Age of Empires 2 is so complex, I can't comprehend how one can decide to get competitive

T90 has a habit of claiming there is no counter to things he lost to 11

I LOVE the score spoiler thing, just incase you get to the video before watching others in the set ! Please keep it up on other sets !

Sneaking out and dispersing into different areas of the map and the back bases is one way to help turn the tide and start putting pressure back on the Portuguese. Counter attack their base and build your castle in their base instead of your own.

Yesterday I had a match, that was 2v2 500pop Black Forrest deathmatch. What I did not notice it was also full-tech-tree match. Me, noticing one of my opponents chose Portuguese, picked Italians, because Condotierro. Issue with my plan was the full tech tree barracks, which turned out to lack Condotierros, in their stead were Eagle Warriors. As it turns out combo of: Siege Onagers, Camel Riders, Organ Guns, Bombard Cannons and castle drops, backed by 14 feitorias, is hard to stop without something killing those Organ Guns. And no, spam of Hussars from 28 stables was not enough.

You can really do this with a lot of civs like the Saracens, Turks, etc. and it works just as well as Portuguese. While Organ guns are great because they can't be easily countered with Monks, my favorite civ to use is Saracens because of how much you use the market with this strat and Mams are really good in their own way for things like killing scouts so you can gather the relics or defending mams or monks. Really all you're trying to do is get your opponent to over invest so you can beat them to Imp and win the treb war, or underinvest and lose important buildings, which is why Saracens are so good at this. When defending against this usually making more TC's is a really bad idea and almost always loses to this strat if done correctly from my experience. You have to get to imp asap. The one who wins the treb war is the one who wins the game.

I kinda feel like hope should had committed those imp resources to castle age army

My hidden favorite for aggressive castle drops on arena are the Huns. Most players underestimate the damage Tarkans do to buildings. Super strategy for teamgames to crush one flank. The Transition to cav archers after is easy aswell.

been a little absent here, but just some feedback, I LOVE that you have the score spoiler. It usually always ruined the series but this is a big improvement imo

Toilet paper league 😂😂😂 5:54

There's so much potential for building a tower that touches your opponent's castle. You want to build it close anyway, so it's less likely to miss villagers on the second volley, but so often players build a tower a couple tiles away from the castle. A tower a few tiles away is easily destroyed since castles get a bonus vs towers and stone walls, while a properly-protected tower that touches the castle requires either some expensive military investment, or university + murder holes (total 500 resources) to destroy. Portuguese are one of the worse civs to try this against, since organ guns have 4 pierce armor and high ranged damage, but against a lot of civs a tower and siege workshop next to a castle could let you destroy it with a lot less investment than usually required in castle age. The siege workshop is for rams, while the tower is to kill the mangonel that would otherwise easily kill the rams.

Enjoying all of the Arena games!

