Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion

Which three would you choose?

Here are the rules: you can't choose a tech, without choosing its prerequisite. For example, the Persians can only train Long Swordsmen. If you wanted to select the Champion tech, you'd also need to select Two Handed Swordsmen.

If you are considering the Aztecs and Mayans, going with horse techs are fine by me. The above logic must apply though. Knights without Scout Cavalry are okay because they don't follow the same tech lineage. Paladins without Knights are a no-no.

For each civilization, which three techs would you enable? This has nothing to do with balance, but rather what you think would help boost or support that civilization's strengths.

Some might be easy to pick (I wonder what the Goths need...), while others could be a flip of the coin.

I'll start with one.

Byzantines:

1) Blast Furnace: I don't know why they were short changed this tech in the first place (perhaps balancing reasons), but it is one of THE most critical techs for military campaigning. The Byzantines have cheap counter units and this would make Cataphracts even more beastly. The Byzantines might be broken with this tech.

2) Bloodlines: Without this tech, the Byzantines quickly fall behind their classic opponents in the stable department. In vanilla AoE2, Elite Cataphracts still had enough HP to be competitive with Paladins; in the expansion, now they cannot. The Saracens, for instance, received a huge boost to their Heavy Camels and Elite Mamelukes via Bloodlines and Zealotry. The Byzantine cavalry is much weaker without this tech. In my opinion, this was the single biggest nerf factor for them going from vanilla to TC.

3) Siege Engineers: The Byzantine siege weapons are average, and this tech is a must have for those that simply don't spam Paladins or Champions. The Byzantines get both the Trebuchet and Bombard Cannon which is an effective 1-2 punch when helped with +1 range and +20% more damage. The Trebs can move forward with a line of Hand Cannoneers while Bombard Cannons can move in with the swarming Cats and counter units.

Honorable mentions:

1) Masonry: If you like to turtle, this makes your defenses that much more impenetrable.

2) Architecture: Combine this with the above tech and I think you can let your castles and towers do all the work for you.

3) Parthian Tactics: This is a great tech in its own right. I like to use Heavy Cavalry Archers to harass villagers and infantry. However, I wouldn't select this without nabbing Bloodlines too.
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Without a gutter, my mind would be homeless.

Too lazy to think about it completely, but aztecs need halbs for sure.
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http://imgur.com/23mzz.jpg

Britons:

1. Thumb Ring - this is like a must have for archer civilizations this way it will be even tougher to get around the longbowmen which are already hard enough to get through in large numbers

2. Cannon Galleons (at the very least) its just really tough to invade enemies because they have towers and castles which would destroy transport ships

3. Bombard Towers - well choosing the 3rd tech was tough because basically the 2 mentioned above were obviously more important to their offense and just the only 2 real techs they need added but now to focus on their defense well this will just make the siege rams nearly useless but nothing some cavaliers or champions can't solve


Well that last one was tough to choose but i couldve easily have gone for something like crop rotation or the last stone gathering one but bombard towers were a nice addition though not 100% necessary
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Soul Silver FC: 3782 1211 9762 Name: Marvin
2063-9637-8417 - Pokemon Diamond (TM trading only) Record 45-2-8 (w-t-l)

brits would need chemistry though
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i dont like my username. so please just call me Mark

they do have chemistry they just dont have the techs that require chemistry to be used i.e. hand cannoneer, bombard cannon, bombard tower so anyways chemistry is pretty much almost useless on them
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Soul Silver FC: 3782 1211 9762 Name: Marvin
2063-9637-8417 - Pokemon Diamond (TM trading only) Record 45-2-8 (w-t-l)

I never feel Chemistry is useless since it adds damage to range attacks. Plus you get the sweet flaming animation effect on all projectiles.
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Without a gutter, my mind would be homeless.

i said almost not completely but thats all chemistry does for britons
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Soul Silver FC: 3782 1211 9762 Name: Marvin
2063-9637-8417 - Pokemon Diamond (TM trading only) Record 45-2-8 (w-t-l)

Ok Goths

Plate Mail Armor- They got such a good infantry lineup and can produce them so fast, this would probably make their infantry the best though if they were to last a little longer

Siege Ram- Goths siege is meh, their bombard cannons dont get any upgrades (i believe so) and all those infantry and how fast they spawn this would be great for them

Guard Tower- come on, stop at Watch Tower, really? at least guard would make it worth building a few towers

Honorable Mention:

Hoardings - Goths could use this since their defense completely sucks, having their buildings last a little longer with more HP would help
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Woo, Woo, Woo! You know it!

i know goths are not great defensively and if u want decent protection ur gonna have to put up a few castles to really be safe
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Soul Silver FC: 3782 1211 9762 Name: Marvin
2063-9637-8417 - Pokemon Diamond (TM trading only) Record 47-2-9 (w-t-l)

BUMP

Keeping this one alive.
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Without a gutter, my mind would be homeless.