It’s funny the OP also mentioned Incas when Incas already have Kamayuks.
But yeah, Pikemen are kinda meant to suck. They cost very little and are cost-effective fighting vs Cavalry type units. You as a player need to have control over your army to predict where fights are so they also get to fight, but the Cavalry lineup needs to be powerful (and agile) due to their very high cost.
You can’t expect a low food and wood cost unit to perform to the levels of a high food and gold cost unit lol, that’s just absurdly stupid.
When did I say you needed 30-40 pikes? 15-20 with upgrades is more than enough to begin with. Camel Archer is only from one civ. And you’re not supposed to ever just go full pikes. Obviously pikes alone die to knights + ranged units. You need to back them up with a balanced army. My guess is you keep dying to well executed double stable knights and it’s convinced you that pikes are underpowered.
No it’s actually the other way around. You don’t transition out of but into pikes. When your opponent goes knights and you wanna defend you start with monks add tcs and then make pikes. Also halb totally is in early imp unit. They shred through cavalier super easily. And you don’t need scorpions or so. Just make arbs as the other part of your army comp. Arb halb is way cheaper than cav plus whatever so early imp is precisely the moment where halbs are most useful. Unless you make halb siege. That takes more time ofc but it’s more of an arena than arabia strat anyways.
Nah pikes produce faster and are way cheaper. So if you start off with pikes early castle age (again opening monks first usually is the better way) there isn’t any problem engaging just vs knights. If your opponent goes for second unit then it can get problematic which is one of the reasons why pike opening isn’t that great unless you go forward and push with them.
Again why is pike bot viable long term? It totally is. Especially in early imp halb is great vs cav. The point when pike loses its usefulness is if the knight play plays extended castle age with knight skirm (or in late game when you prefer hussar as trash melee unit). But then you as the archer player have your imp upgrades faster and can push back. That’s how these games usually go. I mean ofc you don’t go only pike for the whole game. You need some gold army yourself in most situations. And if you don’t play knights yourself that’s archers for most civs.
Btw 18 on food isn’t enough to produce double stable knights, get upgrades for them and get eco upgrades. Double stable knights is (apart from cav archers maybe) the strat that makes booming behind more difficult than any other strat. Also you don’t need heavy plow if you go pikes. It’s an eco upgrade which is great if you can squeeze it in but it’s by no means necessary.
Well if half your eco is idle sure you’re usually dead and it’s true that knights can snowball harder than any other castle age unit. But if you have the eco advantage to spam pikes knights can be countered just any other unit. If you pressure with xbow and make a lot of dmg you can easier remass army, you probably added tcs earlier and can quickly go imp. If you go full knights and lose your army your advantage is basically gone. That’s the tradeoff when playing knights.
I’ll put it in words even you can understand, clearly you aren’t using your brain but parroting what your favorite streamer said so let me use streamer language:
“The pikeman transition can’t be justified in early/mid-Castle Age leaving Monks as the only counter to Knight flood”
It’s easy to say, if he has Knight + Skirm, mix another unit, the issue is that it’s very hard to tech into Pikeman AND get numbers out and it’s very easy to flood Knights and transition into say 3 Scorpions is 500w or so and a negligible amount of gold. 20 Knights + 3 Scorpions destroy basically any amount of Pikeman so good luck transitioning into something that counters Scorpions.
Many civs, such as Franks, Berbers, Lithuanians or Magyars are specifically designed around getting an immense power spike at the ~20 min mark, and the combination of:
open map that is unwallable and with very few woodlines that you can’t protect with TC
eco bonus that all those civs have for Knights play (Berbers in form of discount, Magyars in form of +2 attack right away)
Knight being an all-around strong unit early Castle Age, particularly vs Pikeman/Crossbow.
Leads to Knight civs being nearly autowin which in turn leads to extremely boring gameplay.
