Transcription
Hey everyone, Peprate here with a fully broken down game I'm playing as English against Byzantines. So I've been doing on stream a three days per civ not challenge but thing where I'm going through each civ and playing it for three days straight on stream and so this was my English run. And so here I am playing an English game off stream and I am finally bending the knee. I'm bending the knee to the English meta, which is it feels like to be successful as English, you have to 2TC.
For the first two days, I tried feudal ining, I tried dark age rushing, I tried fast castling, and those things can work, but boy does 2TC or even 3TC is English just feel like their best option for a lot of reasons. Um, >> their feudal eco is really bad. They don't have any bonuses to gather except they can gather hunted meat quickly if you drop a campfire which is the thing a scout and a meta arms can drop. But you can only do that on feudal. So it's not like going out on dark age food is like amazing compared to other civs. Um and then their only bonus is really farms. Like it's farms. They're cheap. They're boosted but that doesn't mean they're amazing in feudal. Uh, they're better. They are some of the best farms in feudal you can have. But like that still doesn't mean they're good compared to other civs who are gathering different high-level foods like deer boar especially Byzantine here my opponent which can immediately get boosted gather rates by having five sistns which he's going to get up five sistns probably within 2 minutes of hitting feudal so I know my eco is going to be worse than 1 DC Byzantine for a significant portion of the game I'm leaning into uh I'm going to be leaning into English's other strenuous defense and their landmarks but um back to what I was saying so whenever I quite feudal against civs as English. It felt like I couldn't do anything. It felt like my eco was super behind. And when I went fast castle once again, it felt like civs could eas and try to play. I have a there's a sheep. It's stuck in the wood. Oh my god. Um or I needed to uh like do some like perfect timing attack, which I didn't understand English well enough to to complete that timing attack. So instead, here I am going into the 2TC.
So 2TC allows you to get the farms down. It allows you have two TCs that defend well. Your TC shoot extra arrows so you're really strong defensively and then if your opponent is planning on trying to attack you, you can go the white tower landmark in castle and then bada bing bada boom, you can't be pushed for a while and the white tower can make units and then you just keep adding farms. You keep making units. So you're about to see a 2TC English just executed to perfection here. Um, so I'm going 2TC. My my build is pretty straightforward. Uh, you do all six to food. You have one drop a house. You do two to gold. You then rally. If you have eight on food, then you rally one to stone, one to wood, and then when you have 200 gold, you pull the two off of gold and set them to stone. And then you rally one more. And then you have four on stone. That's the four on stone. You leave until you have 300 stone. And then you just rally to wood. Once you age up, you age up with three, which I'm about to pull right now. And you're going to go the Abbey of Kings. You do the Abbey of Kings because it gives you the king unit. So you get this free knight that you can use to harass and delay your opponent. It helps defensively as well. You the Abby Kings can heal units and then your king can heal units as well. So it's much better than going council hier when you're playing defensive. So I'm dropping the Abby Kings. I'm just doing my normal eco.
So here's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking what's my Byzantine opponent going to do? Um, and then how I'm going to counter that and what am I looking out for? So my Byzantine opponent could try to do some sort of feudal. He could drop hippodromeome and go horsemen, go longbow bow, mercenary contract to make long bows and just push me and then try to destroy my second TC before I can pay off and before I can mass a force. The hippodrome would give him horsemen that could use the triumph ability which gives them healing, gives him extra damage. And the long bows of course are just really good. Now I could produce more long bows. So that kind of puts him in a conundrum. And since there's no markets, there's no neutral markets on this map, it means that I don't uh that I don't have to worry about like them going to a neutral market. There's also not a lot of berries on this map. So, something I'm confident of is that he can't produce a lot of mercenaries. He'll he can only produce like a couple batches off his main berry pack near his base. And then every other berry pack on the map is like two little berry packs. So, that means that he has to like do a farm transition. So, I actually don't have to worry about like a mercenary mass from him like just vacuuming berries around the map. One thing that will be tough for me is that there's not a lot of space in my base. Space in my base. What's it got to be your face? Um, so that means my farming transition is going to be a little more difficult. So, I see the hippid drum. I'm like, okay. Like my I thought he could potentially have done Grand Winery to then lead that into a fast castle. But he's doing hippid drum. So, I actually kind of think is he trying to like all in me and feudal? The other option is he might still rush castle hippid drum but he's going to try to do some sort of catifact timing where he goes hippodrome into gulp into the gulp landmark which allows his have to have like more healing and then he's going to do some sort of dive with healing with catifact. So that's what I'm immediately expecting. So I need to age up. I need to get my second TC on gold and then I need to macro in a way that keeps me safe but then I'm I want to be hitting castle just when he hits castle.
