Transcription
[Music] Ah, paper cut. Hey everyone, here at Paper Cut with another learning guide video. This is my fourth one, and it's time to pick a civ.
So, we spent the first three doing basic skills that you would need to do no matter what civ you play, and something where it doesn't matter what civ you play. If you're not doing those things, then you're going to be bad with that civ no matter what. If you're not making villages, if you're not consistently making army, if you don't have a basic build order like a feudal all-in, you aren't going to be successful. So, now that we've practiced those things, it's time to really lock in on a singular civ.
Um, so we're going to talk about why you want to lock in a singular civ. We're going to talk about all the different civs. I'm going to rank them from easy, medium to hard, so you can have a general idea of which one you potentially want to pick, lock in on, and work on. As always, I start saying, please like and subscribe. It's huge for a channel like mine. If you check the box below as well, you can find links to my Twitch as well as links to my coaching Discord. If you're interested in just asking questions and getting help from a really helpful and nice community, or if you're interested in contracting coaching services from myself. Um, all those things are there. Let's hop in.
So, first, why pick one civ? Um, in the game as complex as AOE4, and I've talked about this in my previous videos in this series, it's important to narrow down how many things you're learning. When I got my degree in education and teaching, the biggest thing we were taught is you don't want to overwhelm somebody. And people learn fast is when there's fewer things to focus on, which is where the point of those first few videos came from. Similar idea here. If you're bouncing between a lot of different civs, you're going to slow down your learning process. If your goal is to get better quickly and to climb the rank ladder, then focusing on one civ is your best way to do that.
Um, every civ in AoE4 is very unique. They have unique units, unique powers, and traits and weaknesses and strengths. And so, if you're flipping between those, having to learn all of them, it takes a lot. Two, you also have to consider how your civ reacts to other civs. So, there's 17 other civs that your civ has to consider. And while there are similarities between the civs, you can be like, "Okay, civ in this category, civs that are all fast castle civs, quote unquote, I can do this." It's still important to kind of learn the intricacies. You could do that better if you're only playing one civ.
Um, you also consider learning the game mechanics as well. So, there's like two avenues of learning the game. There's learning your civ and there's learning the game. If you're switching between civs a lot, you're actually slowing your game knowledge as well because you have to put so much effort into learning a civ. Um, and as always, the less variables we have, the faster you can learn.
Um, so with that, let's talk about picking a civ. Um, a few things I wanted you to keep in mind. Um, easy does not equal bad. Hard does not equal good. So, in a second, I'm going to give you how I view the civs and how easy they are to learn. Um, just because a civ is easy does not mean it's bad. There are plenty of easy civs that are very good. Just because a civ is hard does not mean it's automatically good. Some of course the civs that are hard generally have a skill a skill a skill ceiling that if you can reach makes a civ good, but that doesn't mean it's good in general because if it's hard to reach that skill ceiling, it's hard to reach what makes that civ good, then for most people the civ won't be good. I think the greatest examples are China and HRE, civs that pros consider very, very good, but the average person struggles with because there's so many things you have to do to unlock its power level.
Um, another thing to consider is that civ balance is constantly changing, unless you're Rus. A little joke from because Rus has always been good no matter the meta. But anyway, um, so I'm not going to do this list based off how good a civ is. I'm doing this list based on how easy it is to learn. So I'm considering civ bonuses and style and how easy it is to execute what makes that civ good. So if there's a lot of steps to get to a civ's like best moment in the game, then that's going to be a harder civ to learn. And lastly, I'll give a brief explainer of what makes each civ good.
Now, this does not cover all the civs' unique units or special abilities. So, if you just use my explainer and play it, you won't actually understand the civ. This is more of if you're trying to figure out which civ you want to put your time and attention to. For many of us, I know we only have a few hours of game at night. So, we want to know what is the general thesis of the civ. So, then you can look up build orders, look up explainer videos on YouTube and just practice it and go to the learning tab, even things like that.
So, with that, let's start with our easy civs. We have Abbasid, English, House of Lancaster, French, Holy Roman Empire, and Order of the Dragon.
First, Abbasid. Abbasid style is a multiple TC eco focus. The reason I say this because most of Abbasid's uh core unique upgrades are eco-based: cheaper TCs, cheaper villagers, cheap uh cheaper farms along with farms that produce more. So, obviously, Abbasid's all about creating that really powerful eco and then spamming units once you get that eco up. Now, that is I've talked about how defending is inherently more difficult than attacking. So, you can consider Abbasid difficult in that sense. But at the same time, the concept of what you want to do is very simple. You can get that second TC up very quick, usually before getting pushed if you follow a good build order. You can then just focus on food and wood, get units out, defend, and win from there.