Well you made the positively ludicrous claim that outnumbered kts are cost effective vs pikemen. This + your previous thread = you sound like you’re massively butthurt.
it’s a snowball issue and yes, once you factor in cost of upgrades, Knights are cost-effective in early Castle age vs Pikeman. I’m not talking about some dream scenario of Black Forest 200 vs 200 pop.
And yes, I’m butthurt as a “random civ” player of going vs civ pickers executing a braindead strat, having 0 micro, 0 macro, 0 understanding of how the game works and staying in this rank because they Favorite’d Arabia and can Knight flood with flag on my TC. So much skill!
Almost like this is meant to be a strategy game, if I make the COUNTER UNIT you should CHANGE STRATEGY and not KEEP FLOODING.
Pikes is a counter unit, so yeah it’s very bad against a lot of thing still it has quite a lot of uses, like getting pikes combo in mid castle age in cavalry war(especially vs camels) or denying an all in of cavalry and siege , it’s also a unit which can be trained from feudal age so if you full feudal with scout for example and your opponent going for cavalry, it’s very usefull to survive the early castle age and so getting in a good spot where your full scouts doing damages which make an elo lead for you but still getting safe at home from potential comeback , pikes are also very used with siege agressively.
18 farms is not enough for constant 2 stables play they are REALLY expansive unit while massing pikes on 1 barracks is very easy to do and allow a much better boom as you saving a lot of wood and food (not even talking about gold where you could remove a lot of villagers of it which is very smooth in boom scenarios).
The real problem of pikes is that you cannot attack correcly with these and it counter only cavalry not combo of cavalry with xbow for example but the price is not the same at all.
it is enough, idk why people say that. Knights are too cheap if anything, particularly if you are like BERBERS and every Knight civ has a food-related ECO BONUS TO HELP THEM because Knights is just such a weak unit!
nah even if you go vs full cavalry, the ONLY way you stop Knight flood is if you pre-emptively build 3 Barracks (I’ve come to the realization that 2 isn’t even enough)… you build 20 Pikes because they scale far worse than Knights so you need to make 20 ish to move out or see anything… then you see 6-8 Knights, Knight player sees 20 pikes, keeps Knights in reserve, either does tech switch or full booms, he invested NOTHING, only 175w of Stable, you meanwhile invested 2x upgrades (250f), Pikeman upgrade (305 resources) and 20 Pikeman is 1200 resources that could have gone into 3 TC, you will never have as strong a boom as opponent because you are likely missing Monastery, Siege Workshop, probably you are missing even Bow Saw.
But aside from heavy resource investment, this is a play that most of the times you must do BLINDLY. You can’t just easily assess the number of Knights he is making and on how many TCs he is, not in early Castle age at least, you might as well open blind Camels if you are Persians and go vs Franks cuz obviously Franks can ONLY go Knights right!
Man so much hate from you…and so much irrationality.
I am not denying that pikes do have problems, namely the fact that they cant do much but killing kts and the fact they cant force fights vs kts.
But you take it to the next level.
once you factor in cost of upgrades, Knights are cost-effective in early Castle age vs Pikeman
For example this one. Its just insane. Pikes are very cheap and very strong vs kts, and their upgrades are cheaper across the board (with the one exeption of pikemen itself). With equal res, Kts will never stand a chance vs pikes in a straight up fight. I already calculated this for you but you seem to ignore it. But it gets worse with the next line:
I’m not talking about some dream scenario of Black Forest 200 vs 200 pop.
This is really funny because you will never see pikes on 200 pop (unless for axtec and viking), and in 200 pop they are actually pretty bad because they aren’t pop efficient, just cheap.
he invested NOTHING, only 175w of Stable
Yeah, sure. Massing 8 kts from just one stable. Remember to disable cheats next time you play…
The rest of the paragraph is just as nonsensical.
you meanwhile invested 2x upgrades (250f)
Why would you get forging? Pikemen are very slow attacking units, they hardly benefit from forging when attacking cav. And why are you getting armor when the kts player is not getting attack? Its usless, your pikes take 6 hits either way, you only need to match the kts attack upgrades with your own defense.
