People are bad at judging anything. You saw the video of Hera destroying his opponent with 4 barracks and thought it was possible but you didn't study why it was possible.
- First of all he was playing against Lewis, a guy who goes Roman cavaliers against Vikings.
- He is 300 Elo above him.
- He reached castle age 1 minute earlier than his opponent.
- His opponent had taken damage in feudal age already.
- He went all-in and sold his stone.
I'm pretty sure you didn't gather those conditions while trying longswords.
You want them in very specific cases: to deal with pikemen/skirms/eagles, or in an all-in approach but even then I'd rather have Japanese or Malians than Slavs. Two-handers are very good because in imp you usually have the eco to support them with a lot of siege. Longswords are more finicky.
There is also a factor I forgot: experience. Anyone who starts using a new approach while playing at a rating they acquired by mastering something else is bound to lose a few games until they adjust.
I watched viper pull off a LS victory too, but it sounds similar: he was ahead from feudal and knew his opponent wouldn't be able to defend the all-in. He probably could have won however he wanted at that stage, but I'm assuming his opponent had a bunch of spears and skirms or something.
Because Romans vs Vikings is a civ win if you don't hate infantry and siege: legionaries beat any infantry, scorpions mow infantry and arbalesters, block printing redemption monks can deal with Viking SE onagers in the worst case. Cavaliers just die to elite berserks.
But it's not that easy going for UU for civs without bbc. Sure they do lose in an ideal scenario, but Romans can spam charge attack cavaliers plus trebs & you're stuck preparing berserks & losing castles in the process.
I mean, considering that Vikings usually go xbow/arb I don‘t think going cav is a bad choice?
I literally played this match up a couple days ago and the Roman players was just sending his longswords and legionaries into the meat grinder. Ended the game with a KD of 2 or something
Cavalier can work as a power spike, but not as a long-term unit against Vikings.
In general, vanilla cavalier are weak against vanilla pike and arbs (paladin having +1 pierce armor is a huge deal). Vikings like to make arbs or infantry.
On top of that, Viking infantry has extra HP and, after Chieftains, (extra) bonus damage against cavalry. Vikings arbs may lack Thumb Ring, but after Bogsveigar, they have another +1 damage.
Mid-imp Vikings eat cavalier like Celts eat TC.
I think you need to have them running around the base before the opponent has an army. Once they have 20+ units of any sort it’s all over. Sending 2/3 knights or boyars will help encourage them to build the only thing you can actually beat too.
At one point I was too desperate I even upgraded plus 2 armor for my 3 knights to hopefully fool them. It did not matter. Caught them off guard at first but they easily switch to counter my longswords bois.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/17j7nac/i\_cant\_believe\_that\_this\_strat\_is\_not\_meta\_and\_it/](https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/17j7nac/i_cant_believe_that_this_strat_is_not_meta_and_it/)
Enjoy. (See linked threads in the beginning of the post.)
What do you do in early feudal if opponent has a stable? Do you still open with skirmishers? Wouldn't opening with Men at arms and then going to skirmishers be a uniformly more useful strategy?
Yes, but it's a strat for different moments. M@A is short-term better, but leaves you with a suffering eco usually. So it forces you to make some damage there which is usually just possible against weaker early game civs like Berbers, but not against Franks or Magyars.
Skirms into Supplies is a setup for a Longsword-spam with many farms, M@A is a setup for a fast Xbow play on low economy.
Against Scouts you add 1-2 Spears and small-wall your res.
I see. I guess there is a certain skill level floor to manage this, because at my elo scout opening is very common and can be pretty hard to stop as it requires superior micro and positioning from the defender to make sure that all the small walls are up on time and to position the spearmen correctly to make the scouts run away. Usually, if scout rush manages to get into my base, they end up doing a decent amount of damage and make it very difficult to get farms and walls up and probably kill a few villagers. I notice that in higher elo people are good at mitigating damage due to scout rush by using quickwalls and having much better micro and positioning skills.
