True, though if you're playing Regicide, and there are kings included, the tech is renamed 'Treason' and the cost is different.

@@Dawnrim true, but if you want to be this precice: It lets you see the LOS of every player for 100 gold x vill they have Since its cost would be an effect in this case 11

@@lukasvideosify1596 don’t know! Both are up for grabs. Make your pick :)

@@Dawnrim Haha! THen I take the Searjeant! I don't pack quite the punch a two-handed Swordsman has, but I can take a lot of beating and I have a talent for building things.

I had a good morning. Most things were falling into place. I don't think this will necessarily turn out the same way if we replay - especially with more practice for you as you mentioned in the post-game summary.

@@Dawnrim Yeah, I will do my best! I managed to climb to 1200. 1300 or even 1400 is still doable. ;-)

zero respect 11 but to be completely honest, while most of his analysis is solid, and he has tons of experience both from his own games and from coaching, I don't always agree with his takes on what goes on down on the lower levels. And I kinda have the numbers to back me up... the stats don't lie.. To be fair there might be a difference between 'best civ to win games on lower levels' which is what the stats portray and 'best civ to become a better player starting from lower levels' which might be what Hera is generally talking about when he picks out good beginner civs. Right now for instance, Sicilians are #3 for best performing civs from 850 - 1000 elo. I bet that's because they slap down their castles in people's faces and force resigns that way. Or maybe Donjon+Serjeants rushes. Hera probably don't want more Dauts and YouPuddings among the up and coming players, so he doesn't endorse that as a good choice, even if the stats say it is. Sorry for the article answer to your comparatively very short question - I think I need a follow up video here..

Playing without small trees would be a struggle for me now, but I see what you mean. You certainly do give up some of the esthetics. I haven't moved to auto-farm placement myself yet. Not really for any better reason than being lazy in my case though.

Oh. I didn't realize there was potential to turn this into an AITAH section. My take is the best approach is always to be the bigger person and either ignore or counter with something in the chat yourself - preferably some coup de grace one liner that blows him out of the water. If you can't come up with something really good - better to be quiet though. Best of all is of course to actually win the game, but that is obviously not always possible. If you slap a layer of carefree 'I'm elevated above your petty trash' on top of a win, like telling him wp or something, just to rub in how much better of a person you are, I give points for that. Now, in the situation where you're truly frustrated and unable to win - I wouldn't call you a big BMer for walling your villagers in. I'm just doubting how much of a revenge it really is. I think your opponent can feel your frustration through your actions and he knows he's grinding your nerves with his behavior if you 'retaliate' like that. I think you're feeding into his behavior more so than taking revenge. Revenge is best served with an army in his base, but second best is just a 'gg' as if you didn't even read what he wrote, and then alt+f4. Leave him wondering if you even know English (or whatever language he insulted you in).

@@Dawnrim Yeah, I would not give a "gg" in such a case. My normal behaviour would be jujst resigning and then reprot for verbal abuse. But sometimes people need to be trolled. I once had that in HD Version. The dude already had a really stupid name. Somehting like "Adolf Bin Laden". He once trolled me with a sneak on Black Forest. I had my revenge three months later by playing the same game with teh same settings but this time I trolled him with his own startegy! xD

Please excuxe all the many typos. My new laptop is still new to me and I have sometimes trouble working the keys out.

Sure, I’m up for a challenge :) let me know when is a good time. We could do a bo3 and make some YT material out of it, if you don’t mind. If we’re doing nomad though, I would like a civ draft with a good amount of bans. Maybe something like pick 6, ban 2, so we go into a BO3 with four civs that are just below the top tier (I like to have one more civ in the draft than there are games in the set, so there can be some strategizing in civ picks even on the last game). Some civs are very OP on nomad, so being able to ban away the most obnoxious ones would make it more fun imo. Let me know what you think about it. If you were imagining something a little less involved and just a single game 1v1 just for fun, I’m up for that too.

@@Dawnrim Hey buddy! Thank you for your reply! I would sure be interested in a "best out of 3" if it turns out to be a fair fight for both sides. But telling by your ELO which is around 1300, I don't think I have a very realistic chance of winning this. I guess "Nomad" is the only map where chances might be even. THat is why I suggested the map. Let's do a testrun on Nomade and if we feel like we are fighting on eye-level we can make a "best out of 3" after that. Do you have a Discord so we can communicate everything?

@@lukasvideosify1596 yeah: dawnrim#4551

@@Dawnrim Thank you! I will send you a rewuest, now. (SemperBlender)

Bouncing up and down around 1200 most days.

@@Dawnrim Okay, sounds good!

I would agree. I also think Aztecs are hard because they lack halberdiers. That means you're on a timer to make your attacks count that is not really there for the other meso civs, or civs with cavalry/camels of their own. If you haven't won by the time massed heavy cavalry kicks in, you're kinda screwed as Aztecs. One thing is spamming infantry in post imp like you're the goths- spamming infantry in castle age/early imp on limited eco to hit the timing window of aztecs is another thing entirely.

