Transcription
Hey everyone, Paperkit here with the Civ break breakdown of the Golden Horde. My goal of these Civ break breakdowns is to give you a complete understanding of the Civ, going over everything from units to age ups, buildings, tech, and strategies you can run in solos and teams. If you find this video months or years from now, check the description as I'll create updates if large changes have occurred. Let's get to it.
First, let's talk big picture overviews and mechanics. Golden Horde is a variant of the Mongols and shares some unique units, techs, and buildings such as Kendricks and Uvous. Outside of that though, their differences are stark. The Mongols are all about aggression, movement, and pressure, while the Golden Horde feels a lot more stationary, slow, and intentional. This is seen heavily in their civ bonuses and mechanics. Let's touch upon these first.
First, we have the golden tent. It is a singular landmark building that houses all of the landmark upgrades within. This functions much like the Avisit and Aubid House of Wisdom or the Knights Templar Capital TC. The Golden Tent can also produce units and has key upgrades and abilities called edicts, which we will also touch upon soon.
Next, we have the hordes mechanic. Units are produced in batches of two with technology available in castle that up this to three with no additional cost. Units cost double and take double the time to make. There are ways to boost production speed, meaning in big picture, golden horde can produce very quickly. But in the early game, it makes unit production feel slow and expensive.
Next is the augmented transports, giving transport ships 50% more health and 50% more speed. That's cool, I guess, but practically it is of little importance in most games.
Silk Road. You get more resources the more traders you have. At five traders, each trade brings back 10% of the gold is food. And at 10 plus traders, that is food, wood. And at 15 plus, that becomes food, wood, and gold. Very nice, but not good enough yet at this time to warrant trading being a main strategy.
Stone tech and uvous. You can construct one uvu per age, which adds base level produces 60 stone a minute. This is important because all major upgrades as well as your con and to good cost stone.
Scouting falcon. All scouts can deploy the scouting falcon, which will sit and give sight in an area for 30 seconds.
Just by looking at mechanics, you can see the Golden Horde is heavily based on massing, either through upgrades that allow more units to be produced faster or strong eco that can allow units to be made without issue. The most difficult part for the Golden Horde is getting to those power spikes.
Let's first talk about the unique units of the Golden Horde and their uses.
Batukan, a semi-hero heavy calvary unit that can buff your other units in combat, unlocks in feudal from the Golden Tent, costing 140 stone. It starts in feudal with 33 armor with 10 attack and 190 health and is produced in 19 seconds. Then in Castle Imperial, it gets automatically upgraded with its full Imperial upgrades making it extremely beefy. During combat, if it does enough damage, it will set off an arrow that buffs all surrounding unit damage by 10%. Which is increased to 20% in castle and 30% in Imperial. Since it is a melee unit, it is susceptible to being sniped, which is offset by its to goods, who take the damage that the con receives instead. A yellow circle indicator shows when that is active and the toids need to be about four tiles from the con. The con is the basis of the golden hord's fighting style. Pure mass and overwhelming. The golden horde does not really have a power unit in the traditional sense, but the con's damage buff is large and can provide an army of massive DPS increase. Combine that with the debuff arrow that you can research in the golden tent. It gives you an ability to take large fights where you can then both debuff the enemy and buff your own army just with the con. Only costing stone also means the con synergizes well with fast castle or 2dc strategy as it can be made without having to gather extra resources as long as you build an uvu in the dark age.
To good a heavy calvary unit that protects your con and is produced from the golden tent only. Unlock in feudal costing 140 food and 200 stone for a pair meaning each individual to good is 70 food and 100 stone. In feudal, their stats start at three melee and three- ranged armor with 10 attack and 240 health. That's a lot of health. At a base level, they produce in 50 seconds. Like the con, they also autole up into each age. The to plays a singular role in fury. Keep the con alive so the con can damage and buff your units. It explains their interesting stats as they have very high health but very little damage. Their takiness allows them to front line well, but their lack of attack damage means their raiding leaves some to be desired. Being built out of the golden tent with food and stone also means like the con, they synergize well with both fast castle and 2TC as a way to buy time, but also as a way to quick grow your army size as long as you have the food to match the stone. Massing to good early often means you're not getting other stonebased upgrades. Yet, if you don't make to good, your con is much easier to snipe. Overall, a great boost to your army and there's a timing window if you have a lot of them and you hit castle where they insta upgrade you can do a lot of damage. But if you need to afford other stone upgrades, you have to stop making them.
Keshix, a heavy calvary unit that is cheaper and weaker than a normal knight but heals on attack. Costing 240 food and 160 gold for a pair, which means each one individually is 120 food and 80 gold. These units have a higher attack than to good at 15, making them the damage dealers of the heavy cal with to being more tanks. They can also both raid and be a strong frontline unit, but will struggle against mass knight comps.
