Improve Your Open Map Skills
- This topic has 7 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 1 year, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I began playing a few weeks ago, and I’ve picked up some standard strategies and countermeasures.
Although having a good build order is essential, it doesn’t help when your opponent, who has 1,000 games under their belt, goes for an early rush.
Trying to defend seems pointless since I usually fall behind economically, so should I just try to be the first one to rush with quick units?
Is it a workable strategy to wall myself in?
Also, are there certain civilizations that are better suited for maps like Arabia?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
>Defending seems useless as I just fall behind on eco, so is it just a matter of being the first guy to rush with fast units?
This is certainly not true, although most players prefer to be the aggressor.
In general, you need to invest fewer resources into defending than you do into attacking on a unit-per-unit, resource-per-resource basis.
A spearman costs 60 total resources and can very easily kill two scouts (160 food) by itself.
Skirmishers require upgrades at the blacksmith to be effective but with fletching and padded archer armor can consistently win fights against archers outnumbered 2-to-1.
This doesn’t mean you should just sit on your butt and wait to be attacked, though; it’s important to know what your opponent is making through scouting (do they have archery ranges or stables?
if they have units garrisoned in their barracks in dark age they are going to send forward either militia earlier or Men-at-Arms later) and it’s important to not overinvest.
Spending the right amount of resources is the tricky part – too much, and, like you said, you fall behind on eco and your opponent can switch unit types to destroy your army.
Too little, however, and you take more damage from the attack.
Spend the right amount, and your opponent will have spent more on attacking than you did on defending and you will gain the upper hand.
>Is it viable to wall yourself in
It is, but you can’t expect to simply stonewall your whole base and pull ahead after that – it is simply too many resources invested between the resource cost and the labor cost of construction.
Survivalist has a very deep-dive video on walling here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ty5cgtKLWI
But you should do it every game, in some capacity, at some point, more or less.The types of walls you make depend on the types of units you are facing (again, scouting!).
>are certain civs better on maps like Arabia
Typically, civs with strong early aggressive potential are favored on Arabia.
The Maya, Aztecs, Franks, and Britons are very good at dominating feudal age and can put you on the back foot early.
But more defensively-minded civs are good as well.
Byzantines have almost entirely defensive bonuses, but are above-average at a high level of play because they can survive the early game and transition into powerful units later and faster.
The Burgundians invest a lot of resources into economic upgrades earlier than their opponents, but so long as you can manage to avoid taking critical damage before those upgrades pay for themselves you will be in a position to grow your economy more than your opponent and later put those resources towards an army that can attack.
The important thing to keep in mind is that defending *just for the sake of defending* will never win you a game.
We said earlier that defensive units cost fewer resources than offensive units.
So what are you spending the difference on?
If you are defending, you need to be thinking of a way to turn your situation into an advantage (most commonly by booming and adding eco while defending, but sometimes through buying enough time to reach a certain technology advantage or mass of powerful units).
Critical stuff: keep eco running.
Always be making vills while defending or attacking.
Keep laying down farms.
Scout what is coming.
More advanced stuff (for people just learning): don’t engage until you have enough units.
E.g.
sending 1 skirmisher at a time against 6 archers will not work.
Wait till you have 3 or 4, then fight.
Think about follow up and counter attack.
If you’ve killed thier army dont be scared of sending your army forward.
If you’ve taken damage this is your opportunity to do damage to them and catch up a bit.
You can always retreat if it doesn’t go well.
Advice from 1300 ELO player with around 1.2k games on open maps, 1vs1.
**Walls:**
it is certainly a good idea to wall, but you can’t do it too early or you will fall behind in eco.
Vils being sent to wall are not only spending resources on the actual walls (palisades, houses), but they are wasting time by walking and building the walls, all time that could have been spent on collecting resources.
So imagine you spend time fully walling and not really building any military while your opponent doesn’t start walling until clicking up to castle Age.
They will have an eco lead on you and will probably get to castle age first.
I would say don’t start any serious walling until you click up to feudal age.
If you are up against a quick militia/scout rush, you can “small wall” your resources (just make small walls for each batch of villagers collecting resources in a certain small area such as walling in those on berries, those on a lumber camp etc.).
**Defending:**
Defending is certainly cheaper but it is often harder than attacking.
An enemy who is the aggressor often has way more info about your army, your production buildings and the layout and distribution of your vils while you only learn about enemy army when they are already attacking.
In general though, if an enemy makes archers out of 2 ranges, you can defend from that by making skirms out of one range.
If enemy constantly makes scouts, just making 1 spear for every 2 scouts they make will ensure you are adequately defended most of the time.
Of course things get complicated if they make scouts, you make spears, and then they make some archers which kill your spears.
Now you are forced to make either archers of your own or skirms.
Or they make 8 scouts and fully upgrade them while you are trying to defend with 4 spears, you will get overwhelmed.
Something to watch out for vs scouts is that even though you might have an adequate total number of spears on the field to protect your base, your opponent might gain local superiority and still do damage before your spears can all congregate and help defend.
