The Underestimated or Infrequent Use of Cav Archer Openings/Rushes in Lower ELOs
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In my Elo range of 1-1.1k, the most common strategies I see are archer and knight rushes, with occasional use of MAA.
Although I’ve attempted cavalry archer rushes in the past and found them enjoyable, they don’t seem to be used frequently.
I’ve also tried doing a rush with light cavalry and cavalry archers in castle age, but it’s not a popular approach among other players.
Do you have any insights into why this might be the case?
It’s too slow.
You need castle age + many upgrades + many of them to be effective.
For example knights can do decent damage right away when hitting castle age.
Generally you want to attack prior to castle age on open maps anyways.
FC into CA is very weak.
It’s basically useless in virtually every situation.
The reasons are:
1) With limited eco you need units that are strong in small numbers.
That’s why you see unique units, monks, siege or sometimes knights as common all-in FC units as they can do decent damage in small numbers.
CA need a larger mass to be really effective and with FC eco you can’t afford a mass.
2) Upgrades.
Similar to point 1 knights, UU’s, monks, siege can be effective with no upgrades.
CA need fletching and bodkin, husbandry, bloodlines and most importantly ballistics to really get going.
There’s no chance you will come even close to getting these upgrades and still make enough CA with a FC eco.
3) Micro.
Generally speaking CA require way more micro to be effective than many other common units.
At lower ELO’s CA play just isn’t as effective.
The slight attack delay is also very awkward for lower/mid ELO players.
After a scout rush or long feudal war a 3 range CA castle age play can be amazing though.
I really believe that they should buff a little bit Cav Archer accuracy, somewhere close to 65%.
Thumb Ring is way too mandatory for them.
It only seems to work for me if I’ve got an eco lead and get to castle age first.
I guess this is too slow?
When I was playing aoe2 with my friends 10+ years ago, we learnt knight rush and tried to advance to castle age within 15-16mins (28+2p).
But now, you know fight usually begins in feudal or even dark age…
3 reasons,
It’s too slow, a knight is a powerful unit on it’s own a handfull of them can win the game if your opponent doesn’t have anything to defend himself with, and with enough of them you can actually push TC’s and even a castle.
Ranged units become powerful in mass, they generally have lower attack but the entire mass is always attacking.
Xbows are competitive because you upgrade your current mass to a better mass.
However Cav archers can only be massed in castle age, they cost more than archers(so harder to mass) and need more upgrades.
I’ll add to this that archers in castle age will kill CA, and CA will start killing archers in imp after they get to their high pierce armor.
Secondly there are a lot of civs with archer or cavalry bonuses, there aren’t that many civs that get castle age bonuses.
Magyars for instance have imo the best overall non unique unit CA in the game, but they are generic in castle age.
Meaning the only civs with active castle age bonuses are Huns, Vietnamese, Koreans, Mongols and Tartars.
That said only 1 of these civs get FU CA, and mongols prefer to go mangudai instead.
Meaning that imo you only have a handful of civs that benifit from doing so, mainly being tartars and huns.
Lastly, the base accuracy of a CA is terrible, I believe 50% which makes thumb ring all the more important, yet it’s costly and usually something you pick up on the way to imp.
For this reason Tartars are one of the few civs I would do a archer into CA build with, as they get free thumb ring.
– CA need a mass of 20+ before they can become useful.
Knights don’t.
Archer do as well but you can produce them in feudal age already.
A small group of CA can neither fight xbow nor knights.
– CA need attention.Knights don’t.
– CA need more upgrades.Without thumb ring, their accuracy is only 50% (xbow: 85%).
Compared to archers, they also need husbandry.
– CA need a bigger commitment.Because you need a big mass, you basically need to go 1 TC 3 ranges, meaning you can’t add TCs as fast as other a knight or xbow player.
That means that going straight CA is usually never a good option, even at higher ELO.
Usually you should aim to play archer into xbow and use your xbow to add some eco first and later switch into CA.
you cant really “rush” CA.
expensive as hell, need a mass and upgrades.
Maybe with huns or but other civs are almost always better off going xbows.
With xbows you can mass then in feudal and on the way up to castle age.
With 3 ranges you can even get to 40 archers in castle age.
Click xbows+bodkin and you have a mass that can kill early castle age CA without a problem.
I do have fun with early CA sometimes, but it really feels like playing a less than ideal tatic.
the game is usually decided in feudal and you can’t make CA until castle.
If you want to go CA you should go archers or (less good) scouts since you will get some upgrades already.
And play tatars because thumb ring is expensive af
Because I can just add camels or skirms to whatever I’m doing.
with good micro, CA teams of 6+ do work, but early castle power spike needs to be capitalized on and ca is too slow to get rolling compared to a couple knights.
I usually see them late castle or imp as final composition.
I think the only civ that might make use out of rushing CA is probably tartars.
But even then it’s better to go for archers (with upgrades) do some feudal dmg and then go up and switch to cav Archers.
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