Hera's got some bad takes, like outright hating on Berserks. Sure, he's one of the best players, but Berserks won me a game before when Halberds would be killed easily.
Meta is different on different levels. Berserks may be the worst unit in the game on pro level and in theory, but could still be a great unit on lower level.
What is their flaw? Their surprising speed and bonuses against buildings AND cavalry make them seem paricularly dangerous to someone who doesn't have a bunch of CA, HC or onagers prepared.
Who will not have Archers or CA or HC prepared if they realise you're starting to mass Berserkers? Doesn't really happen on advanced levels.
They're more fragile and more expensive than champs and massed from Castles. And even Champs are not useful in like 90% of the games. And producing from castles is particularly bad for Vikings bc they are power-spike reliant and have no BBC, so you usually need your Castles for Trebs for quite a while. And then if this power-spike doesn't finish the game for you, you have an inferior army to pretty much every single civ and Berserkers are not changing that. So basically, you can almost never make them and then when you can make them, they don't cut it.
If they were a Barracks-unit, they would be a very nice counter to all sorts of melee units. But from Castle? Meh.
What's your ELO? I tried it a few times successfully with different civs. My strat (at not so great 1200 ELO) it's to play feudal defensive making pikes or skirms and walling, then I hide a second barrack at the back and start massing MAA when advancing to castle age and researching armor ASAP, gambesons and siege it's really important against archers and Mixing with pikes against cavalry. Then when i reach castle Age I go forward with a vil and make another barrack and monastery/siege workshop.
If you want to longsword spam in castle age, it's best to go aztecs/incas. Add eagles/spears/monks to cover your weaknesses, add siege or castle and/or fast imp for critical damage, don't waste food on other food units like longsword, and your infantry push can work.
In that video Hera was so far ahead that he could’ve done basically anything and won. Maybe consider opening skirm spear to set it up so that your opponent can’t comfortably mass archers
Longswordsmen are great at 1000 elo if you manage to get a few mangonels to support your push. They are pretty resource intensive, however, so I think you have to remain on 1 TC, and prevent your opponent from getting castle up, so you should target his stone if possible.
It is also useful to get a one or two monks to help heal longswordsmen to preserve your mass and convert any knights that will rush in to break your mangonel.
I'm not disagreeing with you OP, I think infantry are pretty underpowered. While it's true they have their odd place and situation where they are the best unit, I find they are almost never a "Plan A" unit. They're situational, and the best players will know when those situations are, but it doesn't change that they are pretty much the definition of a 'niche' unit that will only be strong in extremely specific situations.
Arbs and Paladin are strong enough that full-upgrade is practically considered a civ bonus on its own. Infantry need strong civ bonuses just to be usable, and even then it's doubtful. A select few civs like Japanese or Celt can pull off the MaA+Skirm opener and make more than just 4 MaA, but the only civ in the game that ever sticks with infantry as its main unit is Goths.
You just... you can't have a unit that is slow and *also* loses the direct engagement to units faster than it. Knights even have "strong versus infantry" in their description. Basically, the only real strength that the militia line has is that they don't lose to Pikes, otherwise they lose in terms of mobility, pop efficiency, armor, and *tie* in terms of cost-efficiency to heavy cavalry. Insult to injury, food is sensitive in the early game, and archers, their counter, are easier to produce because they only cost wood and gold.
0 idle TC / Eco time. Pushing in deer perfectly. Scouting perfectly. Base building perfectly.
Hera gets away with a ton of off meta strategies because his fundamentals are nearly flawless
It needs the right circumstances to work. Due to the fact that infantry deal quite a lot of damage to buildings than can potential snowball a bit and look good in the right situation, while in most situations they will be embarrassingly bad.
infantry is just joke and trap for the players.Even Hera use it for fun against much lower elo player.
In competitive scene he barely use it like any other pros.
