I’m working on an analysis to see how the cavalry-archer meta is going in 1v1. I’ll exclude OP archer and cav civs like Franks and Mayans to see how others are doing. While doing so, I’m a bit hesitant to consider some civs as cavalry or archer. Asking for opinions.
Do you consider Incas an “Archer” civilization?
Yes
No
0voters
Do you consider Byzantines an “Archer” civilization?
Yes
No
0voters
Do you consider Malians an “Archer” civilization?
Yes
No
0voters
Do you consider Slavs a “Cavalry” civilization?
Yes
No
0voters
Do you consider Khmer a “Cavalry” civilization?
Yes
No
0voters
Do you consider Spanish a “Cavalry” civilization?
Yes
No
0voters
Do you consider Malians a “Cavalry” civilization?
Yes
No
0voters
Now about some CA (and CA type UU) civs. I’ll exclude any civ that doesn’t use “Knight” (and Cavalry UU) that much from my analysis. So it is very important whether I’ll consider these CA civs or not.
Don’t think so. You might open archers in feudal age(if that’s the criterion most civs are archer civs) but rarely do you see arb from them.
Not only britons. For example bohemians or vikings are much more likely to go arb than magyars although the latter have all upgrades. Imo it’s about the civ as a whole and not just couple of techs. That’s also why there is no clear yes or no if civ x is archer or cav. Some are both to a certain degree, others are arguably neither of both.
No, they actually are often played as Archer civs. Can’t remember if moreso in 1v1s or TGs, I think in BoA3 we saw them as Archer flanks very often.
I do agree. I’d say for most of my votes in the poll, I mostly said No to flexible civs (Incas, Byzantines, Malians), whereas civs that have two strong identities (Slavs) would be Cavalry and Siege for example. Mostly I’d rather see the classification for many civs be X and Y, not just one identity.
I think that we are just so used to mainly using cav that a lot of completely “viable” archer civs often just don’t play archers in the mid and lategame cause they have viable cav aswell.
What actually opens the question why nobody mentioned this for years but once we see also some cav civs opening archers into xbows then it is a heresy and need to be “fixed” immediately…
I think it’s just the beauty of AoE2, that you can do things differently as opposed to the intended civ’s design. A very good example of that is I think the recent TTL’s…finals, was it?
Spoilers, just in case I guess.
Where the Briton player went Cavalier against Hindustanis and made it work. I guess it’s funny how there isn’t a need to fix things immediately when the Archer player goes Cavalry instead ;p
My answer for just about all of these is “It Depends,” as there is some slight utility in trying to classify these, but doing so leaves out a lot of essential info. Even if you try to define a civ along 1 dimension like this, that doesn’t necessarily say as much about the civ than the meta. And there’s always the question as to whether this refers to whether a unit line is Dominant for that civ, or merely Viable, (or merely a necessary stepping stone for them to reach their ideal composition, which may be a different unit line).
Someone has to represent the Pros, who would otherwise be such a marginalized community with no voice in the determination of game balance.
/s
I guess Cumans and Huns are pretty easy picks since they don’t really have other strengths, but even Tatars have a strong reason to go into Archers in Feudal.
Or take Spanish. I lean towards designating them as a cav civ, but their scout and knight rushes are below average so its hard to make that argument very compelling, except that they’re sort of pigeonholed into it by lacking Xbow. IMO they are more Cav-Viable than Cav-Dominant, except with regards to their UU in Castle Age. So my answer with regards to whether I consider Spanish a cavalry civ is a definitive “sort of.”
I’m fully aware of that. Honestly I was about to throw them in the poll as an a archer civ. Out of all the civs that misses arbalester, imo Tatars is the closest one to be considered as archer civ.
I personally see them as neither (archer/cav). I wanted to rule out of cav civ but decided to see others opinion. Once Conqs doesn’t work, knight is all you have for them.
Really surprised that Incas and Byzantines not being archer civ by most players. Incas make sense but Byzantines best gold unit is archer line most of the time imo.
in the true definition of cavalry(soldiers who fought on horseback.), and by aoe2’s own ambiguity(mounted units are referred to as cavalry, eg cuman civ bonus and husbandry) they technically play as a cavalry civ
conqs are cav , FU hussar and paladin = cav. they’ll never play as an archer or infantry civ (infantry isnt meta anyway) they might play some CA (which is cavalry)
and gunpowder doesnt mean much. ergo in the scheme of things, they’re a cavalry civ
I mean the Poll is ill-posed and misleading. Asking for example if “Incas are an archer civ” fails to graps the civ’s identity. In this game, you aren’t meant to spam 1 unit the whole game, even if it’s allegedly your “main” unit. Civs have a cue on what their main unit is supposed to be in their tech tree. For example, let’s take Britons. They are classified as an Archer civ, and vs civs that are weak to Archers, say Burgundians, you can probably play full Archer with a few Halbs mixed in. But vs civs like Goths, who can go full Huskarl, or Vietnamese, who have more defensively-statted archers, you might want to play something like Onagers or Champions. So are Britons an archer civ in Britons vs Vietnamese? On paper yes, you probably will do Archers at some point, but not long-term.
In general, it’s more worth to think about matchups. Incas, for example, are flexible, they can play like an Archer civ in a matchup where they need, and like an infantry civ in a matchup where they need. So asking “are they an archer civ?” is moot. Their design is to be the “versatile” meso. Even less versatile civs, such as say Mayans, still have options that depart from their main unit (Mayans can do Eagles and Plumes which is like a Meso cav archer of sorts).
The game consider cav and cav archer differently. And obviously I also will as I just want to see how knight-archer meta is doing. Then I have a plan to compare this again in 6 months to see how much archer civs hurt.
Maybe because you didn’t read my purpose.
Unfortunately I don’t have time to analyze all 861 matchups. All stats sites do that and some people including myself are skeptical about which civ the site consider archer civ or cav civ.
again, pretty much all the civs you list can play both Archer and Knight, and do so depending on the situation and/or map. You can’t draw any conclusions based on that, for example, in some cases Incas might want to Eagle all-in, in some cases do some soft pressure with Crossbows.
You most certainly don’t pick Incas and go like “oh I rolled an archer civ”