Transcription
I asked you guys through several posts which strategies do low elo or beginner players struggle the most against, and you guys had a lot to talk about in that department. So here are the five things that popped up the most, and most importantly, how to counter them. Let's get into it.
First, I want to cover something that I know many of you don't know how to do properly, and not only in lower elos but also in Conqueror too. To beat any, and I mean any strategy in this game of real-time strategies, you need to use a very important part of your body to its maximum potential, and it's your eyes. In every matchup, you should scout your opponent's base at some point. If your [music] opponent is a Dark Age rusher civilization like the Mongols, then scout them at the beginning of the game. This is because most Mongol players will start with a Dark Age rush. If not, you should do it at around the four to five minutes of the game.
Now, once you are at their base, you need to look at two things. The first one is how many villagers are mining gold. If they have five or more, they are probably going for a fast Castle strategy because that requires a lot of gold. And staying in Feudal and being aggressive does not. If they are even building a tower here, that pretty much confirms that they are indeed going for a Castle. The second thing you need to look out for is how many villagers are in the wood. For example, if you see that a Japanese player is chopping the straggler trees in the Dark Age instead of mining gold, that confirms that they are going for a Spearman rush, even if you haven't seen a Barracks yet. That will give you time to respond accordingly to this strategy. Also, if your opponent is in the Feudal Age and is mining a lot of gold, but is also chopping a lot of wood, this might mean that they are staying in Feudal because wood in this age means they want to build production buildings. This can happen with civs that require a lot of gold in the Feudal Age like French or Lancaster.
Something else you can look out for is their stone mine. Every time you see their stone mine, click on it to see how much they have mined. If they have mined 350 stone exactly, that means they are going for a second TC. If they have mined less than that, it could mean they are looking to upgrade their towers or, in the case of some civs, that they are going for certain unique buildings like the Lancaster manners, the Macedonian Dynasty stronghold upgrade, or the Ottoman military schools. In the case of Tughlak, for example, it can mean that they are going for a fort. So watch out if they want to fort rush you.
Okay, now that you know some basics of scouting, let's start with the list.
Okay, so the first one is the Spearman plus Tower Rush. This I see a lot of people struggling with, even in high Gills. And what happens is that certain civilizations like, say for example, Ottomans, Lancaster, and Japanese, that have really good Dark Age game bonuses like, uh, faster gathering sheep, more starting wood, or cheaper Barracks, they can start with a Spearman rush and they can start attacking your exposed resources like, for example, the gold mine or the berries in the case of, let's say, Byzantines, for example.
Now, how do you scout this? The first thing you have to do is, if you see any of the civs, just go straight into their base, uh, with your scout. So, not, not obviously straight into their base, uh, into their base, but just see outside what they're doing. If your scout gets there and they're not mining gold, and you see that they only have like one or two villagers on the sheep and the rest are on the straggler trees, then obviously they want wood for either building a Barracks or building a tower on your gold. So, once you know that this is going to happen, you can do two things.
You can counter this by going for your own spearmen. So, immediately start going for your own straggler trees, build a Barracks, and start building spearmen. Your spearmen, in most cases, not all cases, but in most cases, should have the advantage because you will have the defensive advantage, right? So, you only have to rally your spearmen, uh, into your base, and your opponent will have to rally spearmen all the way from, uh, his base to yours. So, his reinforcements will be late, and you will, uh, after some time, have, uh, more spearmen than your opponent, and then you can just fight his spearmen with yours. Um, this works if you are also a really good Dark Age civilization. If you have, for example, Samurai with Japan or with Sengoku or with even, uh, English too, although English doesn't need to do that because his, uh, the villagers can shoot. So, yeah, there's that.
The second way you can counter this is by making a tower. Let's say, for some reason, you know they are not going to tower rush you. Uh, you just see two or three spearmen. Uh, what you can do is that you can build a tower on your gold, and then the only way they can do damage to you is that they have to pull their own villagers all the way from their base to your base and build a tower there. So, that's the second way. This works really well. Let's say, for, uh, for example, with Sengoku, [music] uh, where you can just buy wood with the market in Dark Age and build the tower immediately, and then the only way that they can deny your gold is by tower rushing you.