Maybe stop wasting ressources on upgrades that do nothing and you will have success.
Love this one too as its in fact easier to scout someone going kts (indications are upgrades on his scout(s), stables in front, 6-9 vills on gold) than someone going for pikes to counter.
Overall, my advice to you is to just take a deep breath and relax. Pikes do kill kts, its just that this is a game where sitting back and waiting to be hit isn’t the best strategy. And if you hate arabia so so so much, just ban it…
you do see Halberdier all the time, obviously Pikeman = Halberdier in this case since on BF you boom into Imp directly. It’s not uncommon for civs like Celts to do 5-6 Onagers and the rest Halberdier.
175w of Stable + the one you make in early Feudal… can’t believe I have to explain this…
you can get +1 armor on your Scouts and then play something else. It’s really easy to transition off of Knights because they are a pop-efficient unit, you will ALWAYS find damage with them and then you can boom, switch into say Crossbow or Skirm etc.
Uhm not this is not obvious at all. The whole tread is about you winning that in early castle age, its difficult to counter kts with pikes and now suddenly you are not talking about early castle, but post imp? Make up your mind…
Which makes 350 wood. The fact that you invested 175 in feudal does not mean its not an investment; otherwise you would have to discount the spearmen you make in feudal already too.
150food in feudal is a lot of investment, so no, you cant just get it and then do something else. Its only really worth it if you commit on a prolonged feudal age, otherwise you will be behind.
WTF? pop-efficiency is just a non-issue in castle age, as you will not be popcapped anyway. So why do you bring this up?
If kts are so OP, why are people even struggling with Burmese anyway? Just spam knights! And free wood upgrades = the food Berbers save on 27 knights, so “no food bonus” isn’t an excuse.
since in BF there isn’t a Castle Age, Pikeman isn’t rly a thing on BF. Regardless, the thread is about OPEN maps, BF isn’t an open map, I’m not interested in what the meta unit is in some mode where the real game starts at minute 40 with some minor aggression on the flanks (1 tower and 3 skirms).
except Archer player also invests 175w into Archery range when 22 pop… so it shouldn’t matter. I’m considering here the net investment of the tech switch, else you might as well factor in the houses you make in Dark Age…
it probably is but you do it when you have something like 5 Scouts vs 10 archers and 3 Spearmen. You do normally Bloodlines and +1, AND IT’S TECH THAT IS USEFUL LATER ALSO SO NOT A WASTE, you delay your Castle time but by delaying it you also get stronger eco, it’s not a big deal IF you beat the archers (and Bloodline Scouts most definitely do beat basically anything unless he has like 10 spears).
healing is a thing, Spearmen tend to die even if you win fights, while Knights tend to not die if you win fights. If a Spearman player wins a fight, likely he loses 60%, often 80% of resources. That is if the Knight player is dumb enough to somehow suicide Knights into Pikes (yes because mobility is also a thing). But if the Knight players beats the Pikes, often they lose 30-40% of Knights, so making 1 Monastery + 1 Monk is very valuable as you basically get 5-8 free Knights again. In this sense, pop efficiency matters (ie having high HP).
because Burmese are pigeonholed into Knights, it’s not like the Burmese player will play Archers… if he does, it will be only VERY early Castle age as they don’t even get Arbalest iirc.