So right now I'm just circling the map. I'm trying to uncover everything so I know where relics are. I know where he might try to send villagers later on. Like for example, in the top corner of the mini map, that deer pack, the berries, the deer pack and the berries, both those are potential raid targets for me later cuz basically what I want to use the king to do is just raid constantly. So I left four on food this entire time. I rallied to wood till I could age up. I'm pulling a lot of vill this age up. I think I have 13 vills dropping this landmark because not landmark, this TC because I really want the town center down. I'm worried that he's trying to rush horsemen over to raid with that many villagers. If a horseman did show up, I could literally pull them and just shoot the horsemen, but his age up built kind of fast. I wonder if he's struggling to either get units out or he's afraid of my king. So, he's just like you using the horsemen to defend a king. Um, so the king's about to pop out. I'm just going to send him first to defend. I realize there's no knight. There's no horseman coming. So, I'm going to cross. And then I'm having my horseman, my knight meet cuz I want the vision of the scout to help my knight charge be better. I'm just rallying to wood. I see that the deer pack's right there. So, my TC is shading that deer pack. So, I'm going to get an early wall down now cuz he's not around. There's no pressure coming. And then with that wall down, I can then take the deer and that's really going to help my food and my ability to get the castle. I initially have all my villagers from the TC go to gold, but that's not the thing I should do. I don't need that much gold yet. I actually need a lot of wood so I can start dropping farms. Basically, when you do this farm build, when you do this 2TC build for English, you want to get down a stack of eight farms as soon as possible. Kind of like the soft goal if you watch people play this at a high level is two farm packs. So 16 farms around mills altogether to get that that mill boost >> and then you're going to castle. So I'm start my first mill with farms safely behind my TC. I send some golds to go to uh the deer and then I see three horsemen. Now why does he do three horsemen? Three horsemen is enough horsemen to fight and beat the the king. So I can't fight that. So, it's clear to me. I don't see any other units that it feels like he literally just made enough horsemen to chase my king. And now he's going to age up. He's got his sisterns down. My guess is now he's rushing castle.
