Utilizing the Militia-line Efficiently
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My mom said it’s my turn to explain to you how to play infantry.
I recently achieved 1200 Elo for the first time during the holidays, so I’m feeling confident in my Age of Empires II knowledge and skills.
Therefore, I thought it would be a good time to talk about how to make the most of the militia-line.
I’m aware that some of you may instinctively argue that the militia-line is useless and infantry are bad units, but I’m not here to debate that.
Instead, I’m here to discuss how, why, and when to use infantry most effectively.
Here are a few tips to consider:
1. **Always pick a civilization that has a bonus towards infantry.** This could be a military bonus (Japanese, Burmese), an economic bonus (Franks, Burgundians), or both (Teutons, Slavs, Vikings).
There are other options available as well, so if you tried to go Persian longswords and it didn’t work out, that’s on you.
2. **Make sure your civilization has the right upgrades.** The main ones to look for are Champion, Supplies, and Plate Mail Armor.
Squires and Blast Furnace are good to have too, but not as important.
You can still be successful without these three main upgrades (I played a team game where my ally was Mongols, who miss Supplies, and did very well with champions against Aztec eagles and skirms), but it’ll be more difficult.
If you’re missing more than one of these major upgrades, I would recommend staying away unless going infantry is your only option or you have a great bonus towards infantry that would otherwise make them overpowered (Bulgarians, Malians, Goths, Malay).
3. **Choose the right opening.** Most of the time, this will be MAA.
Opening MAA has a great number of advantages.
The MAA upgrade is one of the best in the game in terms of return on investment, it saves you another upgrade to wait on when going infantry later in the game (one of the largest flaws of the militia-line is the amount of time it takes to get to champion), MAA hit earlier than straight scouts or archers and harder then drush, and the MAA opening is highly flexible.
While the most common follow-up to MAA is archers, there are builds out there for following up with skirms, scouts, and even towers, as well as flooding even more MAA.
4. **Try to force your opponent into units that swordsmen can deal with well.** This means that you have to choose your army comp so that your opponent goes into units that counter your current army, but don’t deal well against infantry.
This can be the hardest part, as you must scout your opponent’s army to know whether tech-switching into infantry is the right choice.
For example, if you went xbows in Castle Age, you need to know which typical archer counter your enemy chose, which could be several different options, including knights, skirms, and/or siege.
Now that we’ve covered some tips on effective use of the militia-line, let’s look at each generic unit to see whether using infantry against them is a good idea.
This will likely be somewhat subjective, but it should give you a good feel for the best units to counter with infantry.
I’ll organize them by building and try to go worst to best.
**Archery Range** * **Cavalry Archer:** I’m putting them above handcannoneers due to one aspect: speed.
They can kite you all day, and unlike the spearman-line, swordsmen don’t have the “touch of death” bonus damage that spearmen do that forces the cav archer player to constantly pay attention to microing their army. * **Handcannoneer:** The only reason I’m putting them second is that infantry with Squires and a sufficient mass can possibly reach and surround a small group of hand cannons, which isn’t really possible against cav archers.
Still, 10 bonus damage along with 17 damage and 8 range is ridiculously effective, even with the lower accuracy compared to arbalests. * **Archer:** The usual infantry counter from the very beginning of the game really needs no introduction.
Easier and earlier to mass than hand cannons, archers are the unit everyone points to when justifying why infantry have a poor place in the meta. * **Elephant Archer:** Tons of HP and high attack make them formidable to face, but their massive cost and slow training time makes them super difficult to mass, bumping them below archers.
Still, don’t give your opponent time to mass these. * **Skirmisher:** Really the only unit at the archery range that’s worth trying to counter with infantry.
Their minimum range hurts them once you get Squires as they’ll now be slower, and the reliance on bonus damage is far from ideal too.
You’ll still want to get your armor upgrades and a decent mass of infantry before engaging.
**Stable** * **Steppe Lancer:** Again, speed is a major factor in this unit’s placement.
The additional range gives them the ability to hit-and-run and increases their DPS in close quarters.
Go halbs instead. * **Battle Elephant:** Like their cousin at the archery range, the high HP and attack is troublesome, but battle elephants get knocked down from number one as they’re slower than swordsmen, meaning you can retreat and delay them long enough to get out some spears and monks, which make elephants trivial to deal with. * **Knight:** The face of medieval warfare in pop culture, the knight’s previous dominance over the militia-line is the main reason why long swordsmen and two-handed swordsmen got buffed with 1 base melee armor.
This is also unit that rationalizes requiring a bonus for infantry the most, as FU knights tend to win against FU longswords in an equal resources fight, but this changes with a bonus.
However, while swordsmen can do well against cavaliers in Imp, they do not against paladins. * **Camel:** The only civ that might be troublesome is Gurjaras with Frontier Guards.
