How to Counter Franks
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I’ve been playing the new Xbox version and have noticed that many players choose Franks as their civilization and adopt the same tactics.
I find this repetitive and uninteresting.
Once they reach the castle age, they quickly construct a castle near my village, killing my villagers and sending in armies of horses.
I’ve tried attacking early, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference as they still manage to get their castles up early.
This tactic seems cheap and dull.
Using siege weapons against their castles is impractical and costly, as the enemy’s horses often destroy them before they can do any significant damage.
I’m hoping for some advice on how to counter this tactic.
My rating on console is around 1200, which I consider average.
1.
Add stone miners in dark age
2.
Stable + Blacksmith in feudal
3.
Add scouts on your way up to castle age
4.
Use scouts to spot and harass the vils coming forward, kill as many as possible.
5.
Add monks to secure relics and continue messing with his vils.
Also they’re great for converting low numbers of knights.
6.
Add your own knights if need be to help kill the vils.
7.
Build your own castle inside your walls guarding important res or denying likely places he’ll hit you with his castle.
8.
Wall internally using houses, gates, markets, whatever you need, to protect your eco from the breech in your walls.
9.
Focus on getting faster imperial age, and prepare a counter play against his ideal unit comp.
You can idle your TC(s) and abuse the market if you need to.
10.
Build 2-3 trebs ASAP and start levelling his castle.
Regain map control and start pushing out with your army.
11. ???
12.
Profit
I recommend playing Teutons on arena for a few reasons.
First, your cheap farms are a crazy strong eco bonus for FC builds, as well as booming.
Second, your infantry and cavalry get extra armour in castle age.
If you get bloodlines + blacksmith upgrades Teutons have better knights than Franks in Castle age (albeit slower).
Third, franks don’t have a great answer to a flood of beefy Halberdiers and Champions in imp.
It should be easy for an Xbox controller to micro the infantry spam.
If they go with Hand cannoneers to counter infantry, add onagers and knights.
Fourth, iron clad makes your siege a little more durable, and you’ll need that for whatever siege option you go with.
Fifth, crenellations is actually a nice upgrade on arena.
It makes your castle’s range go brrrr, and you’re gonna want to build as many castles as possible to control resources and apply pressure to his walls.
Sixth, Teutons resist conversion.
This is really helpful as monks are pretty common on arena.
The arena Castle drop is the oldest play in the book.
It’s annoying, but not that hard to overcome.
Best of luck.
You have a couple ways to go against this strategy:
1.For arena, you know the castle is coming.
You can deny it easily by delaying your own castle age and building a couple archers/scouts (depending on civ).
Most likely he is running up there with his vills unsupported by units.
2.You go to stone early, scout where he is placing his castle, then build your own defensive one.
Yes, his are cheaper, but you can still afford to build one at roughly the same time.
After you place your defensive one, wall up next to it, build a siege workshop behind your new wall and your opponent will be effectively denied.
In either case then focus on getting to imp faster.
If he is investing in knights to try and attack you, so long as you keep him out, you’ll hit imp before and can treb down his castle.
3.
Pressure him early with towers.
More risky and civ dependent, but will prevent the castle drop boom.
Bonus points if you can deny him taking stone.
In all cases, you know what unit he is going to build.
So you can focus on counters.
Pikes, camels, whatever your civ is good at.
On arena.
Build military buildings OUTSIDE FROM YOUR BASE, yeah in front of your walls.
Also first mine gold which is in front of your walls too.
Here’s why:
You prevent them castle dropping you straightly at your walls, with your forward buildings
IF they lay siege on you, you mine your outside unsafe gold first, so you have shitloads of gold which you can later mine safely in your base.
Also have bunch of archers in feudal, like 10 should be enough.
Gold is a trash resource in feudal, you just need some to age up.
So archers are kinda more of trash unit here.
Food is most crucial resource in feudal, you need it for vills, booming, upgrades, army, everything and you don’t earn much in feudal.
Archers don’t cost food.
But they are vulnerable to cav, so mix here some spears, like 5 or 10…
Build outpost around your walls to see if enemy vills are coming.
Also if you are facing Franks.
They are dumb mostly, going for castle drops and paladins only.
So prevent them dropping castles next to your walls, then they try spamming paladins…
So after you fight off castle drop just spam halbs/camels
Could always TC drop them.
Especially if you can deny their berries then you deny them their berry gathering bonus.
Throw in some farm steals and you can really screw up the average Frank picker’s plans.
Key is to not let him build the castle.If you don’t see it early enough, you need vision (outpost or other buildings at important spots, also townwatch).
Or just plain scouting: Is he mining stone?
Then watch out for villagers coming forward after he reached castle.
Then if you see him building, you should be able to stop him. (counter tower and/or military)
>I’ve tried attacking early but it doesn’t really matter
how could it not matter?
you should be able to disrupt his eco enough to pull ahead with your own.
how can he get stone for castles if you’re attacking his stone mine?
Castle drops are pretty annoying but getting castle dropped doesn’t automatically lose you the game.
To defend vs a forward castle you can either:
– Create archers on defense to kill the forward vills, not recommended because vs a monk rush or defensive castle+boom you’ll be at a disadvantage
– Build your own defensive castle and fast imp, I like this the best, get trebs and push with arbs or hand cannons.
Malay, Turks, Portuguese and Italians are the best at this.
Finally the best solution is to ban arena like a lot of people do.
God, I love this game.
I’m booting up the game now so I can ruin someone’s day as the Franks
Gujara.
They shred Franks…
I’ve found Italians to be a fun counter to Franks.
Especially on arena where you should have a chance to get your own castle and start massing Genoese x bows..which will actually shred both the cavalry and the throwing axemen.
If you’re reaching Castle TOO far behind them , it could be an issue, and on arabia it’s really easy for Franks to punish you before you can get a castle and a good mass up, but for arena definitely.
People say hit stone early to get a defensive castle and make scouts to deny the enemy castle – good luck.
Two spears or quick walls and that castle is up and you wasted a lot of food on worthless or dead units.
Going to stone all but gaurantees you’re too late to imp.
A few towers much better for defense.
And archers are the far better counter to castle drops. 6 archers with fletching toss in a spear or two can all but guarantee denying the castle.
Britons Ethiopians Mayans.
I like britons with cheap tcs to keep up your eco even when producing archers.
and extra range counters a bit the common UU organ gun jannis conqs.
Ehtiopians with bbc can be extremely good in early imp to push back any castle drops etc.
Focus on booming/food/ age up
Then spam halbs before he shows up.Castle drop + FU paladin’s are Franks most cost effective method of winning.
Throwing axemen are slow imho as someone who sometimes plays as Franks.
The major downside of the beefy Frankish paladin is the high cost.
Throwing axemen are also a high gold cost unit.
Spamming halbs is your cheapest option, spamming camels and/or mixing in paladins of your own are a choice if you have the gold.
Archers are ineffective against them unless you have a much larger army.
On arena you just re wall and defend with monks if they castle drop you.
Late game i would go arbalast and halb depending on ur civ or heavy camels
Make some pikes and as soon as he starts building a castle send all your vills at them.
Half of them to melee vills the other half to build a tower next to his castle.
You should kill some vills and build the tower before his castle.
He will resign instantly
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