u/Mangert

I started the first book, and I’m 53% through. I’m really enjoying the world building, magic system, story/plot, pacing.

But jeez does Jason preach! He has a similar “fight the power” rebellious streak like Carl from DCC. But Carl HAD A REASON TO BE! Carl was wronged!

Jason, so far, has had 95% positive experiences. And he’s just a self-righteous asshole to everyone. He also constantly picks fights with his friends over talks of the system of oppression by the rich and powerful. But once again, we have (so far) no justification for why he feels this way. Also even if he HAS been wronged on earth, this is a different world and preaching about the complex political landscape of this new world that you know nothing about… makes you an asshole.

I like his playful nature. I like his care and willingness to help the less fortunate. But the preaching monologues/conversations for 3 pages is starting to annoy me. I respect the social commentary on the intricacies of human interaction. But his debates and arguments feel like they come out of complete ignorance considering he knows next to nothing about this new world.

I’m curious to hear other people’s opinions on the character. He’s an extremely unique and believable character, I will say. There are people like this in real life and Jason certainly feels real, flaws and all. It’s just starting to get on my nerves.

I'm seriously considering just swapping to french because they are so op in low elo (im sure i'll be stuck here for awhile).

I am fully convinced that once french gets to feudal age, they just win. Before getting into ranked I didn’t understand all the complaints about French. Now that I’m playing against it… I get it.

Please look at my profile and watch the most recent quick match on Dry Arabia. Name: Mangert

I do the spearman rush to their gold, but they get lucky that their gold is on the back of them, so my spearmen arrive too late and he already got plenty of gold, then just builds a tower. I can’t even kill a single villager bc they run away b4 my spearmen can do enough damage. Sure I got him off the gold but they can just build a tower and go back to mining. UNLIKE ROYAL KNIGHTS who can tank all arrows and 2 shot villagers.

Spearmen suck because they are SO slow. and I have 0 counter to his tower bc its in range of his TC, so I can't even kill it... is it that easy to stop dark age rush? Just build a tower and it two shot spearmen?

he gets to feudal age, and immediatley starts harrassing me 24/7 with royal knights that are WAY too fast and take basically 0 damage from my TC. My spearmen never get a hit because the knights are too fast. My archers deal weak damage to them anyway, and he keeps switching up where he attacks. I was low on wood, but maybe i should have build walls sooner to reduce angles he could attack from.

Unlike against my spearmen, I cant immediately walk away my vilagers when he attacks bc royal knights are so fast. So while he can run away from my spearmen in dark age, I cant run away from knights.

Please guide me on whats wrong. First time trying dark age rush bc I heard it counters french, but
I genuinely can't imagine getting spearmen to him in time to do much of anything because his gold spawned on the backside of his TC.

Give me the truth, should i just reroll french and stomp everyone up to diamond? or better, WHAT COUNTERS FRENCH? Bc you need to show me a vod of someone not losing villagers to knights. I feel like it was actually inevitable. Ranked should just let you ban 1 civ when you queue up. Make french players have to wait in queue.

I shouldn't need to play like a conqueror player to counter a bronze french player. He had basically 0 ranked games on his account, a 3 year old could play french.

Edit: 100k strong to put bans into ranked!

Edit 2: to summarize: it seems I need to do everything under TC until I have walls to funnel the knights to my spearmen.

I should only build spearmen (no archers). I’m guessing if he starts to build archers to kill my spearmen I need to build horsemen? But I guess I would have to scout that to know if he was doing that.

I should research tawara for the villager movement speed.

I should build a tower on my gold to easily garrison the villagers.

I should get my spearmen out quicker in dark age.

I should build barracks with 1 villager while 2 are on wood, and 3 are on sheep (and rally to sheep).

I guess I’ll try to practice this strategy until they implement bans. PLEASE IMPLEMENT BANS IN RANKED!

So many YouTubers, redditors, streamers make comments and jabs about French all the time. Every guide I’ve watched has a section about specifically fighting French.

I know it’s one of the most played civs along with English. But no one seems to be complaining about English from what I’ve seen (and English win rate is rly bad lol)

Can anyone share some insight into the French hate?

I’m a very new player to the game. I only play against AIs with my friends. I can solo beat a hard AI 99% of the time, but can’t beat a hardest ai (if that gives u a sense of my skill level).

I’ve put a lot of effort into Chinese as my main bc I loved the idea of a eco focused civ (I hate aggro civs). But overall it’s not going well. Unless I’m playing a team game and happen to be completely left alone (rare) I usually just lose early from constant harassment from the civ spawned closest to me.

