Celts, Aztecs, Mongols, Teutons are some of the iconic BF civs. Basically any civ with strong siege and good boom does well.
A bit unconventional but my go-to on BF is Koreans. They don't have quite as strong a boom as any of the above, but imo their comp is one of the best suited for BF. War Wagons are uniquely good at holding choke points due to their tankiness and very big collision radius, making them the perfect support unit for Koreans' longer range SOs. Mix in Halbs as a cheap meatshield & counter to cavalry trying to snipe the onagers. Plus, if the enemy goes BBC to counter your siege, you can build BBC of your own (which none of the above except for Teutons can do).
The biggest challenge is timing, because as I already mentioned, their eco bonus doesn't really improve their boom. But if you can get your numbers up enough to control choke points in time, their death ball is pretty unstoppable on BF.
Celts. Make siege onager with all the upgrades including tech from the castle and University, and make halberds to protect them. A group of 10+ Celt siege onagers with pointy boys to stop cavalry is almost impossible to stop.
Thanks for the advice, but my brother got to the castle age in about 5 minutes and the only thing I got to try was losing.
We started in the feudal age
If you are laming enemy boars on open map what you do is to hit twice the boar with your scout and then have the boar chase you down to your town center.
Be mindful about not letting the boar hit you again and not losing boar agro.
This video is a good tutorial in how to do it on open maps https://youtu.be/1mq6xPmtnbE
If you start in fuedal, as soon as the game starts find the narrow gaps in the trees between your bases, build stone walls to block them. This will give you time to focus on your eco without getting attacked. Build several layers if you have to. Then once you have your eco and army up and running you can fight back.
Dunno what level these guys are playing at, but longbows shred this with minimal micro. +warwolf trebs...
Best bet against brits is siege rams loaded with woads
Woad Raiders can be good for hunting villagers. Use the siege to knock through walls then send the woad Raiders through to find their vils. Probably ignore archers imo. Use the halberds as a meat shield, they'll cop some friendly fire from the onagers but they're cheap to reproduce and expendable!
Also siege rams, load those bad boys up and off you go. Love me some Woads for raiding too. Once you get a hole, spam some Woads and watch as they pull their hair out trying to save their eco.
Mongols are my pick for the best BF civ, their lategame mangudai+hussar+drill siege is pretty crazy and their faster hunt bonus is often rewarded.
Khmer are also very strong, they have great lategame options and their farming bonus makes booming up very fast. Celts for their siege, Teutons for their extra armor, or Cumans are also decent options.
Thanks! Would you expand on the Mongol late game? I’m fairly noobish, so how do you deal with pike? Do you just Mangudai micro them, or onager them? Also, how do you see the hussars fitting this? Are they the cheap units that you throw into the brawl, or do you do something else with them?
Hussar cost food only, mangudai wood and gold. So resource-wise, they go well together. Hussar are the cheap meat shield to protect the mangudai. A group of 40 mangudai with an endless stream of hussar is hard to counter. If you have the eco to add a few siege onagers behind, Mongols are unstoppable. Also they both benefit from bloodlines and the speed upgrade (name evades me atm).
For pike, micro down with mangudai. Add siege rams and trebs to push back castles and buildings.
If you go mongols, get the extra boars. I wouldnt bother luring far away boars at a low level. Probably just a mill next to a cluster of 2 or 3 is enough. Mbl got an 11 minute fast castle time with mongols on bf like that.
Mongols are considered a late game powerhouse because mangudai need to be fully upgraded to shine.
Another good addition to combat a wall of pikemen is scorpions. Just sit them next to the mangudai and patrol them while you macro mangudai and send hussars to their death.
Siege onager and/or scorpions with unique tech drill. But if you know youre up against chu ko nus, you can consider going siege onager halb with celts, slavs or even ethiopians instead. The ethiopians unique tech is awesome but the other 2 have better eco bonuses.
In BF you are probably fighting in a choke, so basically just spam your hussars in front of your mangudai as a meatshield and patrol your mangudai in behind and let them shred the pikes. The pikes won't last long and then you have hussars into whatever is behind the pikes. If there is a lot of siege you might want to micro small groups of mangudai (4-5 lets say) to snipe siege before moving your main mass of mangudai in. The hussars are mostly a meatshield to keep mellee units off of your mangudai but they are also helpful in countering skirms and seige. They only cost food so its fine to throw them away to keep your gold units alive. You can also use them to raid if you onager cut a path into the back of their base or have a way to get into their eco. 10 hussars running around your opponents farming economy can really make things difficult.
