I think French spears are severely underrated by a lot of players; I had a game vs Beasty where I was makinging spear+horseman as Mongol, and he absolutely hosed me down by massing his own spears while pulling back on knight production. This goes into castle, where he has rax, and I have yet to invest in ranges and projectile damage; you can guess what happens next. Edit after finishing the video; this was my favorite one you've done in a while, good insights, and I liked the focus on an overarching concept/theme
The best thing about your videos is that they are explained ,,as a game of chess,, as you said. You speak more about game knowledge + strategy and you dont do very complicated build orderes and micro moves. All your explanations are very easy to understand and straightforward. The only downside of your channel is posting too rare :D
Thanks Don I learned a lot from that. I mass knights and archers and push them both forward but then a mass of spears charge my knights from out of nowhere and I run my knights away, and my archers then get cleaned up by horsemen or spear+horsemen. I now know i need to pull the archers back after the initial poke, and team them up with some spears so I can roam with knights in one mass, and spear+archer in another mass. Going to watch a second time just to get the strat all good in my head.
Love this. I had a comment on a previous video asking about the argument of 2-unit vs 3-unit type composition which was nicely answered btw, but seeing it in practice really puts it in perspective. Having the freedom of being able to use the cavalry units mobility instead of just being body blockers for the archers really made the difference in terms of dictating the terms of the engagements
most 2 unit combos will beat most tri combos however spear knight archer is well rounded jack of all trades but special at none combo. To beat this you need to use your civs two speciality units and apply them as your two unit combo, ie English would use maa longbow and French would use knight arb etc. If he goes something like knight xbow archer then you can simply beat it with the double unit combo horsemen spear.
It's pretty much an "it depends" kinda answer, isn't it? Higher level players than us can't even agree on it. As Don showed here, the 3-unit composition can be hard to defend against. I understand your argument for 2 units though, particularly from a reactionary viewpoint.
@@Eoin1 it's a pretty fascinating thing to dissect but you can't just use any old 3 units combo and expect it to be un-counterable but there are 2 tri combos that don't have an answer and they are knight archer spear and the other combo is maa horsemen xbow. All other tri combos are answered with a correctly applied 2 unit combo. But like I said you can bust these two well rounded tri combos by abusing your civs speciality units.
incase you're wondering how the Rock Paper Scissors dynamic plays out in with double unit combos it looks like this: spear horsemen beats knight xbow beats maa archer. horsemen archer beats spear xbow beats knight maa. knight archer beats archer spear beats spear knight and lastly maa xbow beats horsemen maa beats xbow horsemen. I know that's a lot to absorb but trust me it all checks out.
The 1TC all in still works against Conqueror1 and most Conqueror2 opponents. Still love to execute it once in a while because of the intense micro. But i tried it against people like YUImetal, puppypaw or Isanych and even though against YUI it was close you always lose out on eco and get outmassed. Can you explain why the 1TC doesn't work, but the 2TC has a better performance rate? Is it just a matter of the small army size which is easier to micro? I do was surprised by the amount of torch damage on the 3rd TC. That went down so quickly because you had so more torches with the spearman added in the mix. I mostly stay in Knights + archers because i'm better at the kiting back in forth then controlling three different armies. So at the end you tell us the game went pretty standard, but how do you know what the best response is? Experience? Or theory crafting? I hear Lucifron and Vortix theory craft a lot. Thanks again for the game and analysis! Really enjoying the series.
If you go 1 tc vs 2 tc, you are gonna fall behind on vills which means you have to reach a critical all in attack to win. Problem with that is that you can only reach it with rams because torching under a starting tc takes way too much damage and rams are just really weak. Even if you happen to kill the 2nd tc (which you shouldnt manage to do) then the opponent can give it up and maintain vill lead and you're still behind, you're gonna get outmassed. I think what happens in conq1 or conq2 is a lot different because players there kinda do whatever without much thinking, I mention at the end of the video that at your own elos things will function different. Knowing what to do is partially based on experience, for example 'never fight while you're aging' is a thing that reigns through for all aoe games, or 'lay off the agression for a bit when adding eco' etc etc like when I added the tc I put my archers back a bit. But mostly it's just logic, everything that happened in this game was very normal steps for both of us to take, I just place myself in his shoes, know what he has to do and think about how I will respond
I'm a big fan of yours Don for a long time but your voice needs to be clearer and with more authority, I'm a French Gold and found this a good video :)
@@Don_Artie You are already explaining the game through your eyes and pointing out what you're thinking I think caster mode wouldn't change that not a dealbreaker tho great content regardless.
@Don_Artie and you still managed to be high level player? Impressive, along with this informative video. I'm trying hotkeys, watching videos like yours and others, playing against ai, asking questions on reddit and getting a ton of feedback, watching twitch like valdemar, faye, and blade....and then I still get wrecked at the gold 1 level man. I don't know what else to do to get even to just plat 1 as an English main
SO Don Artie, ik heb je gewoon zien meedoen aan Outback Octagon en leer nu dat je Nederlander bent. Je hebt dus gewoon tegen mijn held BeatsyQT gespeeld ;-)
Thoughts on getting vet archers and spears over royal bloodlines? Thought that would have helping in the big fight once you hit castle. Although getting royal bloodlines I nice when you can afford it.
Probably pretty good yea, the +80 hp can be massive tho. I think with the archers I'll usually select them all and kill 1 spear at a time, an upgrade on them wouldnt change that it's just overdamaging so I'm not overly worried about it in a game like this, but yeah upping spears and archers could definitly have been better
