TL;DR: >Just maek more crossbows lol >Just get upgrades lol >Just wall up lol >Just kite lol >Jut dont die lol Wow, riveting, it shows the only thing you need to get to play with archers is play passively until you get a critical mass of them, and just to obtain the mechanical skill to repeatly click on units until everyone dies. If you do that you will become a massive pain in people's arse on top of becoming a menace to society. Nerf archers.
@@jonathanbrowning4 Skirmisher aint even an answer, the archer spammer can either make cavalry or skirms of his own, in feudal it will make you survive but you're playing a losing game since you're forced on the defense due skirmisher low damage output. The only time it felt good to beat an archer spammer, is with archers of your own, and now you see a problem, an unit which it's only good counter is itself, not mentioning if you face an archer civ such as ethio, mayan or britons.
I was fighting mangonels uphill, but i used the archer delete trick and managed to take them both out with my 30 archers. Thx for the help Hera, couldnt have done it without you!
The one tip I am missing which is imo the most important one with xbows is: Don't overextend your army. Make sure you always have a way to retreat to a choke or a hill where your opponent will not be able to engage you properly. I see so many xbow losses cause people get greedy by trading army vs vills and get their army trapped as a result. Army positioning is the most important non-basic thing with archers to make them work imo and should be mentioned. Another one I should add is playing around power spikes. Archer units tend to have a much stronger power spike than any other unit, and making the most use of that is an auto-win quite often, especially at the intermediate level (1600-2000)
1600/2000 intermediate level X) man intermediate would be close to the 50% of player line not top 1500player in the world, 1800 elos it's more around the top 2% to 5% i guess but still better than 95% of player for sure i would argue betwen 900 and 1200 elo is intermediate since the majority of player with at least 300 ranked played in 1v1 are here
Some macro questions: - What would you say is a good ballpark number of Crossbow mass to justify rushing a University + Ballistics over say, one-two Town Centers? - What are key factors to consider as to whether to commit to a Castle Age all-in versus playing for Imperial Age when having archers as your primary unit? Thanks so much for this video, Hera! Looking forward to the cav player video and I imagine others in the works :)
This one depends on the situation. Because ballistics is military investment that wasn't into eco, it needs to pay off, so consider whether you'll be able to get enough damage in to make it worth delaying the TC. You usually need a stronger military than your opponent so that ballistics will let you pick off fleeing vills, or that ballistics will give you better trades into someone investing heavily into raids or archer micro. Consider how the late game looks in the matchup when making your decision - if they win the late game, invest early into military to stop them from getting there, and add ballistics to get the damage in while you have the military advantage. Ballpark is probably you need 30 x-bow before it starts getting value. Imp is most important when castles start locking down the map, since it's hard to get damage into them in castle age, so watch for your opportunities to do damage to slow down to make the switch. If you can do damage around their defenses, or are in such a strong ram push could end the game, stay in castle longer to give the final push.
Dude. These tips from a pro are super awesome. I played aoe when I was a kid for the history and the settings (campaigns) but never played single matches. Recently I got my interest back and started playing vs the AI and im getting rekt. I didnt realise how bad I was. Watching your so you want to play series and such videos really puts this game in a new light for me and I love the game even more! Thankyou so much!
Hera you're really turning up the content lately. Loving your work. Can't wait to jump on AoE next chance I get and play with an archer civ and NOT fight siege with archers anymore.
Could you do a vid on how to not overreact or under react? In my opinion it’s one of your best qualities and something that many people struggle with. For example, if I’m an arch civ being pressured by a knight siege comp, I always get stuck between adding eco, adding baracks for pikes, or just trying to castle and go imp. A vid going over how to decide what to do and how to transition quickly would be great, ty and great vid like always
For an intermediate player those tips on numbers required to one shot vils at various stages of the game are really nice to know. Thanks! Stats that help you win fights are always good to know.
Hi Hera, IMO this type of content is much more useful than the "demolition ships battle". This is a spirit of the law but focused on the gameplay and not just statistics, which is even better! ps. I'm just posting this because you asked for it in a poll.
Great video, thank you Hera! As a player who mostly plays with archer civs I find those tips very helpful. However, I am missing one important thing: How do you micro archers in the current patch? I used to use attack move facing away from the incoming army but the devs broke attack move some time ago and now it does not work well, as the archers move randomly instead of shooting whenever ready (it acts the same way as patrol). I have switched to manual targeting but that indeed leads to massive overkills when you have a big mass of crossbows. I wish there would be a better solution to this. The only alternative I can think of is to split archers in several control groups and have them fire at different times to not overlap the damage. Although, that might be easier said than done. Would appreciate your feedback. Thank you and keep up the superb content!
