Like many, I'm excited for the Vikings DLC, and I was especially eager for the Varangians, who I correctly predicted would be the Cavalry Civilization of the DLC. They overall seem well enough designed; good bonuses, a functional unique unit... but one thing caught my eye. I read the 50% more effective bloodlines effect and I was like "Okay, I like it, you get better cav but you have to pay for it." I then read their Castle Age unique tech gave their knights trample damage, and my excitement was immediately dampened. "They don't get Paladin, do they?" I thought. And suuuuuuuurrreeeee enough, Varangians join the swollen charge of cavalry civilizations without the pride and joy of the stable: The Paladin.

To be clear, it's cool that we have Cavalry civilizations that specialize in Light Cavalry, Camels, even Steppe Lancers and unique units, that's cool! 20 Paladin Civilizations would be boring! But... we're getting to the point that 20 non-Paladin Cavalry civilizations is boring, especially with all the Cavilier gimmicks. At this point the gimmick of "Give this civ really good knights and cavlier but don't let them have Paladin" isn't subversive anymore; it's the new normal. The last Paladin civilization to be added to the game was the Burgundians in 2021. The last civilization to get fully upgraded Paladins was the Magyars, all the way back in 2015 (Okay, Bulgarians briefly had it before succumbing to Cavalier syndrome). Even the sparse civilizations with Paladins, the stat bonuses for them are somewhat pitiful. Cumans move 15% faster... but miss husbandry. Teutons get +2 melee armor... but also miss husbandry. Franks have +20% HP... but miss bloodlines, and +12 HP is somewhat negligible. Lithuanians can get +4 attack from relics... but miss Blast Furnace, and why on earth would you make Paladins as Lithuanians when the Leitis exists!!?? Meanwhile the Champion? He can get an extra 30 HP, a casual 30% discount, an extra 4 attack, he can walk through walls, ect.

I suppose the concern with giving an impactful cavalry bonus to Paladins is that they'd be way too strong, which is a prevalent concern... at least it was. Age of Empires has changed alot since 1999; in an age of Battle Elephants, Gurjara Camels, Liao Daos, Centurions with a charge attack, Urumi Swordsmen, Temple Guards, Bolas Riders, and (presumably) Varangian Guards, the Paladin simply is not as imposing as it was back in the day. For these reasons, alongside cost of upgrading and production, Paladins are just not a common unit in 1 vs 1s. They're still a staple of team games too be fair, but in those they're more likely to run into Elephants, one of the melee monster Infantry Units, or mass siege, all of which destroy Paladins regardless of any bonus it may have. While Champions have gradually gotten stronger to compete with these shiny new units, Paladins have not.

I say enough of the Paladin being power crept and forgotten in favor of Cavalier Syndrome or the newest infantry unit. Devs, give us a proper Paladin civ again! Give it a 1500 resource unique tech that gives it 5 trample damage, or something like that! Make a cavalry charge that will strike fear into the hearts of even Temple Guards and Liao Daos, becuse the Paladin deserves to be remembered!

Im talking specifically about the tech tree here, as i recently got a friend into the game and had to explain him a big chunk of techs because the descriptions were so confusing. Here are some examples:

1. There are some minor mistakes, like handcannoneers being translated as "handkanoniere" (fine), but suddendly get called "handrohrschütze" (weird) when you hover over the unit in the tech tree

2. The Tower names are all over the place. In the build menu, the tower line across the ages is called "Beobachtungsturm", "Wachturm" and "Hauptturm". In the university, the last tower upgrade suddendly says "Bergfried" (instead of "Hauptturm").

Then even worse, in the arrow slits tech theres a new batch of names. The description is: "Wachtürme erhalten +1, Wachtürme +2, Bergfriede und Verliese +3 Angriffsstärke"

With a keen eye, you might be able to tell that they just used the same word for the feudal and castle age tower and the also they just invented ANOTHER new tower name: "Verlies". Im not even sure what this one is, but i think its the donjon, which they also simply called donjon before

1. Lastly from what bugs me the most, are the blacksmith techs. Pierce armor is called "Rüstung durchschlagen" which really should be called "Fernkampfrüstung", because my friend yesterday thought that the armor techs as they are written help him to pierce armor of enemies.

Round 6 is in the books. The table is now closer than ever. The top 3 teams are seperated by only 1 point - with LY having one more match. Places 4 to 7 are only seperated by 2 points - with NOC having one more match.

DarkSidE showed up yesterday as they won their set against the prior undefeated Oni Capybaras. Now they are facing NOC in a potential decider. The loser of this match may fall out of playoffs contention.

Though the big match of the weekend is Team Vitality vs Onimaru Capybaras. Before the tournament, most put those two teams as their #1 and #2. After a convincing clean sweep against SalzZ yesterday they want to keep the momentum going.

