[Anonymous Player]

tbh, I am a “civ picker”. (1450-15xx elo).

I know a lot of people play random.

And of course this especially applies to pro players.

To me the key to play AOE II realy well is to have a deep understanding of each civ.

And each civ has a unique build order, army combo, rhythm that you want to leverage to make them really powerful.

And if I don’t really understand that civ and only use some generic units I am only playing half of its potential.

And a lot of time if I play a civ that I am not very familar with I feel like my build and ryhtm would be messed up and it feels kinda waste of time.

Instead, if it is a civ I have studied and played well I know their efficient build orders, unit transitions and timing really well and I feel like when I play them thats the AOE I love.

This is definitely a personal choice and goes well with my personality as well.

So I would rather learn each civ well before I go full random.

What do you guys think?

Does this mindset hinder real improvement in the long run?

To me this is like playing tennis or riding a bike.

If it’s not a racket that I get used to it’s hard to realize their true potential.

[Snikhop]

Do you ever watch streams or youtube games or engage with competitive play?

I always play random but I also have very good civ knowledge because of things like that so it’s not an issue.

If you’re just learning literally on the go and in the game then I guess it might hinder you quite a lot, but fundamentally it would still be the best way to learn.

To be honest though once you have a good grasp of eco balance it’s really not hard to change a BO around to account for a civ bonus.

You see Celts, Malians, Portuguese etc you think to yourself okay cool I’ll go one less on wood.

And 90% of the time that’ll work as planned.

You don’t need to-the-second BOs with loads of practice to succeed.

Then after that it’s just about understanding tech tree and power spikes, tech tree again can take a while to learn (and sometimes even pros forget) but the big stuff like halb, BBC, redemption, HC etc that you have to plan around is the main thing.

[sambstone13]

The problem with random civs is that i dont have time to google the civ i got to see what the bonuses are, before the match starts.

I wouldn’t learn it on the go.

I would finish the match without even knowing what are the strengths/weaknesses.

[ysfsd]

I get Bengali every other time from random civ and I am really bored of it.

Monk clownery is fun, but I lose at the end without knights supporting it.

Archer play is not good either without thumbring.

I wish we could ban civs from random selection.

Nowadays I disable random civ just to avoid Bengalis.

[Arkhire]

I play for fun, never bothered to look up build orders, I just look up their tech tree and see if they’re missing something important like “I’m playing against goth, do I have HC”?

I’m just 1450~~ Elo, but I don’t play that much, I get “Ranked anxiety” so I mostly play lobbies with friends.

I do pick my civs just because I like to do “off-meta” stuff, like Franks Xbows, 4 barracks feudal eagle rush, longsword play, etc…

but I don’t mind random.

[bumblingterror]

Riding a pike sounds… painful

[ImagineAName]

In terms of improvement I would suggest to look at each civ at a time.

Play some matches with one civ until you feel like you got the basic concept of it and then move to the next.

It is important to know all basic strengths and weaknesses of a civ when you play against it.

So to improve it is important to know about all civs since you will face all of them eventually.

[kandradeece]

I enjoy random civ and then adapting on the fly.

Otherwise i feel bored.

Like why pick the same civ…

to do the same thing..

over..

and over.

I do wish the random selection had more options.

Like a random cav civ, random naval civ, or just allowed you to pick a bunch of civs and it chooses from them.

Like how map selection works

[Koala_eiO]

You don’t need to master all the civs one by one to be able to play all of them.

You need to know archetypes and counter units.

For example, if you know how to play CA/hussar, you can reasonably play Turks, Bulgarians, even Poles.

There are the obvious like Magyars and Mongols, and then there are the perfectly viable civs (for that composition) that nobody ever mentions.

Do that for 5-10 archetypes and you’re good to go regardless of training on a particular civ or strat.

Edit: and then you don’t die immediately from being clueless so you can survive long enough to actually play the civ and *slowly* find out about its specificities, which you’ll learn to optimise in time.

It will take years.

Besides, I don’t see the point of mastering your own civ if you have no idea what the opponent can do with theirs.

You just go for your “strongest” composition blindly?

[h3llkite28]

I am approx around your level and I only pick (a strong) civ if I lost 10 in a row.

I would agree that you learn less when you play less civs, but probably you will execute *that* things better than a random civ player.

However, aside from the the learning factor I think you miss a lot of fun.

Yes, sometimes it’s tilting to mess up and lose badly.

On the other hand, if you manage to pull off completely different strategies and achieve wins during a session (monk push, standard archer meta build, CA play, double gold compositions, etc etc.) that feels very rewarding.

Whether you accept to trade some of your ELO for that your not is your decision.

[National-Bet-6387]

Random pick.mad respect

[Parrotparser7]

Same.

Random mode is meant to solve the problem of people exclusively picking meta civs, but if you just exclude those civs when choosing, there shouldn’t be an issue.

[Schierke7]

I feel like I improve faster when I focus on one civ at a time.

Obsessing over details is really fun and I’m definitely more of a creative planning player than creative in the moment.

I’m usually around 1800 rated.

[DukeFLIKKERKIKKER]

Personally I started playing random at 12xx ish and I’ve never gone back.

If I play just one civ I’m way too focussed on execution rather than the strategy whereas if you play random you learn the strengths and weaknesses of civs and learn how to strategize and jnderstand the game, which I value more than a flawless execution.

With mutual random you are also always sure youre opponent is also gonna have to improvise which might lead to some more unique games.

[szucs2020]

Im a pretty low Elo 1050 player.

I used to go random but now I pick civs because I want to work on my late game compositions and strategies so I pick a few civs that I play and just rotate them to learn better the bonuses and how to use them effectively.

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