I’m actually improving looking at T90s content 🎉

If organ guns costed food, this could be alleviated somewhat

How to counter this strategy: I fully support nerfing the secondary projectiles of Organ Guns (and Chu Ko Nu, and Kipchaks) to only do 1 damage vs rams. This would make it more effective to use rams as a damage soak, as you can against other ranged units with fast projectiles. But Burgundians have maybe the best unit to counter this strategy. Doing 8+20 damage on the first attack is no joke. Magyar Huszar are maybe slightly more cost-effective vs just siege, but Coustilliers also get the bonus against monks and any other units that get added in. Obviously, Coustilliers require a castle. Hope was in a bad position partly due to getting bow saw and heavy plow on the way up to Castle age, which he didn't cancel after he saw Somero's castle. Contrast Hoang's style of not getting any upgrades, not for eco and often not even for military, in order to have just one or two more units fighting on the field. That Heavy Plow upgrade didn't see any use until two new farms were made around 11:50 (20:00 game time), and the game ended only 13 minutes later. Farms with just Horse Collar would have lasted about 11m30s, so most farms before the game ended were not in any risk of expiring and this was basically a wasted 250 resources at an early point in the game. Basically, Hope had not really played against Organ Guns before, thought of them as a non-serious strategy choice, and did not know how to counter them, and so he continued his plan without really adjusting once he saw the castle drop. He tried some things that did not work because of this lack of experience and this cost him the game. Coustillier can kill organ guns; it's easier if the castle does not have ballistics and if you use one coustillier as a runner to distract the castle's fire. It would be good, of course, to take advantage of the slow speed of organ guns by raiding enemy's base, far from the castle, but this can be difficult if you can't stop the offensive pressure from the organ guns. Watch towers without fletching do only 1 damage each, and while garrisoning a tower can deter a single organ gun just like it can a single mangonel, organ guns are usually massed and fletching becomes essential. Fully-garrisoned watch towers with Bodkin arrow could be enough to hold vs organ guns, if the towers are promptly repaired, and every civ can do this unlike guard tower which some (like Huns) don't have. 5 villagers in a watch tower with bodkin add (25/7 rounded down) 3 arrows, or 12 damage per volley, while in a guard tower with 7+2 attack they would add 2 arrows (with the last villager adding nothing), for 15 damage per volley. Watch tower with fletching only would be +4 arrows, total 10 damage per volley; guard tower with fletching only would be +3 arrows, total 16 damage per volley. Again, if you don't repair the tower and keep the repairers safe, a bunch of organ guns can just kill the tower and then it's like this game. Long comment is long!

Nili had a similar game againt magougou today. He won it with poles vs. portuguise. Pretty amazing, hopefully he puts it on youtube.

One onion layer around your base might be OP strat against castle drops on arena

I think the devs need to nerf their range by 1 before elite. It is pissing me off that you cant even counter them with mangonels on even terms

a couple defensive towers definitely stops the push in its place for a long time, then it just becomes a basic mangonel fight. This is basically just a classic one TC push vs 2 TC crunch matchup. If the crunch player doesn't answer quickly, they miss out badly. The idea that knights don't work here is wrong, organ guns crumble to knights with their minimum distance. You just keep even numbers and out-produce with the extra vills. Trading always benefits the player with the stronger eco. Then when the fight evolves, you get monks to counter their monks. Get to imp faster since they spent so much on that castle and have fewer vills and just treb them down.

Takes less time for an Organ gun to fire 7 cannons, that for a man to fire just 1 xd

I think you nailed the name at first with Manure League

send in the *_Piano Cannons_* !!

7:36 make or drink? silly horse. 😃

I make 22 farms on Arabia feudal sometimes and this can imp with 5 farms 😂

Yeah Bronze league is a dumb idea, but there's no denying a lot of us lel players would just about killl to see our games casted and get solid advice and feedback. So here's what I think you should do. Pick a range. Let's say 500-600 elo. Put out a call. Do a lottery and choose 10 players for a short league, best of one. Nobody needs prize money, we just wanna be seen and get solid feedback on our play. Betcha anything there'd be an audience. And next time ya feel like it pick an elo range and put out the call again. Easy and fun. :)

Who the f*** thought it was a good idea to make organ gun a CASTLE AGE unit? Opponent has horses, spearmen and swordsmen? Cool, I've got a flipping armada of organ guns to mow down all of your units while also being able to destroy massive structures.

Maybe to put an outpost at the two most enemy-wise corners will give the defender an early warning, so as to start amassing stone for a home castle. How will it help the defender is questionable, I have to admit, but it will be better than this.

After i died horribly to it, i expected that my portugese enemy would do this strat again so i prepared scouts, knights and spears after clicking to castle age. i catched the enemys vils of guard, killed many and forced him to build a castle in front of his base. While producing of two TCs i made knights from three stables and when he knocked on my door with monks and organs i had enough to overwhelm him. Having teutons and expecting this strategy were keey.

