On September 28 2011 09:55 Torte de Lini wrote: You will never learn AOEII in time against this fellow.
Chinese castle units are broken Persian Elephants are broken.
Shit, I forgot which civilization it is, but there's one that let's you make their castle unit from their barracks and they're made every 2 seconds (so 30 barracks makes 15 units in a second). All you need is enough wood to keep your autoreplanting farms going, and then just a ton of gold and food. Any extra food you have, just sell for more gold and keep massing units.
However, they will die to onagers really fast or proper scorpions if he's good at micromanagement.
You're thinking of the Goths.
so Goth have baller castle archers, and huns have baller feudal age rush, and uhm, every other race probably has good knights?
should we go with a hun/goth combo then? feudal rush into castle rush into knight death ball.
castle archers???? they're huskarls, they're infantry which have high armour against archers.
I'm really just average at AoE2, not good enough to play competetively online but I can stomp my friends when it comes to it.
Your friend is *probably* like me, just remember the basic tenet of RTS: Never stop making villagers. Get to castle age ASAP to get another town centre for even more villagers. Play the macro game. Keep moving your production buildings forward as you push nearer to his base. Get some cav early to harass his villagers.
On September 28 2011 22:32 3Form wrote: I'm really just average at AoE2, not good enough to play competetively online but I can stomp my friends when it comes to it.
Your friend is *probably* like me, just remember the basic tenet of RTS: Never stop making villagers. Get to castle age ASAP to get another town centre for even more villagers. Play the macro game. Keep moving your production buildings forward as you push nearer to his base. Get some cav early to harass his villagers.
But tbh, just listen to those pros
DO NOT PLAY A MACRO GAME, lol.
He will understand the game and how it develops far better than you. If a friend of yours was going to play a game vs some random guy in SC2, and you wanted him to have the best possible chance to beat him, you would tell him to cheese, not play a 50 minute macro game, because playing the macro game better than the pro would be virtually impossible with only a few days of preparation, whereas something like a DT rush would have a small chance of just winning outright. You would cheese the mess out of him...something like cannon rush into DTs into archon zealot or something like that.
Having played AoE2 a little as well.....rushes are king. Your "pro" friend is probably going to do some feudal rush, and deny most of your economy while rushing to castle/knights. So you need to watch videos on how to hold that well enough to allow your 2 v 1 advantage to kick in.
What map settings are you playing. There are a lot of 'lame' modes.
Like starting with 15k all resources. Island maps in general. I suggest you lay down all the rules and then come back for advice. Build orders are nice but if youre doing a 15k game they're not really relevant.
You're right, he'd have to pick Chinese. However, the build orders are almost the exact same. The only difference is that you include houses and instead of sending 3 villagers to wood you send 4.
Basically when you lure the boar as any non-Hun civ you build a house.
Here's a great replay on youtube of two very good AoE2 players Vegeta and L_Clan_Chris playing Hun war 1v1 on Arabia. Variants of Arabia are the most common map in AoE2, because it's generally considered the "fairest" for whatever reason. AoE players tend to not like water maps except in team games for whatever reason as well.
part 2
part 3
Part 1 I'd say is the most important. The initial 10-11 game minutes are by far the most important. If you don't have that initial build order streamlined you can't really play AoE2 at any level higher than absolute noob.
Also if you do anything other than flush in 1v1 you're bad. That's just how it is.
EDIT: I should mention that Chris, whose perspective you follow in this game, chose a very economical 25 population forward 2 range flush. This is calculated economic aggression. As you can see the fighting around 9 minutes into the video is pretty intense to begin with because Chris chose a more economic, slower forward flush whereas Vegeta chose a faster defensive one. Vegeta actually has skirmishers before Chris's archery ranges are completed, but Chris has a better economy and his base is not under pressure.
On September 29 2011 19:39 LoneWolf.Alpha- wrote: fuck, sorry guys. turns out it's AOE3 we're 2v1ing him in, not AOE2. I feel retarded, but that's ok because i am one.
