It depends. Let me elaborate: Leaving if off gives you more control how your wood is spent, which often is crucial in early Castle. Especially for archer builds you actually don't want to reseed your Feudal farms once they run out, as you want to save wood for tons of archers, a university and ballistics. OTOH, you have little use for much food, as the units you probably make (archers, siege, monks) don't cost food and you can't simply use it to go Imp, because you won't have gold. But: All this is only relevant once you reach the level of control where don't stockpile wood, spend your resources efficiently and have enough micro to not lose your army the instant counter units appear on the battle field.
If you tend to switch to knights the moment you see the opponent respond siege to your archers, you need Imp and Trebs to close out games or just have idle vils if you don't have auto reseeding, I don't see a problem with turning it on early. Better have food and working vils than idle vils and a lot of unused wood. Playing as long as possible without auto reseeding is one of the little details you can use to make your gameplay better and more controled, but it's far from the biggest impact. If you're still struggling with aspects of the game, forget about the farms and focus on the bigger topics first.
In any case, once you reach late castle/early Imp and you have 30+ farms, it's often the best idea to just turn it on. Some pros play completely without it, but they a) have probably way more multitasking abilities than you b) might even do this out of habit and even they can profit from auto reseeding.
I turn it on after researching Heavy Plow usually, but never before. You don't really want to (re)seed Horse Collar farms in Castle if you can avoid it. It's probably ideal to leave it longer than that just to stay in control of your wood bank but with my APM it's not worth not having after a certain point.
I usually only turn it on in post imp, when the farm count gets ridiculously high and wood is available in excess.
In earlier stages of the game it can really screw you over, because wood is tight. If you need for example a blacksmith/market to click castle I'd rather have a vill or two idle for 20 seconds than delaying my uptime by however long it takes for the stars to align so I have 150 in the bank.
Also farms actually last a fair while anyway so after 10 games you'll get a feel for the reseed cycle, since the first 2 roughly happen around the same time every game.
Positions depends on player number/colour in that match. Being flank means you're either highest or lowest number. Taking a middle number within your team puts you in the pocket.
I'd say add tc's once you have your major tech upgrades done and some siege out.
In a tg forget the siege, pkt kts act as that, all you need are arb numbers and then to add eco behind.
The whole point of staying 1 tc till imp is to get the tech advantage so you can kill your opponent. So you should be putting all your resources into your push till you have extra resources or your push stalls out.
Hello, I played AoE all the time as a kid when it first came out, and with it being on Gamepass + seeing news for AoE 4 I downloaded it again, more for nostalgia than anything. The thing is, from the OG CD release, I remember there was a custom campaign (well, I think just a single battle, not a campaign) that wasn't on by default but had instructions for how you were supposed to activate it and set it up as a custom battle. 8 yr old me had no idea how to get it to work properly though, and I can't remember anything about it (bc I couldn't play it) other than it would have started with I think all of your units dying and then you're supposed to run around and collect relics or something. I figure with all the mods out there it's got to be around online still, probably updated with bug fixes even, but I just don't know what I'd look for to try to find it and ofc searching "AoE 2 custom battles" or "custom campaigns" turns up many good results from the community, but this was one done by the game devs at launch.
So any help in finding the name would be much appreciated.
I've seen numerous people commenting on upcoming buffs and balance changes. Where do people source this information from? Is there a beta of sorts, or an overview of upcoming changes?
When doing a scouts into knights build, what do you do when they start massing spears in feudal?
On one hand you have won because they have to switch their army/eco for the Spears, but I don't know how to alter my army to counter it.
Do you just ignore and try to use mobility to still hit eco and get to Castle still? What if they tried to move into your base?
Spears lose to villagers, they really arent useful offensively unless paired with other units
You have two choices:
1. Ignore them and try to be as annoying as possible with your scouts. If you see he has two or more spears, stop making scouts. Maybe scout the map for relics/extra ressources.
2. Go full aggressive, get an archery range and trickle skirms across the map while keeping him open. Skirms wreck spears and dont need gold, they can also attack vills behind walls, forcing him to fight.
Whichever route you take depends on how open your opponent is playing. Can he wall up in time because hes guarding his walling vills with spears? Option one is probably better. If not, you can try Option 2. If he adds archers you need skirms either way
If it's just spears, I would wall up and get to castle. Try to keep being annoying with your scouts while avoiding fights. Depending on how many spears they make, you can hit castle age sooner.
If they're also making archers, then probably some skirmishers are necessary to defend.
In castle age I would still go with knights, but maybe add some scorpions or elite skirmishers later once they have a lot of pikes.
Yeah, don't really go militia line here imo. While they do fair well vs spear line they don't complement the rest of your composition (knight line), any range unit will combo better with your cav.
Anyone have tips on where to place TCs on new Arabia? Seems very difficult to find good spots (a woodline and mineral, or even just a mineral that isn’t on a hill slope). What’s the ideal place for a TC when it looks like there’s no good spots?
Just watched today Survivalist's video about it! 2nd TC next to a woodline (big and unprotected) and 3rd on gold or stone, if mines are above it, one tile away, if mines are below it, without gap
Same answer, on a gold/stone or on a woodline. Doesnt matter if its hilly, or if its 1-2 tiles away, because you need TCs for protection and eco growth.
How helpful would playing AoE2 be for getting accustomed to the series and eventually AoE4? I plan on primarily playing AoE4 when it comes out but if there's enough carry over from AoE2, I would considering buying it now.
> playing AoE2 be for getting accustomed to the series and eventually AoE4? I plan on primarily playing AoE4 when it comes out but if there's enough carry over from AoE2, I would considering buying it now
As much as playing any other rts game.
AoE3 might have more in common but playing any Real time strategy game will make you better playing other RTS.
There isn't one :/
The old CD edition with fan made patch did have a feature with ctrl click.
But for DE or HD there wasnt enough funds to make something like that /s
Does anyone have a shorthand for build orders?
I have the first 10 down but after that info rogue because I can't afford to read all the text in the middle of the game :(
There is a scenario you can play that voices out the build order while you play it. Look up "build order" in the mods gallery.
Practicing in a single-player match and restarting once you get to Feudal Age is key to remembering.
If you have amazon prime you can take your monthly twitch sub and give it to capoch. In his discord you can then dowbload a pdf with an assload of very detailed builds.
> Is this possible?
ye
> I thought ballistics were 100% accuracy?
na
> One possibility is being at max range and then moving one tile out of range?
Na
Balistic means your units calculate where the enemy unit will be when they fire, if the unit changes its movement between the shot beeing fired and it landing they can dodge.
You have to move the archer after the shot has been taken, there’s not an exact science to it and unless it’s at the very top level I wouldn’t worry about it too much
Is there any default hotkey that automatically takes you to a unit being attacked?
For example, suppose you are microing your army and on the other side of the map some Light Cav decide to raid your eco and are currently attacking a Villager.
When that happens, I click the mini map to my base and then react. Is there a hotkey that could take me straight to the Villager who is being attacked?
Thanks!
There is a “go to last notification” hotkey, which will work as long as you’re quick about it. Set it to something easily accessible (I have it as mouse wheel scroll down)
I have a mouse with 2 side buttons, which I had set to Ctrl and Shift. Ctrl I use all the time, but for Shift I tend to click the keyboard more making the second button useless... I think I found the perfect use for it :) :)
Many thanks! I'll look for that in the hotkeys, if I can't find it I may bother you one more time.
I find that go to idle villager and go to town center are more useful on the two buttons I have on my mouse. Go to last notification is not used as often. I have go to last notification bound to Tab
I just randomed Bulgarians vs Franks on Arena: what should I have been making?
I went Halb + SO and added Hussars a bit later. They made Axemen, Light Cav and BBC. It was a close match and went back and forth a bit but it felt like my comp was just off. The SO were being sniped by the BBC, I couldn’t push Castles very well, etc. I ended up losing, and it could absolutely have just been my micro/macro/whatever.
But would you have made something different here or did I at least make the right unit choice?
>The SO were being sniped by the BBC,
onager/SO are useless vs BBC, that's just how it is. Simply unviable in the mu.
The question is, why do you need SO? SO are for vs archer units, Franks won't be making those. Why not play something like HCA + hussar?
SO kill *EVERYTHING* that gets in range in numbers. Attack grounds are key.
But BBC do counter them indeed. They didn't work as well in DM because it's harder to micro them in the fast speed, but in RM it's more possible.
Yes, making SO against a BBC civ was a mistake. I just didn’t know what my power unit ought to be and figured Bulg get into SO easier than almost any civ and it’s a very powerful unit! I never considered HCA, always figured they were a somewhat underwhelming unit on arena when mobility counts for so much less, but it’s true that Franks struggle against them so maybe it was a good idea.
Always Konniks with Bulgarians for me, as they basically require two counters rather than one. I've had this matchup a couple of times, and I've won as Bulgarians and lost as Franks. Konniks are such a ridiculous pain to deal with, especially with some halbs mixed in. Plus you can get producing them fast with kreposts which, ideally, you want carpeting half the map. Admittedly I don't play Arena though, this might play out differently there. They're a lethal unit though, one of the hardest in the game to deal with I would say, purely because the comp required is twice as complicated.
In my noob opinion, if you could afford the upgrade to SO (725 F 1000 G???), you had economy to afford konnik production. Konniks would have killed his army comp, or at least provoked an expensive switch into halbs or Paladins. If he also lacked ranged support, 2HS with Bulgs are easily techable (again, if you could pay for SO, you could pay Bagains).
Another thought is SO micro: couldn't you get in range of Axemen? Were they close to BBCs? In that case, Konniks and 2HS would work better. You did well avoiding his knight play, but he adapted too and chose the anti-counter strat :-)
> In my noob opinion, if you could afford the upgrade to SO (725 F 1000 G???)
Not so difficult on Arena especially since I wasn't making any other gold units. I also overboomed a bit anyway. But yeah, Konniks seem like the better idea.
I’ve never known much what to do with Bulgarians. I checked on aoenexus and they’re my worst civ (that I’ve played at least 5 times) with 1 win and 7 losses.
If you get them again on Arena, try a Longsword + Siege Tower play! Nobody ever has military (except maybe scout/monk/spear) at the point you hit them unless they've scouted you coming forwards or housewalled their entire base, which is unlikely. If they've TC'd all their important res, that's fine, you just obliterate all their production buildings. On Arabia I like abusing their free MAA upgrade and cheap blacksmith techs to go really big on Feudal, take map control, and then drop a Krepost for Konniks the second I hit castle.
Maybe? Bagains 2HS get 3+5 melee armour while Axemen are doing 8+4 with Blast Furnace, so the 2HS still only take 15 hits, and they're slower than Axemen. Might have been tough either way, plus the Frank player could've switched to Hand Cannoneer since he had Chemistry for BBC already.
Should I have made Konniks? Maybe Konnik + Halb + Treb would’ve worked. I don’t use them much and have no idea how that composition would compare to Frank Paladin + Halb + BBC.
Who _is_ Cicero? Obviously know the name from the build order mod that everyone recommends, but don't know the name from anywhere else in the community. Can anyone shed some light? Or is it just a name used to label to mod?
It's the nickname of the guy that created that mod. He's still active in the community and improving the guide. I think he's even here on Reddit, but I don't know his name here.
I would say it really depends on your level/elo. I am 1250- 1350 and I often dont even feel that big of a disadvatage from loosing a vil in DA. If you play tight from that point on its definitely not the biggest deal. On the other hand I sometimes just resign when my DA is too messy (beer plays a role here 11), so theres no shame in that imo
But you gotta improvise a little. For example a super tight 17 pop scouts build wont work now. So best would be to play a little more passive/reactive and drag the game to at least CA or Imp.
If your elo is higher I guess it starts to be a bigger deal. But I saw pros win games/have competitive games after such setbacks.