Um, so, and on top of that, Abbasid's very flexible in a very easy way. So, sometimes there's difficult flexibility where you have to do a few things to to do something different, but it's good. Um, we'll get to that. For example, like China later. Abbasid the flexibility is really simple. The landmark has multiple options, so you can pick military wing, you immediately get military units, you can make rams without a blacksmith upgrade, you can attack very straightforward. There's culture wing, which makes upgrades cheaper. Boom, you go culture wing, now you can fast castle. So the flexibility is simple and it's in in the way that you can execute it, so that makes it once again, an easy civ to play.
Um, lastly, Abbasid has a lot of great unit variation. They have really strong man-at-arms, they have camels which debuff cavalry, they have really fast archers in castle age. Uh, the camel archer, the the camel archer is a great way to defend if you're doing multiple TC and your opponent fast castles. The point I'm trying to make is Abbasid has a lot of different units that can respond to multiple situations, even starting in feudal. So if you're looking for a civ that can cover all your bases, it's there. Now, a lot of pros will tell you that Abbasid is not a good civ. Yes, at a very high level Abbasid struggles, but when it comes to the average player, I think Abbasid is a very strong newer friendly, newer person friendly civ.
Next, English, the classic classic new player civ choice. Uh, most often when people are asked what you start with, they say English or French. Now, there's a reason for this. They're not wrong. Um, English has a very strong defensive style. So the way to think about is English doesn't uh allows you to get away from making mistakes. You don't get punished as hard for making those mistakes. Your TC is very strong. Your units are able to attack faster near your base and towers and things like that. So even if you take a bad fight and you have to defend, it's really hard for your opponent to push you.
Um, English also has two very clear, simple to execute strategies. You have your classic longbow rush with the council hall. While people know how to counter this now because they has been out for a few years now, it's still a very good strategy. Your mass longbows are really good as a defensive unit and really good as an offensive unit because of their huge range and higher damage. Um, on top of that, uh, you can do a really straightforward 2TC strat where you use the king in the in the king landmark that they have to harass while you go 2TC. Usually your second TC cannot be stopped if you follow a good build order, and then you just add farms, make units, defend, and then go White Tower, which is a very, once again, uh, forgiving defensive landmark that allows you to almost get to castle with very few units, and then they can't push you. So overall, there's a lot of things around the civ that allow you to kind of do what you want at home without getting punished too hard. And then if you want a feudal all-in, you have a unit in the longbow that can make it very hard for someone to get resources if you cut them off. That's not to say people won't be able to beat you, of course, but the concept of how to play this civ is pretty straightforward.
Um, and as always, mass range is really good in AoE4. And so having one of the best range units in the game in the longbow, huge plus.
Next, we have House of Lancaster, which is an English variant civ. And since it's an English variant, its concept is actually very similar. You're going to have a very safe eco. With English, it's cheaper farms that are boosted. With the House of Lancaster, it is the manors. So, what are we going for here? The Lancaster um main playstyle is very simple. You make as many manors as you can. The manors provide you free resources, wood and food, and then Imperial can be gold as well. And then you just match what your opponent's doing. So scouting is very important here. If your opponent's trying to attack you, you might want to try to do three manors and then just make units, defend. Those three manors will provide you a lot of nice passive eco. You can use the House of Lancaster to have a defensive landmark as well as something that provides you free units for making manors, which is ridiculous. Your yeomen are a very good archer. Not as good as the longbow in the sense of damage, but they still have the range, but they still but they're really fast and they still have a longer range than archers. So overall, they're still a very good defensive unit. Uh, you also have spears that can debuff your opponent's units. So overall, really good defensive civ, and the manors, if you do the House of the Castle Lancaster, also shoot. So you have a lot of defensive ability. Uh, if your opponent's being greedy, you can just do a lot more manors, up to nine. There's also the other ways you can play the civ are conceptually very easy. You could do three to six manors into fast castle and just make knights and just spam knights and attack with knights, which is also very good.
