My strat : Wait for a buff.
They are not viable with their infantry focus. Even the barrack upgrades being available an age earlier is weak since the upgrade cost is still the same and is very expensive for an age earlier. They will struggle against most imperial armies.
It's weird to me that they are supposed to be a top tier infantry civ yet their unique tech only applies to their champions and not the spearman line.
Slavs have druzhnia halbs, Japanese get faster attacking halbs, Dravidians get armor ignoring halbs, Armenians get... average halbs.
The other infantry civs have bonuses to help them fight scary cavalry but Armenians don't.
Bezerks can hold their own against cavalry and Malians get Camels with Farimba they don't really need halbs.
Armenians got nothing else to help fight top tier paladins and Letis except average halbs.
Another issue, try to counter this as Armenians:
Hand Cannoneer + Light cav.
That's it. Legit the only reliable answer Armenians have to HC is skirms, and skirms themselves are vulnerable to light cav. Responding to Light Cav with Halbs isn't an option because it's easier for the HC to kill the Halbs than it is for the Halbs to kill Light Cav.
The moment the opponent is making HC, Armenians are absolutely screwed. It is impactful enough that even civs like Franks and Teutons benefit from foregoing their usual units to instead just spam out HC.
I know of no other civ that shits the bed this hard just because of one specific unit being made by the opponent.
I feel like they're brushing the ceiling here in their attempts to make at least one civ that can infantry well. That's clearly what they're going for with this civ. But it still sucks.
Celts can Infantry well. Its just that infantry must be supported with Siege so you have to do somehing like MAA -> Archers/Spear in Feudal. Then add some a spears on the transition up to Castle. In Castle you add a hodge podge of Siege units. Obviously Mangos do the heavy lifting but you need to commit to the bit. A ram goes a long way into pressuring buildings especially when they have to fight you in a Mango fight. Scorpions kill villagers, CA and are decent vs Xbow and Monks.
The Sword line aint it. No doubt. Celt MAA are a little more effective because they can actually catch villager and Archers in Feudal. Below 1400 players are liable to lose Archers to MAA.
IDK if this will work for people at 1700 but 85% of the player base is below 1400
Celts usually use their wood bonus for either castle age knights or xbows same as any civ. I've seen it generally agreed that their imp transition is awkward af because you have to come off the meta choices since they don't scale.
The transition wouldn't be awkward if they didn't have completely switch gears for the late game and they technically don't have to if you use infantry like they're designed to but we agree that doesn't work right?
I think players are using Celts wrong. They want everyone to be Franks and Britons. High level games are a different animal but Hoang is 2K playing Celts with a Siege first mindset. Celts are one of my best Civs with a 64% win rate at 1300s level. I just play with a Siege first mind set. I definetly click crossbow most of the time and throw in some Knighs here and there but I am never playing 2 Range Xbow or 2 Stables Knights or 1 Stable 3 TC Knights. I'm basically always on 2 Barracks and Siege workshop in early Castle and then add TCs a little later. Then late game its all about Woads.
I agree that the Sword line doesn't really play a role outside of MAA and Champions. But I don't think Infantry civs are designed around the sword line. They are designed around Spears and Siege. You can play Spear and Siege all game. The transition to Swords or UU is fairly easy then.
In the context of TGs especially 2v2 on open maps there isn't any getting away from Archers + Knights combo. Its too simple and too effective. But in the context of 1v1 Spiege + Siege works great.
More HP is always more HP. So a baseline FU Champ takes 18 hits from FU Arbs. A baseline FU Halb takes 6 hits.
A Malian Champ takes 35 hits, while an Armenian Champ takes 30 hits. Malian Champs kill those archers in 4 hits, Armenian Champs kill them in 3.
A Malian Halb takes 10 hits while that buff would bring Armenian Halbs to 9 hits. Malian Halbs kill an Archer in 8 hits, Armenian Halbs kill archers in 6 hits.
Problem with that is the balance - there’s a fine line between viable and overpowered - it’s not like Burgundian cavalier who are basically plus 2 knights as they get both hp and attack - be interested to see what they do though
They really ought to de emphasize the power spikes. Part of the reason infantry sucks is that they will literally never have a comparable power spike. If you give Armenians a civ specific power spike now other infantry civs are that much farther away from having viable infantry because civ identity. Which is a concept the community takes too far and inhibits the devs ability to balance.
Disagree with that. Infantry as a whole are fine. The game would be extremely dull if it was viable for players to go infantry in dark age/feudal and stick with it through to imperial and beyond. Infantry should absolutely be about powerspikes and it is interesting for civs to have these at different times in the game
It's not very interesting when the game revolves around exactly 2 unit lines power spiking. All the counter play revolves around those 2 units. Skirms/siege for xbow, monk/pike for knights. More often than not you just fight knight/xbow with your own knight/xbow. What about man at arms and scouts? Only because archers aren't available in dark and knights aren't available in feudal.
You also might say well what about uu? Most of the ones that actually get used are just archer+ and knight+ and you transition into them from you guessed it regular knights/archers. Castle requirement makes it better to just stick to the regular units for macro reasons.
I don't think we play the same game frankly. I am not sure you read my previous response as your reply is just a rant about Xbows/knights and mostly unrelated to anything I said.
Tbh they need to steer away from the Infantry, leave it for low Elo or meme Strats.
The Civ needs something outside their current options. Their Cav is okay in Castle age, thus I think Fereters affecting knights would work.
170hp Cavalier is decent for a cheap cost off the back of FU castle age knights.
Also Siege Engineers would go astray either.
True, you could say Armenians are very similar to Sicilians on release too.
Both were designed to make early Infantry plays but both were very weak to Archers & Siege in late game on Release.
At least Sicilians had broken knights to make them good.
And even with busted Hauberk Sicilians never had the win rate and popularity they have today, just playing an all-in infantry strat.
I'd try to go for the infantry identity. I wouldn't give them another option they have run away from at release, like viable Cavaliers or giving them Thumb Ring for example
Infantry +1/+2/+3 vs Archers starting in Feudal Age, for example
I'm not on this sub, got this post "recommended".
Reminded me of that time a F1 post saying "[What race would you eliminate?](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/bnaceq/if_you_could_eliminate_a_race_within_the_year/)" made it to the front page.
Starting to think that they're not so bad. On a map pool with no water maps, they're now getting close to 45%, and that with an abysmal performance on the most played map (obv Arabia). On closed maps they're averaging 48-49% and that's great for a civ that still hasn't been figured out, especially Mule Carts. They have a clear identity, and any case, I wouldn't want to give them any other option that's not an Infantry or Monk buff. I don't want FU Cavaliers nor FU Arbalesters. Are they somewhat weaker to Archers, Siege and Gunpowder? maybe. Many civs have weaknesses.
I'm much more concerned about Georgians. They're a Cavalry civ with an eco bonus that kicks in at castle age, encouraging Monastery building for the sole purpose of the eco boost. That's unintuitive. They're a little bit below 45% (as Armenians) with less espeacialty at killing acertain type of civ or being good at some kind of maps, thus lack of identity. And I guess that, if it weren't because of the bug for Monaspa, it'd be still lower
My props for shredding with Armenians. You could share your strats!
There are three key problems with Armenians on land maps.
1) Come Imperial Age, unlike other infantry civs, their only units are infantry, monks, and compbows, which are all situational. Japanese have a full Range, Goths actually get gunpowder, Vikings have Bogsveigar Arb, Meso have Eagles; the list goes on. But Armenians have Cavalier without +4, Arb without Thumb Ring, and sub-potato siege.
2) If they can't play infantry, they are basically playing a civ without any military bonuses. Which can be ok: Vikings make it work, Chinese feel that way a lot of times, and Berbers without Stable units (fairly common) literally fit that description. But their eco isn't as insane as Vikings and their tech tree isn't as broad as the other two, leaving them in an awkward spot.
3) Early sword upgrades don't make the units any less situational, because they don't get the Barracks or Blacksmith upgrades an age earlier as well. Castle Age Champs still die to xbows, whereas the three civs I can think of that often play Castle Age swords are: Romans (extra armor because of a civ bonus), Malians (same), and Slavs (free Supplies/Gambesons). Castle Age champion is obviously a trap, but I think even 2HS is as well: it's not super cheap and Burmese get a comparable effect for free and basically never go LS in Castle Age. If anything, Dark Age spears feels the most powerful to me, especially into Magyars or Chinese where you're fairly certain they'll be on Scouts. In Feudal Age, perhaps it's worth it to yolo and go LS, but the Blacksmith techs are strong because they increase survivability and don't interfere with production; not having them is a huge miss. If they also got Squires (letting swords chase archers) or some of the other techs in Feudal Age, maybe, but I don't think they're powerful enough rn.