Kipchek, a horse archer unlocked in castle age. The Kipch plays a great rating role and with certain upgrades can be a strong damage dealer in mass costing 160 food and 140 wood for a pair meaning that each one is 80 food 70 wood. They have 10 attack which matches the cheaper roose horse archers but they boast 105 health compared to 85 for roose horse archer. I also find they do very well against mangai. Kipchek also has a special bleed mechanic where when the kipchek shoots a unit that unit bleeds for 10 damage over 5 seconds which is really good against slow units as well. You can also kite knights against them pretty well, but you have to put a lot of attention APM to make that effective. Overall, my single player games, I don't find myself using them very often. I think part of it is I'm in fast castling, making them immediately isn't as effective as with roose because you still make them pretty slow. On top of that, you're generally not playing a fast castle style as Golden Horde. And usually when SS do play fast castle style, they want to make knights to go grab relics. If you make kip checks, but your opponent is just making a lot of archers or horsemen, you can't leave your base anyway. And then the last thing that hurts the kip check is for them to be truly powerful, you need to upgrade them with triple shot, an upgrading castle that allows them to shoot two extra arrows every time they attack. These two additional arrows deal only 30% as much damage as the primary arrow. But on top of that, each secondary arrow also does an additional bleed effect that deals 30% of the bleed damage of the primary arrow. So you get another 6 damage for the next 6 seconds. So overall, you're doing about 19 damage each time you shoot. That's amazing. It It really is. Problem is that upgrade is 800 stone. You're not getting that at the beginning of castle, which means you're using these horse archers that are fairly good, but can be defeated if someone is prepared. Overall, I feel kept are a really good team game unit, which I'll talk more about in the team game section.
Kash, a support unit that is extremely weak, but provides an aura that boosts nearby unit armor by one melee and one range. Costing 100 food for a pair, which means only 50 food per Kash, the Kash is one of the cheapest units in the game. This makes sense as they are slow as the meta arms, have 50 health, and only six attack. They also have no upgrades per age, meaning they have the same stats the whole game besides one unique stone upgrade. They do provide massive value via their aura, though. Extra armor is no joke. And for a cheap cost, you can have that armor in your army, and it's fairly hard to snipe as they have to kill each car, which is a small unit. In a pinch, they can also be a cheap front line that soaks damage.
Lastly, you have the roose tribute. This is a stone only meta- arms that castle has two melee and three ranged armor and 12 damage. They also have three extra damage against calvary. You get them for free over time or can buy them with stone. Each production building you add decreases the amount of time it takes for them to be spawned, but each time they're spawned, their cost increases. Because you receive them for free periodically, as well as their extra damage against cavalry, I tend to just put them on patrol near exposed resources in case of raids.
Keeping with the military units, let's look at the unique military upgrades for the Golden Horde.
Each military production building, except for siege workshops, has a reinforcements upgrade where for 950 stone, you can now produce three units instead of two for no additional cost. This is very good and is not restricted by age. It's very expensive though and would take a long time to reach in feudal on two basic u castle and Imperial as you can upgrade your uvous and get more of them. This becomes much more tenable. Honestly, if you can get two of your production types upgraded with reinforcements, it feels like the game is yours to lose as you can just send waves and waves of units.
In the barracks, we also have battlefield salvage, which is a 300 stone upgrade. It gives the Kash two plus ranged and melee armor and increases their health by 25. This upgrade often does not feel worth it as Karash should never make up a majority of your army. And even if you do get this upgrade, they don't really feel any more tankier. I'd rather use that stone on a different upgrade.
In the stables, we have silancers available in castle for 400 stone. Kendricks get plus one healing per attack and 10% more attack speed. Toggoods now have a heal attack. A good upgrade if you're heavy into to good and kicks as the main part of your comp, especially because it gives your to goods even more tank ability.
Padded armor castle 800 stone increases to good and horsemen ranged armor by two and health by 20. This is honestly an amazing upgrade in Imperial where mass horsemen raids are so strong. It makes it so your horsemen basically don't die to towers or TC anymore. If paired with the stone army's imperial landmark choice, you can start with a punishing horseman raids and then quickly build a to good front line that doesn't die for a push, especially if they have sar lancers research as well.
In the archery range, we have triple shot, castle, 800 stone. Kipch check archers fire two additional arrows for each shot that do 70% less damage. This is what makes mass kip checks very good, but at such a high price point, it is highly contextual to get compared to the basic reinforcements upgrades and production buildings.
In the siege workshop, we have beach head castle 500 stone. Rams get an ability that will mobilize themselves, gaining 8 melee armor and shoot arrow that do eight damage a pop. It is still difficult for me to imagine the use case for this since you can't get into castle and in castle you often want to use trebs instead and with stone at such a premium using a ram upgrade seems like a waste. The arrows don't even do that much more damage. I don't know, it just doesn't feel good to me.
