Age of Empires Mobile – The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Choose Your Line-Up

How to Choose Your Line-Up

By kaity

One of the most asked questions especially when the game is about to be released is what lineup a player should invest in, as a free-to-play player and as a spender.

In this guide I won’t tell you to do that or to invest in that; instead, I will try to help you make the decision.

First, let’s see what are the main ways to get a hero (from the most f2p-friendly to the least f2p-friendly):

Tavern heroes

It’s considered the most f2p-friendly way, the heroes of the tavern are easy to get, including the low rarity heroes and some legendary ones who are: Josephine, Joan of Arc, Darius, Harald, Hamurabi, YSS, Cleopatra, and King Derrick (he is not a tavern hero but given for free in an event).

The legendary advent event heroes or I like to call them the wheel heroes

In this event, you get tickets to spin the wheel to get rewards and you get them by spending empire coins or Buying bundles, but the game gives free spins, and some of them can be reserved this makes it more friendly than the hero rally heroes.

Hero rally

Buy heroes by coins that you get by spending empire coins or paying bundles, obtainable for F2P players but slightly more expensive than the wheel heroes.

Mightiest governor event (mge)

It’s a big event where you get heroes based on your ranking.

Two heroes come in the event at the same time one of them will need lower ranks to be unlocked and the other is unlocked by being in higher ranks, for now the higher rank heroes are only obtained through this event

Pay-walled heroes

Some heroes’ only way to get is by buying bundles, either from daily chests, kingdom Hoard (the pass), or VIP chests.

Now let’s get to the main topic, maybe you were told that pikemen are the most used troops at the moment, Imma clear up why that is:

These are the 6 legendary heroes of the “warrior” “pikemen”

Joan of Arc, Leonidas I, and especially Richard I and Boudica are characterized by the following:

1. High dmg out-put on their own, that is not based on customizable skills nor line-ups each hero is strong on their own, in other words, they don’t need high investment to be functional.
2. Easy to get at the start of the kingdom, Joan of Arc is free while Leonidas I can be obtained immediately after the first purchase, Richard comes in the first wheel (supposedly) only Boudica comes after some time.
3. Versatile strong line-up for early-mid and late-game.
4. Hard to punish, doesn’t have an obvious counter (except the troop counter system) has bonuses the lower the hp of the heroes are.

Now please pay attention to the first point, Richard and Boudica are the core of this line-up and they are heroes who deal lots of damage the moment you summon them.

To clear this up let’s give an opposing example using the hero Attila.

To put it simply Attila increases the amount of normal attacks your whole team can do.

But based on my calculations, the increase in the normal attack damage is low and not worth it at all.

But, the more normal attacks that are done, the more “secondary strike skills” are triggered.

This makes Attila a hero who needs a team with customizable skills to be worthwhile, In other words, Attila needs lots of investments to function.

Now putting this aside, let’s talk about the second popular line-ups, which are the teams of warrior swordsmen.

The warrior swordsmen line-ups can be divided into two:

• In the early game, the popular ones are the f2p swordsmen line-up known as the rout line-up
  The late game line-up: usually involves Tribhuwana and Yodit.
• When it comes to the warrior swordsmen, you get the first 4 heroes pretty fast and for free: Josephine, Hammurabi, King Derrick (KD), and Harald.

KD and Hammurabi make a good pair together that is useful for early to mid-game, they get outshined by the late-game heroes Yodit and Tribhuwana.

Josephine and KD can be used for both swordsmen and archers this gives them the flexibility to be used as troop counter match-ups which are especially important in the early game for PVE content, and is considered a budget investment where you can flex them into archers after you replace them late game.

For spenders in the early game, you can run Miyamoto King Derrick and Hammurabi, or Miyamoto King Derrick and Josephine (so you can move them to the archer line-ups).

F2P players who can’t get access to Miyamoto will run King Derrick Hammurabi and Joeshpine instead

This early game is considered a budget line-up for early game, maybe it has the advantage against the Pikemen line-up because swordsmen counter Pikemen but probably will feel weaker than the spearmen line-up in general.

Over time you look to replace the budget team with Yodit and Tribhuwana.

Spenders will end up with Miyamoto Yodit and Tribhuwana. For f2p Yodit Tribhuwana and Hammurabi line-up can work.

The warrior swordsmen line-up is characterized by:

• Miyamoto Yodit and Tribhuwana are heroes of high burst damage that don’t need investment to function, but Yodit and Tribhuwana come late to the game unlike Richard and Boudica
• The early game line-up is not bad at all for a budget line-up and can be moved as budget to archers
• The swordsmen counter the most popular line-up the Pikemen, but they are countered by archers.

Now let’s talk about the tactical swordsmen line-up:

The tactical swordsmen are in a weird spot, they are not bad but not too good, Sun Tzu who is the most performing hero in this line-up is a burst DPS, all the line-ups until now have been known for that as well! while not necessarily out-performing these heroes nor having a good early game.

This competition with the warrior swordsmen line-ups puts this team in a tough spot, even though the team may be completely obtainable for an F2P player.

• That’s why I think investing in this team is a little bit risky.
• There is no marshal swordsmen line-up.

The following are the tactical archer line-up

This is the tactical archer line-up, putting after the swordsmen because the same thing can be applied to them.

