I recently faced a few people who had miner cities by the time I launch an offense. The most recent one I faced started with a spearton. I beat that, took the center. Waited a bit to add a few swordwrath and speartons to my army. I had about a line and a half of troops, no counter-offense to be seen. So I decide to attack and I see 20+ miners getting gold and mana and I see a fully grown giant walk out of the castle. I decide to retreat. Eventually giants kept coming and he took the tower. As soon as he takes it, a ghost giant comes out of the center tower.

I basically lost at that point.

So my question is: Is a miner city really that effective that consistently, or should I launch my attacks sooner? Or maybe should I consider miner spam?

The beginning of each strategy is the miners.
Miner spam stopped when the last few updates came out. Miners got weaker.
It is VERY effective to have a good amount of miners. Not 20 miners, but at least 12-15 would be good.
I always have 8 miners on gold and 4-5 miners on mana, with miner hustle, and I always fill my army up to the limit.

Make a faster offense. If he made a spearton he obviously has no resources but 2 miners, and then he probably made another miner or swordwrath (or saved up for a castle archer if he's stupid enough because he won't have the opportunity). Attack the miners and try to force them to attack you (and thereby stop mining) or garrison (stopping mining). Because this is definitely more offensive and it's based on keeping a strong attack up, focus your money on swordwraths and archers (essential to killing retreating miners faster), but aim to have around 4 miners pretty soon. If he /somehow/ manages to get the resources to make a castle archer, hold the tower. 4-5 swordwraths and 4 archers is enough to kill one miner and keep your archers from getting hurt. Just keep harassing him. Swordwraths get killed fast, so garrison them in between and replace them with new swordwraths and dot in new archers every now and then.

tl;dr keep harassing the enemy's economy and /fast/ before he makes a castle archer

No counter attack, scout ASAP. If they are massing miners, make ghost spawn 1 and 2 ASAP. But don't juste air for it. Bulk your economy and army too, but the ghosts are pretty high priority.

oh yeah,i miner cite and have fast offense.SO you cant do anything.at the 5 min point i would have a giant out but if you don't attack me it would be at the 3:30 point

Quote from malbence

Make a faster offense.

Indeed.

lol u didn't harass.u are bad

Quote from DragonFrost

LOL. I played azxc (as a test against countering giants). He has ghost giant in 3 minutes. I had 2 giants by 4:30 minutes.

Ghost Giant in 3 minutes O_o

Those are some fast miners.

So basically all turtles are bad? Cuz they don't harass them because they are turtling?

Quote from stickman311

lol u didn't harass.u are bad

I was trying to build a larger army. In my past experience I would have 1 or two swordwrath and SOMETIMES a spearton at the time I have the center in a similar situation. As soon as I send my units to get the miners, castle archer comes up ASAP, kills my swords while they retreat and damage my spearton. I usually don't even get a kill. So I tend to wait to get some more units before I attack. They don't expect it and they don't get a castle archer as soon as they see a spearton on the horizon. Instead they see two or three tanking damage for swordwrath.

Failing. Even if you don't harass, send 1 swordwrath (so they don't know anything about your army except 1 swordwrath) and stand RIGHT OUTSIDE the range of the castle archer. You can see what they are doing without getting killed by castle archers.
P.s. I love doing it with my army. I harass, they retreat, I stand outside of castle archer rang, they come out, I attack again, etc.
SO FUN! :3

Quote from DragonFrost

Failing. Even if you don't harass, send 1 swordwrath (so they don't know anything about your army except 1 swordwrath) and stand RIGHT OUTSIDE the range of the castle archer. You can see what they are doing without getting killed by castle archers.
P.s. I love doing it with my army. I harass, they retreat, I stand outside of castle archer rang, they come out, I attack again, etc.
SO FUN! :3

I didn't know you could really do that. I've never really tried it since they could build a spearton, kill the sword and garrison the spearton.

Quote from DragonFrost

Failing. Even if you don't harass, send 1 swordwrath (so they don't know anything about your army except 1 swordwrath) and stand RIGHT OUTSIDE the range of the castle archer. You can see what they are doing without getting killed by castle archers.
P.s. I love doing it with my army. I harass, they retreat, I stand outside of castle archer rang, they come out, I attack again, etc.
SO FUN! :3

i should had been an archidon

Quote from stickman311

i should had been an archidon

Yea, I've tried it with an archidon. It works until they get a spearton. I played 2 games putting an archidon there, but they were both on small maps so.....

They get a spearton and I kinda kill it once it is lured out of castle archer range. The archidon can kill off their miners easy. I add in a fire arrow every now and then to mix it up a little. It's really effective. First guy tried to get a giant or two but I got a giant meat-shield with some speartons. Second guy knew he lost as soon as I got the center tower and a bunch of archers there with some speartons and a giant meat-shield. He surrendered.

Yea, I love giants. One or two of them make awesome meat-shields for my archers and magikill. They stun some of the attacking melee units and absorb arrows.