Overview
When the unthinkable happens, tarkans will flood your town and whip you to death. Only a sadomasochist will survive…
Settings
- Game Type: Random Map
- Map: Arena
- Players: IamAbe vs L_Clan_Alive
- Nicks in game: ZoD_MuMMy_ vs GunsNRoses
- Civs: Huns vs Mayans
War Story
When comparing tarkans to regular knights, the balance will easily be tilted towards the regular knights. An oddity as most unique units offer something extra compared to their “normal” counterpart. Not so with Huns thus, unless you count on their strength against buildings. Does that mean they’re completely useless? Not at all, because they do have advantages! The situations in which they can be used are just rare. But this game was almost the perfect occasion! Why almost, because Abe had to fight vs Alive, who had Mayans. And our plumed friends are a heavy yoke on Hunnic shoulders.
However, the game started out quite traditional, except that Abe made a castle at home and started to queue a band of tarkans right away. Alive went for a 4 TC boom while Abe managed to keep 3 TC running. But the peace was brutally disturbed when two petards kamikaze’d themselves against Alive’s walls and stormed in for raiding purposes. A first TC went down easily but because of some quick defensive building (including a castle) Abe was forced to withdraw. Abe quickly sought and found another place to break into Alive’s town but this time he only managed to kill a handful of villagers.
The turning point was now reached as Alive had a castle covering his town and had reached the imperial age. Abe imped only a little later and kept on going the tarkan way. He upgraded them to elite tarkans and while blending in siege and skirmishers, he managed to keep back the Mayan powerhouse for a while but ran out of gold. Which was actually the result of poor scouting because he had 2 gold piles in his backyard. Besides, Mayans wouldn’t be Mayans if they wouldn’t pick the longest straw in the end and so they did. Abe was forced to resign, but not after Alive had the chance to congratulate him with the nice tactic. Because honesty abides: if it wasn’t for the Mayans or maybe for the poor scouting, I really expected Abe to win.
What made tarkans suitable in this situation?
The reason why tarkans could have worked here lays in the characteristics that usually decide against them. First of all: before you can fight in arena, you must break a wall. Siege is slow and doesn’t guarantee that you can break. A simple defensive onager or some stubborn double walling will slow you down a lot or prevent you from getting in at all. Two petards will leave your enemy with a sudden surprise. Thus when you need to build a castle for the petards, you might as well save out wood for stables and go for tarkans instead. You’re thus saving out enough wood for another TC.
Another strength lays in the tarkans naturally high pierce armor and their bonus against buildings: great to disturb an enemy’s boom even though tarkans do not shine against units at all. Once you imp, you can purchase the cheap elite upgrade and turn them into mini paladins too.
