Transcription
So, everyone else is fixating on what the best civ is in the game, but I really want to hone in on what really matters. Which civ is the worst in the game? So, we lined up a Golden Horde versus Abbasid matchup to start asking that important question. >> [laughter] >> Oh, welcome back to town, folks. Yeah, it's it's an important question, actually. Uh I just realized for some reason the overlay I set hasn't loaded, so we'll figure that out once. All right, there we go. We got you guys' UI.
Yeah, so Golden Horde and Abbasids kind of weird one, right? Like both of these civs have not been highly desirable. Although, Abbasids I think they're good tempo. We've seen that. I mean, it even got mentioned in the chat. PuppyPaws proved that actually in the DC finals. Like, there are ways to leverage this civ. A lot of people think of it as a late game civ, but they're surprisingly effective for feudal timing, situationally. This could be one of those times. You know, up against Golden Horde.
Golden Horde, no doubt about it. You get to the late game, you know, even after the nerfs, there's some good power plays. However, there's also a very fair argument that the early game is still a giant struggle. It It almost feels like you're prepping to play aggressive, and if your opponent doesn't participate in that, then you just can't really do anything. It's a weird civ. Like, um I think actually a lot of the new civs kind of have this, right? Macedonians would be the other one that I see this with a lot. Is they require the participation ribbon, but if you ignore that, they really hate life. Beasty odds. How's the spawn looking? This is actually pretty good one. I like this. Okay, so there's some hope here.
I think like first thing you got to look at here is if Abbasid is going to try to aggro you, having both of the oovoo placements on the back is so powerful. Remember, this civ can have additional uvoos operational at any given time, and they will generate additional stone based on age. That's really important to keep in mind here. Like, that stone injection, getting it rolling early and secure, allows you to get these very powerful technologies that make Golden Horde feel like a gold tier civ. Vortix put Abbasid in A tier. Didn't he lose to them in the grand finals, though? So, I can kind of like also see the logic there. I don't think I put Abbasid in A tier. I think I feel like they're B tier civ. I think they're B tier because like they're situational. I would not back Abbasid to beat any civ. No. I think there's certain matchups where they are surprisingly effective cuz they stop some really like cheesy or popular strats. But, you know, if you're picking civs that I would slide anywhere, you know, it's not like a Byzantine type pick. Um it's not like a Japanese pick. It's not like an Ottoman pick. Not like a Malian pick. The problem is when they get bad matchups, they look like one of the worst things in the world.
So, is going to be an ecoing build. So, like this is an example, like I mentioned Byzantines. If you've done this build up against Byzantines, I think it's very hard to pull off. We've seen multiple examples where it backfires easily. But, against Beasty on the Golden Horde, I I think you don't care. This stone placement, I guess you could I don't know if you TC drop out here, that's a bit risky, but with the way the treelines are spawning here, you could TC drop the back side of the treeline and be really secure. Yeah, that's another thing we're playing on What is it? Is it the tropical rainforest? This is a little bit weird, actually. Uh different biomes change how maps spawn. You guys may have noticed that we cast one of these recently on Arabia. The treelines don't ever spawn like this on on like temperate and European. This is a weird thing that happens when you play different biomes.
Now, my personal take about the biome detail, I think I don't mind the maps spawn differently if the game actually informed you of this. But, the problem is when you're loading into a pub game, you can't see what biome has been selected until you're on the loading screen. At which point, let's say I know I'm playing this map, the treelines going to be very different, and maybe because of that they're worse for raids, which is a fair point with the concave. That means if I picked, say, Golden Horde, and I'm planning to go for the raining, I'm maybe in a worse position than if we played European temperate. So, yeah. I think they definitely need to change something there. Either they need to realign it so the spawns are consistent despite whatever biome you pick, or they need to make it so that before you even get into game, you know exactly what biome, not just what map you're playing. It's very silly that we've gone this many years with this being the case, actually. Like, cuz biome selection has been a thing for a long time. Those who don't know, when you play on the ladder, you would get one of three different biomes selected for your map. And they are preordained. The developers choose which biomes are viable for each map.
