Its the same story as japan and swedes. They are op but any mention of that to the players is of course rejected. “No we are just that good” it really hurts the game if you like other civs.
Have played three games already against usa and the strategy is clear. They turtle and ff. They are essentially rush proof if they have a small defense force. When they make it to fortress out pop three gatlings and whatever you are hitting them with that is left pushing the attack go up in smoke. They just have to survive long enough and its over.
So their supposed downside like swedes and japan is they are slow. Well if its near impossible to kill them wo a rush civ whats the weakness in that?
I play brits btw
11 Likes
USA is designed specifically to beat all Euro civs. They die only to Lakota and Incas.
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A lot of us saw it coming from before the civ even came out due to the absurd amount of bonuses and stuff that they can do, apart from all the free stuff they get.
Unfortunately now if you want to climb the ladder you gonna have to go through months of mirror matches until they somehow manage to balance whatever this is
8 Likes
But gey, the pros said the USA was B A L A N C E D…
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From the streams that I’m seeing it seems that they aren’t OP at the high level, the game works differently for them, but… isn’t it better to wait for the meta to settle before complaining about balance? It’s been only 2 days XD.
Be patient, BOs are yet to be discovered and counters to those BOs as well.
11 Likes
Heres the progression. Age to commerce w a tower drop it in your town. Build a rax and a batch of infantry. See what hapens. If you get raided use your buff militia and infantry and sit in place. Use buildings to screen of course. Start aging. If they start hitting you w a full rush use what you have left and build what more you can to hold off a bit more. Hit age get 3 gatlings and mow down whats left.
2 Likes
It’s only a matter of time until they start figuring more broken strats with them.
But no way they can say that 22 range skirmsher on age 4 or 23 range skirms on age 5 are even close to being balanced because these details matter a lot and are even more abusable at the higher lvl
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Whenever a new civ comes out I don’t think people have an immediate understanding of how to counter it. At the competitive levels, I’ve seen USA lose more than win, and don’t really see competitive players complaining about it. This isn’t to say we won’t see some balance tweaks in the coming weeks.
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Yes, USA is a super anti-Rush, “get to Fortress” civ.
One they are in Fortress, they are just unstoppable.
They even have an easy time getting to it, because Hamiltonian Economics gives you all Market upgrades for free, which is basically like a bunch of gathering shipments being sent in without you needing to spend shipment points on them, and it more than fixes their Economy.
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I cannot confirm that USA is OP.
They are one of the stronger one’s yes, but definitely not OP.
Yes, they have a lot of different potential bonusses and beeing the civ with the most different options and possible playstyles, but you cannot choose all of them as there are a lot of either decisions and you need carefully to think about what to choose and when.
E.g. in treaty games their economy isn’t as strong as from other european civs as the have less strong economy capital upgrades and especially much less economy boosting shipments like other civs.
Their shipment are more focussed on getting units and bonusses instead of economic advantages.
3 Likes
Perhaps it’s the same situation as Swedes. It has too many options, and in the beginning people have no idea how to use them, or choose the options that look more promising at the first glance (though in practice they are not).
After a few weeks people might or might not find a meta that is very OP. Then it gets nerfed, and people might have to look for another OP meta (or maybe not).
What is different from Swedes, however, is that the advantages of Swedes are mostly on the table (Torps, Caroleans, Leather Cannons), but the advantages of US are so complicated that may take much longer to find out.
11 Likes
Never been the 1v1 guy, but I played as the US in a skirmish game against Extreme AIs just to test out their treaty potential.
I don’t think the US is “great” in Treaty for the following reasons:
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No halberdier or infantry melee units. Yeah, you have really good musks and longer range skirmishers, so you can do well from a distance. But if other civs have masses of melee units coming at you, it’s kind of hard to win those gunfights with sheer units alone. If you get natives to fill in the gap for melee units, you’ll do well and can abuse your longer-range of your skirms. But I had to take a TP to effectively fight this way. The other skirm unit is a wood-drainer. Definitely can see the sharpshooters being so good for teamfights, as they can sit back so far and contribute so much. Great unit at that.
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No Engineering Card. The Horse Cannon training speed and HP boost card isn’t bad, but overall artillery still trains rather slow. Definitely not the Swedes with fast-producing artillery, but still better than the cannon-less civs. Like I said above, it’s hard to fend off a mass of melee units before they reach your mass of sharpshooters to make them feel uncomfortable. If your cannons aren’t set, yeah they’ll just walk in and make things difficult.
