So me and my friend play SC2, but don't play AOE2. This guy in our class basically challenged us to a 2v1 AOE2, cause we're supposed to be "noobs". I'm figuring we could win this since well, we both have SC1 and SC2 experience (C+ iccup, diamond top 8), but I don't know how good this other guy is in AOE2.
If anyone plays AOE2, could you guys give me a quick go-over of the races, main openers, main build orders, and main unit compositions / counters?
I think the further we get into the game, the harder it will be for us to win. But in the early stages, we might be ok if we have a build order planned and get some victories earlier on. Also, if there's anything like archer rush or whatever, I'll probably be able to micro it pretty well and kill some villagers. Anything like proxy archery range into archer rush?
I figure as long as we're microing, that'll also prevent him from using his superior game knowledge to kill us in the end =). Anyways, any help is much appreciated!!!
There's no special secret to learning to play strategy games, as you should know from SC. Just play and watch replays as much as you can.
If he's just a random general RTS superstar that thinks beating 2 computers on hard is the pinnacle of gaming achievement then you could probably beat him 1v1 after a couple of games. If he's played every day on Voobly (AoK battlenet) for the past 6 years then you probably won't beat him 2v1 without a good 30+ hours practise.
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.
But I do agree that the only chance of winning is do some sort of attack early, before the veteran player has comfortably set up his operation. Since it's 2v1, you guys can try exploit his multitasking ability, harassing his resources points at the same time, just remember not over extend. Just assume that he is pro enough that he could hold off your combined attack, instead just split up and harass, and retreat if enemy decide to engage you, while still putting on the pressure from other fronts.
I think it would be really hard to truly destroy him at the start because of the town hill garrison, especially with archers, so I think you guys need some kind of mid game plan too, if he managed to survive the early harass. Again, it is important not to lose those early units, as the longer they are around harassing, the more pressure is to the enemy, maybe you guys will be able to gain enough lead to even win a veteran player with a combined army.
It sort of does, you can tell your villagers (scv's) to garrison (they go into the building like going into a drop ship) in your town centre (command centre). For every villager inside the town centre it does more damage in attack, and with every villager inside it's pretty much unkillable for the first 10 minutes of the game.
Rushes are still common and effective but they're more about shutting down your opponents economy by limiting the area he can get resources to the area directly around the town centre.
I'm a pretty big noob at AoE, I really just got good enough to beat all my housemates.
Just outmacro him. AoE2 works around the idea that certain units counter other units (i.e. some units are strong against other unit types than others) in a somewhat more obvious way than others.
Macro is just as important in competitive AoE as it is in BW so I don't think that's a good option if this guy knows his shit. In some ways even more so because resources are literally everywhere instead of just patches around the map.
I was rated pretty high in AoK back in my day so I can help you out a little.(Plus I practiced castling recently =B took me a few games to get it back to about 16 minutes, but it was decent enough.)
Basic builds to learn are 15 minute castles or lower, depending on his civ and yours you may have to change strats, if he goes for I think it's the huns? Who have no housing at the start expect one of you to be bum rushed and throw the 15 minute castles out of the window.
If you know he is playing a civilization where he probably will not bum rush you, you can probably both get to castle and then take him out, problem with AoK is that it's very possible for a skilled person to take on 2v1, it's not like SC2 in where a pro will still have trouble vs 2 platinum players. A skilled AoE player depending on map choice can demolish 2-4 people who are unskilled easily.
Another thing is you don't want him to be allowed to play on an island map, there are 13 minute castles in AoK for Ocean maps and high level people can do these quite well. (Plus you won't be able to rush him.)
I recommend one party take a heavy melee race and another take a heavy archer-race, he just won't have the units to be capable of dealing with it. (Teutons and British/Turks)
Also, a rush wouldn't be a terrible idea, and depending on the map size, having certain points around it controlled might just tip the balance in your favour.
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.
On September 28 2011 09:55 Torte de Lini wrote: 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.
That's the Goths. Their special unit is practically invincible to archer fire and has a respectable attack. The first unique tech (Goths have two) allows you to make them at Barracks; the second speeds Barracks production by 50%. There's a tech that everyone gets called Conscription, which speeds all unit production by 15%, and the Goths might get a team bonus that further speeds unit production. All this means that you can plant a few Barracks outside his base and kill him, if your macro is good enough.
