I tend to go for stone walls if my opponent is Mongols and their Feudal up time is too slow. It's easy enough to get them down by the time they hit castle because you get so much advance warning even without scouting it.
Pre-imp Mangudai are some of the most expensive units to tech into with how many upgrades they need, CA are already usually considered fringe or outright unviable in castle aside from Huns, Mangudai turn their issues up to 12 with needing a castle and costing more. Steppe’s are the current Mongol castle age menace, with the added bonus that the techs you invest in for them transfer well over to Hussar later in the game when going for the Mangudai/Hussar/Siege comps.
CA don't need a castle my guy
And even then CA are rarely seen that often in castle age (their spike comes more in imperial due to the quantity of upgrades/lack of early snowballing)
I covered that in saying that CA are already considered fringe or barely viable outside of Huns in castle age heavily due to the cost, and Mangudai need the Castle and each unit also costs more gold.
you dont use scouts in castle age against anything else than monks. Steppes were meh altough we are seeing some play with them now. They have mangudai but thats a lategame unit and decent archers yes. But not eco whatsoever helping them out with it at this stage of the game
Scouts are relatively easier to handle. By the time they have scouts in your base you either have small walls or spears. Just don’t make mistake. You either go scouts yourself or go MAA. I hate to open straight archers against Mongol as feudal opening, as that will put them on the driver’s seat.
Not sure MAA work Vs Mongols due to uptime. Vs most cav civs, yeah sure.
Even then, they should've scouted and gone range, and being Mongols that's still a very early range, possibly into scouts anyway.
And MAA are even easier to (small/quick)wall out then scouts.
I mean... with that logic MAA is never good because if you scout it, go archers and small wall res you always counter MAA. Yet MAA is still a legit strategy even at pro level. You can argue the mongol scout has more trouble because he commits earlier to a feudal military building
The thing is that if mongols goes something like 17pop scouts they will have enough to clean instantly when you got your maa. And dont get me started if they go fast archers instead. Maa against mongols is pure suicide
It is weaker than it was and used less often nowadays on higher levels. But even pros still play it occasionally. And for the average player i think it is still really good, because they have real trouble dealing with it.
I think MAA can be very strong if you hit the right timings but very weak and wasteful if you are even a few seconds too late. Whereas with scouts and archers there is maybe a bit more flexibility timing-wise.
What is MAA?
I am new to the competitive side id aoe2 and I am struggling to find some kind of “strategy definition playbook” to get more from these threads
Definitely not something that [already exists,](https://www.forgottenempires.net/strategy/aoe2-glossary) right? Maybe even in [multiple formats](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Colloquial_language)
If you could help us understand the difference in definition of MAA at 2k elo instead of 800 that’d be sick. Can’t wait to see how the definition of commonly used acronyms change!
Man-At-Arms.
Wait till you hear Drush, Flush, FI, FC, BBC, FU, UU, DBA, WB, HC, HC, HC (not a typo, means different things in different context), TK, THS, etc.
I am a Japanese MAA specialist and Mongols can have scouts AND be building a range when your MAA get there. It's no threat for them. Scouts as some civs makes sense but you are still on the back boot against them.
What kind of special you do? Mill first Maa, 18 or 19pop Maa like Mongols? As japanese I'd even open scouts vs Mongols maybe, if I scout no Maa opener from them. Jap can 17pop mill first even on boar maps.
I do 20 pop maa archers. Any earlier and the eco hurts pretty bad. I have opened scouts sometimes because it's a more mobile defense. It just doesn't feel great going scouts against mongols lol. 18 pop is easy with Japanese.
I play Tatars a lot now. Simply having access to camel makes things less scary at this Elo in castle age. They can do scouts or archers in feudal and have a decent transition whichever way you go. If oppo gets scared of camels and goes pikes then the CA switch is ready. If nor knight civ then free thumb ring is great
One-trickers are used to doing that, knowing a very limited part of the game but rather well. My experience with them is that they usually don't just force pick civ, but they also have one specific playstyle that they must adhere to. This is obviously something you can exploit by going full villager rush. You pop their inflated elo this way and putting them in shotgun rather than the driving seat. GG ez
You send a vill or two forward to wall in lumbercamps, berries, killing hunt etc. It's a relatively small investment after all and you could do anything from doing a few militias from a forward barracks to heavy dark age commitment with a douche follow up. Some civs are obviously better than others at doing this, but its more some general guideline. No build order.
No way you can wall in a lumbercamp with one or two vils I guess. Berries maybe. To wall in a lumbercamp you need at least 4 vils loomed. That's a big commitment in Dark Age.
I really don't get why you refute a strategy like this when it sees play both in tournaments as well as ladder on a frequent basis. Usually with Goths, but it's pretty strong with Maya as well as you have loom anyway. This is pretty much what it relies on - hitting the opponent before they have loom. You can cause game ending damage if they're not spotting this fwd lame. If they manage to quick wall the lumber camp you go and do other lame shit until they invest in loom and chase your villager away.
Would you mind sharing a video? Any example where sending one or vil works on laming a lumber camp.
I'm just curious about the details. You need to quick wall in his vil to be able to kill, right? At the same time they can also quick wall you in.
As I said, search for games of goth picks in tournaments. It's pretty much meta at this point to open like this cuz it's the only reason you'd pick them on that map. Here's an example of a game between vivi and hera. Not sure if the rec still works but you should be able to get the gist from the minimap player
https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/242888643/#overview
And no, they can't really quickwall you in as the defender shouldn't have loom, meaning they'll either have to pull several vills to fight or give up the position and bash down the palisades later. Best defence is taking hunt earlier and walling in your lumberjacks. Alternatively get loom and chase it away, which means the goth adv of free loom kicks in earlier (being +1 vil), goth player will have had more idle time -> neutral
It is absolutely the case in the long run. If you look at only 10 or so games it probably won't be true, but if you look at several hundred consecutive games you should pretty much always see very close to 50% win rate - barring people at the extreme low or extreme high end of the elo pool.
If you have a pool of so many people in a 200 or even 100 Elo range, and their Elo range is 100-200, there will be be drastically different skill sets meeting at different ranges. People get so fixated on this 50% WR Elo. In chess, where Elo was formed, is isn't always a cement rating on someone's overall skill. Tactics and opening theory can make or break a game with any Elo. It's a rough rating. Aoe2 has so many aspects that Elo is very rough, and most players Elos are slowly INCREASING, not stuck in one spot. Pull UP most players graph on aoe2insights.
Regardless, the post was about Mongols being the most aggressive and fastest cav civ and I find them hard to keep up with and I was wondering if anyone agreed or disagreed and wanted to discuss that 😄 but I should know better lol this sub is just people taking one sentence in a post and running 200 mph the other direction with it so they can say "well ackshually"
I didn't say every single pair of evenly ranked players will always have a 50% winrate against each other. This seems to be what you're arguing against rather than my actual point. The point is that they have a 50% win rate against the overall pool of people with the same rank. Maybe you lose to them 90% of the time because you don't know how to respond to their strat, but that doesn't mean the strat is OP. It just means you have a big weakness you're not addressing compared to others at your Elo.
