Anyone else get a gold chill go down their spine randomly when ladder fighting? Had a queue where I wanted to play trashintines, but switched at the last second to franks with no real reason aside from a cold chill.

I dont know how else to beat them aside from axemen. I fail when trying to compete with brute force 9/10 times.

Makes the whole "using gold to counter eagles" even more punishing than it should be. Nevermind that eagles hard counter more units than heavy cav do: siege, archers, and monks better than heavy cav do without hurting your food eco. And spears don't work against them. Literally only gold and food intensive infantry counters eagles. Like wtf.

Recommend:

Eagles cost +10f -5g. Elite eagle speed -0.05

Even franks have good infantry, siege, castles, gunpowder and a good UU that counters the civs counter.

In comparison Lith late game have skirms and cav. That's it. Such a monoculture.

I know there's worse civs. But thought the relic bonus might add a little more diversity

I am convinced it isn’t even possible on harder difficulties, like hardest. Their building output is ridiculous, their army production and coordination is impossible for a human, their extra resources/faster build times break the game. And the computer does these moved simultaneously. Unless you’re playing islands or have at least 3 allies, I’m convinced it’s impossible to win. Even with F3 game pauses, my armies won’t build fast enough (plus they die very quickly). Plus the AI can move units in large spread out formations not even an option for the player. I like a challenge, but when there is no chance of winning at all, it just feels broken.

I was wondering how many villagers you're actually ahead with the chinese start considering you have to do loom instantly and that there is some idle time.

You *do* have loom while your opponents don't and they still have to get it but I personally only seem to be barely 1 vil ahead of my opponents.

Bonus points if you can translate this to resources in dark/feudal age 11