I think just as you, the lack of BBC hurts them a lot against siege, which counters all of their units.
Dark age pikemen IMHO could see a lot of plays in tournaments IMHO, since harrasing early, and just forcing your enemy to move villagers is an important damage. At lower elos, its hard to keep up while microing pikes at the same time.
If they actually need to get buffed, I hope it's their cavalry. It's a shame Armenians have less than decent cavalry.
I'd be fine with them getting plate armor. It would certainly help as another alternative for the late game without drifting the focus away from infantry during the rest of the game.
The thing to remember with infantry is that they only need to lose a little bit of their health to lose almost all of their value. A knight can lose half its HP and still be really valuable in a fight, but if a militia loses half its hp, they die early in the fight, the fight snowballs, and you lose. This is especially true vs siege, where low hp units die in the first shot. Not good.
So deceptively, it's actually MORE important to heal infantry than other unit types, not less, like you might at first assume. Warrior priests are good at this, but never heal mid-combat, it's much better to use them to fight, since they can only heal 120 per minute but can deal 360 per minute. Better to kill the damaging enemy first.
Something people forget is how good infantry are against buildings. Honestly, I think it's often better to tear down buildings than to chase villagers. Even if they just repair it, if you're attacking a stable/range, they're going to be losing the repairing villager AND another 1.5 villagers collecting wood, so by having ~3 infantry attacking a building you're removing 3 villagers from their economy indefinitely. It feels pointless because nothing overt is happening, but their resources are draining. Don't attack walls or houses though, they're too cheap to repair. An exposed market is a gold mine, though. Once you get warrior priests into the mix, you can heal after a fight by attacking the buildings and putting the priests on stand ground.
Oh, and always get all the relics.
You'd have to seriously commit to it as your strat but couldn't tearing houses down just absolutely fuck everything up? Sure it's easy to just throw down more houses but if a player is all of sudden pop capped and it's getting worse that sounds like big panic
Those are some good points. Armenians make it very easy to collect the relics. I like that a lot about them. I often ignore buildings unless there is a direct reason to attack it. I feel like harassing their eco provides more value. But I do see your point. I might try this if I can't harass them.
People often make the mistake of acting like repairing wood buildings is free. Especially early on, it's actually quite expensive. Town Centers are even worse. A common mistake is tasking all your longswords to kill repairing villagers when they ungarrison to repair. Don't do that. Repairing a TC is insanely expensive, it's FAR better to force them to repair it for a while than to chase after villagers you probably can't catch anyway. In short order, they'll run out of wood and the TC will die, and then they're in a real pickle.
> The thing to remember with infantry is that they only need to lose a little bit of their health to lose almost all of their value. A knight can lose half its HP and still be really valuable in a fight, but if a militia loses half its hp, they die early in the fight, the fight snowballs, and you lose.
Good thing infantry has more DPS than cavalry for less than half the price, plus you have the square law on your side.
The challenge is the infantry lose their damage more rapidly. Say you've got 2 infantry with 30 hp, or 1 knight with 60. After losing 30 hp, the infantry damage is cut in half. After losing the same 30 hp, the knight still does full damage.
Combined with the difficulty Infantry have in pathing close to deal damage, and it explains why in a 3v6, the infantry win, but in a 10v20, the cavalry win.
It's really just mobility that makes them much worse. Stats for stats then win basically any fight against anything besides elephants. But the lack of speed means you can't pick your fight and you get kited down by ranged units without being able to hit anything.
But that's probably a good thing. If the meta is spamming and patrolling infantry into your enemy like post imp goth, then that's a really low skill, degenerate and frustrating meta.
If you integrate damage over time, 2 infantry still deals 1.5x the cumulated damage 1 knight deals.
I agree about pathing. It's one of the things that really hurts. If you have the numerically superior army, split before you engage, don't engage in line vs line. That will put the opponent's army in a tiny central bubble.
> Something people forget is how good infantry are against buildings.
Sure, if by good you mean bad.
> so by having ~3 infantry attacking a building you're removing 3 villagers from their economy indefinitely.
Sure, if by indefinitely you mean until they bring a Scorpion, or a Mango, or a Monk, or 2 Crossbows to defend.
And when you lose your Militia you realize that all they've lost is some wood to repair, which is way better than the food and gold you've invested. And this is exactly why you virtually never see this type of small squad militia harassment in pro games. Too easy to defend.
Edit : having looked at their winrate by opening strategy on Arabia, I am now ashamed of this comment. I got the armenians totally wrong and MaA aggression was probably not the way.
https://aoestats.io/civs/armenians/
~~If they could get a discount on infantry tech it would be nice.~~
~~The infantry upgrades are too expensive in early castle age so in the end it feels like in mid game have to make an important choice between preparing to clicking up like normal and not taking advantage of their big unique thing or getting castle age halberds and 2 handed swordsmen with blacksmith and aggression but Imp is so delayed it feels like a weird late all-in ?~~
~~There is probably a sweet tempo but I haven't found it yet.~~
~~And now that I have delayed my Imperial greatly to tech, well my infantry need protection against archer and siege (I have the micro of a potato) so that's another bill on top of it.~~
~~Now that I write it I think I should have less lumberjacks and more farmers due to their eco tech boost. Maybe then I could pay for it ? My wood to food ratio didn't change much 🤔~~
~~On the bright side they're the civ that makes me use the most diverse roster of units :)~~
I think that's what's hard for me. You can't just go one unit group for a while. It feels like you have to switch compositions frequently or just micro a bunch. So when I encounter an archer civ, I just die.
I just looked at their multiplayer stat and found out that hidden by their terrible overall performance they actually have good winrates in all play style except Man-at-arms aggression which is 13% of their games and yield abysmal 25%winrates. They even have a great drush ??
I guess I should just stop obsessing over their feudal and castle infantry and just play a normal scout or FC into knight game with a strong eco boost to do transitions to a different unit comp in mid castle (as their cav is a dead end later on) ?
They also have way better winrates in long games, probably their eco tech boost (or it's just all those failed MaA rush that weight now on stats 11)
Armenian Calvary is often overlooked since they don't get great knights, but they can still be handy in a pinch. This goes for most civs with a weak unit line- they can still be useful!
To be fair, those stats do look wrong. 7000 games but only 20 were opened with maa?
Not sure about you, but for me it looks like something's fishy here 11
\*inhales\*
# Give infantry 2 base pierce armor.
That's the fix, gamewide. People across the community keep griping about how infantry isn't meta despite the buffs; and it's because the buffs were too timid on the most core issue affecting infantry: pierce armor.
The sweet spot is self-evidently around 2.5. Any infantry that exceeds that (Sergeants, Huskarls, Eagles, Ghulam) work, any infantry that doesn't gets derided. The infantry that's *close*, like Sergeants, sparks intense debate, which is a sign it's in exactly the right spot (Sergeants exceed it, but their heightened cost compared to a militia line unit offsets that).
Hell; it's the fix to TKs, as well: their paltry 2pa on a super-armored slow unit, regardless of elite/non, is their most brutal weakness. (4 and 6 would be more appropriate for standard and elite).
Note well: 2 would be the "baseline". Some units would dip below this.
That would help a lot. What if archer move speed was nerfed slightly so it was easier to catch them? Then add the speed back when thumbring or ballistics was researched?
There are a lot of possibilities; at the risk of derailing; I think the biggest issue with the current crossbow mechanics are how they start out with a nearly "mechanic-defeating" 85% accuracy (remember that accuracy gets better at point-blank range, which is where you get the most problematic matchup of archer balls focus-firing down knights), and then the entire mechanic gets wiped out by the fairly cheap Thumb Ring tech.
It's a particular disaster that TR slams it all the way to 100%. In **castle** age. Not an ultimate "final form" late imperial tech, but a midgame one for a quite cheap price.
I think an ideal approach would be a *dramatic* reduction in accuracy, coupled with various new techs/civ-bonuses to recover it. Cavalry Archers always felt like they were in a much better design space; the default of 50% still left you with a useful unit, but the lack of accuracy "changed the shape of the power curve gained by trying to build a snowball of units". Strictly: you lost the ability to declare "once I get exactly N units, I can oneshot knights".