A guy I was a housemate with for some years used to ladder that with his brother. They were little cunts though and would drop if they were going to lose. Even so they were pretty good. Thing is they played 30 minute no rush games (YAWN). I bet your friend is similar, since that seemed to be what everyone played in aoe3!
fuck, sorry guys. turns out it's AOE3 we're 2v1ing him in, not AOE2. I feel retarded, but that's ok because i am one.
ah now we are talking . I used to play AOE3 ALOT. Im pretty sure the 2v1 will be played on vanilla which means that he will probably go either fast fortress or rush. He will probably play as either Ottomans(strong rush and ff) or Spanish(strong ff) so I would recommend a all around civ like french.
this is a rush/aggressive opener. The idea is to abuse the strong early economy and train cheap units-crossbows for infantry and pikemen for siege and anti-cavalry
Discovery Age:
-2 villagers to hunts and 3 to crates (always go food crates first) - all villagers to food(try herd the hunts as close to your town center as possible) ship in 3 or 2 cdb’s as your first shipment try to age with 14 vills,should be around 3 minutes
always take the 400 wood politican as your age2 politican
Transition Discovery / Colonial:
9 vills on food , 5 on wood build a market and research hunting dogs and gangsaw If you are planning on being aggressive you should send 2 villagers forward
Colonial:
collect the 400 wood as soon as possible build 2 barracks ship in 700 wood
start training crossbows and pikemen your next shipment should be 8 crossbows when your 700 wood is used up split ur vills in a ratio 5 : 4 (wood : food) next shipment 4 coureur(vills)
notes: -Try to scout as much as possible with your scout. If you see that he send 700 gold early on he will fast fortress which means that you have to rush him before he gets to age 3. -Units are hard countered in AOE3. Its really important to know your enemies unit composition -If he chooses ottomans you should always build the barrackses in your base
The idea here is to reach age3 as fast as possible and abuse the powerful military cards that french have.
Discovery Age:
2 villagers to hunts and 3 to crates all villagers on food, build a house ship in 3 cdb’s as your first shipment age up at 3 minutes with 14 villagers take the 500 food age up politican
Transition Discovery / colonial:
put 4 villagers on coin and collect 300 gold
Colonial:
collect age up recources send 700 gold as ur shipment Town center waypoint to coin age with the marks man ( 6 skirmishers)
Transition Colonial / Fortress:
put 8 villagers on wood to get up a stable or barracks and a few houses split the rest of ur vills 1 : 1 (food : coin) when u have build stable/barracks and 2 – 3 houses take 4 of ur wood cdb’s on food and coin ( 1 : 1 )
Fortress:
send 8 skirm or 2 cannons depending on what your enemy is doing start pumping cuirrasiers with your stable or musketeers and build houses with your 4 wood vills when you have 6 + 8 skirmishers(or 2 cannons+6skirmishers) and 5 currasiers/5+ musketeers start attacking ur opponent, raid his vills and strangle his army
Notes -again scout as much as possible. Try to scout for possible rushes.
I had a similar story in university. I said I could beat him if I got to play 5 practice games. I lost the first game and won the double-or-nothing rematch.
My totally newbie advice: Focus on your economy and harassment, don't miss the transition to tier 2 (mounted units) as they fuck up tier 1 badly and castles are ridiculously strong. In the game I won I just got map control with castles and massively outexpanded him and then flooded with units.
If he's honestly good at the game this advice won't help you though...
Choose your race carefully, because the races are pretty crappily balanced. Goths and Teutons are the best for new players. But the Chinese and Huns are pretty beefy too because of their special units.
I would advise against rushing. Buildings are very beefy in AoE2, and every CC is pretty much a planetary fortress.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is hunting. Make sure you hunt boars ASAP in the early game, it will give you such a huuuuge economy boost in the early game. Fishing too, but mostly hunting boar. For the lategame economy, you definitely want to set up trade cart trains, so the only limited resource you need to worry about is stone.
As far as resources go, wood is the easiest to get, followed by meat -> gold -> stone. Pikemen are the best wood sink, so don't bother with cavalry unless you're hun or spanish. Skirmishers are the next best wood sink, which provide the range dps of your army.
If you see your opponent go heavy castle, then go for Imperial Age asap. Trebuchees (AoE2's Siege Tanks) are the only thing that can really kill them...battering rams and sappers are pretty much worthless.
Because buildings are so beefy and all units are slow, its a really good idea to build forward production facilities. You don't want to play it like SC2 where you need to keep all your buildings choked off because it takes forever to cross the map with anything and the defender's advantage is very strong in AoE2.
