Best civilization in Age of Empires 2: Return of Rome
If you just started playing AoE2:RoR or want to improve your gameplay, I might be able to help you out.
I have been playing AoE1:DE quite a lot in the past years, and these are the best civilization you can find in Return of Rome!
Please consider that in general, choosing a goood civ does not mean winning more easily. You will also need to choose the right combination of units and strategies to defeat your opponent!
Table of contents
5) Carthaginians: academy units, elephants, camels
The Carthaginians have bonuses that increase the hit points of elephants and academy units by 25%, and the hit points of camels by 15%. Also on RoR they have free Nobility upgrade after building the government center.
Please keep in mind that Nobility increases the hitpoints of your camels and horses by 15%. This applies even to chariot archers and horse archers. Carthaginians do not have chariot archers, but they can surely be used for a very nice cavalry or camels opening in the bronze age.
This can probably be defined as the anti-cavalry civilization par excellence: we could produce camels to counter the Yamato, but also centurions to annihilate our opponents' base.
4) Yamato
The Yamato have the advantage of being usable in all ages: the less expensive scouts allow us to make a Scout Rush opening, or we can much more easily produce cavalry units to raid the opponents as soon as we get to the bronze age.
Perhaps best of all, this bonus also applies to horse archers in the Iron Age, allowing us to create very large armies with less resources.
On the other hand it should be kept in mind that the Yamato are not very strong on siege and infantry. However, they have centurions, which allow us to possibly respond to an opponent who is creating camels, elephants or chariots to counter our cavalry.
3) Choson
The "Choson one" (did you like this pun? No? aight) are one of my favourite civs.
Their towers have +2 range which makes them really dangerous especially for a tower rush or to fill your opponent's base with towers, but also to take control of the map. Combine this with ballistics and alchemy and you will have real snipers who in many cases manage to defend themselves even from siege weapons such as normal catapults and helepolis.
The best part of the Choson is their infantry units bonus: axemen have +5 hit points, but above all swordsmen will have +15 and +20 life points for short sword and broad sword, and even +60 and +80 hit points for longswords and legionnaires.
If we combine this with Logistics, which halves the population space occupied by barrack units, this means that we can get to produce a very dangerous number of legionnaires.
2) Assyrians
The Assyrians have become one of the best civilizations in my opinion, because in addition to having archers that shoot 33% faster, and siege upgrades that cost 50% less, they now also have siege labs that work 20% faster, thanks to the team bonus.
In practice, in the Bronze and Iron Age they can become a real nightmare to face when we see their chariot archers, or horse archers, united with their catapults and helepolis in the field.
Also keep in mind that they have access to the Legionaries and Cataphracts. On the other hand, they do not have Heavy Horse Archers.
They probably remain a bit less powerful in the Tool Age, not being able to create slingers they become more predictable: our opponent who uses the Assyrians will likely make simple archers or archers and axemen, which we could counter with archers and slingers, or men with axes and slingers.
About this, also read: 5+1 strategies in the Tool Age
1) Hittites
Hittite warships (exploration and galleys) are great on maps like Islands, where the increased range of our ships can really make a difference. Both units have a base range of +2, thus producing scout ships in the Tool Age that, with even just the first upgrade of the wood cutter, already have 8 range, surpassing in this any other Tool Age unit.
On the other hand, this civilization does not have triremes, in any case the galleys reach a total range of 12, exceeding that of many towers and siege weapons.
As if it was not enough already, on RoR their wheel costs 50% less and is researched 50% faster than other civilizations! This will allow us an excellent opening with chariot archers, also considering the +1 attack bonus of all archers.
In practice, at least until the Bronze Age they can dominate water and also have very dangerous chariot archers.
In the Iron Age they still have heavy horse archers who, in large groups, can do a lot of damage, and they have heavy catapults with over 200 hitpoints that can be crafted quite quickly.
Conclusions
Now that you know some good civilizations to use, try them out and let me know!
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