Now, the third way is, I think, my favorite, and is just counter by grabbing enough gold, uh, once you see that they're rushing you, and then age up. So, just send like two or three more villagers into the gold, uh, from the sheep to the gold, uh, get the 100 gold you need to age up, and then just pull all your villagers, and then your age up should be quicker because they invested in a Dark Age spear, uh, in Barracks, and if they want to go for a tower, they also invested in that. So, your age up should be a lot quicker. Uh, then you can get an archery range once you age up. His spearmen will be completely useless. And if you have another gold, just go to that other gold and you defend it with archers, and that's it. Uh, you don't need to retake your gold unless, obviously, if it's the only gold you have on this map. Um, sometimes the spawn just doesn't help you at all. And if that's the case, then, uh, yeah, of course, you'll probably do some of the other choices that I, I mentioned before. But if you just have another gold, like, let's say on the back of your base, it's further away, but you can just protect it and go there, then that's fine. And then you will be at an advantage, at an advantage, because you went into Feudal Age, uh, faster, and then you can start spamming archers and horsemen or knights if you have access to them. And, yeah, that is pretty much it.
Now, the thing number four is defending early knights. So, I have seen a lot, a lot of mistakes being done in low elos, uh, when playing against French or JD. What happens is that the knight comes in at around 4:30 to 5 minutes, and you don't have like any defenses yet. You didn't scout it. Uh, and then the knight only needs one charge and one out attack to kill, um, a villager, and that's it. So, if you lose a villager at 5 minutes into the game, you are already so behind because you don't have that many villagers yet, right?
So, how do you counter early knights? It is pretty easy. Once you see the French player age up, you have around 50 to 60 seconds to do something about it because in 50 to 60 seconds, there will be a knight in your base. It is 30 seconds to produce a knight, and then, uh, the time that it gets to that, it takes to get to your base. Obviously, this depends on the map, but just, just say 50 to 60 seconds. And if you don't have anything to defend yourself by then, then you have to pull your villagers back so your villagers don't get killed.
Now, it is extremely important that when you are going against early knights, you place your scout at your enemy's School of Cavalry as soon as they age up. Because if you place your scout there, let's say at around 4:30 minutes, you will know where the knight is coming. And then you don't have to guess whether they're going to attack your berries or your gold or your woodline, or let's say you're playing Mali. Then, if they're going to attack your secondary pit mine, you don't have to guess. You just, you already have your scout there, and then you just follow the knight. You see where it's going, and then you respond accordingly. You respond with spearmen or with, uh, the second thing that is extremely good against these guys, and it is walls. Walls are really good against knights because, uh, it takes a lot of them to to kill walls. Uh, and if they just start killing them, then you just repair them, or you can just place a, a gate in the wall, and then your spearmen can go and attack that knight. So, it just gives you a lot of time to react, uh, to the knights. But it is extremely important that you scout the School of Cavalry at 4 to 4:30 minutes. You see where the first knight is going, and then you respond accordingly.
Now, obviously, you need to produce spearmen. Like, don't delay your Barracks. Just make the Barracks as soon as possible against French and JD, or even against, uh, Golden Horde too, or there are a lot of, uh, civilizations now that can start attacking you with early knights. The other thing is that you need to place towers. Let's say you want to go for a deer pack or a boar. If you go there with five villagers, you will have, you can build a tower, and then if you get attacked, you just garrison all your five villagers, and that gives you time for, uh, your army to come and protect. So, don't neglect towers when playing against knight civilizations. It is extremely important. But out of all of these things, I would say the most important one is scouting. Keep your scout alive. Place your scout at the enemy School of Cavalry as soon as they age up, and then respond to it. Just follow the, the knights. Don't lose sight of the knights because if you lose sight of them, you will get raided from the back of your base, and just wall yourself up before going out.