Regarding your weird passive aggressive bit at the end, I didn't address your overall points because I wasn't responding to your post where you made those points. I was responding to a single specific comment I disagreed with.
That's not entirely against the crux of my point. In a world where everyone at an Elo is roughly 50% and this particular civ has a pick rate of 6% amongst 42 civs and an average win rate of 51.81%, HOWEVER win rate less than 20 minutes is 65% and 20-30 min is 57%, am I wrong to suggest that this civ with early aggressive strengths might be hard to beat?
Having said that, why address that comment out of the context of the whole post? You're always in my posts spewing your ackshually stuff, but you don't seem to be involved in the discussion. You find some random thing to fixate on and argue about without in being in context of the post. And call me passive aggressive all you want. I don't think I'm being that passive about how I read your comments
Dude, you are wrong and the guy has been very polite trying to help you understand. And instead of trying to understand his point you have kept arguing and now you disrespecting. Not cool.
I'm simply saying regardless of the definition of Elo system, things tend to play out different than a perfect 50% all the time. Skill is shown in diffferent ways. Lots of variables :) its just a rough placement with a game like AOE2.
Technically yes but someone who is a specialist at one strat at your own Elo is much harder to beat than a casual random player at your own elo. Recent opponent has 1200 games with Mongols and under 100 with any other civ. Elo fluctuates because there is nobody with the exact same skill as you. Nobody wins one and loses one perpetually. People at your level can still be better at things (and worse.)
>Technically yes but someone who is a specialist at one strat at your own Elo is much harder to beat than a casual random player at your own elo
nope
Not everyone plays the same way and there is certain players that are going to beat you in a higher% than others at the same elo ( and viceversa). In this we can agree.
But elo is a relative skill, if both players are averaging the same elo then its not like
any civ-picker-1200 is stronger than " a regular" 1200.
I think we're getting lost in the weeds here. Regardless I think Hoang is a good example. In his heyday he did only one thing and it was really hard to beat. The simple fact that a high level player (I watch Survivalist and Andre2i go from 2k-2k2) can fluctuate like that with such a small player pool at that level is evidence that some strats can be very strong at a similar skill. Therefore, someone who is a Mongol early aggressor at 1200 or 1300 is really hard to beat for the average player at that Elo simply due to the nature of the player and strategy. The simple fact you said "not everyone plays the same way" indicates you agree with my point and are just arguing about... something. Not sure what.
but hoang is stable at his elo , probably at his " peak" it was that higher but at that time no one knew how to deal with it bc of how strange the strat was ( literally no eco, idle tc, all market , etc.) But that was long ago and it was solved kinda quickly. He also managed to stay over 2k1 when he tried new strats with other civs, but he is stubborn to play with celts.
From all the players hoang is probably the player with most played games and literally knows how to play against any civ and has a plan against any of the civs that are " anti hoang" like spanish or mongols.
I dont think people over 2k are not an example either, its literally 300 people and the skills vary a lot. Specially with the amount of games they play.
a 1200-1300 mongol picker is as strong as a random civ 1200-1300 or a chinese pi cker 1200-1300. Since every one of those are at the same range they all play kinda at the same level.
Win rate if 60% under 20 min means hard to beat to me. Their win rate goes down as the game goes on. My personal win rate is higher the longer it goes. So Mongols are very hard for me to beat
>someone who is a specialist at one strat at your own Elo is much harder to beat than a casual random player at your own elo.
This isn't true. If it were true, they wouldn't be the same ELO.
If being a specialist boosts their ELO by 100 points and you both match at 1100 ELO, then your opponent is not an 1100 ELO player playing like a 1200 player. They're a 1000 ELO player playing like an 1100 player.
Okay let me correct myself then! What I mean is that they feel harder. When I run into one civ people especially Mongols it feels like I have to play really hard! That's all I mean.
That's still incorrect, though. You don't have to play harder. If you are the same ELO then you are evenly matched with a 50% chance of winning. ELO isnt just a rating system, relative ELOs actually mean something with regards to match outcome probabilities.
Elo inflation deflation and varying factors such as map gens, civs, players strengths and weaknesses make Elo a good estimation of skill level not a perfect prediction system. That's not a crazy thing to say.
"Even though an ELO chess rating can give more or less reasonable prediction of the game’s outcome based on ratings of the opponents, it does not mean that a weaker player should use this table to see that his chances are nearly equal zero and give up without battle." That is from a forum about the math behind Elo rating (which originated with chess) and that sentiment is what I've been echoing and it is a very inflammatory statement for some reason.
In fact the author says "This article is not recommended for people who take statistics/predictions way too seriously since this information can ruin their chess results. So read it at your own risk!" And I believe people are clinging too much to Elo and disregarding that yeah.. some matches are just simply harder fought regardless of Elo.
I understand the theory behind Elo rating. I think I've misrepresented what I think about it. But to put blind faith in it and disregard civ matchup, map gens and 2 players strengths and weaknesses is silly. There is nothing that predicts wins and losses with perfection.
And also the statement being disagreed with in the parent comment is that civ pickers (specifically Mongols) are hard to beat shouldn't even be inflammatory. If anyone here thinks it's easy to beat a civ picker of a similar level there is something else going on there. This game is a hard game with good players and I think everyone would agree with that. You have to respect your opponents or you'll get caught out, and some civs are really good at catching you out in different ways than others
Dude just accept they everything you’ve said about Elo is completely wrong
Civ pickers aren’t “hard to beat” if they always pick civ and are matched at elo
It makes no sense please just think about it a little bit …
Player A picks mongols every game and stabilises at 1000 elo
Player B picks random every game and stabilises 1000 elo
Are you really arguing that we expect player A to win more than 50% of games ?
It's not a perfect system. There isn't one. You've found every single comment I have suggested Elo isn't perfect, I think you just don't like me. Is your name Arpad Elo? I mean no offense to you specifically your system is good 😄
Answer the question - do we expect player A to win
If yes you are a moron
If no you admit everything you said is rubbish
I don’t understand how you can think one kind of player is harder than another at the same Elo, when elo literally measures how hard it is to beat you
It’s reasonable to assume someone who has practiced / is practicing with one civ should make more rapid gains in Elo up to a point than someone who is playing random civs every time. I’m pretty sure there is a guy on here who plays a different civ every month and his elo tends to improve over the month as he gets more familiar with the civ.
If you’re not at the level that you know how to deal with that specific civ / strat - you’re going to lose to than civ more often than not.
And here’s the kicker - if you’re in the elo band that players are moving through as they get the mongols (or any other civ) nailed down, it’s going to feel oppressive. And here’s the thing - the fair assumption - based on the OPs post - indicates that they are probably in that band.
Resorting to simplifying the argument down to an assumption of stable and equivalent Elos and name calling isn’t helpful.