Um, so you have a lot of options, all fairly easy to execute because everything revolves around the manors, which are themselves a pretty easy thing to set up if you follow a build order guide. You can get a very simple, here's kind of the macro you're looking for to make those manors. As I said, you're just scouting to make sure you don't get too greedy and respond to what your opponent is doing.
Next we have French, our first easy aggressive civ. Um, so their style is denying resources and then do some sort of death push. So what makes this an easy civ? Well, first, you have the best feudal unit in the game in the knight. Um, even civs that can make knights in feudal, like French. So for example, Rus, the French knight is better because when it attacks, when it charges, it gets extra attack damage. So they will beat the French knight in this sense.
Um, now what this means is that conceptually, what you're trying to do is pretty straightforward. You make knights, your opponent has to make spears. So you make archers, and then you kind of have a decision to make. Do you try to win in feudal where you're just making knights and archers and you push with rams, or you can go castle with the uh, what's it called? Uh, Royal Institute. The Royal Institute, you then get bloodlines, make your knights super, super tanky, and then you attack with your tanky knights.
Um, if you want to make this a little more complex, you do pro scouts, which just keep your food safe. If you don't want to go through all that, you can just put your vills on deer normally, and then you're using your units to keep your opponent in their base, them while they're in their base. You get deer and boar and really good food, and then you age up, or you do a death push. As I said, with your knights and archers, you're trying to deny your opponent resources. Can you push them off gold? Can you at least stop them from getting other food resources so they're stuck on farms, which is really bad in feudal? Can you deny wood? Things like that. So you're denying their resources, once you get enough units, you push, or you go castle and then push. If the even if that doesn't work perfectly, if your opponent's making units as well and you guys are kind of stuck together, then what you can also do is do Guild Hall in the castle, which gives you free resources. And that game plan is also really straightforward. You go Guild Hall, you put out food, you keep making units, you keep fighting, you try to secure gold, and then when you have 2,000 food, you pull it from the Guild Hall, and you go imp. Bada bing, bada boom.
Holy Roman Empire. Now, I did say at the beginning of my video that people generally struggle with Holy Roman Empire in the sense that it is, although there's a lot of ways you can maximize it to make it better, but conceptually the civ is pretty easy to play. First, you have that nice boosted eco style where you have the prelate at the start of the dark age, which makes your dark age eco very good. That prelate boosts villagers near it, gather rate. Then you can go into an Aachen Chapel, which then boosts villagers in a radius of a prelate in it. Then you can either fight in feudal or go relics.
Um, the simplest build order for this, uh, BC does something on this, I think so does Valdemar, but overall it's pretty straightforward. You drop Aachen on the wood line, you keep eight on wood, and then you just keep adding production, keep making units, keep adding farms around your Aachen, and your eco can be very safe and very boosted near the Aachen. The villagers have to go away from the Aachen, just make a prelate out of the TC. You have very nice boosted uh, eco, and you use that boosted eco, just spam a lot of units and win.
Um, now you could do that in feudal with like mass archers with man-at-arms or horsemen or spears, whatever you need to have the front line be. Um, you can also go castle and get relics. That's the second eco boost. So, the first eco boost is that boosted eco of prelates and an Aachen Chapel. The second is that castle, getting relics. Relics are huge. You get extra gold if you do Renaissance Cathedral. You can use them to defend in towers. And then if you get the man the monastery upgrade, which turns them into minians, now you have you can just keep boosting your eco everywhere. And the reason people are bad at HRE is because they're they're not good at making units consistently. But if you can make units consistently, then your eco is just destroying people by just massing units.
Um, so in a way, it's similar to Abbasid. You're trying to get an eco advantage. When you go eco, you can just boost your eco with prelates and an Aachen Chapel.
Order of the Dragon. Now, this is a variant of HRE, but they don't get the prelate in feudal, and all their units are more expensive, but they do more damage. So they're easy. Once conceptually, it's a pretty straightforward plan. Um, now Order of the Dragon does have a lot of flexibility that is more difficult to pull off. So you could do 2TC with it, you could do fast castle with it. Both are very good. Both are a little difficult though. So the style is, if you want to be very straightforward, is you just make your units, you go for it.