I checked the stats on aoe4world and Chinese are apparently dead last in every elo. Seems they are insanely good in pro play, but below the top of conqueror they are too complex and vulnerable (I agree!)

In a lot of my games, the Japanese ai always do so well with massive armies and the website said they have one of the top win rates (even in bronze, so must be new player friendly right?) so i wanna try them! I thought about trying Zhu Xi Legacy (similar to Chinese) but idk if it’s any good for a new player. Is it similarly complex to Chinese?

Regardless, I wanna try Japanese.

So does anyone know a good introduction guide/build order for Japanese that won’t die to feudal aggro, and survive until you can create those massively strong armies in the castle or imperial age?

How do you deal with a scout just killing ur workers at the start of the game, b4 u even have a barracks or any units.

I play Chinese and I always put 2 on gold at start. If they use their scout to attack them, I can either attack back with my villager (they immediately run away, making my villagers run). Or I can keep mining (and die)

Lose lose scenario? Is this just how the early game works? Nothing I can do? Just deal with it and do the same thing to them? It completely fucks my gold income… making my age up much slower. Makes me wanna ff and go next when I find a player doing that shit.

Hi all, I’m learning Chinese as a new player and I love the civ late game. If I don’t get harassed early I always do amazingly.

Unfortunately every game against French they constantly harass me early with super tanky royal knights that destroy me and overwhelm my units.

They also always attack my 2 villagers on gold with their scout. If I make the villagers attack back, they run away. Meaning I either mine the gold and die, or stop mining the gold and chase after them while they run away. ITS A LOSE LOSE!

How do you play the match up?

I do my start of: mill on sheep, gather more sheep with scout, build house and mining camp, put 2 workers on gold. Age up as soon as possible.split workers between wood, sheep, and gold and triple supervise (with 1 officer gathering the tax)

If I’m going against French or expecting early aggression I build a barracks and start pumping our spearman. But the archers they bring with their knights always kill my spearman easily. And when I’ve built archers, they do no damage to the knights and just get run down by them and easily killed. I lose a bunch of workers from their attack.

I fall behind and just lose.

Does Chinese have any decent defense for this? Am I missing a defensive strategy apart from just building archers + spearman and hoping for the best?

Should I spend wood on walls? It would cost so much wood to make a full circle around my base out of wood… and if it’s just a line of wood walls they just go around.

I’ve built an outpost or 2 but with 5 archers in them the damage is just so low on the tanky royal knights.

Yes I know Hero of the South is likely stronger.

But out of all the mages, Serie is #1. Demon King is likely #2 (demonkind hyper focused on magic and mana, so likely their king is the best mage with the most mana).

Do we think Flamme is 3? Was she really that strong? Stronger than Macht?

I’m starting to get into competitive on Pokémon champions. Especially in a best of one format… it feels just riddled with… terrible variance.

Perish song players bank on double protect and win.

Rock slide is gigantic variance where sometimes u miss, sometimes u hit, sometimes u hit both and flinch both. Sometimes u flinch the one threat that would have OHKO’d ur team.

Overheat can one shot kingambit, but who cares if u predicted they wouldn’t protect, overheat missed!

Hurricane confusing -> hitting yourself

Dire claw -> sleep/para -> stay asleep/can’t move

Speed ties deciding games where whoever’s aerodactyl goes first gets the tailwind and then their partner wipes ur team.

Blizzard -> frozen -> no thaw.

RANDOM CRITS.

I see why Wolfey hasn’t won worlds again. Even when u are the best player in the world, there is just WAY too much variance in this game. Like holy shit, why would they make the matches live and die on 10-30% chances??

Like am I missing something? Can someone explain to me how to win when luck is just not in ur favor?

I just finished book 7 and now I have to painfully wait for book 8 to come out!

Spoilers ahead. I reposted to make sure it was clear this was not spoiler free. Read at your own risk!

This book does a million things well, but I’ll try to talk about as many as I can!

THE CHARACTERS! My god do they just feel so real I am completely invested. Every single character just feels alive. They all feel like real personalities with strengths and flaws. I’m not doing it justice but all I can say is, the characters feel like I’m watching the best actors in the world play a character. They don’t feel like characters, they feel like people. They talk like people. They make choices like people. They have desires, needs, fears, quirks, bravery, cowardice, ulterior motives. They are selfish, they are selfless. They are HUMAN. And not many authors can write characters and dialogue that truly feels HUMAN.

