Order of the Dragon bad or not?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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I can’t seem to quite figure this civ out. I want to like them so bad since their playstyle and aesthetics strongly appeal to me but something feels…off. I’m a casual player but can usually beat the Hardest AI without much trouble, but with the Order I’m struggling to even beat the Mongols sometimes (for context the AI is horrible at the Mongols for some reason). I am perpetually out of resources and unable to keep production up which I can do fine with other civs, and their units don’t always seem as strong as they’re supposed to be. Is there some hidden factor I’m missing?

I’ve seen posts on Reddit claiming the problem is that their eco bonus for their villagers doesn’t compensate for their high costs if you do the math. Others claim that their units do not have double strength in practice for various hidden reasons, and that only their archers are as good as advertised. But then on the other hand I watch YouTube guides that show them to have one of if not the highest winrate in the competitive PvP scene. what gives!?

Is archer spam all there is to them? I’ve seen posts claiming that their knights are garbage and only have 1.5x strength for 2x cost and population space. Some say the same about their infantry. I have seen several claims that their hand cannoneers are super strong, but whenever I transition into them I lose horribly because they’re so absurdly expensive yet still very fragile. A lot of guides suggest early raids with light cavalry but this seems to only work in PvP.

So what’s the deal with this faction? Are they good but only in PvP?

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Their units are very good, typically 1 OOTD unit will beat 2 regular units. Unexperienced players see that the stats of the units aren’t exactly double yet they cost double the price and population and they think the units are weak when if they did have double the stats they’d be ridiculously broken. All of the units have a built in production bonus as while they’re like 2 units they don’t take anywhere near as much time to train as 2 individual units. Just because the gilded knight doesn’t have the same stats as 2 individual knights doesn’t mean it won’t beat 2 individual knights remember when 1 of those knights dies the dps halves but the gilded knight remains at max dps until the end.

Each gilded villager is just over 11% better than a standard villager, they’re also much tougher and so less vulnerable to raids. Once you reach max villagers they have a 28% eco bonus on every villagers gathering so their late game eco is not bad at all.

Due to your units requiring more food up front to start training and your vills costing more food it’s always a good idea to get vills out gathering deer early and research survival techniques to offset your heavy food requirements.

All in all they are a great faction that can do anything, they can FC into relics, FC burgrave, 2tc, feudal all in and their horseman is basically a tankier early knight so you can raid with them early on.

The biggest downside to OOTD is they have a very harsh farm transition, farms cost 75 wood and there’s no bonuses or discounts that really offset this cost in any way or that significantly buff farms to make it worthwhile. Rus for example have 20% extra wood drop off, same with china and zhu xi have both more drop off and a discount. Due to this typically you need to win games in 1v1 before you need farms, once a farm transition is needed you often lose the game.

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The Dragon’s Order has its tricks:

  • The joke is that by having fewer units, you CANNOT waste units under any circumstances, you have to value them as entire armies, or even heal them constantly, and make strategic retreats to heal them aggain.

  • The other trick is that it is excellent for LATE GAME and MID GAME, but its early game is weak so it is suggested that you play defensively in the first ages or do Fast Castle.

  • I don’t know how they can say that their knights are garbage, if in reality they are one of the deadliest cavalry in the game.

Practice a little more with them and you will get the hang of it.

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Yeah I’ve certainly felt these harsh farm transitions, really contributes to me feeling perpetually out of resources. So you HAVE to win with them early? Honestly that seems impossible given how bad their eco feels in the earlygame, at least to me. The guy below you said the opposite, that their earlygame is weak but they’re good for lategame. So which is it? I do grab deer early and pretty much empty the map of them, yet I still can’t keep up with my food needs.

As for their production time, it certainly feels like they take double the time. My biggest problem with them is I simply get out-spammed no matter how many production buildings I set up because each unit just takes forever to train.

Which of their units are actually good? Gilded Knights don’t seem worth their cost, Landesknechts are garbage as always, and infantry as a whole just got nerfed to the ground from what I understand? I’ve tried Horseman+Archer spam but that’s too easy to hardcounter with heavy units.

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OOTD and Germany are ABSOLUTELY and UNDISPUTEDLY the strongest civilizations in Age Of Empires in terms of military and getting kills.

The only advice I can give you is to forget about Reddit. That community is toxic, full of people who don’t play video games and they’re useless.

Second: Don’t play against the AI, that will make any player very weak. Play 1v1 and after you’ve played and gained experience like managed to reach IV age in 20 minutes and have a good army, then you can go and play in a team

I’ll explain the secrets of OOTD to you.

In terms of kills. There are 5 civilizations in Age that have an absurdly ridiculous KD and this has to do with the unique units that each one has.
Mongol, OFTD, Byzantines, France and Delhi.