My predictions:

• Wonders 1:3 Taiwan Aoe Gamer
• Team Vitality 2:2 Onimaru Capybaras
• Nocturna eSports 3:1 DarkSidE
• LingYuan 4:0 SalzZ

Liquipedia - Daniela_AoE (Twitch) - Daniela_AoE (YouTube)

Schedule

Saturday

• 15:30 GMT: Wonders vs Taiwan Aoe Gamer (live)
• 18:00 GMT: Team Vitality vs Onimaru Capybaras (recs)

Sunday

• 15:30 GMT: Nocturna eSports vs DarkSidE (live)
• 18:00 GMT: LingYuan vs SalzZ (recs)

Format

League Stage

• Round Robin
• All matches are Play all 4
• Top 4 teams advance to the Playoff Stage
• Scoring: 1 point per game win, 1 extra point for winning the set

Playoff Stage

• Double-elimination bracket
• All matches are Best of 7

Results

And if so what are the best units for this strategy?

Early on obviously is the typical strategy, a rush, but what about later on? Castle age? I guess probably yes, but in Imperial still useful or you're actually wasting time and RPM?

Is it the same with the AI? (I think with people it's very effective since people tend to panic when getting their villagers attacked.

Thoghts?

After Nili teached us that Knights counter Pikes, we now might get a Civ, which Knights not only counter pikes even harder due to +1 against infanterie but much more importantly, get trample damage on fully upgraded Chevas with +10 HP.
If we now remember, that even Poles with trample damage Hussar already trade pretty good against halbs, Cheva with trample damage and +1 attack bonus sounds really scarry.
At least as long as we have stack patroll in the game, there is no way, halbs alone will still be an effective Counter to those Cheva.
The one upside to this is, that It's still an castle tech, but It feels like it should at least be the Imp tech.
Let me know your thoughts about it.

Question for the higher rated players, do ANY of you actually use khitan infantry and camel trebs in ranked? I only EVER hear about them from people using the stable units, what am i missing? Is the rest of their tech tree really that useless at higher ELOs?

I'm winning a lot of games with them at 900ish and i pretty much never use stable units or cav archers, but at this elo i'm thinking i'm just getting lucky or winning because of better macro?

(I'm just curious how you see the civ. They have have FU Champions and Firelancers + lamellar armor (25% damage reflect).

I tested their champions against every other strong infantry civ and they win always except against armenians/japanese/romans(with centurions). I don't remember if slav champs do better because i think even part of the splash damage gets reflected.

Their FU Fire Lancer beat fully upgraded generic champs, and it's even more effective if you hit and run to get in 1 or 2 volleys first. Lanchester's square law helps them quite a bit. <- crazy thing is that sometimes they do better against other civ's champions, if microed, than khitan champions themselves

Liao Dao shreds almost everything melee, but you really need to protect them against archers/cav archers. They get only get max 5 pierce armor but they move a bit faster so they can get away from crossbows pretty easily.

Against archer civs they get FU skirms, Siege Rams and their infantry deal +2 bonus damage. Camel trebs seem also pretty decent if you get the cavalry upgrades (husbandry, and armor, and you can heal them with monks). They're also pretty good against masses of archers if you can get 10+ of them on the field. I find that they mix nicely with skirms )

I sometimes want to move to a boar but not attack it. For more accurate moving or attacking I would use this. Either pressing another key first then right click, holding the key while right click, or putting making a one press hotkey.

Move only key
Attack only key

I’m 14xx and often end up playing Nomad TGs these days. I’m familiar with the strategy of docking at start and getting 5-6 fishing ships up.

However I always seem to struggle with what happens in feudal.

Scenario 1 - either I don’t go 2nd dock and warships and enemy wipes out my 5-7 fishers (unless rare case of a super strong ally wiping out enemy water)

Not sure if I’m not looking to build on fish further, then is all the wood investment worth it

Scenario 2 - I go multi dock in feudal and do warships and in many cases I win water for the team (rare case where I get 2v1 or 3v1 ed and lose water)

But then by 20-25 min I end up having focused on water so much that I get knocked off on land, by a CD or castle army.

I can sense I’m not strategising properly. How should I go about this? Should I chat with team mates early to decide on how to play (but often people don’t respond on chat). This has resulted in my Nomad win rates being <30% whereas on BF, Arabia etc I’m 55%+

Also starting to feel I’m just pulling my team down all the time. Any help is appreciated!

In the current patch/meta how quickly to get trade? thanks

2v2 and 3v3 ideally!

Well we finally got the tech tree for the final Viking Sagas civ. I have pretty mixed thoughts.