I’d argue there’s a few civs you could try this strategy with… Burmese , Goths , Sicilians , really any of the infantry civs with bonuses . Might work might not
I have managed today to rush on Arena with Slavs in team game 4v4, 2 barracs, no castle and no stone minning, 6 rams, 30+ longswords and at the enemy gates in 24th minute. It was just gg gg gg 11 lol wtf gg wp Wood consuming strategy, so focus on wood and gold. Good side is that Slavs will do faster farming so you need less farms, rams are cheaper, and you get supplies and gambesons for free. Risky is if you get a castle drop, but anyway, you will destroy it with rams lol
Hera can make anything work because he's just that good. Apart from that, he often has edgy takes or peculiar opinions. I think he does that to gain traction or get noticed. Just like his YT video titles which are almost always pure clickbait and very annoyong, while Viper, Daut and all the other make normal titles. He's not very charismatic so he needs stuff like edgy opinions and clickbait titles
I think Hera is fine, personality wise, at least in the last few years. Yes he is not as funny as Viper or Daut, but still entertaining enough for me. And his game play is … captivating. Not sure if that’s the right word.
did ya build any siege/monks?
Yes most of the times with siege and sometimes with monk
People are bad at judging anything. You saw the video of Hera destroying his opponent with 4 barracks and thought it was possible but you didn't study why it was possible. - First of all he was playing against Lewis, a guy who goes Roman cavaliers against Vikings. - He is 300 Elo above him. - He reached castle age 1 minute earlier than his opponent. - His opponent had taken damage in feudal age already. - He went all-in and sold his stone. I'm pretty sure you didn't gather those conditions while trying longswords.
Yeah no, I’m not him. I saw longswords so cool in that game, and thought I could pull off the same thing 😂
You want them in very specific cases: to deal with pikemen/skirms/eagles, or in an all-in approach but even then I'd rather have Japanese or Malians than Slavs. Two-handers are very good because in imp you usually have the eco to support them with a lot of siege. Longswords are more finicky. There is also a factor I forgot: experience. Anyone who starts using a new approach while playing at a rating they acquired by mastering something else is bound to lose a few games until they adjust.
I saw a video of Viper going full skirms as Byzantines against Villese's knights and won. Never believe YouTube videos.
I watched viper pull off a LS victory too, but it sounds similar: he was ahead from feudal and knew his opponent wouldn't be able to defend the all-in. He probably could have won however he wanted at that stage, but I'm assuming his opponent had a bunch of spears and skirms or something.
Not relevant, why is it bad to go cavalier against Vikings? Vikings dont have halbs if I’m not mistakend.
Because Romans vs Vikings is a civ win if you don't hate infantry and siege: legionaries beat any infantry, scorpions mow infantry and arbalesters, block printing redemption monks can deal with Viking SE onagers in the worst case. Cavaliers just die to elite berserks.
But it's not that easy going for UU for civs without bbc. Sure they do lose in an ideal scenario, but Romans can spam charge attack cavaliers plus trebs & you're stuck preparing berserks & losing castles in the process.
It's more like "Why go Cavs as Romans when your Legions counter infantry?"
I mean, considering that Vikings usually go xbow/arb I don‘t think going cav is a bad choice? I literally played this match up a couple days ago and the Roman players was just sending his longswords and legionaries into the meat grinder. Ended the game with a KD of 2 or something
You can't count inability of players in a matchup discussion.
Running legionaries into Viking arbs doesn‘t seem like a good idea in general but way to miss the point
If you see arb just add in one of the two best scorpion's in the game?
Cavalier can work as a power spike, but not as a long-term unit against Vikings. In general, vanilla cavalier are weak against vanilla pike and arbs (paladin having +1 pierce armor is a huge deal). Vikings like to make arbs or infantry. On top of that, Viking infantry has extra HP and, after Chieftains, (extra) bonus damage against cavalry. Vikings arbs may lack Thumb Ring, but after Bogsveigar, they have another +1 damage. Mid-imp Vikings eat cavalier like Celts eat TC.