Now, the third thing that people struggle with is defending Feudal Age Man-at-Arms. I saw so many posts about this of people complaining about English, Macedonian Dynasty, OTD, HRE, and Sushi. These are the civilizations that, uh, can produce Man-at-Arms in Feudal Age. And why are Man-at-Arms really hard to counter? The problem is that in Feudal Age, not every civ has a good counter to Man-at-Arms. But what all almost all civs have, uh, that can counter Man-at-Arms, is cavalry. Uh, and I'm not talking about knights, I'm talking about horsemen.
So, what happens if you see that your opponent is going for, uh, Feudal Age Man-at-Arms? The first thing is that obviously you have to scout. Um, let's say, for example, English is going for farms. That means they want a lot of food in Feudal, uh, and has one, two, or three Barracks. This is obviously a Man-at-Arms rush. Same with OTD. If OTD has a lot of, is going for deer, and has two Barracks, they are going for Man-at-Arms. And also, if they went with the mine work, which is, it means that they may might want blacksmith upgrades really quickly, then that means Man-at-Arms. Uh, if you see HRE, the same with a lot of laxes, it's Man-at-Arms.
Then, now that you know that they are going for Man-at-Arms. If you go for knights, this is obviously good. French, JD, Golden Horde, Mongols, whatever. If you go with heavy cavalry, these are already really good against Man-at-Arms because you can charge into the Man-at-Arms and then disengage, uh, and then you can charge again, and then disengage, and then you deal damage to them. Uh, you can also raid with the Man-at-Arms. But if you don't have access to knights, just go for horsemen. Horsemen are really good because you can just avoid the Man-at-Arms. Horsemen are not the best at, uh, killing Man-at-Arms, uh, but you will be able to just avoid them and raid, uh, the enemy food sources. Raiding the enemy food sources is extremely important because Man-at-Arms cost 100, uh, 100 food and 20 gold. This means that they need a lot of food to produce Man-at-Arms. So, what happens is you also need a lot of food to produce horsemen, but you don't need gold. And the problem for them is going to be that you can raid their food sources, their deer, their berries. Uh, even when you have enough horsemen, you can go into the woodline and attack, uh, their wood villagers too. Uh, and they will not be able to do the same to you. You can go into the food sources. Uh, if they want to attack there, they have to go with a really slow unit, which is the Man-at-Arms, and, uh, and then you can just pull back and, uh, yeah, just keep raiding their food sources, and you will be always at an advantage.
If they want to counter your horsemen or your knights, they will have to produce spearmen. And what are spearmen bad at? Their spearmen are bad at diving. So, once they start producing spearmen, you go for archers to counter those spearmen. Uh, or you can just go fast Castle because they cannot dive you anymore. If they produce spearmen, they won't be able to just dive your towers on your TC like they can with Man-at-Arms. And, yeah, you can just either produce archers, which I, I do not recommend because most of the times, if you don't have that much good micro, then it will be really difficult to target the spearmen instead of the Man-at-Arms. So, what you can do is just go fast Castle in that, in that moment. Get the gold you need, get the food you need, stop producing units, and just keep raiding with your horsemen so your opponent has to protect, uh, with his units, and just go fast Castle. And once you're in fast Castle, you can produce crossbows or knights to counter them in Man-at-Arms.
Now, some civilizations can do something pretty cool, and it's just wall themselves up and go straight into fast Castle. So, I would say probably, uh, like Japan, Sengoku, uh, Ayubids, can go for this. And also depends on the map, of course, like if you are in Hylandale, you can just wall the front part of your base and just go fast Castle and produce crossbows, and that's it. There, they can't do anything else. That depends obviously on your civilization. Uh, but that is also something you can do.