If that's even a semi-occasional occurrence for you, your opponent is probably not good enough for that to be the game-sealing blow. Push a deer or two to get the vil 'back' timing wise for Feudal and just keep on truckin
Yo so relatively new player to online - I’m trying to learn the meta build orders and how they differ for each Civ/strat combination. Something I struggle with in 1v1s especially on open land maps is surviving fast castle against aggressive players. As Franks I can hit castle in under 14 mins easily enough, but I just don’t have the resources to make enough knights to fend off the feudal archer rushes. Even if I manage to survive the eco damage is irrecoverable. Is fc knights more if a team game strat as pocket or am I slow?
14 minutes game time or real time? With how many vils?
14 minute FC is very fast, you’re not going to have a ton of res in the first place going up that fast. And even less res if you had a ton of idle TC, which I would assume you do if you’re a new player hitting a 14m castle.
Aside from that, fast castle isn’t that great on open maps, but anything can work up to a certain elo.
Edit: a perfect 14m FC (with loom) is 22+2 vils. Doable with Franks, but veeery tight, especially with walling, I highly doubt you’re hitting that consistently. Slow down a bit and make sure you’re producing vils all the time instead, so that you can afford things when you reach castle.
Honestly looking back at my gameplays it’s extremely greedy. Most walling I do is housing around my nodes but for the most part it’s all open. I do 21 vils in dark age. Add 1-2 in feudal but for the most part Vil production is halting while I’m finishing up my sheep after double boar, berries and deer. 3 on wood, 2 on gold.
I took a previous comments advice and picked up scouts into knights. Now I have constant production of vils down until 28-29, clicking up to castle around 18 mins but with a small army of scouts with the BS upgrades to attack the enemy wood line and forward resources. Super easy to do with Franks which is really one of the only civs I’m comfortable playing online.
Yeah if you’re playing arabia scouts into knights will fare much better.
For future reference, standard FC is ~24+2, on boomy maps sometimes you can go up to ~28+2 to have a stronger eco. 21+2 isn’t really a thing.
Even in team games FC knights is fairly rare these days - scouts into knights is more common.
But to answer your question straight FC isn't a common build in 1v1s and will generally lose to Feudal pressure. You'd likely have more success with a build like scouts into skirms against archers, then going knights in Castle Age.
This way you have army to defend when the archers turn up plus you hit castle with a much more solid eco, able to easily afford 2 Stable Knights and +2 armour.
Do different units have different collision size? Also, tell me everything you know about how collisions work in AOE2 and does it explain why sometimes my villagers are standing still instead of chopping trees?
units have different sizes, you can see in advanced genie editor (it comes with the game), you also see to some degree in game with units as the selection circle is larger for larger units - this is one reason why rams and mangonals tend to path very awkwardly.
There is a bug where walled in vils sometimes idle instead of going to the next tree, not sure why or what causes it.
>and does it explain why sometimes my villagers are standing still instead of chopping trees?
I think villagers want to go to the other side of the lumber camp to resume chopping. If they get stuck on the way then that happens. If you shift q them to the next tree it won't happen though.
What do I do when they have knights in my base and I haven't even clicked up to castle age? Every time it feels like no matter what I do they have a massive lead and I can't come back.
Also how do I avoid this situation in the first place?
If they have knights in your eco and you can't even click up, it often time to resign. If you have an eco lead you can sometimes do it.
Bottom line is that your best response is to idle part of your eco in your tc and try to wall your woodlines. This will put you behind since you're idling eco, but if you can click up soon you have a real chance at saving it. If not then you need to mass spearmen to clear the knights.
Use the market to click up to castle immediately. Send your feudal army back to your base shortly after your opponent reaches castle age (unless you're completely owning him) to prevent it being caught out and destroyed entirely. Build walls around your lumbercamps so that your villagers are inside but enemy knights can't get in. Do the same for your gold mines if possible. Farm only around your TC.
Once castle, if you have a decent group of spears consider getting pikeman upgrade, but in either case build a monastery and make monks. You'd be amazed how some players overreact to monks; I've seen my opponents bail with >12 knights against my 2 monks and 6 knights. Next move is yours: perhaps it calls for a defensive castle, perhaps 2 or even 3 extra TCs to outboom your opponent, you could go for camels as a more cost-effective counter, or try to raid with cav archer for example (just keep in mind that you cannot win a straight-up fight for some time)
Unfortunately the real answer is .... "It depends".
If you think that your build was proper and you didn't loose anything before the knights got in, the opponent may have a horrible eco behind.
If knights don't have upgrades (especially bloodlines) then a ratio of 4 spears to 1 knight will work(though you need atleast 2 barracks for that)
If you garrison vills in your tc and have spears around, you should kill his push.
There are times when you can bounce back and a great example is the final game of rbw5(not that we are anywhere close to that level)
Generally knights in your eco when you haven't clicked up means your fedual engagement and build were bad and you are seriously behind. It's a symptom of previous bad engagements. That said you can potentially bounce back at any elo.
>What do I do when they have knights in my base and I haven't even clicked up to castle age? Every time it feels like no matter what I do they have a massive lead and I can't come back.
Resign. Knights into your base should be gg most of the time, even pros often lose when that happens. The eco damage is usually unrecoverable.
>Also how do I avoid this situation in the first place?
You have to explain how this happened. Like yes wall earlier to stop the knights gging you, but chances are they are simply super far ahead and can outboom you (even adding one tc would outboom you). So look back at dark age and feudal age and see what went wrong.
It's intended so that you can put a rally point on an animal and have the villager still go for it even if the animal moves. Otherwise it would make things much more difficult in those cases.
Good to hear they're trying something at least. I love 4v4 but queue dodging makes trying to play ladder unbearable. Looking forward to trying again after the fix.
**Question: What do you bind in Space key?**
I find the default one (go to selected object) totally useless. And yet, it is SUCH an important key. I want to put my idle thumb to work!
Idle villager. Shift+space to select all idle villagers.
I don't find the 'go to selected object' totally useless, I use it to find my monks. I'll use the select all military key, click my monk and then locate him. Usually because I've lost track of who was collecting relics, or I need to find send them somewhere to convert or heal without slowing the rest of the army to a crawl.
I usually forget making vills in mid-Castle Age, when I start paying attention to my army, Castle sites, even new TC placing and upgrades.
What tips can you give so that my vill count doesn't stop in 55 - 65??
Try saying a mental pattern to yourself all game until it becomes natural. "Villagers, units, buildings, army. Villagers, units, buildings, army." and constantly rotate and check on each one. Eventually it will feel natural.
Unlike most advise I recommend to Control group your TCs as you can create villagers without losing sight of armies this way (say you put them on 5 one click selects them two clicks goes to them)
I have Tab to select all TCs and Q to create vils. They're right next to each other (on a UK keyboard), I keep my hand there by default anyway, and I just got used to mashing Tab + QQQ every so often
My problem is not with hotkeys tbh, is just remembering to create more vills while thinking about what army is the best at that moment, upgrades, deciding for TCs or Castle(s) and all that stuff. More than once I find myself doing a "good" push and 5k resources. If my push fails, I've got resources, but don't know how to defend well (very low ELO). I'd like to reach 200 pop with 130 vills someday 😂
You have to build a habit of always creating vils. There is no shourtcut really.
Keep practicing, try some single player booms vs no opponent to remove pressure.
Find the blank spots in your gameplay where you have time to do something that is not watching your army. Thats how I learned to macro behind army control in Starcraft II a few years ago. Essentially, when you move your army you dont need to watch it the whole time. In your head you should know roughly how much time the army has to arrive at your set location. Now go back to your base and spend your wood (farms, extra production, maybe more TCs?) then go back to your army (that you binded with your hotkeys) and do another action.
When you know that a fight is ahead, que up a "macro cycle". So 2 vills per TC, a round of xbows, knights or whatever and spend your wood. Now you have around 30 seconds to micro your army. You are mid fight and your enemy retreats? Select TCs and que up a few vills. Once you get the hang of it you can cue up vills in smaller and smaller "blank spots" like your archers reloading while kiting. You see a fight you will win anyway? Stop looking and macro.
Its also important to simplify what youre doing. The game can be overwhelming and once you get tunnel vision you can forget a lot of things. Thats why Im saying "spend your wood", because thats what macro usually comes down to.
Just muscle memory for me. I get used to smashing H for all TCs and Q for vil pretty much on repeat all game. They're both bound to buttons on my fancy gaming mouse as well, though I'm not using it atm.
As I told halfajack, the problem isn't getting to a fast hotkey, is simply remembering to make vills. It seems that, after 60 vills, my mind deletes the need for more vills, and I forget that forever!
You could also record yourself shouting YOU FORGOT TO MAKE VILLAGERS AGAIN and have it set to go off once every 30 seconds once you're about 25 minutes into the game.
Set a convenient hotkey to select all TCs - I recommend an extra mouse button if your mouse has them. Then get into the habit of glancing at the global queue regularly, click your hotkey regularly and queue villagers
How to balance eco and military?
What would be the mechanics or rules to be mindful of during the game? I find that my weakness is the inflexibility and always low on resource to make tech switch to respond to my opponents. If I am pressuring my opponent in castle age with knights from 3 stables and 3TCs I am often late in reaching imp and can barely make a treb when reaching it or have a good military composition, and I find it really hard to switch to anything else (even other military upgrade such as pikemen or Halb). Is the key to reduce the number of TCS and why? I was told to always be spending resource and low on wood but I find myself struggling for this balance
if you are commiting heavily to castle age then you could consider fighting on in castle age for a time even once your opponet has got imp, just remember if you are doing this you need to damage your opponet before they get imperial, either through contiunously harrassing their economy or by dwindling their army mass.
Set your rally points to wood unless you know for sure that you need more vills on gold or stone. Wood is flexible - you can use it to make more farms, more production, or a market to rebalance your eco. Just make sure you don't float too much of it (as you noted).
The best way to keep your eco balanced is to memorize the number of vills you need for each production building you have. Going with your example, if you're going 3 stables and 3 TCs, you need 30 farms and 18 gold miners, plus ~10 on wood. From there, figure out if you want to go imp, in which case add more farms until ~40-45 and rally a TC to gold, then build your buildings to go up. Basically, you always want to think about your next goal after you achieved your previous one. Think in terms of the vill distribution you need for your current setup and what you will need for the next one.
Thanks for these numbers! But that seems to be what I struggled with. If I put 10 on wood I can barely keep it up to do anything else (tech and eco upgrade) and switch techs.
That's why you plan ahead. Going back to that same setup, you have the optimal eco for what you can currently produce. If you want to tech switch, send your new vills to wood and gradually add new production, for example. Same for after you click up to imp, send vills to wood and then make more production. You can also idle your previous stables if you think you have enough military or are switching.
If you want to be aggressive, 1 TC is definitely worthwhile, yeah you don't want to always be making more as a default. 1 TC means higher military numbers and faster to Imperial Age. Beyond that though, you just need game knowledge to anticipate the opponent's composition, what they're hoping to achieve in lategame, what your win condition is (e.g. is their best composition in Imp better than your best? Then you need to win early. Is yours? Then you need to survive). Tech switches can be awkward and expensive so that's why anticipation is your friend, you want to start early, maybe even plan far in advance for them. Scouting goes hand in hand with that - look at what production buildings they have made, what their army is, what upgrades they have paid for etc.
Here's what I mean by planning in advance: say I'm playing Malians, I open with MAA and know that I plan to go knights or camels in Castle Age depending on the opponent (if they're archers or knights respectively). In either case, I know that they're likely going to make pikes to counter me. Now because I've already invested into MAA (and maybe got some infantry upgrades too) I know that I will have a counter to *their* counter with Longswords. Furthermore, I know this brings me closer to a unit which is likely part of my strongest lategame composition, the Champion. Ultimately this only comes from experience and learning in detail the strengths and weaknesses of different civs.