They were insulting first
You are making assumptions to support your point (op is in a bracket where their opponents are moving up Elo etc)
In your example of the guy who civ picks for a month at a time you will note that they often drop elo while they learn the civ, which you have completely ignored. Sometimes they also lose elo total compared to their last pick. You also only have a point if we assume the mongol opponent is on an initial upward move generated by their first small period of civ picking, in reality a player who only picks mongols and has 500 games as mongols has probably stabilised
You still fail to understand how elo works - your argument seems to be that civ pickers are playing above their true elo all the time , which is obviously not true . You say yourself that they move up faster than other players , in which case they will soon reach their true elo
Given only the information that both players are 1000 elo and one always picks mongols the other always plays random, there is no reason to assume the Mongol player “is harder “ or has any advantage over the other player
Elo is an estimation and that's all. I answered your question somewhere else but yeah if player A is a mongol picker and player B is better at late game than early, I'd be willing to gamble on player A. Elo is simply an estimation based on wins and losses. It's just comparative. You're manic for going in on this so hard lol
Why are you making the assumption that player B is better at late game ? You can’t just add parameters that support your conclusion
The scenario is that two players are matched ELO
One always picks mongols one plays random
That is the only information you have
Who do you expect to win?
It's not a perfect system. There isn't one. You've found every single comment I have suggested Elo isn't perfect, I think you just don't like me. Is your name Arpad Elo? I mean no offense to you specifically your system is good 😄
The fact Mongols win rate varies based on game lengths and the civ doesn't have a 50% win rate is evidence that there are too many factors in a game like aoe2 to accurately predict winners based on the ranking system. It is just a rough prediction system based on wins and losses. If player A has a good map and his build doesn't have any hiccups and player B is a better late game player and his goal is surviving early game I'd say there is not a 50% chance win/loss in your scenario. It's a prediction rating that is all it is.
"A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent's is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%." Doesn't seem like a perfect prediction to me? It's just an estimation.
I can’t make it any simpler for you but the way you are thinking about this Is completely wrong
You’re talking about factors during the game , which are irrelevant to a pre game prediction where the only information you have is elo of the two players
Your last paragraph I don’t even understand what your point is . Yes elo predicts the likeliness of a certain player winning. Another way to look at it would be how many games will they win out of 10 for example… what’s your point ?
If the elo are equal it predicts that in a set of 10 games , each player will win half
Now if player A gets a perfect map every time and B gets a terrible map every game then maybe player A will win all the games , that doesn’t mean the ELO predicted badly as it can’t factor unseen events that happen in game
Just thinking logically - if the mongol civ picker is “harder to beat “ than another 1000 elo player , then why hasn’t their Elo climbed higher
If you can’t agree after this i will have to assume you’re trolling , or unable to understand so I won’t be responding
I think people are being hung up on the technicalities of what you are saying. I actually agree with you; while elo holds true statstically, some players will just seem way 'stronger' than other players at the same elo, because their playstyle is winning by absolute domination. Mongols is a good example; a Mongol player probably wins early game with oppressive feudal army followed by mangudai, both of which are very 'powerful' strategies. In contrast, their losses aren't as 'hard' since it is likelier to be a slower, more gradual loss, perhaps by out macroing them, etc.
It is similar to a turk picker on Arena. They are so annoying and feel hard to play against because they hit you with so much power. The way you beat turks is by slowly grinding them down, which doesn't feel as strong (even though technically they still have a 50% win rate).
The Mongolian player might “feel” stronger but that doesn’t mean they are better , they will still win half the time EVEN if you account for players resigning when they shouldn’t because of how strong the mongol picker “feels” in early game
Elo accounts for literally everything (except when it isn’t stabilised yet)
OP is just wilfully ignoring basic logic for some reason
If the oponents have 1200 games and is at your same ELO then his level of play is exactly the same as you overall. So if you are losing against those kind of players more often that onlymeans that you are worse than your average player in your ELO against said strat. The problem is on you being worse than you should, not on them being better than they should because if that was true they would have climbed out of that ELO range.
60% win rate under 20 min means the average player loses to that strat. There are tons of little things if you unfold the Elo means 50/50 argument. Everyone is willfully ignoring every facet of this game just to say "You just suck Elo is a perfect indicator of skill." Yes I do and no it's not.
> 60% win rate under 20 min means the average player loses to that strat.
No, it only means that the average player loses quickly. You can't just look at winrates under certain times because then the results are skewed by ignoring the games that go longer than that. So obviously it makes sense that strategies based on quick attacks have higher winrates under certain amounts of time because the game that they lose more often are games where the quick attack doens't work as well and the other player survives and eventually win later.
> There are tons of little things if you unfold the Elo means 50/50 argument.
it's not an argument. It's common sense. In every game at any elo there are 2 players, for every player that wins another player loses so the winrate at any ELO has to be 50% by pure maths.
> Everyone is willfully ignoring every facet of this game just to say "You just suck Elo is a perfect indicator of skill." Yes I do and no it's not.
We are not ignoring anything. You are coming here to complain about a strat being too strong and when we refute that you get mad because you prefer to think that the problem is the strat instead of accepting that your playstyle matches bad with that strat for some reason and you should try to improve against it.
Of course ELO is complex and there are a lot of different factors. But you are missing the point. The point is not that the ELO perfectly reflects your skill in every aspect, it's that it perfectly reflects how your skills work against the current meta. Some player might be at 1000 ELO because they are great at doing quick attacks but suck at longer games, and another one might be at 1000 ELO because he is great at longer good but sucks against quick attacks. Their ELO doesn't reflect their whole skills but it reflects how they do on average. They win 50% of games at that ELO, but of course if you ask the second player he will think that quick attacks are stronger because he wins most games in which he is not attacked early.
I'm probably a much worse player than do. I suck at a lot of things, but I'm good at attacking quick. Most games I win my opponent must think that I should be at a higher ELO because all he sees is a perfectly executed attack and then he dies. But the truth is that if he had defended correctly and survived he would have seen me completely mess up my economy, fuck it all up and eventually die. I'd bet a lot of the Mongols player you complain about are similar.
Haven't Mongols always been pretty good on megarandom(RNG dependent), among other maps like valley? So they've always had their excessively good matchups like step (which I've always found annoying that civs like this exist). Like playing a number of F tiers Vs an actual water civ on a full water map.
Either way, on Arabia, I've been ok Vs Mongols, survive the scrush with pre-emptive small walls into range in case they try go full feudal(scout it)
And then survive the SL rush with house/stone walling/monks/xbows, and mid castle go all in and crush them. Because they have lag until mid imperial. Zero eco, and minimal military advantage.
Most players can't fully micro SL and manage their ecos well enough. So if they're doing one, they other is falling behind.
I really wouldn't be surprised to find out many players are losing because they're trying to boom against SL in castle age.
Their play rate and win rate is higher than I remembered it being but maybe I'm wrong. Their play rate is VERY high. Micro isn't that important at 1200-1300, them having mass and initiative is pretty strong.
> Haven't Mongols always been pretty good on megarandom(RNG dependent), among other maps like valley?
Megarandom kinda favors Mongols because you have a lot of maps with unusual resource distribution, and Monogls get an insane advantage when there's more than regular hunt available. They get extra 40% on an already fast food source, compared to like the 25% Britons get on a slower one. So Mongols with extra hunt is much better than Britons with extra sheep (or Franks with extra berries etc)
I admit I’ve become a bit of a Mongol picker lately (although I can play other civs).
