If he thought the slavs were better suited, clearly he would have picked them. He didn’t, so unless you think he was trolling with picks against Hera in HC IV, your point falls flat. He picked it for specifically Hera, countering Hera’s play, yes, we agree on that, but he specifically picked Berbers for that. The difference is that he didn’t pick one of those other civs. He picked the Berbers.
Now, we’ll either acknowledge that the Berbers have an unparalleled strength in that regard with castle age All-in’s, or you’re of the belief that Viper picked them on a whim and there’s no real reason why he couldn’t have picked a different civ, and if you believe that I don’t know what to say to you, besides you are heavily underestimating the value of a raw unit discount.
No we are not. If you read over his HC IV review he specifically called Byz/Huns 50:50. He specifically called Berbers a counter for Hera’s Mayans on Arabia. Berbers have some of the best camels in any age and Mayans do not get Cavalry so clearly he sees value in that castle age push.
Yes, he picked berber because you can make mass kts slightly better than slavs, that needs a bit more farm. I know that, thank you very much.
Celts are more suited for all in then berbers. There you go, have one civ that can do it better. But you know, since in a draft you pick civ s for a lot of maps it’s not a given you get the best one for what you have in mind
I’m not underestimating shit man. Berbers are good for all ins, but they are not even the best one for that. This reminds me of your old argument about malays’ battle ele
Yeah, he called them a counter for his defensive playstyle, i read that statements when they came out. But you are saying a massive load of bullshit and calling them facts. Let’s go over what you said about berbers:
thei feudal age is generic
this is not true. You might save a vills here and there, but the main reason you see man at arms is to keep open the base of the opponent for the folow up arvhers. There come the damage, but somehow people still think thta the value of the m@a rush lies exclusively in killing vills with them
no, thei feudal is generic. They don’t have a single bonus that helps their feudal out.
The bonus you get from faster vills on farming is neglegible. It simply isn’t a good enough farming bonus.
That’s the only true part, they can be deadly in castle, BUT THEY ARE NOT S TIER.
You are not properly evaluating anything, you are just convinced by yourself. There’s not a single pro who’d place berbers in S tier. Not a single one.
Let’s bring the guy who you quoted to convince people Berbers are S tier: the Snek put them in B tier on arabia and nothing on them ha changed except for Genitours. This is literally the argument when you were telling everyone that the correct pocket play was Malay instead of Khmer for eles, even tho they clearly weren’t
Back to HC4: yes, he took those specifically to counter Hera’s playstyle, but that game could have gone whatever way if it wasn’t for some Hera 's mistake and for Viper’s amazing play.
Just to conclude: according to Viper Slavs, Huns, Khmer, and Franks are all better civs for Arabia, and that’s not even bringing in the other pros. The only one who’d probably put them on A tier is MBL who loves, but that’s it.
Jeez, on the last big arabia tournament (KOTD3) on 75 series they were picked 16 times and played 7 games, winning just 4 of them. Sinc ethey haven’t been changed, it looks like they weren’t (and they aren’t) S tier on arabia
Out of context it sounds like I’m attacking your character.
Within context, it looks very much like you cut my statement into pieces and then picked one expressly sharp bit to pounce on, then decided to get mad about it.
Damn, so we agree, and Berbers had an expressed reason to be picked? Who’d’ve thunk.
Depends on when you want to strike. Celts all-in is early castle age, Berbers all-in is usually later and can have a strong economy behind it. The 3-TC → Hoang Rush doesn’t exist, really.
They have faster walking villagers, which slightly improves farming rate, walling speed, and durability against raids. They are not generic. The bonuses are not prominent but they aren’t zeroes.
This snip is a thread unto itself, but what you’re expecting out of the M@A is dependent on your opponent and the gamestate. The meta has popularized M@A archer but M@A to secure your own map or to pressure greedy defensive play with M@A towers is still a thing.
If you send your own militia forward and your opponent decides on doing the same thing, and you have barracks on different angles (late scouting can do that) you’ll have an advantage on Berbers as a result of the speed bonus. That’s a simple example where the speed makes a difference, and it’s well away from the only example.
Funny enough, I never claimed that they were, I said it was weird that nobody else thought they were. Factually speaking, if we agreed Berbers were “A” tier (which I doubt) then you’d naturally expect the spread of ratings to situate them sometimes in S-tier, usually in A-tier, sometimes in B-tier. Instead, they’re pretty much universally slotted in B-tier with a few notable exceptions, which is extremely odd to me given how much of a problem matchup they are for some of the best civs in the game.
It was you who insinuated, due to my defense of their strengths and indication of their potential, that I had announced I had placed them in S-tier. I’m just surprised they’re rated so low by the plurality of players despite being so strong.