Unlike Starcraft, the races are more or less the same with minute differences in tech and units that will determine the resulting strategy. In your case, learning what to counter with what will be more difficult.
If you want to practice, try this, although I think it might recommend you use the Vikings; don't. Don't use the Franks, either.
AoE2 is all about early game rushing. Proxy barracks rush or get to second age and the proxy rush. Both are ideal strategies, and with 2 people its even easier to do.
Vikings are good for seemaps From a guy who once defeated five of his friends in AoE2, if you don't know at least the basics you have no chance. But since you are at least decent Starcraft players this shouldn't be so difficult for you. When I played against five others I did only one powerful long push which killed 3-4 of them and the rest of them were just in panic mode so I could macro up. So your main strategy should be one of you should be rushing in tier 2 and the other one should prepare a tier 3 push. I don't remember the complete build orders, but the guy who is rushing ( tier 2) should choose a race/nation which has good archers, since I don't think you are able to kill him on tier 2 since AoE2 is very much in favour of the defender in tier 2 since you can send your workers in to your base and it works like a big bunker. But if you can force him with archers to stay with his workers long enough in his base you/your teammate should have enough time to prepare a powerful tier 3 push. Since you want to finish the game relatively early (tier 3 around 10-12 Minutes) the guy how attacks in tier 3 should use a race which has good siege units. Since I haven't played AoE2 for some years I am not complete sure about the races you should choose, but like GertHeart mentioned before it depends on the civ your friend choose.
Some basics don't try to defend, don't let him dictate the game and don't try a strat like both of you just rushing ( 2guys 6pooling in a 2vs1 in SC might be nearly unbeatable but in AoE2 you will loose against every decent player).
On September 28 2011 10:22 GertHeart wrote: I was rated pretty high in AoK back in my day so I can help you out a little.(Plus I practiced castling recently =B took me a few games to get it back to about 16 minutes, but it was decent enough.)
Basic builds to learn are 15 minute castles or lower, depending on his civ and yours you may have to change strats, if he goes for I think it's the huns? Who have no housing at the start expect one of you to be bum rushed and throw the 15 minute castles out of the window.
If you know he is playing a civilization where he probably will not bum rush you, you can probably both get to castle and then take him out, problem with AoK is that it's very possible for a skilled person to take on 2v1, it's not like SC2 in where a pro will still have trouble vs 2 platinum players. A skilled AoE player depending on map choice can demolish 2-4 people who are unskilled easily.
Another thing is you don't want him to be allowed to play on an island map, there are 13 minute castles in AoK for Ocean maps and high level people can do these quite well. (Plus you won't be able to rush him.)
What this guy said, ignore everything else in this thread pretty much
You could also try knight rushing (getting castle age asap and rushing knights, knights rapes everything), but the rush in the video linked is better and easier to learn.
All of the following advice pertains to LAND MAPS or maps without significant bodies of water.
I used to play AoE2 and AoE2:TC on Zone (peak rating around 1900 Elo sometime in 2005)
1. You need to know how to "flush" or feudal rush. There are three variants of flushes, only one of which works well in the vanilla AoE2. Rarely you can get away with tower rushing as well, but against a good player tower rushing is pretty shitty.
The variant of the flush that works in both AoE2 and AoE:TC:
a. 2 archery range skirmisher/spear flush, either forward base or defensive. Generally you go for a 22-24 villager age up to Feudal as Chinese or Brits (in vanilla AoE2) or Mongols (in either AoE2 or TC) or Huns (best civilization, only TC). Chinese are the best civilization in AoE2 and Brits/Byz/Mongols can all be fairly decent in AoE2 vanilla but Chinese are best. In TC Huns are by far the best, there's no doubt.