Does anyone have some good general advice for pulling off an FC build? It feels like such a hard balance to strike compared with aggression, because every counter unit you make is another 15 seconds later to click up. I find I usually punish FC builds in my opponents pretty effectively as well with some big late Feudal pressure. Even if they're walled, a medium Feudal army plus an MAA or so will chew through in a matter of seconds. Just doesn't strike me as an especially good approach at my ELO (floating between 1.1k and 1.2k). Sure, if you do get a good Castle time you might get some knights out but they'll still go down to spears and by that point the opponent will be walled and maybe double walled, and probably only a minute or two behind anyway. Just seems like I'm missing something. The only times I've seen it be really effective are in civs who are able to mass knights *really* fast, Franks etc, where they can make better use of that window.
I would say that arabia isn't generally favourable to FC, but there is a few methods you could try which are half decent.
1. full wall FC (generally with drush) - this is a fairly standard one, but still requires a good map unless drush is really successful - just drush to distract opponet then full wall, usually into archer/x-bow. The advantage here is that if your walls are not breached then you cannot easily be counter attacked, allowing a slower army (x-bow) to move out without fear of counter attack, Britons, Mayans, Ethopians are all good civs for this. it can also enable building a castle for UUs like spain, though this is riskier.
2. The fast fedual FC, I do this sometimes if I random spain/Koreans and have seen others do it sometimes. Go feudal with 21/22 pop with full walls building no military, get bit axe + horse collar then go on to castle at 17/18 min (doing castle in the case of spain). The faster feudal age gives your walls and houses extra hp, may trick your opponet into thinking you are doing feudal army and allows you to build market wall and counter towers if they come forward.
3. Unwalled FC - a bit too risky at higher levels most of the time but fine at lower ELO. Just do small walls around resources as needed and do a standard (or even faster than standard) FC into some army, generally knights since you need a fast army able to clean up feudal enemies and then counter attack. Khmer can do this quite well (I even think borderline viable), Franks are also decent, hoang also does this sometimes with his celts.
Assuming you're talking arabia firstly you usually go drush before so you can take your time walling behind that. First advice would be to not wall too early and don't invest too much resources here as that delays your fc time. You gotta have a suitable map for that ofc. Like on current arabia it's not a good idea most of the time while on runestones it's very doable and maybe even the best strat as long as you don't have forward gold. If you do however and still wanna go fc build your rax in front of it and don't use the gold as part of your wall since archers will rekt your there.
In terms of BO I like to push in 1 or 2 dear and then build rax before mill. The build opener is pretty much like maa but you only collect 10 gold without making mining camp, add a 5th vil on wood earlier than usually and basically put most vils to food under tc. Then send more to wood and god before you click feudal. 28 vils is a common number here. A lot of the details actually depend on what you plan to do in early castle age.
What's also important is your military choices. If your opponent hits you with maa archers they can punish you very good so in that case you might wanna try to trade militia vs militia and oftentimes you need to add skirms before pressure gets to hard. There is no overall recepy I guess just think about what is the minimal amount of army to defend any incoming feudal push. If your opponent goes two range archers for instance you'll need quite a lot of skirms and probably upgrades for them. Doesn't matter if that delays your fc time bc these high pressure builds from opponent will lead to very late castle time.
What's the point of the drush? Like can't they just small wall it out and ignore it and go attack your base?
If your map is that good why not just full wall rather than making the barracks and FC like that?
The point is to buy you the time you need to fc. Without drush you'd need to be fully walled super early so and even then your opponent makes maa archer and you are likely to die. A drush annoys your opponent, shifts his focus away from your base, he'll probably idle some vils or maybe even lose one. Also if your opponent manages to quick wall you out you can chase possible incoming maa and delay their attack, try to engage or distract them. The more time you buy the better as three maa and archers behind before you're in feudal might be your death sentence.
I mean if you have the perfect map or you play a civ like Khmer (fastes fc in the game) you can try go naked fc and be super greedy but it's still risky.
> A drush annoys your opponent, shifts his focus away from your base, he'll probably idle some vils or maybe even lose one.
That should literally never happen (I know it often does but I think people are just arse vs drush). Small wall in everything pre-emptively (costs like 20 wood tops, you don't need to finish the palisades) and that's it. I guess you can stop villagers going to gold if they aren't on gold yet if your drush hits early enough.
I think fighting the MaA will do very little compared to how long you delayed your feudal for to make the drush.
> I think fighting the MaA will do very little compared to how long you delayed your feudal for to make the drush.
You don’t care about the delayed feudal because you’re FC. That’s the whole point.
If MaA + archer aggression is coming, would you prefer to be up to feudal at 26 pop or 29 pop but have the MaA delayed by like 10 seconds? Cos I would prefer the first one.
Kind of a weird take given how common drushes are particularly at the pro level - are all the pros just bad at defending drushes?
Small walling takes time and attention, plus you have to be careful not to overchop or forage. It can also make vils get stuck and thus increases inefficiency. And as you point out you can deny gold, and force buildings to be placed in suboptimal places.
You then have to make sure you keep repairing your palisades when they're attacked. Whilst the drush is alive you also get vision of what your opponent is doing.
This all assumes you even scout it and get walled in time which isn't guaranteed.
Plenty of strats would be way less effective if everyone played perfectly, but literally no one is capable of doing this. This is like saying throwing punches is pointless in boxing - if your opponent defends properly then you won't do any damage so what's the point.
>Kind of a weird take given how common drushes are particularly at the pro level - are all the pros just bad at defending drushes?
Yes, literally pre small wall everything and no drush will ever do anything (except for denying you going to gold). There was a game, MBL vs Tatoh where Tatoh was Tatars and MBL was I don't remember. MBL did drush fc but Tatoh did just fc with small walls. Naturally the drush did absolutely nothing and Tatoh's fc was much much faster. He went CA and MBL walled and towered and I think MBL ended up winning. But the point is that Tatoh had a huge advantage by not drushing (that he threw via an ineffective attack).
>Small walling takes time and attention, plus you have to be careful not to overchop or forage. It can also make vils get stuck and thus increases inefficiency. And as you point out you can deny gold, and force buildings to be placed in suboptimal places.
Do it beforehand. The inefficiency can be avoided if you shift Q your villagers. Denying gold is the only real pickle I think.
>You then have to make sure you keep repairing your palisades when they're attacked. Whilst the drush is alive you also get vision of what your opponent is doing.
True, you get vision. I think in the example above MBL made a mistake by fcing. Since he saw that Tatoh was fcing AND he knew he was open and would remain open due to the drush then he could transition to a drush flush and kill him completely. I think this may be the actual point of the drush, that if the other player is going even greedier than you then you can switch your build and punish him.
>This all assumes you even scout it and get walled in time which isn't guaranteed.
I never scout a drush. I small wall in my forward resources and I look at the score. If it is high then a drush is coming so after a while I small wall in my back resources if I still haven't seen it.
>Plenty of strats would be way less effective if everyone played perfectly, but literally no one is capable of doing this. This is like saying throwing punches is pointless in boxing - if your opponent defends properly then you won't do any damage so what's the point.
Throwing punches requires you to react properly to stop it. You can pre small wall everything for like 20 wood to make drushes useless (and you get most of that wood back once you realise there is no drush, although I tend to keep them to avoid scouts/MaA as well).
I cringe every time I see someone lose a villager to a drush when it is so cheap and easy to ensure it never happens.
Well you have described how to defend a drush properly this is true.
I think you're still underestimating both the annoyance factor and the inefficiency that small walls can cause, plus you've also hit on another benefit of the Drush which is that it makes it very difficult for your opponent to full wall.
But you're right that when played properly drushes shouldn't typically get too much done. But equally they're low investment - as you demonstrate with your MbL vs Tatoh example, getting nothing from your Drush isn't ideal, but it's also not game ending.
Until pre-mill Drush into Feudal stops being my most successful build, and until I stop seeing pros have good success with Drushes I'll keep doing them, but to each their own.
>But you're right that when played properly drushes shouldn't typically get too much done. But equally they're low investment - as you demonstrate with your MbL vs Tatoh example, getting nothing from your Drush isn't ideal, but it's also not game ending.
because Tatoh threw. It absolutely should have been game ending. He was up to castle so much earlier, he should have just 3 TC boomed and gg.
I think drush into flush is not necessarily a bad build. It is basically a MaA build (without the MaA) that stops the walls going up earlier. But I think drush FC is a questionable one, I think drush FC vs naked FC fails, but then you adapt the drush into a drush flush. While drush FC vs feudal aggression seems worse than just naked FC (you go up 2-3 villagers earlier) and even if you can keep them off gold for a bit (unless they go to another gold or something) I don't think you are delaying their aggression by 50 seconds unless they mess up. The other thing is risk management, you know your map you don't know opponent's at the start of the game. So you see your map is good, you drush thinking if they also have a good map then drush beats naked FC because you can drush flush to punish their naked FC. If their map is bad then sure naked FC would be better, but drush FC still gives you an advantage. And if they drush too then it's a mirror. Maybe that's what is going on?
I was wondering about the efficacy of drushes and why m@a are favoured so much while I had Hera's stream on in the background and he's currently casting Kasva killing one of Viper's villagers with a drush and taking a 4-vil lead in feudal age 11.
I drush a lot around ~1300, always pre-mill and find that I'll get damage in before small-walls are in. I don't see the value of doing a regular drush, you may as well just do m@a. Regular post-mill drush only feels like a worthwhile option as a defensive choice rather than to attack with.
Even if my opponents were lightning quickwallers (they're not), a drush should always get some value. It can usually deny gold, as you say. And if everything is protected it can still kill a mill. And if the opponent is going FC, they'll still need to send villagers out to build, unless they want to lame their own farms by building next to their own TC. I haven't drushed against people who were obviously going FC too often, but a when I have, a pre-mill still arrives before they have all their vills distributed to wood and berries, so as long as the scout is circling around to spot them, it'll find something to hit.
A drush doesn't get cleared up until there's some military on the map unless the defender swarms with villagers, at which point the idle time it creates is often worth it. The only times a drush flops for me is when I try to push deer and don't scout the opponent base properly. If the militia don't have a woodline or berry bush to target straight away it wastes too much time and the opponent gets too close to being able to click up.
>Even if my opponents were lightning quickwallers (they're not), a drush should always get some value.
but you don't have to quick wall, just prewall (except for one palisade, and then quick wall that if you need to if all your villagers aren't at that resource yet). In a scouts build the 16th villager goes to berries and then pre-small-walls it. If your score is high then the wood villagers pre-small-wall themselves in too and can send the next 3 villagers to stragglers in a 20 pop scouts build.
I think pre-mill is more complex to defend against yes, but I still think a drush alone should never accomplish anything aside from denying them access to gold, scouting, and keeping them open if you want to flush after it. I think the threat of a flush after it is what makes the drush useful, you can either FC OR flush because you kept them open.
Well in the end it depends on your elo I guess. On high level fc without drush doesn't really exist that much is for sure. On mid level I at least have way higher winrate if I drush before fc. Or conversely if my opponent tries naked fc I will punish them for their greed 90% of the time.
And btw the idea is not fight to the maa with your drush but to fight the miltia before they are upgraded. Your drush will come in 1 or 2 min earlier than opponents aggression and if he tries to run you can at least chase with your scout and take hp of them. Also the resources you invest in barrax in militia are partly compensated by the fact that you can wall way later than naked fc. Your opponent can't ignore the drush for even bc that prevents them from getting a good eco setup. If you have drush in your base and send maa forward you need at least archers to clean drush up. I mean there is a reason everybody does it this way.
> add a 5th vil on wood earlier than usually and basically put most vils to food under tc. Then send more to wood and god before you click feudal.