Otherwise, even infantry lacking an upgrade or two can beat camels in an equal resources fight. * **Scout:** The best of the trash units, there are still very few that pose a threat to infantry in an equal resources fight, namely Magyars, Berbers, Mongols, and Bulgarians.
Still, any civ with FU champs has no problem with the scout-line, only civs that miss upgrades might struggle.
**Barracks** * **Militia:** Trust nobody, not even yourself.
This comes down to production, micro, bonuses, and upgrades. * **Eagle:** Ther high speed makes forcing fights troublesome, and with 8 bonus damage for champs, they’ll likely run away.
This does open up a path for you to bust through their buildings and roll right into their base. * **Spearman:** With such a massive overreliance on bonus damage, spears are not very threatening.
They are faster and can run away and regroup if need be, but it won’t be very impactful.
**Siege Workshop** * **Scorpion:** Minimum range and slow speed makes siege in general have trouble with melee units, but scorpions en masse can clear out a group of infantry with ease. * **Mangonel:** One mangonel is more intimidating than one scorpion, but mangonels in larger groups aren’t quite as good as scorpions due to the nature of the bolts hitting every unit in front of the scorpion, unlike a mangonel shot. * **Battering Ram:** Lol
With the previous descriptions in mind, you should be able to make smart decisions about employing infantry in your army composition.
For example, a knight + skirm combo would be a good time to use infantry, while hussar + cav archer would be a bad time to use them.
At this point, I’m sure many of you are thinking something along the lines of “well why would you use swordsmen in a certain situation when another unit would be far better?” which is certainly a valid point.
Against mangonels, knights or light cav are certainly a better choice.
So why would you go infantry at any point?
Well, infantry do have several advantages over other popular units that might make them more appealing in various circumstances.
Nice guide!
I like specially the early castle and early imperial power spikes that are usually forgotten.
If you have a MAA/longswords mass their cheap and fast upgrade to longswords/2HS is strong.
Specially if you happen to reach the other age faster.
If your opponent is booming in castle age, a somewhat fast imperial age into 2HS+Plate Mail Armor is hard to stop with anything they could have from castle age.
Good to see the monk point mentioned, though I don’t know where the idea that infantry have more conversion resistance than knights came from.
You do need something other than infantry to stop someone from walling behind.
But if that’s the way they want to defend, it’ll cost them the production buildings at the front of their base.
Sending a nuisance group of like 4 longswords to attack a side wall puts a lot of pressure on the opponent.
MaA into range is better than a MaA flood.
One vil can out-repair 3 MaA hitting a palisade.
Don’t double down by building twice as many MaA and splitting them into multiple groups, that’s how you get 6 MaA getting stuck behind 2 palisades.
Your initial MaA can run vils off a resource but it’s easy for an opponent who knows what they’re doing to redistribute them to safer resources.
It’s also much faster for your opponent to small wall the MaA’s next target than it is for the MaA to run all the way there.
If you all-in thinking denying gold is a win condition you may be unpleasantly surprised by an opponent who builds a market.
The training time is not as much of an advantage as it seems because even though the other units take longer to train, they trade better.
You can’t slam 1 barracks of longswords into 1 stable of knights and think you’ll win.
Same goes for ranges, you take way too much unanswered damage when you walk at a microing opponent.
So you have to spend more on both production facilities and military to gain an advantage, which makes them a timing attack/win harder unit.
I believe point 1 should be revised.
It’s not quite so important that you choose a civ with a bonus toward infantry as it is that you have mostly-complete infantry and supporting units.
On that note, I’ll say something, and with a moment of thought, the meaning will be entirely clear: Vietnamese are an infantry civ.
Not only do infantry have more resistance to conversion than knights,
no
>Ability to be massed earlier:
like in a game with free res, you are right.
but unfortunately the disproportionate amount of vils needed to produce MAA line doesnt make this viable (lumber into farms).
gold heavy units win the game.
xbows produce slower but you need much fewer.
siege comes in much later, but again you need much fewer.
knights will simple out manoeuvre you and pick the fights they can win
>farming economy necessary to consistently produce infantry, which is also unlikely in early Castle.
i guess you answered yourself
>You’ve likely stayed on one main unit throughout Castle,
ah ok, so i just need to reinvest how much res?
what is my opponent doing?
infantry are only effective en mass, so my opponent is neither scouting me, nor spending the massive res that i spent on the hugely expensive transition?
how to play infantry: be a better player than your opponent
I didn’t read this whole essay of a post, but I want to point out the biggest flaw in your thinking:
>This can be the hardest part, as you must scout your opponent’s army to know whether tech-switching into infantry is the right choice.
