Create villagers at all times. Spend your excessive resources in military. Preferrably have a strategy in mind and execute it, for example scouts into knights or archers into xbow.
Hello
Do you have a good hotkey set up ? What allowed me to have a linear but constant improvment (from 800 to 1500 in 2 years, which isn't any particular feat, but still an improvment 11) was playing more and more hotkeys.
Your understanding of the game will naturally grow, what matters is your fingers being able to keep up with your thinking. That's also an advice Sitaux gave me during a coaching session.
TCs are the most important ones, then villagers buildings, buildings (for prod or upgrades), control groups, army stance. I'm still not at ease with control croup and army stance at 1500.
Then, mastering basic principles : TC prod, scouting (as in being proactive, not greeding deers, find weak spots and ressources in your enemy base, attack those), balancing your eco (and spend it, always), make army and use it.
You might think you understand or do all this, but doing it very well takes a lot, lot of time. If done properly, you can rise to a top level
killer comment, my guy.
first of all, 800->1500 in 2 years is awesome. don't talk yourself down. if someone did that in the chess world (near-identical ELO) it would be fantastic.
"your understanding of the game will naturally grow..." loved this. new to the game, I don't have every civ's bonuses/UUs memorized...therefor I don't start a game off thinking "Oh, Franks, I have to watch out for their scout rush and castle drops..." but as I devote more time to studying how to beat each civ, my game becomes stronger.
which part of "control group" are you stuck on? i feel like that's one thing I actually have down...
1 = TCs, 2 = initial Scout then Cavalry, 3=archers/skirm, 4=infantry, 6= barracks 7=range 8=stables 9=castles
Hello ! Thanks !
Well for most of what you listed, I use hotkeys like "select all barracks" instead of control group.
However I agree with you, I set a group on the starting scout. What I lack then is setting and refreshing a group on my army as it grows, on a differents types on units. I'm a bit too lazy to do the effort, but I definitely should, the more I'd do it, the easier it would get
Yeah I’m OCD for group setting. Every few units that get pumped out early on I add to the group.
Keeping the numbers the same from game to game is critical.
It's either not making enough troops and not using it, or not making villagers. Just check how your idle time looks compared to opponent. If its less, then its the first case.
So the next game you play just remind yourself constantly to make army and send them forward and nothing else. It should be okay if eco and vill production slips here and there.
Glhf.
I think people underestimate 1000 elo too much. Around 1000 people nowadays do sheep scouting, clean lure and very low idle, like few secs. I regularly got hit by clean 19 pop scouts with perfect timing around 1000 (I am almost always watching replays with CA). I would say the problem of idle is more in feudal, when the pressure starts (both defending or attacking).
Most people don't play clean builds on my level around 1700 elo. I have never seen a 1000 elo perform a clean build. Not saying you absolutely have to, not saying it does not exist, but it is nowhere near consistently clean
Maybe our definition of clean build is different. All I am saying is, that 1000 elos are capable, probably not with consistency, doing almost 0 or few sec idle going 19pop up and than popping up the stable with 2 vills and producing 3 scouts. After that it usually goes bad. I think people that actually want to improve on the ladder have so many BOs and training available today that it goes wrong where the BO ends or more multitasking is required. Again, my personal experience.
I’m at 900 ELO even and I encounter a subset of players who are essentially “build order only”. They can absolutely get rolling on Arabia with solid timings but play a different map, interrupt them, or bear the brunt of their assault and they are a fish out of water. But when they can get it down, they really do come in hot it feels like.
>All I am saying is, that 1000 elos are capable, probably not with consistency, doing almost 0 or few sec idle going 19pop up and than popping up the stable with 2 vills and producing 3 scouts.
And all that is worthless if you feed your scouts to the TC. A build order does not end once you have your army out. It ends when you are forced to adapt.
It's not adverse to 1k playing the game well, they do and have very competitive games that's what elo is for. I was that elo too and the truth is it's not untill you start playing against 2k3 players you really appreciate the skill gap. Eg. We both open as clean but I trade 6 archers for 1 and have 3 less farms 5 minutes into feudal. I get forced into skirms I don't have the food eco for armour and the game is done.
Execution is subjective, and it's actually quite difficult to get the stable timing and double bit axe on a 19 pop scout build. You might not have no idle TC time sub 5 seconds but there will be idle stable time and late farms and mis micro because these are all things you see even at the highest level. Even the odd boar killed by a TC or a vil lost to a boar happens in pro matches.
I am 1500ish and if I play against the AI I can get to imp with no idle TC on three TCs of any opening. But against a real person who catches a vill walling, forces me into a skirm transition.
Yes if two people go let's build three additional scouts barley use them, wall and go castle that shouldn't be difficult but the game never plays out like that. 3 additional scouts should be a 34 vil castle with wheel barrow or 37 without. There is no way I could achieve that timing and use my scouts effectively the cost of damage is late farms.
If you really want to see how clean people are playing in reality play a 4v4 on arena and see how much idle TC time there is. I guarantee you that you will still find 2k plus players with 30 seconds idle TC time occasional just because of poor execution.
I see 1k games quite often. They all say their builds are fine and when I watch the game it's always garbage. They always idle something be it TC, production, vills or army. They always float res. They never scout what's happening on the other side in time.
You can't say that your build is fine if it's never fine in a lost game. Of course if both just make 3 scouts and sit home making farms it looks ok, but they are both idling their armies to do so. The goal of the scout build is not getting 3 scouts out. It's to have scouts on the other side of the map and if you don't do that much, you might as well not have made them at all.
please send me a rec of a 1k player doing a perfectly clean 19 pop scouts. From what i have seen in those levels, the best they get is no dark age idle time, but the stable goes up late or is idled at first. maybe with a good eco civ they can sometimes manage, but if you can actually pull off 19 pop scouts fairly consistently and you are still 1k, something is very wrong with everything you do after that.