The Dragon Order is incredibly strong because, just like England, France and Germany, it has an extremely easy dynamic and depending on how you set up your economy, even with an extremely low number of economic units, the Dragon Order can have a strong economy. In the game, I recommend everyone to have at least 100 economic units, but I often play with 135, sometimes 150, sometimes I delete the villagers or send them to war, anyway… The Dragon Order can sometimes have a good economy with the absurd amount of only 60 villagers!!! It’s unbelievable. So that’s their first advantage.

The second advantage is in relation to the proportion of units. At this point, there is also a disadvantage. To overload and flood the enemy with units and thus destroy their economy, a technique often used by Chinese players who are used to playing Go, a small humerus can be bad. But if you flood the enemy’s economy with Order of the Dragon units, you can make their defense fail because the units are very strong and depending on how you upgrade your arsenal, the arrows from the enemy town center can be absolutely useless! And players who don’t understand the Order of the Dragon may end up losing skirmishes, because some don’t understand that Order units are worth 2x.

Now, back to talking about kills. The Order of the Dragon’s heavy cavalry can annihilate several players simultaneously if used well in a 4v4 team game. A well-composed Order of the Dragon army with cannons, arquebusiers, and heavy infantry can achieve a KD 2x or more superior in attrition battles.

It is an absolutely strong civilization, but you need to have good mathematical skills when entering battles, upgrade your entire arsenal without leaving any items behind, and have a sense of the game and teamwork. I suggest playing PvP. If you don’t have experience, go 1v1, watch replays, watch replays of professional players to get good tips, watch tutorials, play more 1v1 and then when you feel confident go with a 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 team.

Good luck. If the question of units confuses you, you can also play with the Holy Roman Empire, Germany is good anyways.

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I simply have no interest in PvP or getting that good, I’m a casual player and don’t want to get into the struggle that is getting good enough to actually do PvP in any meaningful way. I really just want to consistently beat the AI for now and even this is hard for me with the Order because it takes so damned long for their eco to get going.

So what you’re saying is that hand cannoneers and heavy knights should be the go-to lategame army? I’ve just seen so many claims that their knights are not worth their price. I’ve also seen videos where 10 gilded knights get obliterated by 20 knights of other factions.

As for heavy infantry and playing Holy Roman Empire, didn’t infantry just get nerfed into oblivion? I’ve seen several pro players on YouTube talking about how this season is archers and cavalry or GTFO.

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No one will be able to help you if you don’t leave a replay there.

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You don’t have to but they have more momentum until you need farms. I’m quite a high rank and typically if I play OOTD I will FC into burgrave and spam man at arms at the opponent and idle his entire eco. Games usually over about 15 minutes in.

Very late game they are very good because their units are population efficient, meaning 100 pop worth of OOTD units is better than that of other civs.
Also OOTD villagers have a +28% gather bonus, unfortunately the slower train time negates this throughout the game but when you hit max vills at say 120 and train time is no longer taken into the equation then you have the full 28% bonus compared to other civs. Before max vills the slower training makes the bonus more like 11%. In short they have a good early game and late game, the only drop in momentum is at the point of transitioning to farms.

A knight takes 35 seconds to train while a gilded knight takes only 42. This holds true for all of your units, with burgrave your units train incredibly quick considering their strength.

Their best units are the hand cannoneer, archer, crossbow and man at arms that’s not to say that the other units are bad though.

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If u do not want to play PVP.You don’t need to worry about choose civ.
Any difficulty AI can be defeated easily by tower-rush, their behavior logic is too stupid.Just like they would crazily consume wood to build wharves wherever there is water, and foolishly crazily produce spearmen as long as the TC was close.
The only thing you need to pay attention to is that when fighting against difficulties with resource collection efficiency bonuses, do not try to win the game through peaceful development and economic growth competition.
Simple math isn’t it, with peaceful development you’re extremely hard pressed to beat the difficulty with economic bonuses.All you need to do is limit his gathering during the feudal period, and then he will stupid himself to death.

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Huh, I actually thought Burgrave wasn’t worth it. Do you ever use Landsknects? I thought the Gilded version out of Burgrave would be worth it but they die to a butterfly fart.

Sounds like they indeed are all about their ranged units. Shame, I really wanted to make Landsknects and Knight spam work with them since I read that this season is all about Knight spam. I usually do light cavalry harassment first though, should I just drop this and go for Castle ASAP?

It sucks about their eco bonus but it explains a LOT, I knew something felt off from what their eco looks like on paper when you just read their bonuses. With no other economic bonuses than that and such expensive units I understand why I never have any resources.

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Burgrave is usually better than regnitz for OOTD as not only does it give tempo but also your units made from it are incredibly efficient. Landknechts are good with their unique upgrade from meinwork that does bleed damage, go meinwork and burgrave that way you can get the armor techs for cheap and quickly, get the bleed damage tech and then burgrave gives you a discount on the unit itself. Just 1 landsknecht sent to kill enemy villagers can easily clear 30 vills if left for alone for a minute.