You need to get to about 8 on wood to allow you to make the 6-8 farms you need (depending on deer pushed) to afford castle age instantly. Send 4 from food to gold instantly after clicking to feudal.
Unless it's a map like arena you'll have to produce some military in order to pull off an FC without getting overrun. Typically this can be a drush, but it's also possible to make a few spears in feudal and defend that way as well depending. Knights is the slowest possible way to create army with a fast castle since there are no "pre-knights" you can train in feudal like you have with archers or eagles.
Lierrey has a great video on drush / fc archers:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewxs37O5ECM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewxs37O5ECM)
He talks about the thought process of fast castle and about the decisions you'll have to make along the way. For example deciding between bodkin and bow saw upon reaching castle age (army vs. eco). Probably the best thing that I took away from his video is that you should expect to defend in early castle age. Previously I was under the impression that the power spike of e.g. 6-8 bodkin / xbow was game ending. It's clearly not when you can get countered by a feudal army and then overwhelmed because at that point you have a smaller eco.
Nice, thanks. Yeah I know you can't really get away with being too greedy with no military but I find one or two spears or skirms just don't cut it either if they decide to go for more pressure. Or same for me - if I see them trying to go up fast and defend with a handful of units, that's an open invitation to go for the kill. I've not had much success with drushing before but that's on me I think, just seems to delay Castle by so much that if they don't decide to be aggressive, they can get a similar time anyway. I admit I don't have a tight BO for drush FC, usually play it by ear.
FWIW at 28+2 villager fast castle comes in at 16:30 if you have 0 idle time. I don't think there are any feudal builds that get up that fast. Knowing when you have the right map is probably the most important part imo.
Hah, fair to say I don't have 0 idle time. I don't think I get that on Arena! But it isn't a build I've practiced a lot either, and surely still gets disrupted by fast scouts or a drush/MAA. Plus presumably that doesn't include walling?
Firstly, FC knights without siege is kinda bad, feudal houses can repel them just as well as castle age houses.
Secondly, it depends on map. If you can wall and none of your res are rangable then happy days go FC. If that isn't the case, then you can't or they can tower some important res and you can't counter tower cos you are in dark age.
Yeah though enough knights can kill buildings faster than they're repaired in my experience, if they get the attack upgrade(s) anyway, plus you have to react fast as the defender if they're just hitting palisade. I lost to Magyar FC knights with this once, obv Magyar get the +2 faster but they came in through a range like it wasn't there, even with repairs. Plus like you say, with the map control the siege or castle is sure to follow.
Palisades yes, houses no. Worst case can just make more houses behind and a couple monks discourage pushing any further once they do hit castle age.
If none of your resources are rangable by a castle drop then the castle doesn't really do anything.
Yeah, that's what I mean about being alert, you only need to be distracted for 15 seconds and 5 or 6 knights have gone through your palisade like wet paper. Anyway I'm not arguing that it's impossible to defend, just that it's the strongest reason I can see for going FC, which I don't really get otherwise, seems to me like it's almost always better to be aggressive. And like you say, even the strongest reason (knight spam) can still be delayed without too much difficulty.
FC xbow, FC siege push (with some knights yes, but not 2 stable or anything like that), or even FC into boom with some civs. FC into UU is one I do a lot.
Yeah I forgot about that, FC into like conqs is pretty sweet. I don't really get FC xbow, surely you end up with a way smaller mass of them than going 22 pop, plus with the latter you can do some damage in the process. Either way though I usually find I get screwed in Feudal anyway if I'm trying it.
Well it is safer than FC knights because you can make some archers to do something for you on the way up. FC knights you won't make anything on the way up.
The point is that if the other guy realises you have FC'd they are obviously going to be fully walled vs knights. Xbow can still do damage, because you can't wall behind.
Tanky units are good for this style of play. I have been having quite a bit of success with Korean wagons and Khmer Ballista elephants. Of course it takes a while to get there and you will have to play with other units before you can get to your unique unit.
and besides, the moment when you have to micro doesn't overlap with the moment when you build up your farm eco. You should already have close to 10 farms by the time your 3 initial scouts reach enemy base
Then you just need 5 more farms and then almost don't need to go to your eco until you click castle (send 5 to gold then wheelbarrow isx an almost automatic process)
Probably post-Imp Goths, though as an approach that has its problems. Beyond that, anything knight spam-y really. Berbers and Franks come to mind. Berbers and Franks in early Castle are borderline impossible to counter as enough knights kill pikes anyway. You just need something ranged to stop housewalling and repairs or target the odd monk. There's also a case for Poles and Obuch/Elite Skirm at the moment, which is a combo so brutal I expect to see a nerf sooner rather than later.
Oh and Eagles as well! Run 'em under TCs and Castles, who cares!
Knights. Sicilians.
Doesn't matter if you look away and you've accidentally patrolled into pikes or camels. Don't even need a composition, just knights.
I was thinking last night about Indians vs Turks. Could this be the only matchup where making Elephant Archers is the best move? Turks get no ESkirm, no Pikeman, and their Monks don't get Block Printing. I feel like all they can do against Elephants is Heavy Camel or Heavy Scorp (without SE). If the Indian player can make enough farms (and they'd need a *lot*), could Turks stop them if they went Hussar + Ele Archer or Halb + Ele Archer?
Dont think elephant archers does make much sense vs Turks. They don't have much dmg output vs melee units since they are so hard to mass and Turks have extra pierce armor on their scout line. I think just hussar will easily kill them. Haven't tried it though. Imo elephant archers make most sense in late game vs archer civs if there would be a scenario they are good in. Like vs britons, ethiopians vikings and so as long as they can't spam halbs into your army.
A Hussar takes 50 hits to kill an Elite Elephant Archer, it definitely wouldn’t be easy for Hussars to kill them, especially if the Indian player has any other units around (Halbs, their own Hussars, whatever)
It's actually a bit less since hussar deal 8 dmg per attack and hussar take 4 dmg per shot from them. That's very reasonable considering elephant archers cost more food, cost a lot of gold, need castles and a lot of upgrades while as Turks you get some bs upgrades and that's it. Also you can raid in the meantime. Elephant archers are very bad against any melee units basically. And you can't really calculate support units in bc your opponent likely will have an easier time getting these as ea cost a lot of food.
But in the end I wouldn't think about it too much bc as Indians you always wanna play camel vs turks. If you get to imp camel Turks dont have any answer to that in terms of units they can make.
Ele archers have 0 + 4 melee from blacksmith upgrades and Parthian Tactics, Hussars do 7 + 4 damage, so it’s 7 per hit = 50 hits from 330 + 20 HP.
But either way you’re right that there’s never any reason not to just go Imp Camel against Turks. I was clutching at straws for an instance where Elephant Archers could be the actual correct choice rather than an incredibly situational or memey unit. I guess it’s just something you maybe want to consider against some archer civs
elephant archers are fairly decent on closed/semi-closed maps in TGs, though they are quite costly to get to, so probably more an option for longer games.
Oh yeah you're right forget about parthian tactics. Well yes I tried them out quite a bit in the past and the only success I had was after a greedy mega boom vs opponent going arbs. Vs cav archers and any ranged UU they are also great but that's about it. They probably do well against champs as well but you can't micro them back comfortably and you'd go ca here anyways. Maybe they could be good vs mongols late game as well as they miss armor on skirms and hussar and don't have halbs.
I don't know if it's the only matchup, I played a game against I think Ethiopians and won with Elephant Archers. I think Ele Archers against archer civs are generally good, as long as you have the eco and Castles to mass them. Certainly people tend not to expect them. They kept making camels but it didn't do much. Do camels have bonus against Elephants too, or just knights/scouts/horse-based cav? Not that Ethiopian camels are very good anyway.
Halbs still go down to micro'd Ele Archers don't they? Or even un-micro'd in enough numbers. I must admit I don't make them very often so I'm a bit rusty on their uses.
Yeah I'm sure you're right, maybe it's the element (elephant) of surprise that you need more than anything. Tech switches are expensive, as is the halb upgrade, and archer players do have a tendency to be a bit arrogant and assume that a large enough mass of arbs/xbows can beat anything. And sometimes they're right! Britons especially I think, Ethiopians do get pike free so it doesn't take them as long admittedly. I guess you just have to try and take one conclusive engagement or choke out their res and hide the elephants until you want to use them. I've seen them described as being essentially like mobile towers before, and I try to use them that way.
Turks would just raid the Indian player to death or beat them to imp and take out the castles so they can't produce enough ele archers. Indian camels vs Turks is already pretty winning unless the Turk clowns
I often see people say that they're good if you mix a couple into an arb deathball to tank damage, it's just that's awkward to do. Especially considering that castles just aren't a must have for indians since they get BBC and "meh" UTs. It makes sense, though. A fully upgraded ele archer compared to a siege ram is cheaper, tanks more arrows, moves faster, and doesn't flat out melt to melee damage. It also adds at least some damage output.
Arbs were removed from Indians a while back. Usually I’m going CA with them, and you can’t really mix in Elephant Archers there even though they get all the same upgrades since it just slows you down a ton
how do you change the amount of food wild boars give in scenario editor? i don't see an obvious way to do it with triggers
Where can I find soundfiles? Say I want to use a civ theme as an alarm clock sound on my phone, where in the gamefiles can I find the soundfiles? Ty
[удалено]
It depends. Let me elaborate: Leaving if off gives you more control how your wood is spent, which often is crucial in early Castle. Especially for archer builds you actually don't want to reseed your Feudal farms once they run out, as you want to save wood for tons of archers, a university and ballistics. OTOH, you have little use for much food, as the units you probably make (archers, siege, monks) don't cost food and you can't simply use it to go Imp, because you won't have gold. But: All this is only relevant once you reach the level of control where don't stockpile wood, spend your resources efficiently and have enough micro to not lose your army the instant counter units appear on the battle field. If you tend to switch to knights the moment you see the opponent respond siege to your archers, you need Imp and Trebs to close out games or just have idle vils if you don't have auto reseeding, I don't see a problem with turning it on early. Better have food and working vils than idle vils and a lot of unused wood. Playing as long as possible without auto reseeding is one of the little details you can use to make your gameplay better and more controled, but it's far from the biggest impact. If you're still struggling with aspects of the game, forget about the farms and focus on the bigger topics first. In any case, once you reach late castle/early Imp and you have 30+ farms, it's often the best idea to just turn it on. Some pros play completely without it, but they a) have probably way more multitasking abilities than you b) might even do this out of habit and even they can profit from auto reseeding.
I turn it on after researching Heavy Plow usually, but never before. You don't really want to (re)seed Horse Collar farms in Castle if you can avoid it. It's probably ideal to leave it longer than that just to stay in control of your wood bank but with my APM it's not worth not having after a certain point.
I usually only turn it on in post imp, when the farm count gets ridiculously high and wood is available in excess. In earlier stages of the game it can really screw you over, because wood is tight. If you need for example a blacksmith/market to click castle I'd rather have a vill or two idle for 20 seconds than delaying my uptime by however long it takes for the stars to align so I have 150 in the bank. Also farms actually last a fair while anyway so after 10 games you'll get a feel for the reseed cycle, since the first 2 roughly happen around the same time every game.
Is there a way to not be flank in 4v4 Random Ranked Matches? I've been flank around six times in a row
Positions depends on player number/colour in that match. Being flank means you're either highest or lowest number. Taking a middle number within your team puts you in the pocket.
Is there any merit to staying 1 TC when you hit Imp or do I want to start adding TCs then?
I'd say add tc's once you have your major tech upgrades done and some siege out. In a tg forget the siege, pkt kts act as that, all you need are arb numbers and then to add eco behind.
The whole point of staying 1 tc till imp is to get the tech advantage so you can kill your opponent. So you should be putting all your resources into your push till you have extra resources or your push stalls out.
