🎓 Learn CBA

Everything you need to understand CBA REQUIEM, on one page: the game loop, the numbers that matter, and what to do in your first minute.

Ask the Expert

The fastest way to get an answer for YOUR game: ask the AI expert. It knows every civ table, threshold and matchup in this site's knowledge base.

🏰 What is CBA REQUIEM?

CBA (Castle Blood Automatic) is a fan-made custom scenario for Age of Empires II, played since the Zone/Voobly era and still one of the most popular lobby games in DE. There is no economy: you start with 99,999 of every resource inside a small fortress with 4 pre-placed Castles that auto-spawn your civ's unique unit for free, forever.

REQUIEM is the actively maintained DE version — essentially all competitive DE CBA uses it. The current documented version is v294 (30 July 2026, maintained by RoyalHack). Don't confuse it with CBA Fixed (the HD classic, different numbers) or CBA Hero (a hero-progression variant with its own metagame).

The format is 4v4 (or FFA). You win fights with micro, advance ages with kills, and unlock Villagers by razing enemy buildings. Losing your last Castle means instant defeat — and so does deleting your own pre-placed gate, towers or Castles.

The CBA map — each player starts in a small fortress with 4 pre-placed Castles.

▶ Watch: Intro to CBA! A Classic AoE2 Scenario — beginner-friendly explainer with Requiem notes.

🔄 The game loop

The CBA REQUIEM loop — units spawn automatically, kills advance ages, razes buy villagers.

1. Spawn — each Castle spawns your unique unit every 6–15 s, up to a per-civ cap. At cap, spawns stop until units die: keep fighting so the enemy hits their cap first.
2. Kill — kills advance you Feudal → Castle → Imperial (civ-specific thresholds). Every death of yours feeds the enemy's age timer, so don't throw units away.
3. Raze — destroying enemy buildings unlocks Villagers (rear gates are the classic first target).
4. Vill up — Villagers wall your base and build military production.
5. Push — in Imperial, mass Heavy Cav Archers + Rams and break Castles. Last Castle down = player eliminated.

The spawn cycle — at cap your Castles go silent ("caged"), so keep fighting to make the enemy cage first.

🔢 The essential numbers (Requiem v294)

Version lock

All numbers below are from Requiem v294. Earlier versions and CBA Fixed/Hero use different values — never mix them. For your exact civ, check its civ page or ask the chat.

Quantity	Range (v294)
Starting age	Feudal for most civs; Castle Age for weak-UU civs (Malay, Vikings, Magyars, Sicilians, Ethiopians, Mapuche, Athenians, Thracians, Shu…)
Spawn interval	6 s (Malay) → 15 s (Khmer) per Castle
Unit cap	30 (Khmer) → 120 (Malay), average ~72
Kills → Castle Age	35 (Malay) → 300 (many DLC civs); 200–250 typical
Kills → Imperial Age	mostly 500–600; extremes 300 (Thracians) → 700 (Gurjaras, Spanish)
Razes → first Villagers	1–5 depending on civ (see below)

Kills are your age-up currency — every unit you lose feeds the enemy's timer instead.

Razes to first villagers (pairs spawn; each further raze = +2 vills):

Razes	Civs
1	Britons, Mayans, Magyars, Vietnamese, Malay, Italians, Mapuche, Muisca, Tupi, Wu, Armenians, Gurjaras
2	Most civs (Vikings, Aztecs, Koreans, Chinese, Ethiopians, Byzantines, most archer civs…)
3	Franks, Teutons, Spanish, Turks, Burmese, Lithuanians
4	Persians
5	Huns

The raze economy — buildings burn into villagers, villagers become walls and production.

🧱 After villagers arrive

• Can build: walls, Barracks / Archery Range / Stable (≈300 aggregate unit cap), Siege Workshop, and up to 10 Bombard Towers.
• Cannot build: Town Centers. Disabled units: Petards, Trebuchets, Bombard Cannons, Scorpions, Mangonels, Battle Elephants (until Imperial, elephant civs only).
• Never delete your pre-placed Castles, towers or forward gate — instant defeat. Buildings you construct can be deleted freely.
• Standard sequence: backwall first (rear gate is the enemy's first raze target), then front, then 2–4 Stables + 1 Archery Range, Siege Workshop in Imperial.

⏱️ The universal first 60 seconds

1. Announce your civ and razes-per-vill in team chat ("Britons here, 1 raze").
2. Agree raze order — Vikings first, then 1-raze archer civs, then whoever is weakest.
3. Set your gather point / spawn distance, group your first spawns, pick Line formation + Aggressive stance.
4. Move toward your lane fight immediately — idling at cap wastes spawn timers.
5. Identify the enemy's biggest threat (Chakram, Urumi, Persian elephants, archer stack) and call it.

From there, everything is tactics and team play.

📖 Glossary

Click to expand the CBA glossary

• CBA / REQUIEM / Fixed / Hero — scenario family / DE flagship (v294) / HD classic / hero-progression variant.
• Raze — destroy an enemy building; unlocks villagers per civ-specific count.
• Vill — Villager, the currency of post-Feudal CBA economy.
• Cage / capped — a civ at its spawn cap; spawns suppressed until units die.
• Feed / feeding — dying to the enemy so their kills advance their age faster.
• Dive — coordinated melee/cav push into a base for razes or key kills.
• Kite — hit-and-run micro, mainly for cavalry archers.
• Short-patrol — patrol between two nearby points to re-space a ranged formation.
• No-attack micro — No Attack stance + patrol back + flip to Aggressive; skips engagement delay.
• Backwall — walling the rear of the base first (rear gate = first raze target).
• Spawn-block — standing on enemy Castle spawn tiles to prevent new units.
• Two 2v2s — the map splits into two side-battles; watch both.
• 1-raze civ — a civ that vills after a single raze (see table above).
• Pass-through — projectile keeps flying, damaging every unit in its line (Scorpion, Chakram, Ballista Elephant, Kipchak, Organ Gun).
• Trample — melee AoE around the primary target; never hits allies.
• Charge — stored bonus damage added to the next hit, then recharges (Coustillier, Centurion, Urumi).
• UU / UT — Unique Unit / Unique Technology.
• HHA — Heavy Cavalry Archer, the core Imperial push unit.
• BE / BBE — Battle Elephant / Ballista Elephant (Khmer).
• CA / SO / HC — Cavalry Archer / Siege Onager / Hand Cannoneer.