So, what's Beasty up to? It looks like we are going to get the Khan probably into Torguts beginning cuz he did go for the Khan and Torguts' choice. Second uvoo already coming alive, which goes to show you can just keep spamming those out. Beasty. Second TC coming in momentarily. If he drops it on the stone, okay, it's free TC. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> That's pretty much confirmed, isn't it? How did he do on sheep? Uh nine sheep here is not crazy, though. Beasty has 16. So, there is going to be a food problem for Beasty? I don't know if he tried to sneak out into this deer park, but that'd be I think that'd be impossible. With the Khan and Torguts coming, that would be a death sentence. GH is really slow? Yeah. Even when they try to play aggressive, they feel slow because their production rates are slow. Remember, this is a civ that has to produce in batch, meaning you wait double the time. You want to get some keshiks out? That's a whole minute. Right? Like, I I I think it's cool to have this batch production idea, but also I would say simultaneously, did we not learn from Order of the Dragon? Cuz one of the big flagged points about Order of the Dragon where they feel weird to play, like you'd be disadvantaged, is you are essentially saving up double the resources to then wait even longer to produce a unit. That exact same problem is occurring here. And the weird thing is the devs were somewhat aware of it because they did make the town center produce workers quicker. 37 instead of 40 seconds. But, on the flip side, they allowed this situation. Maybe it'd be more complicated, but my mindset would be it would make more sense to change Golden Horde so that you could queue up one of a unit, but you could queue up two of a unit. And if you queue up two of a unit, it 1.5 x's like the the time required or something like that. Like, this isn't a perfect solution, but I'm spitballing this whole idea that you could batch queue. A bit like what Age of Empires 3 had. Cuz Age of Empires 3 had this where you could start queuing units, and it would have like 40 seconds till that unit produces. But, then you could queue up to four more units, but it would come up at the same time. Uh but the problem with that, like in AoE4, I think that would be kind of imba if you were able to like last second add in others and have them pump out. But, the idea of like having an alternate version where you can choose to single queue or double queue, I would quite like. I don't know. It's a weird one. Like, there is an argument once Golden Horde do get going with their batch production, they get insane. But, like we're usually talking about the triple batch production. That is indeed when it gets ridiculous.
Beasty just maxing out the Torguts. Also, did go for an early stockyard, by the way. I think this is going to become increasingly more popular. It feels like the passive strategy with even better, I want to say. It feels so efficient, man. Like, 250 wood sounds like a lot. I think the only issue with this strat is like you will have to move out here. That's the only negative of going for an early stockyard is you need to actually get additional wood cuz it's 250 wood is a low. But, once you get these people in position, they're never moving. They've got a gathering rate that's actually more impressive than standard sheep um quite quickly in the game. You know, when you add in the fact that they practically don't move to drop off, like it's just ticks ticks ticks every box imaginable. And because it's 250 wood compared to 300 wood for farms that would cover four workers, it's a damn good deal. It's even better than you realize because like normally as the game goes on, you're going to have to add in a mill for your farms. You don't have to do that with stockyards.
By the way, Beasty, interesting TC placement in the end. I guess he just wanted to create more protection towards the gold and the secondary TC. So, he's just created a defensive triangle. It could have been better being here, but if he put it on the gold, he actually wouldn't have good protection for the second TC here, though. Yeah, so pretty much just layering like eight stronger together type logic. Beasty now bulking up archers. Really wants to look for that blacksmith timing if he's doing what I think he's doing here, which is all in assault. Which makes sense against free TC. You know, you can either try to tech ahead and play relic rush or try to all in. And I feel like we're past the point where you can just tech ahead in time. 14 villagers lead is crazy. That's free TC, baby. Remember, remember, he also gets discounts. He's free TC, but he's spending as much on his villager production, actually less than you'd spend on two TC while being free. Cuz he's spending 90 food uh rotation with each town center, whereas on two TC, you spend 100. This is where Abbasids are technically meant to be stronger. This is when they can get away with the TC greed. Problem is at pro level, it's becoming increasingly difficult to do. So, for good company been able to stop it. No textiles, maybe a little bit too greedy for Beasty. Spearmen will turn Myriad. His archers aren't here. Turtlegod is shifting to south side. One of them