Welcome back Y3AH. Been a while.
Personally I can't see myself ever playing:
Russian - The unit mediocrity goes against my very nature. I like to micromanage less numerous but higher quality units (and I'm a Russian myself ).German - The whole Uhlan thing turns me off. The Settler Wagons confuse me (silly, I know, but hey ...) since they make the villager indicators lie. I can't stand Dopplesoldners, they're just utterly silly units. And I've seen too many War Wagons during 1.06-1.07 to ever want to make those myself. Also their Colonial is boring as hell with the Crossbows. Civs need some flair, such as Brits with Longbows or Spanish with Rods.
British - I tried them, not my thing. Hate the need to boom forever before actually being able to truly go on the offensive.
Portuguese - You're pigeonholed into defensive play while booming. That's my very definition of boring. Oh and no real artillery until Industrial just kills all appeal for me. I need my cannon action. Iroquoi - they're too "European" for my tastes. Their units (aside from the Ram) are almost copies of the European version. Just too generic and uninspired for my tastes.
Quoted from Y3AH:
I think the fact that you don't need to que vills makes them too easy and noob-friendly to play with.
I hear this alot, but in my opinion all auto-que does is remove the boring routine of having to press "control group/T" then "V" every time a TC finishes production. You might as well make a macro for your keyboard and turn it on/off depending on food supplies.
How can people really find it "fun" to repeat the same simplistic action again and again game after game?
Quoted from Y3AH:
All you really ever need is a 50/50 ratio of Jans and Abus, throw some spahi into the mix and then all you'll ever need is good micro.
Don't need Abus. Quoted from Y3AH:
Back when I first started playing Aoe3 I immediately went for Ottomans. But, I soon discovered (when I changed to Dutch) that it really didn't enhance my skills.
Exact opposite for me. I started with Dutch on ESO, then switched to Ottomans after a while. Mostly out of frustration with the Skirmisher speed nerf. I found that playing Ottomans after Dutch forced me to "do more with less". Improving battle micro, rather than relying on economic strength to simply grind my opponent down.
These days though I get the benefit of both, thanks to one little strat. Quoted from Poita:
I also don't like to play as Ottoman. When I have I've found that you spend a lot of time doing nothing, especially in age 1.
In age 1, scouting, treasure hunting, building TPs and fighting other Explorers/Scouts takes up most of my Discovery time. More time to do these things means you get to do them more efficiently.
In Colonial and on, you shouldn't have any spare time. Scouting stil plays a huge part, but most of the time freed up by auto-que should be going into maximising the effectiveness of your units in battle.I don't know what people do with their "attention cycles" while playing Ottoman, but I try to get every last % of effectiveness out of my military. MUCH more fun than pressing T -> V a hundred times a game.
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