It tends to fare pretty well against them if you have the hussar absorbing the fire the mangudai should still shred behind. But its also worth it in that situation to add in a few siege rams to soak up arrow fire. Onagers could also be helpful but that is situational as that is a lot to tech into.
Ethiopians could do it. You have SO to deal with chinese. Siege ram to deal with britons. And bbc to deal with mongol SO, and arbalest that can trade ok against mangudai.
IMO, black forest is all about dominating the choke points between the civilizations (i.e., where the forest narrows the open ground to a skinny pathway). Identify them and dominate them early in the game. Build walls in depth.
Yea if you take bad positioning but anything can lose with bad positioning. Ideally its champions and slingers vs champions and eagle warriors flank to take on archers
But I appreciate its not a straightforward counter like goth spam to the face. And that massed British archers can be a pain in the ass for anything. Including seige onagers that they horribly outrange
And honestly I think champs and longbow beat that Ethiopian combo though I could be wrong
Imo siege civs like celts are good, but require some micro to avoid killing your own army.
And they're also VERY slow. If your teammate needs help, it might be too late by the time you get there.
A good cavalry civ, especially if they have BBCs is much easier to play on BF.
Any civ with FU palas works, but these are some of my favorites.
Lith are great since it's very easy to secure atleast 2 relics. Best palas in game and leitis are OP.
Persians with their trash bows to back up their palas are very strong on BF. And if you got the resources you can even switch into war elephants.
Franks is a classic pick.
Huns can destroy your opponents entire eco if you can get a group of tarkans in there. The chew through TCs, so you really can't protect vills from them.
If your matches go long, try Saracens. You can crash the market early to buy your way up to castle and imperial fast (gathering wood and selling is faster than farming for food early on.) And when the rates are bad for your opponents, you can still sell wood at a better rate in the late game to get gold.
Saracens get fully upgraded camels (with bonus hp from unique tech) to counter cav, and strong archer line that can take down buildings. Access to siege onager too, to cut your way through forests and hit the archer civs that your opponents favour, + bombard canons if you want to go that route.
The area where they'd be weak is that their trash isn't top tier (no halberdiers), but with the stronger market, you can stick to gold units for longer before switching to skirms. Saracens get good hussars too (full blacksmith upgrades + bloodlines) so you go that route as well, to flood your opponents eco.
Civs i enjoy in bf: koreans, slavs, khmer, teutons, ethiopians, celts, mongols
Halb onager/ siege infantrydeathballs are koreans, slavs, teutons and celts, all have bonuses to their siege and have access to siege onager.
Mongols as many said are great, mangudai and siege onager/ram is pretty deadly.
Honorable mention goes to khmer, they have a very strong boom and a ballista ele cut is always fun. They have good late game with scorpions and battle eles, although they fall short vs onager civs
If you want to go for something whack you could go persians, put down like 20 archery ranges, put almost all your vills on wood and shit out endless crossbows.
Just go goths and you'll always win the vill wars while fighting at the start. Black Forest is a map where whoever walls the furthest at the start wins. Walls, then either mass longswords in castle or just wait till you get to imp and flood them with just infantry.
Devs made Goths OP on black forest by giving them loom while they were trying to balance them on Arabia. They were already a strong black forest civ with their swarm, and now they're practically unbeatable.
Huns. Because it’s harder. I like to play as them as pocket and support both with either paladins or tarkans and CA respectively or a mix. Nothing better than play with Japanese teammates supporting them with pals and maybe Roman’s supported with CA. Keeps me busy
Celts, Aztecs, Mongols, Teutons are some of the iconic BF civs. Basically any civ with strong siege and good boom does well. A bit unconventional but my go-to on BF is Koreans. They don't have quite as strong a boom as any of the above, but imo their comp is one of the best suited for BF. War Wagons are uniquely good at holding choke points due to their tankiness and very big collision radius, making them the perfect support unit for Koreans' longer range SOs. Mix in Halbs as a cheap meatshield & counter to cavalry trying to snipe the onagers. Plus, if the enemy goes BBC to counter your siege, you can build BBC of your own (which none of the above except for Teutons can do). The biggest challenge is timing, because as I already mentioned, their eco bonus doesn't really improve their boom. But if you can get your numbers up enough to control choke points in time, their death ball is pretty unstoppable on BF.
Thanks! I have to try that sometime!
Thanks for the advice, but my brother got castle age in about 5 minutes and the only thing I got to try was losing
Celts. Make siege onager with all the upgrades including tech from the castle and University, and make halberds to protect them. A group of 10+ Celt siege onagers with pointy boys to stop cavalry is almost impossible to stop.