You can’t really spam landsknecht as even with the discount from burgrave they are still very expensive and very fragile, it is better to mix a few of them in to a mass of man at arms. Knights can be spammed the same as with any civ, the gilded knight actually has more ranged armor than a regular elite knight so they are very strong late game.

I’d recommend just doing a straight FC, go meinwork and burgrave and send man at arms immediately to the opponents base upon hitting castle, prioritize the veteran upgrade and ranged armor.

I mean technically you are better off than a civ with generic vills like french, even taking into account train time your vills are 11% better than generic, burgrave also makes your units very efficient so that is sort of like an eco bonus.

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Is going Meinwerk absolutely obligatory? I kinda like the chapel since I feel it helps give my eco just a little bit of momentum which is desperately needs, and placing farms around it helps my lategame eco a lot. Besides aside from the MAA one I’m not impressed with the unique Meinwerk upgrades.

Do you build additional barracks or should Burgrave be able to carry your MAA spam alone?

If the game comes down to a trash war I’m guessing just faceroll the archer button until one of you loses?

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Meinwork is obligatory if doing the burgrave FC as you want the armor techs and the unique tech for maa. Otherwise it isn’t but the chapel is much worse than it is for HRE so it’s up to you if you consider the extra 15% gathering worth it, aachen range was recently nerfed as well for both OOTD and HRE.

Only burgrave as you want the discount, you also make units 30% faster and if you’ve gone meinwork you can quickly research military academy quickly and cheaply which also effects burgrave further boosting train speed another 33% meaning burgrave alone is sufficient for infantry production for a good while.

Yes just archers and spears, OOTD spears are better than normal spears as they have additional melee armor.

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Thanks for all the tips! Will try to adjust my playstyle. Is there ever a time for light cavalry? You mentioned in the beginning that OOTD horsemen were very good, almost early knights.

As for the lategame do you just keep spamming MAA and Archers or is it okay to transition to Knights? I really like the Order Knights so would like an excuse to use them :stuck_out_tongue:

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You can go horsemen early as if they were knights for french. Go with meinwork and quickly get ranged armor, your horseman both train faster and move faster than early knights so you can be in the opponents base and idling their vills faster than most civs can with knights in feudal.

Gilded horseman lack the charge and don’t kill villagers as fast as say french knights but most of the damage caused is by idling their eco and your horseman easily achieve that as they are tankier than an early knight and can take more ranged fire. They’re also better at killing in general compared to normal horseman as they have superior pathing.

You can use knights, they’re very good I was just saying go archers/spears if you have no gold.

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Tried this twice now and absolutely obliterated the Hardest AI, it never even made it to Castle Age. In one game the enemy even did have some spearmen and it just didn’t matter.

Thanks a lot for all your advice! I’m growing fond of Order cavalry both light and heavy. MAA+Archers FC seems very strong too. I still can’t seem to find love for the supposedly powerful Hand Cannoneers, they just keep feeling too fragile for their price to me.

Would mixing Landeknechts for damage in with Knights for tanking be too weird? I tried it once but didn’t really have the gold to support it I think.

Oh, also, how many villagers do you recommend as an end goal for the lategame? I’ve heard everything from 60 to double that for the Order.

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Use some MAA in front of the Hand cannoneers to help tank while they do dps from behind.

Landskechts are particularly bad vs AI in general as they just target them down, vs a human player you can mix them in with maa and most people can’t micro well enough to target them all down or they don’t even notice them.

You want to go up to 120 villagers, you can delete 20 if you need more military pop later on but 100-120 is the ideal amount.

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I do use melee units in front but the cannoneers get sniped very easily by archers etc. or one melee unit getting through.

So about half your pop being villagers, same as AoE2. Always nice when skills are transferrable between the games ^^

Damned shame about Landsknechts sucking against the AI since that’s what I play. I wanted to find a use for them so badly since I have a strong fondness of two-handed swords. Why couldn’t they be powerful heavy infantry like in 3, there they kick ass.

Are the Order’s unique techs even worth getting by the way? So far I’m extremely unimpressed with everything except Gilded Cuirass and wish they would just have the same as the HRE.

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Gilded cuirass is by far the best, bodkin bolts is good late game especially now there’s no anti-siege siege unit in the springald and mangonels/nest of bees have been nerfed in general. Zornhau is actually really good, you can swipe a few vills and walk away and they’ll die as they walk back to the tc to be garrisoned but as I said before you get much more value out of landsknecht vs real players, not so much vs ai.

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Bodkin Arrows just seems absurdly situational, I don’t think I’ve ever been in the situation that my crossbows got within range of the enemy’s backline before my melee units had already got to it. But maybe this is just because I don’t play PvP?

Anyways I kind of find myself with the opposite problem now that I’ve discovered the AI can’t withstand a cavalry rush lol.