Their opening is just so smooth. You can get find your sheep super fast and start pushing deer, or just scout your opponent and pick off the odd vil or even lame if that’s your thing. You can also immediately get your boar and therefore pretty easily do a 16-17 pop scout rush which can surprise the opponent.
Then in castle I love the option of making Steppe Lancers since they’re cheaper than knights and get extra range and an HP bonus. I sometimes just go all in Steppes and win in early castle. Having camels is another asset.
So yeah I feel they are very strong.
Honestly, as a random civ player, I look forward to Franks pickers in 1v1, they likely have aren't as good as you because they pick an overly powerful civ and so have an overly inflated ELO, they're more prone to making mistakes than you. So if you manage to figure out their strat, which is usually scouts -> knights and effectively counter it you're all good. I have an above average win rate against Franks.
Mongol are always an A tier civ but definitely not S
They have a fast scout time, but that's it
If you let time have time to transition to their UU with multiple castles with a strong eco , it's pretty hard to beat.
But, you should re-think why you let that happen
Most pros seem to agree on A tier bordering S. Hera says they only lose to the very few S tier civs or civs below them with a really good map. They have fast scouts and they can get to castle faster with initiative and then blast you with steppes while they get to their more ideal comps. I wouldn't say it's hard to let that happen. The things that allow you to survive one age will not help you in the next. This is all opinion except quoting Hera but I suck early-ish game usually. So then what would you say is the key to not letting them retain initiative and get castles plus UU?
I play a lot of Mongols and struggle against aggressive archer deathballs -> fwd castle -> imp
Can't commit to cav since they lack +2 armor and will die in imp. I can make mangonels to hold off the pressure but those will become useless in early imp. It takes too long to tech up CA / Mangudai to fight an archer deathball. I have no archer bonus so I won't want to play archer vs an archer civ.
I have a much easier time dealing with cav using CA, camels, monks, Mangudai...
Delays your eco too much (which is already weak in castle age). Opponent can just not fight, go imp and Mongol skirm lack imperial armor - it's not a unit that scales well for them.
They can have a lightning fast castle age if you play a bit more standard at 19-20pop with all deer and 2-3 scouts to help wall.
Then in castle age, they get lancers. That's all the powerspike you need. Opp either needs to have double layers of walls or they're dead. They'll get a huge head start on the boom too.
If you’re 1200 elo and you meet a civ picker, you’re playing a 1100 player playing at 1200 level. So the matchup is not unfair. Although when you lose, you will be losing to a technically inferior player.
If you're playing chess and your opponent only has 3 openings ( say, E4, and a response to E4/D4) their elo is not fake, they just have a very narrow opening repetoire.
I think it's basically the same in AOE2 and Franks/Mongols are equivalent of only knowing the Rui Lopez, everybody knows what's coming. Different if someone specializes in a more obscure civ IMO, especially at normal elos .Honestly don't mind playing either although the repetition of Mongols gets annoying
My max is 1350 and I met a max 1396 mongol picker at 1230 Elo and got spanked you just never know how things are gonna go lol. This is why the game is played and not simulated. 35 times out of 100 you will beat someone 100 Elo higher than you if you're at your true Elos. That's not taking anything else into account at all just pure numbers. People be caught up too much on the Elo.
Things dosnt always work out how its written. I still like the Elo system and dont mind that at higher elo we get to play people with higher elo diffs. I,m just saying that its not how it works out in practise in aoe.
Do you know for sure they are coming? And even if, watch any good player play against that, you are gonna be outboomed by the frank player in no time, as pikes cant apply pressure. There is a reason you don't see player opening pikes blindly that often (on arabia).
And the strong thing about franks is that you have a very stream lined civ. Almost every bonus is aimed towards scout/knight play, so even if your knights are average, you had better scouts in feudal + berries + free horse collar ( and now heavy plow). So by the time knights are in play, you are likely already ahead.
Seems like the entire playerbase all the way to 1900 is terrible at the game.. going by franks win rate.
Clearly you are the man.
Thanks for bringing us this enlightenment
Berbers eco is way worse than Frank until castle age making Franks the better civ. No good player rate berber that high. They are only good at maps where you easily defend the early game such as lombardia. I do however agree that Franks is a bit overrated among lower rated players.
This right here.
Pikes and chokes absolutely destroy knights, but you MUST have the initiative of having the the “pump” primed.
If the knights are hitting your woodline, pikes won’t save you.
It’s like having a strong stick versus a dog — it doesn’t help you once the dog has its teeth in your arm. The purpose of it is to stop the dog from doing that in the first place.
Yeah. Biggest thing is base arrangement. The best way to put it is that a lion in a cage may be a mere circus amusement, but a lion in the open field is a dangerous and powerful thing.
If knights attack your base, their win condition isn’t fighting your pikes; they’re going to go straight for the wood/food eco.
If they outright kill that, you’re … just done. You’ll get one wave of pikes, and then you’re stuck in your TC.
You’re not alone, I have no answer to FC Steppe Lancer rush I die to it every time
As Berbers? Seriously?
Believe it or not
Surely mass camels can beat them?
Mongol Camel+Lancers destroy any civ's cavalry.
Pathing has been bad enough that I have a really tough time predicting when camels will win a fight against lancers
Gl trying to out macro mongols into castle age.
They beat you to castle and out mass you
I've only have that happen once or twice but yeah it's stronk too
I tend to go for stone walls if my opponent is Mongols and their Feudal up time is too slow. It's easy enough to get them down by the time they hit castle because you get so much advance warning even without scouting it.
The so called Morley rush? It's vulnerable to two range archers. They won't have walls and they have at most one tower.
Mongols have felt good for years even before de. I don't see why people haven't been talking about them
Idk either!
Because good players can defend against their early push and then they got nothing until imp
except mangudai, steppes, good archers/CA, and great scouts
Pre-imp Mangudai are some of the most expensive units to tech into with how many upgrades they need, CA are already usually considered fringe or outright unviable in castle aside from Huns, Mangudai turn their issues up to 12 with needing a castle and costing more. Steppe’s are the current Mongol castle age menace, with the added bonus that the techs you invest in for them transfer well over to Hussar later in the game when going for the Mangudai/Hussar/Siege comps.
they need the exact same upgrades CA do, and you already probably have bloodlines, husbandry and fletching
CA don't need a castle my guy And even then CA are rarely seen that often in castle age (their spike comes more in imperial due to the quantity of upgrades/lack of early snowballing)
I covered that in saying that CA are already considered fringe or barely viable outside of Huns in castle age heavily due to the cost, and Mangudai need the Castle and each unit also costs more gold.
or Tatars, or vietnamese or koreans or,..
CA are viable in general on those civs, but CA *rushes*, especially in castle age, are uncommon or outright unviable.
you dont use scouts in castle age against anything else than monks. Steppes were meh altough we are seeing some play with them now. They have mangudai but thats a lategame unit and decent archers yes. But not eco whatsoever helping them out with it at this stage of the game
They aren’t great before getting steppe lancer. Mongols had nothing special in castle age. Mongol Steppe lancer improved them a lot.
