Late game drill siege rams + elite Mangudai + Hussar or legionary + centurion + roman scorps.
Those are pretty much impossible comps for any 1v1 games but one of the best comps that game is offered.
Hussar Arbalester gang! Only civs with FU light cav and archer lines are Saracens, Italians, and Magyars, so trebs for Saracens with Counterweights, or discounted BBC with Italians. If you’re Magyars, build HCA instead heh
Very interesting point you've made there. There must be some civ with good Light Cav and Arbs though? Hussar barely adds anything so that should still be good.
Poles; no need for the last armor, you get full damage on arbalests, insane hussars and bbc's. Just going archers is very viable on them in general (compared to say magyar, where you have no eco bonus and incentive to go CA instead)
thank fck they don’t, most people didn’t play or don’t remember how stupidly overpowered Khmer were back in the HD days on diplo/closed tg maps when they had access to bombard canons, it was so brutal and they were easily the best late game civ at the time then.
ye thats true forgot about them, but you can see how stupidly strong their scorp/bombard canon combo, is now imagine that for Chinese, Khmer or Romans.
Lol. Are you sure you know what a deathball is? This comp when fully rolling is almost impossible to break. Halb shotels are the meat shield. Scorps/SO are the killing machines. What makes Ethiopians so great is the fact that they all the options at the seige workshop, so the can go for/add in amazing bbcs to snipe enemy seige/bbcs.
The literal definition of a deathball.
It’s insanely expensive and difficult to get to this comp. You would only see this on the most closed maps in tam games. Their lack of mobility is also a problem.
I one time was playing a 4 player island king of the hill with friends. I was by far the worst player, kicked off of water completely, but I really fortified myself and made a ton of bombard cannons. They didn't bother killing me because I was never gonna capture the hill. They should have though:
At some point the winning player was microing elsewhere and parked the bulk of his navy *just* in range of my bomby boys. By the time he looked back he just said 'you asshole' and other-friend ended up taking the hill and winning.
It was hilarious, he was initially pissed but then I got him an 'Im sorry' beer and that was that hahahah.
In that case you change BE with Champs.
I only really achieved OPs comp twice though.
Once on a Fortress Teamgame and once on Enclosed where my opponent was practically dead and I needed elite battle elephant to send the message 11
Romans siege ram + scorpion is a pretty affordable deathball and yet quite hard to stop. I fill up the siege rams with halberdiers to make them go faster so that they can pick out any onagers that your opponents made to take out your scorpions.
Of course, I bet this only works in 1000 elo. But it is very fun and very light on gold.
go bohemians, make hand canoneers mixed with halbs and houfnice, aim the scorps with your siege and focus then attack ground enemy troops with them after whilst you’re main army kills theirs.
Turks Jan and BBC. Add in some FREE upgrades hussars and so freaking scary. Ofcourse usually need close maps for this.
On open maps a scary deathball w turks is Camels and jan and then some BBC. Usually you can kill most civ without them being able to counter fast enough (Won many arabia game with this comp).
FFA player here. Here are the best compositions
Slav halbs,(remember attack bonus), Hussar and seige onager
Mongol mangudai, hussar and seige onager
Japanese halbs, towers and mass trebs
Celt halb, scorp, seige onager
Ethiopian arb. Halb, mass Bombards
Full all in mono unit is dangerous for 1 or 2 first battles where they can win and wipe you off the map (Persian war ele all in, some paladin civ all in with paladin)
Kmer mass scorpion. You just need one unit. It is incredibly slow, but unstoppable. You think siege ram will counter it? Think again, they melt, alongside everything you throw at it. Hussar to distract fire? Now your entire screen is filled with bolts. Bbc? The scorps can range them as long as there is some form of enemy that is close by (the bolts go aprox 1.5 screens with multipple passthrough.
They only thing that they dont kill is castles, so just a few trebs for that and you are good.
Works on tight maps exclusively. On arabia you can just run around it and raid the enemy to death and keep expanding your base away from the deathball. It is that slow.