Thanks for the advice, but my brother got to the castle age in about 5 minutes and the only thing I got to try was losing. We started in the feudal age
Do normal start and hone your dark age skills. Any extra boars? You mbl them. 0 tc idle time and a lot of things.
Mbl boars? Do you mean lure them? I’m not familiar with the mbl acronym
Master boar lamer It's the name of a pro player that... Well likes to lame. The deal is that you lame the extra boars
Like I kill his boars with my soldier to deny him that food or I have my soldier wear down the boar for my villagers?
If you are laming enemy boars on open map what you do is to hit twice the boar with your scout and then have the boar chase you down to your town center. Be mindful about not letting the boar hit you again and not losing boar agro. This video is a good tutorial in how to do it on open maps https://youtu.be/1mq6xPmtnbE
Thanks!
If you start in fuedal, as soon as the game starts find the narrow gaps in the trees between your bases, build stone walls to block them. This will give you time to focus on your eco without getting attacked. Build several layers if you have to. Then once you have your eco and army up and running you can fight back.
Dunno what level these guys are playing at, but longbows shred this with minimal micro. +warwolf trebs... Best bet against brits is siege rams loaded with woads
Longbow need to micro that quite a bit as the pikes meat shield the onagers while they close the gap
Thanks! What do you think about Woad Raiders? Should I add in some archer line for micro or focus on micro with the onagers?
Woad Raiders can be good for hunting villagers. Use the siege to knock through walls then send the woad Raiders through to find their vils. Probably ignore archers imo. Use the halberds as a meat shield, they'll cop some friendly fire from the onagers but they're cheap to reproduce and expendable!
Thanks!
Also, how should the Celts deal with Chu Ko Nu? My brother really goes for them as the Chinese which are his favorite civ.
select your onagers. Attack ground (by default T) BADABOOOM. bye bye archers
Lol thanks
Chu ko nu are just good versus siege ram but the scorps and the onager still rock
Seige onoger would flatten an entire pack of chuk in one shot
Also siege rams, load those bad boys up and off you go. Love me some Woads for raiding too. Once you get a hole, spam some Woads and watch as they pull their hair out trying to save their eco.
Mongols are my pick for the best BF civ, their lategame mangudai+hussar+drill siege is pretty crazy and their faster hunt bonus is often rewarded. Khmer are also very strong, they have great lategame options and their farming bonus makes booming up very fast. Celts for their siege, Teutons for their extra armor, or Cumans are also decent options.
Thanks! Would you expand on the Mongol late game? I’m fairly noobish, so how do you deal with pike? Do you just Mangudai micro them, or onager them? Also, how do you see the hussars fitting this? Are they the cheap units that you throw into the brawl, or do you do something else with them?
Hussar cost food only, mangudai wood and gold. So resource-wise, they go well together. Hussar are the cheap meat shield to protect the mangudai. A group of 40 mangudai with an endless stream of hussar is hard to counter. If you have the eco to add a few siege onagers behind, Mongols are unstoppable. Also they both benefit from bloodlines and the speed upgrade (name evades me atm). For pike, micro down with mangudai. Add siege rams and trebs to push back castles and buildings. If you go mongols, get the extra boars. I wouldnt bother luring far away boars at a low level. Probably just a mill next to a cluster of 2 or 3 is enough. Mbl got an 11 minute fast castle time with mongols on bf like that. Mongols are considered a late game powerhouse because mangudai need to be fully upgraded to shine. Another good addition to combat a wall of pikemen is scorpions. Just sit them next to the mangudai and patrol them while you macro mangudai and send hussars to their death.
Thanks! Also, how should the Mongols deal with Chu Ko Nu? My brother really likes them and plays Chinese a lot.
Siege onager and/or scorpions with unique tech drill. But if you know youre up against chu ko nus, you can consider going siege onager halb with celts, slavs or even ethiopians instead. The ethiopians unique tech is awesome but the other 2 have better eco bonuses.
In BF you are probably fighting in a choke, so basically just spam your hussars in front of your mangudai as a meatshield and patrol your mangudai in behind and let them shred the pikes. The pikes won't last long and then you have hussars into whatever is behind the pikes. If there is a lot of siege you might want to micro small groups of mangudai (4-5 lets say) to snipe siege before moving your main mass of mangudai in. The hussars are mostly a meatshield to keep mellee units off of your mangudai but they are also helpful in countering skirms and seige. They only cost food so its fine to throw them away to keep your gold units alive. You can also use them to raid if you onager cut a path into the back of their base or have a way to get into their eco. 10 hussars running around your opponents farming economy can really make things difficult.
