What Is the Most Suitable Civilization for Defensive Play for a Rookie?
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Greetings everyone!
I’m new to Age of Empires II and I’ve been reading up on some topics and found that I’m really drawn to defensive playstyles (mostly because I’m not great at managing a large army and don’t know where to attack yet).
Would Byzantines and Teutons be good choices for constructing a strong defense and avoiding developing bad habits?
Is it a good way to learn the game by playing defensively?
While playing defensively aka turtling, you want to build walls around your base early and then make military and keep them at home while you build up your economy.
For this playstyle I like Mayans.
Longer lasting resources so you can turtle for longer(expanding is still smart to do).
Cheaper walls.
Cheaper archers.
You want to have archers and later monks or mangonels for defense behind your walls.
Send out the occasional eagle raiding party.
A walled in Britton archer army with light cav is hard to stop at a low level.
That long bow and yeoman upgrade let’s you hit most anything from behind your walls and then slow castle push forward
Defensive civ is more complicated to learn, since you need to be knowledgeable enough to utilise the defensive advantage in order to win.
Byzantine is all about countering and how to gain advantage by using your cheaper trash unit discount, as opposed to straight up eco bonus from another civ (Teutons have cheaper farm instead.
Very straight forward good eco bonus).
Teuton is easier to play because you can either play paladin or halbs or TK SO build.
Both are straight forward to play comparing to defensive and Jack of all trade civ like Byzantine.
Teutons is less about making the right counter comparing to Byzantine. (E.g.
if your opponent is making knights in castle, as Byzantine you don’t want to go knight yourself since you lack good upgrades to make them equal trade.
You have to make camels/monk and pikes later on.
As Teutons, you can make your or knights as counter since your knights have higher armour and dominate them, providing their knights have no civ bonus of their own.) By being defensive you’ll also need to be good at placing good castles, be able to multitask (defend attacks, while micro your villagers so they don’t die or be exposed, and keep production and make buildings…)
Id say Teutons if you don’t like losing too much.
But sticking with Byzantine will force you become good at the game in order to win.
So it highly depends.
Byzantines is a good beginner civ IMO.
They have a wide tech tree, cheap army and they’re not a civ that’s designed to steamroll players.
New players often just want to steamroll their opponents and it’s not really the best way to get better.
Both are excellent picks for this playstyle, which itself is a good way to learn the game.
The Teutons will be easier but you’ll probably learn more playing Byzantines.
By simple nature, a defensive player will never win a game.
Defensive is a great way to drag games out but you need to sort out attacks if you ever want to get any better.
The thing about learning is that you want to practice what you can’t do yet, rather than optimising your result without that ability.
So when it’s about _learning the game_, do the opposite, play aggressively.
A good middle ground might be to go for defensive Archer play with Britons.
If you really want to commit to defensive structures then Koreans and Poles are a good shout too.
Incas are okay and give you great counter options for the follow up.
Byzantines are a good civ for beginners overall, as they have one of the widest tech trees in the game.
Meaning you can practice with more units than almost any other.
If you like defensive play then poles, mayans or incas might be your favorites because of their defensively oriented bonuses and/or tech tree.
But I’d recommend byzantines and Spanish to start with because they can do pretty much any strategy well and have good Unique units.
Lastly remember that playing defensively isn’t always a bad thing but games are won with aggression.
Also hera and survivalist make aoe2 guides so watch those.
You mean map?
Koreans for free tower upgrades, noone will attack your base 😉
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