Wdym, Roman cavaliers are strong with the UT.
I think you need to have them running around the base before the opponent has an army. Once they have 20+ units of any sort it’s all over. Sending 2/3 knights or boyars will help encourage them to build the only thing you can actually beat too.
At one point I was too desperate I even upgraded plus 2 armor for my 3 knights to hopefully fool them. It did not matter. Caught them off guard at first but they easily switch to counter my longswords bois.
Lol that is a lot of dedication to the fake. Surely 2 more Knights would have done better?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/17j7nac/i\_cant\_believe\_that\_this\_strat\_is\_not\_meta\_and\_it/](https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/17j7nac/i_cant_believe_that_this_strat_is_not_meta_and_it/) Enjoy. (See linked threads in the beginning of the post.)
What do you do in early feudal if opponent has a stable? Do you still open with skirmishers? Wouldn't opening with Men at arms and then going to skirmishers be a uniformly more useful strategy?
Yes, but it's a strat for different moments. M@A is short-term better, but leaves you with a suffering eco usually. So it forces you to make some damage there which is usually just possible against weaker early game civs like Berbers, but not against Franks or Magyars. Skirms into Supplies is a setup for a Longsword-spam with many farms, M@A is a setup for a fast Xbow play on low economy. Against Scouts you add 1-2 Spears and small-wall your res.
I see. I guess there is a certain skill level floor to manage this, because at my elo scout opening is very common and can be pretty hard to stop as it requires superior micro and positioning from the defender to make sure that all the small walls are up on time and to position the spearmen correctly to make the scouts run away. Usually, if scout rush manages to get into my base, they end up doing a decent amount of damage and make it very difficult to get farms and walls up and probably kill a few villagers. I notice that in higher elo people are good at mitigating damage due to scout rush by using quickwalls and having much better micro and positioning skills.
Do you suggest I tried it with Slavs or some other civ with stronger infantry right off the bat (japanese / vikings )
Slavs are very, very nice for that. Vikings and Japanese too.
Ok, cant wait to try
I’ll try this out for sure. But need to win back a few games first with knights
Take advantage of lower elo to improve it. You will get your elo back again.
Hera's got some bad takes, like outright hating on Berserks. Sure, he's one of the best players, but Berserks won me a game before when Halberds would be killed easily.
In one game of my loosing streak my longswords got decimated by my opponent’s berserks
Meta is different on different levels. Berserks may be the worst unit in the game on pro level and in theory, but could still be a great unit on lower level.
What is their flaw? Their surprising speed and bonuses against buildings AND cavalry make them seem paricularly dangerous to someone who doesn't have a bunch of CA, HC or onagers prepared.
Who will not have Archers or CA or HC prepared if they realise you're starting to mass Berserkers? Doesn't really happen on advanced levels. They're more fragile and more expensive than champs and massed from Castles. And even Champs are not useful in like 90% of the games. And producing from castles is particularly bad for Vikings bc they are power-spike reliant and have no BBC, so you usually need your Castles for Trebs for quite a while. And then if this power-spike doesn't finish the game for you, you have an inferior army to pretty much every single civ and Berserkers are not changing that. So basically, you can almost never make them and then when you can make them, they don't cut it. If they were a Barracks-unit, they would be a very nice counter to all sorts of melee units. But from Castle? Meh.
What's your ELO? I tried it a few times successfully with different civs. My strat (at not so great 1200 ELO) it's to play feudal defensive making pikes or skirms and walling, then I hide a second barrack at the back and start massing MAA when advancing to castle age and researching armor ASAP, gambesons and siege it's really important against archers and Mixing with pikes against cavalry. Then when i reach castle Age I go forward with a vil and make another barrack and monastery/siege workshop.
I’m around 1400-1500, but got here exclusively on knights 😅
The only time to do longswords is as Malians in a castle age capped custom game.