Lastly, unique eco buildings and edict upgrades.
In the golden tent, you have four edicts. An edict is a buff that applies as long as it is activated. Only one edict can be active at a time. You start with two edicts unlocked and can research two more using stone. You start with the production speed edict, which is the one you'll most likely use early. When activated, all military buildings and the golden tent will produce 20% faster near a tower. This is vital for feudal play as your eco is smaller and can only produce out of one or two production buildings at a time. Getting units out a bit faster is extremely valuable. The other starting edict is the defensive bar edict, which increases health of all units by 10% near towers. This is very good, especially if you're defending near a tower, but you have to remember to turn it on and it means reinforcements will come slower. This is also really good on the offensive. Place a tower before you know you're going to push and that gives you a huge boost to your fighting force.
Next, for 600 stone, you have the Krash Edict. This causes a Kash to be made for free each time you make a unit in any production building. This is interesting as a way to quickly buff up your unit numbers and have a free meat shield as well as the armor buff. The issue is, as is the case for a lot of the stone upgrades, is that there are expensive stone upgrades that are much better. And even within the edicts, I would argue the stockyard edict is much more important and better to save and use. If you could have two edicts on at the same time, I could see it being used.
The last edict is the stockyard edict for 800 stone. This is an amazing edict, similar to the English enclosure upgrade, though you can get it whenever you can afford it. Each fully worked stockyard creates 40 gold a minute. Win near a tower. That means if you have a bunch of stockyards, you can produce food and gold units pretty consistently. This is the edict you should definitely have on by the time you're mid to late castle or Imperial as you don't have to rely on securing gold as much, which is important cuz it's hard to secure mid golds at times cuz you don't have a keep.
Unique buildings and tech
Stockyard. Instead of farms, Golden Horn has a stockyard. This can house four vills who gather sheep forever. It costs 240 wood, so you have to pay it all up front, which can be difficult. It is cheaper than a mill and four farms, which cost 320 wood. Stockyards without upgrades gather 160 food a minute, which is much better than four average farms, which gather 137.5 food a minute.
GR, a one-stop shop eco building that costs 50 wood. Unlike the Mongol version, the Golden Horde GR cannot move. It holds all eco upgrades. As much as possible, place the GR covering multiple resources to save resource and villager time.
Instead of horiculture, there's an upgrade for stockyards called portation grazing, which costs 200 stone and increases stockyard gathering by 10%. There's a second level in castle that does another 10% for 400 stone.
The other special upgrade is Uvu offering, which increases Uvu stone gather rate by 30% for 100 wood and 250 gold and increases the stone gather to 78 a minute, up from 60. This upgrade is vital since all of your best upgrades are stone based. There's another upgrade Imperial that adds on another 30% gather increase for 250 wood and 500 gold. At this upgrade, each uvu will produce 121 stone a minute. This is affected by your castle age upgrade as well. If you go relic uvus and castle, there's a stone production increase by 20% on top of that.
Golden Horde also has a unique tower called the fortified outpost. At 150 wood and 50 stone, it is very expensive, but there are a lot of buff space around the tower and has a lot of health at 1,700 compared to a normal outpost at 750 health. The outpost has two unique upgrades that both are unlocked in castle. First is earth and core walls for 500 stone, which increases the fire armor by three and health by 300 of all outposts. The other is glorious charge. It is an activated ability where the activated tower would start a 10-second countdown. And at the end, any unit near the tower would gain 50% movement speed and take 15% less damage for 30 seconds. This can be really good if set up right, but you have to have an outpost placed in a good spot and plan your fights where your opponent has to take it. Whether you're doing a defensive use of glorious charge or an offensive, the prayer tent, which is the golden horde version of a monastery, there's a unique upgrade called uvu tythe at 500 stone in Imperial. It is very similar to Ty Barnes. What makes it especially good is that's just for uos, not relics. Which means I imperial, you can have at least four oos and get extra resources. No relics necessary.
Lastly, in the blacksmith, there's a unique upgrade called increased supplies. For 400 stones, your production buildings produce 50% faster. This is an amazing upgrade and vital to get as soon as you can.
Onto our next section, landmark choices.
First, it's important to understand how much aging up in the golden tent affects Golden Hord's gameplay. Most cives can use villagers to build a landmark slowly or rush it with a lot of vills. This can be really important for castle rushing or responding to your opponent's age up. The Golden Horde Age up is so slow. And while the trade-off is all your villagers are gathering, which means you're getting more resources, it does mean you're open for timing attacks, raids, and dark age aggression much more than other civs. It also heavily affects your strategy options, as not being able to rush and age up often means you have to consider how safe you are when you age up.
For each age up, you have two options available to you.
