a badly played germany.Civs that cant act but have to REact always have big disadvantages.
E.g. Spain can always FF safely withz maybe 1 tower built vs a Ottoman rush.
Peoplay have to REact vs the Spanish strategy in order to win.
Same with ottos/Russia.
While a Russian/Ottoman can play the same way vs all civs and strats, other civs have to use specific strategies just to have a chance to win. Wtf?
And even then, it isnt a sure win.
An example: As Germany, my best "counter" to muskets are xbows.
So actually, pure xbows should work vs pure musks for a good game balance. No?
Russia also gets 13 strels shipment and 5+4 cossacks.
So I get ~6 Uhlans (free) + ~10 pikes (vs the cossacks) +~20 xbows vs 9 cossacks, 13 strels and 30 musks.
I should win because basically, my units are counter ones.
But do I win? No..... WTF?
10 pikes die in secs as do 6 uhlans and then my 20 pathetic xbows get RAPED by 30 musks+ 9 cossacks.
And even if you leave out the cossacks/pikes/uhlans and its 20 xbows vs 30 musks.
Who wins? the xbows dont... although they are the counters^^
How can that be? Yes, I have less xbows but they are COUNTER units ffs!!! they are supposed to COUNTER them.
If I have 10 pikes I beat 5 Hussars with ease.
But if I have 20 xbows I dont beat 30 musks. huh?
Thats the reason why Russia is good: they force people to do special things while they can do their standard BO all over again and again and STILL WIN!!!!
I once made 17 hussars vs ~50 strels + 5 musks and guess who won... map was Rockies and some trees+5 cossacks+ buildings were around so my Hussars died horribly.... Bleh.
What do I build counter units for if I still lose????
ZzZZzzzZZz
EDIT: another problem is that I cant make such a big army as the Russians can make in time. So I always have less numbers but although my units are "counters" I still lose...
EDIT2: I remember one game I played on GP. I guess it was vs you, Larky.
What happened? He built a BH with 300 Wood (who wudda thoguht that...), aged up with 400W guy and built 4 houses with it.
He had his vills mainly on food and some on gold.
He basically did nothing but non stop spamming musks+strel/cossacks shipments into my base while I tried everything to fight him off : several towers, xbow spam, MM, TC fire etc.
But eventually he wore me down because I ran out of food and got slowly owned.
He had like 2 times as many musks as I had xbows....
And even if he wouldnt have been able to outmass me he simply would have taken total map control (funny, he had it anyway) and I wouldnt have had any food or anything left - GG.
While I did my best to counter his strat he didnt even have to build ANY unit to counter my xbows but just did his standard cookie-cutter musket spam.
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[This message has been edited by Voltiguer (edited 10-15-2006 @ 09:57 AM).]