Strategy Thesis of the Week: Longswords in early Castle Age are Meta

Okay, guys, don't freak out and give me a minute to explain myself. I know very well that Long Swordsmen are a unit which is absolutely crap. I advocated to buff them multiple times. Their stats are a joke. They actually have a base melee armor of 0. That is worse than a villager. Those guys have a shield and an armor and seemingly that's worse than a casual dress as long as the dress comes from a loom.

Whatsoever, I really enjoy to play with Infantry, perhaps because I am slow af. And I tried again and again to make Longswords happen. Obviously, I tend to fail with it. But I think I finally figured out when and how to use them and I am actually positive that they might be superior to a Knights-opening in early Castle Age in very specific situations.

Just recently I beat Memb with a Pikemen-Longswords-play that you can still check on his Twitch (starting at 00:17). (Worth mentioning that I lost against Memb multiple times before, just had a civ-win with Indians vs Magyars so far. It feels like the old man is one of the the smartest guys on that Elo-level, he is playing the Civs and the Maps (!) so, so well. His macro can be off at times but he compensates for it with decision making big time.)

It was hilarious to see the chat afterwards with everyone being confused about what I was doing. And also the discussions afterwards how that shouldn't have worked. It did work though, players don't play perfectly. What I did there is not the best application though, I think. Let me elaborate.

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Disclaimer: That stuff is rather supposed to be thought provoking than 100% true and I'll go for some clickbaitish headline now and then to get the discussion rolling. So, feel free to give your opinion and don't be too angry about me. ; Also I want to add that my view will, in some cases, not translate into top-level-meta because the time-windows and their use is tighter up there, but with a current Elo of 1600-1700, my thoughts should be somewhat applicable for 98% of the player base.)

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While Knights and Xbows are way better units than Longswords overall, the slow, weak, expensive Sword-swingers have at least a few positives going for them:

• You can start to mass them in Feudal Age. (Other than Knights.)
• You set up a strong, flexible food eco. (Other than Xbows.)
• You kill buildings pretty, pretty fast. (USP.) Also, you open walls quickly.
• And: The opponent won't expect it.

In fact, in most cases where you play Scouts or M@A into nothing into Castle Age, the opponent predicts Knights. He might prepare some Spears for it aaaand this will be not good for him when suddenly 15 Longswords pop up at his base before he got any Castle Age technologies in.

Optimally, you will come in with the Longswords (or the M@A who are going to become Longswords very soon) right before you hit Castle Age or perhaps shortly after, when the Longsword upgrade finishs. That is where the opponent doesn't expect any aggression from you if you have not shown any signs of an archer play beforehand. And it's also where the opponent might move out, expand walls, add production buildings or a TC.

The downside is, obviously....you die to Knights and Xbows. So...you die every time. Key is to make enough damage before your Longswords die to pay off for them. With ~10 Longswords you actually kill buildings pretty quickly, so you have a good chance to take out production buildings before the opponent starts to make the good units. This will delay his production, it will heavily delay his boom and most probably it will disturb his eco balance a lot.

It works actually very similar to the M@A-play which also gives you just a small time window to do damage before the opponent makes army, but if you get the damage in, it's absolutely worth it. The difference to M@A is that:

• There is much more variance in Castle transitions than in the Feudal transition which is basically always the same.
• The opponent possibly already has Archers when you arrive with Longswords.

That means, that you can play Longswords only

• when you had a good Feudal Age with a strong farm eco and a quick uptime. Otherwise, your time window might be gone already.
• when the opponent is not playing Xbows. (Cav Archers might be fine actually, they need much more time.)

Good thing is that you should know by mid-early Feudal if your opponent produces Archers or not. If not, you can start to prepare the Longswords with 1-2 additional Barracks and the necessary economy.

So, this is how you pull it off:

• Open up M@A or Scouts, depending on your Civ, the map, the opponent. M@A is stronger but Scouts give you a bit more flexibility and potentially an even faster up-time. If you make M@A, make sure you still get Horse Collar in!
• Make sure that you did at least a bit of damage so that your opponent has to be up slightly later than you.
• Scan their base and keep an eye on their walls and production buildings to make sure, you actually can make damage. You want either long, isolated walls (so they can't comfortable wall behind) or exposed productions buildings. Or just a base which is not fully walled.
• Make the decision in mid to late Feudal if you want to go Longswords or not. If you decide that while being 70% up to Castle, you'll be too late. This must be streamlined like a M@A-aggression.
• When you're about to click up (at ~500 food), add an additional Barracks or two. Make M@A upgrade if you don't have it. (You don't necessarily need Supplies, but consider it if your advantage is big enough and/or you plan to keep producing Longswords later on.) Start producing asap.
• Keep only around ~3 vils on gold, depending on your gold bank. You get 8 Longswords for the gold price of 2 Knights. The upgrade is only 100 Gold.
• Add additional farms while going up. With something like 10 on wood and 3 on gold you can afford a pretty amazing food eco. But make sure you still get enough wood to add a TC.
• Castle Age takes 160 seconds, a M@A is produced in 21 seconds, so you can potentially have something like 15-20 of them when you hit Castle Age. More realistic is probably 10-15. Anyway, move out either shortly before hitting Castle Age or around the time you hit Castle Age, so you reach the opponent base when Longsword kicks in. Depends on the situation. If you need to beat a wall, better come with more units; if there are open ressource spots, rather come earlier. If your opponent invested into 8 Scouts, probably don't move out with 6 [M@A](mailto:M@A). Adapt to the situation.
• Choose your follow-up according to the situation. If your opponent throws away units, you may consider to double down on the Longswords and just send more. When he defends well and drops Ranges, you might consider a forward Siege Workshop to add a Mangonel or two. If he is producing Knights, but you killed already a stable, it might be worth it to make Pikemen-Upgrade instantly and send some Pikes to support. If you trade the Longswords for eco damage, you probably want to focus on your boom - but make sure that you produce enough units to defend. When you opened up the base and there are vulnerable woodlines or gold-spots, you can also harrass them with just a few Knights extremely efficiently.