Build order:
-Build 2 houses at start of game, one with two villagers, other with the third villager and constant villager production unless otherwise noted -First 6 villagers gather sheep (7 population counting the scout) -Next 3 villagers go to wood, build a lumber camp next to forest. (4 if anything but Huns) -Next 3 villagers go to berries, first builds a mill at berries -Next villager builds house near first boar, research loom instead of making another villager here (huns skip house obviously) -As soon as house completes lure the boar to town center with builder (resume villager production after loom) -use the sheep villagers to drop off their food and shoot the boar underneath the town center -should be at 14/15 population now, next 4/5 villagers to boar, use the injured villager to build a farm next to town center -at 17 population take another villager and build house next to second boar, lure it, kill it (if Mongols you'll have to do this around 15 because they gather food from hunted sources faster) -if you're on a map with a third boar you can lure it at any time after this -villagers 18 and 19 build farms next to town center, second wounded villager also creates farm (4 farmers total) -villagers 20-22 or 20-24 go to wood, make a new lumber camp at a new section of forest or new forest (improves efficiency) as soon as the boar are finished switch 6 villagers to sheep again and send rest to wood -periodically drop off food from the sheep villagers as you get close to 500. If you don't have 500 keep making villagers (you should have it by now)
If you plan on doing a forward rush you need to age up at 22 villagers so it's faster, and send 4 villagers to build a forward barracks near your enemy (who you have hopefully scouted by now) around 40% to age 2. The barracks needs to start at around 65-70% to age 2 to be on time
If you're defending put one or two extra farms down, send 2-3 villagers to food (the four you would've sent away) and then the rest on wood.
Once the sheep are done you switch all those sheep gatherers to wood.
You should have 4 forward vils / 4 farmers/ 3 berries/10 wood if you're forward rushing Should have 4-5 farmers/5 berries/13/14 wood if you're defending
Barracks should start no later than 60% of the way to feudal (around 10:10? gametime if you're defending usually, don't remember exactly. Latest feudal should be like 11:30, rushing it should be like 10:30)
Upon hitting feudal immediately begin making villagers, research double bit axe at lumber camp, make two archery ranges immediately with 4 builders, make a spearman at barracks, research horse collar at mill (in that order)
once archery ranges finish constantly make skirmishers and spears. If he doesn't attack you by the time you get 10 or so, go across the map and start killing his wood villagers. If he attacks you, begin putting up palisades in strategic places to cut off his paths of attack and put up a tower near your wood if he towers you or if you think you need it there to garrison and what not.
With workers you want to balance food/wood income. A couple minutes into feudal you'll want to research wheelbarrow at the towncenter. You'll also want to get a blacksmith to research the archer upgrades and then start mining gold in order to prepare for a transition to castle age.
Then finally when you get enough resources/are comfortable with aging you go castle and build 2-3 stables, pump knights, add extra TCs, boom, etc etc etc.
EDIT: The other two types of flushes are archer flushes and scout flushes. Archer flushes can be done in AoE2 vanilla but skirm flush can straight up destroy it so no real point there.
In TC the feudal dynamic changes because scouts get +2 attack and bloodlines gets introduced (plus huns woot) so the scout flush becomes viable. The archer flush becomes viable too because you can go 1 range 1 stable and make archers and scouts or skirms and scouts, which will kill any pure scout flush and pure skirm flushes with some decent micro. It isn't a strict rock/paper/scissors but you can make any of the three flush styles work depending on your own playstyle. For a hybrid style, for example, I prefer an in-base scout flush, for offense I prefer a range/stable archer flush, and for defense I prefer a two range skirm flush.
Scouts and archers both take way more micro than skirms so it's not a great idea to use them in TC unless you know what you're doing
If you're C+ honestly you should win just with mechanics and having a basic idea of how things work. Obviously you won't understand the villager economy like you would SCVs but as long as you got a rough idea - just be sure to play low eco so you don't get caught out.
C+ is really good basically; this guy likely isn't good in comparison. Do some harassment to force multitasking and you can probably win 1v1 let alone 2v1.
On September 28 2011 10:10 Phyrigian wrote: i think hes saying ones C+ and the others diamond top 8 because they both have sc1/sc2 experience...
anyway, from what little i know about aoe its obviously less about mechanics and its a lot more of a traditionalist RTS. hes probably most likely some person who thinks hes hot shit and plays it amongst friends, but none of them use hotkeys and all suck. you guys got dis!
I'm trying to read the rest of this stuff, but basically, I haven't played much SC2 mostly cause of school.
The AOE2 match is because well, figured id give it a try to see if SC1,2 skillset applies to other strategy games
On September 28 2011 11:29 wherebugsgo wrote: Most of this advice is really terrible lol.
All of the following advice pertains to LAND MAPS or maps without significant bodies of water.