Meanwhile Berbers aren’t pigeonholed into Knight play because Crossbow gives you a very easy transition into Camel Archer. The question is honestly ill-posed and very loaded, it’s like asking, why do Turks not go full Scouts in late Feudal, they have the best Scouts in the game in Feudal, yes that’s true but it’s also true that you can never fear for example Pikeman play from Turks. Their full Scouts is strong but it’s also the ONLY thing they can do in Feudal if they decide to play extended Feudal… same with Burmese, their Knights are strong but it’s the only strat they will do. And even then, they have very generic Knights with lumber camp upgrades (wow!), I would say Magyars, Franks, Huns with all their eco bonuses have even stronger Knights considering how they save more resources (for example Huns save like 400w until min 20 in terms of less houses made which is stronger than the Burmese bonus). Their UT, “Manipur Cavalry” is a Imperial thing, their Knights might rekt Arbalest harder in Imperial, too bad by then you lost the game.
you have to see out of the box to realize high HP = pop efficiency. It’s not a perfect 1:1 relation, but close enough. I guess you can’t do that though. Regardless it’s not hard to realize Knights are more pop-efficient than Pikemen, and yes even in Castle age pop efficiency if we wanna look ONLY at the number top right matters, to beat 20 Knights comfortably you need like 40 Pikeman, 20 Knights is 4 houses = 100w, 40 Pikeman is 8 houses = 200w, another hidden tax of playing Pikeman transition.
Often, you do not need to beat them confortably. I often feel even 15 to 20 pikes scare knights away, even though the knight win the fight. I think it is not resource efficient for the knight player. And he sees you have 2 or 3 barracks next to your pikes (as counter units are more defensive than offensive), he may be afraid of production
In the end, the thing with aoe2 is that gild units are generally better than trash units, because the incentive is to force player to take map control and secure gold mines. If you don’t or are afraid to spend gold, these are good reasons for losing the game.
Pikemen + siege push at his base forces the fight and means your pikes can get much better trades on the knights, because he will aim for the siege first, meaning the pikes will get amazing value by getting tons of free hits on the knights while they try to kill the mangonels or rams. Also aiming for his stables with siege will slow his knight production.
Pikeman training time: 22 seconds Knight training time: 30 seconds
And the knights player needs to build a barracks and 2 stables, whereas the pikemen only need 2 barracks. Pikemen player also has the option to build a 3rd barracks for the same amount of resources as 2 stable knights if they want more numbers faster.
so why if you go vs full skirm, the archer player feels obliged to mix in another unit, but the Knight player isn’t obliged and feels justified to keep spamming from 2-3 stables in an attempt to snowball? Crossbowmen can’t snowball skirms because they can’t run under TC and they can’t overwhelm a “reasonable” amount of skirms (say 30 crossbowmen need to be afraid of 18-20 skirms).
you are proposing to play Crossbow vs +2 Knights? Bruh, Knight is a Crossbow counter unit and if you do 3 Barracks Pikes you can’t do gold units as well because you need to shift gold villagers to wood for additional wood income required for Pike play.
Knight player cleans up easily that fight. Regardless of where the fight happens, once you lose the Pikeman mass, his production > your production.
you do no production buildings in Feudal? Is this 700 elo?
At semi-high level, it’s Scouts → Knights, and Archers → Crossbow or Archers → Monk/Pike defense + boom or something like that. So in Feudal, the Knights player does at least 1 Stable, more if he plans to play extended Feudal but let’s say it’s minimal aggression (unrealistic on new Arabia but realistic assumption on Runestones), and Archer player does 1 Archery Range. Both do Blacksmith or Market so investment is very equal here. At the end of Feudal, Archer player realized he is behind or ahead, if he is ahead he adds 2nd Archery Range, if he is behind he adds Monastery +1-2 Barracks. Knight player meanwhile ALWAYS adds 2nd Stable because Knights beat Archers (early +2), Pikeman (Mass problem we are discussing) and only lose to basically 2 Monasteries, conveniently you can go Light Cav which is a VERY easy tech switch, you literally already have the upgrades needed for the switch including the +2 armor required to run under TC.
Funnily there is another problem, vs Knight player you can have ZERO map presence because he can always be next to your base, and keep 2 Knights or the leftover Scouts on the side, at that point any time you try to march out he will see you. Vision = power in this game, since he has vision and you don’t, if he sees you are massing Crossbow with good upgrades, he does +2, else he does something else.