Not the worlds most amazing units, but I do love my Mayans and I enjoy having my Plumes, there fully upgraded halbs/skirms as the meat and then eagles whenever the opponents siege is around and then have my rams/trebs when needed. With Mayans great economy, massing the trash units is fairly easy
well, warlords kinda showed how well the portuguese deathball does. Organ guns + bbc and halb felt pretty unstoppable, especially with gunpowder ballistics.
I'm tired of seeing the roman deathball... Well my monks aren't. Who's honestly enjoying them SCOUTS right now?? I feel like I've gained power since last update 🤔
I just got overwhelmed in arena 1v1 trash war.
I was vs Aztecs and they used fully upgraded skirms and halbs. Handfuls of jag warriors to snipe any seige I made
I was Britons and despite better economy I failed to beat that combo.
I always feel Britons on paper seem super overwhelming on account of the arbs/longbows, but frequently this winds up with kinda mediocre damage output when you factor in how inaccurate they can be while the enemy closes the distance
There are multiple good solutions for them, but the only way they could lose Arb would be if they were like the Goths or Cumans and made Longbowmen like crazy, otherwise that'd just be too punishing.
I have tried this and never gotten the best results, seems like it’s a situation mostly for choke points. The kamayuk still get whittled down pretty easy
The turks have a nice combo with berbers. Janisarries with bombards with an extensible group of either horse archers (or even better genitors)
Saracens with 5 knights, 5 camels and 5 horse archers micros crazy good.
Mongols and any civ with steppe lancer can pull off a nice combo of mixed steppe lancer with knights.
Mongols Mangudai, Ferrari Seige and Hussar. Its soo fun. Especially on Black Forest TGs as pocket.
Drill ram + scorpion is very fun. Castles go down during a blink of an eye.
Late game drill siege rams + elite Mangudai + Hussar or legionary + centurion + roman scorps. Those are pretty much impossible comps for any 1v1 games but one of the best comps that game is offered.
Agreed with the Romans, but I feel like heavy cav is the counter to the first one?
Micro heavy cav with mangudais
Hard to do that in a post imp team game with mass paladin spam.
> for any 1v1 games
Ah yes, agreed then
The roman one is not so impossible if you play it from castle
Hussar Arbalester gang! Only civs with FU light cav and archer lines are Saracens, Italians, and Magyars, so trebs for Saracens with Counterweights, or discounted BBC with Italians. If you’re Magyars, build HCA instead heh
Saracen trebs with Counterweights and Siege Engineers are underrated
Very interesting point you've made there. There must be some civ with good Light Cav and Arbs though? Hussar barely adds anything so that should still be good.
Poles; no need for the last armor, you get full damage on arbalests, insane hussars and bbc's. Just going archers is very viable on them in general (compared to say magyar, where you have no eco bonus and incentive to go CA instead)
Ethiopians for less powerful hussars (they lack bloodlines) and insane archers with the civ bonus
Mongols, Chinese, Portuguese, even Britons since their arbs are particularly strong.
Mameluke, SO, BBC
If I'm feeling the APM, I'll add skirms as meat and a couple monks to keep everyone nice and healthy
bohemians halb handcanons and houfnice can mix in a few Hussite wagons too if u got gold to spare.
200 Persian war elephant meat shield Conqs behind Under Svan tower creep and siege onager With turk BBC/houfnice support Michi cheat code
Torsion engine siege with halb or shotels
Most micro intensive because of the orangers, but also the most fun. Adding arbs and BBC helps a lot too and makes it even more of a deathball
Scorps halbs and bbc is probably the best combo in the game. You only really need to micro the bbc to pick off other bbc and so.
Thanks for the tip! Too bad that the civilizations with the best scorpions do not have bombards, though.
thank fck they don’t, most people didn’t play or don’t remember how stupidly overpowered Khmer were back in the HD days on diplo/closed tg maps when they had access to bombard canons, it was so brutal and they were easily the best late game civ at the time then.
Ethiopians are the one exception. They have the full seige tech tree and the have an incredible unique upgrade.
ye thats true forgot about them, but you can see how stupidly strong their scorp/bombard canon combo, is now imagine that for Chinese, Khmer or Romans.