I used to play AoE2 and AoE2:TC on Zone (peak rating around 1900 Elo sometime in 2005)
1. You need to know how to "flush" or feudal rush. There are three variants of flushes, only one of which works well in the vanilla AoE2. Rarely you can get away with tower rushing as well, but against a good player tower rushing is pretty shitty.
The variant of the flush that works in both AoE2 and AoE:TC:
a. 2 archery range skirmisher/spear flush, either forward base or defensive. Generally you go for a 22-24 villager age up to Feudal as Chinese or Brits (in vanilla AoE2) or Mongols (in either AoE2 or TC) or Huns (best civilization, only TC). Chinese are the best civilization in AoE2 and Brits/Byz/Mongols can all be fairly decent in AoE2 vanilla but Chinese are best. In TC Huns are by far the best, there's no doubt.
Build order:
-Build 2 houses at start of game, one with two villagers, other with the third villager and constant villager production unless otherwise noted -First 6 villagers gather sheep (7 population counting the scout) -Next 3 villagers go to wood, build a lumber camp next to forest. (4 if anything but Huns) -Next 3 villagers go to berries, first builds a mill at berries -Next villager builds house near first boar, research loom instead of making another villager here (huns skip house obviously) -As soon as house completes lure the boar to town center with builder (resume villager production after loom) -use the sheep villagers to drop off their food and shoot the boar underneath the town center -should be at 14/15 population now, next 4/5 villagers to boar, use the injured villager to build a farm next to town center -at 17 population take another villager and build house next to second boar, lure it, kill it (if Mongols you'll have to do this around 15 because they gather food from hunted sources faster) -if you're on a map with a third boar you can lure it at any time after this -villagers 18 and 19 build farms next to town center, second wounded villager also creates farm (4 farmers total) -villagers 20-22 or 20-24 go to wood, make a new lumber camp at a new section of forest or new forest (improves efficiency) as soon as the boar are finished switch 6 villagers to sheep again and send rest to wood -periodically drop off food from the sheep villagers as you get close to 500. If you don't have 500 keep making villagers (you should have it by now)
If you plan on doing a forward rush you need to age up at 22 villagers so it's faster, and send 4 villagers to build a forward barracks near your enemy (who you have hopefully scouted by now) around 40% to age 2. The barracks needs to start at around 65-70% to age 2 to be on time
If you're defending put one or two extra farms down, send 2-3 villagers to food (the four you would've sent away) and then the rest on wood.
Once the sheep are done you switch all those sheep gatherers to wood.
You should have 4 forward vils / 4 farmers/ 3 berries/10 wood if you're forward rushing Should have 4-5 farmers/5 berries/13/14 wood if you're defending
Barracks should start no later than 60% of the way to feudal (around 10:10? gametime if you're defending usually, don't remember exactly. Latest feudal should be like 11:30, rushing it should be like 10:30)
Upon hitting feudal immediately begin making villagers, research double bit axe at lumber camp, make two archery ranges immediately with 4 builders, make a spearman at barracks, research horse collar at mill (in that order)
once archery ranges finish constantly make skirmishers and spears. If he doesn't attack you by the time you get 10 or so, go across the map and start killing his wood villagers. If he attacks you, begin putting up palisades in strategic places to cut off his paths of attack and put up a tower near your wood if he towers you or if you think you need it there to garrison and what not.
With workers you want to balance food/wood income. A couple minutes into feudal you'll want to research wheelbarrow at the towncenter. You'll also want to get a blacksmith to research the archer upgrades and then start mining gold in order to prepare for a transition to castle age.
Then finally when you get enough resources/are comfortable with aging you go castle and build 2-3 stables, pump knights, add extra TCs, boom, etc etc etc.
EDIT: The other two types of flushes are archer flushes and scout flushes. Archer flushes can be done in AoE2 vanilla but skirm flush can straight up destroy it so no real point there.
In TC the feudal dynamic changes because scouts get +2 attack and bloodlines gets introduced (plus huns woot) so the scout flush becomes viable. The archer flush becomes viable too because you can go 1 range 1 stable and make archers and scouts or skirms and scouts, which will kill any pure scout flush and pure skirm flushes with some decent micro. It isn't a strict rock/paper/scissors but you can make any of the three flush styles work depending on your own playstyle. For a hybrid style, for example, I prefer an in-base scout flush, for offense I prefer a range/stable archer flush, and for defense I prefer a two range skirm flush.