Um, the key to Order of the Dragon is you always want to make counters. So if your opponent's making archers, you make horsemen. If your opponent's making cav, you make spears. If they're making spearmen, you make uh archers. Your units do very, very well against their counters. Um, because but since you have less units, if you're not making counters, you will die very easily. On top of that, um, if you can go mass man-at-arms with the mine work upgrade, it's also very good. So you can play this very similar to HRE where you go Aachen, you put like five to eight on wood, and you just keep adding farms and you keep rallying to food, and with that food and with that safe eco, you're just massing units. You can also do mine work into a very big all-in. You drop like a barracks or two and just do mass man-at-arms. Both those are very good, and both of those are very conceptually easy to do.
Um, what might hold you back for the Dragon and why I consider putting a medium is that if you're not good at switching your units, you could be beaten pretty easily. But if I'm considering a newer player and you are also playing against newer players, they won't expect how good your units are, and you can win that way. So conceptually easy to play, but also a lot of more difficult flexibility. If you main the civ, 2TC is very good, fast castle about, but it can be done. Oh, and the unit breakdown, I kind of said in feudal, just make the counters. In castle, make crossbows and then either some sort of front line. You can do man-at-arms, you can do spearmen. Burgrave is very, very good for Order of the Dragon because of the cheaper units, and then you do your really good ranged units. Right.
Next we have our medium difficulty civs. So these are civs that require a little bit more nuance to maximize, um, but are still, I think, pretty straightforward for a new player to pick up, unlike the harder civs which might require a few more losses and a little bit more focus to to unlock. So we have Iubid, Delhi, Japan, Joan of Arc, Rus, and Ottoman. Let's get to it.
First, we have Aubid. Aubid is a variant of Abbasid. And what's interesting about Abbasid and Aubid is Abbasid is like eco focus, while Aubid is fighting focus. Your big thing is a big castle rush into death push. So generally, any civ whose castle rush is like their best thing, I've put in at least a medium tier because I feel like castle rush is actually more technically difficult to pull off than a feudal all-in. I've had people disagree with me on that, but that's what I think. I think partly because if someone, you have to both defend and maximize your resources with the castle rush, and then you have to maximize your less units, that are better units, and not lose them, and build up into a good death push.
Um, while I think that's easy in a way to execute at a lower level as people aren't pushing you, but if you get better and then go into higher ranks, people will try to stop your fast castle, and that's that's where things get more difficult.
Um, but overall for Aubid, your style is fast castle into a death push. Why castle? Aubid has a lot going for it in castle. First, it can build siege on the field. So, you can make mangonels, which they have a special one called the Mangonel, which can do with this fire attack, which is good against buildings. So, you get that uh siege immediately on the field with units. You have unlock the camel lancer. It's a really strong unit. Your age-ups really reward you for going castle. So, if you do Growth and Culture, depending on the order you do, you're going to get dervishes, which can do group healing and get relics really quickly. You can get free villagers, which help boost your eco immediately, and they boost your berries. So, that gives you that food source.
Um, on top of that, you then have the camel lancer, which is a really good knight, debuffs cav, um, and has high damage. And then that forces your opponent to make spears. So, you make archers, and then they're going to try and make crossbows. They get a castle, and you get the relics, and then you go mangonels and you just push and win.
Um, what's interesting is the Aubid eco isn't great. So, you, another reason you want to do this castle castle death push is that if you go into a long game with farms, your farms suck. Um, so kind of the thought process is, I have all the berries and deer on the map to win this game. I'm going to be on the berries, which are boosted. I get a lot of food from. I can go on the deer, which is a good food resource. I get relics and I use that boosted eco to win in this time frame that I have. So that can be a little more difficult because you need to be clear on, I'm making camel lancers now. I switch to archers. Now I'm making siege and I'm pushing, taking advantage of that.
Um, which can be more difficult than just a straight up feudal all-in. Um, so that's where the difficulty comes from. Now, Aubid can't play in feudal. If you're going to do that, I suggest you do the culture wing with the uh, with the dervishes, and then the dervishes can uh, heal you while you do early feudal fighting. Your desert raiders are a pretty good unit. Um, though, if you're not watching, they can die from like mass archers. Um, but they do debuff and they do like really good against knights too. So, if you're playing against a knight civ, you can just fight them in castle with desert raiders. Um, and that and that's available to you, but it's just not as strong as a fast castle death push.
Next, you have Delhi. Delhi was the first civ I ever to Conqueror. Love this. Love this civ. So, their style is mass units, sacred sites, push. Same, similar to French. That push can happen, if you push, can happen in castle. Um, depending on who you're, what civ you're playing against.