Civs that can use Longswords are mostly:

• Slavs: Free Supplies and strong farms. Gives you time for a Bojar-transition.
• Teutons, Celts: Stronger units and very easy to put out a lot of farms.
• Bulgarians: Free Longsword-upgrade, cheaper Blacksmith-upgrades to support either them or the following transition, option to use the Longsword-presence to put down a quick Krepost and end the game right away?
• Vikings: More HP on the units, very fast up-time and very strong boom behind.
• Goths: Well, obviously.
• Japanese: They melt walls and buildings.
• Burmese: Stronger units, you save on the wood upgrade and you might want to buy time for the Arambai follow-up.

Possibly also these:

• Indians: If you scout that your opponent is investing heavy into Spears/Pikes, that might be a good move. With the cheaper vils, you have an easier boom behind it. Maybe the play vs Mayans and Aztecs, perhaps after going Skirms in Feudal? Sets up a good eco for +1 pierce armor Light Cav too.
• Magyars: You get them out very strong of course, but I think with their eco is not 100% suited for that. Maybe an option to go full Infantry against Franks or Indians for example, so they're forced into units that you can fight more easily.
• Tatars: Quick uptime possible & your early boom needs less ressources because of the extra sheep. If you don't want to fight for example a Knight-spam from Berbers or Magyars, this might be a good idea to get an eco advantage first, transition into Pikemen behind it and switch later into Keshik or mass CA from many ranges.
• Lithuanians: Forcing map control to get the Relics maybe? Especially against strong Pike- or Camel-Civs. You can prepare it with very early M@A too.
• Koreans?: Sending 10 vils with the Longswords to immediately drop a couple of Guard Towers to deny ressources? Maybe that's how they can beat Franks...
• Malians: Seems obvious, but I think it doesn't make that much sense actually, because you only have an advantage over Xbows - and if your opponent is on Xbows, you don't want to use that strategy. If you do that with Malians, it's rather supposed to be an endless stream of units rather than just a quick power spike, I think.
• Sicilians?: Well, you have good farms. Maybe you can follow that up with a Donjon and then going for a Serjeant-Donjon push from there? (I think, that might be very hard to pull of but it seems like it could end the game right away.)

So can that be Meta - in very specific situations - or not? Some critical thinking: All of that is quite the big investment for a unit and tech which you don't want to produce long-term and it's kinda risky bc you might not be able to make the damage you need. Also, you can basically only do it if you're slightly ahead. Isn't it especially in these situation very good to just stick to the Xbow/Knight Meta? Well, probably on a theoretical level, that might be a yes, at least in many situations. There are some interesting aspects here, though:

• Most importantly: You might change the army compositions in the long-run. If you feel like these will be to your disadvantage, you might want to take a risk to change the situation or make damage before these Castle-Age-compositions come into play. (Like, facing CA as Teutons or facing Knight-Skirm as Vikings, etc.) You might force your opponent into units that are better for you. (In my game against Memb, I provoked Franks Axemen and was able to kill those with my Arbs much easier than I could've killed Frankish Knights. Same could happen with Gbetos, Konniks or Cataphracts.)
• You might not want to play into Knights as a Knight-Civ because the opponent has stronger Knights (Berbers, Franks, Teutons, Burgundians), strong Camels (Indians, Saracens, Persians, Berbers, Malians), CA (Huns, Tatars) or you expect a heavy Pikemen-play anyway (Goths, Japanese, Byzantines, Celts). Then you can use this to prepare your own Pikemen with a superior Eco behind and spam some power units later or transition into your UU (Bojars, Arambai, Berserkers, Konniks).
• You might feel uncomfortable using Archers as an Archer-Civ (Japanese, Vikings). Maybe you're just not good with Archers. Maybe your opponent already dropped a defensive tower or has a very good base with a back woodline. Maybe you fucked up something in your BO, you lost a few Archers early on or you see your opponent already producing lots of Skirms before you commited much into the Archers. Maybe you expect good Cavalry (Franks, Berbers, Magyars, Burgundians, Persians, Turkish/Indian Light Cav) or good Skirms (Byzantines, Lithuanians) or good Siege (Slavs, Bulgarians, Celts) to kill/negate your Archers anyway and it feels like a waste to invest much into Archers.
• I think that your eco on a Longsword play will be always better than behind Xbows and also usually better than behind Knights. In a situation where you are not sure what is going to happen or how you can get an advantage in Castle Age with army, it might be good to just focus on getting out the farms even earlier in order to be able to tech switch earlier and quicker later on or get very quickly to Imp.
• Shouldn't that hard-counter a Hoang-push!? Longswords counter that whole composition quite well as long as the Knights and the Siege are in low numbers and can take out the forward production quickly. Usually, a Longsword switch won't be your rescue against a Hoang-push because the transition is too slow and too expensive, but when you prepare for it immediately before you waste ressources on anything else, it should just kill the Hoang-push immediately, no?

With all those factors, it feels for me that there must be situations where the Longsword-play is even optimal on theoretical Meta-level of the game - but that is only speculation of course. Fact is that it can work on lower levels, even against opponent who are on the same level as you. And as most of us are not competing in Hidden Cup anyway, that is a nice little variation, right?