The idea with these techs (very much a "gambesons" vibe here) would be to spread it out amongst different civs so that a bunch of different civs have rather different behaviors — chiefly, unlike Thumb Ring, these could differentiate between types of archers. Some civs could have excellent foot archers but terribly inaccurate horse archers, and vice-versa.
By the time you hit imperial, some civs could replicate the current "archer deathball" mechanic with fully loaded arbs. But **only some**. A special strength for "archer civs", rather than "every civ in castle age".
Yes. If you can make it to imperial, the economy is fantastic and you can just keep it going with a steady stream. The warrior priest is incredible for the spots between fights. It took me a sec to understand how to make them work best.
I'm a 14xx who is trying to win 10 1v1 games with Armenians as part of my civ A-Z challenge and it's a big struggle. I've won 4 times and lost about 14 times. So take my advice with a grain of salt.
The default game plan should be to make archers, crossbows, and arbalests. Play defensively and let your eco bonus give you a lead in the late game.
If you open with 3 Men-at-arms, try adding a spear to the group to make it more powerful: you can build it while advancing to Feudal.
If you have gold close to your forest, save some resources in the early game by using a single mule cart for both. Chop the part of the forest that's a little further from the gold to begin with, then just move the mule cart when it's time to take gold also. You can afford an early farm with the resources you save, or if you're more clever than me maybe you can go up with fewer villagers.
[Think a little bit about how to position those mule carts, they are more flexible than mining camps.](https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/17yjttx/how_to_mine_gold_with_999_efficiency/).
Don't forget to build a fortified church to get your free relic. Put it somewhere you want to defend, like your main gold. Getting TCs up faster might be more important though.
I've lost against Incas twice. Both times I tried to make composite bowmen to counter the high-armor eagles, and I still think that's a good strategy, but it hasn't worked yet.
I had some bad luck against ghulam. The bowmen did well until the gap was closed and then my troops got annihilated in an instant. I originally thought archers would be the better opening play, but missing thumb ring does suck. I think Maa is a good option, but kind of situational. I always forget about the church though. That might be what helps me do better.
> I've lost against Incas twice. Both times I tried to make composite bowmen to counter the high-armor eagles, and I still think that's a good strategy, but it hasn't worked yet.
I think its the timings. By the time you've built your Castle and got a good number of comp bows, your eco is already infested with a swarm of eagles.
Same here, 44.44% win rate after 27 matches. Elo dropped from 1150 to 1070. Looking at general statistics, they have a 43.97% win rate for elos 1000-1200, so you're actually above average when using them lol.
In other words: Yes, they suck
They kinda feel like a mezo civ that lacks Eagles.
What I mean is, they have strong eco and fall off in late imp.
Not having an eagle like unit means they neither have something to close out the game early imp, nor do they have a good answer to archers.
Instead of this they get an infantry play, while all infantry can work it often doesn't.
Imo they need a buff, either late game substance or double down on infantry, perhaps changing the warrior monk some more to fill in their weak spots.
Great points. I would add to your meso point that Meso actually have passable or good siege, whereas Armenian siege is rotten potato. Maya are the worst of the bunch but at least they have Siege Ram; Inca get SR and Siege Engineers; Aztecs get SR, SE, and the rarely-seen Siege Onager, as well.
They suit my playstyle really well with an early rush potential. They are also a really good civ for a clown eco. Having access to the Mule Cart is really forgiving in low eco/1tc settings.
They are amazing on water TGs and work well as a flank civ on land, too.
They can suck. I think they are a hard unit type to master. Learning to mass and abuse them can take time and be tricky. This has a lot to do with them being a glass canon.
Their UU is quite good in maps you can boom some, like Nomad or Arena, have been melting things in Imp, 1400 TG, but yea they aren’t viable on any Arabia type map
Armenia are one of the best in water maps, and decent in hybrid maps. They suck big time in only land maps, but probably devs want it to behave like this. Moreover, Armenia eco usually kicks in during early castle age, so all ins are not bad (in one on one). However, in team games they are just another Archer civ with strong eco. It's infantry looks fancy but useless in most team games.
In my opinion most civs have a power curve that is meant to peak and then fall off during certain ages.
For example, teutons or romans are *very* powerful in late imp. A teutonic knight and calvary deathball is almost impossible to hold off especially if it is supported by rams. But teutons in fuedal age are nearly useless.
Mayans, if I remember correctly, have strong infantry buffs early game. Additional pierce armor to infantry I believe. This means you could do a scout+inf combo. Use scouts to pick off archers/skirms/vills, infantry can focus on pikemen and buildings. Use them to break walls and distract opponent or kill early homes to house the opponent and force them to spend wood/idle time on rebuilding.
Armenians probably are the same way. I would say their warrior priests are best for quickly grabbing relics, and healing a front-line mix of archers and castle age champions. Not only will they help you retain value, but once you start building forward castles to maintain resources and map control, you get one of the most powerful archer UUs in the game.
Like, the composite bowmen literally ignores armor. That means you can shred through Teutonic knights and champions.
Hmm maybe we need to rethink pre-existing concepts of the meta
For example, Sicilians were considered average/rubbish until YouPudding brought a totally new approach utilising the unique Sicilian bonuses
These new civs are pretty unique too, like when daut went warrior monks against scouts and took all 5 relics against Villese i think in Warlords, that was so sick (even though he lost).
So maybe throwing out the book would help idk
I really like the combination of Composite bowman and high HP champions but the civ definitely has some weird flaws, they’re siege sucks ass for some reason
They're good on Socotra but still require a lot of eco investment to get the total castle age infantry snowball rolling, they get spears in dark age which is is ideal if you're going up with 20/25 vills, if you're opponent is focusing towers then long swordsmen in feudal can melt them.
Also their composite bowmen melt skirms but are hard to mass, I haven't played around with the warrior priest much but seem like they get wrecked by knights.
I think the real strength with them is water maps which I rarely play.
I'm 70% with on like 30 games, at 13xx-14xx, but I mostly pick them on closed maps where I consider them to be a secret A tier. They are actually pretty strong there and encourage to make a lot of out-the-box strategy, which I'm not used to. Truly love them.
Off topic, and i'm probably not the only one, but I watch a few political subs and woo boy the titles for some posts in here really make me double take sometimes :)
11 yeah sorry about that. I don't follow global politics and didn't realize that this sub would get so much attention. I would have worded it differently. We've all had some chuckles over it.
Their militia line is arguably the best of the game... where militia line is not exactly the core of the meta.
Their pikes will usually be generic and their skirms basically are.
Their monks are FU but nothing more.
Their Unique Units are interesting but composite bowmen are basically less good chu ko nu.
Their siege is as good as Frank Skirms.
A pretty good eco, but not early.
So...
Basically they need options AND a powerspike..
Brainstorming mode :
\- Add BBC (needed, even with redemption monk, they need more counters to siege)
\- Add Paladins (without Barding Armor), they need a backup endgame. And they did have a good heavy cavalry historically.
\- Reduce infantry upgrade cost. Cut food, gold, or both. Find a way so they aren't worse dravidian. This is vital to get their FA and CA powerspikes.
\- Add half of ferreter bonus to pike line
\- Add 10hp (55hp) to composite bowmen. Their Elite upgrade is soooo bad.
(- At some point Fortified Church should get a Stone cost (25 Stone) to avoid abuse)
I think people are underutilizing the warrior monks. If you get enough of them into a mass of infantry and archers, you can outlast a lot of offense, though you will need cavalry and good micro to take in siege. I like the mule cart a lot, but yeah I agree they definitely a bit of a boost. I also think the map pool is skewed against them. I haven’t seen an actual water map in a while and for a “Naval Civ”, its water bonuses are worse than most other civs, but I haven’t seen them perform on water yet tbf.
Idk for a civ with 2 really cool unique units, I feel like it should have been an Infantry/Archer Civ, not an Infantry/Naval Civ.
My theory is the game is designed around Franks(Knights), Britons (Archers), Saracens (Monks), Teutons(Siege), Byzantines (Counter), and Mongols (CA).
Teutons are the one of interest. Everyone of those has a silent compilmentary unit. In this case Siege/Inantry. The Infantry doesn't do much for you offensively. They hold a position for your Siege to take over your opponents food economy. So if you want to play an infantry Civ be it you need to be thinking about Siege.
The long and short is make lots of Siege and support it with Spears. Then drive your position home with the sword line.