Um, now Delhi has an amazing early eco and early unit production, which is why you want to max the units in feudal. Um, you have a great horseman, the Ghazi, which does extra damage, is a little bit more health than the average horseman, and does a little bit of extra damage against heavy units. Um, you can use scholars to boost your unit production, which means that your production buildings are producing faster than other people, so you can get out a bigger mass faster. You get all your eco upgrades for free. So that means you're saving all the resources and getting them. And also, once you get them, your eco is better on less villagers. So this gives you this huge early momentum push. You can take sacred sites in feudal. So what you do is you make the units, you take the sacred sites.
Um, once you take the sacred sites, you can then either buy use that gold to buy resources and do a big death push in feudal, or rush castle and then use your production speed to both get faster upgrades for free in in castle, or just make castle units like the elephant or man-at-arms or knight and win that way.
Um, but either way, um, the difficulty of Delhi is the maximalization. Since your eco is going to be so much better, you also get like boosted berries too, which is really nice. Since your eco is going to be so good and you can make units so quickly. The way the thing that makes Delhi good is if you're good at making units consistently and forgetting and remembering to put like the scholar on the production buildings, to take the sacred sites, buy the resources, make the units. If you can do that, it's a very, very good civ and very straightforward what you're trying to do. But the difficulty comes from making sure you're actually spending those resources. Well, I already kind of gave the general game plan. I did it out of order.
Japan. Another one of that's the fast castle. So, where did I get this picture? This is grainy as hell. Whoops. Um, so fast castle death push. It's like Aubid, basically, same similar idea as Aubid.
Um, once again, because you have so much going for you in castle, you have the mounted samurai, which is one of the best knights in the game. Has deflective armor so it can take a hit. Um, has really high damage. You can then boost its damage through uh bannermen, and you have extra melee upgrades. So you can get to castle, make mounted samurai, take relics, and then you go into either Onna-bugeisha, which is a very, is a light, very fast attacking unit to counter spears and crossbows, or you go into mass Yumi, which is your cheap, really quick archer.
Um, and this is a really good push. You do mass mounted samurai, mass archers, and unlike Aubid, your farming eco is actually pretty good. So you can actually keep adding farms and keep building this death ball until you find an opening to push. Um, but it's a very similar game plan as to same thing. The difficulty is getting to castle efficiently, keeping your early knights alive because you want to use them to raid so you can get relics, and then creating that really good death ball army of mounted samurai, archers, and mounted samurai, and pushing.
Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc is a French variant that's basically French but with Joan. There's some upgrade differences. The biggest one being is Joan of Arc is not only your main fighting thing, but she's also your main eco boost. Um, so your style is you want to force fights in feudal and use Joan because Joan gets XP from uh killing units or being near units that die. And then she also can boost your eco by making units cheaper in production buildings. So you have to both use Joan's powers well for her eco and for her damage. You want to keep her alive so she's getting uh, she's getting XP. You want to be forcing fights so she's getting XP. So the difficulty in this comes from maximizing Joan. You're playing the same game plan as French, but what makes it better than French is when you're really good at using Joan.
Um, what's also nice is unlike French where you feel like you have to use knights, Joan of Arc, you can go away from knights and be okay. There are some special units she unlocks that make that variation better. And since she can do this group heal power, it's actually nice to have a massive infantry because then she can heal up all this infantry and it feels really good. So with Joan, you don't have to stick to the knights, though you definitely can. Um, but the difficulty comes from making sure you're using Joan correctly.
Next you have Rus. Um, Rus their style is flexibility. You can play as you want with Rus. So you can do feudal all-in, you can do fast castle, you can do 2TC, it's all available to you. It's partly because their feudal landmarks are so nice. Kremlin provides you great defense, great wood gathering. Rus has a lot of nice eco bonuses. Um, you can also do Golden Gate and have really well-balanced eco without any punishment for it. Right now, the meta for Rus is pro scouts into fast castle, which can be difficult to execute, but you don't have to play that.
Um, Rus, as I said, Rus has good eco, feudal knights, great landmarks. They have the whole package. Um, I kind of mentioned the meta strat. What's difficult is doing that meta strat is getting a good timing on the pro scouts, gathering the deer correctly, if you get pushed, not losing your scouts and making units, but you don't have to play the meta strat. You can easily just go into mass units in feudal and win that way with knights and archers, um, and still be very, very good. So the, so the, once again, the difficulty of Rus comes from almost like picking a thing to do and executing it, uh, or following the meta strat if you want, and then also maximizing the eco, remembering to put, you know, you get towers near your woodline to get extra wood gathering, you get gold from harvesting deer, so you want to be on the good resources. So maximizing all of Rus's eco bonuses are also important as well.
