Poles have 60F 30G knights. Lithuanians have +6, Leitis, faster trash, and Hillforts. Cumans have capped ram and steppe husbandry. Gujaras have the food ut but also aren’t hindered by lacking Blastfurnace. I don’t think they are top tier but Battle elephant with UT for Bengali’s, Khmer, Vietnamese, and Burmese. are worth reevaluating.
I don’t think you can beat Cumans.
2 Likes
Burgundians because economy techs one age earlier
Cumans because second TC in feudal age
Malians because 1 pierce armor for infantry
Goth because cheap infantry
Inca because eagle scouts, cheaper towers, cheaper food units and more house capacity
I think BL scouts rule in all in feudal, so I value having BL very high.
- My top 5: Cumans, Sicilians, Turcs, Magyars, Khmer
- My bottom 5: Malays, Britons, Aztecs, Incas, Mayans
If there is some water on the map, Malay can benefit from cheaper fish traps for one of the best economies. I don’t think they are bottom tier.
And all the american civilisation would be also strong imo because of eagles. Mayans for example also have cheaper archers. That must be rather strong.
I would like to see the answer to the same question with Castle Age.
I think important is what is good against castles and with castles without trebuchets.
So maybe
- Huns because of Tarkans
- Goth because of Huskarls
- Celts because of strong Siege and strong Infantry that can protect Castles and because of stronger Castles with Stronghold
- Japanese because of Yasama-Towers
- Malians because Gbeto takes out all Siege, availability of Camels, high pierce armor Infantry
- Franks because of more Castles, Axemen against Siege like Gbeto
Why do you think Bengalis will be better than American civs?
Poor Romans. This is why their empire fell so “early”. 11
1 Like
Ok, that s something I have to think about.
Also with BL ?
KotD is not limited to Feudal age. The 2 biggest strengths of archers for me is that (1) without food cost you advance quickly to next age, and (2) they get a big power spike at next age and can barely get countered by units of thebprevious age.
I am only trying to guess how feudal only games would play out, and put my eggs on BL scouts. I guess it is easier to draw out the game to late game, where I expext scouts to be a predominant part of the armies.
Maybe. I admit that I only thought about land maps.
I can replace Malays with Dravidians maybe ?
Who would you put as bottom 5 ?
I thought that americans would be weak because of eagles. AFAIK eagles take twice as much time to train, cost gold, have -1 damage and -15hp (+5hp before bloodlines). So I expect them to get rolled over by BL scouts.
For me feudal eagles is the reason why people dont want to play american pockets in land map team games.
Because I think BL scouts are thst strong compared to eagles.
And I expect that people can just wall and defend with tower until later stage if the game. So expect early game bonus to be less impactful, and archers power to decrease over time.
It is harder to choose. I pick these civs:
- Top 5: Goths, Persians, Huns, Mongols, Franks
- Bottom 5: Dravidians, Bengalis, Teutons, Burmese, Sicilians
I think it is very hard to push castles, because rams are the only option.
1453 is early? You might be thinking of the city of Rome. The Roman Empire fell to the Turks, not a group listed there.
The “Romans” he talks about is only the “Western Toman Empire” part of the Roman empire. I am pretty sure that the “Romans” civ excludes the Byzantines.
1 Like
Maybe. I admit that I only thought about land maps.
Malay fishing ships and fish traps could be worth on Arabia too if it is feudal age only. Normally they delay castle age and vil production from multiple TCs, but with feudal only docks are additional production buildings for economic units. So with maybe two docks you can end up with maybe 8 additional economic units in the mid game. I think sometimes it would be very strong.
I can replace Malays with Dravidians maybe ?
But Dravidians have faster attacking Skirmishers, cheaper Barracks technologies and 200 extra wood in feudal age.
Who would you put as bottom 5 ?
I think Tatars, Britons, Spanish, maybe Bengalis, maybe Lithuanians.
I thought that americans would be weak because of eagles. AFAIK eagles take twice as much time to train, cost gold, have -1 damage and -15hp (+5hp before bloodlines).
I think training time isn’t as important if the game is longer, because you can just build more production buildings (you can’t build castle age buildings anyway with the wood). Gold cost is actually better than food cost, because it takes much longer tfor villagers to generate the food. First they have to collect wood and than they have to farm what takes longer than to mine gold.
Damage and Health is a good argument for scouts. But Eagles ar not as easily countered like by Spearmen, and I Eagles have still an advantage against Scout-civs without bloodlines.
Overall I think it at least doesn’t really hurt to have Eagles instead of Scouts, and there are more important factors.
Malay fish booms without gillnets, You are restricted to 1 TC but I don’t know.
I am not convinced. It is 150w + 141w/trap while a trap brings food slower than farms even without wheelbarrow. So it is just good as a wood to food converter and being an extra villager until pop capped. The cost seems too high to afford in early to mid game.
True.
- Britons are a great pick. They should be bottom 5.
- Spanish are a good pick. A must-have if you feel good archers are more important than BL
- Bengalis are a fine pick if you do not value BL
- I dont really like Tatars because of the hill bonus (+BL), but okay
- I am against lituanians, they have good early bonus while other civs lose their mid game power spike, they have BL and faster skirms/spears. faster skirms is a candidate for top3 skirm bonus as it means archers cannot run away.