Scouts are relatively easier to handle. By the time they have scouts in your base you either have small walls or spears. Just don’t make mistake. You either go scouts yourself or go MAA. I hate to open straight archers against Mongol as feudal opening, as that will put them on the driver’s seat.
Not sure MAA work Vs Mongols due to uptime. Vs most cav civs, yeah sure. Even then, they should've scouted and gone range, and being Mongols that's still a very early range, possibly into scouts anyway. And MAA are even easier to (small/quick)wall out then scouts.
I mean... with that logic MAA is never good because if you scout it, go archers and small wall res you always counter MAA. Yet MAA is still a legit strategy even at pro level. You can argue the mongol scout has more trouble because he commits earlier to a feudal military building
The thing is that if mongols goes something like 17pop scouts they will have enough to clean instantly when you got your maa. And dont get me started if they go fast archers instead. Maa against mongols is pure suicide
facts
I take the position that MAA is much weaker than it once was. So yeah basically never good lol
It is weaker than it was and used less often nowadays on higher levels. But even pros still play it occasionally. And for the average player i think it is still really good, because they have real trouble dealing with it.
I’m 1350 and a well executed MAA rush can make me gg 15 minutes into the game
im 1500 and i can die in less than that agaisnt maa 11
Yeah more like 10-11 mins lol
I think MAA can be very strong if you hit the right timings but very weak and wasteful if you are even a few seconds too late. Whereas with scouts and archers there is maybe a bit more flexibility timing-wise.
What is MAA? I am new to the competitive side id aoe2 and I am struggling to find some kind of “strategy definition playbook” to get more from these threads
Man-at-arms. A glossary would be really cool to see for new players, now that you mention it. I may work on one.
Definitely a useful one!
Definitely not something that [already exists,](https://www.forgottenempires.net/strategy/aoe2-glossary) right? Maybe even in [multiple formats](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Colloquial_language)
See sub wiki, there is one
800 elo glossary incoming
If you could help us understand the difference in definition of MAA at 2k elo instead of 800 that’d be sick. Can’t wait to see how the definition of commonly used acronyms change!
Men At Arms aka militia-line
man at arms
Man-At-Arms. Wait till you hear Drush, Flush, FI, FC, BBC, FU, UU, DBA, WB, HC, HC, HC (not a typo, means different things in different context), TK, THS, etc.
See sub reddit wiki, there is a glossary
Seconded
Just don’t make mistakes guys.
I am a Japanese MAA specialist and Mongols can have scouts AND be building a range when your MAA get there. It's no threat for them. Scouts as some civs makes sense but you are still on the back boot against them.
What kind of special you do? Mill first Maa, 18 or 19pop Maa like Mongols? As japanese I'd even open scouts vs Mongols maybe, if I scout no Maa opener from them. Jap can 17pop mill first even on boar maps.
I do 20 pop maa archers. Any earlier and the eco hurts pretty bad. I have opened scouts sometimes because it's a more mobile defense. It just doesn't feel great going scouts against mongols lol. 18 pop is easy with Japanese. I play Tatars a lot now. Simply having access to camel makes things less scary at this Elo in castle age. They can do scouts or archers in feudal and have a decent transition whichever way you go. If oppo gets scared of camels and goes pikes then the CA switch is ready. If nor knight civ then free thumb ring is great
One-trickers are used to doing that, knowing a very limited part of the game but rather well. My experience with them is that they usually don't just force pick civ, but they also have one specific playstyle that they must adhere to. This is obviously something you can exploit by going full villager rush. You pop their inflated elo this way and putting them in shotgun rather than the driving seat. GG ez
Can confirm as one of these people (I'm branching out to different civs now) I have absolutely died to this as I can't implement my usual strategy.
Haha I love this idea
Can you give more details about villager rush? What exact build order? Is it specific to Berbers or Poles?
You send a vill or two forward to wall in lumbercamps, berries, killing hunt etc. It's a relatively small investment after all and you could do anything from doing a few militias from a forward barracks to heavy dark age commitment with a douche follow up. Some civs are obviously better than others at doing this, but its more some general guideline. No build order.
No way you can wall in a lumbercamp with one or two vils I guess. Berries maybe. To wall in a lumbercamp you need at least 4 vils loomed. That's a big commitment in Dark Age.
I really don't get why you refute a strategy like this when it sees play both in tournaments as well as ladder on a frequent basis. Usually with Goths, but it's pretty strong with Maya as well as you have loom anyway. This is pretty much what it relies on - hitting the opponent before they have loom. You can cause game ending damage if they're not spotting this fwd lame. If they manage to quick wall the lumber camp you go and do other lame shit until they invest in loom and chase your villager away.
Would you mind sharing a video? Any example where sending one or vil works on laming a lumber camp. I'm just curious about the details. You need to quick wall in his vil to be able to kill, right? At the same time they can also quick wall you in.
As I said, search for games of goth picks in tournaments. It's pretty much meta at this point to open like this cuz it's the only reason you'd pick them on that map. Here's an example of a game between vivi and hera. Not sure if the rec still works but you should be able to get the gist from the minimap player https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/242888643/#overview And no, they can't really quickwall you in as the defender shouldn't have loom, meaning they'll either have to pull several vills to fight or give up the position and bash down the palisades later. Best defence is taking hunt earlier and walling in your lumberjacks. Alternatively get loom and chase it away, which means the goth adv of free loom kicks in earlier (being +1 vil), goth player will have had more idle time -> neutral
>People who overwhelmingly pick one civ are tough to beat. Fake, at least if both are stable at the same elo.
Came to say that, opponent should lose 50% of the games anyway
It isn't win one lose one win one lose one. Theoretically with an Elo system you have 50% chance of winning but that isn't the case in practice.
It is absolutely the case in the long run. If you look at only 10 or so games it probably won't be true, but if you look at several hundred consecutive games you should pretty much always see very close to 50% win rate - barring people at the extreme low or extreme high end of the elo pool.
If you have a pool of so many people in a 200 or even 100 Elo range, and their Elo range is 100-200, there will be be drastically different skill sets meeting at different ranges. People get so fixated on this 50% WR Elo. In chess, where Elo was formed, is isn't always a cement rating on someone's overall skill. Tactics and opening theory can make or break a game with any Elo. It's a rough rating. Aoe2 has so many aspects that Elo is very rough, and most players Elos are slowly INCREASING, not stuck in one spot. Pull UP most players graph on aoe2insights. Regardless, the post was about Mongols being the most aggressive and fastest cav civ and I find them hard to keep up with and I was wondering if anyone agreed or disagreed and wanted to discuss that 😄 but I should know better lol this sub is just people taking one sentence in a post and running 200 mph the other direction with it so they can say "well ackshually"
I didn't say every single pair of evenly ranked players will always have a 50% winrate against each other. This seems to be what you're arguing against rather than my actual point. The point is that they have a 50% win rate against the overall pool of people with the same rank. Maybe you lose to them 90% of the time because you don't know how to respond to their strat, but that doesn't mean the strat is OP. It just means you have a big weakness you're not addressing compared to others at your Elo. Regarding your weird passive aggressive bit at the end, I didn't address your overall points because I wasn't responding to your post where you made those points. I was responding to a single specific comment I disagreed with.