For feudal age, your two options are contor goods and building carts. For contor goods, it gives 30 extra points to contor goods and the stone cost for them is reduced by 20%. Building carts spawns two carts that can be set up into a barracks, archery range, stable, dock, or blacksmith. You then get a building cart in each additional age up that can also be a prayer tent or siege workshop. Once they are unpacked, they cannot be packed and moved again. In the big picture, you will use conurid more than building carts. As of all age ups, you have to consider what are things you can only get with that age up versus things you can already get but you're getting faster. Building carts is all about tempo. You're getting two production buildings instantly and then one more for each age up. Basically meaning when you're feudal, you can quickly get units out. In castle, you can quickly get shamans out to get relics. In Imperial, you can potentially get a siege workshop if you don't have one yet. Those things are all things you can build without the building carts age up and are things you can especially have prepared and ready as you age up if you want. A huge snag as well is that these carts take forever to unpack. An instant unpack would do a lot to help make this landmark choice better. Con and to good on the other hand make both units a lot more tanky and allow you to make more tor goods as their cost is reduced. This is amazing. If you're doing heavy feudal, you can easily beef up your army numbers with tor goods or run a really strong comp of con to goods and archers. If you're trying to rush castle, you can also make a few to good to raid without hurting your budget. This does fall off a bit in castle and piral as you tend to make less to goods to save for other stonebased upgrades. Yet, if you're on late imperial and got all your upgrades, then continually adding to is great because their health will be super high, making them an amazing frontline unit.
Castle Age, your two options are first, Musky Yazak. All heavy units gain plus two ranged armor. The golden tent also generates wood starting at 200 wood a minute, but is reduced by two for each heavy unit. The other option is relic uvous. Shamans can make relic uvous out of relics and also increases the gather of all u by 20%. The castle upgrades is by far the hardest choice for me. I did find myself leaning towards Musky Yazic for a few reasons. First, early on, the wood boost helps with adding more production and start to transition to stockyards, which each cost 250 wood. Ranged armor is also super valuable on a unit, and having a massive meta- arms, target to kicks of extra ranged armor can really be felt. At this point, TC's keeps and towers aren't doing much, and really the only thing your opponent can do is make a massive crossbows. At the same time, so much of the golden horde is unlocked with stone, and getting multiple relic u is an insane amount of value. When you realize you don't need the stone anymore, you can delete them and pocket the relics. Or if you're imperial, you can get uvu tithe and get a lot of passive resources from them. Even if you don't get a lot of relics, the passive increase to stone gathering helps your natural u a lot. This is where I think military versus eco path really shows itself in the golden horde gameplay. The military path is to take musky and try really hard to put pressure on your opponent. This feels especially good against civs that have strong defensive landmarks or who are turtling with no static defenses. This is also very good if you're playing a heavy cap comp of keshix and torids paired with the contor good fetal upgrade in your torids are massive tanks in castle. Even if you're doing a mass infantry comp, having a lot of meta arms of extra ranged armor and the extra kash armor just makes them very hard to kill. I think musky is also very good if you're entering castle with a lot of units and want to try to end the game with one big push or if you're being pushed as you're aging up. In both cases, the extra- range armor does a lot of heavy lifting before your opponent can create a large mass of crossbows. Relicus are much more about eco. You're sacrificing overall strength of units for pure mass, which takes time to get going. You have to secure the relics and then hold by your stone upgrades come in. It also gives you a massive boost in Imperial because you can research uvu type from the prayer tent, which makes your relic u produce other resources. But all that takes a while to pay off. But once you're creating units in batches of threes 50% faster with all their upgrades, you're creating massive value just purely outproducing your opponent. So the big picture, Musky Yasic feels like the best choice for aggressive gameplay or if you don't quite know the game state and you just want to be safe with good units. Relic U feels like a great choice if you're playing a more eco- focused game or if you want to use map control to create an even larger eco advantage in castle.
Imperial. This is probably going to be my hottest take, but I think there is one clearly better Imperial option outside of very specific scenario. So let's break them down.
Option one, stone armies. This allows you to create golden horde unique units out of the golden tent for just stone. These units can only be produced in batches of two except siege which you still produce one at a time and are produced in halfime. Roost tributes gain more stats and toss are 20% cheaper. So overall that is toss kash kix kipchucks and traction trebuchets. This age up is good for two main reasons. Number one, this allows you to spend your stone especially once you get all the stone upgrades and you're floating a lot of stone. If you are in a situation where you've gone fast imp and don't have a lot of production, this can be huge for your survival. It also allows you to get trebucher 200 stone. So, if you need a lot of siege to pick up position, it gives you a solid timing. The issue is the golden tent cannot provide you an army on its own. Even with production speed increases, you're only seen to catch it every 15 seconds. In Imperial, you're often dealing with massive armies that are then replaced fairly quickly cuz you have a lot of production. This makes the stone armies from the golden tent less and less important as people's eco and production size scales.
