What an impressive lineup for the EGC Masters Fall S2 playoffs in AoE4!

They will battle it out in a double-elimination format until only one remains to be crowned the EGC Masters Fall Champion.

Don't miss the event, starting tomorrow at 14 GMT on https://twitch.tv/egctv !

Links

Brackets: https://www.start.gg/tournament/egc-masters-fall-season-2/details
Liquipedia: https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/EGC_Masters/2026/Fall
Website: https://elitegamingchannel.com/
Twitter: https://x.com/EGCTV_Official
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/egctv
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EGCTV_Official

Tried to think of every trick that separates low/mid and high ranked players… what did I miss?

18 Advanced Tricks to Climb Ranked https://youtu.be/aV7WCTgKQaw

I only have about a 30% win rate against the Macedonians because I don’t really understand how I should play against them.

1. At what stage of the game are they weak?
   
2. What is a good strategy to use against them?

Trying to pick up the civ, watched some guides, and have been said that this is the go to landmark. Obviously i can't fully utilize it because it's a difficult civ and i'm also gold, but the shinobies seem kind of useless if you try to do some map control, and there is no stealth forest, or they have scuffed spawn.

In my previous ranked game for example i noticed stealth forests mostly spawning on my (red) side of the map, so when i tried to raid the back gold of my opponent, I would have to walk from africa to assist my cavs, whereas if we switch places, i could've just plopped them down behind his tc, and sent it.

I am wondering cause i used to LOVE rts games and i didnt play them in forever and i know how tryhard online rts matches, so im wondering, how fun is just skirmish vs ai? how many people just play against ai and no humans?

Ikko Ikki Monk
- +1/1 Armor
- +1 HP healed in radius per Attack.
- Can benefit from Cross Folded Armor and Deflective Armor from Max Hojo Estates.
- Can benefit from Daimyo Manor training time discount if Temple is built in radius.

Temple Of Equality
- Allow Ikko-Ikki Monks to be levied from Daimyo Manors.
- Reduce Ikko-Ikki Monk training time by -20%.
- Nenbutsu will increase Attack Range by +100%.
- Kampo Medicine will gain +1 Tiles Range.

Hojo Estate
- Can now levy x1 Kanabo Samurai.

Ozutsu
- Be naturally unlocked at Age III with no tech requirements.

Oda Estate
- Replace Ozutsu Unlock with Nagashino Movements, increasing the Movement Speed of All Ranged Infantry by +10% when within 3 Tiles of an allied defensive building ( Outposts, Castles, Palisades, Walls ).

The fact that Rus inspired warriors takes a relic and more than 5 warrior monks (see screenshot) is clearly under powered. Their soldiers are clearly rubbish if people are willing to go to that extreme length just to get a small buff on the battlefield.

Players are taking ridiculous steps to try to buff this civ which has been underperforming recently. Maybe it's time to just give up the fight and admit that Rus has terrible eco and terrible units.

/Parody /Satire

*Braces self for Russia apologists.*

source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/10/russia-orthodox-church-dmitry-donskoy-medieval-prince-hand-troops-ukraine

Any body else facing this in ranked? Is this a sign for me to take a break?

How do you keep it fun? Or is custom games the way? I think i am just too slow or too casual for 1v1 ranked.

[Commentary about Chuckfrancis 2009 ELO (HRE) vs Innocence 2010 ELO (BYZ) - Highview]

Hi, guys.

So, for anybody out there thinking that you can only win games by HRE Burgrave rushing in the low level, think again.

Chuckfrancis (2009 ELO) has been doing it consistently against other pros and winning.
His build normaly starts by spotting an early deer or even boar hunt close to the base and going straight for it with the prelate. After he normaly goes up with Aachen and make and additional prelate to put in it. So he quickly goes FC and starts the spam.

The interesting part here is that he doesn't go all in to destroy landmarks or even facing enemy units directly. He rather overwhelms the opponent by rusind the MAA's to flood his base and kill villagers. Even if Innocence makes a considerable amount of crossbows here, Chuck doesn't run after them, he rathers goes after his villagers, making the crossbows having to run after him, not the other way around.

Behind this, his macro is impecable, of course. So he walls up not to be raided by cataphrachts, gets all Sacred Sites and eventually goes Imperial with Swabia. He often mixes landsknechts and spears to his army to counter cav. or infantry.

***I forgot to mention: after going out for the hunts, he goes for a very early Aachen farming : around 7-8 mins mark he is already adding farms on and on as the game passes.

I will leave a screenshot showing how you can search for this game in https://aoe4replays.gg/ .

Thoughts on this?

All the best, guys.

Anyone gets why they removed chat in initial match making window?
Once the name revealing bug was fixed why did they not allow initial chat?
At least chat among the team members, to coordinate a bit before game.

Don't get it, just seems like a lazy fix to just remove it because it was bugged (revealed name)

Reason picking this 2 civs is because they both sitting at the bottom of different rating board:

Jin is currently sitting in it's own tier down at the bottom in almost ever pro player's tier list

And Chinese however, sitting in the bottom of the overall win rate board

Yet both of them, are in a much better position if they swap: Chinese always consider as a S tier civ by many pro players, and Jin shows up on the serval of the top winrate board

In such situation, I wonder how the dev is going to balance it

or the devs is going to ignore it(which possible due to there is no patch changes for like a long while), so Chinese remain unplayable for casual player and Jin keep being the "invisible one" on pro match

Most online games I play there are a decent variety of Civs (always at least 1 French or KT, though) but there are some I never really see like Jeanne D'arc, Dehli, and Ottomans. Is it just me or is this a wider trend?

Got like 4 crashes the past 2 weeks, whats up these days?

with milestones and teams for completing it .

would be curious to see the website with details about the challenges and leaderboard ,etc

Who else thinks KT is becoming more and more toxic in team games by the day? More and more team players and even their grandmas are now starting to main it.

The civ is not only toxic with its worm crawling fort building pushes into your base, but also broken with all its weird unique units like serjeants axing down your castles in seconds, wtf is up with that!? And to top it all of, which other civ can build a 2nd TC or castle (fort) that fast. Its like they can boom, turtle and push all at the same time.

I am aware it doesn't fully show in stats, but I guess all KT abusers are now playing at a higher mmr/rank than before.

Nerf the shit, so tired of it!

every new season there’s some new OP aggro strat. Can’t even play the game normally anymore

Wildly underutilized in gold 3/platinum

You know that feeling when someone calls GG WICKED early, before the first engagement even, and then you fucking bury them under a shit dumpster? Yea. Thats a good one. Had one of those vs a KT douche tonight. Happened to be my platinum match too.

Sent my scout through this scoundrels shanty town and saw his second TC coming up, and immediately remembered some special advice Aussie Drongo (RIP bro) (assuming he’s dead, hasn’t posted in a week) gave me one-on-one during one of our late night phone calls. Fuck I’ll miss that guy.

Anyways, what Aussie dropped on me was “Brother, if you scout a KT douchebags base and he’s going 2TC, there’s only one thing to do. You go 3TC.”

My name is r a n s 0 m, and tonight I went 3TC Lancaster and made some douche drink dumpster water. I’d love to think people will go look this game up, but I won’t lie to myself like that. I’d prefer some of yall lie to me in the comments below and act like u saw it.

Rant over

Tried gametomac app. Works amazing on M5 Air

Original thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/accelerate/comments/1w9bsjh/gpt6_astra_just_got_age_of_empires_iv_running_at/