For example, if you went xbows in Castle Age, you need to know which typical archer counter your enemy chose, which could be several different options, including knights, skirms, and/or siege.
You make it sound like you going xbows means the opponent is going to go a counter to xbows.
No.
If you picked a civ that has infantry bonuses, and the opponent picked a civ that has archer bonuses (which are extremely commonly picked civs) then THEY don’t have to go for an xbow counter.
YOU do.
They just go their own xbows into your xbows, and now both your xbows are struggling AND your infantry are useless.
One does not simply force their opponent to go into an xbow counter, doing so is more than half the battle in and of itself.
Also hand cannoneers have 7 range, not 8.
Step 1: dont because archers are still op.
Step 2: profit
>MAA flood: If you can starve your opponent of gold, then this can be a decent strat, but you must keep them away from gold for archers.
This can be a dangerous strategy as you can have multiple groups of MAA running around that can’t be resource walled out,
why can’t they be resource walled out?
If you bring towers it can be a useful strategy to stop them going to gold I guess, but probably tower the berries first.
>Early Castle Age Longswords: Quite popular with Malians, this strat is excellent against an opponent who has played very defensively in Feudal, with walls, towers, skirms, and/or spears.
The building-killing ability of infantry allows you to punish a greedy boom, as you can both break into the base and raze town centers.
You’ll need to do damage, as your own eco won’t be as good behind for a little while due to the focus on army production and the necessity of upgrades for this to be effective.
Quite popular?
By who?
Also how are you breaking into a base with just melee units?
Just make houses behind man and make like 1 scorpion and it doesn’t work.
>Late Castle Age switch: Personally, I find this to be the most effective.
You’ve likely stayed on one main unit throughout Castle, and your opponent will be trying to add counters, since having the economy to produce two unit types in early Castle effectively is difficult.
By the time you get to late Castle Age, you should also have the farming economy necessary to consistently produce infantry, which is also unlikely in early Castle.
Additionally, PMA and 2HS can give you a good power spike as soon as you hit Imp, as well as Champion and Blast Furnace after, which can give you an additional boost if your initial attack stalls.
Attacking in early Imp also means your opponent won’t be able to even think about getting a decent handcannon mass out.
More powerful gold units like paladins or siege onagers can give you trouble if you can’t close out the game quickly enough, so be sure to be prepared to make the appropriate counters when needed.
if your opponent was going anything ranged in castle age then they click Imp while you make the transition and ranged units with bracer will wreck you.
So I guess if they were going knights, but then as you transition to game losing longswords they can transition to xbows themselves if they want and knights + xbows beats basically anything.
>Trash wars: The most typical use for the militia-line outside of early openings, going champions in trash wars is a good choice.
As your gold dwindles low, you’ll have to keep in mind that it’s best to mass them as much as possible before attacking, as small trickled-in groups are liable to be picked off by skirm masses with a hussar meatshield and waste your valuable gold.
Champs also are good here due to their ability to raze buildings, which keeps you from having to invest your gold in siege to take out enemy production buildings.
Also, it’s best to wait until you’ve killed your enemy’s archers/cav archers/handcannons before attacking with your infantry in order to keep them alive and effective, as a small group of handcannons with a trash meatshield can still ruin your day.
This is actually an underrated use for them, but typically games go like both players have ranged gold units with a trash meatshield.
If one player loses their gold army then gold + trash beats just trash anyway.
So the situation you describe is basically both players losing their gold armies (perhaps trading with each other) but one player still having gold left.
But then, they could have just waited to spend that gold to make a bigger gold army to begin with and won that way, bearing in mind the transitioning to champion costs what around 800 gold before you even make the units?
Still, I think there are situations where this is worth doing, especially since 20 CA + hussars vs just hussars can take a long time to win, while 40 champions going into their eco can win the game on the spot since they double as siege so I have done this before and it has worked.
>Feel free to discuss and air your thoughts!
11, last time I did that I got downvoted.
Malay I find to be among the most accessible options to get into infantry without lacking good support options/alternative strategies: their elephants are so cheap they are overwhelming despite their overall lack of defense and health (also they have Heresy, quite unique for a elephant civ), their foot archer tree is complete, they have BBC and BBT, have usable monks and they make great use of water, even small bodies (fish traps and harbours)
Are goths complete crap?
They are pretty much a pure infantry civ.
I’m just wondering why they aren’t mentioned at all.
Tell em bro
Most important aspect was skipped by you: farming eco.
You need more farms for LS than for anything else besides Light Cav and Elephants.
That is their biggest issue and the task is to turn it into their biggest strength.
If you manage to survive the investment into farms, you’ll be able to spam and you have a very good, very flexible eco that can be turned into a mega-boom at any time.
That’s the thing you’re playing around while applying Longswords.
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