Amurites vs Khazad in early game help

[Cuteunit]

Hello. I am having difficulty countering my Khazad friend in the early game while I play Amurite. He always quickly techs to Axemen or champions, and my 3 str adepts with no attack spells cannot really counter these 5 and 8 str units. Sometimes he shows up with 10+ of these units, all of them with 3 upgrades somehow at my border for war and I have nothing but 3 str adepts, 4 str ( from bronze working) warriors or 3/5 archers.

if I live long enough to get some Fireballs out I can send him into fits of cursing about cheapness.. but what can I do to help endure this weak time in amurite power?

my adept building cities have cave of ancestors et al and my research is not bad or anything..

 

[Grey Fox]

Get the Charm Person spell, should stop stacks of living units for some time.

 

[Cuteunit]

I've tried that, but he just goes off to pillage everything I have while he builds more units and I still lose.

 

[monolith94]

"He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue."

Meaning, that when I play the amurites, I generally delay knowledge of the ether until I've gotten bronze swordsmen.

 

[Caradoc]

You might look into Archery, since it's great for defense you will want it later anyway for your Firebows.

 

[Cuteunit]

Archery doesnt stop pillaging.

In fact I'll go far enough to say that archery on the whole is just not at all useful when your enemy is a player. Archers are too expensive and cannot attack effectively, while an equivalently expensive melee unit can both attack and defend.

The only thing stupid enough to attack a fortified archer are barbarians/AI civs... player just walks around and clicks Pillage on some other tile.

 

[xienwolf]

forts + Archers


Or, placing Archers on each Tile you are actually working.

Neither is practical however.

Monolith said it best, just wait to get your mages.

 

[onedreamer]

If he techs for Iron Working, you should do the same. I'm surprised you aren't afraid of his siege machines units, actually...

 

[Caradoc]

Get the Charm Person spell, should stop stacks of living units for some time.

So how long does Charm last anyway? The other day I charmed Orthus and then waited for him to come back to fight, but he just kept wandering around.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Charm person adds the charmed promotions to any unit that doesn't resist the spell. This promotions makes the unit unable to attack (I think it can still move just fine, and it can still defend), and has a 5% chance of wearing off naturally each turn. The Dispel Magic spell also will remove this promotion.

 

[DREWid]

If he techs for Iron Working, you should do the same. I'm surprised you aren't afraid of his siege machines units, actually...

then whats the point of plaing the amurites? if your just going to tech match him down the melee line... then you may as well be playing mahala (sp?)

 

[xienwolf]

The "point" is in the later stages of the game. But no matter what civ you use, the first priority is always survival. Until the foundation is solid nobody cares what color you want the drapes to be.

 

[DREWid]

i understand that... but there all ment to survive in different ways, otherwise you might as just make the military tecn a pre-req tech for every civ that aint the hippus, ljoj or sav ... the problem is that this game, as amazing as it is, is not balanced for mp ... if one player bounds down the melee line and another down the majic line ... the mage aint got jack to stand against the slavering axe wielder bearing down on him...

its like d&d at early levels the fighter snots the mage ... later on it switches ... but ffh aint an adventuring group... in erubus the fighter aint gonna protect you from the goblins until you got fireballs.

this, imho, is one of the reasons vanilla is ... well ... so vanilla, its designed to be balanced multiplayer... nothings really that uniquie so you dont feel cheated by axe rushing like your mates... but in ffh if i pick to play the amurites, its because i want to play mages with wippy powers... not swordsmen... in the same way if you pick the hippus... you probably dont want to be sailing around with a massive navy...

as a note i play ffh both mp and sp!

 

[Sureshot]

are you using Dain or Valledia?

if you're using Dain (i recommend him on smaller maps), then you should get the Great Library and National Epic right off, which means you need Education and Bronzeworking. So get them first, that means you'll have axemen with a free promotion right off. Then focus on the arcane line, you'll have plenty of science to make up for the delay and a proper defense that can be proactive. grabbing AV can be good as well (synergizes well with arcane line), or OO if you want hemah.

 

[brainpan]

First piece of advice: Do not play one vs. one games with your friend. Diplomacy and international intrigue are really the best weapons against an early Khazad rush.

Sureshot's advice, combined with Fox's, is probably best, but I'll throw my two cents in anyway: The problem with trying to match Khazad on the field in an early melee rush is that he has an advantage in producing sheer numbers. Ingenuity for half price upgrades means he can produce axemen at an incredible rate, and Financial trait works in perfect synergy with that. All this is made even worse if he has his vaults filled, which he probably will. And God help you if he also has the Arete civic in force.

In my opinion, this situation is not likely to be countered with a fight fire with fire strat. So this is what I would do. Go straight for catapult production as soon as it's feasable and have your production maxed to churn them out in numbers. Do NOT let him see your cats, keep them away from the border until he commits a monster stack.

An overconfident player will get owned big time competing against this kind of strat. If he commits a majority of his units you should be able to annihilate them and then exploit his temporary weakness with a catapult rush. This has saved my ass time and again in mp games, but is likely to catch other players completely off guard only once.

PS-Dont forget to have "stack attack" selected!