already got sniped out in this area though. He is also adding in Keshik so that's pretty smart. We see that a lot right now from Golden Horde players. Turtlegod themselves not very good killers. Keshik are they're 50% high damage but they have substantially less health. So, the whole idea is kind of like playing men-at-arms plus spears against archers. You're literally in these premium units with these squishy units. The idea is meant to be that like you know, it's not as much about damage absorption as it is with men-at-arms. It's more about I can actually kill things. These archers just I don't like to arrive though. Farm count is getting a lot better for Beasty. He's definitely not out of the woods yet. Has got still down the way. Very smart here with the three TC triangle. The food is becoming a bigger and bigger crucial problem here. It looks like it's going to be sneak out. Myriad, he brought everything together. Beasty was waiting for this moment. Yeah, I mean Myriad he in some ways had the right idea. He blocked the berry farm on the left side. But now he should have giant question marks about where his opponent is getting food. Problem is there's so much food on the south side. He has to kind of camp it but might be worth killing one or two troopers just to go check these resources. That's the thing. The fresh food stuffs might make a Beasty very lean on the food usage. They still need food. They still need a thing for the workers to do. So, when you're playing against these ultra greedy plays that's the thing you got to think about. Maybe not so much if you're a low rank player cuz low rank players more often will go for farms anyway. But pro-level even with the discounts from Bell pressing massing out farms can kill you. Look at this for a killing blow. Myriad jumps in. He ends up killing a few workers off. Has now blocked out the wood gathering entirely. Also does have Keshiks waiting on the left side. But he doesn't quite see this. It's going to be a straggler tree strategy. And Beasty by the skin of his teeth is going to get away with it. That's unbelievable. He sees him as well. So, he knows that Myriad is parked here. But Myriad oh my god, no. Come on. >> [laughter] >> Just a little bit further over. Keshik's going to pull away now. Gets the battle on this side. Things are ramping up nicely but keep in mind Beasty has still got a lot of food gathering out here. 10 on the deer. For the undergrowth. It's going to be going to chase away the Keshiks. Take the straggler trees. Relic Uvus now on the way for Myriad however. He didn't have the timing for the rotation grazing. I think that's maybe like one thing in hindsight is would Myriad have been better off just for our playing into deers and boars for this strat? Cuz I know I said that the stockyards are really nice but that's like when someone has cavalry. But technically Beasty didn't have cavalry at first. He only had spears. He's setting up even more archers. Uh technically with just mass archers Myriad can deal with most of the army at this base. Nice intercept on the berries. Heavy cav's going to go for the charge in. Just keeping that count down. Now, remember he's playing Relic Uvus which means he can get insane stone gen if he rushes those relics. Now, there's a good timing in mind here for Myriad. Love to see him just starting to like stop all the stone now. Three TC Abba, right? Like when was the last time you saw someone do this? Even with eco wing usually people stop at two. I feel like you have to go back to pre-Camelot in this this. Another farm being found. It's kind of a shame Golden Horde don't get paid for this, right? Would that be broken? I don't feel like it would be busted if they got bounty though. Like don't let them have improved bounty but it's kind of weird they get no bounty. Myriad 10 seconds out from Relic Uvus. Beasty is prepping for his own castle play now. Has got enough spearmen to feel fairly safe. Like yes, the archers will be strong for a direct fight but Myriad will be reluctant to dive the base because even if he vets the archers up it's still an unarmored unit underneath the town center. I'm going to I'm going to burst the bubble for you guys. I don't know if you know this but the veteran archers cannot be at town center. Someone's going to be like, "No, but that archer just rolls up their sleeves." No, no that guy is the Basically should not win. They They do you've you've let a lot of archers die to achieve that. Like a lot. Wait, is Myriad even gone for the relics yet? I don't think he has. Uh okay. Horseman also getting raided. I mean Beasty's finding trick with damage folks. Oh my god, seven worker kills so far. Myriad's. He needs a more solid answer and fast. Both are on the second TC but the torch armor makes it a lot slower. Feudal city just kicking for the archers. Is it me or does Myriad not have much of a military lead? No and now the dive comes in and this is what I was worried about. If Beasty target fires the archers it's easy kills. Another farm being hit. Farm crew on the third town center. Horsemen are still raiding. Oh my god, Beasty. He's getting such insane value off a small group of ponies. More out of time being achieved. Farm is being successful on the