10:30 TC (as played) or another siege workshop and wait for a mass of mangos? By 11:10 you talked about towers? Maybe both and then leave 3 or 4 vills in the tower whilst you mass siege? These plays are difficult because the opponent has a massive army lead

i love arena, i lost my age of empires disks when my house got on fire, but i wish i could play it again someday!

i feel like monks with redemption would stop this push pretty fast. and also gives you opportunity to think about relics. what do i know im low elo tho

This sort of reminds me of the Hussite Wagons pre nerf, I think they were also pretty strong and coudl take down mangos. Now, mangonels absolutely destroy them due to their abysmal damage output. I think one consideration for organ guns would be to reduce their damage vs siege.

Imo the best (generic castle age) counter to CD organ guns is having the same amount of ressources spent to mangonel (which means that you might consider 2nd workshop). If you go one workshop and send the mangonels in one by one and trade one vs one then you will lose. Two defensive castles also might do the job on arena.

I just found out about the Persian tc strat. Thought it was unbeatable, maybe I need to get better at placement maybe but it’s definitely beatable 😂

Nerf - 1 range to organguns... I thought it's a nightmare only at my elo 1100-1200, but also at pro level it's so hard to counter. Or make them big negative arrow resistance... I always ban arena in my ranked games because of Portuguese haha.

Would full feudal tower drop work? 4 vils forward, drop the tower and take down their wall while they’re so focused on a clean fast castle. Would at least make it messy and prevent the castle drop.

Hussite Wagon rush should do pretty well against Burgundians too, then. I mean you’d think, right?

Heads up to the best commentator of games ever. Cheers.

Maybe Persians tower rush into douche at 19 pop has a shot?

I got wiped by this strat in a rage forest game with the amigos. Very stronk

go feudal and take the map control is a counter

It's not hard to counter if you know it's coming if their stone is in front you can scout the base from outside to know it's coming or go to stone as you go to Castel age with 7 to get the stone for a defensive or aggressive Castel yourself Or you can actually have a fudel army to make his Castel defensive but the best case to do is just prep the casel and once it's there make your defensive one where he can't come in easily and go fast imp and treb it down works better if you have a UU that's actually good cause they you can ignore the stable and all for more and go monks siege as a mix

Guard tower does good against them until imp

If you have monks and mangonels ready you can just deny the castle 2 of each would do it

Finally got actually back in the game (after 20 years) and tried out my first ever skirmish with Lithuanians against Standard AI. Super easy, total cakewalk. Started with the sheep and collecting more with the scout, then pulling boars, and then a mill with eight farms and four fishing ships. Quickly to castle age to build monks and snatch up all the relics and constantly upgrading my troops and villager efficiency. I totally didn't need to wait for a castle to build unique cavalry and trebuchets. My swordsmen and crossbowmen with four mangonels totally tore through the AI. T90 has taught me well.

this reminds me of AOE3 organ gun spam

You can do this with Bohemians hussite wagons on 23 pop

The only counter i've found to this shit is going up faster than 23 vills to feudal and speedrun castles as much as you can and prioritize a fucking mangonel, portuguese tend to make castles really close to the walls (One even figured how to make the organ guns spawn directly inside my city without even breaking through walls lmfao) so you can do some damage to those vills and avoid the mass, cause trust me, those organ guns are not weak against mangonels as they claim xd, and by the time you can get some cavalry, the guns are already so stacked it's impossible to do anything

I would totally get in on a low-Elo league.

spam scouts and make rams for the castle

I will throw my 1.2k mmr opinion into the ring here and say that 2 rams manned with infantry could have probably dealt with this. They would have taken almost no damage from the organ guns and the castle and the most dangerous thing for them in this scenario would have actually been the villagers mining gold. But then again you got infantry inside of them so the villagers could also not really dare to get close. There are probably also other paths you could have gone to counter this. The most obvious being 'just not let it happen in the first place, duh!'. But the ram thing is certainly something I would try :D

Tin can league, yes please :D

Have it with a 1 dollar entry and use the lower leages to fund the higher level games

light cav do very well against organ guns. and against monks and mangonel.

