The following does not exactly support my argument that Eggy cf is very good but anyways, for the sake of activity around here and some intelligent discusion (this being key so don't post if you're just trolling or have no idea what you're talking about) I'll give this a go:
On another forum (the mG clan forums don't know if I'm allowed to post the link here...) Lorenzo was discussing Zeus vs Isis and I think he made some valid points...and I'd like to see what you guys have to say on the matter. I'll quote the post here (I don't think this is posting anything in name of a banned forumer seeing as this is open for all to see on another site):
Zeus vs Isis on Mediterranean
Zeus vs Isis on Midgard
Zeus vs Isis on Savannah
There is also a 4th game of the same match up on Oasis where 2 of Lorenzo's starting zebras spawn off the map, another huge disadvantage that nothing can be done about (I do not have this rec).
On another forum (the mG clan forums don't know if I'm allowed to post the link here...) Lorenzo was discussing Zeus vs Isis and I think he made some valid points...and I'd like to see what you guys have to say on the matter. I'll quote the post here (I don't think this is posting anything in name of a banned forumer seeing as this is open for all to see on another site):
Here are the games he is refering to:Quoted from mG Forums:
I played vs Magyar today and got raped 4x by same strat, Athena fb (sure I win 1 game but that's because it's Midgard and he can't push me off hunt, only gold11). Tbh that's not very different from Isis FH...
(Before I start ranting, I would like to say that I have not tried sub 5:00 priestrushes so I do not know if this works. Perhaps a fast priest rush would prevent him from fb'ing and screws his food income or resource income in general. On Savannah I did do something like a 5:00 but he advanced around that time as well and jason stopped it (and would stop 90% of all priestrushes anyway), otherwise Bolt on Pharaoh would have stopped it 100% and Odysseus would have too. I actually opted for a sub 5:00 priestrush on savannah, but was unable to advance fast enough with a monu/pickaxe/flood of the nile in archaic and I don't think I can win if I don't get those in Archaic. Anyway, conclusion: I did not try a sub 5:00 priestrush so I am not certain if this would work, but I don't think it would)1a) First the maps, which are almost certainly in Zeus' favor... If both hunt is in the middle (which, technically, is fair) you won't be able to hunt it after Archaic but the Zeus will, and he will get your food on top of this. 1b) Then there is the starting goldmine issue. If your mine is very forward and the Zeus' mine is very forward (once again, technically fair) the Zeus doesn't really face any problems whereas you do... This is why you will be at a disadvantage resource-wise. 1c) Then, there is the problem of not having hunt in LOS and finding your hunt at, say, 1:00 - 1:30. You gather from your chickens or berries, spot the hunt and move towards it. For the sake of the argument the Zeus player faces the exact same scenario (once again, making it 'fair') and moves to the hunting at the same time. The Zeus will still advance around 5:00 and push you off. Now you have 90 seconds less hunting time because you weren't hunting from the start, while the Zeus faces no problems with this because he can continue hunting... 1d) As for the starting towers, if you don't have a good tower covering your first gold (or just bad tower placement in general, like too far from the TC or towers that are too far back/protect useless areas) you are bothered, if the Zeus has bad tower placement he is not bothered. However, to be fair: the Zeus will be attacking you thus inevitably fighting in building fire at times, so I guess this helps even it out. 2a) You can't defend your starting hunt effectively, so you will always be forced to leave your hunting. I think we can all agree on this, Zeus has bolt, Jason and a free myth unit to push you off hunt and you will have a Pharaoh, free MU and some Priests (assuming you advance at the same time as him, which is usually not the case). 2b) You can't fight his army effectively with Classical units because of the Toxotes. Lets say he makes Hippikons + Toxotes + 2 heroes, it's impossible to beat this combination with Classical units (including Pharaoh). When you group units, they automatically form a formation with the archers at the back. So when his army is moving forward, his melee units minus Odysseus (Hippikons, Hoplites, free Minotaur) will be at the front and his Toxotes will be at the back. That's no problem because he wants the Toxotes to attack the front units. You, however, facing the same scenario with the ranged units at the back and the melee units at the front, will want your ranged units (slingers) to attack his ranged units. IIRC Slingers and Toxotes are both 16 range (not that it matters for the following argument though). Assuming a battle commences, there will be 32-33 range between your Slingers and his Toxotes in the worst case scenario, making it pretty impossible for your Slingers to hit his Tox as they would actually have to:
1) move past the melee units of your opponent, which will have to be from the side because the Slingers can’t walk through the melee units battling at the front
2) be micro’ed manually on the Tox, as they attack the closest units which will still be the hops
Not to forget, the time your Slingers are moving they are not attacking, whereas the opponent’s Tox are attacking (off-topic: I see this mistake made in lots of Norse vs Atty games too where in a 115/115 battle the Norse runs around with 15 RC to get to the Turmae, not realizing that’s basically 15 idle RC while the Turmae are attacking… then wondering why they lose the battle 11). This makes it very hard for you to win the battle. To make it even worse, I did a test in the editor: 15 Slingers and 15 Axemen vs 15 Hoplites and 15 Toxotes. I put every Axeman right in front of every Hoplite, so that each Axeman will fight 1 Hoplite (not realistic, I know, but bare with me). Behind those 15 Axemen were 15 Slingers, and behind the 15 Hoplites were 15 Toxotes. At the start I paused the game and ordered every Slinger to attack the Tox behind the Hoplite, so each 1 Slinger was firing at 1 Tox. Also, I will stop capitalizing the letters of the units now because it gets annoying. This is the best possible scenario you can possibly imagine for hop/tox vs axe/slingers, you have to agree with that, yet hop/tox still won the battle. Now add a 5million hp odysseus and a 2k hp Jason to this (and a pharaoh on the eggy’s side and some more units, you can even have like +10 pop or even +15 pop over the Zeus with your pharaoh and you’ll still lose) and you die. Don’t forget restoration, btw, which will automatically win one battle. Even if you went Anubis, which doesn’t seem very smart to begin with, restoration will still win the battle when plague of serpents is cast.