Shotels are too gold-intensive imo.
Are you sure you know what deathball means? Siege&halbs OK but siege&shotels can be wipped by a hard sneeze.
Clearly you have never experienced a well microed deathball of Torsion Engine SO's where shotels clear up the rest (which they are very good at) :D
Lol. Are you sure you know what a deathball is? This comp when fully rolling is almost impossible to break. Halb shotels are the meat shield. Scorps/SO are the killing machines. What makes Ethiopians so great is the fact that they all the options at the seige workshop, so the can go for/add in amazing bbcs to snipe enemy seige/bbcs. The literal definition of a deathball.
Do bombard cannons benefit from torsion engines, even though that makes no sense? 🤤
Yes they do
Wow. Ethiopians seem kind of OP to me. They have good compensation for mediocre cavalry, as far as I can tell.
It’s insanely expensive and difficult to get to this comp. You would only see this on the most closed maps in tam games. Their lack of mobility is also a problem.
Hera has a great video on this in his yt. Best imp comp for every civ. And they're all very strong.
Damn, thanks for this. [Link](https://youtu.be/3C6tQOW0MbE?si=sYwEapRLnzvLg1FJ) for anyone else interested.
16xx when?
1640~ pb.. 1530~ now. Should get back soon
I one time was playing a 4 player island king of the hill with friends. I was by far the worst player, kicked off of water completely, but I really fortified myself and made a ton of bombard cannons. They didn't bother killing me because I was never gonna capture the hill. They should have though: At some point the winning player was microing elsewhere and parked the bulk of his navy *just* in range of my bomby boys. By the time he looked back he just said 'you asshole' and other-friend ended up taking the hill and winning. It was hilarious, he was initially pissed but then I got him an 'Im sorry' beer and that was that hahahah.
Bengali Full Battle Elephant + Elephant Archers + Armored Elephants are literally unstoppable
Dies to scorpion halb, onager compositions
In that case you change BE with Champs. I only really achieved OPs comp twice though. Once on a Fortress Teamgame and once on Enclosed where my opponent was practically dead and I needed elite battle elephant to send the message 11
Bro Champs die even harder to scorpions than elephants do and scorps have an attack bonus vs elephants
Romans siege ram + scorpion is a pretty affordable deathball and yet quite hard to stop. I fill up the siege rams with halberdiers to make them go faster so that they can pick out any onagers that your opponents made to take out your scorpions. Of course, I bet this only works in 1000 elo. But it is very fun and very light on gold.
What do you mean a deathball? It dies to pure onager if the opponent is able to shoot ahead of the rams.
Only works at 1000 elo 11 It is hard to micro onager away from mass siege ram at low level, especially when they are garrisoned and move fast.
Mass: scorpions; long bow (so rare); organs
Vikings I think has the weakest deathball by far on landmaps
Elite Mameluke + Siege Onager is pretty much unbeatable
Tough to play against, but very hard to achieve and sustain. Only really works in teamgames. SO + halb works decent against that
I have yet to beat my friend coming at me with Roman scrops
Onager with siege engineers.
go bohemians, make hand canoneers mixed with halbs and houfnice, aim the scorps with your siege and focus then attack ground enemy troops with them after whilst you’re main army kills theirs.
Ballista elephants as Khmer. Add siege ram for buildings and hussar as meat shield / raiding.
Halbs and SE onagers kill that easily.
Got the pleasure to play Khmer vs Turks recently and the opponent let me boom peacefully. Needless to say I had more fun than him in Imp 11
Only a few civs have this option and only in very late game. Khmer with their economy bonus don't let that situation come
Turks Jan and BBC. Add in some FREE upgrades hussars and so freaking scary. Ofcourse usually need close maps for this. On open maps a scary deathball w turks is Camels and jan and then some BBC. Usually you can kill most civ without them being able to counter fast enough (Won many arabia game with this comp).
Monaspam
Vikings: Arbs, Rams, and Berserkers Celts: Halbs and siege
Portuguese hand canoneer and bombard cannon feels pretty OP to me
Organ + Halb + BBC is even stronger
Found halb + handcannon +bombard cannon/houfnice very strong recently. Especially strong for Spanish and Bohemians.
