I just finished a round. I was italians, and the incas were constantly at my doorstep. They were spamming skirmishers and elite kamayuks. I tech switched into infantry/champions, and one of my teammates got on my case saying that was a terrible decision. What should I have done instead?
This should have better visibility in the aoe2de forum. This is the aoe1 forum
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You should move it into the aoe2 section.
However, italians don’t really have anything vs incas, the best thing is to outboom the incas, or to reach imp faster.
Italians HC counter kamayuks, but you have to protect them from the skirms, so maybe condos and onagers could help too.
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the kamayuk is like any infantry until they enemy get fabric shields… ie you hard counter infantry with archers sicne you can kite them.
you counter skirms with cavalry since they can out flank the infantry meat shield.
so it comes down to micro… you need to snipe his kamayuks forcing him to engage with skirms and then catch him out of position with hussars (likely) or knights if you have the gold. mangonels also help if he’s blobing.
sword line and condos EASILY beat kamyuks so long as you can stop him from blobbing the kamyuks power relies heavily on maintaining that formation to allow maximum models attacking simultaneously while minimum models are beign attacked. but with only 8 dmg, they’re doing a lot less damage than a condo nevermind a champ. and you can have 30 champs for the cost of 20 kamayuks, so as long as you can break that formation your champs will rek
once you reach imperial and they now have fabric shields you should have access to bbc, onagers, and HC, all better at dealing with fabric shields, the onagers force them to break up the blob, the bbc force them to engage and HC kill them, of course its too expensive to have all of these, but any one of these will help… if they’re fast enough they could tech into eagles which will rek all of the above since HCs are so unreliable…
of course if he’s a better player than he’ll beat you anyway since you dont have a civ advantage over him and very minor bonuses
btw italy has better bonuses towards reaching imperial than inca does
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Crosbow + onagers maybe
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Your teammates were wrong. Champions (with Supplies) are cost effective against a Kamayuk+Skirm combo, not a “terrible decision” at all. Maybe you just needed more numbers.
You can also add some Onagers…
yeah allies arent always right… ive seen a lot of people be a lot more critical and trying to control another player while themselves are actually wrong
That works as long as the kamayuk numbers aren’t very high. In large groups they kill champions because of the range. So teching into champs is indeed very risky, here.
Not sure about team games but in a 1v1 you can go arabalest in early imp if the Inca player didn’t go mass eagles in castle age, continue with hand canoneer and skirms to eventually add hussars. In any case your best bet is probably go for heavy boom in castle age and try to outnumber your opponent later on.
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Kamayuk beat champion. Not that hard but they do.
That’s not really true.
Elite Kamayuks SLAUGHTER champions since they stack when they attack. One on one champions are favored but no one using kamayuks is going to be attacking with small enough numbers to where infantry can even comfortably engage. Mass champion vs like 25+ Kamayuks, they die before they can really engage.
As for countering this composition, it isn’t easy since Incas have a pretty well rounded army composition, and Italians aren’t as flexible as they are, but I would say your best bet is Hand Cannons + Your Own Skirmishers. Skirm hand cannon is a pretty strong combo on its own, skirms to cover the enemy skirms and hc for everything else.
Microing an army like that against Incas wouldn’t be easy though; you’d have to match skirmisher numbers fast and be a bit campy with your hand cannons since your skirmishers die to the kamayuks without them around. Hussars are an option for the skirms, but since kamayuks are on the field that’s not as viable unless you bait the kamas around.
Against Incas, Italians could go for Hussar + HC.
Italian HC are amongst the only cost-effective ones, afterall.
And slingers? Slingers are good against champs too
Kamayuks are very weak to onagers. They are a bit squeashy
Of course skirms are weak against onagers too.
And both kamayuks and skirms cant oneshot onagers at range.
Test it yourself in the Editor…
I’m talking about Cost Efficiency (less or equal amount of resources used).
Supplies Champ: 45f 20g
E. Kamayuk: 60f 30g
E. Skirmisher: 25f 35w
The skirmishers actually just help the champions to be “more efficient”… a pure Kamayuk vs Champions battle (again with similar resources) would have a different result.
Maybe he meant that tech into champs were too slow and costly.
Also, massed kamayuks beat champs and almost any melee unit.
I would use the new condos, less upgrades and they wouldn’t suffer from +12 bonus damage.
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True, but Hussars do the job, and since they are Trash, you can sustain production of them and a Gold unit, for a long time.
I think Arbalest/Hussar is a good unit comp- I agree with JonOli12 that Hand Cannon/Hussar is a good army comp, only issue is that those units both require food, whereas if you go Arbalest/Hussar there’s no overlap in resources they need (Arbalest = wood/gold and Hussar = food). That’s usually a pretty good army comp.
Obviously it always comes down to micro. I think champions aren’t horrible since they kill Eagles which are always a threat with Meso and they kill trash well, but Kamayuks when massed shred them. You could do Champ/Arbalest but you have to have good gold control.
siege or even the new condos
Jebait the kamayuks into stacking and hit em with onagers
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Yeah, but they melt so fast, unless you dance in front of the kamayuks a bit before engagement while you HC fire at them.
Plus, you have to pay for 600g of hussars upgrade, so they are slower to tech into.