Lastly, Ottoman. Ottoman style is military schools and then a castle push. So what the Ottomans get is that they get these things, military schools, which produces units for free. In feudal age, they're very slow, and you need to have them around blacksmiths to maximize them. So, where Ottoman difficulty comes from is you're not very good early. You're trying to build units. You're trying to get your military schools up, which can be very slow. Um, your early, your best unit, the Sipahi, is kind of expensive. So, your early eco can't make very many of them. So, if a person's pushing early, that's where they kind of take advantage of you. But your goal is to just keep building your army slowly, get to castle, and every age your blacksmiths produce help buff production buildings more, so your uh, production, so your military schools are doing better. So Ottoman's definitely built as a civ that does better throughout. It's better in castle and imperial. So that's what makes it difficult, because you're trying to survive into these better ages for you, and if someone's being really aggressive, it can fall apart pretty quick. But if you get to castle, the game plan's super simple. You make a lot of Sipahi, you make a lot of Janissaries, which are a unit that do extra damage to cavalry, and you make a lot of springalds, which you get for free from your castle landmark. So that setup, springalds, Sipahi, Janissaries are very, very good, very hard to stop. Um, it's getting there, which is the difficult part.
Our last one is our hardest difficulty civs. Now, this doesn't mean you shouldn't play these civs, but it might take you longer to understand them. You're going to make a lot more mistakes early on. So just be kind to yourself. Uh, these are also civs that generally, if you start on them and then you play other civs, it's going to be kind of a weird transition because there's so much unique stuff with these civs.
Um, so let's get into it. Oh, sorry. First, let's list them up. Byzantine, Malians, China, Zushi, which is a variant of China, Knights Templar, and Mongols.
Byzantine. So Byzantine is another eco focus civ, but unlike our easier ones, the eco requires a little bit more planning. So, if you can set up your eco via the Sistine Chapels, which is a building that buffs units, but also has various powers, but you have to pick which one you do with them at any time. Um, that makes your eco very, very good. Like, Byzantines can have one of the best ecos in the game without ever going to TC, just from these Sistine Chapels. But the Sistine Chapels only have a certain range of buff, and they do cost stone. So, there's ways you can lose if you're way over-investing eco and get pushed. If you're not placing your Sistine Chapels correctly, you're not buffing your eco as much as you should. If you're not using the powers of the Sistine Chapels, you're missing out on a lot of value. So the difficulty in Byzantine is making sure you're maximizing this eco source of the Sistine Chapels.
Um, two, you're very slow rev up, kind of similar to Ottomans. You get uh, a resource with olive oil from berries and fish, which is good. You can make mercenaries out of them, which makes your your military very good. You get these pop of mercenaries. But if you're denied berries, or if you're not using, or you're not like on berries well, and you're not getting upgrades and things like that, you're not going to get those mercenaries. You become a very average civ. But if you build your base correctly, you're efficient with your build order and getting out your mercenaries and defend well early, then you're just keep adding to your eco, and you're just massing these units. And especially Byzantine in castle is very good because you can get a landmark that gives you free mercenaries. Now you're getting all these free units. You're getting your units from olive oil as well. And then you're making your normal units, so you can quickly create this massive army. But setting that up and not losing early is kind of the key thing for Byzantines.
Next are the Malians. Malians is, to me, like the Mongols in the sense that you have a very, you have so many unique things to yourself, so many unique units, so many unique buildings, and just completely different style of play that if you start with them, one, you'll get an advantage because a lot of times in lower leagues, you don't see these civs, but um, if you learn these and try other civs, it's going to feel weird.
Um, so the Malian style is greed as much as humanly possible, and then unit spam. So Malians have so many unique units. You have so much passive eco. So you can get passive eco from building a thing called a pit mine on gold. You can get passive eco from making cows and putting them in ranches. You have very unique feudal units, which makes you like a strong feudal army if you can make enough of them.