Option two is the yan network trade, which causes the golden tent to generate 10 gold every 10 seconds for each fortified outpost for a maximum of six. So at six outposts, your golden tent produces 360 gold a minute, which is the equivalent of 4.5 relics. This is a lot of passive gold. If you get the stark air edict, you can basically run off pure passive gold. I find this is much better option as gold is always a highly needed resource in Imperial and you will most likely be close to if not have six outposts by imperial. The option is also a clear favorite if you do not go relic uvus and castle as you won't have the stone to really make the golden temp production worth it. When I play, it just feels way better to have the gold than stone production.
How to play Golden Horde.
Overall, the Golden Horde to me is similar to Ottomans and to the Order of the Dragon as the Zift takes time to get going. Once it gets going, oh lord, can it go. You're rarely going to be the aggressor or tempo setter in the match. Instead, Golden Horde is highly reactive as production speed requires you to make the right decision on production constantly, or else you'll be hardcountered. Starting with one less bill and having initial units and villagers cost such a high portion of your early feudal eco makes Golden Horde feel slow at first. Once you're able to get on good food resources though and get your upgrades throughout the castle Imperial, you start to feel unstoppable as you said wave after wave of units at your enemy. My biggest piece of advice is to play Golden Horde to counter your opponent. The lower levels you can get away with a lot and play anything. But in the upper levels, Golden Horde requires you to think about what your opponent wants to do and how Golden Hord's options best counter that. If your opponent is playing greedy, attack and feudal hard. If your opponent is aggressive, play defensive around towers and resources and soft greed with stockyards. Castle timing can be huge if you've built up a big to good mass who get insta upgraded. I don't really think golden horde should ever go naked castle. Feels like a death sentence if your opponent makes any units at all. Saves that can get away with naked fast castle either have a strong defensive castle landmark like the English and house of Lancaster right tower or the Macedonia golden horn tower. Some sort of increased production speed mechanic with a strong unit unlocked in castle. This is Japan for your shiro and the mounted samurai or an agent that gives you healing or units in castle i.e. bid with the dervishes or desert raers. Golden Horde has none of these. The only special unit that is unlocked is the kip check which needs numbers to be effective. Mana arms are also unlocked, but if the opponent has knights or bar mass, that won't work. And to goods, which auto upgrade, but you can only make them out of the golden tent, so your production speed is going to be slow.
Dark Age Golden Horde struggles mightily to do any sort of dark age pressure. Simar and Avisid, the issue they face is that their age up takes so long that if you delay and make dark age units, it feels like you're even more behind. On top of that, since you have to make units in bunches of two, you can't make units from the start of dark age. Instead, you have to save and then make units, meaning by the time your units get to your opponent's base, they are for sure aging up, which the only thing you can then do is deny more gold gather, which is nice against civ who need gold, but you haven't really actually stopped anything. But if you insist on doing dark rushing, you have two options, barracks or staple. For both, the early macro is simple. When you start, one vill goes to wood, the rest of food rallied till you have eight. The villain wood gathers till you can build a production building, a set of units, and a GR. You will be skipping uvu till age up. At 8 bills, rally your TC to gold. The two bills make the golden tent and then stand down gold till age up. The villain wood goes to food to make nine. Rally TC to wood till age up. Do what you need. If your opponent tries to send units across the map, rush up a tower on gold or rush up a tower on deer for food at the end of the gold till you get units. I suggest you do horsemen in the dark age as they cross the map faster and get sniper on gold easily. They can run around the opponent's base and delay them crossing. I think this strategy will only be effective against Sids who need gold as a way to delay them for making good units or a fast age up. Once again though, I generally think it is not good in 1v ones. I really only think dark age rushing for golden horde is good in multiplayer, which I'll touch upon in the multiplayer section.
If you get dark age rush, I think there are two options for you. Option one, you get the gold early and put a tower on the stone. You open three on gold and get gold you need to age up. 250 50 for the golden tent, 200 for age up. After you get the gold, put gold vills on wood, as well as a couple food vills. Get the resources for a tower and a G, which is 200 wood. Tower your stone and put a G next to it and send a sheep for the vills. This allows them to keep gathering while being able to hop in the tower to stop spears. Option two, open UVU, but then gather the wood for a barracks. Make Karash, then spears, and duel. You'll be behind at first, but if you're consistently making spears, you will outspear your opponent, especially with the armor boost. Don't be afraid to toss a vill or two into a fight to help boost your numbers. The key is the longer dark age goes, the more stone you're getting from the uvou, building a reserve. Eventually, either you can push your opponent back, or you sacrifice the uvu, but use your units to then set up on another gold or food source you can age up. If you're lucky, that gold source you need to age up will also be near food so you can double use the gur. If not, get wood for another tower. Take the gold and take a deer. Use your units to defend tower drops.