third TC so Beasty now if he loses workers it actually matters. Beasty still hasn't even started the castle up. It definitely feels like Myriad gave over a lot more than he should. Beasty essentially evened out the worker kill count there. He's at 19. Now, the clash. Spearmen they go in with the phalanx tech. Cav Oh my god, they just get melted. Phalanx is a hell of a difference here. Archers should eventually win out. Beasty takes a lot of the truly freaking cavalry with him. >> [screaming] >> Feel like killing the bounty counts a cheat code as long as it's Turtlegod. Just keep switching the damage over. So, despite the fact that like Myriad looks like he took a really good fight. The problem now is he doesn't have anything to dive [laughter] the primary town center with. He has however okay for the whole fight. Yeah, this is might take a while. He's now leaving. Okay, so like in Myriad's defense I will say and I don't know if anyone else has felt this. I feel like one thing I hate about stockyards is they feel really annoying to micro around with your workers like seek your shelter and then like micro them onto them again. Also, I don't know like subconsciously you feel like they should be safe watching this little enclosure thing but they're not. More damage done there. Beasty maintained a 14 plus worker lead. Big problem here folks is Myriad still hasn't got a single relic. No, which is a really big problem here. For the Relic Uvu strat to make sense I mean you are getting more stone by default like picking that landmark. You're missing out on so much stone gen. That could allow for this men-at-arms strat to truly punch. >> [cheering] >> Yeah, cuz remember if he gets up to the 950 mark you get batch production. You get batch production you get a whole extra men-at-arms per circulation for free. He went Relic Uvu? Yep. Which also has made this like weird and now that he's a men-at-arms diving a base doesn't it? >> [laughter] >> Oh, yeah like actually if if he had gone for the armor Beasty's outpost defense doesn't work. Cuz right now he's doing seven damage. Your men-at-arms I mean they got six armor so they're fine there actually like I guess it should be fine. Maybe that's why Myriad didn't think it was worth it. Cuz he's like if I'm going to get raised armor two it's good enough. Like I defend No, no I I think I think he made the right call. It's just a shame he's only now going for relics. >> [screaming] >> Only going to get mopped up. Horsemen around the back find practically all archers. Only men-at-arms left. Still, if he can start picking up relics there's a way here for Myriad. Armor one gives you wood. That's true but like to defend it another way you do immediately get an extra 24 stone per minute. It's nowhere near as high as the winning comp for sure. But if you now get the relics it's a huge boon. In fact, has he gone for the third? Yeah, okay so it's an extra 36. He's already got an extra 36 stone a minute. And like it's what do you weigh more? Like if you're going for an all-in kill point straight away definitely You see the logic behind Musofadi Yasak, the the armor. But, if you think the game's going to drag a bit further, the stone gen is crazy. You just got to remember Golden Horde's strongest plays all are hidden locked behind stone gen plays. Beasty still destroying trees over here, man. Yeah, the problem is this this frontline. Like, you never feel safe going for it. And he's actually going camel archers now, which can be a good answer to men-at-arms. Now, this is where having Musofadi Yasak would have made sense. Because camel archers have 12 base. Oh, sorry, 11 base and then they've got the plus one. So, now now your armor could have benefited substantially. He would have been up to eight armor. Military wing also on the way from Beasty. The relic game, what are we looking at so far? Has he pulled any back? Uh Mir Ad? Oh, no. Please tell me we remembered that we uh All right, guys, this is looking pretty bad. If he immediately deploys all the relics and gets batch production, maybe. But, I it's not. Raiding the farms. We'll find a few workers. It's kind of feel like Mir Ad has fatigued himself out here though on these pushes. The triple outpost really has screwed the pooch for him. And he's just it just kind of feels like he's lost track of things, really. Like, the monk time I wonder if he could have gotten in a lot earlier and how different the game would have looked if Wally was diving the base, he was picking five relics. And there's a cool strat here. Yeah, he's doing it now. Like, just drop them straight away. Don't walk them back home. Just build them here. Move around the map deploying them. Cuz then you get that huge injection of stone. But, this has been anything but fast. Like, bro, can you can you move? Like, just jobs? >> [screaming] >> Oh, god. >> [groaning] >> Yeah, I guys, I think Beasty's probably got it. Mir Ad needs to make a move fast. He has now gone to rams. There is kind of a growing feeling of like, would this have been good if we just done it several minutes ago instead, you know? Cuz if he had just two rams on that dive previously, you know, he pretty much had dealt with spears. Uh there was still horsemen, I guess, so it wouldn't