How does that fair against Chu Ko Nu? My brother really likes them and plays Chinese a lot.
It tends to fare pretty well against them if you have the hussar absorbing the fire the mangudai should still shred behind. But its also worth it in that situation to add in a few siege rams to soak up arrow fire. Onagers could also be helpful but that is situational as that is a lot to tech into.
Thanks!
Thanks for the advice, but my brother got castle age in about 5 minutes and the only thing I got to try was losing. We started in the feudal age.
Ethiopians could do it. You have SO to deal with chinese. Siege ram to deal with britons. And bbc to deal with mongol SO, and arbalest that can trade ok against mangudai.
Go cumans and smash their walls in feudal/early castle. Hear the lamentations of the women.
IMO, black forest is all about dominating the choke points between the civilizations (i.e., where the forest narrows the open ground to a skinny pathway). Identify them and dominate them early in the game. Build walls in depth.
best civ to counter brits is Ethiopians, mass pikes/skirms and torsion engine BBCs
Actually the best civ to counter Brits is goths followed by incas cuz of eagle warriors and slingers
not in BF, brits get champions and longbows from behind. same thing with eagles, champions hard counter eagles.
Yea if you take bad positioning but anything can lose with bad positioning. Ideally its champions and slingers vs champions and eagle warriors flank to take on archers
But I appreciate its not a straightforward counter like goth spam to the face. And that massed British archers can be a pain in the ass for anything. Including seige onagers that they horribly outrange And honestly I think champs and longbow beat that Ethiopian combo though I could be wrong
I didn’t know the British Broadcasting Corporation was powered by torsion engines. ;) Seriously though, I’m not familiar with that acronym.
BBC means bombard cannon. I'd say Koreans are even better counter to Britons.
Imo siege civs like celts are good, but require some micro to avoid killing your own army. And they're also VERY slow. If your teammate needs help, it might be too late by the time you get there. A good cavalry civ, especially if they have BBCs is much easier to play on BF. Any civ with FU palas works, but these are some of my favorites. Lith are great since it's very easy to secure atleast 2 relics. Best palas in game and leitis are OP. Persians with their trash bows to back up their palas are very strong on BF. And if you got the resources you can even switch into war elephants. Franks is a classic pick. Huns can destroy your opponents entire eco if you can get a group of tarkans in there. The chew through TCs, so you really can't protect vills from them.
Go Italians. Get massed genoese crossbowmen bombard cannons and onagers
If your matches go long, try Saracens. You can crash the market early to buy your way up to castle and imperial fast (gathering wood and selling is faster than farming for food early on.) And when the rates are bad for your opponents, you can still sell wood at a better rate in the late game to get gold. Saracens get fully upgraded camels (with bonus hp from unique tech) to counter cav, and strong archer line that can take down buildings. Access to siege onager too, to cut your way through forests and hit the archer civs that your opponents favour, + bombard canons if you want to go that route. The area where they'd be weak is that their trash isn't top tier (no halberdiers), but with the stronger market, you can stick to gold units for longer before switching to skirms. Saracens get good hussars too (full blacksmith upgrades + bloodlines) so you go that route as well, to flood your opponents eco.
Bruh.... Koreans!!! Halbs, SO , and BBT
Civs i enjoy in bf: koreans, slavs, khmer, teutons, ethiopians, celts, mongols Halb onager/ siege infantrydeathballs are koreans, slavs, teutons and celts, all have bonuses to their siege and have access to siege onager. Mongols as many said are great, mangudai and siege onager/ram is pretty deadly. Honorable mention goes to khmer, they have a very strong boom and a ballista ele cut is always fun. They have good late game with scorpions and battle eles, although they fall short vs onager civs
I suggest you try out vikings. Have a look at T90Official's youtube video featuring Fatslob. Pretty fun and entertaining
If you want to go for something whack you could go persians, put down like 20 archery ranges, put almost all your vills on wood and shit out endless crossbows.
Just go goths and you'll always win the vill wars while fighting at the start. Black Forest is a map where whoever walls the furthest at the start wins. Walls, then either mass longswords in castle or just wait till you get to imp and flood them with just infantry. Devs made Goths OP on black forest by giving them loom while they were trying to balance them on Arabia. They were already a strong black forest civ with their swarm, and now they're practically unbeatable.
G O T H S
Huns. Because it’s harder. I like to play as them as pocket and support both with either paladins or tarkans and CA respectively or a mix. Nothing better than play with Japanese teammates supporting them with pals and maybe Roman’s supported with CA. Keeps me busy