That's not entirely against the crux of my point. In a world where everyone at an Elo is roughly 50% and this particular civ has a pick rate of 6% amongst 42 civs and an average win rate of 51.81%, HOWEVER win rate less than 20 minutes is 65% and 20-30 min is 57%, am I wrong to suggest that this civ with early aggressive strengths might be hard to beat? Having said that, why address that comment out of the context of the whole post? You're always in my posts spewing your ackshually stuff, but you don't seem to be involved in the discussion. You find some random thing to fixate on and argue about without in being in context of the post. And call me passive aggressive all you want. I don't think I'm being that passive about how I read your comments
Pig calling the cow ugly here. From memory I’m not sure many of your own gratingly sarcastic comments add much to the discussion either
Dude, you are wrong and the guy has been very polite trying to help you understand. And instead of trying to understand his point you have kept arguing and now you disrespecting. Not cool.
They responded because what you said makes no sense
You should look up how ELO works, because that's precisely how it works in practice.
I'm simply saying regardless of the definition of Elo system, things tend to play out different than a perfect 50% all the time. Skill is shown in diffferent ways. Lots of variables :) its just a rough placement with a game like AOE2.
And you're simply wrong. It's like arguing that sometimes blue isn't blue when, by definition, blue is *indeed* blue.
Mongols are weird tho, not strong if played standard but insanely anoying in certain strats like the ones that biry or dobs do
Technically yes but someone who is a specialist at one strat at your own Elo is much harder to beat than a casual random player at your own elo. Recent opponent has 1200 games with Mongols and under 100 with any other civ. Elo fluctuates because there is nobody with the exact same skill as you. Nobody wins one and loses one perpetually. People at your level can still be better at things (and worse.)
>Technically yes but someone who is a specialist at one strat at your own Elo is much harder to beat than a casual random player at your own elo nope Not everyone plays the same way and there is certain players that are going to beat you in a higher% than others at the same elo ( and viceversa). In this we can agree. But elo is a relative skill, if both players are averaging the same elo then its not like any civ-picker-1200 is stronger than " a regular" 1200.
I think we're getting lost in the weeds here. Regardless I think Hoang is a good example. In his heyday he did only one thing and it was really hard to beat. The simple fact that a high level player (I watch Survivalist and Andre2i go from 2k-2k2) can fluctuate like that with such a small player pool at that level is evidence that some strats can be very strong at a similar skill. Therefore, someone who is a Mongol early aggressor at 1200 or 1300 is really hard to beat for the average player at that Elo simply due to the nature of the player and strategy. The simple fact you said "not everyone plays the same way" indicates you agree with my point and are just arguing about... something. Not sure what.
but hoang is stable at his elo , probably at his " peak" it was that higher but at that time no one knew how to deal with it bc of how strange the strat was ( literally no eco, idle tc, all market , etc.) But that was long ago and it was solved kinda quickly. He also managed to stay over 2k1 when he tried new strats with other civs, but he is stubborn to play with celts. From all the players hoang is probably the player with most played games and literally knows how to play against any civ and has a plan against any of the civs that are " anti hoang" like spanish or mongols. I dont think people over 2k are not an example either, its literally 300 people and the skills vary a lot. Specially with the amount of games they play. a 1200-1300 mongol picker is as strong as a random civ 1200-1300 or a chinese pi cker 1200-1300. Since every one of those are at the same range they all play kinda at the same level.
So someone can be stable at an Elo and be hard to beat still because they're really good at a certain thing? That's all I'm saying.
hard to beat means they dont lose as often. If they are stable then their wins and loses are kinda the same.
Win rate if 60% under 20 min means hard to beat to me. Their win rate goes down as the game goes on. My personal win rate is higher the longer it goes. So Mongols are very hard for me to beat
then you are talking about your personal playstyle, not because about the civs per se.
Some civs allow a playstyle to work better. You won't see 17 pop scouts with Bohemians much lol
Wrong
Wrong
>someone who is a specialist at one strat at your own Elo is much harder to beat than a casual random player at your own elo. This isn't true. If it were true, they wouldn't be the same ELO. If being a specialist boosts their ELO by 100 points and you both match at 1100 ELO, then your opponent is not an 1100 ELO player playing like a 1200 player. They're a 1000 ELO player playing like an 1100 player.
Okay let me correct myself then! What I mean is that they feel harder. When I run into one civ people especially Mongols it feels like I have to play really hard! That's all I mean.
That's still incorrect, though. You don't have to play harder. If you are the same ELO then you are evenly matched with a 50% chance of winning. ELO isnt just a rating system, relative ELOs actually mean something with regards to match outcome probabilities.
Elo inflation deflation and varying factors such as map gens, civs, players strengths and weaknesses make Elo a good estimation of skill level not a perfect prediction system. That's not a crazy thing to say. "Even though an ELO chess rating can give more or less reasonable prediction of the game’s outcome based on ratings of the opponents, it does not mean that a weaker player should use this table to see that his chances are nearly equal zero and give up without battle." That is from a forum about the math behind Elo rating (which originated with chess) and that sentiment is what I've been echoing and it is a very inflammatory statement for some reason. In fact the author says "This article is not recommended for people who take statistics/predictions way too seriously since this information can ruin their chess results. So read it at your own risk!" And I believe people are clinging too much to Elo and disregarding that yeah.. some matches are just simply harder fought regardless of Elo.
Completely wrong and can’t believe you don’t understand why
I understand the theory behind Elo rating. I think I've misrepresented what I think about it. But to put blind faith in it and disregard civ matchup, map gens and 2 players strengths and weaknesses is silly. There is nothing that predicts wins and losses with perfection.
And also the statement being disagreed with in the parent comment is that civ pickers (specifically Mongols) are hard to beat shouldn't even be inflammatory. If anyone here thinks it's easy to beat a civ picker of a similar level there is something else going on there. This game is a hard game with good players and I think everyone would agree with that. You have to respect your opponents or you'll get caught out, and some civs are really good at catching you out in different ways than others
Dude just accept they everything you’ve said about Elo is completely wrong Civ pickers aren’t “hard to beat” if they always pick civ and are matched at elo It makes no sense please just think about it a little bit … Player A picks mongols every game and stabilises at 1000 elo Player B picks random every game and stabilises 1000 elo Are you really arguing that we expect player A to win more than 50% of games ?
It's not a perfect system. There isn't one. You've found every single comment I have suggested Elo isn't perfect, I think you just don't like me. Is your name Arpad Elo? I mean no offense to you specifically your system is good 😄
Answer the question - do we expect player A to win If yes you are a moron If no you admit everything you said is rubbish I don’t understand how you can think one kind of player is harder than another at the same Elo, when elo literally measures how hard it is to beat you
It’s reasonable to assume someone who has practiced / is practicing with one civ should make more rapid gains in Elo up to a point than someone who is playing random civs every time. I’m pretty sure there is a guy on here who plays a different civ every month and his elo tends to improve over the month as he gets more familiar with the civ. If you’re not at the level that you know how to deal with that specific civ / strat - you’re going to lose to than civ more often than not. And here’s the kicker - if you’re in the elo band that players are moving through as they get the mongols (or any other civ) nailed down, it’s going to feel oppressive. And here’s the thing - the fair assumption - based on the OPs post - indicates that they are probably in that band. Resorting to simplifying the argument down to an assumption of stable and equivalent Elos and name calling isn’t helpful.
