Handling Spears in Early Teutonic Castles
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I take pleasure in playing as Teutons, and usually I pressure scouts in Feudal, then progress to two Town Centers/two Stable Knights.
I have observed that my aggression is hindered in the early-to-mid Castle Age when my opponent heavily invests in pikes to counter my knights.
What would be the best course of action for me in this situation?
I have considered switching to another tech, but that would be costly and my opponent would reach Imperial Age before me.
I have also thought of adding a Mangonel, but that would only draw my knights into unfavorable fights to protect it.
Scorpions work well, but they are expensive and significantly hold back my Imperial Age transition.
Should I stop making scouts in Feudal?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated; I am at 1k Elo.
One thing to consider here is that your opponent isn’t going to be winning the game with only pikes.
How often have you lost a TC to pikes?
If he does push your base, they have made a terrible decision, just take your knights straight to his eco and kill everything in sight.
Your opponent will never be able to match your mobility (even with slow Teuton cav).
If you have map control, scorpion+skirm+knights can work wonders in a direct battle.
Another option is to just stay knights and 3-TC boom and beat them to imp.
Yet another option is to castle drop them (wall in your vills if necessary, pikes will take awhile to get through even palisades) and fight under your castle (not actually direct fight, but you can run around and attack production buildings nearby with your knights).
Also sit siege near your castle for good damage trades.
You could even drop a forward TC on a forward gold or stone since they won’t really be able to pressure it with only pikes (and if they do, just attack their eco and force them to go home).
I was only playing archers (up to 1250), then in Jan started using scouts to knights (I dropped to 1050), I then climbed to 1350 in about a month with scouts to knights.
Here are the tips I think I focused on to climb.
General tips to increase ELO:
– watch your replays.Focus on TC idle time especially in dark/feudal age.
Focus on your up times.
– A 1300 will beat a 1000 almost every game within 5 minutes of hitting castle age.This is due to clean build up to castle giving a fast up time.
The eco is then set up to spam 2-3 stables of knights instantly.
This overwhelms enemy army numbers and breaks into base.
– Get dark age as clean as possible, pick one build (I.e. 20 pop scouts) and stick with it always.At 1000 ELO you don’t get better by reacting much to the enemy build/plan, you just need to do your build/game plan faster/ more efficiently.
– Don’t bother to push deer if it more often then not makes your dark age sloppy.No point getting a boost 1/4 games if 3/4 you get an overall negative outcome.
– If you get housed in dark/feudal try really hard to remember in your build to get houses down consistently.
– Make sure you get as much value as possible from first 2-3 scouts.Make stable asap and go straight to the enemy base to look for vills.
– Think about when to stop making scouts and go to castle faster (I.e.can I realistically find more damage here if I add a 5th and 6th scout when we are both fully walled).
– Get to castle faster than the enemy.What can I do to go up faster, are you getting enough farms down in the first few mins of feudal?
After your barracks, stable then house, are you spending the rest of your wood immediately on 4-5 farms?
Try not to float more than 100 wood if possible and get the vills on stragglers straight onto farms.
Then focus really hard to listen to the villager created sound, tab straight back to tc and put farm down.
– try get 14 farms by 14-15 mins.Then put 5 vills on gold.
Once 5 are on gold hit wheelbarrow.
Then send all berry villagers to farms (18+ farms).
As soon as wheelbarrow is finished you will have res to click up to castle.
Tips on knights in castle vs pikes (if enemy is pure pike)
– playing against pure pike is a gift as long as the enemy isn’t miles ahead in eco in the first place.
– click the enemy pikes to check upgrades.I’m very early castle try to focus on if you can win a fight if they don’t have as many upgrades as your knights yet.
Later in castle when they have mass and more upgrades do not fight them.
– Use mobility, you can always run away.Don’t take a bad fight.
Pikes can’t run under TCs and kill vills so their ability to disrupt your economy is limited.
If they do come to your base, you can just run to the back of theirs with knights and force them to react.
– drop a defensive castle, this limits where the pikes can walk around.
– make just enough skirms with some upgrades to make them back off.Hope this helps!
Use Mobility.
Boom. 3-4 Scorpions
Forward siege with 2 scorps
A few monks
Add spears (save the pikes investment for more knights)Depending on their upgrades your spears should do ok enough especially if you have the attack upgrade already since you’re going cav.
Teuton extra melee is solid and your knights should eat with just a little balance to the pikes counter especially in early castle with lower numbers.
Adding a few spears is the cheapest option by far and easiest to micro.
If they have arch or siege your spears will get crushed of course but if it’s pure pike I’d go for that
FIGHT PIKE WITH PIKE!
Thats basically my game plan with teutons.
Force the opponent into spears in castle.
Make him sit at home with raids.
Meanwhile boom up with cheap farms, go imp and flood with champs.
Try to pressure his gold, so he can’t counter champs.
If he manages to get some archers add skirms/skorps/onagers.
Focus your boom on imp and champs.
No need for a castle/trebs/siege/other units early on.
Your opponent will only beat you with straight pikes if you repeatedly take bad fights into them and start losing lots of knights.
That’s an inefficient trade and will slowly drain you of resources, which is why your opponent is hitting imp first .
With Teutons you actually shouldn’t really be getting beat to imperial age because of how cheap your farms are (unless your opponent is deliberately going 1TC fast imp)
If your opponent is investing into mass pikes, consider that a good achievement.
Back off knight production, then use your existing numbers to keep his pikes near his base.
Get that third TC up, grab handcart, and spam those cheap farms and get yourself to imp.
You’ll have map control in the meantime, so as others mention use that to your advantage grabbing relics, drop a castle on a middle hill if there is one, or forward, etc.
Depending on how mutch pikes your opponent build, you might want to switch into archers.
If it’s not to many just add some of the following skirmish/xbow/scorps
Maybe try 1 TC triple stable which is doable with Teutons due to cheap farms.
With full blacksmith upgrades and bloodlines your armored knights should still beat pikes unless outnumbered 2 to 1.
The key is not to let him mass pikes.
If he does try to take good fights with high ground from hills or bait him away and then raid his eco.
Hera said knights counter pikes 😛
Famous quote on hera: “knight counter pike”
If the enemy has low number on pike and missing upgrade, you can kill the pike even with your knight.
If he has big mass of pike, use mobility or tech switch into foward siege or skirm or teutonic knight if it is late game.
Siege require no upgrade and teuton skirm dont have bracer though
Keep a few scorpions at standby at your eco.
Pikes can’t dive under tcs, so your eco is untouched.
And don’t engage spears with scouts unless with upgrades & considerable number advantage, & pikes with knights.
some of the other guys have mentioned it, but if you are in knights and your opponent is in pikes you are winning.
Pikes will successfully stall knight aggression but only in one place at a time, so keep moving your knights around and attempting to pressure but do not let them engage with the pikes.
While this happens you have free reign on teching, and map control.
You can pressure them and they cant pressure you.
Forward siege for a couple scorps is a low investment way to keep pressure on, and use that time to secure res or imp
Add some scorps
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