Hard to give advice to people that haven't played much AoC. (Which is what I assume you're playing.) Hunt boar ASAP, they give more food, have a relatively high cap, and there's a bug that makes them faster to hunt than other animals.
DO. NOT. RUSH. If your opponent is ANY good at all, he will see your rush with his Scout and immediately turtle up to counter. All he really needs is like two or three towers at his resource blocks and he's fine.
My advice would be to FE, get three TH really fast, and just attack with Knights/Longbowmen. If that doesn't win you the game, you transition to Catapult/Priest and you should win in sheer numbers.
Edit: The guy above me gave really good advice as well about economy, I probably should have mentioned that.
On September 29 2011 19:39 LoneWolf.Alpha- wrote: fuck, sorry guys. turns out it's AOE3 we're 2v1ing him in, not AOE2. I feel retarded, but that's ok because i am one.
A guy I was a housemate with for some years used to ladder that with his brother. They were little cunts though and would drop if they were going to lose. Even so they were pretty good. Thing is they played 30 minute no rush games (YAWN). I bet your friend is similar, since that seemed to be what everyone played in aoe3!
wait
you just said they were good?
Anyone who plays NR anything in AoE is absolute noob.
I played AoE3 as well but I never was into it as much as AoE2 cause AoE3 has bad balance and IMO bad design.
Idk what the best civ nowadays is but if you're playing vanilla you should be fine IMO with any of the civs other than perhaps Portuguese.
Pick one and find out how to use them. If you want to learn a top tier vanilla civ fast though I'd suggest Spain or Germany, they are easy and powerful to boot.
Learn the FF strategy (fast fortress) if you choose Spain, Germany, or France. France is the weakest of the three but are still viable.
Learn the respective colonial rush for Ottomans/Russians/British/Dutch if you chose any of them. Out of these civilizations I was strongest with Russians and Dutch. Dutch economy can be very strong if you know how to balance it correctly. Combine this with age 2 skirmishers and you have a very potent age 2 rush.
Russians can do a very good age 2 rush as well, with masses of strelets and the forward blockhouse, plus the very cost efficient and useful cossack shipments.
Ottos are really easy to use because you don't have to focus at all on villager production. Both their janissary rush and abus gun rush are very powerful.
British longbow rush is very powerful and they have a good economic bonus in the manor system.
Just stay away from Portuguese. If you're playing with the expansions I'm not much help but google is your friend.
Aoe Vanilla? I was 1750elo back in the day a long time ago . Anyway I thought it had pretty good balance not sure on what ^ is talking about, anyway the rest of this advice is correct, personally I would just end it in age 2 with a strelet (russian)/ longbow (brits) rush.
My personal favourite was musk rushing as brits whilst manor booming but this took me a long long time to get right.
Even more than in SC, never stop making villagers. Your TC should never be idle.
If it's all down to one game, you should both flush him. This means rush in the feudal age. Try to age up somewhere around 20 population, put down your barracks while you age up, proxied is ok. Then put down an archery range near his base and pump spearmen and skirmishers. You won't be killing lots of workers. Your goal is to disrupt resource mining, specifically wood, which is the driving force resource, and do not allow him to mine gold, which would allow him to age up. Be sure to scout him well before hand to know his mining locations.
My personal flush variant is to start mining gold while aging up, put down a second rax near his base, and go men at arms and skirmishers, which is a much better villager killing composition
You could also have one person flush while the other booms. In the lategame, your booming player should have a big advantage from the other player's harassment. If he will outplay you in the lategame, this might not be a good idea though.
Fast castle is another good build. Knights are super good.
....and I just read that you're talking ao3 instead. That's nowhere near as cool. Still cool I guess, but I don't know any sick strategies. There's the whole deck mechanic that probably gives your friend (?) a serious advantage. There is some system to timing of resource cards to jump through ages and proceed very quickly at key points.
You will need a good deck as mentioned above, the only way to get a good deck is to lvl your homecity, it makes a huge difference because it essentially gives you free resources/villagers and what not (its not actually free but is derived from you doing thing hence rewards good play) agesanctuary gives some goof advice regarding this stuff google them
EPT