So, I'm don't have that much sheep. I'm on deer, but I can't just do a pure castle rush myself because I do want to start getting my farms up. If I age up without putting on farms, I just don't have food. So, I am keeping a group of vills on wood. And now I'm just trying to quickly add my farms. I also need to make spears just so he can't just straight dive my base of horsemen. I'm just rallying and so low on food. I'm I'm like not producing any of my TCs for a minute here. But >> as you can see, the issue he's facing is he can't dive TC's at all. I can take these fights of my king and then my king can immediately heal up. >> He's taking a lot of damage from this TC and so he has to leave. And now I'm safe. And now we're just playing the eco game. What's my goals here is English on 2DC. Get my farms up, get the castle, and then secure my next gold. If I can deny relics and get a couple relics myself, amazing. But honestly, I'm just trying to secure my next gold, which I have a lot of time to do. The other thing I'm trying to do is make sure that he doesn't get away with some sort of very aggress rate for my hunt for my villagers on deer. And I can also start dropping these fires throughout uh south forest to gain vision. Uh, and I'm just defending cuz right now it's kind of the impetus is on him. I'm waiting for him to either show that he's making units and fight me or that he's trying to castle, which right now my money is on he's castling. There's no pressure. I see no extra units. I haven't scouted yet. But to me, this like red as a fast castle. So, I'm just getting walls up. I'm making some spears to prevent dives. I've gotten the farms down. At this point, I go out to go pressure his scout cuz I want him to just get free vision. Now, he has to run. Once I'm seeing no units, so this to me is just for sure a fast castle. I'm going to pull my knight and my scout away. And these two units are going to go I'm going to drop the fire for vision. It's beautiful. I I've been using the mechanic way more. I just honestly have forgotten how good it is. So I'm trying to drop uh fires whenever I'm running. They're only 25 wood, so it's fine. Um, since of the lack of space, I have to drop some not great farms, but always make sure you have a mill around them. At this point, I'm rallying just straight to food because I'm trying to get into my own castle. I do feel comfortable enough to get eco upgrades. I got wheelbarrow. I got the broadax. I think it's worth it because once again, English has no real eco advantages besides farm. So, it's like I need my eco upgrades or else these villagers are just kind of bad. Remember, he's probably has every villager under five sister um gather rate boost for viz. So, like his eco is still better than my probably at this point. Like, no lie. I think afterwards we'll see the resource graph and he's getting more resources than me than most for most of the game. But as English, it's not really about the amount of resources you're getting. Sorry, that was a work slack message. Um, it's not about the resources you're getting per se. It's more about uh getting to the point where you're getting your your resources so consistently that you can just spam units. So like once you get these farms up and you have secured gold, you can just make units forever like consistently it feels like. And that the meta arms and the meta arms spear crossbow combo for English is just so elite with with attack speed. But so it's like English, you're really trying to pick your spots. It feels like you once if you're allowed to fight under the conditions you want to fight, you feel extremely strong. If people throw you off balance, then that's a problem. And that's what my opponent never did. My opponent never threw me off balance. He really needed to do some sort of forced attack before I really built up. He just hit castle. So now I'm expecting catifacts. So like a catfact longbow push >> um at some point in the next two to three minutes would rekiller against me. So it so like against this English 2TC he either needed to take the sacred sites immediately to force me out of my base to decap sacred sites or he needed to do some sort of attack cuz right now my 2TC is really starting to take off.
Knowing that he aged the castle I immediately macro castle. I even cancel upgrades to make sure I have the gold to get the upgrades. And now I'm dropping the white tower putting it right on the big gold cuz as long as I have the big gold I'm fine. And that shades a lot of my farms. So now he can't push that anymore. Though to be clear, he could still attack me from the right side and completely avoid my white tower. So I'm like prioritizing the gold for sure over anything else. So now I'm just adding production. We're getting archery ranges. We're getting boom. I see the catfax in the long bows. And so I'm now I'm worried about he's doing some sort he's getting ready for some sort of push. So I just need mass spear crossbow. Make my own knights here to fight his long bows. And eventually I can transfer into mana arm crossbow and that pretty much solves the problem. But right now he's just getting relics. He he had an opening here. Like he had calav, he had long bows. He definitely could have come in and like killed some villagers. Maybe made maybe like pull more villagers to get the white power down, but he never really tries. And that's thing like you can't you can't just let English PC pump like this