I Cannot Seem to Triumph in Archer Versus Knight Battles, What Should I Do?
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So the first thing is, archers cost about half of a knight, so an even fight in terms of ressources would be more like 2:1 archers to knights.
The other misconception here is that you have to fight the knights.
Archers are exceptionally good at killing vills, if you have 40 archers and ballistics, try and send 8 to the enemies base (don’t take the obvious route), and see if you can find some vill kills.
Only move out with your big group of archers if you are 100% confident that you can win the fights with them, otherwise stay at home and mass more.
Only if this happened, and your opponent still is not showing any hesitation to continue playing knights, you should tech into spearmen.
Try to play for imp here and play with arb + helb, rather then xbow and pikes, as that is very vulnerable to siege.
Other then this, have a look at the replays and see how the eco is looking when you take these bad fights.
Are you ahead in eco? –> Stay home
Is he ahead in eco? –> Improve your boom game, or add more archers/monks so you can push
Your timing must be off.
You can get 20 crossbow with bodkin by the time they get two knights.
You need to use your castle age power spike.
You go two range you can drop two TCs and get a vill lead by picking some vills.
Add monks and you go for arb spike in imp.
Timings and power spike favor the archer player.
Knights work well cuz low level players don’t hit timings and use the power spikes.
Knights are also easier to micro.
I have the same problem and I have come to some conclusions about Archers.
They are for late Feudal, Early Castle, and Imp.
Any other time they should not be on the map without spear support.
Even with 25 Xbows with full upgrades they will get clapped by Knights with +2.
Mid to late Castle age is the Knights time to shine.
Archers can push again once they become Arbs with Chemistry and a meat shield.
After hitting that Early Castle Age timing.
I just go home and macro.
Certainly there are instances when I stay forward and keep pressuring maybe add siege but if my opponent is still able to mass Knights take a few vils and make way home.
The knights are absolutely useless against Crossbows behind walls.
Pros make it look easy but that’s because they are playing on thinner margins with less upgrades and against less knights.
Man, first of all don’t listen to these comments, most of the people who aswered here have no idea what they are talking about.
– Defending your base with xbows sounds like a stupid idea for me.
They are slow and deal very little damage against +2 kts.
You need to have like 20-30 of them, why would you want that many xbows just sitting inside your base, make pikes or camels.
If you expect your opponent to go 2x stable knights and you haven’t done any damage to his economy, better start adding second barracks and reasearching pikemen before it’s too late.
– Few monks can help early castle age but when your opponent’s got 20 knights they are pretty much useless.
– Trying to outboom the cav civ as archer player is even worse.
Player who is going scouts into knights should always have a better eco.
You get horse collar early in the feudal, don’t have to make mining camp in dark age and blacksmith early feudal – means you can invest into farms earlier, even research wheelbarrow in feudal and after advancing to castle age you usually can drop 2 tcs right away and get all your upgrades, while xbow player has to spend wood to make army = less wood for farms and tcs = worse eco.
– Fast imp tho can work sometimes, if your opponent doesn’t know how to deal with it.
But even castle age skirms with full upgrades trade pretty well against arbalest, so you have to kill quickly.
So what to do?
Honestly, i have no idea.
For me it feels like there’s no clear answer. (I’m only 15+).
I’ve lost many games with archers vs knights, maybe bc i never wall and just die to raids, but even with walls, one bad fight and you’re pretty much dead, it just snowballs out of control.
Knights are very easy to spam, i’ve seen people even going for 3 stable knight, sure they’ll have some idle tc time but it doesn’t really matter at low to mid elo.
You can just patrol kts under tc, they are always getting few villager kills.
You don’t have to micro that much, you can basically spam one button and win games. (ofc you need to manage your eco and stuff but you know what i mean).
They are just better unit, it is what it is.
What kinda works:
– early castle age you should always have numbers advantage, try to force a fight earlier before upgrades, and maybe try to deal some eco damage if you can, don’t go too far tho.
At all cost try to keep your xbows alive, never jump under the tower, don’t overmicro vs mangonels, don’t trade your army unless you are trapped.
If you failed, just switch into pikes/monks + TCs, don’t try to go forward siege with just xbows – knights counter both, you are just going to waste resourses;
– full feudal.
Archers probably the best unit you can make in feudal, 8-10 archers can deal a lot of damage, you can even trade ok against no armor skirms.
If your opponent is committing to skirms, simply make scouts.
Archers + scouts is the best feudal age army composition, it will delay your castle age for sure but if you manage to break through and kill few vills, force idle time, maybe a tower or deny resourses (especially gold, knights cost a lot of gold), then it’s totally worth it, also for some reason people rarely expect scouts from archer player and move out too far with their skirms;
– ballistic is very important but only when you have good numbers and your opponent cannot really fight you, it also helps with raiding.
So, to sum up: don’t throw away your numbers (20 xbows 2shot a knight with +2, with proper micro it can be really annoying to fight; make pikemen if you lost your initial mass; don’t commit to xbows when your opponent has like 10 kts vs your 10 xbows, you are never going to catch up it’s just a waste of resourses; also probably try to wall, i don’t know much about that but some people said it’s kinda working.
And good luck i guess.
I’m often on the other side of that matchup and the thing that scares me the most is the army you’re making (monks, xbows) but behind walls
Redemption is a great upgrade if you’re pressured by mangonnels
Yeah this is tough cause their isn’t one answer.
If you aren’t being aggressive and getting kills in fuedal or early castle with your archers, knights are better.
But even that is really dumbing it down.
It really is a common problem for 1100 players and under.
Just know that timings and having a sharp build is really important for the archer player.
Early castle you should have massed a lot more than him, so all in push forward siege workshop to force fights before he’s massed is pretty good.
Alternatively being walled and keeping your army inside and trying to get to imp first can be strong too.
Again you’ll see a lot of different answers cause it’s probably one of the deepest match ups in the game when it comes to how it can play out.
Are you me?
If your opponent is massing knihghts, send the xbows home and boom up to imp behind walls.
If they attack the walls with knighrs, xbows can defend from behind the walls.
If they make siege, redemption monks.
You should then win the race to imp, upgrade to arbs, get chemistry and bracer then kill all the knights.
Worth keeping in mind, the xbows should be able to get damage before the knights come out due to being able to mass them on the way to castle age so you should have the advantage in the boim game.
Knights counter Archers.
It’s a weird misconception that this wouldn’t be the case because of the very frequent early Castle fights where people take engagements before getting to appropriate numbers of Knights or missing def upgrades.
With somewhat even resources, Knights just win against Archers very convincingly.
thats how powerspikes works, u need and are forced to make damage early castle and then wait until arbalest if u didnt kill him.
If they going that heavy on knights you might need to keep all at home for defense and go imp.
20 knights will beat 30 crossbows unless you have pro level micro or find a really good spot to sit in – you shouldn’t expect to win those fights.
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