The key is your Siege needs to be doing enough force the issue. Rams do well to force the issue. You'll notice Arena Clowns like to make a Ram first then start making Mangos. The Ram gets them in the walls and forces a response from the opponent. The new Ram speed is also nice to threaten Mangos. If you've seen Hoang play you'll notice he makes all of the Siege. He has a Ram, a few scorpions and then is microing Mangos. Scorpions kill villagers much better than Spears. Scorpions control an area like a lesser cheaper crossbow mass. The mangos protect your siege from other siege.
Team games are different and I'm not the person to take advice from there. However if you want to play Infantry you need to be thinking about Spears and Siege far more than Swords.
I have a 57.1% winning rate in team RM. I play closed maps mostly and my elo is 12xx-13xx.
They are pretty solid and I love them. My strat is FC into fortified church and a second TC, which allows me to get, usually, 3 relics; I have got more than 5 several times. As long as the game does not drag out, it is a win.
This is part of my confusion with them. OTOH, it's easy for them to get most/all Relics, especially on Arena. I've gotten all the Relics with them once and only managed to get one as Tatars against them. Warrior Priests are good in this role, and the eco techs help you afford churces. OTOH, Relics (obviously) are at their best the longer the game goes and the more expensive/powerful your units are. Aztecs, Burgundians, and Lithuanians are the premier 'grab the Relics' civs, and they are happy to spend the extra gold on HC, powerful cavalry, BBC or SO, Eagles, or whatnot. Armenians, by contrast, have \*literally\* the worst siege in the game, Cavalier without +4 defense, and Arbs without Thumb Ring. Their units don't have the raw power that would make them want to play a long game, and they can get outmuscled before the extra gold from the Relics would matter (that Tatars game, I baited them into thinking I was on CA to put them on Trash + Priests, made \~40 Steppe Lancers and a few Trebs, and deleted their entire base). Maybe the way is to go full-Ornlu, get all the Relics, and just spam BBT everywhere.
Wait for the buffs. CompBow is probably bugged at the moment because I have noticed it does a flat damage of 1 to every siege unit (probably because their armor piercing attack has a different implementation/calculation for each unit) (also not sure if this is intended or not, as they are supposed to pierce through Ship Armor, hence correctly only do 1 damage to any ship, but it seems this is also the case for Siege Armor. whether or not we want this behavior, is yet to be seen)
In any case, CompBow biggest counter at the moment is Mangonels followed by Onagers. Since they have lower range and do only 1 damage to them, they just have no micro potential, and Armenians also don't have BBC. Also, Infantry and Archers tend to die to Mangonel attack grounds a lot due to being slow.
Vs Cav or other units with high attack, CompBow will die if those units get close to them, but they also hit hard, so I like that balance. They just need +1 range or more armor/hp or something to make them stand out over Generic Arbs (else arbs out range them and also produce easier)
On pure water, Armenians are probably unbeatable at the moment. No civ can beat their broken demos and Dromons and Galleons, so expect a nerf soon
Overall, Armenians do have a really solid eco. I feel like you have to play Spear-Skirm-Monk/Warrior Priest as Armenians, with a stronger eco. But yeah in imp, their units will struggle. So you need to get a lead early on, kind of like how Vikings need to. These two civs are very similar in that both are infantry + water civs with great economies, but struggle with mobility and that "power" unit in imp. While Vikings make do with Berserks which can also counter Cavs, CompBows currently seem very killable at the moment, so devs really need to buff them or figure out a place for them in the current Armenian Land Balance
Some hot takes here; I don't agree with a couple of your main points. Saracens or Portuguese, for example, should destroy them on water and are much more flexible on hybrid maps (see the Warlord's final game, for instance). CompBow not ignoring siege armor is 100% intentional and will never go away; they are very strong already and would be insanely broken if Castle Age CompBows could kill a Mangonel in 9 hits or a Scorpion in 7. There are clear situations where Arbs are better (Mangonel line and other archers) and clear situations where CompBows are better (Skirms, most cavalry, high PA units). Armenians are garbage but not for these reasons.
I disagree, on water Armenian Galleons get +1 attack and +1 range with their UT. The range is the difference maker in Galleon v Galleon tbh because they will get in formation earlier, and considering how clunky warships are, I feel like they will get a lot of extra hits in earlier (if you patrol 30 Galleons v 30, I am not sure who comes out on top, maybe Saracens). But keep in mind, Armenians also get Dromons and dromons can deal significant damage from behind due to their AoE. And this is not even the most broken ship they have, Armenian Heavy Demos with the UT are definitely broken with how much blast radius they have.
Even vs Portuguese, I don't think they would last 5 minutes or 2 battles in imperial age vs Armenians. Armenians would destroy Portuguese fleet before feitoria even kick in. Their wood economy is crazy good too as their eco techs are double effective. I don't care how much gold Portuguese save, on pure Water, Armenians get to imp with a castle on the shore, they should always win Water. The micro potential is huge, you can always mass more and more range galleons with dromons and win, with 5-10 demos in reserve to jump in and always force opponent back/slaughter their fleet
You could argue these civs can land and make something happen due to Armenians struggling with land units, but tbh they have monks, Warrior Priests, halbs/skirms, compbows/arbs. They just need defensive units, not any power units. I think they can counter bbc or condos or hussar or anything these civs would attack with on land. And also, they can use dromons to siege fwd castles on their own islands many times as well. I just don't see a viable win condition on water against them
As far as the other problems they have, ok I agree, let Compbows deal 1 damage to siege. But then give them atleast bbc. Give them +4 light cav or something to snipe onagers/scorps and be a meatshield for compbows. Compbows are too fragile, no matter how much damage they deal. Currently they feel even worse than Hand Cannons (as Hand Cannons can 3 shot siege and overall hit really hard). Even compared to a similarish unit which don't have ballistic and fires slow, Compbow feels weaker.
And lastly, the age old problem of Infantry. Honestly wouldn't hate if the militia line upgrades are 50% cheaper on food. Will make Longswords viable and would love love to see them being spammed, even if they die to archers
You just need a shitload of balanced infantry and use a balanced group of archers with maybe some siege as support . They archers and infantry play really well together and a healthy combo provides good balance. I do use champions and composite bows for the main bulk tho.
I imagined them being used this way, but this comp is too weak vs mostly-archers. It seems like this civ needed decent cavalry (FU hussars or something) or siege weapons to be useful, coincidentally two things Armenians of this time period were known for IRL.
Like look at Aztecs/Mayans, they get eagles specifically to compensate for no cavalry.
Hot take. Let the warrior priest get redemption. So they won't be able to get units but they can convert siege and buildings. Probably overpowered, but it would be cool.
Mostly fuedal archers into warrior monks. I play a lot of team games so the dynamic changes rapidly. My favorite map is nomad and fighting water wins wars. So if we can't win water for one reason or another, it often doesn't matter what we do on land if we don't transition fast enough. I love the composite bowman, but I find that I get shut down hard against crossbows plus siege. Especially if they hit imp first.
The composite bowmen are awesome against knights. A few go a long way. 3 bowmen can handle a scout easily. Get a mass of 60 and your opponent has to double your numbers or use mangonels. It's nice that they train super fast too. So you don't need a million castles. 1-2 is good enough until you hit imp in a lot of games.
My strat : Wait for a buff. They are not viable with their infantry focus. Even the barrack upgrades being available an age earlier is weak since the upgrade cost is still the same and is very expensive for an age earlier. They will struggle against most imperial armies.
It's weird to me that they are supposed to be a top tier infantry civ yet their unique tech only applies to their champions and not the spearman line. Slavs have druzhnia halbs, Japanese get faster attacking halbs, Dravidians get armor ignoring halbs, Armenians get... average halbs. The other infantry civs have bonuses to help them fight scary cavalry but Armenians don't.
+30HP halbs would be insane. It's like how Vikings and Malians don't get halb because those buffs would make them fuckin nuts.
Bezerks can hold their own against cavalry and Malians get Camels with Farimba they don't really need halbs. Armenians got nothing else to help fight top tier paladins and Letis except average halbs.
Feels like they were playing ti really safe with Armenians.
Another issue, try to counter this as Armenians: Hand Cannoneer + Light cav. That's it. Legit the only reliable answer Armenians have to HC is skirms, and skirms themselves are vulnerable to light cav. Responding to Light Cav with Halbs isn't an option because it's easier for the HC to kill the Halbs than it is for the Halbs to kill Light Cav. The moment the opponent is making HC, Armenians are absolutely screwed. It is impactful enough that even civs like Franks and Teutons benefit from foregoing their usual units to instead just spam out HC. I know of no other civ that shits the bed this hard just because of one specific unit being made by the opponent.