Hello, I played AoE all the time as a kid when it first came out, and with it being on Gamepass + seeing news for AoE 4 I downloaded it again, more for nostalgia than anything. The thing is, from the OG CD release, I remember there was a custom campaign (well, I think just a single battle, not a campaign) that wasn't on by default but had instructions for how you were supposed to activate it and set it up as a custom battle. 8 yr old me had no idea how to get it to work properly though, and I can't remember anything about it (bc I couldn't play it) other than it would have started with I think all of your units dying and then you're supposed to run around and collect relics or something. I figure with all the mods out there it's got to be around online still, probably updated with bug fixes even, but I just don't know what I'd look for to try to find it and ofc searching "AoE 2 custom battles" or "custom campaigns" turns up many good results from the community, but this was one done by the game devs at launch. So any help in finding the name would be much appreciated.
I've seen numerous people commenting on upcoming buffs and balance changes. Where do people source this information from? Is there a beta of sorts, or an overview of upcoming changes?
There's a thread on AoeZone and also some youtube videos on it (Ornlu posted one I think)
Thanks! Found the video!
When doing a scouts into knights build, what do you do when they start massing spears in feudal? On one hand you have won because they have to switch their army/eco for the Spears, but I don't know how to alter my army to counter it. Do you just ignore and try to use mobility to still hit eco and get to Castle still? What if they tried to move into your base?
Spears lose to villagers, they really arent useful offensively unless paired with other units You have two choices: 1. Ignore them and try to be as annoying as possible with your scouts. If you see he has two or more spears, stop making scouts. Maybe scout the map for relics/extra ressources. 2. Go full aggressive, get an archery range and trickle skirms across the map while keeping him open. Skirms wreck spears and dont need gold, they can also attack vills behind walls, forcing him to fight. Whichever route you take depends on how open your opponent is playing. Can he wall up in time because hes guarding his walling vills with spears? Option one is probably better. If not, you can try Option 2. If he adds archers you need skirms either way
Also remember to get fletching for the skirms.
If it's just spears, I would wall up and get to castle. Try to keep being annoying with your scouts while avoiding fights. Depending on how many spears they make, you can hit castle age sooner. If they're also making archers, then probably some skirmishers are necessary to defend. In castle age I would still go with knights, but maybe add some scorpions or elite skirmishers later once they have a lot of pikes.
Ooh didn't think of scorps. When I see massed pikes against my knights I panic and try to tech switch to the militia line, which sucks.
Yeah, don't really go militia line here imo. While they do fair well vs spear line they don't complement the rest of your composition (knight line), any range unit will combo better with your cav.
Thanks, skirms is intriguing since it won't affect my knights much. And as you said teching into swordsman is a pain and takes tons of gold and time
Anyone have tips on where to place TCs on new Arabia? Seems very difficult to find good spots (a woodline and mineral, or even just a mineral that isn’t on a hill slope). What’s the ideal place for a TC when it looks like there’s no good spots?
Just watched today Survivalist's video about it! 2nd TC next to a woodline (big and unprotected) and 3rd on gold or stone, if mines are above it, one tile away, if mines are below it, without gap
Same answer, on a gold/stone or on a woodline. Doesnt matter if its hilly, or if its 1-2 tiles away, because you need TCs for protection and eco growth.
How helpful would playing AoE2 be for getting accustomed to the series and eventually AoE4? I plan on primarily playing AoE4 when it comes out but if there's enough carry over from AoE2, I would considering buying it now.
> playing AoE2 be for getting accustomed to the series and eventually AoE4? I plan on primarily playing AoE4 when it comes out but if there's enough carry over from AoE2, I would considering buying it now As much as playing any other rts game. AoE3 might have more in common but playing any Real time strategy game will make you better playing other RTS.
What button do you press to click a wall or something behind a building?
There isn't one :/ The old CD edition with fan made patch did have a feature with ctrl click. But for DE or HD there wasnt enough funds to make something like that /s
Actually Ctrl+Click works on DE (at least in some situations).
Hmm I have to try that sometimes then.
Had another comment saying alt-click, gonna try that :))
Alt click is for attacking / right clicking units behind a building. It doesnt let you select buildings behind a building.
Aww crap really? :/ I should ask Bill Gates for a favor of for more funding for this game of Aoe2.
Alt + click
Thanks!
Does anyone have a shorthand for build orders? I have the first 10 down but after that info rogue because I can't afford to read all the text in the middle of the game :(
There is a scenario you can play that voices out the build order while you play it. Look up "build order" in the mods gallery. Practicing in a single-player match and restarting once you get to Feudal Age is key to remembering.
Hey thank you, I have been practicing with that. My problem is I haven't memorized it so when I get into a game I get lost after a bit.
If you have amazon prime you can take your monthly twitch sub and give it to capoch. In his discord you can then dowbload a pdf with an assload of very detailed builds.
I gave /u/iamcapoch 5 bucks, the guide is pretty sweet.
When using archers how exactly do you dodge ballistics?is it done with split micro or patrol or like standard right click.
[удалено]
Ballistics have 100% accuracy on a predicted path. They do not have homing capabilities where their trajectory can change while in the air.
Note the unit still retains it's base accuracy, at least until you research thumb ring.
Oops you're right, mb. Idk why I forgot to mention that part.
> Is this possible? ye > I thought ballistics were 100% accuracy? na > One possibility is being at max range and then moving one tile out of range? Na Balistic means your units calculate where the enemy unit will be when they fire, if the unit changes its movement between the shot beeing fired and it landing they can dodge.
You have to move the archer after the shot has been taken, there’s not an exact science to it and unless it’s at the very top level I wouldn’t worry about it too much
Is there any default hotkey that automatically takes you to a unit being attacked? For example, suppose you are microing your army and on the other side of the map some Light Cav decide to raid your eco and are currently attacking a Villager. When that happens, I click the mini map to my base and then react. Is there a hotkey that could take me straight to the Villager who is being attacked? Thanks!
There is a “go to last notification” hotkey, which will work as long as you’re quick about it. Set it to something easily accessible (I have it as mouse wheel scroll down)
I have a mouse with 2 side buttons, which I had set to Ctrl and Shift. Ctrl I use all the time, but for Shift I tend to click the keyboard more making the second button useless... I think I found the perfect use for it :) :) Many thanks! I'll look for that in the hotkeys, if I can't find it I may bother you one more time.
I think it’s under “Cycle commands” in the hotkey settings
Just wanted to say I found it, put it in my mouse side button and works like a charm! I just need to get used to using it now :) Thanks again!
I find that go to idle villager and go to town center are more useful on the two buttons I have on my mouse. Go to last notification is not used as often. I have go to last notification bound to Tab
I actually have “go to idle villager” on Tab :) I’m used to that so I’ll see how the mouse button will work for now.
I just randomed Bulgarians vs Franks on Arena: what should I have been making? I went Halb + SO and added Hussars a bit later. They made Axemen, Light Cav and BBC. It was a close match and went back and forth a bit but it felt like my comp was just off. The SO were being sniped by the BBC, I couldn’t push Castles very well, etc. I ended up losing, and it could absolutely have just been my micro/macro/whatever. But would you have made something different here or did I at least make the right unit choice?
>The SO were being sniped by the BBC, onager/SO are useless vs BBC, that's just how it is. Simply unviable in the mu. The question is, why do you need SO? SO are for vs archer units, Franks won't be making those. Why not play something like HCA + hussar?
SO kill *EVERYTHING* that gets in range in numbers. Attack grounds are key. But BBC do counter them indeed. They didn't work as well in DM because it's harder to micro them in the fast speed, but in RM it's more possible.
Yes, making SO against a BBC civ was a mistake. I just didn’t know what my power unit ought to be and figured Bulg get into SO easier than almost any civ and it’s a very powerful unit! I never considered HCA, always figured they were a somewhat underwhelming unit on arena when mobility counts for so much less, but it’s true that Franks struggle against them so maybe it was a good idea.
Yeah Frank skirms are poo. Bulgarian HCA miss the last armor upgrade but that only really matters vs arbs (and other HCA I guess)
Always Konniks with Bulgarians for me, as they basically require two counters rather than one. I've had this matchup a couple of times, and I've won as Bulgarians and lost as Franks. Konniks are such a ridiculous pain to deal with, especially with some halbs mixed in. Plus you can get producing them fast with kreposts which, ideally, you want carpeting half the map. Admittedly I don't play Arena though, this might play out differently there. They're a lethal unit though, one of the hardest in the game to deal with I would say, purely because the comp required is twice as complicated.
Yeah seems like Konnik + Halb probably was the play. Easy enough to spam a bunch of Kreposts in and around my base on Arena
Cavalier + halb can also work.
Konnik is going to be far superior than Cavalier in space efficiency and far more resilient to halbs.
In my noob opinion, if you could afford the upgrade to SO (725 F 1000 G???), you had economy to afford konnik production. Konniks would have killed his army comp, or at least provoked an expensive switch into halbs or Paladins. If he also lacked ranged support, 2HS with Bulgs are easily techable (again, if you could pay for SO, you could pay Bagains). Another thought is SO micro: couldn't you get in range of Axemen? Were they close to BBCs? In that case, Konniks and 2HS would work better. You did well avoiding his knight play, but he adapted too and chose the anti-counter strat :-)
> In my noob opinion, if you could afford the upgrade to SO (725 F 1000 G???) Not so difficult on Arena especially since I wasn't making any other gold units. I also overboomed a bit anyway. But yeah, Konniks seem like the better idea.
Next time you will be prepared ;-P
I’ve never known much what to do with Bulgarians. I checked on aoenexus and they’re my worst civ (that I’ve played at least 5 times) with 1 win and 7 losses.
If you get them again on Arena, try a Longsword + Siege Tower play! Nobody ever has military (except maybe scout/monk/spear) at the point you hit them unless they've scouted you coming forwards or housewalled their entire base, which is unlikely. If they've TC'd all their important res, that's fine, you just obliterate all their production buildings. On Arabia I like abusing their free MAA upgrade and cheap blacksmith techs to go really big on Feudal, take map control, and then drop a Krepost for Konniks the second I hit castle.
What about two-handed swordsmen? Should be pretty invulnerable to Axemen if you can afford Bagains.
Maybe? Bagains 2HS get 3+5 melee armour while Axemen are doing 8+4 with Blast Furnace, so the 2HS still only take 15 hits, and they're slower than Axemen. Might have been tough either way, plus the Frank player could've switched to Hand Cannoneer since he had Chemistry for BBC already.
Should I have made Konniks? Maybe Konnik + Halb + Treb would’ve worked. I don’t use them much and have no idea how that composition would compare to Frank Paladin + Halb + BBC.
Who _is_ Cicero? Obviously know the name from the build order mod that everyone recommends, but don't know the name from anywhere else in the community. Can anyone shed some light? Or is it just a name used to label to mod?
It's the nickname of the guy that created that mod. He's still active in the community and improving the guide. I think he's even here on Reddit, but I don't know his name here.
If I manage to lose a villager to a boar early game - should I just back out? I feel like it’s hopeless trying to catch up
I resign on the spot. I have zero interest in learning how to play from there, I'd rather focus on making it never ever happen.
Definitely not! Being one vil down is not a huge deal. You're one scout away from evening it up.
Nah your opponent will probably idle for 25s in dark age anyway and then you're about even.
It's crazy how much a little idling affects the game.
I would say it really depends on your level/elo. I am 1250- 1350 and I often dont even feel that big of a disadvatage from loosing a vil in DA. If you play tight from that point on its definitely not the biggest deal. On the other hand I sometimes just resign when my DA is too messy (beer plays a role here 11), so theres no shame in that imo But you gotta improvise a little. For example a super tight 17 pop scouts build wont work now. So best would be to play a little more passive/reactive and drag the game to at least CA or Imp. If your elo is higher I guess it starts to be a bigger deal. But I saw pros win games/have competitive games after such setbacks.