Now, the thing number two that people struggle with is punishing fast Castles. What happens here? What happens is that, or at least what I've seen people talk about, is that they have trouble when the opponent just goes into fast Castle. Uh, because most of these guys are lower elos, their Feudal aggression is not fast enough to prevent them from going into fast Castle. So, let's say, for example, Japan, Ayubids, Macedonian Dynasty, these are all civilizations that are really good at just placing, uh, a tower on their gold and going straight to fast Castle as fast as possible, and then they produce knights, uh, and with the knights, they can, uh, kill your Feudal army, or, uh, just go around, around the Feudal army and raid your food sources.
So, what do you do in this case? First, if they go into fast Castle, there are some civilizations that, uh, you pretty much cannot prevent it, uh, unless they have like a really forward gold. So, let's say Japan, if you're going against Japan, they are going to get into fast Castle one way or another. But what you have to think about is just mentalize yourself that fast Castle is going to happen, and that you need to keep calm. Like, let's say you have been producing units in Feudal Age and attacking the gold, but you cannot deny the gold because he has towers and just like a couple of units to defend it, and you don't have enough units to just attack the towers, uh, before he gets to Castle. Once he gets to Castle, stay calm, produce spearmen. Each spearman, if you have like 10 of them, one Samurai will not, one mounted Samurai will not be able to kill your 10 Feudal Age spearmen, right? Uh, so just keep calm, stay in Feudal, take your time to produce a big enough army, and then you can go and attack the gold. But don't suicide your units. You have to keep your units alive. You have to make a spearman, and then, uh, you can make archers if he has, uh, spearmen as well, or you can make horsemen if he has archers. So, just make a really good army. Make siege engineering. Make one siege ram, is all you need. You don't need more than that to kill, uh, uh, one or two towers and then kill the gold vein, and you can defend the mounted Samurai or the knights or whatever with the spearmen.
The second thing that you can do is just raid the food, uh, as much as you can. Like, one knight, let's say they get into, into Castle, and you have 20 horsemen, or 15 horsemen, 10 horsemen, just use these horsemen to constantly raid their food sources. Like, if they have one or two knights, they are not going to be able to defend the gold and their food sources all at the same time, and also raid you. So, if you keep your army around the enemy base and keep them enclosed within that space, they will not be able to raid you with mounted Samurai. So, don't worry about getting raided. Just keep calm, keep producing units, and slowly go towards a fast Castle yourself in the back of your Feudal Age army. Like, your Feudal Age army will be more than enough to defend, uh, three, four, or five mounted Samurai. So, don't worry about it. Just keep making units, and you can, uh, kill the gold vein towers and also raid their food sources.
Now, if you are a knight civ, like French or JD, just keep producing knights and nothing else. Like, knights, battle-hardened knights will destroy Castle Age knights if they are, like, twice or thrice in number. Like, you should have all, you should be able to have all the map control in the world with all of your Feudal Age knights, and you can just keep raiding your opponent, keep depriving them of resources. And you can also place like one knight at each of the, uh, relics so they cannot sneak relics by, by you and capture them, and then they can get passive gold. So, pay attention to the relics as well.
Now, the third thing you can do is that you can go for a Dark Age rush. Let's say you have Japan yourself, or you can have Ottoman or Mongols, or whatever, and you're going against a fast Castle civ like Ayubids. If you Dark Age rush them, they will have to respond accordingly. They will have to either stay in Feudal and fight, or delay their Castle by a lot. So, Dark Age rush is a really good strategy against this.
And the last thing is just go fast Castle yourself. Like, if you're playing against Japan, and you have Ayubids, let's say, for example, just go fast Castle. Don't, no need to stay in Feudal, no need to, uh, make units, just go fast Castle and, uh, produce the counter to knights immediately. So, obviously, if they are making Feudal, don't just go naked fast Castle because then you can die. Uh, but this is also something you can do if you see they are going for a naked fast Castle.
Now, an honorable mention before we go to the number one is Mangudai. How do you counter Mangudai? So, this was something that used to have a lot of hate towards. Uh, but now they suck. They just suck, man. Like, since they got nerfed, if you go horsemen, you can chase the Mangudai with the horsemen. And because they are moving now, their DPS will decrease to less than, uh, less than half than they had before. So, Mangudai right now, they're just not a good unit. And most Mongol players I've seen just never make them. They are making archers instead now. Uh, so just make horsemen or make archers. Either of those are fine. Mangudai just suck.