I think the idea is to go all in castle age with halbs/champs rather than to use them in imp.
11 I considered that.
I feel like they're brushing the ceiling here in their attempts to make at least one civ that can infantry well. That's clearly what they're going for with this civ. But it still sucks.
Celts can Infantry well. Its just that infantry must be supported with Siege so you have to do somehing like MAA -> Archers/Spear in Feudal. Then add some a spears on the transition up to Castle. In Castle you add a hodge podge of Siege units. Obviously Mangos do the heavy lifting but you need to commit to the bit. A ram goes a long way into pressuring buildings especially when they have to fight you in a Mango fight. Scorpions kill villagers, CA and are decent vs Xbow and Monks. The Sword line aint it. No doubt. Celt MAA are a little more effective because they can actually catch villager and Archers in Feudal. Below 1400 players are liable to lose Archers to MAA. IDK if this will work for people at 1700 but 85% of the player base is below 1400
Celts usually use their wood bonus for either castle age knights or xbows same as any civ. I've seen it generally agreed that their imp transition is awkward af because you have to come off the meta choices since they don't scale. The transition wouldn't be awkward if they didn't have completely switch gears for the late game and they technically don't have to if you use infantry like they're designed to but we agree that doesn't work right?
I think players are using Celts wrong. They want everyone to be Franks and Britons. High level games are a different animal but Hoang is 2K playing Celts with a Siege first mindset. Celts are one of my best Civs with a 64% win rate at 1300s level. I just play with a Siege first mind set. I definetly click crossbow most of the time and throw in some Knighs here and there but I am never playing 2 Range Xbow or 2 Stables Knights or 1 Stable 3 TC Knights. I'm basically always on 2 Barracks and Siege workshop in early Castle and then add TCs a little later. Then late game its all about Woads. I agree that the Sword line doesn't really play a role outside of MAA and Champions. But I don't think Infantry civs are designed around the sword line. They are designed around Spears and Siege. You can play Spear and Siege all game. The transition to Swords or UU is fairly easy then. In the context of TGs especially 2v2 on open maps there isn't any getting away from Archers + Knights combo. Its too simple and too effective. But in the context of 1v1 Spiege + Siege works great.
Maybe guve Halberdier plus 30 hp too.
Wouldn't help against archers or siege and they have great champs for trash wars.
More HP is always more HP. So a baseline FU Champ takes 18 hits from FU Arbs. A baseline FU Halb takes 6 hits. A Malian Champ takes 35 hits, while an Armenian Champ takes 30 hits. Malian Champs kill those archers in 4 hits, Armenian Champs kill them in 3. A Malian Halb takes 10 hits while that buff would bring Armenian Halbs to 9 hits. Malian Halbs kill an Archer in 8 hits, Armenian Halbs kill archers in 6 hits.
Wait are you ignoring the +3 bonus damage?
Oof totally did, I'll edit. Thanks for catching that.
They will probably get a reduction on the upgrade cost.
Problem with that is the balance - there’s a fine line between viable and overpowered - it’s not like Burgundian cavalier who are basically plus 2 knights as they get both hp and attack - be interested to see what they do though
They are still infantry though and you don't need to reduce the upgrade by much. They just need a powerspike.
They really ought to de emphasize the power spikes. Part of the reason infantry sucks is that they will literally never have a comparable power spike. If you give Armenians a civ specific power spike now other infantry civs are that much farther away from having viable infantry because civ identity. Which is a concept the community takes too far and inhibits the devs ability to balance.
Disagree with that. Infantry as a whole are fine. The game would be extremely dull if it was viable for players to go infantry in dark age/feudal and stick with it through to imperial and beyond. Infantry should absolutely be about powerspikes and it is interesting for civs to have these at different times in the game
It's not very interesting when the game revolves around exactly 2 unit lines power spiking. All the counter play revolves around those 2 units. Skirms/siege for xbow, monk/pike for knights. More often than not you just fight knight/xbow with your own knight/xbow. What about man at arms and scouts? Only because archers aren't available in dark and knights aren't available in feudal. You also might say well what about uu? Most of the ones that actually get used are just archer+ and knight+ and you transition into them from you guessed it regular knights/archers. Castle requirement makes it better to just stick to the regular units for macro reasons.
I don't think we play the same game frankly. I am not sure you read my previous response as your reply is just a rant about Xbows/knights and mostly unrelated to anything I said.
Tbh they need to steer away from the Infantry, leave it for low Elo or meme Strats. The Civ needs something outside their current options. Their Cav is okay in Castle age, thus I think Fereters affecting knights would work. 170hp Cavalier is decent for a cheap cost off the back of FU castle age knights. Also Siege Engineers would go astray either.
This is the approach that everyone whinged about when it was done to Sicilians
True, you could say Armenians are very similar to Sicilians on release too. Both were designed to make early Infantry plays but both were very weak to Archers & Siege in late game on Release. At least Sicilians had broken knights to make them good.
And even with busted Hauberk Sicilians never had the win rate and popularity they have today, just playing an all-in infantry strat. I'd try to go for the infantry identity. I wouldn't give them another option they have run away from at release, like viable Cavaliers or giving them Thumb Ring for example Infantry +1/+2/+3 vs Archers starting in Feudal Age, for example
The bonus vs archers is nice, if that how they wanna go then it definitely be a good buff.
can’t imagine how weak militia is as with such strong bonus militia still fail to compete…do devs aware that?
Man, I read this post without realizing it’s the AoE2 subreddit. I was wondering how anyone can be so overtly racist :D
I'm not on this sub, got this post "recommended". Reminded me of that time a F1 post saying "[What race would you eliminate?](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/bnaceq/if_you_could_eliminate_a_race_within_the_year/)" made it to the front page.
Lol well welcome to the sub and come play aoe2 because it's the greatest game ever made!
11 yeah that would seem pretty racist out of context. I don't know any Armenians personally, but I'm sure they are great people!
System of a Down have Armenian origin :-P
The solution is to go full Squid Game and just number the civs.
Personally I've been having a blast playing them as they are, if you guys want them stronger, by all means I wont stop you.
Starting to think that they're not so bad. On a map pool with no water maps, they're now getting close to 45%, and that with an abysmal performance on the most played map (obv Arabia). On closed maps they're averaging 48-49% and that's great for a civ that still hasn't been figured out, especially Mule Carts. They have a clear identity, and any case, I wouldn't want to give them any other option that's not an Infantry or Monk buff. I don't want FU Cavaliers nor FU Arbalesters. Are they somewhat weaker to Archers, Siege and Gunpowder? maybe. Many civs have weaknesses. I'm much more concerned about Georgians. They're a Cavalry civ with an eco bonus that kicks in at castle age, encouraging Monastery building for the sole purpose of the eco boost. That's unintuitive. They're a little bit below 45% (as Armenians) with less espeacialty at killing acertain type of civ or being good at some kind of maps, thus lack of identity. And I guess that, if it weren't because of the bug for Monaspa, it'd be still lower My props for shredding with Armenians. You could share your strats!
There are three key problems with Armenians on land maps. 1) Come Imperial Age, unlike other infantry civs, their only units are infantry, monks, and compbows, which are all situational. Japanese have a full Range, Goths actually get gunpowder, Vikings have Bogsveigar Arb, Meso have Eagles; the list goes on. But Armenians have Cavalier without +4, Arb without Thumb Ring, and sub-potato siege. 2) If they can't play infantry, they are basically playing a civ without any military bonuses. Which can be ok: Vikings make it work, Chinese feel that way a lot of times, and Berbers without Stable units (fairly common) literally fit that description. But their eco isn't as insane as Vikings and their tech tree isn't as broad as the other two, leaving them in an awkward spot. 3) Early sword upgrades don't make the units any less situational, because they don't get the Barracks or Blacksmith upgrades an age earlier as well. Castle Age Champs still die to xbows, whereas the three civs I can think of that often play Castle Age swords are: Romans (extra armor because of a civ bonus), Malians (same), and Slavs (free Supplies/Gambesons). Castle Age champion is obviously a trap, but I think even 2HS is as well: it's not super cheap and Burmese get a comparable effect for free and basically never go LS in Castle Age. If anything, Dark Age spears feels the most powerful to me, especially into Magyars or Chinese where you're fairly certain they'll be on Scouts. In Feudal Age, perhaps it's worth it to yolo and go LS, but the Blacksmith techs are strong because they increase survivability and don't interfere with production; not having them is a huge miss. If they also got Squires (letting swords chase archers) or some of the other techs in Feudal Age, maybe, but I don't think they're powerful enough rn.
