[womblemuppet]

My scottish cough cough mate has got into aoe2 in a big way and I thought I'd brush up on my skills while providing a deep and informative analysis of each civ. 'skills' in quotes because it's just the AI but whatever. The hard difficulty is basically the new moderate with moderate not really being much of a challenge anymore (they still attack you unlike easy and standard, but they're so dumb it doesn't matter).


lithuanians:

these guys rock. think of them as byzantines with an early eco bonus not a super late one. 150 food means your dark age is guaranteed to only depend on how bad you are at building houses and boar lures. The extra bonus on relics is great because it's something that you want to get in the first place, whether you go calvary or not. Actually, I think you're really supposed to go calvary anyway but I haven't been because I'm bad, so I've been going spearmen + skirmishers. skirms will beat archer deathball, spears will defend vs scouts and knights and if you keep your numbers up for both you'll have a really strong trash army with access to elite skirm and halb, plus extra pierce armour through tower shield unique tech.

The easiest answer to this comp would be mangonels I think, but the AI doesn't really mass them or micro them enough to be a significant counter. So I just massed spears and skirms while controlling most of the relics and booming on 4 TC with only one castle for conscription. I don't think it'd work on a good human player as I only had one castle and so I'd probably get raided to death.

Really fun civ though, it's a really satisfying pick as none of their bonuses are ever irrelevant (eg naval bonuses) , and there's no pressure to build lots of castles for unique units so you can start your army early. Granted, I ignored stables that game so the +attack per relic wasn't actually useful but I COULD have teched into knights if I needed to counter mass skirms/archers or siege or something. 

I think they'd be a great pvp civ to try out.

[taco]

nice! the relic bonus thing really itches something nice in my brain even if it doesn't always translate to being useful

[womblemuppet]

magyars:

took me two attempts, either I do a successful scout rush, or I eventually die. theoretically you could do m/a rush and use the forging +1 ATK bonus that way, but I don't need to try trick a computer. 
You have to kill about 2~3 villagers with your scouts or it's an uphill fight until post imp I feel with these guys. If you're successful, you have time to either build castles and TC's everywhere or rush cavalry archers. They're basically a less viable huns or mongols, no eco bonus really makes them do-or-die. Maybe using the instant wolf kill you can do scout rush into towers but I considered towers to be cheating vs the AI since they just don't respond correctly.
Anyway, I've had lots of experience with the magyars so it wasn't hard. Knights + CA is a great unit comp (really fun to play too), swapping to magyar hussar when you run out of gold and mangonels against archer spam.

[womblemuppet]

moving south to the 
Bulgarians:

did it first try going knights into konniks only. 
Kreposts are great defensive structures (probably good for rushing too), I littered my whole base with them and spammed konniks out of all of them. Set rally point at enemy base, win. Getting a castle really is necessary though, I put it off for way too long. You need elite konnik, stirrups (unique tech) and conscription to really get your army rolling.
Since they possess fully upgraded halbs and also unique-tech madmen hussars they're an easy win in post-imp, and it just leads in so well from the infantry and calvary blacksmith path for your konniks. 
Really, if you space out your TC's and kreposts to cover your resources well enough you're fine defensively until your opponent hits imperial age. They're a great civ, it feels again like every bonus you have gets put to use and they have a strong identity.

[womblemuppet]

turkeybois

The turks suck and I only won my 2nd match because the ai patrolled a huge army at my market instead of anything useful. They're a really micro-intensive civ once you get going with them, which is a short time after getting expensive gold units, before running out of gold.
Remember kids, don't pick turks.

[womblemuppet]

tatars

wow this took me 5 matches. In the end I just cheesed with scout rush, AI half-heartedly defended with one spearmen and then decided to resign.

The first few times I was trying 18 pop scout rush into knights + CA which takes a very long time to get moving. (eventually started doing 23 pop scouts) CA in general requires a lot of prep time for all the gold and upgrades, and while the tatar ones have a slight edge with free thumb ring I just couldn't seem to pull off a win (the 4th time I was definitely trolling though, had a huge lead and then never expanded thinking I had won).
Overall I don't like how they feel, the hill bonus is hard to take advantage of and their unique unit (raiding boi) leaves a lot to be desired.
Maybe I should have tried flaming camels?!

Also I will be moving up to 'harder' difficulty after this, I'm getting too good at exploiting the AI so need to compensate.

[NZs no.3]

Fook I need to buy this new remake already. Cool write ups.

[womblemuppet]

texans

another great civ, I love their overall feel. sheperding speed bonus gives you a great start and a lot of flexibility to do scouts, man at arms, archers, or fast castle into their unique wranglers. I had a great early economy helped by luck in finding my two boars and won with a castle drop. The civ probably drops off starting in imperial age missing out on the final armour upgrades and crop rotation (which doesn't seem historically accurate but whatever, game needs to be balanced).

I've tried winning as byzantines 3 times now but spamming trash doesn't help you gain any map control and I get outboomed, need to either go archers or knights it seems.

[womblemuppet]

byzantines

R E L I G I O U S  V I C T O R Y



there's probably better ways to play the civ, but skirms into cataphracts is what I went with. My strat went as follows: 
stay ahead of the AI economically (which means they won't attack)
scout whether they're going archery ranges or stables in feudal and build cheap counter units. The AI cheats so they know to not attack now until they have siege units
get 5 relics
build castles that eventually get trebbed down 
get redemption and seduce enemy rams to your cause
panic wall in your monastery as your base crumbles

[womblemuppet]

spanish:
really easy. the spanish should be played exactly like the real conquest of south america. when you pick spanish, you are role-playing a disease.

I heard conqs are worse in DE and they certainly seem very inaccurate. monks is their best counter due to colonial guilt and the pocahontas effect.