I just threw that into aoe-combatsim.com .
5 knights without bloodlines and no armor upgrades are about equally matched with 20 fu elite skirms in castle age…
That’s almost twice the investment for the skirms…
WIth medium hit and run it’s about even with 18 skirms against 5 knights.
So much about:
No, it’s a quite common move for the archer player to just add a few knights if the opponent goes heavy into elit skirms. You don’t even need upgrades on these knights to be devastating to the skirms. (and if you are good you can even get away without any losses if you pull back the damaged ones)
5 knights are a lot - I mean 1 or 2 knights without upgrade cannot kill the skirms (as they do 3 damage without any upgrade - same as xbow if the knight has +2 armor)
If you add 5 knights, monks are cheap to be added anyway (Or just play defensive and boom at home). And we already agree that food is difficult to obtain, now consider that the first knight alone costs 70+150 (armor) food…
as I said you don’t need any upgrades on these knights. This is actually one of the strongest counter mechanics in the game. Half the value of unupgraded skirms against archers? No chance!
But half the value of unupgraded knights against elite skirms do their job., because skirms are so terrible against them.
And you don’t have a real chance to counter this actually. If you preemtively make monks you miss these ressources and the opponent will very likely try to pick of your monks with his archers before engaging with the knights -as he won’t lose too much value on his xbows: Skirms dps against archers isn’t the highest.
It’s such a common move… Don’t know, haven’t you seen that yet?
One of the various reasons why I rarely play skirms against archers. Mangos just work so much better, not only because they don’t need upgrades to be effective - but you often just need 1 or 2 good hits with them, so it’s way more revarding to micro them. ofc mangos also die to knights, but because you have usually way less invested ressources in your mangos and hide them till you get a good opportunity you can often get good trades before the opponent can react to it, even if he has the right counters on the field. With skirms this is way more difficult.
I mean I have the greatest respect for players with good skirm micro, but that’s so insanely hard… I prefer to have short times when I can focus on micro on one location, get a good trade there and then continue with all the other stuff to do than to babysit my skirms all the time, because they are so vulnerable to basically anything that isn’t an archer.
I think my position on this would be different if you would be more positively revarded for your skirm micro like with the proposed:
That would be so much better for the game if it was like this.
Are you sure? I have seen (and have been used) skirms killing single / two knights without armor.
The issue is that getting 5 knights are not easy if you don’t have good eco, and monks are just so cheap compared to knights anyway.
(Yes knights with same cost destroys skirms with same cost - thats why you don’t open skirms blindly. You have to consider the archers you deployed as well, and adding 5 knights in addition to all the xbow upgrades are a nightmare. Not to mention it’s insanely easy to switch to archers if you open skirms, and archers counter small number of knights)
Let’s be real though, those Knights are probably going to have at least Scale Barding for 150 food, which means they can win 4v20 against fully upgraded Elite Skirmishers. If they also have Chain Barding (which I agree is less likely) then they take 1 damage from FU E. Skirm and can easily 3v20.
True, but if you calc that you will figure out, that it is actually cheaper to make more knights with less armor upgrades. Also it’s heavily depending on the upgrades on the skirms and the attack upgrades are usually made after the defence upgrades (as explained, for skirms the defencive upgrades are more important).
BTW: 5 knights to counter 20 elite skirms is way cheaper than 20 elite skirms + upgrades to counter 25-30 xbows. So if the knights to add are such a big problem, why is adding so many skirms no problem for that eco? Knights just counter skirms sooo much better than skirms counter arbs, you can’t really compare this. Yes Skirms counter archers, but knights destroy skirms.
I think 5 knights + armor + 25 xbows are much more expensive than 20 skirms alone? (or 20 skirms + 7 xbows)
The point is that you never go skirm alone vs only knight (that is beyond stupid), but skirms DO counter archers, and skirms + composite unit are cheaper in EARLY castle age.
The point is we don’t play with perfect information. You’re just making things up here.
The best part was as you tried to argue for adding monks against archers… Really?
Well if you want to add up numbers that aren’t in any relationship do it correctly please. 25 xbows vs 20 skirms and 5 knights vs 20 skirms makes 25 xbows + 5 knights vs 40 skirms…
But these numbers were only intended to give an overview of the countering relationships of these units, not for (false) addition.
The point is we don’t play with perfect information. You’re just making things up here.
I guess scouting is important…
And no making monks vs archers+knights are ok as long as you dont send them directly to frontline - one monk costs two archers only.
Well if you want to add up numbers that aren’t in any relationship do it correctly please. 25 xbows vs 20 skirms and 5 knights vs 20 skirms makes 25 xbows + 5 knights vs 40 skirms…
But these numbers were only intended to give an overview of the countering relationships of these units, not for (false) addition.
Not sure what you mean. If you go skirms, you can switch to xbows anytime? There are only one xbow tech which is cheap, and you have all the blacksmith tech
I think you misunderstood how skirms should be used - if you have no idea your opponent is going archers, you should go gold unit. But if you saw your opponent saving archers, there are no upgrade on the initial scout, no stable, etc. Only then you go full skirms.
Edit: I think you misunderstood where the “7 xbows” come from, it is xbows by the SKIRM player, not the original XBOW player.
Oh dear, this game is difficult isnt it Its not enough that you have to build the right unit to meet your opponent. You also have to adjust your economy to advance in the game depending on what unit you build. Dear oh dear poor you… FYI Thats why its called a strategy game.
Archers are already easy to counter. No other feudal unit is countered by the same type of unit. That is the reason why viper during low elo tournament casts said, that beginners shouldn’t go archers. Skirms counter archers in offensive and defensive ways actively due to bonus atk and high armour. They are also not slow unlike spear vs scout fights. They dont really need a buff. And wood only skirms would be rise of skirms only meta which noone really wants to see…
Archers need a lot of babysitting. And archers die too easy to defences. That’s why beginners shouldn’t use them, not because skirms counter them.