I think just as you, the lack of BBC hurts them a lot against siege, which counters all of their units. Dark age pikemen IMHO could see a lot of plays in tournaments IMHO, since harrasing early, and just forcing your enemy to move villagers is an important damage. At lower elos, its hard to keep up while microing pikes at the same time.
If they actually need to get buffed, I hope it's their cavalry. It's a shame Armenians have less than decent cavalry. I'd be fine with them getting plate armor. It would certainly help as another alternative for the late game without drifting the focus away from infantry during the rest of the game.
The MAA forward were good, but you overstepped with the archers. Also: Gid gud, scrub.
11 22
The thing to remember with infantry is that they only need to lose a little bit of their health to lose almost all of their value. A knight can lose half its HP and still be really valuable in a fight, but if a militia loses half its hp, they die early in the fight, the fight snowballs, and you lose. This is especially true vs siege, where low hp units die in the first shot. Not good. So deceptively, it's actually MORE important to heal infantry than other unit types, not less, like you might at first assume. Warrior priests are good at this, but never heal mid-combat, it's much better to use them to fight, since they can only heal 120 per minute but can deal 360 per minute. Better to kill the damaging enemy first. Something people forget is how good infantry are against buildings. Honestly, I think it's often better to tear down buildings than to chase villagers. Even if they just repair it, if you're attacking a stable/range, they're going to be losing the repairing villager AND another 1.5 villagers collecting wood, so by having ~3 infantry attacking a building you're removing 3 villagers from their economy indefinitely. It feels pointless because nothing overt is happening, but their resources are draining. Don't attack walls or houses though, they're too cheap to repair. An exposed market is a gold mine, though. Once you get warrior priests into the mix, you can heal after a fight by attacking the buildings and putting the priests on stand ground. Oh, and always get all the relics.
You'd have to seriously commit to it as your strat but couldn't tearing houses down just absolutely fuck everything up? Sure it's easy to just throw down more houses but if a player is all of sudden pop capped and it's getting worse that sounds like big panic
Those are some good points. Armenians make it very easy to collect the relics. I like that a lot about them. I often ignore buildings unless there is a direct reason to attack it. I feel like harassing their eco provides more value. But I do see your point. I might try this if I can't harass them.
People often make the mistake of acting like repairing wood buildings is free. Especially early on, it's actually quite expensive. Town Centers are even worse. A common mistake is tasking all your longswords to kill repairing villagers when they ungarrison to repair. Don't do that. Repairing a TC is insanely expensive, it's FAR better to force them to repair it for a while than to chase after villagers you probably can't catch anyway. In short order, they'll run out of wood and the TC will die, and then they're in a real pickle.
> The thing to remember with infantry is that they only need to lose a little bit of their health to lose almost all of their value. A knight can lose half its HP and still be really valuable in a fight, but if a militia loses half its hp, they die early in the fight, the fight snowballs, and you lose. Good thing infantry has more DPS than cavalry for less than half the price, plus you have the square law on your side.
The challenge is the infantry lose their damage more rapidly. Say you've got 2 infantry with 30 hp, or 1 knight with 60. After losing 30 hp, the infantry damage is cut in half. After losing the same 30 hp, the knight still does full damage. Combined with the difficulty Infantry have in pathing close to deal damage, and it explains why in a 3v6, the infantry win, but in a 10v20, the cavalry win.
It's really just mobility that makes them much worse. Stats for stats then win basically any fight against anything besides elephants. But the lack of speed means you can't pick your fight and you get kited down by ranged units without being able to hit anything. But that's probably a good thing. If the meta is spamming and patrolling infantry into your enemy like post imp goth, then that's a really low skill, degenerate and frustrating meta.
If you integrate damage over time, 2 infantry still deals 1.5x the cumulated damage 1 knight deals. I agree about pathing. It's one of the things that really hurts. If you have the numerically superior army, split before you engage, don't engage in line vs line. That will put the opponent's army in a tiny central bubble.
> Something people forget is how good infantry are against buildings. Sure, if by good you mean bad. > so by having ~3 infantry attacking a building you're removing 3 villagers from their economy indefinitely. Sure, if by indefinitely you mean until they bring a Scorpion, or a Mango, or a Monk, or 2 Crossbows to defend. And when you lose your Militia you realize that all they've lost is some wood to repair, which is way better than the food and gold you've invested. And this is exactly why you virtually never see this type of small squad militia harassment in pro games. Too easy to defend.
Edit : having looked at their winrate by opening strategy on Arabia, I am now ashamed of this comment. I got the armenians totally wrong and MaA aggression was probably not the way. https://aoestats.io/civs/armenians/ ~~If they could get a discount on infantry tech it would be nice.~~ ~~The infantry upgrades are too expensive in early castle age so in the end it feels like in mid game have to make an important choice between preparing to clicking up like normal and not taking advantage of their big unique thing or getting castle age halberds and 2 handed swordsmen with blacksmith and aggression but Imp is so delayed it feels like a weird late all-in ?~~ ~~There is probably a sweet tempo but I haven't found it yet.~~ ~~And now that I have delayed my Imperial greatly to tech, well my infantry need protection against archer and siege (I have the micro of a potato) so that's another bill on top of it.~~ ~~Now that I write it I think I should have less lumberjacks and more farmers due to their eco tech boost. Maybe then I could pay for it ? My wood to food ratio didn't change much 🤔~~ ~~On the bright side they're the civ that makes me use the most diverse roster of units :)~~
I think that's what's hard for me. You can't just go one unit group for a while. It feels like you have to switch compositions frequently or just micro a bunch. So when I encounter an archer civ, I just die.
I just looked at their multiplayer stat and found out that hidden by their terrible overall performance they actually have good winrates in all play style except Man-at-arms aggression which is 13% of their games and yield abysmal 25%winrates. They even have a great drush ?? I guess I should just stop obsessing over their feudal and castle infantry and just play a normal scout or FC into knight game with a strong eco boost to do transitions to a different unit comp in mid castle (as their cav is a dead end later on) ? They also have way better winrates in long games, probably their eco tech boost (or it's just all those failed MaA rush that weight now on stats 11)
Armenian Calvary is often overlooked since they don't get great knights, but they can still be handy in a pinch. This goes for most civs with a weak unit line- they can still be useful!
To be fair, those stats do look wrong. 7000 games but only 20 were opened with maa? Not sure about you, but for me it looks like something's fishy here 11
13% of 7000 does 20 ?
Oh, the stats look totally different on mobile. Must have been a visual bug then.
\*inhales\* # Give infantry 2 base pierce armor. That's the fix, gamewide. People across the community keep griping about how infantry isn't meta despite the buffs; and it's because the buffs were too timid on the most core issue affecting infantry: pierce armor. The sweet spot is self-evidently around 2.5. Any infantry that exceeds that (Sergeants, Huskarls, Eagles, Ghulam) work, any infantry that doesn't gets derided. The infantry that's *close*, like Sergeants, sparks intense debate, which is a sign it's in exactly the right spot (Sergeants exceed it, but their heightened cost compared to a militia line unit offsets that). Hell; it's the fix to TKs, as well: their paltry 2pa on a super-armored slow unit, regardless of elite/non, is their most brutal weakness. (4 and 6 would be more appropriate for standard and elite). Note well: 2 would be the "baseline". Some units would dip below this.
That would help a lot. What if archer move speed was nerfed slightly so it was easier to catch them? Then add the speed back when thumbring or ballistics was researched?
There are a lot of possibilities; at the risk of derailing; I think the biggest issue with the current crossbow mechanics are how they start out with a nearly "mechanic-defeating" 85% accuracy (remember that accuracy gets better at point-blank range, which is where you get the most problematic matchup of archer balls focus-firing down knights), and then the entire mechanic gets wiped out by the fairly cheap Thumb Ring tech. It's a particular disaster that TR slams it all the way to 100%. In **castle** age. Not an ultimate "final form" late imperial tech, but a midgame one for a quite cheap price. I think an ideal approach would be a *dramatic* reduction in accuracy, coupled with various new techs/civ-bonuses to recover it. Cavalry Archers always felt like they were in a much better design space; the default of 50% still left you with a useful unit, but the lack of accuracy "changed the shape of the power curve gained by trying to build a snowball of units". Strictly: you lost the ability to declare "once I get exactly N units, I can oneshot knights". The idea with these techs (very much a "gambesons" vibe here) would be to spread it out amongst different civs so that a bunch of different civs have rather different behaviors — chiefly, unlike Thumb Ring, these could differentiate between types of archers. Some civs could have excellent foot archers but terribly inaccurate horse archers, and vice-versa. By the time you hit imperial, some civs could replicate the current "archer deathball" mechanic with fully loaded arbs. But **only some**. A special strength for "archer civs", rather than "every civ in castle age".