Imagine you have 5 spears and your opponent has 8 scouts.
In a straight up fight you will kill his army with your much cheaper army of spear.
However, he may attack an area with his 8 scouts where only 2 spears are defending, kill them quickly while only losing say 1 scout and then proceed to kill vills and cause havoc before your other spears get there.
With archers it’s similar issue.
Your opponent may send the bulk of his archers on one side (say 13 of them) where you defend successfully with your 8 skirms and send 3 archers on the other side and start harassing/killing vils.
The other thing to note is that even though skirms/spears are excellent counter units, they are themselves easily countered as well.
So if enemy makes 20 archers and you make 12 skirms to defend, you can easily be caught by surprise by 2 enemy scouts who will do enough damage to your skirms so that the 20 archers can come and finish what remains off and then have free reign in your base.
Same thing for spears, just 2 or 3 archers, even without any upgrades can kill spears quickly.
So sometimes the best way to defend might be to just mirror your opponent.
If they make archers, you make archers (maybe with a few skirms mixed in).
This way, your archer vs archer fights should favour you since you have some skirms mixed in while you stay protected from counter units to your skirms (scouts).
Athother thing to remember is opponents at my level and below don’t have god-like multi-taking skills.
If they are attacking you aggressively, they are probably not paying a lot of attention at home.
I have often lost games in feudal/early castle to early aggression and then after resigning I look at the map and notice that my opponent’s base is wide open with zero defense and a small raid with 3 scouts or 5 archers would have done a ton of damage.
So if you can manage it, counter attacking can be really good as it not only taxes your opponents multi-tasking (yours as well!) it also often forces them to retreat their army back home or start creating defensive units thus draining their resources.
**Militia/Maa rush:**
These things come in the earliest, typically maa come soon after you hit feudal age. 3 maa + scout can be tough to deal with, but remember, your opponent spent a ton of resources on this (280 food + 100 gold assuming generic civ).
If they don’t do enough damage, they will actually be behind.
Even if they manage to kill one vil before you clean him up, that may still not be a good trade for him.
The biggest thing to watch out for is to not over react.
Sending 10 villagers running to the TC and being idle for too long can be worse than losing vils!
Remember that vils can fight back.
If you keep your scout back and help out, you can often kill opponent for the loss of one vil.
This is an OK trade for you since you lose one vil while they lost 380 resources.
If you are making archers, then even 1 archer can begin to attack the maa and start taking off hp and keeping them away from your vils.
If you are making scouts, then be sure to mass at least 4 before engaging.
While maa are technically stronger than scouts (+1 attack).
The fact that your scouts can often surround 1 maa and kill him quickly means that you quickly turn the tide in your favour.
Here’s my attempt to put how I tend to adapt into words.
I’m ~1300 Elo, so there’s better advice out there, but mine’s worth a B grade on the curve.
There are civ factors to consider as well.
Militia: Fight back with vils if you outnumber them or small wall the resource they’re heading towards.
Look at the score: an oddly high score early often means militia or men-at-arms are coming.
Men-at-Arms: Small wall the resource they’re heading towards.
Run away if they get in.
Use units from your Feudal Age military building to clean them up.
– When you opened scouts: don’t send them in until you have 4 or so.
In the meantime, use the scouts to snipe archer reinforcements or get advance notice of spears.
If he’s making spears, send the scouts to his base, small wall your resources, and build a range.
You don’t need Horse Collar immediately, your opponent won’t have it.
– When you opened archers: main thing to worry about is not losing your initial archers to a range follow-up.
You can either add a 2nd range or a stable and he won’t be able to keep up with your production.
If you go 2nd range you should be ready to make a few skirms because that’s what he’s going to try to counter you with.
Send your mass to his base once you’ve reduced his attack to a level where you can clean it up with your reinforcements.
Scouts: Scouts is difficult to deal with because it’s such a low-commitment opening.
I’m still trying to figure out what the best approach is.
Archers: You can fend off two range archers with one range upgraded skirmishers.
The ideal situation is to scout the enemy walking forward, add a few skirmishers if you need to, and maneuver your guys into a position that both cuts off his retreat and prevents him from diving your vils.
Town Watch helps limit the damage he can do.
If he adds a stable, best thing to do is be fully walled, because scouts + archers beats scouts + skirms but skirms + walls can stop scouts + archers.
Walling can give a false sense of safety but it is worth it regardless and can buy you time to get your own military to defend yourself.
Overall though, a better eco is the key as it will allow you to have a better military and walls can complement this.
Its usually easier to be the defender.
If you walled your base so enemy can only get in at one place you can take a better position, your production buildings are closer so easier to reinforce, you also dont have to move your screen much if your army is at home and you need to fix eco.
On the other hand if you arent going forward at all opoonent can just do small amunts of army and go up to kill you with knights.
Basicly, it depends.
> Defending seems useless as I just fall behind on eco, so is it just a matter of being the first guy to rush with fast units?
defending and playing around getting bettter eco is literally the meta
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