I'm not too experienced yet but had some success using the "stop" command so move stop move. And they will shoot different targets without trying to move outside where you say
Love it! Formatting and editing has been top notch lately! I know you’re down on CA lately but I’d like to see something similar with them in mind. Specifically transitioning to them after various openings as that’s my biggest struggle personally
A very underrated tip is that if you just hit imp upgrade xbows asap. Arbs with bracer take down mangonels with unbelievable ease. Using xbow is 100 times harder.
Hi, Hera. Great video! I was printscreen the crossbowman-mangonel tradeoff numbers to send to my friends [that don't speak English] and was thinking, maybe have your logo (as watermark, don't know) in some corner... when we send details and numbers to our friends (and their forward to more people), would "merchandise" it's from Hera. Tbh I always send the video too, but many ignore because can't understand the lang.
The first point, massing up the unit, took me some time to appreciate. Of course having more of a unit is going to help, just like the knight, it's going to help more. Even seeing the example It wasn't obvious to me mathematically what was going on. I had to stew on this for quite a while until I remembered SOTLs video on Lanchester's Law and then it all made sense. Super quick recap for anyone who hasn't watched that video, during WWI a guy named lanchester postulated that given certain assumptions, doubling the size of an army actually squares it's strength. The crossbow fits basically all the assumptions so for practical purposes it's a squared relationship. you go from 20 to 40 crossbows and your army is four times as strong, not twice as strong. Knights however don't satisfy all those criteria. During SOTLs testing an exponent of 1.77 was a closer match for knights. You crunch the numbers and doubling from 20 to 40 knights doesn't make your knight army 4x as strong but approximately 3x as strong (3.4x more precisely). There is more to gain from doubling your army size if you're the xbow player compared to the knight player. 40 xbows against 40 knights should fare better than 20 xbows vs 20 knights which themselves should fare better than 10 xbows vs 10 knights, so on and so forth. In practice I think what Hera showed off with xbow range and micro is a better real-world explanation, the micro of the xbow player makes a big difference, but if you wanted a bit more of a theoretical mathy explanation as I did, there you go.
Only complication/ proboem with the #1 "mass" is that if you are not accurate you can be overkilling a lot with your archers so for example 40 crossbows will do the same dmg vs swordmen as 60 crossbows, the way to work around it is to either double keybind the big mass into 2 smaller ones. Or to not target 1 unit only which can be bad as you want less enemies to attack. Other wise you can just mass as many crossbows as required plus a few more in case some died. and stop there if it is hard for you to micro more.
important before moving out imo: manage your eco so that it can work well automatically, and get things done that you won’t be able to do/remember after having moved out. big problem with archers is that after you’ve babysat them, you might have a)idle vils b)idle tcs c)if you’re lucky 2k wood d) tons of all resources but no buildings to click up. if you’re opponent can click up before you, your archers will be out-armored and killed for free
I feel that you are getting better as a streamer and content creator for aoe2. Maybe your relative detachment from aoe2 and then coming back was actually a good thing. Thx for the content.
@Hera Really good content. I identify myself as a cav player (currently at 1200). I really struggle using skirms to defend against archer players in early castle age (if they age up first ), because they add a couple of knights or add seige. This forces me into going all in triple stable knights, which is probably not the optimal way to defend especially after having scout skirm in feudal age. Can you make a similar top 5 tips for Cav players?
What a banger of a video Hera! The quality of these videos are through the roof 🔥🔥. Btw wanted to know, do you have any tips or a general thumb rule on when it is better to hit Imperial Age and Arbalests and when it is better to add in Pikes and Siege and push in Castle Age itself, specially against Knight civs.
thank you so much man! Honestly great question, I think if ur map is still kinda open or vulnerable just add pikes late castle age vs knight civ. If u ahve a nice closed map or a castle to defend u can just go imp . Both are good options
Nice Hera! What about this idea: Once every.. week / days a very short video (2-4min) on a single unit. So by the end we can learn all of them? (perhaps it would be more interesting to learn about the combinations, like you said in this video; arbalest+skirms. Or Mangonel+monk+Pike?) Things like that are difficult to remember all at once but great and fun to learn over time!
I want to know a few general questions: -Do you use the "Select all" buttons? For things like all idle vills, idle military, TC's and production buidlings? -Is there a practical application to setting up tech early, or is it just wasted resources that could go into the push? I.e. You're on Scouts into Knights and pressing and not getting a lot of damage. You know you dont need elite skirms now but researching it and tier 2 armor just because you know CA could be coming? -Are scorpions much better than they get credit for? -Do you disapprove of laming as much as I do? I sincerely hope so.
