COMPSTOMP

[wardyb1]

post a rec and then people will be able to look where you are going wrong

[tnors]

update - finally got fred. rush kept him off balance until i could get some troops in the middle of the map. then i scaled up, brought artillery and attacked from the middle of the map. just keeping things in perspective though, i'm still operating with a 20% handicap. now down to gall and dutch. not sure what i'll do differently with them. i feel like i've tried just about everything.

[silky]

old thread but hopefully i can find some answers. i am getting my rear end destroyed by expert ai with me having a 20% handicap playing as france. the three i am having trouble with are gall, dutch and fred. i have tried rush, ff, semi ff and even turtle. i have tried all combos of infantry/cavalry.

gall - his cavalry and infantry and absolutely impervious to my attacks. they are wicked tough. i can greatly outnumber him and he will eliminate my army in less than a minute - with my troops behind 2 layers of defensive walls and a nontrivial number of artillery units. i have on occasion been able to hold him off for a while and make it to age 3 but, he brings another huge wave of troops as soon as i repair the walls and i haven't had time to replace troops. it's astonishing how many troops he can bring so quickly and he slices through my wall like it's not even there. game over.

dutch - they are the toughest. the town has a tight formation surrounded by towers. the settlers are gathering behind the towers so i can't get to them. early on, my troops are not strong enough to bring down the towers/buildings in a timely fashion, he scales up, sends cavalry/infantry and i'm wiped out. i can rush but my troops get picked off by the towers and the tc.

fred - just scales up well and brings artillery early. game over.

i have watched plenty of videos and i am scratching my head every time because the ai treat them differently than they do me. the whole time i'm wondering where the hell enemy is!!! they're just letting the player scale up and then launch an attack on their town. one exception i have noticed is that on some occasions, interjection will build barracks near the enemy town, attack the opponent and just abandon his own town. however, he also has 2 tc's which is not available to me.

totally baffled

Do yo have to do it as France, though? With 20% handicap you should be able to easily wipe out any comp with Iro rush. Only Maurice was a pain because of all the towers.

[tnors]

finally defeated both gall and mo. i've gotten all the ai civ's using french with me at +20%. i definitely had to study up and use some different micro approaches which helped a lot.

one of the comments i made was that in watching videos, i kept wondering why the ai was treating them differently than me. it seems to me that the ai reacts to what you're doing. when i started taking a different approach, the ai adjusted and my game looked much more like what i see in the videos - with me winning. like a boss

[aligator92]

I am pretty sure the first 8-10 are exactly the same every game. They have a fixed BO and use early units to take treasures. After that they usually try to adapt to your unit compositions

[tnors]

i finally got all the ai civs with me having a +10% handicap, including mo. i have no idea how i'll beat him with no handicap. it took several hours. once he spawns up some renegades, i can't take him on in a direct confrontation with even numbers. his renegades and cavalry cut through my musketeers like they aren't even there. the strategy that ended up working is to keep his settlers bottled up behind the towers until i could muster enough units to go after his military buildings, which is incredibly difficult because he has such a tight formation and several towers. if you go for the towers, you get taken out by cavalry and renegades. if you go for the saloon, you get taken out by cavalry and towers. ditto the stables. i just had to keep pecking away at his town until i had a sufficiently large enough force to overcome his defense. the civs that don't have towers are not nearly as difficult.

[tnors]

Do yo have to do it as France, though?

well no but that's the challenge. i do get that some matchups/maps just favor the opponent and at some point i'll accept that and maybe try a different civ. at the moment everyone keeps saying how easy it is to beat the ai which is turning out to not be the case in real life

[ǝɯɐuɹǝsn]

I am pretty sure the first 8-10 are exactly the same every game. They have a fixed BO and use early units to take treasures. After that they usually try to adapt to your unit compositions

not really, like the rest of the game, it depend of what you do,
it depend of the map, it depend if you wall early or not, it depend of the amout of TP you take, it depend if you make army early or not etc etc

[tnors]

i have defeated all ai civs with no handicap on either side. however, i am getting destroyed when giving a +10% handicap. would someone explain how 8 crossbowman can rip through 10 skirmishers in a matter of seconds?

[helln00]

if you are not microing im pretty sure that crossbows trade well with skrims due to their higher base stats

[dansil92]

Vet xbows do actually trade quite nicely with vet skirms in equal cost. Actually quite underrated in a pinch tbh

[tnors]

i just got henry with cavalry rush/keep away so i'm back on the winning track. i just kept his settlers from getting to the food. each time his infantry showed up, i just ran away and then returned to the herd. he couldn't scale up while i scaled up cavalry. catharsis. i've been working on that one for days.

[callentournies]

[callentournies]

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