I Used to Play This Game as a Child and Later Moved to StarCraft II, Achieving Diamond Rank, Yet I Am Poorly Skilled – Any Suggestions?
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I have recently watched some videos of Hera and T90 in action and have seen some of their build orders.
I understand the basics of defensive walling and walling in general, but need to work on trapping enemy units.
I am not sure how to handle the transition from feudal to imperial times properly.
I know that I need to get the wood upgrade and the wheelbarrow/cart from the Town Center as soon as I reach feudal, since economy is very important.
I usually get good aggressive map position with my castle but don’t build enough production buildings.
I am also unsure about how many production buildings I need for effective tech swapping and remaxing.
I am good with micro and have seen some interesting tech with toggling unit stance for siege weapon shots, but I don’t know enough about common points of getting housed, when to tech swap, and the unit compositions to counter.
I think the best way to learn this is by playing more games, but I am hoping that some of my questions can be answered to save me time.
My current ELOs are 448 for Random and 795 for Empire Wars.
A part of me died when you suggested getting wheelbarrow and cart thing as soon as you hit feudal
1) keep your tc running.
Always.
2) feudal age is mostly about early timing rushes with low army numbers and then transitioning into castle age.
That mainly means getting many farms up and running, since the 800 food is usually the limiting factor to get to castle age.
3)early Castle age can be again used for timing attacks, since castle age units (knights,xbow, siege units) are much superior to feudal units.
After that its about expanding with extra tcs (2 extra tcs with the 200 stone is standard, more only in late Castle age or imp to secure ressources) and increasing your farm count.
Food is often the key ressource in this game, since its the only one where you cannot simply shift 20 vills to.
While expanding people use army to harass the enemy or take control of important areas of the map.
4) imperial age often offers the first timing to really win a game.
Trebuchets (and upgraded) rams are the first really efficient way to deal with enemy castles and tcs.
Again upgraded imp units can kill Castle age armys efficiently.
When the game goes into a stable imperial age game, its about maxing out(200 pop) and getting into the desired army composition.
Keeping production running, economy efficient and actually using your army are the most important things.
Now a few important things.
Fletching, bodkin+xbow, bracer +arbalest are huge power spikes.
Same goes for the 2nd and third cavalry armor.
Especially the imperial age cav armor is a crazy powerspike against ranged units.
Archer line and knight line dominate this game.
Keep an eye our for the availability of the above mentioned upgrades.
In imperial age halberdiers are a very efficient cavalry counter.
Everything else is secondary for the start.
Floating resources: Use them in Castle age to expand your Economy and get upggrades for your army.
It should normally be 1 main type (archer or cavalry) and getting to imperial age.
In imp you of course get more upgrades, but in general its more important to have numbers than to control units perfectly.
Imperial is often about “spamming” units and patrolling them in (until a certain level).
General Imperial age army compositions advice:
-trebs or bombard cannon
+ a main gold army (ranged, cavalry, unique unit, eagles etc..)
+ a trash unit to “spam”. (Light cav/hussar, skirmisher, halberdiers)
+ potentially other siege (rams/onager)Thats everything from the top of my head.
The key concept being: expand your economy and win with numbers.
Here are some things that helped me: https://dondinardoni.com/kickstart-your-aoe2-gameplay/
Check out the Hera build orders.
Pick one and Follow it absolutely exactly over and over.
With he same civ.
That’ll get you to castle age for sure.
Then you can experiment with different Civs and BOs.
The key is to follow it exactly, no deviation.
I used to be like, what’s an extra house etc.
But it matters in the tight BOs.
If you want more help, maybe post a past game and people can comment.
about unit comps to counter and maybe if you want to exactly know how long something takes and if you dont get bored by just reading about things, give the wiki a try: [https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II:Portal](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II:Portal)
afaik all stats are up to date there, and it includes all the stats and mechanics the game doesnt tell you directly.
For civs most interesting is the tech tree page, and if you are interested in gather rates the villager page has them.
Although about vill numbers needed to support certain production its maybe easier to just look at this website by survivalist: https://aoe2-de-tools.herokuapp.com/
Do not focus on timer.
Focus on not having idle tc and clean dark age which is more important.
Realized I didn’t answer the castle thing much but it all really depends.