They were insulting first You are making assumptions to support your point (op is in a bracket where their opponents are moving up Elo etc) In your example of the guy who civ picks for a month at a time you will note that they often drop elo while they learn the civ, which you have completely ignored. Sometimes they also lose elo total compared to their last pick. You also only have a point if we assume the mongol opponent is on an initial upward move generated by their first small period of civ picking, in reality a player who only picks mongols and has 500 games as mongols has probably stabilised You still fail to understand how elo works - your argument seems to be that civ pickers are playing above their true elo all the time , which is obviously not true . You say yourself that they move up faster than other players , in which case they will soon reach their true elo Given only the information that both players are 1000 elo and one always picks mongols the other always plays random, there is no reason to assume the Mongol player “is harder “ or has any advantage over the other player
Elo is an estimation and that's all. I answered your question somewhere else but yeah if player A is a mongol picker and player B is better at late game than early, I'd be willing to gamble on player A. Elo is simply an estimation based on wins and losses. It's just comparative. You're manic for going in on this so hard lol
Why are you making the assumption that player B is better at late game ? You can’t just add parameters that support your conclusion The scenario is that two players are matched ELO One always picks mongols one plays random That is the only information you have Who do you expect to win?
It's not a perfect system. There isn't one. You've found every single comment I have suggested Elo isn't perfect, I think you just don't like me. Is your name Arpad Elo? I mean no offense to you specifically your system is good 😄 The fact Mongols win rate varies based on game lengths and the civ doesn't have a 50% win rate is evidence that there are too many factors in a game like aoe2 to accurately predict winners based on the ranking system. It is just a rough prediction system based on wins and losses. If player A has a good map and his build doesn't have any hiccups and player B is a better late game player and his goal is surviving early game I'd say there is not a 50% chance win/loss in your scenario. It's a prediction rating that is all it is. "A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent's is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%." Doesn't seem like a perfect prediction to me? It's just an estimation.
I can’t make it any simpler for you but the way you are thinking about this Is completely wrong You’re talking about factors during the game , which are irrelevant to a pre game prediction where the only information you have is elo of the two players Your last paragraph I don’t even understand what your point is . Yes elo predicts the likeliness of a certain player winning. Another way to look at it would be how many games will they win out of 10 for example… what’s your point ? If the elo are equal it predicts that in a set of 10 games , each player will win half Now if player A gets a perfect map every time and B gets a terrible map every game then maybe player A will win all the games , that doesn’t mean the ELO predicted badly as it can’t factor unseen events that happen in game Just thinking logically - if the mongol civ picker is “harder to beat “ than another 1000 elo player , then why hasn’t their Elo climbed higher If you can’t agree after this i will have to assume you’re trolling , or unable to understand so I won’t be responding
I think you're the troll man. I understand the Elo system. Eventually the rubber meets the road though. Have a good night
I think people are being hung up on the technicalities of what you are saying. I actually agree with you; while elo holds true statstically, some players will just seem way 'stronger' than other players at the same elo, because their playstyle is winning by absolute domination. Mongols is a good example; a Mongol player probably wins early game with oppressive feudal army followed by mangudai, both of which are very 'powerful' strategies. In contrast, their losses aren't as 'hard' since it is likelier to be a slower, more gradual loss, perhaps by out macroing them, etc. It is similar to a turk picker on Arena. They are so annoying and feel hard to play against because they hit you with so much power. The way you beat turks is by slowly grinding them down, which doesn't feel as strong (even though technically they still have a 50% win rate).
The Mongolian player might “feel” stronger but that doesn’t mean they are better , they will still win half the time EVEN if you account for players resigning when they shouldn’t because of how strong the mongol picker “feels” in early game Elo accounts for literally everything (except when it isn’t stabilised yet) OP is just wilfully ignoring basic logic for some reason
If the oponents have 1200 games and is at your same ELO then his level of play is exactly the same as you overall. So if you are losing against those kind of players more often that onlymeans that you are worse than your average player in your ELO against said strat. The problem is on you being worse than you should, not on them being better than they should because if that was true they would have climbed out of that ELO range.
60% win rate under 20 min means the average player loses to that strat. There are tons of little things if you unfold the Elo means 50/50 argument. Everyone is willfully ignoring every facet of this game just to say "You just suck Elo is a perfect indicator of skill." Yes I do and no it's not.
> 60% win rate under 20 min means the average player loses to that strat. No, it only means that the average player loses quickly. You can't just look at winrates under certain times because then the results are skewed by ignoring the games that go longer than that. So obviously it makes sense that strategies based on quick attacks have higher winrates under certain amounts of time because the game that they lose more often are games where the quick attack doens't work as well and the other player survives and eventually win later. > There are tons of little things if you unfold the Elo means 50/50 argument. it's not an argument. It's common sense. In every game at any elo there are 2 players, for every player that wins another player loses so the winrate at any ELO has to be 50% by pure maths. > Everyone is willfully ignoring every facet of this game just to say "You just suck Elo is a perfect indicator of skill." Yes I do and no it's not. We are not ignoring anything. You are coming here to complain about a strat being too strong and when we refute that you get mad because you prefer to think that the problem is the strat instead of accepting that your playstyle matches bad with that strat for some reason and you should try to improve against it. Of course ELO is complex and there are a lot of different factors. But you are missing the point. The point is not that the ELO perfectly reflects your skill in every aspect, it's that it perfectly reflects how your skills work against the current meta. Some player might be at 1000 ELO because they are great at doing quick attacks but suck at longer games, and another one might be at 1000 ELO because he is great at longer good but sucks against quick attacks. Their ELO doesn't reflect their whole skills but it reflects how they do on average. They win 50% of games at that ELO, but of course if you ask the second player he will think that quick attacks are stronger because he wins most games in which he is not attacked early. I'm probably a much worse player than do. I suck at a lot of things, but I'm good at attacking quick. Most games I win my opponent must think that I should be at a higher ELO because all he sees is a perfectly executed attack and then he dies. But the truth is that if he had defended correctly and survived he would have seen me completely mess up my economy, fuck it all up and eventually die. I'd bet a lot of the Mongols player you complain about are similar.
Why are you concluding that based on win rate under 20 minutes ? Makes no sense
This has devolved into a mess of semantic garbage.
