Just had a match where I got drushed by a saracen player. Fairly standard so far. He transitions into archers and pressures well, again fairly standard.
We go into castle, and I see that as my one opportunity to hit back, then the saracen gets x-bows.
and then … 8 ■■■■■■■ X-BOWS TAKE OUT MY TC! A Castle age TC!
They 2 shot any units , so even with equal numbers they took out knights. I totally understand pathing and micro… but 8 x-bows winning against 8 knights without losing a single -bow, to then take out a TC. This is broken. you can just go drush into saracen archers and nothing can be done. Why in the flying ■■■■ doesn’t TC get the range bonus. TC’s can’t protect themselves at all.
give TC’s their ability to get extra range. otherwise you can’t do anything if they have 5+ archers near your tc. you can’t leave with vils and x-bows can just take out a TC with no risk…
You can make a mangonel if that situation happens, but this gives me memories about the old saracen archer bonus vs buildings and the utterly, dumb, and stupid OP broken Obsidian Arrows UT, then you understand why was removed, Archer bonuses vs buildings are bad for the game (balance and design), if anything, there’s an argument to remove the team bonus and replace it with something good.
But I don’t think 8 xbows kill 8 Knights, that’s absurd, something wrong here.
My woodlines were pressured and no wood to be had, the only thing that would’ve worked was knights. I had stables, food and gold. but apparently Knights are as useful as a geriatric acrobat.
but hey, I get having good micro against knights, but barely making a single dent in their lineup is shouldn’t be a thing. It’s one thing to be bad (me), but another to be utterly useless.
Ye, the obsidian stuff was stupid, fun but super unbalanced. you shouldn’t be able to take down buildings with arrows easily. that’s just illogical and stupid.
It’s a natural reaction to call a civ/a unit/a unique tech OP and broken when you lose a game. Just like AlphaCreator suggested above - watch the replay, reflect on what you could have done better (not over-relying on knights only. Honestly knights is the worst choice you can go against saracens) Then return tomorrow, you will feel better after winning a game. And chances are your opponent will call your winning strategy broken.
I do believe I might’ve done some stuff differently. But i still stand by my statement that it is utterly broken that 7-8 x-bows can take out a tc within a minute or 2. It is broken.
But, as Confucius say: ■■■■ it, Imma go Saracens. can’t beat em, join em.
You need to learn to play, how to not die against the xbow power spike.
If the enemy plays drush fc and you go sc or skirm in feudal, you lose by strategy.
You can’t stop the 10 xbow at minute 17 at your walls with nothing.
So you need to go plain fc skirmisher/kts +2/mango/xbow yourself.
Or try to tower like crazy, both your enemies wood/gold offensive and your own wood/gold defensive.
Recently people don’t play as much fc, but straight single range, or drush/m@a into single range and try up asap. With Saracens this strat is extra powerful, because they don’t overfarm by using the market, and have much better eco balance.
In your case you both flushed.
After and extensive flush you can play skirmisher in castle.
The enemy ups xbow+bodkin, you up elite skirm + 2nd armor.
If you see the exact time, when the enemy clicked up, you can also play mango def or +2 kts, if you are faster to castle age.
Also there is no way you die to 8 xbow, if you have 8 +2 kts, so something is crooked anyway.
After all, opting for a fast xbow power spike is meta, it’s ok to wreck and get wrecked by that.
Definitely panicked. The idea that crossbows are going to be taking out a functional TC means the player who was under pressure absolutely and totally crumbled. You can literally just repair. Two villagers will offset the damage from eight saracen crossbows completely, and then some.
If the knights don’t have armor and bloodlines, they only need 20 hits to be taken out. With good micro you can kill 3-4 knights without losing a single xbow.
I once made a 25 pop game for fun and played xbows. Besides I then deleted basically all my eco to have superior numbers the same principle works there. High amount of xbows with good micro can be devastating against low amounts of knights.
Same amount of knights with full upgrades should be basically impossible though.
But the interesting part is how 8 xbows would take out a tc… Even with the saracen bonus this takes ages actually. You can’t really tell there is nothing to do against it because for sure there is with that much time.
It’s actually 2.5 minutes for 8 saracen xbows without TR. That’s a lot of time in game - and you can repair your TC as mentioned by @WoeIsToWho .
Lastly you need only 1 archer attack upgrade (Fletching) for your TC to have the same range as xbows and making it basically impossible for any amount of saracen xbows to raise your TC.
Giving town centers extra range leads to the death star effect A0E 2 early days. Teutons were broken.
I am by no means a pro at the game but here’s a few tips to deal with archers.
Use skirmishers. A trash unit that is specifically designed to counter archers. Play as Goths, castle unit is an archer worst nightmare.
Knights excel more in team games where you have access to trade. Knights are difficult to mass in one vs one. Since you have limited gold.
Saracens only economy bonus is literally their market. Learn some guide something how to do the fastest rush to cripple the Saracens before it even get started and then you won’t have to actually deal archers. Or at the very least you will weaken them.
Lol, cool you never stop learning…
I usually try to avoid Tcs with my archers so I never figured that out. But I don’t think it will change my playstyle. You just have better things to do with your archery than firing at TCs (and unexoerienced players who don’t use stand ground should never leave their archers anywhere near an opponent a TC, they are too easily lured in).
TC got 2.4k HP, it can take 800 shots from Saracen crossbow. 8 crossbows need 200 second to destroy a TC without hill bonus
Knight without any upgrade has 2 armor and 100 HP, it can still take 20 shots against fully upgraded crossbows. 8 crossbows need hill bonus to kill your knight with 2 shots. It is still hard to kill 8 non-upgraded knight with 8 fully upgraded crossbows. You probably did not control those knight at all or you just sent them 1 by 1.
My conclusion after reading your situation is that your enemy got much better marco and micro control over you. He must be a smurfer.
No. He just played better. Too many people think “smurf” every time they lose. 95% of the time they just played badly. Rewatch the recorded games. These supposed ‘smurfs’ make a ton of mistakes. “Smurf” is just the excuse we tell ourselves because our ego cannot handle the truth that we suck at the game, so we shift the blame to other things like bad map, OP civs, smurfs, bad team mates etc.