have been the easiest, but like it would have been a way of dealing with these torch-resistant outposts. Cuz remember, it's not just like the five fire armor, it's 10 fire armor due to the House of Wisdom. That's actually what makes Abassid outpost defenses so toxic. If you can't build a ram, you just can't do it. Diving the base now. Camel archers plus three minutes to defend. And he's got new horsemen springing out as well, which going to draw away from frontline hold. Or you have to lose the archers. Either way, a big negative here. Mir Ad, I feel like we're just not getting it. Another wave gets pushed back. The new wave rallying across feels like it's going to be slow. Casual raid on the flank is at least good. I mean, you know, it's not like there's a gazillion workers out here deforesting the area that we could kill. They've been >> [laughter] >> working so hard to get rid of stealth forest. This right here is the anti-stealth forest coalition. It's kind of fun to watch free TC Abba win with zero food. That's fun? That that when you when you say it like like that, it sounds depressing. I guess if you're an Abassid main, then it sounds fun. You know, like if we're being totally real, Abba mains in 2025 are freaks. I'm sorry. Like, well well like like okay, like I'm not I'm not shaming you. But, you have to be into some crazy stuff to like be to be sticking with Abba in 2025, you know? That's like being an Ipswich Town Football Club fan in 2024 made sense, but then in 2025, you got to have something wrong with you, you know? You know, that's like that's like saying you buy Call of Duty games for the campaign. Hey, oh, okay, I got you. I actually did like some of the campaigns a long time ago. No, you know what it it that's like saying you bought Fortnite for the um the single player mode. Yeah, there you go. That's the weirder one. We found it. All right, Beasty is pretty chill mode now. He's gone back for an extra TC on the factory line. Walls already up. Now Beasty on the march. Golem mass here as well. And Mir Ad's men-at-arms can trade reasonably to Golem. The problem's going to be crossbows. Not looking like a game where Mir Ad can keep up. And now he's finally resorting to upgrading and including Karash in the coming moments. He also just went for the Karash edict, which I get the idea. Just bodies for the fight. But, knights come through. Mir Ad's frontline definitely not going to hold on as long as Beasty. Knights come through on the relic outposts as well. Even losing some workers now. Good blockout actually from the one men-at-arms on the gold line. The wave number one of the Abassid apocalypse seems to be successful. Probably won't need the wave number two, but send them anyway. Oh my god, even a few horsemen wrapped around the back. So, now Mir Ad in full retreat. Yeah, this is a little bit weird actually. He never switched over to the four five outposts. It's easy to forget, but guys, when you're defending your outposts like that, you want to be toggling into defensive aura. Defensive aura is pretty strong. He did get five Karash instead, but he could have had 10 10 more health on that frontline. Which would have made a lot harder for Beasty to break. Beasty now going to retreat. Rams to follow. Golem mass continues. We do at least see relics now making their way home. Finally. It we had to wait a little bit. A biggity bit. But, Mir Ad now has what? Three relics in his purview? Um yeah. No, well, kind of. He needs to He actually needs to plug them first. >> [screaming] >> Mir Ad unfortunately just isn't on the same level as Beasty. That's a bold thing to say considering Beasty only just beat him in the KPM map. That series was a five-game series though. Beasty won three to two. So, Mir Ad can Like, the thing you have to keep in mind though is this is just a very unusual civ in many ways. Still being discovered. Both of them are kind of rediscovering what they do. >> [cheering] >> Mir Ad forced to defend again. Batu Khan is gone though. So, that's going to be a lack of damage buff as the fight continues on. Going to make it much harder to try and hold this. Beasty is going to try to brute force his way through now. He does have the boot camp, remember? So, very tanky by comparison. That does look like the killing blow. I can't believe this, man. Like, it's five minutes in. You think about how most of this game went. I think Mir Ad, this is the type of game that like you want to review to improve, right? Instead of just throwing all his outposts at Beasty. There was a few things. Obviously, the relic Ubers choice into the delay on even picking up relics was a big deal with Golden Horde. I think the other thing is the relentless dives. Like, what are you diving for there? Um but, you know, even earlier than that, he had the right idea, but maybe in the wrong place. Like, he wasn't blocking out these deer. The sneak on the stealth forest is pretty rough. High view, I think this is always this very polarizing map for people to adjust to. Like, most players when they play attacker prefer to just play raiding and not all in for that very reason. Props the effort in the end though. And I can't believe I'm saying this at the end of 2025, Abassid free TC is pretty lit.