i do use select all for vils and tcs and idle military, not for prod buildings but i recommend it only get tech when u wanna make the unit or u know 100% u will need it soon. Getting it 10 mins in advance is just a waste of ressources - scrops are good yea laming sucks i dont do it unless tourney
Love the recent youtube vids! One thing I'd recommend is starting with something that isnt't "welcome back to another video," even just, "hello everyone, today we're gonna be looking at our top 5 archer tips etc..." I think seems a lot more professional, but that could just be personal preference
Awesome video! Personnally I like archers a lot, but I'm always too scared of big badabooms, which pushes me towards CA, which can survive one hit, which is enough to pull them back to safety. (It would have been great if you could have amended your tips to CA, where the differences lie. Basically their higher cost, higher upgrade cost I guess, and massing starts later) I feel very comfortable with the classic hussar+CA combo, backed up by hussar raids. This leads me to the question: how do you beat hussar+CA, backed up by hussar raids? I feel like knight+skirm won't work anymore, as it's waaay too gold intensive in post-imp.. Siege and skirms are slooow and are at constant risk of getting picked off by basically cost-free hussars. Is it just game over when Tatars, Magyars, Mongols, etc. reach their post-imp. combo? Do only Britons and Vietnamese stand a chance with their own top-notch archers?
@@derikaem8021 Parthian tactics CA easily deal with halbs. However, halb+skirm with siege might actually work. It forces the CA player to leave his dream combo and tech switch into champs, which he definitely doesn't want to do, not to mention CA-civs champs are usually terrible. Walling against raids sounds v good indeed. Even some house walls might cut it.
@@aoe2and3fan also depends on level. the lower the elo, the harder halb+ram crushes ca+hussar. however, the much easier response to halb+ram is mangonels i think
I love Archers, but I struggle with points 3 and 2... Which is why I tend to avoid them and go for CA when I can instead.. I'll try to apply these tips though, thanks professor Hera :P
Great video - my only comment would be try to avoid using ‘him’ or ‘his’ to describe the opponent - anyone can lead an empire and be crushed by my now epic archer skills!
I know you did videos on that a few years ago, but I don't think there's a video yet on youtube that combines or compares different types of unit micro.
Firstly, great video! Love this type of deep dive content. I know managing vid length is always tricky, but personally I would’ve loved it if the last tip had been “complementary units” so as to cover dealing with more xbow weaknesses. For example, you could have still said everything you did about dealing with skirms, but I’d love to hear you also talk about when/why you would add which 2nd unit to your xbow/arb army (pikes/monks/cav/siege). The “when” is a big one for me as it’s tough for me to decide if I should tech into another unit or get up to imp and arbs faster
yesterday i found out that having a few scouts out with some bowmen is huge. So effective for putting pressure to the enemy. You just have to get ur opponent to make a mistake and push out with their spearmen :)
How does the skirms counter skirms go as an archer civ? Usually it’s skirms + X that I fight. Does archers + skirms beat that? I get if it’s just skirms v skirms you should have more upgrades. Is the idea that your mass is so great that nothing can beat you? Like knights can’t break your mass or deal with skirms + archer line? I’d love a bit of clarification and examples on that one for my tiny, low elo brain. Obviously Cavalry type is the easier and more obvious one that does a lot of work even if your civ doesn’t have great bonuses for them. Thanks again for the video!
1:05-Mass of Crossbows 1:28-Reason 4:35- 4:50-Ballistics everytime over thumb ring but thumb ring better against range units 5:30-Move Out Carefully with crossbows as you can't run away from bad fights because of lack of mobility 9:00-7 archers with fleching can 2 shot villager 9:25-8 crossbow will one shot villager 10:00-5 arblasts can one shot villagers 11:00-Use Knights to kill skrimishers in small numbers 12:00-Use Siege to counter skrimishers 12:30-Elite skrimishers to counter Elite skrimishers as you already would have upgrades
With a little micro, ranged units in AOE are often the strongest option. For example, an all in feudal archers build order will probably win most games up to 1400-1500 elo. Edit: I'm more of a cavalry player because it's more fun in my opinion. But every now and then I come across an all in feudal archer player, and it's always difficult to stop even if I know it's coming.
Chemistry feels so strong! Is it only 1 additional damage? It feels like I'm eating through most units with my archers, once I get that upgrade. Something hidden in Chemistry to know about?
Any chance you could do a video like this for siege? I feel like every time I try a siege push I need to include scorpions or I'll lose everything to straight pikeman because my instincts for when and where to mangonel attack ground are just really bad.
5: massing. What is really good to learn is that having twice as many archers makes you not twice as strong, but four times stronger. Imagine I have 20 archers and you have 10. Imagine that both groups fire twice. For every archer of yours there come 4 arrows flying from me. But for every archer of my own, there comes only a single an arrow from you, because you have only half my numbers.
could you make a video to teach us how to do the micro moves to against the siege units? everytime I use the zvzv hotkey, it only works at the first and then the archers don't move as I think they should do... Certainly I don't want to use my archers to against siege units but sometime it must be.
thumb ring ballistics please explain it again, cause if you try archers and maybe still booming, why is it worth more building a uni and ballastics then just denying the uni and get thumb ring and get to imp faster cause saving gold?