So, yeah, let's go now to the number one, which is Keep Rushes. Keep rushes is the one that I've seen most people complain about, and how do you deal with them? So, first, there are four civilizations that can Keep Rush. Knights Templar, which I have never seen a Knights Templar fortress rush because it just sucks. Like, you won't be able to get a, a fortress rush and then also protect your, your economy at the same time. Uh, so I'm not going to talk that much about KT. Now, the other three civilizations. Let's start with the first one. Let's start with Tughlak. How do you counter a Tughlak fort rush? First, you need to scout the stone. Like I said at the beginning of the video, at around the 4 to 5 minutes, or I would say even less, like around the 4 minute, just go into their stone and see if they're mining. Now, if they're mining, keep your scout there and see if those villagers are going to go into your base. Now, if they are going into your base, now you have a couple of options.
The first one is you can scan your base and see where is the most likely place they are going to fort rush you. Once you see that, and once you see that their villagers are going towards that place, you can make a small wall there with your own villagers, and that way they cannot place the fort at that place because there will be a wall there blocking the spot.
Now, if you are not fast enough to build that wall, just, once you see that the fort rush is coming, immediately grab all of your villagers and start attacking the fort. Like, even before they get there, like you have your scout, you know when they are going to get there, just grab all your villagers, and once they start building the, the fort, you attack the fort, and the fort will die immediately. The fort rush without any upgrades is pretty much like two towers worth of HP. Like, it doesn't have that much HP. I think 2K HP or something like that. Uh, so you can just burn it down with villagers, or you can just make units immediately as you see that they're mining stone, and once they get there, like they get there at around the 4:30, like around the 5 minute, you already have units there to defend it.
Now, if they do get the fort up, just move all of your economy towards the back of your base, go towards other places. It doesn't matter. Just make cavalry and start raiding their, their economy at the back of their base. Like, they won't have enough units to defend that, and they won't have enough units to raid your villagers at the back of your base because even though they're denying, let's say, your TC, your gathering around your TC, uh, even though you have to walk like a little bit, uh, towards the other places of your base, it doesn't matter because they had to walk like 10 villagers to your base, uh, to start placing the fort. So, don't worry about the economy being bad. Just go towards the back of your base and produce a lot of units. You will have more economy, uh, go more production and more army, and then you can just kill all of their units. Raid them at the back of their base. They cannot defend both places at the same time, and then you will be good.
Now, against English or Lancaster, which is the white tower rush, it is extremely easy. It is the easiest thing to see. So, the first thing is that they won't have any units. The second thing is that you just scout their gold. They are mining a lot of gold. They are not mining any wood. That means they don't want to make any production buildings or stay in Feudal. And they are mining a lot of, uh, food. That screams fast Castle. And if you see a fast Castle, just keep your scout at their base. See when they're going to move out with the villagers. And if you have units, which you should, uh, in the Feudal Age, just, uh, go and attack their villagers when they have, when they are moving towards your base, or even better, just attack them before that. Like, if you just go into the English, uh, gold vein and attack it, they will have to either defend themselves, stay in Feudal, uh, or build, uh, multiple towers, which in turn will delay their fast Castle. So, it is the easiest thing to counter.
Even if they get the white tower up, what you can do is just go to fast Castle yourselves. You should have more economy because they had to walk a lot of villagers towards your base and start driving it down. Just, same thing applies, uh, as, uh, what I said about Tughlak fortress. Get your economy towards the back of your base. Uh, start driving down the white tower, and build horsemen or knights. These are extremely important because they will be able to destroy the battering rams that will they will produce with the white tower, or you can use them to just raid the base that is completely undefended, and they will have almost no villagers or almost no army, and you can just raid them and kill them.
So, yeah, these are the things that I have for you. Top five strategies and how to counter them. So, I hope you enjoyed that, and see you the next time.