Now if he makes hipps + tox it’s even worse because spears don’t get enough bonus damage vs cav without horus techs (10% bonus I believe), if he makes hipps + tox + hoplites, well… I don’t know what unit combo is best vs. this, just seems hopeless for the eggy11. If you have bad first gold (like really forward and you don’t have/can’t defend your ‘gold’ tower well) you basically lose the game right there.2c) As the game continues and you’re struggling to survive, you’ll notice that his hoplite:toxotes ratio will go from 50+:50- to 50-:50+. This makes sense, as:
1) Toxotes are easier to produce as they cost wood
2) You will be killing off his hops faster as they are melee and in front whereas tox are in the back and ranged
3) He will usually be using AQ
4) Hunt will run out, slowing his food income thus his hop production (optional/debatable)
You ‘suffer’ the same faith. On paper this gives you the advantage, but in practice this is actually/usually worse than a 50:50 hop:tox and axe:slings army. Yes, 20 slings + pharaoh (ye, being slightly naïve here with the + pharaoh) 20 tox, but 20 tox with 3-5 units in front (worst case scenario would be 2 heroes) will beat 20 slings + pharaoh + whatever unit you would like to add as the slings don’t mow down the units in front of the tox but the tox will mow everything down in front of your slings. I actually tested 20 tox vs a sphinx and 20 slings vs a medium hippikon and the results are really really really depressing 11 (I won’t spoil the surprise, go test it. Slight note: you might also want to test it with decreased numbers, as the true broken imbalanced retardedness becomes much more clear with smaller numbers, e.g. there is not much diff in time between 100 tox vs son of Osiris and 100 slings vs a hippikon) now imagine oddyseus in front.3a) So, logically, the best thing to do is FH, which might not be easy on some maps to begin with, especially combined with pressure but to be really honest I’m able to get heroic just fine on 90% of the maps so lets ignore that, it’s probably also a bit harder to fb with Athena on some maps. The next problem: you can’t kill or put a dent in his army with A+E because he’ll just run through a gate and by the time you’ve destroyed the walls his army is gone, only to return after A+E with 115/115 and (possibly) resto. Actually, in the Savannah game I anticipated his use of a gate pretty well and have minions on both side of the gate and I really kill a lot of units, but I still lost pretty easily. Yes, perhaps making an outside Migdol at my 2nd gold during A+E would have been the better choice, but I didn’t know where he had walled (and that’s not due to lack of obelisks, if I had them he would have destroyed them anyway) and where his army was (contrary to popular belief I do not maphack 11) so I decided to make a migdol at home first and make CA. 3b) Now there are watermaps… I don’t think it’s very easy to defend vs. any Athena rush with even neutral gold, because you just can’t keep your gold tower up (really, check the Midgard game vs Magyar: I make 2 or 3 layers of walls with a house in between and he still bashes through while I’m constantly firing with my Pharaoh. I should have lost that game as well, btw, but an extremely poor use of resto and poor micro by Magyar (don’t know why you idiots suck off him so much for his “godly micro”, last time I checked making walls and putting hero on MU wasn’t micro-intensive11, check the game on Alfheim where it’s Zeus vs Poseidon and check Adhafang’s comment in the game then watch the game and go to the 12 min he described, tell me where you see micro plz, are you blind?. But I guess it’s just the normal thing to do these days, praise Magyar for his non-existent godly micro, flame me for my non-existent maphack and give Hellsravage expert staff for his non-existent skill. But I digress. A lot) made me win the game (I bet you had to read back to see what that ‘made me win the game’ was about because your brain lacked working memory. That is because you’re stupid, btw).
Action helped me a lot with a potential counter to this fb Athena walling which I will discuss later, but I have my doubts.
Going to bed, cheers.
P.S. - this is only about Zeus' Classical, haven't even talked about his Mythic, underworld passage, map control, 4v2 TCs scenarios that might occur (and will most of the time due to map control) etc.
There is also a 4th game of the same match up on Oasis where 2 of Lorenzo's starting zebras spawn off the map, another huge disadvantage that nothing can be done about (I do not have this rec).
[This message has been edited by Major_Rackham (edited 07-06-2009 @ 09:13 AM).]