Age of Empires Forums

I am just asking, I don't want to start a flame war or whatever, I'm really just curious.

I've started playing aoe 3 1 week ago, I really like this game, so I'd like to know more.

If you do care I'm playing dutch, and i've recently read that they are not that good, is it true (even though i'll still play them anyway ) ? And I've faced a LOT of british, so I assume they are top tier ? 

What about TAD and TWC civ ?  

Well man on this game some people prefer to not play TWC civilizations (im talking about Full Game AOE 3) because that civilizations are overpowered and you can discover that they have no good luck on water maps (we play land usually).

On TAD civilizations we say that Japanese are overpowered and that thing is because they have too much cards to send that have warriors, and the samuray that is the evolution of Pikeman. Also i think but i dont know if it is correct at profesional levels Russians can own Japanese with a good rush japanese are a little bit slower. I havent tried Defensive against russians.

India is a hard oponent against aztecs if they get third age and get their Mahout elephant.

And China has so many diversity on Soldiers.

I play vanila without expansions and I am not very experienced yet, ( my profile http://aoe3.jpcommunity.com/rating2/player/Juanes930920 ) but from what I saw Brits are really strong, French as well and Russians in late colonial owns. I recently started to play Portugals and I enjoy them a lot. Yesterday I played one game against French where I was in colonial untill 33th minute against french in fortress, good eco and raiding with hussars saved my day. It was very nice game thou. So I think that portugals are not bad either.

Belia:

I am just asking, I don't want to start a flame war or whatever, I'm really just curious.

I've started playing aoe 3 1 week ago, I really like this game, so I'd like to know more.

If you do care I'm playing dutch, and i've recently read that they are not that good, is it true (even though i'll still play them anyway ) ? And I've faced a LOT of british, so I assume they are top tier ? 

What about TAD and TWC civ ?  

vanilla:

tier 1: spain, otto

tier 2: russia, france, dutch, brits

tier 3: germans

tier 4: ports

TAD:

tier 1: india, otto, iroquois

tier 2: japan, aztec, china, sioux

tier 3: france, brits

tier 4: russia, dutch, germans

tier 5: spain, ports

generally, civs in any given tier will beat every civ in every tier below it (with the necessary exceptions). but this is only on a top level ofcourse, on the level you're playing balance really isn't that much of an issue.

i wouldn't say it's an accepted tier list because i just made it up, but i will say with certainty no one will give you a more accurate one :p oh and i left TWC out because no one plays that.

also: http://209.85.117.197/12414/111/0/p1035570/Stratguide2010.pdf made this for TAD fan patch which no one plays anymore so don't listen to any of the statements about balance. almost all the strategies in it work on every version though. 

I think this is about it (a tier list is a bit controversial though, if a civ a beats certain other civs really really badly and only barely loses to certain other civs, while civ b beats a lot of civs just barely and has a 50% chance of winning against some other civs, does that mean civ b is better than civ a?)

Tier 1 (OP)

Iroquois, India, Otto, Japan* 

Tier 2 (above average)

Sioux, China, Aztec

Tier 3 (standard)

British, Germany, France

Tier 4 (below average)

Russia, Dutch  

Tier 5 (UP)

Spain, Portuguese 

* = Japan is a controversial one, it loses too many mus to be OP I feel, but Japan beats some civs really badly, its definitely above tier 2 though but it feels to weak for tier 1 

EDIT: I didnt see GS's posts, whoops. Only difference turns out to be my placement of germany ( I personally really feel like germany has the upper hand over Dutch and Russia)

they lose to brit & france though. i guess you could put them in between 

gs:

they lose to brit & france though. i guess you could put them in between 

Same as Japan I'd guess ^^ 

na japan vs china and japan vs aztec are relatively balanced match ups and japan loses hard to every tier 1 civ.

what about sioux vs japan? i used to think dualrax ashi is unstoppable in this MU but i have seen sioux players pwn japan with RRs + dog meatshield.

edit: also i dont think sioux loses to india, otto, or iro. i have seen these MUs played many times. sioux rapes 1010 rush and without 1010 would probably be balanced and otto is obvious. Iro may be a balanced MU not sure though, i have seen fast age + 4AR destroy iro players since they have no time to put up a rax and push with sioux raiding constantly.

dual rax ashi should beat sioux but it's always hard to play against something that can 100% dictate when and where the fights take place. i've lost the MU myself 1 or 2 times when i wasn't concentrated and lost too many vills to raids/pushed at the wrong times.

sioux for sure loses to india and iro. agra fort and the very fast forward WH are strong weapons against their mobility and they can just maintain strong pressure on the sioux from too early in the game which sioux can't handle. only if iro/india make a mistake and get surprised by a shipment they could lose the MU, and again this is hard to avoid. fact remains sioux dictates when and where fights take place and this takes so much strategy out of it that it's miles and miles easier to play than any other civ, and quite hard to play against. makes it the only civ that imo was ever truly lame in my aoe time.

yeah, they beat otto but this is one of the necessary exceptions i mentioned in my tier post 

Bart331:

Some japanese site gives stats for TAD 

Stats based on games of 3 min and longer from 1/4/2011 - 20/10/2011 (only games from people elo ranking 2000 + taken)

Rank civ avg win percentage

1 Iro 60,1

2 India 58,1

3 Otto 57,0

4 China 55,6

5 Japan 54,7

6 Sioux 51,3

7 German 50,7

8 Aztec 50,2

9 Russia 49,1

10 British 43,7

11 Dutch 43,5

12 France 42,9

13 Spain 41,8

14 Ports 41,4 

Entire cross table 

Some civs dont match the order gs posted:

China above Japan, British really low, Germany really high, Aztec under germany, Russia kinda high and France really low. A part of this can be explained by the fact that both British and Japan are hard civs because they are defensive civs. The reason that british are so low is probably also because they lose to Iro India and Otto really extremely badly. 

I guess the way GS ordered them he just didnt take into account how badly the civs lost vs others, but just what civs they lose and win against. 

double post

Jerom:

Bart331:

Some japanese site gives stats for TAD 

Stats based on games of 3 min and longer from 1/4/2011 - 20/10/2011 (only games from people elo ranking 2000 + taken)

Rank civ avg win percentage

1 Iro 60,1

2 India 58,1

3 Otto 57,0

4 China 55,6

5 Japan 54,7

6 Sioux 51,3

7 German 50,7

8 Aztec 50,2

9 Russia 49,1

10 British 43,7

11 Dutch 43,5

12 France 42,9

13 Spain 41,8

14 Ports 41,4

Some civs dont match the order gs posted:

China above Japan, British really low, Germany really high, Aztec under germany, Russia kinda high and France really low. A part of this can be explained by the fact that both British and Japan are hard civs because they are defensive civs. The reason that british are so low is probably also because they lose to Iro India and Otto really extremely badly. 

I guess the way GS ordered them he just didnt take into account how badly the civs lost vs others, but just what civs they lose and win against. 

yeah like you said those win percents are influenced by difficulty. if they only included expert games it would be more accurate. russia is easy, german xbow rush is quite easy and pretty strong on a sub-expert level, brits are a very hard civ to play optimally, and france is just not being played right. france's best strats were invented after FP came out and were only used on FP, so RE patch players probably don't have much of a clue about how to play them :p 

and yeah some civs are just used a lot (the top tier ones) and brits don't stand a chance vs them so if you play brits in qs you'll run into them often and so you'll lose often. but brits are still quite strong in the right hands.

I dont disagree with your list ofc, but I just wanted to show these stats because they are rather interesting.

german xbow rush? XD all players on RE go semi ff shipment spam kinda gets boring