Why are pros so dang hesitant to create militia-line units when militia would clearly be a winning play?
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I’m a low elo scrub, so feel free to ignore my post/call me a noob.However, there’s one aspect of the game which pro players seem to ignore, and that is late game militia spam.
The fact that they don’t use this strategy more often is mind-boggling to me.
They seem to absolutely avoid creating the militia line at all costs, often choosing to go for a mixture of trash units and siege, which they then promptly lose in a fight anyway.
One of the more egregious examples of this is the recent TTL Platinum match, TaToH vs Viper, the first match where they played Hideout.
Tatoh was Malay while the Viper was Portugese.
For those who are interested, this is the link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvVXxGO6zGs&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvVXxGO6zGs&t=0s)
To briefly summarize the video, TaToh and viper were playing a hideout game where they both were primarily creating trash units backed up by a lot of bombard cannons and trebuchets when gold was running low.
Tatoh was basically creating only skirms, halbs and karambits who were promptly being killed by defensive castles.
I’m pretty sure that if he just researched Forced Levy and spammed two handed swordsmen, Viper would have no answer to them, because they can only be countered by gold units, which were in short supply.
Instead, he made shitty units that just died to Viper’s trash army, so he just resigned.
This brings me to the crux of my unhinged rant: WHY are pro players so allergic to making militia, especially when the militia line is so hard to counter without gold units?
It feels like they are so paranoid to take ‘bad trades’ and hence they may lose a few militia line units to microed arbalests, creating a ‘missing the forest for the trees’ type situation.
I’d love to see a top 50 player experiment with militia line beyond early feudal age and actually give them a fair chance and play against other top players in the ladder.
Hera made a video about why transitions are not always that easy as they seem: https://youtu.be/g_yWWo8yAOk?si=YPov0XfdihU1LXrD
Hey OP, you are going to be happy 🙂 https://youtu.be/aYQhtZ7S-yo?t=3378
The main problem seems to be investment costs.
It takes a lot of time + resources to actually tech into champions.
And if you do have the means to invest that, your opponent likely also has the means to invest into counters to the champions you just made (and will do so much easier than you did).
The problem is there are 4 Evolutions in the militia line.
So if you don’t go for maa it just takes to long ans is to expensive to get there.
Thing about how many supper units you can have
it’s funny that you mention tatoh and viper specifically, because one thing I noticed is sometimes they are allergic to make gold units at all, not just militia.
it is as if their game plan is to hoard all the gold while the map runs out of it, then just outlast their opponent.
but sometimes it backfires, I remember a tournament game (sorry don’t remember which one) where Viper resigned with like 3k gold, he just had no production and lost to pure hussar.
it might even have been against tatoh, not sure
Two reasons: Milita line are countered easily by archers, a common unit, and Militia line take a lot of time to switch into.
Sometimes they still don’t go for it even when it makes sense, but the example you provided the reason was probably because he would have lost a lot of momentum and didnt have enough breathing room to make the switch.
I havent seen the game though.
I havent seen the game, but what would have stopped viper from adding a few hand canoneers while his castles kill the first infantry units?
What would tatoh do while investing all the ressources into all the techs he needs?
What army comp did viper had?
if there were castles covering each other, or if murder holes is researched, the swordsmen arent that great against castles.
Why didnt tatoh go for bbc to kill the castles?
Did viper have feitoria and/or relics?
You need to make a bunch of barra ks amd wait so long for all the upgrades.
In this time the opponent might overwhelm you already
>Why are pros so dang hesitant to create militia-line units when militia would clearly be a winning play?
maybe because is not the wining play.
Too expensive to tech it.
in the game you posted Tatoh was playing against Portuguese and Viper had already teched into arquebus.
it takes tatoh several minutes to tech into infantry + he needs to spend wood he doesnt have on barracks, while Viper could just add some of the strongest hand cannons to counter
One thing you have to understand is the game is very snowbally and your unit composition could be game winning (or losing).
Champs simply don’t work cost effectively against most other gold units (archers/knights) and have next to 0 mobility.
Although they do well against pikes, they aren’t as strong as you’d believe vs hussars/skirms, assuming full upgrades.
Hussars have the mobility advantage and can take good fights or raid effectively with their speed.
Skirms are always attacking and can easily kite backwards especially with a meatshield in front.
If you had the gold to upgrade and spam Champions, assuming your opponent simultaneously didn’t have any gold to spend on counter units, you probably already won or are in a winning position.
Malay going for trashswords is extremely situational because of the high upfront cost of researching 2HS and all the relevant upgrades on top of an UT that costs ~1400 resources which could be better invested into other units.
This isn’t like Arena/Black Forest where you can peacefully boom for 30 mins while spending 0 resources on army.
You also need an extremely strong food eco to support 2HS spam.
Even if Tatoh got Forced Levy for free, he would’ve only been able to make like 20-25 trashswords at the time he resigned which would’ve been promptly cut down by skirm spam with a few arbs behind.
How would you justify spending that many resources on a unit that has no choice but to run forward into ranged units and lose half your army by the time they get within melee distance?
I play a lot of Goths on closed maps team games because they have a extremely fun early Imperial Age composition but I would never play them on an open map because going infantry will just die to the current meta, which is crossbow + knight.
Honestly, that seems like pros not recognizing that militia lime units can become trash for one civ.
which is a niche that makes sense that pros can fail to recognize.
But yeah, it is annoying that people overwrite off militia-line units.
On a map like hideout u will just sell food and wood in late game if u have 130+ vills to mix siege and counter units like hand cannons .
The second aspect is also that it takes too much time for u to transition into militia line if ur planning around countering lategame trash war (ur usually out of gold by that point anyway)
I think this is prob the worst game u could’ve chosen in terms of map civs and stiuation to illustrate your point because the openings in imperial were arb bbc vs skirm monks .
Viper is spending gold on making a gold army comp and tatoh is spending his gold into upgrading his trash , tatoh stabilizes the situation to hold the early push and goes for a counter through the middle teching into onager + mixing his own bbc .
U can’t win siege war vs Portuguese once they get arquebus , eventually once the pressure has been cleared , u have officially run out of options since viper just has better army comp by default in that matchup the longer the game goes on .
militia line doesnt do anything vs existing arbs ( nvm that he wont even have time to switch cuz viper is wiping out his base with 10+ bbc arb skirm lc mix ) and hc mix once miltia line does show up u’ve already lost all the wood access in the middle .
malay have weaker cav , weaker seige , equal archers and worse militia line once viper gets his own champs .
u only win that matchup with if u use ur timing attack early imp or do enough dmg to contain the other player with ur mapcontrol .
Also a video on transition timing if anyone is interested https://youtu.be/vEeHT4zhl4U
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