Aztec, Knights or WH units

[Sun_Tzu1]

The age old question for Aztec players .

I find I keep changing my mind on the value of Knights in general.

WHs give you a well balanced range of units. Yay! No need to build a stable.

NH units are missing an anti-LI (skirms) counter.

On the other hand, JP and EK are very pop efficent. And, you can get the +15% hp/dam upgrade for knights.

These days, I tend to lean in the direction of building just WH units (BBs aside). However, I do build AK - 1 NH is normally enough. In theory, Coyotes can handle cav, but, in practice I find AKs do a better job.

Anyway, if like me, you lean toward WH units, you can ditch Knight upgrade cards for something more useful. Is the Ruthlessnes card worth it?

Any thoughts?

[GeneralMichael]

For me I love the jaguars, they can go into stealth and with all the home shipments for thier attack and the one that increases noble hut units seieg damage they get a 100 siege damage. With this you can easily take down many buildings quickly especially if you can sneak up right next to them and attack if before then enemy army attacks.
So for me I try to get the noble hut up as fast as I can. In treaty games I pretty much only use Noble hut Units since in treaty games with the aztecs wood can be hard to come by unless you want to risk you enemy doing a raid on your vills. So as long as the enemy does not have spies the JP can pretty much destroy anything. Just remember to have them attack the cannons first and the skirmishers. The only way for the oponent to counter this is massive cannons and skirmishers and once your opponent only makes that you can start throwing some cyotes at him after your JP are distracting him.

[Sporting_Lisbon]

Yeah I love jaguars too. Keeping a combo that costs wood in fortress is something that I don't like much and maces aren't -that- hot at killing HI after colo due to short range.

But something that I stil don't know because I don't play aztecs too often is the situation of ERKs. Are they good/bad? Good with a meatshield vs RI like the jaguars? 1 pop is cool.

[I__CHAOS__I]

i find ERKs terrible tbh

[Sun_Tzu1]

ERKs aren't that good anymore. They've changed from a great all-round unit to a one dimensional unit.

They nerfed their range. From 14 down to 12 (18 down to 16 with the +4 Range/LOS Temple Tlaloc - same range as a Mace). Making it even harder to hit and run HI.

A while ago, they nerfed their damage. I think it used to be 17 (1.5 ROF) now it's 15 (1.5 ROF).

They took away Ruthlessness from the ERK. So you can't really raid with ERKs anymore because they only do 7 (1.5 ROF) damage to settlers.

They now take more damage from skirm type units. The modifier used to be x1.5, now it's x2.

Basically, ERK used to be a unit you could raid settlers with and they held their own (almost) against Skirms. Now, they're just pretty much anti-cav units which are particularly good at taking down Lancer type units (because they're not classed as 'infantry' like Puma Spearman).

Personally, I don't really use them much anymore. You need to play Temple Tlaloc to make them 'ok'. And, I'd rather use that card on something else. Having said that, they're still on a Big Button so in longer games you'll probably get them on the board anyway.

[ruminator]

When I played a lot of Aztec and stayed in age 2 for a while I would often have 2/3 warhuts by the time I hit age 3. It then seems a better option to upgrade WH units and attack than build a noble hut and start moving to a gold economy.

Noble huts are good for map control though, mainly for guarding gold mines. You can then bang out the AK BB which costs food/wood as well.

I tended to then introduce knights in later age 3. However, this can be map dependent as if you are struggling to find a good source of either wood or gold you then need to adapt your troops to fit - WH is mainly wood based while NH is mainly gold based.

[GeneralMichael]

[quote=""ruminator""]When I played a lot of Aztec and stayed in age 2 for a while I would often have 2/3 warhuts by the time I hit age 3. It then seems a better option to upgrade WH units and attack than build a noble hut and start moving to a gold economy.

Noble huts are good for map control though, mainly for guarding gold mines. You can then bang out the AK BB which costs food/wood as well.

I tended to then introduce knights in later age 3. However, this can be map dependent as if you are struggling to find a good source of either wood or gold you then need to adapt your troops to fit - WH is mainly wood based while NH is mainly gold based.[/quote]

It makes me nervous to stay on food/wood units for very long since by the end of age 2 I sometimes have villagers starting to travel a good distance away from my TC. So I try to get a mill/plantation up right next to my tc so the enem has a harder time raiding. It he does raid I can send all my vills to the TC and then take out each calv in 1 or 2 shots. :twisted: Also this way it will be easier for me if I have excess resources to then just use my excess to age up and then have the advantage of having better upgraded troops.