The tactical archer line-up also known as the Suleiman line-up is good at countering swordsmen, not only because archers counter swordsmen, but Sendeok can “silence” the enemy aka preventing the enemy from casting “active skills” which means most of the swordsmen rely on, including the late game Miya Yodit Tribhuwana heroes.

But the line-up probably does not perform that well outside of fighting the swordsmen, aka they are probably not going to trade well against the spearmen line-ups, and they are heavy on investments, especially the rings (EverFlame Wings).

Now to the marshal-pikemen line-up

The marshal Pikemen line-up

First of all, Ram is hard to get for F2P players, only players who rank high in the mightiest governor event can get him and there is no other way to get him at the moment.

Although the other heroes can be obtained through F2P ways, this line-up in general is heavy on the stars.

Stars: are a ranking system where you ascend your hero by getting duplicates of the hero.

This line-up without question gets outperformed at low investments by the warrior Pikemen line-up.

Even after high investment and ascending the stars of the heroes, it remains a question of whether this line-up performs better than the warrior Pikemen line-up.

• This is a line-up I don’t advise any F2P player to look for at the moment.
• There is no tactical pikemen line-up.

Now to tactical cavalry line-up

The tactician Cavalry line-up

First of all, Ashoka is a high-rank MGE hero, a tough hero to get for most players (especially F2P).

But Ashoka is not necessarily needed, Cleopatra a free hero competes for a spot in this team as well.

Usually, the line-up ends up as Hannibal Justinan + either the two.

The issue comes from Justinan though, he is easier to unlock than Ashoka from the Mightiest Governor event, and if you miss him from this event, then the only way is pay-walled.

In other words, you can get two heroes of this line-up, and the 3rd one is not completely guaranteed for F2P players.

This line-up is strong but risky, remember how Warrior Pikemen are the most popular heroes? and this is a cavalry line-up?

Being countered by the most popular line-up puts this team in a tough spot.

But please pay attention that Hannibal and Justinian can be a tanky line-up, also that Hannibal has a debuff, ahh and that Hannibal does high base damage, and ahh that every hero in that line-up synergies with Hannibal, this makes Hannibal a hero that everyone hates fighting.

Hannibal loses the 1 v 1 against spearmen, if you are in the middle of a big fight (murder ball) people would not like to hit a tanky target that can debuff them, this reduces how risky this line-up can be in the open field.

When it comes to warrior cavalry heroes we have lots of problems:

• Pikemen’s popularity makes using cavalry a tough choice since you will be counted by too many people in the field.
• The warrior cavalry heroes are glass cannons .
• They are awful early game.

Lubu, the hero that comes in the late game is a great hero but still needs some investment.

Usually, Lubu goes with Attila, and either Rani or Guan Yu.

Rani can be an interesting choice for the spender, while Guan Yu is a free hero and does not need much investment, not because he is non-investment friendly, but because he is horrible hat you should not invest in him.

Jokes aside Guan yu only needs his customizable skill “critical insight” while putting full investment in Lubu and Attila.

Ok so finally for the warrior archer line-ups

As said previously Josephine and King Derrick can be used in an infantry team and archers as budget heroes.

Mulan is generally a good hero who is used as a main hero, but she is pay-walled which makes her not available for F2P players.

Early game line-ups will consist of Mulan Josephine and King Derrick for Spender, but for f2p who can’t get Mulan they may need to pull for Attila and use him.

Late game the line-up should become Mulan, Belluvue, and Attila, or it can be Bellevue Mulan and Attila.

For f2p Mulan will be replaced with Joeshpine.

Generally speaking, Mulan should be better than Josephine, but the gap is not that high at 0 stars, with 5 stars Mulan has a wider gap.

Also, these line-ups are not necessarily performing well against the Pikemen line-up.

For the Miyamoto-Yodit-Tribhuwana line-up, it’s worth mentioning that archers counter swordsmen but the warrior archer line-up does not necessarily counter their skills, this puts the archer line-up in a tough spot especially when not highly invested since they may struggle against their “counter”

And these line-ups are all glass canons who need high investment

Cavalry marshal line-up

I’m not a fan of this line-up at all, CId applies slowly and has high damage reduction against one target while able to do damage with reduction healing.

The team is a niche. And this line-up may be considered the worst line-up in the game. I hope this guide helps you a little to choose what team you want to go.

I want to wrap up this guide as this:

The “safe start” especially for F2P players is as follows

• Is to invest in o Josephine and King Derrick they will help a lot in the early game.
• Then invest in the warrior Pikemen line-up.
• Make the warrior Pikemen your main, and train more Pikemen than the other troops.
• Turn Joesphine and King Derrick with Hammurabi into a swordsmen line-up as a second march.
• Since troops die in PvP combat, if you run out of swordsmen then turn Josephine and King Derrick into archers (please notice that if you obtain Richard there is a chance you can’t get Attila if you are F2P since they are both in the same wheel).
• Thus this leaves Mulan as the only option to use, if you don’t have Mulan use Hammurabi in Archers (you lose some stats but it’s better than nothing at this point).
• You can decide afterward whether you want to get Yodit and Tribhuwana to upgrade your swordsmen line-up.