posted 03-14-12 02:39 PM
ET (US)
10 / 36
Trust me, plismo, I have tried multiplayer, and knowing the theory hasn't helped me at all!
ephestion: fully upgraded Hittite war galleys not only match trirremes, they even surpass them. Fully upgraded hittite war gallys have the longest range of any ship in the game.
Basse: You already know this: rushing civilizations do better in RM than in DM, because one of the rush civilizations main advantages is the resource gathering speed. In DM the speed at which you gather resources is not as relevant. So i'd put that aside as a rather minor advantage in a DM game.
Also, a decent hittite player will know how to rush if he wanted to, after all hittites have most kinds of units in the game. That does grant them incredible flexibility: if you have an unit take as a fact that the Hittites have the unit to counter it. And even with no super units, Hittites can be really tough. Remember that no civilization has fast super unit tech research so the tech research will be as fast as that from any other civilization. I think that the super unit research can overwhelm an inexperienced player (like me), but not someone decent in this game.
Now let's go case by case: Persians do have fast elephants and that's useful, however elephants are trained slow. For faster units archers lack range and accuracy, infantry can be useful because it is trained fast (that's why legion rush is useful), however, unless they are ultimate units (I've never heard of long swordsman rushes in DM), infantry is pretty much cannon fodder, and ultimate units require time to be researched. If gold ran dry, Hittites would still have chariots, Persians (ironically) don't.
Shang have a not so nice fame DMs, interesting because they have nice units. Maybe the lack of some pivotal technologies as ballistics and engineering could affect them negatively, but cavalry wise they are just like the Yamato (except for the price of course, and the lack of ballistics and alchemy that would aid the horse archers). As a side note i find that landwise Shang are superior to Yamato in DMs: after all they have chariots to save gold as well as catapults and helepolii, BUUUT helepolii with no engineering and ballistics certainly aren't as good as others'. In any case I didn't mention Helepolii because they are cannon fodder for Hittite catapults.
Yamato's main advantage in DM is in my opinion the cheap cavalry, but once again maybe that's not so much of an advantage in DM. Hittites have the best horse archers in the game. One could complain about the tech research speed, however, as I said before, no civilization is faster than any other to research a specific technology, so if you're Yamato and you're researching heavy horse archer, your hittite enemy could do the same, as fast as you do. Also the training speeds for specific units are the same for every civilization. I think that if you're Yamato and your enemy is hittite there's no way you could be able to beat him, except if the Hittite player had much lower playing skills than you. Cataphracts, which are available to yamato but not to hittite, are generally seen as the most useless super unit, so I will not discuss them. Also Hittites are much better deffensively so in theory they could repel any hack unit offenssive.
If gold ran dry, Hittites would still have chariots, Yamato don't.
Egypt is IMO pretty good to counter, however one must know how to use them, as Hittite are still superior if you let them be. The main advantage should be the chariots. who cost no gold. Them combined with some super priests can be a pain in the butt. But as I said above: even with no super units Hittites are tough!. In example: One could think of Egyptian elephant archers buut: hittite elephant archers are better!
For me DM should be played in Post-Iron or not played at all. Sadly there's no post Iron option in AoE/RoR Multiplayer (except in player created scenarios), so one has to deal with tech research in Iron age. I find it silly when people start DM games in stone age or even as nomads, what's the point of that? if i wanted to 'invest' resources researching technologies I'd play RM. Honestly tech research is a waste of resources in DM.
Now I was thinking about Legion rush, even though legions can be seen as cannon fodder because of their speed, remember that they are cheap and train really fast. The idea is the standard for legion rush: overwhelm the enemy (in this case the hittite player) by building lots of barracks near their base, and ideally towers as well (that's why choson excell with this strategy). This must be done as fast as possible!!! (double emphasis in the !!!) so the hittite player is swamped. Just in case you've forgotten, the best legion rushers are the Choson (legion huge HP boost and very useful tower range), however any civilization with legions should work: romans (legion vs legion their legions are better than the choson ones, test them, the storage pit techs and the 33% faster attack rate are pretty useful, but choson extra Hp does grant them advantage when they deal with ranged units: they are less likely to die when closing a gap), Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Phoenicians (poor storage pit techs make the phoenician and babylonian legions inferior, but at least both have nice towers as support, the babylonian ones specially).