Is Choosing Italians as an Anti-Meta Arena Civilization the Ultimate Strategy?
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According to win rate and pro picks, the top civilizations on Arena are generally a combination of Poles, Burgundians, Portuguese, Turks, and Bohemians with Spanish and Teutons receiving an honorable mention.
These civilizations rely on either gunpowder or powerful cavalry units.
However, the Italians with their age-up discounts, cheaper technologies, and two unique units may be a strong counter to the meta.
They can typically reach Imperial Age before their opponents, which gives them access to Condotierros to counter powerful units like Hand Cannoneers, Janissaries, Organ Guns, and Conquistadors.
Additionally, if opponents go with cavalry, the Italians have Genoese Crossbowmen.
With several clear counters and a broad technology tree, including discounts that favor the late game, the Italians could be a strong choice on Arena.
They’re a good defensive civ because they have all the answers, a great late game, and you didn’t mention it, but they also have every monk tech besides Heresy.
Having said that, they don’t get there with overwhelming economic advantage like half the list, and they don’t get there with overwhelming fast pushing ability like the other half.
Being able to counter people in Imp after you’ve been castle dropped twice with organs already doesn’t feel good.
Hera puts them in B tier:
What I see as the Italians is that they can compete for relics and map control, go for competitive Imp or actually make stuff after fast Imp, or have a great eco set up for the late game, but they can’t do all of them at the same time.
All the top tier arena can do at least two of the above very well.
Bohemians can do all three, lol.
Fast Imp is only meaningful if you have a forward castle or if your civ allows you to make cannons right away.
Genoese are a great unit, but they’re not a top tier pushing unit, so it feels bad to forward castle.
When you fast Imp, you need to be able to make strong units in small numbers that are hard to counter right away.
I don’t see that with Italians on Arena.
They are like the Incas of Arena.
They are in paper really good because they have a lot of good counter units to what is meta relevant, but can still be outmaneuvered and brute forced by top civs with stronger army and stronger economy.
If they ever get Condos in castle age with an imp elite upgrade (maybe for free only for them), they will be a threat for sure.
But right now they cant do anything against Turk castle drops into Jennies.
Yes Italians counter a lot of top tier Arena civs very well in the long run.
However if you go for the genoese hussar comp that is super expensive and takes time which civs like turks bohemians burgundians can use to pressure early imp before you can mass genoese.
Also if you wanna play condos as anti gunpowder some civs can just go arb.
GXbows are not at all easy to mass and are pretty squishy, look at ACCM v Tahtoh in NAC4
Italians have a big weakness to siege civs, as they lack key tech that is Siege Engineers.
Meaning even their bombards are outranged by FU bombards, so halb+onager+FU bombard counters them pretty well.
The Genoese are more vulnerable to onagers than arbs cause of their shorter range too
I like using Italians as the ultimate middle finger to late-game elephant rushes on casual.
Best feeling ever.
It’s pretty common for people to think Italians counter cav on paper, until they actually play Italians and realise they don’t.
iirc their lowest WRs are Vs cav civs.
Gxbows just aren’t good enough for being bottlenecked by a 650 stone archery range.
I’m an Arena clown, and my favorite civ is Italians because they counter almost everything.
It’s no problem to reach castle age at 14:05 with the stone to build a castle and then secure the relics with Genoese Crossbows.
They also counter most of the annoying unique units like Conquistadors or Mangudai, and for organ guns or Hussite wagons, they have Redemption monks.
Italians are also great for playing aggressively and pushing with one TC.
I often win arena games with 60 villagers while my opponent had 120 because I have the faster imp and the better army composition.
But there is one exception: Italians don’t counter Turks although they have the perfect counter units on paper.
Nothing counters janissaries, and there is no chance of getting condottieri when janissaries destroy you in castle age.
If you expect janissaries, you can make feudal army to prevent the castle drop, but if the opponent goes fast imp instead, you are dead.
If you expect fast imp and try to get to condottieri, the opponent destroys you with janissaries.
Or they just boom and overrun your fast imp eco with mass hussars or CA.
Whatever you try against Turks, it’s always wrong.
I usually just delete my starting vils and TC and go on to the next game if my opponent is Turks to avoid the frustration.
Imo britons better… that range advantage means you don’t need a castle to defend the castle drop Meta and can counter all of the common UU with extra range xbow while still running a 3 tc eco easily..
Nope.
Gunpowder in general is not what makes these top civs strong.
Strong lategame AND strong aggressive strats is what is.
Turk/portuguese/pole Castle drops are fast.
Condotierro help nothing against them.
The lategame of these civs doesn’t need to include HC/gunpowder units either.
For example Turks/portugese/poles can just go (cav)archer and light cav combination with fantastic eco.
Italians have far too weak an eco bonus to compete on Arena.
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