TOP5: Worst civ for beginners 

Yeah, makes sense. I agree a lot of newer players probably get pierce armor shock in imperial age when coming up against heavy cavalry. I think you could flip those numbers around and paladin would still ravage the archers in a straight up fight. Need those halbs in front...

@@Dawnrim You can win even without halbs, you just don't do yourself a favor and u'd win despite it, not because of it. Kiting is just super important. Wich i will suspect lower elos will have more trouble with. Kiting Cav backwards, dodging mangonels...stutter stepping skrim javelins early game. Archers Civs in generell are much harder to pull of than Cav civs imo.

I agree. Gurjaras are tricky. In addition to the unconventional start, it’s easy to fall to pike play if you can’t get enough chakrams on the field in time. The stats agree too btw - Gurjaras are #38 out of 45 at the time of writing this.

Glad you liked it :) Thanks for sub!

Appreciate it man :)

Thanks you! Plan is to keep doing this as long as I can find the time and can come up with topics to cover :) Personally I agree with your take, though I believe him when Hera says the most straight forward path from complete beginner to pro is by hard grinding one civ and then branch out later. But it depends on how dedicated you are and what your goals as a player are I guess. For me playing just one civ simply sounds terribly boring.

crutches. crotches are a little bit different 11

Yup. Good point with the Aztec bonus. Unless you keep your production buildings running constantly to begin with (which require some real macro skills), you can't take full advantage of higher production rate.

I agree. It’s funny though is back when Conquerors dropped the Aztecs became my favorite. I Oddly enough, been hugely successful on ladder with them, and I’m pretty low ELO 🤷‍♂️. I think it’s because so many low ELO go Cavalry, and monks just work so well.

​@CrayZtwin1 hugely successful on ladder but still low elo? I don't get it.

@@italicpigeon I play very infrequently, and play other civs.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

thank you

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.

Interesting. Given you approve of Hera’s take, I assume you’re questioning why Britons and Byz are on here (which surprised me as well tbh). I would be interested in hearing what else feels wrong to you.

​@@Dawnrim Yep, Britons with the sheep bonus is easy to play, as sheep allows you to have a faster dark when you are at low elo, unlike mongols for example, that will require deer push or boar luring, wish can be more complex or get one of your vills killed.... IMO Britons are great for starting. Arches have lots of advantages, the main one is that to effectively counter your enemy needs to have a range, putting the pressure on him to be faster and have the knowledge to know how to react to pressure. Byz, the negative you mention is that it feels a defensive/reactive civ... and i was thinking, is this a joke? that's not a negative, is the strategy of the civ... it's what goes to the description, defensive civ. As a new player trying to beat that moderate and Hard AI one of the first things you learn is to turtle and hold while trying to develop a superior Economy. and Byz are great for that. Both Britons and Byz are civs that can make good use of overflow wood, unlike Franks or other cavalry Civs... as a new player you can be sure that 2 things will happen to you: Lots of Idle TC. Lots of wood. Both Byz and Briton will get army by making use of the wood. and Britons with the cheaper TC allow new player to make several once they get to CA and hopefully have a better boom. I do not agree sorry, and I don't think Hera's point is invalid for be the top player, considering he also give coaching I think he is in a great spot to know what he is talking about. Finally I start playing only in Jan of this year, so my perspective is the one of a new player

@@MacNewbieAoE2 its a half half for me byz can be difficult to play leading in the counter Units Play by scouting which is hard to impossible for newer players and their endgame unit is so expensive that without a good eco that maybe a new player lacks you never get to the numbers(chinese are dificult without question. But Britons is a questionmark for me aswell. Archers with pikes is easy to execute and hard to counter for casual players and its so easy get to there numbers as a player cause there cheap that its really beginner friendly. I would personally tag all meso civs in there to not play as new player, because you dont have the normal archer/Infatery/cavalry play with them and so players can get confused instead of cav to use eagles. I would also get in there most indian civs which instead of using knights/Crossbows often relay on elephants and other gimicks to be strong and its confusing aswell as a new player.

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?