2TC. I think golden horn's worst style is 2TC. The biggest reason is that it takes an already slow slip and makes it even slower. They don't have any benefits that make 2TC good compared to many other 2TC based civilizations. Instead, once you get a second TC down, you must spend 200 food every 37 seconds to maintain production. This puts a huge food strain on you. Since your production is slow and you have to pay so much upfront cost for units, you will struggle to get out units early in your second TC, which means your opponent will quickly outnumber you before you can consistently get units out. Any fast castle civ worth their salt will be in castle by the time you get a second TC down and units on the field. And since you can't rush your age up by the time you age up, they will already have all the relics and be pushing you. If they decide to just attack you, I don't see how you're able to get the units out to match their early unit production. Compare that to saves that are considered good at 2TC and why. Abvisid has a cheaper TC and cheaper villain is significantly less. Boosted berries also provide a lot of food along with deer to get your eco going fast. The ego wing also gives you cheaper farms. They do have a slow age up, but is offset by the fact that they have camel archers and feudal and on age up unlock gulams, knights, and camel riders. All have distinctive use cases against a castle or feudal army pushing you. Order of the dragon villagers gather so fast that getting a TC on deer can quickly power their eco, even if they have to add farms around the Aen that food is very high quality as well. Extra powerful units mean feudal spears can take on castle knights and the burra castle option allows OTD to quickly get units on the field. English. The free king unit allows for raiding while their villagers gather quickly the resources they need for a second TC. While Batu Khan plays a potentially similar role, he still costs stone and he's not as strong as the English king who can also heal outside of combat. The English TC also shoots extra arrows which makes pushing them difficult. They have cheap farms which means they can avoid going out on food and their castle landmark, the White Tower, can basically stop a push on its own and can be rushed up by English Blair to protect resources and buy time. Overall, Golden Horde's strength lies in its stone upgrades, its amassing ability, and use of towers for both economic and fighting purposes. TTC doesn't really play into that at all.
As Castle as a strategy, it is for sure more viable than TTC, but in my opinion, it still holds flaws. Keep in mind, when I think of fast castle, I think of either no military or just a couple units to distract while you go castle. If you fast castle against fast castle oriented civs, you will just be outtempoed. By that, I mean they will be faster to castle and can usually get units out much faster than you. Examples would be Japan, Aubid, Senoku, Atri. It's just not going to be good for you to fast castle. You do have Batu Khan as a way to poke, but tower will easily shut him down. I would say fast castle is viable against sibs who tend to not fast castle, potentially ones that want to boom. I would suggest you go con one or two pack of tours to harass and keep your opponent in the base while you age up. You should also be trying to get greedy and good on resources on the map like deer or boar. Overall, if you take this strategy, my suggestion is you go relic u into castle and try to grab relics as that's going to be the main eco driver for you, especially in Imperial where you can upgrade them to produce other resources with uvo tythe. If your opponent is trying to dive you, you might need to go muskabe with their forces heavily ranged. This will also give you extra wood to use.
Feudal fighting either allin or eventually to go castle. This is where golden horde plays most and I think is their best strategy. Your go-to compers con to goods and mass archers at karash when it's time to dive and spears if your opponent has knights or mass horsemen. Once your eco improves, add kashix. But the key is to are so tanky that your opponent has to make spears. Mass archers can really thrive in this. If your opponent fast castles, you're really well set up to shut that down. The con and toot upgrades make them really tanky. Great for diving. You can rush ranged armor to crash and you can dive with five ranged armor hunts. If they get to castle, you're set up to fight feudal as you can go spears to match with your ketchics and targets to fight knights and your ketches can fight men at arms. Fighting fast castle is also where I think building carts is viable as it allows you to get a stable and barracks down and use your wood to build a tower for production speed increase and securing a food and a blacksmith for range tech. Though you sacrifice a cotton torque of tankiness for this golden horde feels very well set up to shut that down. While many people bemoan golden horde and feudal I think they hold up fine. The key is a few things. First is a bit of a raiding presence to good and khix checking and poking resources can do a lot. Be greedy for map resources. Your towers are tanky and I often find myself going out on deer report instantly when I age up a feudal to give myself a huge food boost to get my units rolling. You can easily defend them as you can use your defensive aura edict to help your units fight. Be mindful of unit placement. An early feudal your army replaces slowly until you can get more production. Losing a chunk of your army because they got caught out can be a massive issue and steamrololled into a loss. Once you get on the map resources and get extra production, you'll find yourself massing units like crazy. Lastly, be okay of going into stockyards early while an expensive upfront investment in wood. They are more efficient than four feal farms. My general TC rally is to wood as I can take four villas off a wood and drop a stockyard whenever I have extra wood. In fact, I would argue the stockyard adding over time is one of the most important things to do as golden horde. It goes handin-hand with stone upgrades.
