues in the mid game.
I would call saracens anything but predictable 11. They can do litterally anything with the market.
I think people underestimate cuman feudal boom at the moment. It’s not always as punishable as most people seem to think, and if they manage to pull it off decently they can compete with most civs. Turks are not an amazing civ, but their imp is very good.
Their scouts are straight up better than Magyars scouts in almost every situation, they actually have a good eco bonus and a strong comp (light cav + CA).
They are considered S tier by every arena player
Win rate means shit, especially at lower levels
Being predictable is not a being thing in AoE2. Brits will always go for archers, and yet here you are saying it’s S tier o’clock for them
They don’t have mobility on arabia. 12 range archers still die to cavalry, eagles, skirms and rams.
Lacking accuracy sometimes do better (missing shots do dmg to near units) + Briton arbalest with 11 range is not a joke also + 9 range eskirms mamma mia 
Yea they are not broken but they superb and i love playing them
no they are not.20 characters
A tier list that shows Turks above the last possible tier is just wrong. Turks are so trash that the single eco bonus related to gold cannot get them above 50% win rate even in gold heavy maps like gold rush.
Their unit composition is so s##t that even having all blacksmith upgrades cannot give them an edge over any other civ. Top players can classify them an S tier in arena sure, but those top players are like 20 30 people in the world who can do magic in certain match ups AND in certain window. When the window is over, the tiger becomes a cat.
Sure you have janissaries and good cav archer if you can get to that point and not until they can overrun you with trash counters.
1 Like
My two cents on the berber matter:
I think S tier should generally be the civs people complain about for being too good. Going down the list of 1v1 Arabia 1650+ elo winrates on what I think is the latest patch I feel like only four civs could be considered for that: Incas, Mayans, Chinese and Franks. For an overall, non-personalized tier list based around high level play those are the fout I would consider putting in S. We don’t have to place them there, Inca’s might be a bit of a statistical fluke for instance, but they’re the ones I would consider. That would leave the civs right below them as the obvious candidates for A tier: Celts, Indians, Berbers, and after that more civs that are not very interesting to the Berber discussion. With a 53% winrate and only 2 clearly not S tier ranked civs above them on the list, I would argue A is in fact the best place to put Berbers. The existence of bad match ups for them due to Berbers relying too much on specific parts of the tech tree does not do enough for me to change this. The fact thet you’re having a debate over whether they should be considered S tier or B tier also points in this direction.
Of course, these are your tier lists, I can’t tell you they’re wrong, being right or wrong depends entirely on the exact meanings and ideas behind these lists and your interpretation of them. But for the general case I would argue for placing Berbers in A tier. A little weak in the early phases, but two great options for powerful play (knights-camels and camel archers) and one of the best discounts around.
The best arena player in the world says hi
Tbf you can go for scouts, just need to transition later. Can surprise opponent if you can hide your stables 