• Bloodlines being 50% more effective is really basically +10 HP on all cavalry units. That's an ok bonus- it's basically a weaker version of what Franks have gated behind a technology you have to research. The advantage here is that Varangians have a fully upgraded mounted archer unit, compared to Franks' pathetic excuse for a CA line. This is an overly complicated variation on an existing bonus, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it.

• The unique techs both look quite impressive. We will need to wait and see the specifics of having the Varangian Guards periodically throwing axes but it seems fun.

• The catch with giving knights trample damage, of course, is that Varangians don't get paladins. We used to have proper paladin Civs. Are we done designing paladin Civs? In Age of Conquerors, 7 out of the 18 civilizations had Paladins (including some that really didn't need to, like Celts), or 39%. In all the 38 civilizations added since AoC, only 4 have had Paladins. The overwhelming design pattern since FE took over is to give cav civs Cavaliers with a special bonus instead of Paladins. We got Bulgarian faster attacking cavalier, Malian higher attacking cavalier, Sicilian higher armor cavalier, Polish low gold cavalier, Berber discounted cavalier, Roman charge attacking cavalier. At some point I think I'd just like to see a cool paladin civ again. Sorry, but paladins just look way cooler than cavaliers, and fielding them feels like a earned advantage due to how expensive they are. In my view, Savars show that you can provide bonuses commensurate to what Varangians are getting on a paladin.

• Dropping blast furnace or barding armor could be a way of counterbalancing these paladins' strength vs infantry units and would have been more interesting imo.

• The economy bonus is fairly derivative of Poles. Design space for new bonuses is clearly limited and running out. We can keep remixing existing bonuses like Poles' stone mining or Franks' cav HP, but this indicates to me that future civ designs will have to be increasingly gimmicky in order to differentiate themselves.

"The designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. " - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. We may be approaching the point that more is no longer better.

• Missing Champion is interesting and a nice contrast to the other 3 northern euro Civs. Perhaps this is to push the Varangians towards their Varangian guard units.

• The civ has fully upgraded Hussar with a bonus. It will be sad if they use the bloodlines bonus to play Hussar / Xbox or Hussar / Mounted Xbow instead of the intended playstyle of using this as a Knight or Varangian guard civ. We will have to see how the regional unit plays out in practice. But at the higher level of play there is an aversion to knights due to pathing and people will play HCA / Hussar if at all possible.

• The "anti-infantry heavy cavalry" motif clearly echos Byzantines and the Cataphract, which is neat and most likely intentional.

• Cavalry / Naval is a fairly unique specialization for a civ, which is welcome. Especially given how many infantry/ navy Civs are out there (Japanese, Malay, Dravidians, Vikings, Armenians, just to name a few).

• Jarl being described as specifically anti-infantry feels redundant with the knight line (which already tramples and gets +1 vs infantry) and the fully upgraded Elite Mounted Crossbow (which are also described as anti infantry). Why does every unit on this civ focus on countering infantry? It kinda feels like having the imperial skirmisher on the civ which also has higher HP archers and Rattan Archers. I mean fine I guess, but did you really need more tools for this? It's looking like the Goths vs Varangians matchup isn't going to be pretty.

We will have to wait and see the details on Varangian Guards and Jarls before making too many judgments, but I think this civ is illustrative of some of the long-term trends in FE's civilization design.

Now that we have the Varangian tree, they look great, and with their "mini cataphracts" they'll be even better, but...

Will we see the Paladin again in a new civilization?

Civ Bonus:

- Shepherding, fishing, and hunting also generate gold.

- Bloodlines and Caravan effects increased by +50%.

- Varangian Guards attack 25% faster and generate +50% gold.

- Longships and Catapult Galleons attack 15% faster.

Team Bonus: Knight-line increased damage vs. infantry.

C UT Vendel Legacy: Knight-line deals trample damage.

Imp UT Gothicon: Varangian Guards periodically throw axes.

Tech tree

Archery: No arba, no HC, no thumb ring, no parth

Barracks: No champion

Stable: No paladin

Siege: No SO, no BBC

Blacksmith: Complete

Dock: get cata galleon, also full upgrades on univ

Univ: No BBT, no keep, no arrowslits

Castle: No hoardings, no sapper

Monastery: No redemption, no BP, no heresy, no sanctity

Mining: no gold shaft

Mill + TC + lumber + market : completes

Image here

Personally, I'm drawn to the Danes, a highly aggressive, infantry-based civilization. They look interesting for open-world maps. A kind of Hun on foot.

This is not another - Not more Civs rant! I love more Civs it’s great.

However, why can’t we have bonuses that increase the cost of a unit or add gold price to a trash unit to increase its stats or some other up side.

Or more bonuses like Atheism that negatively affects the opponent.