So, now let's move on to the castle age and how I view the general strategy of the Golden Horde. Since you do not have keeps, taking and securing space is much harder. You do have towers and walls, so you can at least delay raids and use towers to hold position somewhat. The defensive aura edict is really helpful here as a whole army buffed by 10% health matters a lot when it comes to holding position. Overall though, I think golden horde is best played fairly defensive as you try to make starkard transition and get stone upgrades. Mass infantry works well for golden horde. Doing a classic spear and crossbow comp with comb buff feels really good. If you go musky, adding meta arms can be really good as the range armor will be super high. Kashik and horsemen should be made to counter mass ranged or to raid. You should also generally stop torch production as you need to save stone for upgrades. If gold is going to be an issue, your first get should be stockyard edict and get stockyards around towers. If gold access is not an issue, then you should focus first on increased supplies in the blacksmith. A flat 50% production speed boost in all production buildings is massive value and instantly allows you to field your army much faster. This is the first upgrade that makes Golden Horde start to feel really strong. After that, I value the extra unit upgrades in each production building as follows. First, archery range. Mass range is one of the most important things you can have an AoE for. This allows the building a crossbow mass quickly and immense value imperial with hand cannons. Second, stable. Similar to archery range, the value of producing extra khic or horsemen for free is very strong. I actually view it as most important for horsemen. Pair this with patterned armor to make your horsemen basically unkillable by stack defenses and raid constantly with a never- ending supply of horsemen. And lastly is the barracks. All infantry are fairly low value, so this reinforcement upgrade is least valuable unless you're churning through front line and need constant replacements. The reality is though, it is fairly common to only have one or two large stone upgrades in castle unless you go relic uos and secure multiple relics. You often find yourself spending stone on towers, sprint upgrades, con and tokens to keep your army numbers up and villagers safe. Another really important stone upgrade is glorious charge for your towers. It gives you massive defense and offensive value if you are low on stone. Get this upgrade to allow your units to take really strong fights if your opponent is pushing to slow units as you can get on top of them and slaughter them. Same with an offensive push. You can run and take a strong fight and make your units worth a lot more. Landmark choice does also affect how you play in castle as Musky Yazic and relic of gives you different focuses. Musky Yazic can be used in two main ways. First, as a game ender, you have a large army of Kakan targets and the Musky Yazic gives you the ranged armor to dive and win. This of course also allows you to play in heavy infantry comp when mena arms who tank range damage way better than before. This to goods automatically upgrade on age up. Going musky means all your to goods are super strong. Second has a boom mechanic of its own. The passive wood means that if you avoid making heavy units at all, you get a massive wood bonus. You can use this to get a second TC or do a faster stockyard transition. You can save stone at that point fairly quickly to unlock the stockyard edict and have your stockards produce gold when near a tower. If you go this direction once a occurs, stick with spear crossbow comp and turtle using walls and towers to delay raids and allow you to defend easier. If you get uvu offer and the gr with free u produce 234 stone a minute, meaning you can get a stockyard edict in 3.4 minutes if you spend no stone. That's really solid and sets up your eco to be very self-contained and good even if you're cut off from gold. Relic UVs makes base uvou produced stone at 98 stone a minute with castle upgrades. That also means that each relic that is turned to an uvu provides massive value, more than two villagers worth per relic. Relic u also rewards a much safer play style. You get all your major stone upgrades much faster and then Imperial gives you even more resources via uvu type. The biggest difference is that you are more inclined to do pure infantry comps as ketchin are significantly weaker without the extra ranged armor. You have to also consider the lack of free wood that you get when you go relic uvous. Stock art transitions will be harder, but the faster stone upgrades means massing will cost less. So, it's a trade-off. Overall, your eco will be much better if you can go relic uvous and stag a few. While musky yasic will allow you to have an easier stalker in transition and be a lot more forceful in your push. As for fighting, it is vital you play like English. You always want to have a forward tower so you can take fights using defensive aura edict as well as glorious charge once it's researched.
Lastly, Imperial where you become a horseman and to good plus hand cannon spamming nightmare. Overall, I tend to favor the Yan network trade landmark to stone armies. Hopefully, by imperial, you have reinforcement upgrades for your stable and archery range as well as the padded armor upgrade for horsemen. Once you get the full imperial upgrades, your horsemen are extremely tanky and you're producing both horsemen to good for your front line and hand caners in batches of three from your archery ranges. It is an amazing comp. If set up right, you have one of the best Imperial push mechanics in the game doing the following. One, have a tower placed near we want to fight. Two, use glorious charge to get movement speed and damage reduction. Three. Botukan hits his automatic damage arrow. Plus, you can activate the debuff arrow. All of a sudden, the enemy units are taking extra damage. It's an army that is damage boosted fast and takes less damage. It's really hard to lose a fight at that point. By Imperial, you're also floating a lot of stone, which means you can spam cannon towers everywhere, as well as super beefy toorggas. It is vital that you do this as you have no stone walls, so you're susceptible for raiding. While you can set up a lot of stockyards around a tower's influence, the tower can only hold five bills. My suggestion is actually put a ring of towers near your stockyards as well with cannon imp placements to shut down raids if the game is going super long.