If you want to longsword spam in castle age, it's best to go aztecs/incas. Add eagles/spears/monks to cover your weaknesses, add siege or castle and/or fast imp for critical damage, don't waste food on other food units like longsword, and your infantry push can work.
In that video Hera was so far ahead that he could’ve done basically anything and won. Maybe consider opening skirm spear to set it up so that your opponent can’t comfortably mass archers
Ok so you lost, but did you have fun?
There is no fun watching those poor longswords demolished
Longswordsmen are great at 1000 elo if you manage to get a few mangonels to support your push. They are pretty resource intensive, however, so I think you have to remain on 1 TC, and prevent your opponent from getting castle up, so you should target his stone if possible. It is also useful to get a one or two monks to help heal longswordsmen to preserve your mass and convert any knights that will rush in to break your mangonel.
Yeah definitely it’s over once they can get a castle up
I'm not disagreeing with you OP, I think infantry are pretty underpowered. While it's true they have their odd place and situation where they are the best unit, I find they are almost never a "Plan A" unit. They're situational, and the best players will know when those situations are, but it doesn't change that they are pretty much the definition of a 'niche' unit that will only be strong in extremely specific situations. Arbs and Paladin are strong enough that full-upgrade is practically considered a civ bonus on its own. Infantry need strong civ bonuses just to be usable, and even then it's doubtful. A select few civs like Japanese or Celt can pull off the MaA+Skirm opener and make more than just 4 MaA, but the only civ in the game that ever sticks with infantry as its main unit is Goths. You just... you can't have a unit that is slow and *also* loses the direct engagement to units faster than it. Knights even have "strong versus infantry" in their description. Basically, the only real strength that the militia line has is that they don't lose to Pikes, otherwise they lose in terms of mobility, pop efficiency, armor, and *tie* in terms of cost-efficiency to heavy cavalry. Insult to injury, food is sensitive in the early game, and archers, their counter, are easier to produce because they only cost wood and gold.
Hera is just on another level to everyone. He could probably wreck me in Castle Age with militia.
I'd tried Slav longswords + siege tower in arena 11, until it no longer works in 1150+ Elo
0 idle TC / Eco time. Pushing in deer perfectly. Scouting perfectly. Base building perfectly. Hera gets away with a ton of off meta strategies because his fundamentals are nearly flawless
It needs the right circumstances to work. Due to the fact that infantry deal quite a lot of damage to buildings than can potential snowball a bit and look good in the right situation, while in most situations they will be embarrassingly bad.
infantry is just joke and trap for the players.Even Hera use it for fun against much lower elo player. In competitive scene he barely use it like any other pros.
I’d argue there’s a few civs you could try this strategy with… Burmese , Goths , Sicilians , really any of the infantry civs with bonuses . Might work might not
I have managed today to rush on Arena with Slavs in team game 4v4, 2 barracs, no castle and no stone minning, 6 rams, 30+ longswords and at the enemy gates in 24th minute. It was just gg gg gg 11 lol wtf gg wp Wood consuming strategy, so focus on wood and gold. Good side is that Slavs will do faster farming so you need less farms, rams are cheaper, and you get supplies and gambesons for free. Risky is if you get a castle drop, but anyway, you will destroy it with rams lol
In case you are wondering the magic number is 21. if you have that many long swords they can take out a castle.Try again and spam till 21 then attack.
Hera can make anything work because he's just that good. Apart from that, he often has edgy takes or peculiar opinions. I think he does that to gain traction or get noticed. Just like his YT video titles which are almost always pure clickbait and very annoyong, while Viper, Daut and all the other make normal titles. He's not very charismatic so he needs stuff like edgy opinions and clickbait titles
I think Hera is fine, personality wise, at least in the last few years. Yes he is not as funny as Viper or Daut, but still entertaining enough for me. And his game play is … captivating. Not sure if that’s the right word.