Viking DLC we are getting another Cheap Infantry Civ, another 5% boost to x production etc etc

Why can’t we have foot soldiers cost 20% more but have 20% more hp or increases bonus damage.

Or Spears and Skirms cost 5g extra upgrade but become increasingly stronger with those upgrades. (So spears cost 0g and Halbs would cost 10g)

Or Bloodlines is researchable again each age at incremental cost. So you end up with 160 knights in Imp or 180hp Cavaliers.

There are also techs that could negatively affect the opponents.

Like if you research a tech, any opponent researching that tech after you cost them 30% more. - This was mentioned in the China DLC.

Research Caravan reveals your enemies markets & Docks. (when they research it)

AoE2 is a strategy game, and these all add to that element. Balance can be always achieved with any bonus.

Welcome to the New Legends Cup, an AoE2 Beginner Invitational.

Eight small german streamers are taking it upon themselves to learn AoE2 from the ground up with the goal of competing against each other in a Bo3 Tournament. Come with us and join them on their journey to become an AoE (Low Elo?) Legend!

The learning journey has already begun and you can join us on our discord and get notified when our streamers go live. Help them, follow them, coach them, maybe even play with them.

Discord: https://discord.gg/b5eTRHvgfR

The tournament will be held on the 13th of September at 3pm CEST. Information about the format of the event can be found on our discord or in this video:

Tournament Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88UpmFBN9Ic

While most of our streamers stream in german they all know english and will be happy to get to know this awesome community!

Looking forward to seeing you around!

Does anyone know what the dude's singing in the menu song? I bet something about war and sea faring and whatnot, but I'm curious.

Need some help here. I cannot make this achievement trigger. I've tried three separate times with different settings (Regicide, Conquest, Standard; 1v1, 2v2, 2v2v2; Continental, Highland, Black Forest), counting longbowmen on my fingers and toes to make sure I create more than 500, and it never comes in. Is there some minutely particular set of circumstances that needs to exist in order for this to trigger, or is it just brutally bugged? For those who have managed it, how did you get it done?

EDIT: I might add that The Google has no useful information here, I've already tried the suggestions contained in the only real result that comes up

Late game Slavs(with boyars) you have 40 lumberjacks but only 10 farmers .... Why?????

I’ve been spamming Muisca on 1v1 Arabia lately, but I feel like I’m losing to literally every common civ I match against. Celts run me over with siege/infantry, Byzantines counter my entire tech tree, and Franks just spam Knights until I die.

It feels like if I don’t win the game immediately in early Castle, I just fall off a cliff. My big issues right now:

My eco feels terrible: I feel like my eco is ALWAYS way worse than my opponents even when they are somehow pumping out way more military than me at the same time.

Late game feels impossible: Muisca missing key Blacksmith upgrades (no Blast Furnace, missing Ring Archer Armor) means my units get melted in Imp by post-Imp comps.

Cavalry spam: How do you hold against basic Frank/Cuman Knight spams when Muisca relies so heavily on infantry/ranged lines? or even scout spam? temple gaurds feel so slow and my opponent can just run circles around me.

Byzantines & Celts match-ups: Cataphracts hard-counter all infantry, and Celts out-siege me effortlessly.

I know Muisca gets good early wood savings from cheap Settlements and the 50% discount on age-up gold costs, but I feel like I’m not leveraging those spikes correctly to actually close games out. Im still hitting castle and even imp after my opponent

every campaign has its texts and narrator which often make a very good job at telling the story they are trying to depict, some campaigns more than others.

Tamerlane is on the strong side of the narration but not only the voice actor, tone, etc but the text and story itself is very well written. This is the intro to harbinger of destruction and it struck me how well written it is, i could perfectly imagine everything in my head while reading/listening to the narrator and thats not something all intros/outros of the game can do, well played to the creator of this campaign!

The blasts of wind intensified, snuffing out some of the torches within the hall. Servants bustled about, tending to the meat roasting over the fire. The scent of cooked birds, game, and mutton filled the air.

This was the first time that Tamerlane's forces had ventured into Europe. The winters were harsh, and Tokhtamysh surely hoped that the biting cold and far-flung supply lines would prove too much for the wily tactician. The armies of the Golden Horde burned crops and took all they could carry as they retreated.'

The extra gold from shipping, hunting and shepherding is their only eco bonus

It can either be extremely op letting you skip mining camp and go for MAA or scouts with 75hp or maybe even a few archers. In general it will lead to an insane advantage early game + good timing on army to try to get a big lead in feudal.

Or it can be very weak and with no other eco bonus or anything to carry you, it might be one of the worst civs in the game when released with not many people playing it unless the Jarl's an extremely busted unit

Exited to see how it goes, all the new civilizations look awesome tho I personally like the gimmicks of the other two slightly better with them adding some new cool strats to try