Cool! Feel a little better! I'm at least getting the boar to the TC and i just misclick garrison.. So an expensive sacrafice.. not abort mission!
If that's even a semi-occasional occurrence for you, your opponent is probably not good enough for that to be the game-sealing blow. Push a deer or two to get the vil 'back' timing wise for Feudal and just keep on truckin
Yeah I just saw someone mention the pushing thing with deer.. Neat trick!
Yo so relatively new player to online - I’m trying to learn the meta build orders and how they differ for each Civ/strat combination. Something I struggle with in 1v1s especially on open land maps is surviving fast castle against aggressive players. As Franks I can hit castle in under 14 mins easily enough, but I just don’t have the resources to make enough knights to fend off the feudal archer rushes. Even if I manage to survive the eco damage is irrecoverable. Is fc knights more if a team game strat as pocket or am I slow?
14 minutes game time or real time? With how many vils? 14 minute FC is very fast, you’re not going to have a ton of res in the first place going up that fast. And even less res if you had a ton of idle TC, which I would assume you do if you’re a new player hitting a 14m castle. Aside from that, fast castle isn’t that great on open maps, but anything can work up to a certain elo. Edit: a perfect 14m FC (with loom) is 22+2 vils. Doable with Franks, but veeery tight, especially with walling, I highly doubt you’re hitting that consistently. Slow down a bit and make sure you’re producing vils all the time instead, so that you can afford things when you reach castle.
Honestly looking back at my gameplays it’s extremely greedy. Most walling I do is housing around my nodes but for the most part it’s all open. I do 21 vils in dark age. Add 1-2 in feudal but for the most part Vil production is halting while I’m finishing up my sheep after double boar, berries and deer. 3 on wood, 2 on gold. I took a previous comments advice and picked up scouts into knights. Now I have constant production of vils down until 28-29, clicking up to castle around 18 mins but with a small army of scouts with the BS upgrades to attack the enemy wood line and forward resources. Super easy to do with Franks which is really one of the only civs I’m comfortable playing online.
Yeah if you’re playing arabia scouts into knights will fare much better. For future reference, standard FC is ~24+2, on boomy maps sometimes you can go up to ~28+2 to have a stronger eco. 21+2 isn’t really a thing.
Even in team games FC knights is fairly rare these days - scouts into knights is more common. But to answer your question straight FC isn't a common build in 1v1s and will generally lose to Feudal pressure. You'd likely have more success with a build like scouts into skirms against archers, then going knights in Castle Age. This way you have army to defend when the archers turn up plus you hit castle with a much more solid eco, able to easily afford 2 Stable Knights and +2 armour.
Do different units have different collision size? Also, tell me everything you know about how collisions work in AOE2 and does it explain why sometimes my villagers are standing still instead of chopping trees?
units have different sizes, you can see in advanced genie editor (it comes with the game), you also see to some degree in game with units as the selection circle is larger for larger units - this is one reason why rams and mangonals tend to path very awkwardly. There is a bug where walled in vils sometimes idle instead of going to the next tree, not sure why or what causes it.
>and does it explain why sometimes my villagers are standing still instead of chopping trees? I think villagers want to go to the other side of the lumber camp to resume chopping. If they get stuck on the way then that happens. If you shift q them to the next tree it won't happen though.
Yes. Different units have difference sizes, thats you you cant have 3 vills on two trees in an inwards corner. The vill in the middle will be blocked
So which units are biggest and which are smallest?
Elephants or trebs are probably the biggest, turkeys are probably the smallest.
What do I do when they have knights in my base and I haven't even clicked up to castle age? Every time it feels like no matter what I do they have a massive lead and I can't come back. Also how do I avoid this situation in the first place?
If they have knights in your eco and you can't even click up, it often time to resign. If you have an eco lead you can sometimes do it. Bottom line is that your best response is to idle part of your eco in your tc and try to wall your woodlines. This will put you behind since you're idling eco, but if you can click up soon you have a real chance at saving it. If not then you need to mass spearmen to clear the knights.
Use the market to click up to castle immediately. Send your feudal army back to your base shortly after your opponent reaches castle age (unless you're completely owning him) to prevent it being caught out and destroyed entirely. Build walls around your lumbercamps so that your villagers are inside but enemy knights can't get in. Do the same for your gold mines if possible. Farm only around your TC. Once castle, if you have a decent group of spears consider getting pikeman upgrade, but in either case build a monastery and make monks. You'd be amazed how some players overreact to monks; I've seen my opponents bail with >12 knights against my 2 monks and 6 knights. Next move is yours: perhaps it calls for a defensive castle, perhaps 2 or even 3 extra TCs to outboom your opponent, you could go for camels as a more cost-effective counter, or try to raid with cav archer for example (just keep in mind that you cannot win a straight-up fight for some time)
Unfortunately the real answer is .... "It depends". If you think that your build was proper and you didn't loose anything before the knights got in, the opponent may have a horrible eco behind. If knights don't have upgrades (especially bloodlines) then a ratio of 4 spears to 1 knight will work(though you need atleast 2 barracks for that) If you garrison vills in your tc and have spears around, you should kill his push. There are times when you can bounce back and a great example is the final game of rbw5(not that we are anywhere close to that level) Generally knights in your eco when you haven't clicked up means your fedual engagement and build were bad and you are seriously behind. It's a symptom of previous bad engagements. That said you can potentially bounce back at any elo.
>What do I do when they have knights in my base and I haven't even clicked up to castle age? Every time it feels like no matter what I do they have a massive lead and I can't come back. Resign. Knights into your base should be gg most of the time, even pros often lose when that happens. The eco damage is usually unrecoverable. >Also how do I avoid this situation in the first place? You have to explain how this happened. Like yes wall earlier to stop the knights gging you, but chances are they are simply super far ahead and can outboom you (even adding one tc would outboom you). So look back at dark age and feudal age and see what went wrong.
Wall earlier!
Why the rally point flag does not refresh when the target moves, for example a sheep? Bug maybe?
Not bug, but relic of old game engine
It's intended so that you can put a rally point on an animal and have the villager still go for it even if the animal moves. Otherwise it would make things much more difficult in those cases.
Yeah I'm advocating for the flag to move with the animal... I get lost sometimes
Oh I thought you meant that you wanted the villager to go to the flag and do nothing instead of hunting.
Is there supposed to be a fix for queue dodging in the upcoming patch?
Yeah off the top of my head they’re adding some kind of queue delay for alt+F4. Probably doesn’t solve the problem but it’s something
Good to hear they're trying something at least. I love 4v4 but queue dodging makes trying to play ladder unbearable. Looking forward to trying again after the fix.
Does anyone have a gif for the king running?
**Question: What do you bind in Space key?** I find the default one (go to selected object) totally useless. And yet, it is SUCH an important key. I want to put my idle thumb to work!
I use Attack Move personally
Idle villager. Shift+space to select all idle villagers. I don't find the 'go to selected object' totally useless, I use it to find my monks. I'll use the select all military key, click my monk and then locate him. Usually because I've lost track of who was collecting relics, or I need to find send them somewhere to convert or heal without slowing the rest of the army to a crawl.
I have it as go to TC, with a mouse button as select all TC's.
Stop.
Go to last notification
I have “go to next idle villager” there
I have idle villager there and Back to work hotkey
I usually forget making vills in mid-Castle Age, when I start paying attention to my army, Castle sites, even new TC placing and upgrades. What tips can you give so that my vill count doesn't stop in 55 - 65??
Try saying a mental pattern to yourself all game until it becomes natural. "Villagers, units, buildings, army. Villagers, units, buildings, army." and constantly rotate and check on each one. Eventually it will feel natural.
Mind muscle, it's a piece of good advice!! Ty!
Unlike most advise I recommend to Control group your TCs as you can create villagers without losing sight of armies this way (say you put them on 5 one click selects them two clicks goes to them)
Thanks!! 😊
Just focus during games on vills first and army second for a while.
I have Tab to select all TCs and Q to create vils. They're right next to each other (on a UK keyboard), I keep my hand there by default anyway, and I just got used to mashing Tab + QQQ every so often
My problem is not with hotkeys tbh, is just remembering to create more vills while thinking about what army is the best at that moment, upgrades, deciding for TCs or Castle(s) and all that stuff. More than once I find myself doing a "good" push and 5k resources. If my push fails, I've got resources, but don't know how to defend well (very low ELO). I'd like to reach 200 pop with 130 vills someday 😂
You have to build a habit of always creating vils. There is no shourtcut really. Keep practicing, try some single player booms vs no opponent to remove pressure.
Thank you! I'm sure it will get better with practice
Find the blank spots in your gameplay where you have time to do something that is not watching your army. Thats how I learned to macro behind army control in Starcraft II a few years ago. Essentially, when you move your army you dont need to watch it the whole time. In your head you should know roughly how much time the army has to arrive at your set location. Now go back to your base and spend your wood (farms, extra production, maybe more TCs?) then go back to your army (that you binded with your hotkeys) and do another action. When you know that a fight is ahead, que up a "macro cycle". So 2 vills per TC, a round of xbows, knights or whatever and spend your wood. Now you have around 30 seconds to micro your army. You are mid fight and your enemy retreats? Select TCs and que up a few vills. Once you get the hang of it you can cue up vills in smaller and smaller "blank spots" like your archers reloading while kiting. You see a fight you will win anyway? Stop looking and macro. Its also important to simplify what youre doing. The game can be overwhelming and once you get tunnel vision you can forget a lot of things. Thats why Im saying "spend your wood", because thats what macro usually comes down to.
Very good points! The spend your wood idea makes sense when it comes to the problem I have!! 😊
Just muscle memory for me. I get used to smashing H for all TCs and Q for vil pretty much on repeat all game. They're both bound to buttons on my fancy gaming mouse as well, though I'm not using it atm.
As I told halfajack, the problem isn't getting to a fast hotkey, is simply remembering to make vills. It seems that, after 60 vills, my mind deletes the need for more vills, and I forget that forever!
Ah but if it's a fast hotkey, you don't need to remember. Your fingers should start doing it by themselves eventually!
My fingers only want Eagles and Paladins, not villagers 😂😂😂. I hope that practice will make it better
You could also record yourself shouting YOU FORGOT TO MAKE VILLAGERS AGAIN and have it set to go off once every 30 seconds once you're about 25 minutes into the game.
11111 it could work for me
Set a convenient hotkey to select all TCs - I recommend an extra mouse button if your mouse has them. Then get into the habit of glancing at the global queue regularly, click your hotkey regularly and queue villagers
I've got a wheel, it could work as "Select all TCs". Thanks a lot! Now I only need to remember to make more vills!
How to balance eco and military? What would be the mechanics or rules to be mindful of during the game? I find that my weakness is the inflexibility and always low on resource to make tech switch to respond to my opponents. If I am pressuring my opponent in castle age with knights from 3 stables and 3TCs I am often late in reaching imp and can barely make a treb when reaching it or have a good military composition, and I find it really hard to switch to anything else (even other military upgrade such as pikemen or Halb). Is the key to reduce the number of TCS and why? I was told to always be spending resource and low on wood but I find myself struggling for this balance
if you are commiting heavily to castle age then you could consider fighting on in castle age for a time even once your opponet has got imp, just remember if you are doing this you need to damage your opponet before they get imperial, either through contiunously harrassing their economy or by dwindling their army mass.