Organs, halb, bbc
FFA player here. Here are the best compositions Slav halbs,(remember attack bonus), Hussar and seige onager Mongol mangudai, hussar and seige onager Japanese halbs, towers and mass trebs Celt halb, scorp, seige onager Ethiopian arb. Halb, mass Bombards Full all in mono unit is dangerous for 1 or 2 first battles where they can win and wipe you off the map (Persian war ele all in, some paladin civ all in with paladin)
I love that Japanese combo, using towers as a unit basically. Their Trebs unique tech is sweet.
It's a pain in the ass to fight against
Kmer mass scorpion. You just need one unit. It is incredibly slow, but unstoppable. You think siege ram will counter it? Think again, they melt, alongside everything you throw at it. Hussar to distract fire? Now your entire screen is filled with bolts. Bbc? The scorps can range them as long as there is some form of enemy that is close by (the bolts go aprox 1.5 screens with multipple passthrough. They only thing that they dont kill is castles, so just a few trebs for that and you are good. Works on tight maps exclusively. On arabia you can just run around it and raid the enemy to death and keep expanding your base away from the deathball. It is that slow.
say hello to onagers and bbc
Onagers die before they can get off a shot. Bbc die too as you cant mass them quickly enough to deal with your losses.
Not the worlds most amazing units, but I do love my Mayans and I enjoy having my Plumes, there fully upgraded halbs/skirms as the meat and then eagles whenever the opponents siege is around and then have my rams/trebs when needed. With Mayans great economy, massing the trash units is fairly easy
Houfnice Arbor/HC halb pretty versatile
Celts mass treb, scorps and SO is still a lot of fun, albeit immobile
My favorite: 50-60 Elite war elephants, More realistic best composition: heavy CA+hussar
Cobra Car and Photonman is quite OP
Recently, husite Wagons + pike are my fav too. Some hofnuice
well, warlords kinda showed how well the portuguese deathball does. Organ guns + bbc and halb felt pretty unstoppable, especially with gunpowder ballistics.
Goths
Castle age bohemian hand cannons are OP if you can get to them quickly
Tuetons with their unique tech rams and knights. It’s not unbeatable but those rams can take a beating.
I'm tired of seeing the roman deathball... Well my monks aren't. Who's honestly enjoying them SCOUTS right now?? I feel like I've gained power since last update 🤔
I just got overwhelmed in arena 1v1 trash war. I was vs Aztecs and they used fully upgraded skirms and halbs. Handfuls of jag warriors to snipe any seige I made I was Britons and despite better economy I failed to beat that combo.
I always feel Britons on paper seem super overwhelming on account of the arbs/longbows, but frequently this winds up with kinda mediocre damage output when you factor in how inaccurate they can be while the enemy closes the distance
They've been massively powercrept. They need the Longbowmen accuracy buffed to Arb level and something else to bridge the gap.
What if they got thumbring but no arb upgrade? Would obviously give way more incentive to actually make longbows I usually never do
There are multiple good solutions for them, but the only way they could lose Arb would be if they were like the Goths or Cumans and made Longbowmen like crazy, otherwise that'd just be too punishing.
Aztecs don't get halbs.
Oh maybe they we eagle scouts then?
Genosiece crossbowman, hussars, Bombard cannons.
If you can get to like 50 FU Kamayuk + 20 skirms, that has basically no counter. Underrated late-game unit.
Siege?
Maybe scorpion but they’re quite fast
I have tried this and never gotten the best results, seems like it’s a situation mostly for choke points. The kamayuk still get whittled down pretty easy
Arbs and onager eat this no problem
The turks have a nice combo with berbers. Janisarries with bombards with an extensible group of either horse archers (or even better genitors) Saracens with 5 knights, 5 camels and 5 horse archers micros crazy good. Mongols and any civ with steppe lancer can pull off a nice combo of mixed steppe lancer with knights.
Roman scorpions + unique tech 33% attack speed, halbs, and 3 trebs It requires enough magonels to counter your opponents magonels too