@t90 a good reward for winning bronze league would be to auto qualify for next silver league... just an idea

Just make early archers and kill the villagers for the castle rush.. Then at least you have some chance of coming back.

You can have a qualifier league, and ranked qualifier league could go to bronze league

Strategie callt Skorpion, you need to get behind the sting , there is the weakspot, very difficult becase of the heavy pressure right in Front of u

Do scorpions outrange these units???

So I can win Copper and Toilet paper and I don't have to rip it out of the walls? I gotta get good at this game.

Counter : skill

Had to stop to laugh at the end of all the potential league games. Around 5:35

I thought he was gonna make rams. Why would that not be a good strat?

Difficulttoobtanium League

28 on gold carry Somero to imp not the three farmers^^

hi t90 ily

You could do a bronze league for the chance to play into the silver league no money for bronze and keep the size of bronze small to keep the work down. The person in last place in bronze gets dropped and a new player gets a chance.

*T90!!!*

What's a respectable elo for the new Xbox version that's just come out would it be about 1500

you can counter them by using Rams with infatry inside

Anyone else watch this on their phone? It's tiny right?

Can britons pew pew units deal w this?

Yes.

Id compete in the Toilet Paper League if I won a roll of Toilet Paper :3 Its 2023, Everything is worth getting for free :D

Can it be countered by early pressure? Red makes Scouts or Archers in Feudal. Pressures mid. Blue Portuguese builds their castle at home. Builds their army at home. Even if Blue's army pushes Red back from the Red base, Blue can still contest the middle. They can contest the relics. They have the room to use cav and attack the flanks. Their eco and buildings aren't under attack. They can mine stone and gold. They have time to build tower defenses before the army arrives at the Red base. Despite losing vils to Blue, Red still had a 10 vil lead. Red leads in economy, builds up a larger army, and uses space and speed to hit Blue's base while avoiding Blue's death ball. In short: Blue has Feudal age pressure. Throwing off Red's Castle age attack. Red has Castle age pressure. Which we are working to overcome. Blue has Imperial age pressure. Going for the win.

imo make the bronze league but make it a low prize pool. then have a restriction on it. dont make it for the pros bronze is not for the pro's make it for the LEL with a minor prize pool. let them low elo players get a feel for it and have a chance. so restrict it like below 1k elo or so then setup some qualifiers.

Is an special site for match making or is just the multiplayer of the game?

Paladin

If you want your "funsy" league to still get serious mid to upper teir players why not make it basic qualifier? Ex. Winning the annual Bronze grants you a spot in 1 of your tournaments/events with a possible pay out?

is this hope the italian player or is this the vietnamise player that's name is there in the scoreboard im so confused

What could’ve red done? Honestly?

I want to see a low elo league called LELiga

T90 does not want a bronze league because with his quick exit he would be getting bumped down. Yikes!

Never played aoe3 but these vods are unusually entertaining

tin can league, make it happen

About bronze league you mentioned; what if, you had 100$ entrance fee tourney that the winner gets into silver?

Bronze League prize, One 20$ Steam game lol

Man i absolutely cannot stand arena because of castle drops. I get that its good and that theres very punishing counterplay but its so boring.

Savage

103

A funsie league would actually be perfect… alot of views and money to be made just saying

Believe me, there is a counter. Tried and tested. The Gurjaras😁😁😁

Low Elo League

just Imp faster

Is the hidden cup dead?

This is absurd, he could have preped cavalry, and charge from the back.

I lose to this at 1000 elo constantly. If it's Turks or Portuguese I know I've already lost.

Worst thing about playing aoe2, you join noob only games, and nobody else is a noob but you. STOP WRITING NOOB ONLY.

Free Palestine

The new Portuguese bonus is ugly. What's the historical basis of it? This game isn't about historical fidelity, but the civs had identity. It feels like the devs want to give the Portuguese more power just because.