without doing something. Like some saves there's like you could trade against it to get way better eco. Um, I know Biz is feeling pretty comfortable here because of this. Like if he had dropped maybe a really quick second TC >> and started matching my eco, then that maybe would have helped him as well. But once again, I think a big thing would be him to take the sacred sites really really fast and then like tower up the sacred sites or drop keeps on the sacred sites and make me fight around that. >> But like the longer this lasts for me, the better my eco is getting as I'm dropping farm. So I'm just building up my units. I'm sitting in base. I actually lost games earlier yesterday because I left base too soon. So, I learned my lesson here. I'm not leaving my base and I'm absolutely sure it's time to go. I should be trying to scout more, but it is what it is. I'm It kind of feels like it's English. As long as you're just adding farms, making units, adding production, you're fine. I'm trying to get at least this relic over here, I think. Okay, I can get that relic's right next to my base. Um, I should have waited until I had the monk to go grab the relic cuz this alerted him that I'm going for and then he's going to go deny it. But I should have waited until I had the monk ready. And if I grabbed it right then and walked away, I could have potentially gotten that relic. But now my goal is to keep spears and crossbows at home. And I'm always making a few knights out of my white tower to raid. So I have a knight and my king going to go raid. I'm going to keep making a couple knights here and there. And their goals are just to raid while I continue to defend with spears and crossbows at home. Knowing that he's making um long bows. I'm trying to also make mana arms because if I can get enough mana arms to tank, they'll tank the long bows really well because I mean with English you have the ironclad ability for your castle age mana arms and that gives them a lot of armor. You get ranged armor and then they're so tanky and as English you make mana arms faster so you make a mana arm as fast as you make a spear. So you can just spam mana arms and since they made them cheaper it's even better for English. So English, your comp should always be spears at first and then you add a whole bunch of men arms and then you just do whatever range you need to counter. Do you need to make long bows to kill his crossbows? Great. If not, you can make crossbows to kill their heavy units, which is what I'm going to do here.
So now it's just me spending my resources, adding more farms. This is just this is just so English, man. It's honestly kind of like relaxing. >> Uh, when you play English like this, you're just chilling. You're just letting the resources come to you. You're letting your army build. The key is pushing out when you have a moment here. Now, one decision I could have made, I could have made I could have tried to fast imp. I could have tried to go imp, go winduard, and make windard units, but I really didn't want to fight Byzantine in Imperial because his eco is just going to continuously be better than me. And I had a I had a hunch that he dropped the second TC. He has all the relics, so his eco is probably pretty good here. So, I'm kind of balanced between this idea of do I try to push or do I go imp? But against Byzantine, it's like you just don't like as much as he's let me set up my eco, I don't want to let Byzantine also set up his eco because I know his eco has been pretty heavily based on deer on like getting map resources and relics. >> So, I figured I I'm I'm kind of have this internal clock in my head of like, okay, I need to start pushing out soon and testing the testing the boundaries a bit. Once again, the king of the key of English, you want to set up fights that use your skills. The biggest skills are your mass mana arm, cross, and mass range. >> I'm getting my MA arm upgrade. So, I'm not going to push out. I have that. I'm getting my ranged armor because long bows are going to be an issue for me. But then, it's also making sure I'm fighting with towers, >> that I'm fighting with towers cuz you want that attack speed from the towers. So, as English, you never want to take a fight without towers. If you can keep fighting under influence of attack speed, your fight's going to go so much better for you. You're going to see me like be very careful about like extending across the map with towers. I'm also realize that I'm burning through my 4k gold pretty fast. So, I want to secure my next gold to really make sure that's safe, dropping more production cuz my eco is really starting to take off. Just constantly producing villagers, units, and then I'm going to do my first tower. My goal is I'm looking at where the tower range is. It's the solid circle around it. I'm looking at the tower ranges. I'm trying to just keep dropping towers. I'm going to basically work my way towards his base tower by tower by tower. I mean, the attack speed is is legit. >> You That's how you win as English. >> You just It's It's such a pondering slow style that's just all about taking the best fight for you and just letting your consistent eco take off. And that's why English and imp is so good is because at that point, your farm bonus is at its max. You're not getting gold from farms. You can do this eco that basically allows you to constantly produce mana arms and units from the wind guard and that's how you win.