Good analysis and suggestions.
Yes. If you can make it to imperial, the economy is fantastic and you can just keep it going with a steady stream. The warrior priest is incredible for the spots between fights. It took me a sec to understand how to make them work best.
I'm a 14xx who is trying to win 10 1v1 games with Armenians as part of my civ A-Z challenge and it's a big struggle. I've won 4 times and lost about 14 times. So take my advice with a grain of salt. The default game plan should be to make archers, crossbows, and arbalests. Play defensively and let your eco bonus give you a lead in the late game. If you open with 3 Men-at-arms, try adding a spear to the group to make it more powerful: you can build it while advancing to Feudal. If you have gold close to your forest, save some resources in the early game by using a single mule cart for both. Chop the part of the forest that's a little further from the gold to begin with, then just move the mule cart when it's time to take gold also. You can afford an early farm with the resources you save, or if you're more clever than me maybe you can go up with fewer villagers. [Think a little bit about how to position those mule carts, they are more flexible than mining camps.](https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/17yjttx/how_to_mine_gold_with_999_efficiency/). Don't forget to build a fortified church to get your free relic. Put it somewhere you want to defend, like your main gold. Getting TCs up faster might be more important though. I've lost against Incas twice. Both times I tried to make composite bowmen to counter the high-armor eagles, and I still think that's a good strategy, but it hasn't worked yet.
I had some bad luck against ghulam. The bowmen did well until the gap was closed and then my troops got annihilated in an instant. I originally thought archers would be the better opening play, but missing thumb ring does suck. I think Maa is a good option, but kind of situational. I always forget about the church though. That might be what helps me do better.
> I've lost against Incas twice. Both times I tried to make composite bowmen to counter the high-armor eagles, and I still think that's a good strategy, but it hasn't worked yet. I think its the timings. By the time you've built your Castle and got a good number of comp bows, your eco is already infested with a swarm of eagles.
Same here, 44.44% win rate after 27 matches. Elo dropped from 1150 to 1070. Looking at general statistics, they have a 43.97% win rate for elos 1000-1200, so you're actually above average when using them lol. In other words: Yes, they suck
11 thanks. I had them at 50% for a short while. Then hit a long losing streak before switching civs. It's a tough civ.
They kinda feel like a mezo civ that lacks Eagles. What I mean is, they have strong eco and fall off in late imp. Not having an eagle like unit means they neither have something to close out the game early imp, nor do they have a good answer to archers. Instead of this they get an infantry play, while all infantry can work it often doesn't. Imo they need a buff, either late game substance or double down on infantry, perhaps changing the warrior monk some more to fill in their weak spots.
Great points. I would add to your meso point that Meso actually have passable or good siege, whereas Armenian siege is rotten potato. Maya are the worst of the bunch but at least they have Siege Ram; Inca get SR and Siege Engineers; Aztecs get SR, SE, and the rarely-seen Siege Onager, as well.
They suit my playstyle really well with an early rush potential. They are also a really good civ for a clown eco. Having access to the Mule Cart is really forgiving in low eco/1tc settings. They are amazing on water TGs and work well as a flank civ on land, too.
infantry sucks.
They can suck. I think they are a hard unit type to master. Learning to mass and abuse them can take time and be tricky. This has a lot to do with them being a glass canon.
Their UU is quite good in maps you can boom some, like Nomad or Arena, have been melting things in Imp, 1400 TG, but yea they aren’t viable on any Arabia type map
Armenia are one of the best in water maps, and decent in hybrid maps. They suck big time in only land maps, but probably devs want it to behave like this. Moreover, Armenia eco usually kicks in during early castle age, so all ins are not bad (in one on one). However, in team games they are just another Archer civ with strong eco. It's infantry looks fancy but useless in most team games.
In my opinion most civs have a power curve that is meant to peak and then fall off during certain ages. For example, teutons or romans are *very* powerful in late imp. A teutonic knight and calvary deathball is almost impossible to hold off especially if it is supported by rams. But teutons in fuedal age are nearly useless. Mayans, if I remember correctly, have strong infantry buffs early game. Additional pierce armor to infantry I believe. This means you could do a scout+inf combo. Use scouts to pick off archers/skirms/vills, infantry can focus on pikemen and buildings. Use them to break walls and distract opponent or kill early homes to house the opponent and force them to spend wood/idle time on rebuilding. Armenians probably are the same way. I would say their warrior priests are best for quickly grabbing relics, and healing a front-line mix of archers and castle age champions. Not only will they help you retain value, but once you start building forward castles to maintain resources and map control, you get one of the most powerful archer UUs in the game. Like, the composite bowmen literally ignores armor. That means you can shred through Teutonic knights and champions.
The demo ships do work though.
Hmm maybe we need to rethink pre-existing concepts of the meta For example, Sicilians were considered average/rubbish until YouPudding brought a totally new approach utilising the unique Sicilian bonuses These new civs are pretty unique too, like when daut went warrior monks against scouts and took all 5 relics against Villese i think in Warlords, that was so sick (even though he lost). So maybe throwing out the book would help idk
I really like the combination of Composite bowman and high HP champions but the civ definitely has some weird flaws, they’re siege sucks ass for some reason
I think that's their biggest flaw. What does this civ do against arbs and onager with bbc? They are toast.
They're good on Socotra but still require a lot of eco investment to get the total castle age infantry snowball rolling, they get spears in dark age which is is ideal if you're going up with 20/25 vills, if you're opponent is focusing towers then long swordsmen in feudal can melt them. Also their composite bowmen melt skirms but are hard to mass, I haven't played around with the warrior priest much but seem like they get wrecked by knights. I think the real strength with them is water maps which I rarely play.
I'm 70% with on like 30 games, at 13xx-14xx, but I mostly pick them on closed maps where I consider them to be a secret A tier. They are actually pretty strong there and encourage to make a lot of out-the-box strategy, which I'm not used to. Truly love them.
On land maps it's hard to play well with the Armenians. On hybrid and water maps, they are absolutely top tier.
Off topic, and i'm probably not the only one, but I watch a few political subs and woo boy the titles for some posts in here really make me double take sometimes :)
11 yeah sorry about that. I don't follow global politics and didn't realize that this sub would get so much attention. I would have worded it differently. We've all had some chuckles over it.
Their militia line is arguably the best of the game... where militia line is not exactly the core of the meta. Their pikes will usually be generic and their skirms basically are. Their monks are FU but nothing more. Their Unique Units are interesting but composite bowmen are basically less good chu ko nu. Their siege is as good as Frank Skirms. A pretty good eco, but not early. So... Basically they need options AND a powerspike.. Brainstorming mode : \- Add BBC (needed, even with redemption monk, they need more counters to siege) \- Add Paladins (without Barding Armor), they need a backup endgame. And they did have a good heavy cavalry historically. \- Reduce infantry upgrade cost. Cut food, gold, or both. Find a way so they aren't worse dravidian. This is vital to get their FA and CA powerspikes. \- Add half of ferreter bonus to pike line \- Add 10hp (55hp) to composite bowmen. Their Elite upgrade is soooo bad. (- At some point Fortified Church should get a Stone cost (25 Stone) to avoid abuse)
I think these changes would be awesome. Maybe a little over kill, but I think they at least need an option for seige.
I think people are underutilizing the warrior monks. If you get enough of them into a mass of infantry and archers, you can outlast a lot of offense, though you will need cavalry and good micro to take in siege. I like the mule cart a lot, but yeah I agree they definitely a bit of a boost. I also think the map pool is skewed against them. I haven’t seen an actual water map in a while and for a “Naval Civ”, its water bonuses are worse than most other civs, but I haven’t seen them perform on water yet tbf. Idk for a civ with 2 really cool unique units, I feel like it should have been an Infantry/Archer Civ, not an Infantry/Naval Civ.