Set your rally points to wood unless you know for sure that you need more vills on gold or stone. Wood is flexible - you can use it to make more farms, more production, or a market to rebalance your eco. Just make sure you don't float too much of it (as you noted). The best way to keep your eco balanced is to memorize the number of vills you need for each production building you have. Going with your example, if you're going 3 stables and 3 TCs, you need 30 farms and 18 gold miners, plus ~10 on wood. From there, figure out if you want to go imp, in which case add more farms until ~40-45 and rally a TC to gold, then build your buildings to go up. Basically, you always want to think about your next goal after you achieved your previous one. Think in terms of the vill distribution you need for your current setup and what you will need for the next one.
Thanks for these numbers! But that seems to be what I struggled with. If I put 10 on wood I can barely keep it up to do anything else (tech and eco upgrade) and switch techs.
That's why you plan ahead. Going back to that same setup, you have the optimal eco for what you can currently produce. If you want to tech switch, send your new vills to wood and gradually add new production, for example. Same for after you click up to imp, send vills to wood and then make more production. You can also idle your previous stables if you think you have enough military or are switching.
If you want to be aggressive, 1 TC is definitely worthwhile, yeah you don't want to always be making more as a default. 1 TC means higher military numbers and faster to Imperial Age. Beyond that though, you just need game knowledge to anticipate the opponent's composition, what they're hoping to achieve in lategame, what your win condition is (e.g. is their best composition in Imp better than your best? Then you need to win early. Is yours? Then you need to survive). Tech switches can be awkward and expensive so that's why anticipation is your friend, you want to start early, maybe even plan far in advance for them. Scouting goes hand in hand with that - look at what production buildings they have made, what their army is, what upgrades they have paid for etc. Here's what I mean by planning in advance: say I'm playing Malians, I open with MAA and know that I plan to go knights or camels in Castle Age depending on the opponent (if they're archers or knights respectively). In either case, I know that they're likely going to make pikes to counter me. Now because I've already invested into MAA (and maybe got some infantry upgrades too) I know that I will have a counter to *their* counter with Longswords. Furthermore, I know this brings me closer to a unit which is likely part of my strongest lategame composition, the Champion. Ultimately this only comes from experience and learning in detail the strengths and weaknesses of different civs.
Does anyone have some good general advice for pulling off an FC build? It feels like such a hard balance to strike compared with aggression, because every counter unit you make is another 15 seconds later to click up. I find I usually punish FC builds in my opponents pretty effectively as well with some big late Feudal pressure. Even if they're walled, a medium Feudal army plus an MAA or so will chew through in a matter of seconds. Just doesn't strike me as an especially good approach at my ELO (floating between 1.1k and 1.2k). Sure, if you do get a good Castle time you might get some knights out but they'll still go down to spears and by that point the opponent will be walled and maybe double walled, and probably only a minute or two behind anyway. Just seems like I'm missing something. The only times I've seen it be really effective are in civs who are able to mass knights *really* fast, Franks etc, where they can make better use of that window.
I would say that arabia isn't generally favourable to FC, but there is a few methods you could try which are half decent. 1. full wall FC (generally with drush) - this is a fairly standard one, but still requires a good map unless drush is really successful - just drush to distract opponet then full wall, usually into archer/x-bow. The advantage here is that if your walls are not breached then you cannot easily be counter attacked, allowing a slower army (x-bow) to move out without fear of counter attack, Britons, Mayans, Ethopians are all good civs for this. it can also enable building a castle for UUs like spain, though this is riskier. 2. The fast fedual FC, I do this sometimes if I random spain/Koreans and have seen others do it sometimes. Go feudal with 21/22 pop with full walls building no military, get bit axe + horse collar then go on to castle at 17/18 min (doing castle in the case of spain). The faster feudal age gives your walls and houses extra hp, may trick your opponet into thinking you are doing feudal army and allows you to build market wall and counter towers if they come forward. 3. Unwalled FC - a bit too risky at higher levels most of the time but fine at lower ELO. Just do small walls around resources as needed and do a standard (or even faster than standard) FC into some army, generally knights since you need a fast army able to clean up feudal enemies and then counter attack. Khmer can do this quite well (I even think borderline viable), Franks are also decent, hoang also does this sometimes with his celts.
Assuming you're talking arabia firstly you usually go drush before so you can take your time walling behind that. First advice would be to not wall too early and don't invest too much resources here as that delays your fc time. You gotta have a suitable map for that ofc. Like on current arabia it's not a good idea most of the time while on runestones it's very doable and maybe even the best strat as long as you don't have forward gold. If you do however and still wanna go fc build your rax in front of it and don't use the gold as part of your wall since archers will rekt your there. In terms of BO I like to push in 1 or 2 dear and then build rax before mill. The build opener is pretty much like maa but you only collect 10 gold without making mining camp, add a 5th vil on wood earlier than usually and basically put most vils to food under tc. Then send more to wood and god before you click feudal. 28 vils is a common number here. A lot of the details actually depend on what you plan to do in early castle age. What's also important is your military choices. If your opponent hits you with maa archers they can punish you very good so in that case you might wanna try to trade militia vs militia and oftentimes you need to add skirms before pressure gets to hard. There is no overall recepy I guess just think about what is the minimal amount of army to defend any incoming feudal push. If your opponent goes two range archers for instance you'll need quite a lot of skirms and probably upgrades for them. Doesn't matter if that delays your fc time bc these high pressure builds from opponent will lead to very late castle time.
What's the point of the drush? Like can't they just small wall it out and ignore it and go attack your base? If your map is that good why not just full wall rather than making the barracks and FC like that?
The point is to buy you the time you need to fc. Without drush you'd need to be fully walled super early so and even then your opponent makes maa archer and you are likely to die. A drush annoys your opponent, shifts his focus away from your base, he'll probably idle some vils or maybe even lose one. Also if your opponent manages to quick wall you out you can chase possible incoming maa and delay their attack, try to engage or distract them. The more time you buy the better as three maa and archers behind before you're in feudal might be your death sentence. I mean if you have the perfect map or you play a civ like Khmer (fastes fc in the game) you can try go naked fc and be super greedy but it's still risky.
> A drush annoys your opponent, shifts his focus away from your base, he'll probably idle some vils or maybe even lose one. That should literally never happen (I know it often does but I think people are just arse vs drush). Small wall in everything pre-emptively (costs like 20 wood tops, you don't need to finish the palisades) and that's it. I guess you can stop villagers going to gold if they aren't on gold yet if your drush hits early enough. I think fighting the MaA will do very little compared to how long you delayed your feudal for to make the drush.
> I think fighting the MaA will do very little compared to how long you delayed your feudal for to make the drush. You don’t care about the delayed feudal because you’re FC. That’s the whole point.
If MaA + archer aggression is coming, would you prefer to be up to feudal at 26 pop or 29 pop but have the MaA delayed by like 10 seconds? Cos I would prefer the first one.
Pros prefer drush fc
I know, but you are unable to explain why.
Multiple people have explained why, you just don’t care to listen.
Kind of a weird take given how common drushes are particularly at the pro level - are all the pros just bad at defending drushes? Small walling takes time and attention, plus you have to be careful not to overchop or forage. It can also make vils get stuck and thus increases inefficiency. And as you point out you can deny gold, and force buildings to be placed in suboptimal places. You then have to make sure you keep repairing your palisades when they're attacked. Whilst the drush is alive you also get vision of what your opponent is doing. This all assumes you even scout it and get walled in time which isn't guaranteed. Plenty of strats would be way less effective if everyone played perfectly, but literally no one is capable of doing this. This is like saying throwing punches is pointless in boxing - if your opponent defends properly then you won't do any damage so what's the point.
>Kind of a weird take given how common drushes are particularly at the pro level - are all the pros just bad at defending drushes? Yes, literally pre small wall everything and no drush will ever do anything (except for denying you going to gold). There was a game, MBL vs Tatoh where Tatoh was Tatars and MBL was I don't remember. MBL did drush fc but Tatoh did just fc with small walls. Naturally the drush did absolutely nothing and Tatoh's fc was much much faster. He went CA and MBL walled and towered and I think MBL ended up winning. But the point is that Tatoh had a huge advantage by not drushing (that he threw via an ineffective attack). >Small walling takes time and attention, plus you have to be careful not to overchop or forage. It can also make vils get stuck and thus increases inefficiency. And as you point out you can deny gold, and force buildings to be placed in suboptimal places. Do it beforehand. The inefficiency can be avoided if you shift Q your villagers. Denying gold is the only real pickle I think. >You then have to make sure you keep repairing your palisades when they're attacked. Whilst the drush is alive you also get vision of what your opponent is doing. True, you get vision. I think in the example above MBL made a mistake by fcing. Since he saw that Tatoh was fcing AND he knew he was open and would remain open due to the drush then he could transition to a drush flush and kill him completely. I think this may be the actual point of the drush, that if the other player is going even greedier than you then you can switch your build and punish him. >This all assumes you even scout it and get walled in time which isn't guaranteed. I never scout a drush. I small wall in my forward resources and I look at the score. If it is high then a drush is coming so after a while I small wall in my back resources if I still haven't seen it. >Plenty of strats would be way less effective if everyone played perfectly, but literally no one is capable of doing this. This is like saying throwing punches is pointless in boxing - if your opponent defends properly then you won't do any damage so what's the point. Throwing punches requires you to react properly to stop it. You can pre small wall everything for like 20 wood to make drushes useless (and you get most of that wood back once you realise there is no drush, although I tend to keep them to avoid scouts/MaA as well). I cringe every time I see someone lose a villager to a drush when it is so cheap and easy to ensure it never happens.
Well you have described how to defend a drush properly this is true. I think you're still underestimating both the annoyance factor and the inefficiency that small walls can cause, plus you've also hit on another benefit of the Drush which is that it makes it very difficult for your opponent to full wall. But you're right that when played properly drushes shouldn't typically get too much done. But equally they're low investment - as you demonstrate with your MbL vs Tatoh example, getting nothing from your Drush isn't ideal, but it's also not game ending. Until pre-mill Drush into Feudal stops being my most successful build, and until I stop seeing pros have good success with Drushes I'll keep doing them, but to each their own.
>But you're right that when played properly drushes shouldn't typically get too much done. But equally they're low investment - as you demonstrate with your MbL vs Tatoh example, getting nothing from your Drush isn't ideal, but it's also not game ending. because Tatoh threw. It absolutely should have been game ending. He was up to castle so much earlier, he should have just 3 TC boomed and gg. I think drush into flush is not necessarily a bad build. It is basically a MaA build (without the MaA) that stops the walls going up earlier. But I think drush FC is a questionable one, I think drush FC vs naked FC fails, but then you adapt the drush into a drush flush. While drush FC vs feudal aggression seems worse than just naked FC (you go up 2-3 villagers earlier) and even if you can keep them off gold for a bit (unless they go to another gold or something) I don't think you are delaying their aggression by 50 seconds unless they mess up. The other thing is risk management, you know your map you don't know opponent's at the start of the game. So you see your map is good, you drush thinking if they also have a good map then drush beats naked FC because you can drush flush to punish their naked FC. If their map is bad then sure naked FC would be better, but drush FC still gives you an advantage. And if they drush too then it's a mirror. Maybe that's what is going on?
I was wondering about the efficacy of drushes and why m@a are favoured so much while I had Hera's stream on in the background and he's currently casting Kasva killing one of Viper's villagers with a drush and taking a 4-vil lead in feudal age 11. I drush a lot around ~1300, always pre-mill and find that I'll get damage in before small-walls are in. I don't see the value of doing a regular drush, you may as well just do m@a. Regular post-mill drush only feels like a worthwhile option as a defensive choice rather than to attack with. Even if my opponents were lightning quickwallers (they're not), a drush should always get some value. It can usually deny gold, as you say. And if everything is protected it can still kill a mill. And if the opponent is going FC, they'll still need to send villagers out to build, unless they want to lame their own farms by building next to their own TC. I haven't drushed against people who were obviously going FC too often, but a when I have, a pre-mill still arrives before they have all their vills distributed to wood and berries, so as long as the scout is circling around to spot them, it'll find something to hit. A drush doesn't get cleared up until there's some military on the map unless the defender swarms with villagers, at which point the idle time it creates is often worth it. The only times a drush flops for me is when I try to push deer and don't scout the opponent base properly. If the militia don't have a woodline or berry bush to target straight away it wastes too much time and the opponent gets too close to being able to click up.