So when I saw that cal raid I knew he's going imp. He doesn't have a crazy amount of cal like that's catifacts but it isn't as many as he could have right now and he's not like trying to push me. So to me this screams he's he's trying to rush in and I'm making a lot of units. Once again, if he I think I think if he had committed to just pumping catifacts like he he could have got on board in the middle of the map, he could just be pumping catifacts. I think he he could beat me just with mass catifact longbow. Like he needed to like I I I think he needed to just take the fight to me and trust that his comp is lot especially if he goes hippodrome and he has gulp like the the healing from the the sister of the first hill landmark in castle. He can take a really good fight against me once he builds basically an unkillable cat counteract mask. But he doesn't want to risk that and instead he just takes the sacred sight and then a second he's going to hit imp. And that's why I know >> it's do or die. Catch him trying to take the sacred sight. I'm going to I'm going to snipe him there. And he's running from me. So I know that he doesn't want to take a fight. Like if he felt confident he'd be walking up right now to fight me. Nope. He's trying to avoid this. I just keep producing units. I'm doing spear, meta, arm, crossbow cuz the cuz the catifacts are the most important thing for me to kill. I'm getting ranged armor cuz I'm going to be pushing towards his base. I have my cal going outside his base. I love doing this. I love pushing with infantry on the front and then having a few knights loop around the back cuz so often you can get so many villager kills by doing that. Decapping the sacred site. Keep making I'm going to go heavy onto stone cuz I want to drop a keep in the middle of the map to secure the sacred site and start pushing forward even more. Keep powering and then he hits Imperial. And at this point, it's go time. I know that he just spent a bunch of resources on imp or like what is it like 3,600 resources on imp? Something like that. I've been putting everything into a unit. So, in my mind, I should have a massive unit count here compared to him. And there I see his I just a move into his base. I a move my knights down. I see that's not enough units. That's a lot of catifacts. That's not a lot of long bows. Once again, the lack of berries on this map really hurts him here. He's using triumph. He's using gulp and honestly the fight's going pretty well for him. He's like macing back her catiferracks to heal. Um, so I'm fighting this through triumph through um healing gulps from the sister of the first hill and I'm still winning this and I'm doing it without attack speed too. So like once again I think if he just committed to units I think he just commits to units he's fine here. Um, but now like he's losing his long bows. He just dropped his farming eco. I killed a bunch of villagers behind his TCS. Now I'm just going to go hunt for villagers. My next wave's coming in. At this point, I know I just got to keep my foot on the gas. He lost so many catiferacts. He's lost so many long bows that are going to be really hard. I'm going to add more production, a little bit more forward cuz I lost all my front line on that fight. I still have a lot of crossbows. I lost all my front line. So, I need more barracks to make spears and men of arms. I'm just running through his base. Going to go to another tower to get my attack speed. And you know, this is English, baby. This is this is this is what English does. This is how English wins. Now, we're just burning down the town. We're just burning down the town center. Bada bing, bada boom. And he GG's. And I mean that's textbook English. Textbook 2TC white tower. Secure resources. Get your farms up. Get put down your production. Start massing units like crazy. Catch your opponent not ready for the push. I can't think of how many times I've tried impinging against a 2TC English like this and just immediately dying. I noticed he is V. I should have checked the rights. I never took the right side of his resources, but I think on reflection, Wasteland not having a lot of berry packs, it made his army so much weaker cuz he just couldn't get that long of a mess. Like on most maps there's like two to three berry packs. So the Disney player can really go big on on berries and go really big on mercenaries to be able to really make their army size bigger. Uh, if we look at the military count or if we look at the graphs here, villagers, I we outpace the military count. Just when he decides to go in, my military count spikes cuz around that 13 minute mark. So my eco is just taking off. And so like he just he he just he had a chance. Someone was saying if you look for the 9 to 12 minute mark, his his units were he had way more units than me. They were stronger units. They were catifacts, but he didn't take that fight. His eco was much better than me during that time. My eco basically just took over right when he hit imp and then I attacked him. But like that's why that imp choice for him felt really weird cuz he was way ahead of me up until that point if he had just taken the fight. Anyway, I hope you found that very helpful. I hope you learned something. Um, check out my coaching Discord. Check out my check out when I stream on week nights. Check out my YouTube membership. Uh, and thank you so much. Bye.