Besides Lituanians, I respect these picks. I choose differently because I am all on board for the BL scouts. I currently roughly expect any civ with BL to beat any civ without BL in the late game. Maybe I overestimate BL scouts, idk.
Late game it matter less. But it allows reinforcement to come faster, just like Goth imperial UT.
True in early to mid game, wrong in late game. In late game gold is very scarse. You cannot get relics either. And I feel like in most maps you cannot really get more than 40 or 50 properly working villagers on gold (without blocking each other due to lack of space). While it is easy to have 80 farms.
And I expect the game to go late because there is no good way to take out buildings.
Yes, but I expect BL scouts to do fine against non Viking spears. Even alone they should trade kind fine (4hits vs 6hits) in mass battles of equal number while coming faster to the battlefield.
Then scouts can always be supported by either archers, skirms, or maa who all hard counter them.
I think 10 archers + 80 scouts beat 100 spears.
While spears are the worst matchup for scouts.
I agree that castle are key and I like those picks.
If it is Castle Age only, the Bohemians have a unique tech called Chemistry that is quite frightful in Castle Age. Add to that the fact that their pikes are better than par and you have one scary civilization.
In fact, they have a unique unit called the Hand Cannoneer.
2 Likes
Probably Burgundians will be better as they have gillnets in Feudal Age.
1 Like
Not 100% sure about that. Bloodlines increase the number of hits needed from 3 to 5. However, that last hit is for just 4HP. Meaning, that scout won’t even be able to take down a villager afterwards. Since there’s no healing in castle age, that scout has little value afterwards, unless you have a huge mass of scouts.
That is true, and that is indeed one of the main reasons. But, there are other reasons. For example, archers can prevent vils from walling out scouts. They can also stop scouts from attacking their own walls. Watch Hera’s video on arabia opening tier list, he gets into the reasons more.
This might apply mostly for raiding reasons. Once the opponent has a nice mass of spears, your scouts are completely useless in a direct fight, or for walled areas. This isn’t like imperial age, where you need multiple halbs to kill one paladin. Spears are cheaper, easier to produce, and kill scouts 1v1. Also, everyone has all the necessary techs for spears.
A lot of games will never get there. For example, you put Dravidians as one of the bottom civs. However, they have one of the strongest feudal age plays in the game with over 60% win rate. This is early-mid feudal, and the game is over. This might not apply as much to full feudal games, but I think it’ll still matter. In contrast, something like turks are much weaker, because most of their bonuses kick in only at imperial age.
I think people are sleeping on Malians. They may not have the best eco like Cumans but they definitely have the fastest and most sustained eco for long Feudal. They are clear number one for me.
Rest of my top 5 are:
Cumans
Khmer
Burgundians
Teutons
For bottom 5:
Britons
Bengalis
Berbers
Malay
Bohemians
TL/DR:
- I think games go to late game because you can wall early and opponent cannot snowball any lead. So there is no problem letting the opponent get a lead.
- I think scouts+archers are the best late game combo, and BL is the mist important tech/bonus in the game to make this combo stronger.
3 to 4 hits. The spear deals 3+15 damage per hit, so 3 hits make 54 damage and 4 hitd make 72 damage.
Anyways, I missremembered spears hp. They have 45hp , I though they only had 30hp.
So in 1v1, the spear kill in 4shots=9s (3 shots=6s) without BL) and die in 16s=9hits. In mass battles, it should be 12s vs 18s, due to the reload time between killing a unit and attacking the next one. So we definitely need some archers or skirms as back up. A good thing with scouts is that they can devide fights.
Now that I remember that spears got 45ho, the statement “you need 3 scouts against 1 spear” is clear because 3 scout without BL kill a spear without caduality. With BL, 2 scouts are enough.
Anyways you wsnt greater numbers because:
- you want to put the opponent economically behind afterward (vil kill / walling / idle time)
- a scout is worth a lot because it costs so much food.
In the feudal setting in late game, I have no problem throwing 3 scouts against 2 spears. Even 3 spears, as scouts will put up a fight before dying, protect my eco and give time for my archers or reinforcement scouts (scouts arrive faster than spears) to clean up.
I am not sure about that. This requires the spear player to notice and follow this scout in the mess and raid, and micro fight with vils.
I may be misspredicting the hypothetical meta, but I expect a big difference between the current way games are played out and the way it would be played out without castle & imperial age.
If I had to play such a game with a BL (eg Spsnish) against a non BL civ (eg Dravidians), I think I would triple wall my base from 5min mark onward (even with early loom) with at least a safe wood and both safe stones (big walling if need be).
- Expensive ? So what, I can delay my military buildings and age up at ~25 pop.
- archers want to break in ? I have time for house walling behind. Once I get to feudal age I can make a few towers.
The difference with regular setting is that in this setting I am not afraid to:
- be outboomed with 4 TC boom
- get castle dropped
- get sieged by mangonels and/or rams
And all this reasoning is based on the assumption that BL scouts will rule late game, when paired with archers (or skirms). Maybe 65 scouts + 45 archers ?
At first I was thinking more like 80 scouts + 30 spears, but I have to balance to more due to how “strong” spears are.
So I do not care that much about early eco bonus. But in the end I think Dravidians do not deserve bottom 5 due to the faster skirms (which is very convenient if you lose your archer mass and lack gold and Malays or Celts should take the spot, or Koreans if we only talk about land maps.