Scouts and archers both take way more micro than skirms so it's not a great idea to use them in TC unless you know what you're doing
Dude bro, you sound like you really know what you're talking about. I'm going to memorize that build order with a few single player games, and use uhm... what was that imbalanced race. Goths with their super fast training archer units? ok
On September 28 2011 10:22 GertHeart wrote: I was rated pretty high in AoK back in my day so I can help you out a little.(Plus I practiced castling recently =B took me a few games to get it back to about 16 minutes, but it was decent enough.)
Basic builds to learn are 15 minute castles or lower, depending on his civ and yours you may have to change strats, if he goes for I think it's the huns? Who have no housing at the start expect one of you to be bum rushed and throw the 15 minute castles out of the window.
If you know he is playing a civilization where he probably will not bum rush you, you can probably both get to castle and then take him out, problem with AoK is that it's very possible for a skilled person to take on 2v1, it's not like SC2 in where a pro will still have trouble vs 2 platinum players. A skilled AoE player depending on map choice can demolish 2-4 people who are unskilled easily.
Another thing is you don't want him to be allowed to play on an island map, there are 13 minute castles in AoK for Ocean maps and high level people can do these quite well. (Plus you won't be able to rush him.)
Dude this is exactly what I'm looking for. Kinda like someone typing in SC into youtube and seeing a bunch of noob stuff, but where is the pro mana? yup yup this is the AOK pro mana.
I'm going to work on some 15 minute castle builds. What do you think about one of us being Hun and timing bum rush, and the other guy be Goth or something, and do an archer timing rush.
seems that we will have to dictate the game cause he knows way more than us. if we attack first, that will be essential. Then we'll finish him off with some of the AOK "broken" stuff, which i hear is goth archer dudes (something about speed production bonus and pumping out a billion of them)
EDIT: I'm assuming the general flow of the game is: tech to castle units as fast as possible while not dying to rushes? this is why you mention the 16 minute castle tech and send me a youtube of rush defending?
What is the viability of having my ally feed resources to me, so I can get into the feudal age at like, 16 villagers instead of 24 villagers and do a superfast rush/towerrush on his lumbercamp?
How come the standard castle age unit to spam is knights. wouldn't it be whatever is coming out of the castle? neways, ok, feudal rush = spearmen/archer/scouts + bunker rush harass their wood. castle age = spam knights until he dies.
during this time, i'll tell my ally to do exactly what the opp is doing. and after the opp kills me, my ally does a huge attack and kills him.
in castle age, how do i know how many extra town centers to make? In sc2, expanding gives you a timing window of weakness and after that, you're doing better, but assuming that me and my ally both do a perfect feudal rush into castle tech, i doubt the opp will be too far ahead of us. what's preventing one of us from massing knights, and the other dude to mass town centers and hit pop cap and do a huge attack?
edit: do me and my ally have near spawn points? should we share a lumber camp so we only need to make one watch tower to watch our wood instead of 2? also, if we're close, we can make buildings shared defense.
On September 28 2011 12:39 infinity2k9 wrote: If you're C+ honestly you should win just with mechanics and having a basic idea of how things work. Obviously you won't understand the villager economy like you would SCVs but as long as you got a rough idea - just be sure to play low eco so you don't get caught out.
C+ is really good basically; this guy likely isn't good in comparison. Do some harassment to force multitasking and you can probably win 1v1 let alone 2v1.
the thing that gets me is the idea of "infinite resources". question that results thereof is, when should I stop making villagers to advance to feudal age (figured out it's 25, set to optimize feudal age time. or 30 to optimize castle wage time). But in castle age, when should i stop making more towncenters? There is almost no opportunity cost to making town centers... apparently the ideal number of villagers to pump nonstop knights is 100 villagers (out of 200 pop?). by castle age, i should have 40 villagers, so basically it's a question of, how many town centers do i need to hit 100 villagers fastest. 4 total town centers is probably the way to go, though there is some weakness window associated with building so many town centers.
also, there is more defender's advantage. So I need to know what are the standard rushing units and timings. Apparently there's a feudal age pikeman/bowman/scout rush, then a fucking castle age knight rush.