Team games. Golden Horde is a good multiplayer civ in threes and fours and a little lackluster in twos. The largest reason is relics. It's much easier and safer for you to go fast castle because of the larger maps and more teammates to protect you, which means
You can pretty easily get four or more relics. These extra u will make your eco insane. Kip checks also shine in larger team games as you are less likely to be pushed. With the maps getting so large, it's hard for opponents to keep their villagers safe and hidden. Mass Kip checks can do amazing raiding and can kite down basically every unit in the game. If you have triple shot and a few horsemen, keshix or toot to tank, plus confer damage buffs, your kip tricks can shred.
In Imperial, Kip checks get like all horse archers do three imperial upgrades. Cavalry health, fire arrows, and slick bow strengths, making them ungodly strong. In team games, you can basically just mass kips and send passive gold to your teammates. If your opponents go pure mass knights, you can also go handken to kesh or spear depending on income as counter comp. Team games is also where trade is a lot more viable because of the large maps. But I still tend to not trade as much as my passive eco relic goooo is insanely strong. If you can get four or more relic uos, you will have one of the best Imperial eos in the game without even needing to trade once you get uvu tight in stockyard edict.
Team games is also where I find the dark age horsemen opening for golden horde to be viable. One, if you age up late, it's not as big a deal. You have teammates who can cover you. Two, in large team game maps, people tend to be very greedy with early deer. So, these early horsemen can do a lot of damage or at least raid French players off of gold or anyone else who is trying to TC to make it hard for them to boom or to be aggressive.
General build orders that I run. Overall, the big goal as Golden Horde is going on map resources such as deer boore ASAP. This allows you to send more vill to wood, which you can then use that wood surplus to make units, add production, and start a slow stockyard ad. You can use the food to either allin or pressure in a castle. You will always make Khan in one or two batches of to good. At that point, you can either add archers and go for damage or use them to pressure the opponent while you go castle.
Overall, here's my go-to decision tree with some basic villager suggestions. I am not huge on specific numbers of vills. Instead, I'm more of I want to do this, so I generally need more of this style of macro. Once we're out of the dark age, my biggest goal is securing deer bore. I will have eight bills gathering wood as the agent curse and be scouting to ensure one of those food sources is safe to take. Once I have enough wood for a tower, I pull the eight bills to go drop a tower. While they do that, I have a couple of builds at home who are gathering wood for a GR. Scout helps either pull the board into a good location or shoot deer to keep them close to the GR in your tower. You then put production around the tower for production speed boost. By that point, you should have aged up and your con should be made. So, the decision tree goes as follows.
One, opponent is going castle. Go all in as golden horde is very good at this. The con goes to poke with scout. While you do that, you add a barracks and archery range. You make to good whenever you can. Add another uvu, archers, crash, and spears. Get ranged armor from blacksmith, dive gold as they age up and hunt fills. If they don't GG, either go castle yourself or my favorite is to commit to more units, start adding kix, deny resources, add rams, and push. You need more upgrades or want to start making kicks, rally event to gold. As you have extra wood, make stockyards in production.
Two, the opponent is going to TC or some sort of eco greed like Byzantine rushing five sistns. Decision tree is very similar to fast castle. With kash armor, your ability to die TCS is very strong. You can easily take map resources and really pump units.
Lastly, your opponent is making units and fighting in feudal. Are they a knight? You want to play defensive, making keshix, to goods, and spears. Get a tower on gold so you can make khiks and allows you to take good fights either near food or near gold using tower defense edict solely at stockyards and either take a good fight when they force a dive or push out if they go back to their own base to go castle. If they're non-night civ, you want to go to good, con, and archer. Raid with Khan and to good while you build up an archer mass. Take a good fight, keep eyes on your food source, and soft ad stockards while you can as your eco booms. If they are capsive but non- knight like zenoku with the arari or deli with their gazi lean into kasik to goodut until they're forced to make spears then add archers yourself. Remember secure deer and bore of towers and use those as a hold point with defensive edict. Often as golden horde you're waiting for your opponent to make a mistake and take a bad fight that you can then capitalize off of. If feudal goes long eventually you will have stockyards go castle easily. My suggestion is muskabe as your opponent will push you the second you age up and the armor on targets and kix is really good.
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