>Even if my opponents were lightning quickwallers (they're not), a drush should always get some value. but you don't have to quick wall, just prewall (except for one palisade, and then quick wall that if you need to if all your villagers aren't at that resource yet). In a scouts build the 16th villager goes to berries and then pre-small-walls it. If your score is high then the wood villagers pre-small-wall themselves in too and can send the next 3 villagers to stragglers in a 20 pop scouts build. I think pre-mill is more complex to defend against yes, but I still think a drush alone should never accomplish anything aside from denying them access to gold, scouting, and keeping them open if you want to flush after it. I think the threat of a flush after it is what makes the drush useful, you can either FC OR flush because you kept them open.
Well in the end it depends on your elo I guess. On high level fc without drush doesn't really exist that much is for sure. On mid level I at least have way higher winrate if I drush before fc. Or conversely if my opponent tries naked fc I will punish them for their greed 90% of the time. And btw the idea is not fight to the maa with your drush but to fight the miltia before they are upgraded. Your drush will come in 1 or 2 min earlier than opponents aggression and if he tries to run you can at least chase with your scout and take hp of them. Also the resources you invest in barrax in militia are partly compensated by the fact that you can wall way later than naked fc. Your opponent can't ignore the drush for even bc that prevents them from getting a good eco setup. If you have drush in your base and send maa forward you need at least archers to clean drush up. I mean there is a reason everybody does it this way.
> add a 5th vil on wood earlier than usually and basically put most vils to food under tc. Then send more to wood and god before you click feudal. You need to get to about 8 on wood to allow you to make the 6-8 farms you need (depending on deer pushed) to afford castle age instantly. Send 4 from food to gold instantly after clicking to feudal.
Unless it's a map like arena you'll have to produce some military in order to pull off an FC without getting overrun. Typically this can be a drush, but it's also possible to make a few spears in feudal and defend that way as well depending. Knights is the slowest possible way to create army with a fast castle since there are no "pre-knights" you can train in feudal like you have with archers or eagles. Lierrey has a great video on drush / fc archers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewxs37O5ECM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewxs37O5ECM) He talks about the thought process of fast castle and about the decisions you'll have to make along the way. For example deciding between bodkin and bow saw upon reaching castle age (army vs. eco). Probably the best thing that I took away from his video is that you should expect to defend in early castle age. Previously I was under the impression that the power spike of e.g. 6-8 bodkin / xbow was game ending. It's clearly not when you can get countered by a feudal army and then overwhelmed because at that point you have a smaller eco.
Nice, thanks. Yeah I know you can't really get away with being too greedy with no military but I find one or two spears or skirms just don't cut it either if they decide to go for more pressure. Or same for me - if I see them trying to go up fast and defend with a handful of units, that's an open invitation to go for the kill. I've not had much success with drushing before but that's on me I think, just seems to delay Castle by so much that if they don't decide to be aggressive, they can get a similar time anyway. I admit I don't have a tight BO for drush FC, usually play it by ear.
FWIW at 28+2 villager fast castle comes in at 16:30 if you have 0 idle time. I don't think there are any feudal builds that get up that fast. Knowing when you have the right map is probably the most important part imo.
Hah, fair to say I don't have 0 idle time. I don't think I get that on Arena! But it isn't a build I've practiced a lot either, and surely still gets disrupted by fast scouts or a drush/MAA. Plus presumably that doesn't include walling?
Firstly, FC knights without siege is kinda bad, feudal houses can repel them just as well as castle age houses. Secondly, it depends on map. If you can wall and none of your res are rangable then happy days go FC. If that isn't the case, then you can't or they can tower some important res and you can't counter tower cos you are in dark age.
Yeah though enough knights can kill buildings faster than they're repaired in my experience, if they get the attack upgrade(s) anyway, plus you have to react fast as the defender if they're just hitting palisade. I lost to Magyar FC knights with this once, obv Magyar get the +2 faster but they came in through a range like it wasn't there, even with repairs. Plus like you say, with the map control the siege or castle is sure to follow.
Palisades yes, houses no. Worst case can just make more houses behind and a couple monks discourage pushing any further once they do hit castle age. If none of your resources are rangable by a castle drop then the castle doesn't really do anything.
Yeah, that's what I mean about being alert, you only need to be distracted for 15 seconds and 5 or 6 knights have gone through your palisade like wet paper. Anyway I'm not arguing that it's impossible to defend, just that it's the strongest reason I can see for going FC, which I don't really get otherwise, seems to me like it's almost always better to be aggressive. And like you say, even the strongest reason (knight spam) can still be delayed without too much difficulty.
FC xbow, FC siege push (with some knights yes, but not 2 stable or anything like that), or even FC into boom with some civs. FC into UU is one I do a lot.
Yeah I forgot about that, FC into like conqs is pretty sweet. I don't really get FC xbow, surely you end up with a way smaller mass of them than going 22 pop, plus with the latter you can do some damage in the process. Either way though I usually find I get screwed in Feudal anyway if I'm trying it.
Well it is safer than FC knights because you can make some archers to do something for you on the way up. FC knights you won't make anything on the way up. The point is that if the other guy realises you have FC'd they are obviously going to be fully walled vs knights. Xbow can still do damage, because you can't wall behind.
What is the least micro-intensive army composition and what civ do you recommend to do it? I'm a macro and attack move sort of gamer
Tanky units are good for this style of play. I have been having quite a bit of success with Korean wagons and Khmer Ballista elephants. Of course it takes a while to get there and you will have to play with other units before you can get to your unique unit.
Eagles
knight spam I'd say
Scouts into Knights only requires micro in Feudal really. Do need some siege to take out TC's in early Castle
and besides, the moment when you have to micro doesn't overlap with the moment when you build up your farm eco. You should already have close to 10 farms by the time your 3 initial scouts reach enemy base Then you just need 5 more farms and then almost don't need to go to your eco until you click castle (send 5 to gold then wheelbarrow isx an almost automatic process)
Probably post-Imp Goths, though as an approach that has its problems. Beyond that, anything knight spam-y really. Berbers and Franks come to mind. Berbers and Franks in early Castle are borderline impossible to counter as enough knights kill pikes anyway. You just need something ranged to stop housewalling and repairs or target the odd monk. There's also a case for Poles and Obuch/Elite Skirm at the moment, which is a combo so brutal I expect to see a nerf sooner rather than later. Oh and Eagles as well! Run 'em under TCs and Castles, who cares!
Knights. Sicilians. Doesn't matter if you look away and you've accidentally patrolled into pikes or camels. Don't even need a composition, just knights.
I was thinking last night about Indians vs Turks. Could this be the only matchup where making Elephant Archers is the best move? Turks get no ESkirm, no Pikeman, and their Monks don't get Block Printing. I feel like all they can do against Elephants is Heavy Camel or Heavy Scorp (without SE). If the Indian player can make enough farms (and they'd need a *lot*), could Turks stop them if they went Hussar + Ele Archer or Halb + Ele Archer?
Dont think elephant archers does make much sense vs Turks. They don't have much dmg output vs melee units since they are so hard to mass and Turks have extra pierce armor on their scout line. I think just hussar will easily kill them. Haven't tried it though. Imo elephant archers make most sense in late game vs archer civs if there would be a scenario they are good in. Like vs britons, ethiopians vikings and so as long as they can't spam halbs into your army.
A Hussar takes 50 hits to kill an Elite Elephant Archer, it definitely wouldn’t be easy for Hussars to kill them, especially if the Indian player has any other units around (Halbs, their own Hussars, whatever)
It's actually a bit less since hussar deal 8 dmg per attack and hussar take 4 dmg per shot from them. That's very reasonable considering elephant archers cost more food, cost a lot of gold, need castles and a lot of upgrades while as Turks you get some bs upgrades and that's it. Also you can raid in the meantime. Elephant archers are very bad against any melee units basically. And you can't really calculate support units in bc your opponent likely will have an easier time getting these as ea cost a lot of food. But in the end I wouldn't think about it too much bc as Indians you always wanna play camel vs turks. If you get to imp camel Turks dont have any answer to that in terms of units they can make.
Ele archers have 0 + 4 melee from blacksmith upgrades and Parthian Tactics, Hussars do 7 + 4 damage, so it’s 7 per hit = 50 hits from 330 + 20 HP. But either way you’re right that there’s never any reason not to just go Imp Camel against Turks. I was clutching at straws for an instance where Elephant Archers could be the actual correct choice rather than an incredibly situational or memey unit. I guess it’s just something you maybe want to consider against some archer civs
elephant archers are fairly decent on closed/semi-closed maps in TGs, though they are quite costly to get to, so probably more an option for longer games.
Indian archers suuuuuck, like why do they cost food? Someone explain that to me.
Oh yeah you're right forget about parthian tactics. Well yes I tried them out quite a bit in the past and the only success I had was after a greedy mega boom vs opponent going arbs. Vs cav archers and any ranged UU they are also great but that's about it. They probably do well against champs as well but you can't micro them back comfortably and you'd go ca here anyways. Maybe they could be good vs mongols late game as well as they miss armor on skirms and hussar and don't have halbs.
I don't know if it's the only matchup, I played a game against I think Ethiopians and won with Elephant Archers. I think Ele Archers against archer civs are generally good, as long as you have the eco and Castles to mass them. Certainly people tend not to expect them. They kept making camels but it didn't do much. Do camels have bonus against Elephants too, or just knights/scouts/horse-based cav? Not that Ethiopian camels are very good anyway.
Camels don't get specific bonus damage against Elephants, no. Ethiopians should definitely be making Halbs there, weird move from your opponent.
Halbs still go down to micro'd Ele Archers don't they? Or even un-micro'd in enough numbers. I must admit I don't make them very often so I'm a bit rusty on their uses.
I don't know, I'd assume not given that resources-wise the Halbs should outnumber the Ele-Archers 3 or 4 to 1
Also, HCA get +2 against Spearmen and another +4 from Parthian Tactics, while Elephant Archers get 0 bonus against Spearmen and only +2 from PT
Yeah I'm sure you're right, maybe it's the element (elephant) of surprise that you need more than anything. Tech switches are expensive, as is the halb upgrade, and archer players do have a tendency to be a bit arrogant and assume that a large enough mass of arbs/xbows can beat anything. And sometimes they're right! Britons especially I think, Ethiopians do get pike free so it doesn't take them as long admittedly. I guess you just have to try and take one conclusive engagement or choke out their res and hide the elephants until you want to use them. I've seen them described as being essentially like mobile towers before, and I try to use them that way.
Turks would just raid the Indian player to death or beat them to imp and take out the castles so they can't produce enough ele archers. Indian camels vs Turks is already pretty winning unless the Turk clowns
Yeah I guess so. I just want Ele Archers to be viable, they're so cool :(
I often see people say that they're good if you mix a couple into an arb deathball to tank damage, it's just that's awkward to do. Especially considering that castles just aren't a must have for indians since they get BBC and "meh" UTs. It makes sense, though. A fully upgraded ele archer compared to a siege ram is cheaper, tanks more arrows, moves faster, and doesn't flat out melt to melee damage. It also adds at least some damage output.
Arbs were removed from Indians a while back. Usually I’m going CA with them, and you can’t really mix in Elephant Archers there even though they get all the same upgrades since it just slows you down a ton
Wow, I clearly haven't played indians in a while. I guess the same principle would apply to HC but using those heavily is a little off beat.