The message is beautiful. I’ve read a lot of books in this genre that are about a person, about progression, about just getting through the next day. Those books don’t have a message, they simply exist to follow a person’s journey and hopefully enjoy it. And that’s okay. But u don’t sit on the last page and just ponder. And I like doing that! DCC has something to say, and I love that. I love the themes of rebellion, fascism, the strong and rich abusing the poor and helpless. And I love Carl’s REAL catchphrase of, “fuck you all, you won’t break me.” And I think watching Carl struggle with that, and fight and fight while everything around him threatens to drown him. That is a story that I love. It’s not just about levels or stats (even if there is plenty of that), it’s about a man and a cat’s fight for freedom. Not just freedom for them, but freedom for all.

The system is so fucking well designed. I’ve read around 100 litrpgs, if not more. Magic/game systems can make or break a book. Everything about the way the system works, is amazing. I love the loot boxes, I love the achievements for doing cool shit. I love the unique classes and spells. I’ve had so many books say “the system tailors its rewards to you.” But no book does that as well as DCC. The system TRULY TAILORS EVERYTHING TO YOU. It’s like you’re the main character getting personalized rewards, but everyone is getting the same personalized treatment. And that creates interesting distinct characters with interesting distinct powers. Which all makes sense bc it’s all a tv show, it’s all for the entertainment of the galaxy. And lucky for us, it’s entertaining to us too!

To add, the health system in the “game” is the best I’ve seen within a Litrpg. It’s basically just the real world (if ur head gets blown off, u dead), and “HP” only really shows you a representation of how close to death you are. And health potions or healing spells, do what they would in real life. Knit your body back together.

Carl’s fighting style of mostly explosives is extremely unique and it fits perfectly in a system where health and mana exist, but fuck it I’m just gonna throw bombs bc everything dies to bombs. It’s very unique and makes for many interesting exciting moments. And Donut’s fighting style scratches the itch I have for loving Magic and cool Magic spells.

Also I love Carl’s character. Carl’s serious, focused, blunt self is the PERFECT foil to Donut’s ridiculous over-the-top personality. I love their dynamic so much and they complement each other so well as characters, as crawlers, as best friends. They are amazing dual MCs.

This book series has ruined my sleep schedule, it has caused me to neglect people in my life. I truly could not stop reading until I finally slowed myself down in book 7 (bc I didn’t want it to end, and bc I need to live my life). If you want an EXPERIENCE. If you want to truly live through Carl’s eyes and follow his journey as he fights and fights. This is the book for you. It’s an extremely serious plot and story about abuse of power, life and death, friendship, love, and the courage to not give up. But it’s colored in with tons of jokes, moments of joy and reprieve, caricatures, silly moments, and a good time.

Now what don’t I like about the book?

FUCK the fourth floor. The infamous “Iron Tangle.” Fuck it. I won’t lie, book 3 was tough to get through. For me and for Carl. Everyone in the book says it. I’m saying it. The Iron Tangle was needlessly complex, ridiculously slow, and just a slog. I didn’t care what the fuck the answer to the puzzle was. The Hekla storyline was the only interesting part of that whole floor. It was a SLOG. And considering the comments in later books about how much the characters hated that floor… I think Matt (author) is aware the mistake he made lol. I urge you to skim over all the explanation parts in that floor. The rest of the series is amazing. But yes the Iron Tangle single-handedly tanked my rating of the book series.

Mongo. I love pets. I love summoner-style classes. But I swear Mongo was essentially just a plot device and not actually a combatant. Yes, this is a nitpick. Donut kept using her copy spell to make clockwork versions of Mongo to fight. But MONGO NEVER FIGHTS. Yes that’s hyperbole. But I wanted a cool combat focused pet. Not a pet that is usually a liability and rarely helps (apart from being cloned into clockwork versions). Another crawler has Bianca, a terrifyingly powerful pet. Now THATS a cool pet. Mongo never felt exciting or an interesting addition to the team. More of a Mascot. And we are the Donut Holes! Donut is our mascot! We don’t need another. Mongo took away screen time from actually interesting characters. I guess I did like Donut’s mothering dynamic with Mongo at least.

Conclusion:

Seriously, if u like Litrpg, read Dungeon Crawler Carl. Before reading this series, my favorite series was Life Reset by Shemer Kuznits. My new favorite series is Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.

Rating: 10/10 (would have been 12/10 god tier… but fuck the Iron Tangle)