I do, but at my dad’s house back in Norway. And it’s probably pretty rusty by now. I doubt anyone has kept up with oiling it. Given it’s a metal sword in a metal scabbard, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s so rusted it can’t even be drawn anymore. Maybe I’ll make a revisit video at some point lol

They are fun. And those free sheep as you add TCs are so nice - it’s a nice wood saving from not needing farms right away in castle age, so you can make ranges or stables or CA or whatever you need. Start of castle age is the most wood demanding period of most games, so that bonus is really well timed. Interesting how the two civs in this matchup are very different in almost every way, but they do share having a bonus giving saving on the investment you have to make into the wood->food conversion in the boom phase. The teuton version is clearly better with cheaper farms, but still, it’s the same concept.

@@Dawnrim idk how meta it was, but with tatars I enjoyed so much going archers into either xbows or cav archers. I'm better with range units, than with scouts/knights. For TG I would drop a well placed forward tower on one enemy and the my archers would go on the other. So, I carry my friend in early game and then he sling me just a little bit of resources, so I can mass CA

Definitely big ones. It is kinda mind boggling that the official version of the game with big trees stuck around for more than 20 years, and it was pretty much impossible to have control of what your units were doing on the north side of a wood line that whole time. The grid can be nice (I assume that’s what you mean). I actually doesn’t use it personally, as I think it messes with the immersion a little bit (I still like to balance the feel of being a medieval lord a little bit against the optimal conditions for securing the win), but for range calculations, boar de-agro by palisade etc I can see how it’s very useful.

@@Dawnrim Since I got this mod, i really don't remember ever having a gap in my wall (with buildings-wall or wood/stone wall), all because of grid/tile visual mod. But before this, I had some moments when one mistake made me lose a winning game. And small trees are useful also when you wall into the forest and your villager wants to make a way in for enemy, lol. All other visual mods are ok to me, but I don't really need much. Maybe the castle range is fine to keep safe my mangonels/villagers repairing rams, but anyway, I got a really good speed at counting tiles

@@AEGISAOE ah, yeah makes sense for spotting gaps

I agree. They are tough. I wonder though, if perhaps the market bonus is silently working in the background for a lot of people, even if they don’t think about it and base a strategy around it. It’s almost like Saracens become harder the harder you try with them. At higher levels you have to try hard because you’re up against other players who take advantage of their bonuses to a large degree and you’ll fall behind if you just play standard, but things like the wall breaking archers might carry a lot of people as Saracens even without some elaborate market abuse strat. Idk though, just thinking out loud. They’re weird for sure.

I completely agree with you that Byz a good place to start to learn the game, and I think the devs do as well, given they've put a focus on counter play in the handicap system: you don't get an attack bonus across the board when turning on the handicap system, but your bonus dmg in increased. It seems they're trying to 'teach' weaker players to play with counters, which makes sense. And then it would make sense to have Byz as your 'training civ' as well. Still, as you say there's a learning curve and you don't get anything for free economically, so I'm not necessarily surprised they're in the bottom 5 on the win rates (which is the basis for this video). Good for actually learning - not necessarily good for performing well on the ladder initially.

I can go along with that list. I think your take on Armenians and Georgians is generally accurate, though I believe there is a layer somewhere on the ranking where infantry is favored and viable. I would imagine Armenians are popular among those players.

It’s at least hard to get to if you want to mass their best ranged option, scorpions. Maybe it will be a little easier with the scorp buffs coming in next patch.

thank you

You remind me why I rarely play team games 11

You're welcome. Hope I'm not misinterpreting what you're saying here, but yeah you get none of that pro player talk here of "on lower levels, like 1800s and such..." As Real Time History would have said: 'the only AoE channel that defines intermediate by the median' (if that reference didn't land, it's worth checking them out - their history content is perhaps the best on youtube;e not much medieval history tbf, but still).

I see what you’re saying, and to be clear - running villagers and walling them up in a team games to try to rebuild to get back into the fight later is totally a legit strategy. In 1v1s though, there are situations where the game is very much unwinnable and walling the few remaining villagers in a corner accomplishes nothing but stalling out the inevitable. Like I mentioned, some people enjoy that - both sides of that - both I think those are the minority.

I guess you're focusing on civs that form bad habits for new players, and that's a fair enough criterium. Btw, I agree many of the ones you mention form worse habits than Huns, which is the OG bad habit forming civ that's often being pointed to.

Spanish is an interesting choice as they have a pretty full standard tech tree minus xbow so they are a good flexible civ for people to pay a wide variety of strategies especially if ppl come up with a good counter against conqs

@@Dawnrim Yes and also it not a very defined question, one person may answer it in the form of fast results, another one focuses on the civ bonuses, next one might think knight-play is so important they don't want a beginner to use eagles. Then there is the word beginner itself, some reserve it for being new to both the game and RTS in general, while some read it as just not being good at the game. For the former once, it might also have a time limit, like you only a beginner until you have played 20/50/100 games or for a month/months. So perhaps it good to have both what anyone think is the best and worst, so can read between the lines what they value and don't.

Wrong on Vikings

New player here what does UU stand for?