You can move forward to apply pressure or you can place castles on key hills over key resources or areas of the map and play the longer game.
Usually more of a style preference.
I’d say as you climb elo, castle placement will usually be more conservative/safer on open maps but it really is super dependent on the game specific situation.
I think it takes roughly 2 vils worth of TC time for a single vil to make a house.
While eco techs are good, getting wheelbarrow super early in feudal is usually very bad.
Most build orders don’t recommend it until like 30-33 vils or in early castle age.
Wheelbarrow mainly effects farming so it’s better to have the 3 vils doing tasks in early feudal than the more efficient ones and then just wait until you have a bunch of farms rolling to research.
It’s also pretty expensive and could hurt your ability to produce army and defend or apply early pressure.
If you do find yourself housed, town watch is always a great research to get instead as it’ll greatly help you spot early raids while keeping that TC busy.
As for the rest, 3 Tc’s is usually fine until early imp.
The biggest key tho is actually keeping those TC’s running.
If they aren’t making vills then they aren’t doing much for you except providing a place to hide.
Doesn’t answer all of your q’s but hope it helps!
splitting formations important so is attack ground onager stance.
onager shots can win games also help in treb wars if they arent taking naked castle shots at low numbers.
at least 3 of a building type on tech switches outside feudal.
scale out pre housing.
lots of transferable skill here.
hit hard and fast, lost units hurt more and are even less forgiving. 4s is main game rts endgame mode always.
I have a few tips to help, also don’t touch ranked for a while if you don’t want to cry yourself to sleep
1.
Art of war (obviously)
2.
Watch build orders in action (hera’s guide to 2k has this) or use Cicero’s interactive guide and get an A
3.
You should only get wheelbarrow after having plenty of farmers, around 16-18 is good.
Double bit axe however should be obtained instantly after advancing except in a few strategies.
Horse collar is obtained in some builds, researched later in others.
Make sure to get wood upgrades after every age up.
4.
Avoid floating resources as in having some but not using them, transfer vills from a resource you’re floating to one you need, like sending lumberjacks onto farms or training crossbows if you have a bunch of gold and wood you want to spend.
5.
Tech switching is usually costly so randomly switching in castle age isn’t always a great idea, investing in too many counter units is always a bad idea, knights counter pikes and crossbows counter skirms unless you heavily invest in them.
6.
Focus on strategy and execution.
Quick walling like viper or splitting troops isn’t gonna get you to the top by itself. (Micro tip, spam split and line formation to dodge arrows, similar thing can be done with your starting scout)
If you want to experience the feudal pressure you can try initiating it – while learning new things you will lose, but good to practice your eco management with military presence.
One of the most useful habits I got into was using a select all tc button to keep making villagers while causing trouble
> pull off an 8:15 dark age transition to feudal with loom and 21 pop
perfect timing to click up with loom and 21 pop would be 7:30, so you have 45 seconds of idle time there, which amounts to almost 2 villagers less (1 villager is 25seconds ingame)
It would help if u write down what elo u are right now.
If you are like under 1100, or even under 1200, maybe the best way to play for you would be fast castle knight rush?
Otherwise you can do a scout rush into knights and try to perfect it.
Or a 2 archery range archer rush.
dont think about man at arms or militia rush till you are at least 1400 elo.
Regarding listing houses on a BO: unless they’re specifically part of a BO (e.g. 2 houses + then Barracks for a premill drush), building new houses is considered muscle memory and something you do occasionally.
If you play a scout rush with 22 pop (21 villagers + 1 scout) you need 4 houses to not get housed when clicking up to Feudal Age.
I personally like to build house 3 with the villager luring the first boar and house 4 with the first villager to berries.
If I have 3 on wood, I have enough wood for a mill as soon as the 3rd to berries is made.
Here’s one personal opinion and what got me go from 1.2 to 1.8k elo: if you have the capacity to have minimun resources while creating army, you dont need build orders.
Also, all build orders end in castle age and that is where the players ability to waste resources comes in while also going imp before enemy and keep overwhelming the enemy.
Obviously this wont work for everyone and first learning basic build orders (scout rush, m@a into archers and FC boom) its needed, to then be able to flexibility.
Edit: wont> what got me
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