Have I Reached My Limit? Am I a Poor Player or Struggling Learner?
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I’m having a hard time improving my gameplay.
I have 1045 ELO with 1650 wins and 1643 losses in RM.
I’m not sure if this is the best I can do or if there’s something I need to work on.
I’ve been playing Random CIVs for my first 2500 games, and occasionally banning water-heavy maps.
I don’t have any specific build orders, except for normal FC and 20-22 POP Feudal.
I’ve tried a lot of strategies, like Hun Longsword spam against Vikings and winning, Tower rushing with Japs, and many other meta strategies.
I usually get to Castle Age under 25 minutes.
After realizing that my ELO wasn’t going up, I asked some pros and they said that playing Random every time makes you inconsistent and puts too much pressure on decision making.
So they suggested that I pick one CIV and go in-depth with it.
I’ve been playing Tatars since then, usually with double stable feudal or FC 3 Archer CA.
My ELO hasn’t improved much.
I’m not great at micro, so I rely on free thumb ring or CA HP to keep my numbers alive.
My siege micro is average, and my idle TC is present but not huge.
I don’t handle Drush and MAA well, but I’m good at expanding with multiple TCs and raiding with Hussars or Steppe Lancers.
I research Blacksmith upgrades, university upgrades, and counter units, and I usually have between 120-140 villagers max.
I’m good at stone walling and bombard tower defenses.
I’m not sure why my ELO isn’t going up, but I suffer most losses in the late feudal to mid castle period, and my win rate is only 40%.
Post Imp, my win rate is above 60%.
I’m also good at castle drops and treb wars, and I use flaming camels to counter strong CA or CAV civs.
I’m starting to think that this is my limit in terms of intelligence in the game.
What tips do other AOE2 players have for me?
Have you hit your ceiling?
Going random is a not a good way to improve your elo and the skill.
Because you have to adapt each game and have to perform various build orders that are not efficient with the particular civ.
I am a random civ player and used to go pick civ earlier.
So my advice is pick one cav civ.
Pick one strat and practice a perfect build order, ceceiro build orders are perfect for this.
Idea is do the same thing every time and do it efficiently.
Dont focus much on macro, focus on army control and keeping military numbers.
Once you are comfortable at one elo level, then try to go random.
You could use help from someone analyzing a few recorded games to help you spot things you can’t spot.
DM me in discord: GregStein#2970
I am willing to discuss and watch with you a few recs.
If you have a few games that were even (open maps only pls) i wouldnt mind checking them out to see if anything obvious is a problem.
Ive been getting more time to coach and review again nowadays.
If you have a few games that were even (open maps only pls) i wouldnt mind checking them out to see if anything obvious is a problem.
Ive been getting more time to coach and review again nowadays.
Are you using hotkeys?
It sounds lame and boring, but using a few hotkeys has done more for my winrate than anything.
Being able to spam production or slam down a couple of houses/palisades when getting rushed has made a real impact.
Send me a dm & we can go over recs & strategies.
Just my opinion, there may be upward mobility to be had from implementing efficiencies and shaving idle tc and military production time.
Anyone in our elo range (under 1600) likely can benefit from some macro improvements and those seem more attainable than just like microing better (for reference I was roughly 1400 but with zero micro and now just play the AI).
One thing I did recently was have a select all military hotkey on my mouse that allowed me to quickly either go to specific units in the map or reconfigure control groups much faster.
Another major upgrade was having a tc control group from dark age to queue vills without taking your eye off military or scouting.
It should shave idle tc time.
If you can shave idle tc time you’ll straight up win games.
We beat ourselves a lot at this level lol.
Anyway don’t think of yourself as bad.
You’re not.
You’re just not a pro and that’s cool.
Glhf!
Well first off rating yourself isn’t working for you.
If it was you’d be improving.
In general you have to pay attention to details and note cause and effect patterns across games.
Try watching recorded games as a pre play warmup and slow it down to catch everything.
If you want specifics from snother person then get another person to play with you and watch what you do.
If i had to guess, your doing things that you think aren’t a big deal that actually are.
I’m only 1300 bit DM me if you liked to play sometime.
2500 games on random civ.
if you enjoyed these games, you have achieved more than a few hundred more elo points could give you.
But if that is your goal, and after what Im reading from you, you might wanna really tighten up your BOs.
When you practice certain BOs on certain civs, they suddenly become 1-2 villagers tighter, and suddenly you are a minute ahead and your opponent is always in trouble.
My approach to the game was basically the opposite of you.
I practice a certain BO for a certain civ on a certain map, and I really enjoy that practice.
And I basically hit the ladder at 1300.
I really focus on spending every resource immedietaly, have no idle TC and keep my army active, and that alone usually gives me +10 villagers by minute 25.
Tight BOs are incredible and deadly.
I feel like you have conquered the random civ world, you might wanna take a deep dive into really tightening up a certain BO on a certain map with a certain civ.
If you ask like that.
Yes with this track record you probably are either a bad player or poor learner (whatever you prefer to think yourself as).
However it really doesn’t matter.
You don’t get paid more if you’re better, you don’t have more fun by pure merit of being better.
As long as you have even matches and fun there’s very little difference of doing it either at 1800 or 1000.
Yes you would be matched against better players and go 50/50 against them instead of newish players at 1000, but there’s nothing more to it.
You aren’t using build orders so your dark age is garbage.
Legit a proper dark age gets you to 1400.
Watch your demos on capture age.
Keep an eye on your idle TC counter.
You want it to stay 0 as long as possible.
Just improving here will easily catapult you up 200 ELO points.
After that it’s floating wood in feudal age.
Similar concept, keep Wood count at 0, takes you probably to 1500 ELO.
Usually people don’t read the game/map well at that level and usually people don’t maintain their economy while attacking.
Its the same with every game, you need to do focused training/learning to get better at the game after a certain point.
Note that getting better at the game isn’t necessarily going to make your time with the game better, so if your enjoying yourself as is, that’s great.
Its definitely more rewarding to improve though!
As with every game you need to do a mix of the following, and its more or less 100% guaranteed you will improve:
1.Practice in a closed focused safe situation – aka offline in single player.
In AoE2 this looks like mastering 1, 2 or 3 basic builders vs the A.I.
Specifically, mastering Scouts and Archers BOs is the way to go here.
And throw in MAA too if you really want to demolish people at your ELO.
Build orders are by far the best things to just practice, but if you really want you can practice even more focused bits like pushing deer, killing the board with the TC, dodging mango shots etc.
2.
Apply your practice online – no matter how much you practice in offline/closed situations, when you actually do it in a real situation it will feel different and more chaotic.
Things will happen like losing villagers, misclicks, nerves, losing your scout at the start etc.
Best way to do this is usually to play a game with the mindset of “The only point of this game is to apply my practice, not to win.
That is just a bonus/side effect”
3.
Watch recordings and see where you went wrong.
Idle time?
Bad micro?
Not scouting enough?
Too defensive?
4.
Watch other pro players with good commentators, and other youtube guides/trainers like the survivalist and hera.
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Rinse and repeat the above, and you will always improve.
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