I mean, you’ve assumed everything else, might as well ask. What, exactly, have I convinced myself of? I think you may have convinced yourself of something and you’ve failed to properly evaluate it.
They are still strictly better than Khmer, they were when I said it, they’re still better now, and they’ve gotten better since then.
We’ve been over this, the Malay can do what the Khmer can do, better, and cheaper. I don’t need to convince anyone of this, those that catch on and figure out what’s what get to be on the side of the argument that looks smart when all is said and done. Still can’t believe they keep buffing it. Thanks for the callback. Stop buffing Malay, devs. They’ll get the blindfolds off eventually.
K. So you agree with my point, and spent 33 lines (save quotes) blustering about it. Great.
Literally everyone including pros wasn’t agreeing with you. I wonder why, really. But again, this comes in as a further proof that most of your analysis tends to be laughable at best. I really wonder why everyone had a Khmer pocket and not a Malay one. They must all be really stupid and bad at this game, since Malays’ eles are so much better LUL
This weirdly sounds like you considered them way above their tier, but go ahead.
Players get stuck in a meta. That’s how meta works. Malay aren’t meta, so they haven’t got the exposure needed to understand the strength. That’ll change with time.
For the record, pros weren’t agreeing with anyone, top level teamgames weren’t being run by Khmer or any elephant civ for the entirety of the period whilst the forumgoers were complaining ad nauseum about it. Because it’s not actually that good.
Keep laughing. It doesn’t help your cause, and it won’t make it any less enjoyable when the inevitable comes to pass. Just know that what goes around, comes around. It’s offtopic so I’ll leave it at that.
No, you’ll know when I make a claim like that. Here’s an example:
Malay is extremely underrated, the stats don’t show just how absurdly strong the civ is, aside from Vikings I’d consider them the best all-around civ in the entire game. And while we’re on the record, even though we already nerfed the Vikings a tad with Chieftains, I’d still like to see them toned down just a tad bit more.
People don’t get stuck in the meta. The meta changed a lot, yet we still don’t see malays pocket. I really wondered why.
Literally everyone agreed that Khmer were way too oppresive on the meta and everyone agreed that their eco and ele combination was too oppressive in tgs.
You got a good point tho. Every other eles civ wasn’t played in tgs because they could not afford to do so, while Khmer could and had way too fast eles.
You can ask any 2k+ 1v1 player who also played tgs and they’ll tell you the same: it wasn’t a nerf for 1v1, but for tgs.
I will, don’t worry. The day Malays are a top pocket civ like you said they would be 6 or so months ago i’ll stop laughing
Malay are strong especially on arena, if we are talking only land maps. If we are talking arabia tho, they are not even close to the top civs. I also won’t call them underrated, but do as you wish
When I random Malay pocket, spamming eles is fun but the second my eles are too far away to defend, enemy knights come in and run everywhere and ofc I can’t counter that with some emergency knights to chase them so things become less fun all of a sudden.
For me, its mostly the same- Burgundians down to A tier, Celts down to B, Byzantines and Indians down to C tier, Cumans, Persians and Burmese down to D tier, Koreans and Turks up to B tier
Celts and Byzantines are quite unorthodox civs but i think you’re underrating them.
Celts only struggle vs top tier archer civs in late castle age/early imp in my opinion, if they fail to deal damage earlier. Early/mid game they’re solid and very dangerous, and their late game is strong. Woad raiders are one of the most underrated unique units in my opinion.
Byzantines lack an eco bonus, but they almost always features cheaper units in their composition since feudal age so they can generally keep up until their cheap imp power spike. Buildings bonus is quite strong aswell, in almost any age gives the civ clear advantages.
Celts are an amazing civ for black forest or arena. For arabia their early game m@a rush followed by ranged units mix is strong. But mid game seems weak to me. You don’t get bloodlines so you can’t go full knights + skirms, nor you get Arbalest to do crossbow+light cav/pike. Either some hoang style push in early castle age which is very difficult for average players or defend and boom into halb + siege ram seems to be the play style.
Woads are really good against goths, eagle civs but don’t feel so strong about using them against archer or ca civs.
As far as Byzantines, the cheaper defensive units and cheaper imp are very good on four lakes and some hybrid maps but don’t seem comparable to the likes of Magyars, Ethiopians and others civs on B tier imo
Woads do well vs archers in my experience, expecially paired with siege, they are fast and they close the gap quickly, they’re cheap and train very fast so you can generally get good trades with them.
I find celts castle age being very good actually. Their crossbow play is good, faster firing mangonel really help in that regard, and wood bonus helps getting to castle age faster and helps booming while going for aggression. Yes their transition to imp is awkward bc you’re forced to transition into infantry, the trick is to buy time with castle age aggression and boom behind to get a lead that allows to transition.
Even on arabia are pretty good bonus I’d say. I see byzantines being way better than any C tier civ tbh