When you begin with the game you should get your buildorders, scouting, macro, basic understanding of roles in the game, when to add eco when to go for military… This kind of stuff.
It’s not about archers being weak against skirms, it’s about not microed archers are bad against a lot of things, including knights. And if you micro the archers as beginner you will usually lose much more in the macro department.
I don’t know what you are trying to make up, but I’m pretty sure that if you ask viper he will say the opposite of you associative claim. He will say, that’s a downside of the skirm to be the same class as the unit it is supposed to counter.
Edit: I just thought a bit about it and I think there are 2 differnte things we are talking about.
I’m talking about skirms as counter choice. Mostly if you have a knight civ, the fact that you need to make the same upgrades as the opponent, play the same buildings and unit type just plays into the hand of the archer player. As most archer civs have already also the best skirms.
What you are talking about is only if 2 archer civs match, the one who makes more skirms has often the advantage. This is of course true, but the question is then why we have 2 archer civs matching each other if archers would be so bad? Are both players masochistic? No the reason is they want to play archers. And yes this situation is bad for archer play because skirm is just the better option you have available in that situation but the precondition of archers are the strong meta play still holds because without that precondition the matchup would never occur.
I think both cases just show how bad the choice of the original devs was to make the counter unit the same class as the unit it is designed to counter.
But I think your argument doesn’t hold, because the main purpose to make counter units is that you can’t catch up with the same class as the opponent. If your opponent has the same unit directly available but better and they both counter each other, it’s very bad for the non-archer civ to play skirms. As the archer player can easily just add his own skirms and get better trades against your skirms.
That’s why it’s bad for the skirms to have the same class as the unit they counter, because it allows the more agressive player to easily at least stale the situation with just balancing out the skirm numbers.
Especially as it is expected the archer player has actualy better archer/skirm micro than the knight player.
Ofc in an archer/archer matchup you shouldn’t go pure archers but more skirms. But that doesn’t show that skirms would be strong, it just shows that the counter mechanic in this pure matchup is still somewhat working. And ofc it’s suboptimal for the archers there that their counter has the same class. It’s just a bad concept for counters. But counters are designed for non-equal matchups, that’s where they need to be measured. This is essential for the balancing of the game between civs with different focusses.
And lastly. If your argument was true this would mean that archers would be bad at all elo, as there is no difference in elo for the mechanic you describe. Skirms counter archers at all elo. So why should this only apply to low elo? My explanation with archer play => more demanding is actually a very good explanation why archers have way higher play- and winrates at higher elo than lower. Whilst your explanation would aplly to all elos and archers must be bad for everyone.
Skirms are supposed to counter archers and buy time. I don’t think adding more identity to skirms (as making it generic) would make it better, as you will encourage a more boom-style gameplan where you just deploy skirms to defend. If the opponent want to counter skirms, skirms do not need to doing alright against knight? Why not switch to something counter knight as well?
I really don’t understand your argument of 5 knights destroy 20 skirms - 20 skirms destroy 20 xbows, 5 knights destroy 20 skirms, how about 10 xbow destroys 5 unupgraded knights then?
The argument is that skirms are very easy to counter actually. In my games I rarely see or play any skirms atm, cause everybody knows that. If my opponent makes a lot of skirms I usually go for mangos, but also knights can work as the opponent often doesn’t expects this from the archer player.
And btw I play koreans for the most. And never open skirms currently, besudes having 2 bonusses to them, It’s just experience you get from trying this… So sorry that I don’t “believe” this fairytale from the 1 range skirm producion.
The archer player just retreats, goes up to castle, makes mangonels, kills your skirms and walks in with xbows. And so do I if my opponent offers me this easy opportunity by overextending into skirms.
Game over.
i literally see skirms all the time at the pro level. so i guess the pros don’t know that. or maybe the pros know something you don’t, and that is why they use skirms.
Do you play yourself? I mean if you specify this all the time that you only “see it at pro level” this is actually an admission that you rarely encounter it yourself… so, what are we talking about?
Yeah just try to twist reality. I already said that pros are the ones that play counters the most because they need to make use of every advantage they possibly can get and have the most experience with everything and they have all the basics right… So I know that I’m not as good as pros, and I also explain that quite honestly here. As I said, skirm babysitting is extremely demanding and I can’t pull that of. I prefer to have my counters at my disposal and them positively revarding if I pay attention to them, not negatively punishing me if I need to split my attention.
It’s not necessarily knowledge. Ofc pros also have more knowledge than me. But I just don’t have the apm to babysit my counters. It’s that easy. And I doubt any of you has.
Maa archer or drush FC, At least that’s what I prefer.
Well not for me, I prefer going drush FC if I’m with koreans against an archer civ. Offers so many options.
For maa, the opponent usually counters with faster archer, thats why opening skirms is usually a much better idea as your range+blacksmith is later and you are far away from their base. Maa archers will basically die to two range archer, so skirms are necessary sometimes (or most of the time, since sometimes you even see frank opening archers if you are, say, bulgarians)
Sometimes drush is just not possible - forward gold in a cliff for example. Unless you are mayans, usually you get a tower on your face if you force drush and your resources arent the greatest.
I dont think the argument that skirms are weak because you find it weak is reasonable - low elo players never use archer well, that does not mean archer needs a buff. In nearly all archer civ war (and consider the ugly terrain of Arabia), you basically see skirms and eskirms every game or two in all 1500+ games
Its not enough that you have to build the right unit to meet your opponent. You also have to adjust your economy to advance in the game depending on what unit you build. Dear oh dear poor you… 
FYI Thats why its called a strategy game. 