Hello everyone, I have recently learned the archer build order and in my quest to do it on Celts, Ethiopians, and Koreans, I have run into problems.
Once I reach late game and start making Siege Onagers, I find that they either kill all my halbs, miss all their shots and die, or are found away from my main army and killed due to min range.
Does anyone have tips on how to use them better, and managing them?
Thanks,
There isn’t much to say, except that you have to better learn to use the attack ground command and that it take a lot of practice.
Maybe one small trick, if you are using a gaming mouse (or maybe a normal one too if you are able) is to create a macro with the attack ground command hotkey.
For example I set my third button click (the mouse 3, when you click the wheel) set so that whenever I have a siege selected the wherever I click on the map with it my siege instantly take the command of the attack ground on that location.
However you need a lot of practice, not just with SO, but with BBC too (to snipe the SO) and a bit with trebs too.
I’m not a pro at this, but what I try to do is putting them in no-attack stance, then micro-ing them with the ground attack. It works as long as I don’t have to care about what the rest of my army do. Usually I end up doing 2-3 shots then completely forgot about my Onagers…
Halbs should act as a detterent to shield you SO, you have to quickly retreat them when you fire with you SO, and if you engage, you should use the SO to fire at enemy units that aren’t close to your halbs.
However, keep in mind that you usually use halbs precisely because they are cheap and expendable, so don’t worry if you kill them, the important thing is that either you have some left, or that you have near reinforcement buildings.
Also, keep you halbs in spread formation, it helps to reduce a bit the friendly damage.
Thanks for the advice guys!
I try to use no attack, but then sometimes i forget to use them completely 
I’ll try the spread formation trick too
thanks again
More than no attack stance you should use stand ground.
I use stand ground for archers, doesn’t that mean they will attack automatically but not move? So won’t the SO just kill their meatshield?
I’m still learning how to use unit stances thought so I may be wrong
No, they won’t attack automatically at all
I see you have good taste (my fav civs too).
How did you find the recent korean buff?
I think the Korean buff is actually pretty good, I have done the archer build order on a few civs, and Koreans and Vietnamese are both civs that I find myself not struggling for wood on. Really fun to play without having to chop stragglers and just staring at the wood count, hoping it passes 60.
Also i’m still in the process of finding my fav civ 11, so far I have vikings, khmer, vietnamese and magyars as civs I usually win with. I also like Ethiopians and Koreans, but I find their SOs hard to use, as is the posts reason.
Yes, that way your halbs would attack enemy units when they collide with them, but they don’t charge or chase them.
So if you put them between the enemy and your SO (especially in spread formation) they will damage any units that charge at you SO, and at the same time you can use the SO to deal damage.
Of course you have to constantly keep moving the halbs and targeting the enemy.
EDITED: No sorry, I just now understood that you meant that the SO should stay on no attack stance, not the halbs.
11 so I’m not crazy right? SO should be on no attack stance?
Yes SO on no attack stand, I don’t know why I thought you were talking about the halbs 
Another tip, micro your army, two control groups can do the trick, number 1 halbs, number 2 onagers. Try to be careful if you think the fight is important, and retreat back if you need to look away and manage other things like economy.
I think macros like that are considered cheating, its similar to how people used macro for monk conversions on voobly.
Yes? No one never told me that, I and never played on voobly.
Since I often used macros for other games…
I think this is not a macro, by what I understood you just saying to bind a hotkey (attack ground) to an extra gaming mouse button.
Monk macro is definitely cheating (still a thing in DE, kids are kids…)
Yeah that’s it, the program of the mouse call it macro so I do too (not a computer expert so…).
One further point worth mentioning might be when to use SO, to begin with. It’s so costly that oftentimes it can be better to go for onager and spend the resources to field more army, for instance. Also if you play open maps, you really need good army control to make it worth it. Even if you have halbs around mobile armies can work pretty well if they distract your halbs while sniping the SO. So while on arena SO are easier to manage on other maps SO is super risky. Doesn’t mean it can’t work but let’s say the more open the map the riskier going SO gets.
One of my problems when I hit imp is that i’m floating around 1.5k wood, 1k food, 3k gold, and like 1200 stone. I get all my upgrades on the units I want to use, build a couple castles, make a ton of production buildings, but then still have res to spare, so with that extra res i usually tech into something I want to try, like SO.