The gatling gun isn’t bad… just feels like an organ gun with lesser area-of-effect. -
Eco isn’t bad but not great either. Yeah, you get a lot of cool immigrants, a bank, etc. But you don’t have a lot of eco cards, and I didn’t see my score rising crazily, even when I was winning fights back-to-back and didn’t need to spend that much on units. I’d say the late-game eco is balanced. Not OP by any means when compared them to the Germans or China. I tried to put every possible eco card in my deck and chose every economical age-up option I could - maybe I still have yet to optimize it, but I don’t think the US economy was that impressive.
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Standard cav. The carbine cavalry isn’t a bad unit. I sought to buff my cav as much as I could, and they’re not bad at what they do. Just standard. Same with the hussar. No complaints, nothing special. Can’t ask for anything more or less.
I tried a few mercenary units here and there, including the Saloon units. I still don’t recommend using saloon units in treaty. The mercs were nice and cool though. Not OP, but it all depends on your strategy.
For treaty, I think they do alright. I leave it to the other guys to assess its 1v1 or team rush potential
4 Likes
USA has an Engineering card, it is in Age 4.
Why would you ever need Melee Infantry past Age 2?
The Carbine Cavalry has better Range and damage than the fully carded Portuguese Dragoon.
Their Hussars suck, but their Ranged Cavalry is amazing.
4 Likes
I know, it’s called “Knox Artillery Train” and has the same picture as the engineering card from other civs. It only boosts the HP and helps with the train time of only Horse cannons and heavy cannons. It is still better than having no cannons at all, and gladly it specifically buffs the widely-used horse cannon, but the fact that it doesn’t assist with training time of the other artillery makes their overall artillery about average.
Melee units are especially effective in certain situations in treaty. I’ve seen a good Dutch player push effectively into my ally’s base using a horde of halberdiers, backed up by his own skirms and cannons. It was just too tanky of a mass for my ally to fend off, and then the Dutch player pushed to control the opening in the wall. Skirm/cannon alone wasn’t overcoming the stalemate for the guy
Also, they are so good to add into the mix in a gunfight (assuming that you’re backing them up with proper support and all). You’ll always see people throwing natives in gunfights to act as meatshields. And any cav swarming renders your army ineffective, even if you have musks, cause none of them are actually participating in the gunfight, all the while you’re getting shot at. Musks will kill the cav, but they never walk up to the cav (lest you go melee mode), and they’re not gonna walk up to the enemy to act as a tank so your skirms can do their job. If used right, melee units make the difference in treaty games.
The US can get swarmed, and you have to send 2-pop carbine cavalry to fend them off, only to sit in the back and take up pop space that could be squeezed out for more skirm power
For some reason my game was bugged and didn’t let anyone go Age 5. But for how they performed in the skirmish game I played, I just thought of them as any normal goons. Did what was expected of them
1 Like
American cavalry is pretty terrible in Late Game because they train in twice the time of regular Europeans one. They do have one option to go Imperial that give a card for that, but this is one of the worst options.
Considering they have no card to boost Hussars and they train slower, it’s fair to say they are the worst in the game. Carbine Cav. is incredibly fragile with less HP and Armor than Dragoons.
I had no issue in the last 2 days with their eco. (around 6-7 games in Treaty)
1 Like
USA Cavalry is better than most, actually.
The Patriotism Age 3 card improves the Train Time of all their base units, and the Korvats Legion card lets them train Magyar Hussars from the Fort, which heavily benefit from the Cavalry-focused Age 5 option, since they are quasi-Mamelukes, bust costing much less, including less pop.
2 Likes
I found a nice little strat.
Record Game 2021-04-16 14-13-55.age3Yrec (5.0 MB)
Recording^
Basically USA vs. Hard AI, aroundn 8 vils on food and rest on gold,
advanced Salloon, Capitalism and Arkansas Post
Then just spam mercenaries out near the enemy base (salloons have 25 pop so no need to house for a little while).
Make more vils on gold during this, and later a few on wood with Hamiltonian + 700 gold crate + bank
When you age to 3, get the blockhouses and put them close to enemy too (who should still be in age 1 or 2 because of the mercenary spam).
Then make fusiliers and burn everything
the deck i used 
Hmm rewatching my replay i could improve to maake it much more efficient, ie. 3-5 vils on food while aging, rest on coin
1 Like
Funny you mention blockhouses. The last guy i played did that and at that point i resigned. I went out of the game and didnt look around but i would swear i caught a glimpse of strelets. Can you produce strelets out of the blockhouses?
nah, they are State Militia/ Volunteers which are better skirms that cost 50F/35W
1 Like
No, but you can produce State Militia, which are better than Strelets, Shapshooters, which are better than Caçadors, and Regulars, which are better than Musketeers.