Um, so the the classic play style of Malians is you do this thing called a cow boom, where you put your cows into ranches. You can make up to 19, if I remember off the top of my head correctly, or 20, and then you can build a castle landmark that boosts all of the cows and gives you makes your food eco super, super good. Of course, people are going to try to stop you. They're going to try to burn your pit mines, are going to try to stop you making cows. And so the game plan is, in a way, like House of Lancaster, you're scouting to see how much greed you can do. Can you just go full cows, or do you need to make units and defend and slowly add the cows? And where people lose a lot of Malians early is their their macro gets all messed up because they're not making units as fast as they should, or they're not making eco enough and they're over-making units, things like that. So finding that balance is key of Malians. Once you find it, it's a very, very good civ.
Um, but it's learning that unique eco of it, which is the very difficult part.
China. China is the classic high skill ceiling, high reward. A lot of people play it badly. Um, it's hard to kind of pinpoint what China's style is, but so the way I kind of thought about is you're trying to secure your food and maximize your Imperial Officials, and then you're kind of doing whatever makes sense in the moment.
Um, China's flexibility comes from its Imperial Officials. So, let me break down these units. They're such an important eco unit. As China, you can have four of them. You make them out of either your TC or from a feudal landmark. And what they can do is they can supervise buildings, either production or eco. And while they're supervising it, any resource dropped off, you get extra. Any unit is produced faster. Any research is done faster. And not only that, the entire time your buildings are producing stuff or researching things, they're collecting, they're creating taxes, which your officials can then gather and drop off. So it is passive gold, it is extra resources, it is faster unit production. All those things are amazing. The thing is, you'd be, it's not surprising that people who are lower level don't use the Imperial Officials very well. They're not putting them on the right resource building. They're not making units with them. They're forgetting to collect taxes. So there's so many ways that you that you will not maximize this eco boost from their Imperial Officials and waste it, basically. So the difficulty comes from using your Imperial Officials very well.
Um, but besides that, China has so many things to make it powerful. Now, the securing of the food comes from two ways. You can either pro scout. Um, you can pro scout because you can research it very quickly. You can get scouts up very quickly thanks to the Imperial Officials. And also you're collecting gold, so it makes it easier to get the upgrade. It's very expensive. Once you get the um deer, then if you're if you're supervising the mill with the deer on, then all of a sudden you're getting so much food, it's insane. And then you just mass units and you go. The other way is you make granaries. Granaries are a special mill that buff farms near it. But you have to get the Song, which is building both feudal landmarks, and then you, it's expensive to set up, but once you set it up, your food's crazy. So as you see, in both instances, China is this like, I get a lot of food either through farms or through my mill through getting deer, and then I just mass a crazy amount of units, and you can mass units quickly if you're maximizing your Imperial Officials. So it all really comes down to that, and that's where the extreme difficulty comes from.
Zushi, as a variant of China, is still very, very similar but has more of a castle focus. Um, the reason being is a couple reasons. One, you have an upgrade that makes your cavalry better. So that means you want to get to castle to use your really good knights. Um, you have a landmark that helps you collect relics faster. So you can get. So you're playing this very much like Japan and in a way, you're trying to get to castle. You're trying to then get relics. You're trying to do kind of this death push where you go knights, and you have Zhuge Nu, which is a really good archer. You have. You also get extra upgrades to your archers, to to your Zhuge Nu, which makes them even better. So, as you can see, like there's this focus on more of a castle push of Zushi as opposed to China, which you can play in any of the ages. That's not to say you can't win in feudal, but like there's definitely advantages to going castle.
Um, so the only game plan difference is that you want to pro scout with Zushi a lot of the time, though you don't have to, but that's an option. You want to get to castle and then go knights with the special horsemen with the special knight upgrade in the blacksmith and go Zhuge Nu and then go siege. And that's uh, the Nest of Beasts, which is a really good uh, mangonel variant. And you're trying to win more in that way. So you're doing a much more cav focus. While China feels much more infantry focused, you're trying to mass this huge infantry ball to push and win. Zushi is a little bit more cav focused.
Knights Templar. Knights Templar is a very interesting civ because it's like Delhi. It's sacred site focused, but and it's also attack focused, but it doesn't get the same bonuses as Delhi, so it does it differently.
Um, here's the thing. Knights Templar is all out securing the sacred sites, and you're doing that by attacking, attacking, attacking. You actually don't want to play defense with the sacred sites because then you get raided to death. You want to be at your opponent's base so they can't leave and go raid your sacred sites. You have this pilgrim mechanic where the pilgrim leaves your base and goes to the sacred site, and they're open to being raided that entire time, right? So that is it gives you really good eco, but if your pilgrims are cut off, then you're then you're dead. So you're definitely trying to play the style of, I'm attacking, attacking to create a good eco for myself behind that attack.
