I love Hidden Cup. I started last year with Viper imitating other players before HC3. Corona was new and lockdown was imposed. The best thing in my life that time was HC3.
It was 4/5 months after DE. Balance not great. Neither was pathfinding. Fast forward an year. We have HC4. Pathfinding good, not great, not bad. Balance great except Cumans and the 2 new civs.
I am looking at the drafts of the players and 4 civs are quite common. Vikings, Aztecs, Chinese and Lithuanians. Sure Aztecs and Chinese had always been great, at least on Arabia. Vikings are good on most open land maps and water maps. This year I am quite surprised with Lithuanians. They are not getting banned. They are being sniped and picked in top 3 almost everytime. I am an intermediate player who himself loves Lithuanians on Arabia and Arena.
Talking about last year, there have been some changes with Lithuanians. The Leitis is much weaker against ranged units but absolutely owns everything in melee with 2 relics (1 relic is enough for Hussars).
Even on aoestats.io (last patch data, but no change to Lithuanians so I don’t think it will be a huge deal), Lithuanians are 49.5 - 50.5 which is not the best of the data. For reference, Franks were 55% during HC3.
Balance wise Lithuanians data suggests they are perfectly balanced, so I am not asking for changes.
they are good on open maps (cavalry civs usually are) and are good on hybrid maps due to the extra food at the start. given that there is a lot of hybrid maps in hc4 they are going to be better suited for its playstyle.
on the other hand, they aren’t good in redbull wololo because of the changes there.
Oh yeah. The extra food bonus is disabled on Empire wars, just like the Aztec gold bonus, Chinese and Mayan villager bonus, Incan Llama bonus, Persian food and wood bonus.
However, the least impact of this is on Persians since they get their 2nd bonus immediately too.
Yes but the biggest change is the rules of Hidden Cup. Last year you had hidden pick no repeat and mirrors were allowed, so both player would end up picking Japanese on the Japanese map, Persian on the Persian map ect. Now that it’s a draft, the fact that Lithuanian are good on Arabia and any hybrid map + their good tech tree means they are good on most HC maps unlike the civs everyone kept picking last year.
Also they decided that all maps would have fixed relic positions for some reason. You can imagine how much this help Lith even further 11
Oh yes, that I was wondering. I remember Vikings mirror on Cup usually but then no mirrors this time.
This is quite easy to ignore. I know the tech trees to a good extent. But the Lithuanian defences are great. The only defensive tech they miss is Arrowslits, which is less important than the Keep upgrade honestly. Bombard towers are also there. The dock tech is great. Crossbowmen till mid Imperial, Hand Cannons after that if gold exists.
It’s like it was all the time, Lithuanians get some nice bonusses which are easy to use, but seem not overwhealming.
But pros know how to abuses these little bonusses to an absolute masterclass level. An insanely fast drush potential, the opportunity to take water just 3 mins earlier… These are the little things a pro can use to get a slight edge which he can snowball to a win. Not that it works all the time, but if it works like 20 % of the time it makes a 40/60 matchup to a 60/40. That’s all you need.
KOTD3 and WC2v2 Lithuanians already famous civ. Extra food made rush very strong and flexible, and make docking earlier. faster skirms made anti-archer easy. They are not as good in closed map, but in closed map u can more easily get relics to compensate. So i guess they are A-tier civ 1v1 or 2v2 (more easily attack your opponent than in pocket)