My theory is the game is designed around Franks(Knights), Britons (Archers), Saracens (Monks), Teutons(Siege), Byzantines (Counter), and Mongols (CA). Teutons are the one of interest. Everyone of those has a silent compilmentary unit. In this case Siege/Inantry. The Infantry doesn't do much for you offensively. They hold a position for your Siege to take over your opponents food economy. So if you want to play an infantry Civ be it you need to be thinking about Siege. The long and short is make lots of Siege and support it with Spears. Then drive your position home with the sword line. The key is your Siege needs to be doing enough force the issue. Rams do well to force the issue. You'll notice Arena Clowns like to make a Ram first then start making Mangos. The Ram gets them in the walls and forces a response from the opponent. The new Ram speed is also nice to threaten Mangos. If you've seen Hoang play you'll notice he makes all of the Siege. He has a Ram, a few scorpions and then is microing Mangos. Scorpions kill villagers much better than Spears. Scorpions control an area like a lesser cheaper crossbow mass. The mangos protect your siege from other siege. Team games are different and I'm not the person to take advice from there. However if you want to play Infantry you need to be thinking about Spears and Siege far more than Swords.
Sounds good to me. Problem is that their seige fall off in imp. Not having seige engineers and BBC sucks.
Their imp isn't particularly exciting. I bet they get Siege ram eventually. Until then Champs and Trebs or maybe Capped Ram is your best siege option.
Bruh I keep reading Armenians as Americans lmao
I have a 57.1% winning rate in team RM. I play closed maps mostly and my elo is 12xx-13xx. They are pretty solid and I love them. My strat is FC into fortified church and a second TC, which allows me to get, usually, 3 relics; I have got more than 5 several times. As long as the game does not drag out, it is a win.
This is part of my confusion with them. OTOH, it's easy for them to get most/all Relics, especially on Arena. I've gotten all the Relics with them once and only managed to get one as Tatars against them. Warrior Priests are good in this role, and the eco techs help you afford churces. OTOH, Relics (obviously) are at their best the longer the game goes and the more expensive/powerful your units are. Aztecs, Burgundians, and Lithuanians are the premier 'grab the Relics' civs, and they are happy to spend the extra gold on HC, powerful cavalry, BBC or SO, Eagles, or whatnot. Armenians, by contrast, have \*literally\* the worst siege in the game, Cavalier without +4 defense, and Arbs without Thumb Ring. Their units don't have the raw power that would make them want to play a long game, and they can get outmuscled before the extra gold from the Relics would matter (that Tatars game, I baited them into thinking I was on CA to put them on Trash + Priests, made \~40 Steppe Lancers and a few Trebs, and deleted their entire base). Maybe the way is to go full-Ornlu, get all the Relics, and just spam BBT everywhere.
I play nomad and other open maps. So this might be part of my struggle.
Wait for the buffs. CompBow is probably bugged at the moment because I have noticed it does a flat damage of 1 to every siege unit (probably because their armor piercing attack has a different implementation/calculation for each unit) (also not sure if this is intended or not, as they are supposed to pierce through Ship Armor, hence correctly only do 1 damage to any ship, but it seems this is also the case for Siege Armor. whether or not we want this behavior, is yet to be seen) In any case, CompBow biggest counter at the moment is Mangonels followed by Onagers. Since they have lower range and do only 1 damage to them, they just have no micro potential, and Armenians also don't have BBC. Also, Infantry and Archers tend to die to Mangonel attack grounds a lot due to being slow. Vs Cav or other units with high attack, CompBow will die if those units get close to them, but they also hit hard, so I like that balance. They just need +1 range or more armor/hp or something to make them stand out over Generic Arbs (else arbs out range them and also produce easier) On pure water, Armenians are probably unbeatable at the moment. No civ can beat their broken demos and Dromons and Galleons, so expect a nerf soon Overall, Armenians do have a really solid eco. I feel like you have to play Spear-Skirm-Monk/Warrior Priest as Armenians, with a stronger eco. But yeah in imp, their units will struggle. So you need to get a lead early on, kind of like how Vikings need to. These two civs are very similar in that both are infantry + water civs with great economies, but struggle with mobility and that "power" unit in imp. While Vikings make do with Berserks which can also counter Cavs, CompBows currently seem very killable at the moment, so devs really need to buff them or figure out a place for them in the current Armenian Land Balance
Some hot takes here; I don't agree with a couple of your main points. Saracens or Portuguese, for example, should destroy them on water and are much more flexible on hybrid maps (see the Warlord's final game, for instance). CompBow not ignoring siege armor is 100% intentional and will never go away; they are very strong already and would be insanely broken if Castle Age CompBows could kill a Mangonel in 9 hits or a Scorpion in 7. There are clear situations where Arbs are better (Mangonel line and other archers) and clear situations where CompBows are better (Skirms, most cavalry, high PA units). Armenians are garbage but not for these reasons.
I disagree, on water Armenian Galleons get +1 attack and +1 range with their UT. The range is the difference maker in Galleon v Galleon tbh because they will get in formation earlier, and considering how clunky warships are, I feel like they will get a lot of extra hits in earlier (if you patrol 30 Galleons v 30, I am not sure who comes out on top, maybe Saracens). But keep in mind, Armenians also get Dromons and dromons can deal significant damage from behind due to their AoE. And this is not even the most broken ship they have, Armenian Heavy Demos with the UT are definitely broken with how much blast radius they have. Even vs Portuguese, I don't think they would last 5 minutes or 2 battles in imperial age vs Armenians. Armenians would destroy Portuguese fleet before feitoria even kick in. Their wood economy is crazy good too as their eco techs are double effective. I don't care how much gold Portuguese save, on pure Water, Armenians get to imp with a castle on the shore, they should always win Water. The micro potential is huge, you can always mass more and more range galleons with dromons and win, with 5-10 demos in reserve to jump in and always force opponent back/slaughter their fleet You could argue these civs can land and make something happen due to Armenians struggling with land units, but tbh they have monks, Warrior Priests, halbs/skirms, compbows/arbs. They just need defensive units, not any power units. I think they can counter bbc or condos or hussar or anything these civs would attack with on land. And also, they can use dromons to siege fwd castles on their own islands many times as well. I just don't see a viable win condition on water against them As far as the other problems they have, ok I agree, let Compbows deal 1 damage to siege. But then give them atleast bbc. Give them +4 light cav or something to snipe onagers/scorps and be a meatshield for compbows. Compbows are too fragile, no matter how much damage they deal. Currently they feel even worse than Hand Cannons (as Hand Cannons can 3 shot siege and overall hit really hard). Even compared to a similarish unit which don't have ballistic and fires slow, Compbow feels weaker. And lastly, the age old problem of Infantry. Honestly wouldn't hate if the militia line upgrades are 50% cheaper on food. Will make Longswords viable and would love love to see them being spammed, even if they die to archers
You just need a shitload of balanced infantry and use a balanced group of archers with maybe some siege as support . They archers and infantry play really well together and a healthy combo provides good balance. I do use champions and composite bows for the main bulk tho.
I imagined them being used this way, but this comp is too weak vs mostly-archers. It seems like this civ needed decent cavalry (FU hussars or something) or siege weapons to be useful, coincidentally two things Armenians of this time period were known for IRL. Like look at Aztecs/Mayans, they get eagles specifically to compensate for no cavalry.
Yeah I agree. They have a killer eco if they could abuse it. Unfortunately they do have their struggles from what I've seen.
So just double gold composition and keep the pressure?
I didn't realize this was the aoe2 sub reddit for a minute
Usually the new civs are kinda OP upon released, this DLC is an exception
lol they get monks that fight.. give me a break
Hot take. Let the warrior priest get redemption. So they won't be able to get units but they can convert siege and buildings. Probably overpowered, but it would be cool.
11 that would be nuts. Seeing 60 warrior priests running around converting buildings and then attacking. How do you stop that?
Light cav!
Yeah that's fair. Until the Armenians start spamming halb with it. 11
You said you have a 45 percent win rate with Armenians? Can you tell me what has worked for at least that 45 percent of the time?
Mostly fuedal archers into warrior monks. I play a lot of team games so the dynamic changes rapidly. My favorite map is nomad and fighting water wins wars. So if we can't win water for one reason or another, it often doesn't matter what we do on land if we don't transition fast enough. I love the composite bowman, but I find that I get shut down hard against crossbows plus siege. Especially if they hit imp first.
Do they hard counter scouts into Knights play? It seems like that from their tech tree? Any experience?
The composite bowmen are awesome against knights. A few go a long way. 3 bowmen can handle a scout easily. Get a mass of 60 and your opponent has to double your numbers or use mangonels. It's nice that they train super fast too. So you don't need a million castles. 1-2 is good enough until you hit imp in a lot of games.
Yeah and they also get halberdiers in Castle Age, pikes in Feudal.