What i'm leaning towards now is 1 of 2 strategies:
1) I memorize a build order and do feudal age rush on his wood, then castle age knight rush (while mirroring his number of town centers), and spam knights forever. My ally gets almost no military and goes straight to castle, gets 3 town centers, and spams town centers and knights until 200/200 and hits opp with a huge army while i'm holding opp off best i can with my canned build order.
2) ally feeds me minerals so i can get a super fucking fast feudal age rush with proxy rax. then continue like (1).
edit: though i'm leaning towards (1), because (2) is kind of bm to tell my ally to just be my bitch you know? honestly though, I think whoever attacks first will either dictate the game, or at least have better scouting. I really don't like the idea of opp attacking us first. seems feudal age is the earliest to attack, and (2) does give us the fastest attack.
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.
I just think he isn't likely going to be good enough to play to this kind of standard but i guess it's good to be prepared Then again i guess why would he ask for 2v1 i suppose. I don't think you should double rush at least because it would be lame.
And SC skills in general go across really well, going back and trying old RTS with decent mechanics is very fun. All the stuff i read about AoE doesn't seem to mention simcity much; I was thinking walls would be really useful when they are so cheap and too hard to break down until siege weapons. But is there even need to mine stone except for that?
I posted it because it gives you two views, you can also watch some WCG gameplay if you'd like.
I would recommend one person bum rushing as long as one of you can pull off a 15-16 minute castle, while the other guy rushes, you castle and then go for fast knights. The guy with the build order does show something that someone higher level may use, but the issue is you aren't a high level AoK player, so it isn't going to help you as much, due to you having to look at pop, etc...
I would recommend just looking at a good 16 minute castle or earlier build and then study rushing on youtube for your buddy. If you both bum rush him and lose possibly, and say he's expected it, he could defeat both of you right then and there possibly.
There is also a Town Center rush I forgot about, but I don't remember if they fixed that. =B you used to be able to build a town center near the enemy and garrison units in it, you could check to see if your version allows for this. It's a cheap way to win =P, but possible.
On September 28 2011 15:09 GertHeart wrote: I posted it because it gives you two views, you can also watch some WCG gameplay if you'd like.
I would recommend one person bum rushing as long as one of you can pull off a 15-16 minute castle, while the other guy rushes, you castle and then go for fast knights. The guy with the build order does show something that someone higher level may use, but the issue is you aren't a high level AoK player, so it isn't going to help you as much, due to you having to look at pop, etc...
I would recommend just looking at a good 16 minute castle or earlier build and then study rushing on youtube for your buddy. If you both bum rush him and lose possibly, and say he's expected it, he could defeat both of you right then and there possibly.
There is also a Town Center rush I forgot about, but I don't remember if they fixed that. =B you used to be able to build a town center near the enemy and garrison units in it, you could check to see if your version allows for this. It's a cheap way to win =P, but possible.
how early is it possible to send resources to each other? Is it possible to have one person in the stone-age forever just feeding me resources, and i'll do a super fast feudal age harass and super fast castle age knights?
Yeah there is a percentage cost. There's an lategame upgrade to remove the tribute cost. Unless that's AoE1, but i wouldn't be surprised if it carried over.
if i have an ally, i can use trade carts to make gold instead of always mining right? that's a pretty big advantage in the castle age when the main units is knights right?
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
On September 29 2011 09:07 wherebugsgo wrote: Here's a great replay on youtube of two very good AoE2 players Vegeta and L_Clan_Chris playing Hun war 1v1 on Arabia.
Glad you liked the video! Wasn't expecting it to be featured on a TL thread that quickly, but that's pretty cool :D
On September 29 2011 09:07 wherebugsgo wrote: Here's a great replay on youtube of two very good AoE2 players Vegeta and L_Clan_Chris playing Hun war 1v1 on Arabia.
Glad you liked the video! Wasn't expecting it to be featured on a TL thread that quickly, but that's pretty cool :D
hey hey are you the uploader of that vid?
There need to be more vids or commentaries of AoE2 recs IMO, particularly so that new players can learn how to competitively play AoE.
It was very nice to be able to just go on youtube and find your video, though I had to sift through some other commentaries (in French) to get to yours.
EPT
Then again i guess why would he ask for 2v1 i suppose. I don't think you should double rush at least because it would be lame.