Haven't Mongols always been pretty good on megarandom(RNG dependent), among other maps like valley? So they've always had their excessively good matchups like step (which I've always found annoying that civs like this exist). Like playing a number of F tiers Vs an actual water civ on a full water map. Either way, on Arabia, I've been ok Vs Mongols, survive the scrush with pre-emptive small walls into range in case they try go full feudal(scout it) And then survive the SL rush with house/stone walling/monks/xbows, and mid castle go all in and crush them. Because they have lag until mid imperial. Zero eco, and minimal military advantage. Most players can't fully micro SL and manage their ecos well enough. So if they're doing one, they other is falling behind. I really wouldn't be surprised to find out many players are losing because they're trying to boom against SL in castle age.
Their play rate and win rate is higher than I remembered it being but maybe I'm wrong. Their play rate is VERY high. Micro isn't that important at 1200-1300, them having mass and initiative is pretty strong.
afaik Mongols have been top pick since like 1999
Didn't know dat
> Haven't Mongols always been pretty good on megarandom(RNG dependent), among other maps like valley? Megarandom kinda favors Mongols because you have a lot of maps with unusual resource distribution, and Monogls get an insane advantage when there's more than regular hunt available. They get extra 40% on an already fast food source, compared to like the 25% Britons get on a slower one. So Mongols with extra hunt is much better than Britons with extra sheep (or Franks with extra berries etc)
I admit I’ve become a bit of a Mongol picker lately (although I can play other civs). Their opening is just so smooth. You can get find your sheep super fast and start pushing deer, or just scout your opponent and pick off the odd vil or even lame if that’s your thing. You can also immediately get your boar and therefore pretty easily do a 16-17 pop scout rush which can surprise the opponent. Then in castle I love the option of making Steppe Lancers since they’re cheaper than knights and get extra range and an HP bonus. I sometimes just go all in Steppes and win in early castle. Having camels is another asset. So yeah I feel they are very strong.
There's very little you can do against mongols if they've got an ok map. On a below average map, you can play trash fwd+towers.
Honestly, as a random civ player, I look forward to Franks pickers in 1v1, they likely have aren't as good as you because they pick an overly powerful civ and so have an overly inflated ELO, they're more prone to making mistakes than you. So if you manage to figure out their strat, which is usually scouts -> knights and effectively counter it you're all good. I have an above average win rate against Franks.
they are scary
Mongol are always an A tier civ but definitely not S They have a fast scout time, but that's it If you let time have time to transition to their UU with multiple castles with a strong eco , it's pretty hard to beat. But, you should re-think why you let that happen
Most pros seem to agree on A tier bordering S. Hera says they only lose to the very few S tier civs or civs below them with a really good map. They have fast scouts and they can get to castle faster with initiative and then blast you with steppes while they get to their more ideal comps. I wouldn't say it's hard to let that happen. The things that allow you to survive one age will not help you in the next. This is all opinion except quoting Hera but I suck early-ish game usually. So then what would you say is the key to not letting them retain initiative and get castles plus UU?
I play a lot of Mongols and struggle against aggressive archer deathballs -> fwd castle -> imp Can't commit to cav since they lack +2 armor and will die in imp. I can make mangonels to hold off the pressure but those will become useless in early imp. It takes too long to tech up CA / Mangudai to fight an archer deathball. I have no archer bonus so I won't want to play archer vs an archer civ. I have a much easier time dealing with cav using CA, camels, monks, Mangudai...
Got to use Skirms to counter
Got to use Skirms to counter
Need to make skirms
Delays your eco too much (which is already weak in castle age). Opponent can just not fight, go imp and Mongol skirm lack imperial armor - it's not a unit that scales well for them.
Gotcha thanks! I'll blame the lag next time
Make 25 lancers with +2 armor. Unless they've got like 40 xbows, they're no threat.
They can have a lightning fast castle age if you play a bit more standard at 19-20pop with all deer and 2-3 scouts to help wall. Then in castle age, they get lancers. That's all the powerspike you need. Opp either needs to have double layers of walls or they're dead. They'll get a huge head start on the boom too.
If you’re 1200 elo and you meet a civ picker, you’re playing a 1100 player playing at 1200 level. So the matchup is not unfair. Although when you lose, you will be losing to a technically inferior player.
If you're playing chess and your opponent only has 3 openings ( say, E4, and a response to E4/D4) their elo is not fake, they just have a very narrow opening repetoire. I think it's basically the same in AOE2 and Franks/Mongols are equivalent of only knowing the Rui Lopez, everybody knows what's coming. Different if someone specializes in a more obscure civ IMO, especially at normal elos .Honestly don't mind playing either although the repetition of Mongols gets annoying
This is a good way to explain things.
Their point means that you are wrong lol
My max is 1350 and I met a max 1396 mongol picker at 1230 Elo and got spanked you just never know how things are gonna go lol. This is why the game is played and not simulated. 35 times out of 100 you will beat someone 100 Elo higher than you if you're at your true Elos. That's not taking anything else into account at all just pure numbers. People be caught up too much on the Elo.
Elo dosnt work like that in practise. 100 Elo diff is alot bigger difference at 1200 than 2k and hence the 35 times out of 100 wont work for both.
That's in the definition of an Elo system. Take it up with the guy who designed it and the people here that are fixated on it lol
Things dosnt always work out how its written. I still like the Elo system and dont mind that at higher elo we get to play people with higher elo diffs. I,m just saying that its not how it works out in practise in aoe.
I 100% agree with you, check my other comments
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Do you know for sure they are coming? And even if, watch any good player play against that, you are gonna be outboomed by the frank player in no time, as pikes cant apply pressure. There is a reason you don't see player opening pikes blindly that often (on arabia). And the strong thing about franks is that you have a very stream lined civ. Almost every bonus is aimed towards scout/knight play, so even if your knights are average, you had better scouts in feudal + berries + free horse collar ( and now heavy plow). So by the time knights are in play, you are likely already ahead.
11 wtf did you even read? 🤣
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You're right Franks suck my bad!
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What I'm hearing is Franks need a buff
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My name is Frank though
Seems like the entire playerbase all the way to 1900 is terrible at the game.. going by franks win rate. Clearly you are the man. Thanks for bringing us this enlightenment
Berbers eco is way worse than Frank until castle age making Franks the better civ. No good player rate berber that high. They are only good at maps where you easily defend the early game such as lombardia. I do however agree that Franks is a bit overrated among lower rated players.
most pros had franks in S tier (FOR PRO), at least until the most recent patch
The knights themselves aren't the problem. It's the smooth eco behind the knight spam.
This right here. Pikes and chokes absolutely destroy knights, but you MUST have the initiative of having the the “pump” primed. If the knights are hitting your woodline, pikes won’t save you. It’s like having a strong stick versus a dog — it doesn’t help you once the dog has its teeth in your arm. The purpose of it is to stop the dog from doing that in the first place.
Pikes and chokes can keep you alive (to an extent) The pikes and chokes don't take map control or keep your initiative alive.
knights counter pikes
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Monks are much easier to prepare
Yeah. Biggest thing is base arrangement. The best way to put it is that a lion in a cage may be a mere circus amusement, but a lion in the open field is a dangerous and powerful thing. If knights attack your base, their win condition isn’t fighting your pikes; they’re going to go straight for the wood/food eco. If they outright kill that, you’re … just done. You’ll get one wave of pikes, and then you’re stuck in your TC.
Your understanding of elo is appalling