Um, on top of that, Knights Templar's units, all they have so many special units. They have three different special units per age, and you have three different age-up options. It's so much variability. So learning all those units is a lot. There's just so much to learn.
Um, but in the end, all those units kind of suck in feudal. They get a lot better in castle, imperial. So feudal is your weakest point. If someone takes a good fight against you, cuts off your pilgrims, then you become a very average civ. But if you can get the pilgrims going and get the gold, then and you're massing and you're attacking, you're feeling really good.
Um, the difficulty, as I said, comes with the game plan. You have so much variability, so you have to learn all the different ways you can play the civ depending on the situation you're facing. Your eco focus is really important. While you have great wood eco because your villagers don't have to make a lumber camp, they just kind of transport the wood to your to your base. They, you do have to have this eco where you're trying to add fortresses, but also still attack. You generally want to add fortresses in castle, imperial. But the point being is there's there's a lot of things you have to learn.
Last but not least, we have the Mongols. As I said with the Malians, they are very unique. So they act really differently. They have no need for houses. They can move all their buildings. Uh, they can't make walls. They have Mangudai, which is unique cavalry that's always shooting arrows. Like they have a lot of things that are unique to them. They get resources for burning buildings. The list can go on.
Um, but the big thing for them is how they gain power from always, always attacking. If a Mongol tries to play defensive, the issues of no walls, they're very, very easy to raid and attack and and start getting pulled apart. So the best thing for them uh is to continuously keep on the offensive to keep their opponent in their base. Usually what they want to do in the background of that is either do some sort of trade boom or some sort of fast castle into their gold landmark, which helps them get even more gold.
Um, the current kind of meta strategy for Mongols is either a a fast imp, which I think would be hard for a lower level player to pull off, um, or just a natural trade boom where you open up dark age tower rush into making Keshiks and Mangudai, or Keshiks and archers. And while you're raiding and attacking, you're booming, you're trade booming in the background to give you more and more and more gold because Mongols also have bonuses around trade. And that could be difficult to do. There's a lot you're balancing the raiding, the but not losing your units, continuously making you continuously making traders. There's a lot to balance, and so that makes Mongols a little bit more difficult civ, especially since dark age is such an important part of your build. You have to fight in an age that you don't really have to do with most other civs. So with that, it's a very fascinating civ. It's really powerful in the hands of people who really use it well, but um, it can feel really bad if you don't know what you're doing or you're new to the game.
So when does switch civs? I get this question a lot from people I'm coaching on. Once they reach a milestone, they ask, "Okay, so should I try switching civs?" I mean, oops, my bad. That's really a personal goal. Like, when you switch, generally what I notice is that you play an entire rank lower than where you're currently on your main civ. So, if you're Gold and you switch a civ, you will play at a Silver level at first. Um, just because there's so much you're trying to pick up, and that kind of dentens, you don't realize how much you made automatic when you've mained a civ for hundreds of games.
Um, so if your personal goal is to reach a rank, but you don't care how many civs you know, well, yeah, then focus on one civ. But if your goal is to be a more well-rounded player, then sure, learn civs, but you have to realize it will slow your overall learning down.
Um, for me personally, I got to Conqueror 1 with Delhi. That was my first one I got to Conqueror 1 with. And then my goal was I really wanted to be a well-rounded player. I wanted to know a lot of different civs. I wanted to take part in like low-level tournaments, which means you need to know multiple civs. And so I spent a lot of time taking other civs to Conqueror. And then once I had a roster of about six to eight civs I could play, then I eventually reached Conqueror 3.
Um, and now I float between Conqueror 1 and Conqueror 3. Um, depending on what civs I'm playing because um, I'm constantly switching civs now and trying different things. So, uh, that means uh, I am falling and then getting better again, things like that.
Overall, your goal should be really the same as part three. You're trying to learn a build order with the civ you choose. You're trying to maintain the macro cycle of making villagers, making units, scouting, uh, adjusting your eco, and then you're trying to just learn one strategy for that civ. You hopefully the one that is like strongest with the civs in the current meta, because that's usually set up based on the civ strengths, and you're just practicing again and again and again. So, you learn how it works and you learn how it works against other civs.
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