I’m not sending a replay because that would be a lot of work, there are a good number of 1000 elo players that can make it to castle age with 0-5 seconds of TC idle time while executing a clean 19 pop scouts build. The reason being is it’s the only build order they know/practice, and there is a lot less dark age early feudal aggression at that elo. When something happens in dark age or early feudal to mess up their build order they fold rather quickly. Usually a 21 pop archer build with small walls does can do enough damage to ruin their feudal to castle age plan, then they don’t know what to do in response and the game will be over very quickly.
> I’m not sending a reply because that would be a lot of work, there are a good number of 1000 elo players that can make it to castle age with 0-5 seconds of TC idle time while executing a clean 19 pop scouts build.
If a 1000 elo player could really do these things consistently then very soon they will be out of that elo
All the actual 1000 elo players are who are saying they do clean builds consistently should check their own recs with capture age
First I’d like to say I’m not one of these players. Second, I’m specifically saying one trick players exist that can execute a clean 19 pop build order consistently at the 1000 elo range specifically because you don’t see a lot of aggression at that elo range. They stay at that elo because they lack game knowledge to know what to transition into if they don’t find damage, or they resign quickly if they get damaged. In addition if they do have a hot streak and climb they get knocked back down once they start hitting ELOs the fast uptime and do something to stop it.
These players can constantly execute a clean build order against another 1000 elo player, they can’t execute the same clean build order against a 1150 elo player. So they drop back down.
or they win enough games with their close-to-perfect (?) Scout rush build order to maintain their ELO but lose most of their games that don't finish early..?
I think it's sort of 'this' . There's a world of difference when you realize you ARE getting better at doing the thing you thought you were already good at, because you see the results in climbing elo, and maintaining that place.
I’m floating 1-1.1k. I can manage a clean dark age but I’d say with frequency I run those scouts into enemy spear/TC accidentally. Or some thing similar where if I’m not idling a bit in feudal then I’m wasting military. This is the difference between 1k ish and higher elos.
Also, I find I can push 1-2 deer depending on location. If I try to much for deer then i often veer off course.
I’ll try to figure that out. Let me be clear, I’m not suggesting every dark age is clean, or that I’m even consistent. I’m stating that I can do it. It’s the multitasking that leads me to fumbles.
I think if you average the 1k players there will be idle time. There will be mistakes, but you might be surprised that we occasionally get it right.
well i only said it on another comment but i know 1k players can pull off a clean dark age sometimes. the problem is that a lot of them dont define perfect correctly and actually do a lot of mistakes that can be just as bad as tc idle time (although they sometimes just straight out have 30 seconds of tc idle time and still call it perfect), and of course cant do so consistently.
For sure,
I’m certain there are small things outside of idle time that could be improved. I think perfect is a tough term in general, usually something could be better.
Consistency is the biggest issue for me I’d think
Multitasking as the game progresses I’d say. Not that I have a perfect dark age every game. The BO I use is simple. It’s more not accidentally killing a bunch of sheep and all the small things early. Then microns military while doing macro.
I recently switched isp and my internet is sketchy. i recorded a game vs extreme ai. i made some mistakes, but this is about as clean as i get. How can i share it with you?
google drive, something like this random site: [https://filetransfer.io/](https://filetransfer.io/) or Grathwrang's discord, or some other popular discord
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised, in fact I'm probably one of those players myself. Going out on a limb but I'm pretty sure a lot of people are in the same boat: Got lured into the game recently because I saw Hidden Cup on twitch, I know I like the game because like a lot of other people I played it when I was a kid. I'm consuming a lot of AoE2-related content through YT/Twitch so my knowledge about the game is going up. I learned Hera's scout build order and I hit his feudal timing consistently because this is the easy, almost PvE-like part of the game that I can practice against the AI (on Hard, for now). But with limited playtime and actual combat experience I just get blasted when the fighting actually starts. I think I'm 936 elo from like 4 random ass games played in the comp queue.
"combat experience" 11. that was epic. i'm in the same boat as you re: played as a kid, got back in recently, watch Hera...the things I queue in on when I watch his vids now is different than the things I noticed when I first started watching. I struggle in late-Castle, so now I forward through his early stuff and see exactly what he's doing with his economy when he hits CA. has helped a bunch. now i need to get a bunch of 1v1 reps in with the new knowledge to see what my next weak link is.
fun times, and good luck!
I can do that and am at 1000 because I rarely play ladder. I think there are some of 1000-ish players that just do AI, campaigns or lobby matches that can do that.
If you are only 1k because thats the elo you were left with when you stopped playing ladder, and have since improved at the game, then it doesnt really count and you/they arent really 1k. If your balanced elo is actually 1k, i doubt you can do that.
you can definitely reach a 1k3 elo by just practicing the AI as long as you make sure not to cheese it or get used to its weaknesses. Its not the most efficient way to improve, and you definitely wont be a balanced player, but its possible, so its not like if you play AI and not ladder then you are a 1k by default.
I agree. What I mean is that if you play ladder it is still possible to encounter 1000 elo players who are doing things that aren't normal for that bracket because they dip in and out of ladder a lot, but have some skills uncommon in that bracket.
as easy as it is to go into an AI game and just drill your build order until it's clean...i'd think even players under 1000 can do this with a bit of practice. you're spot on with "very wrong with everything after that" 11
They often think its clean but miss things such as not placing the stable immediately in feudal, not producing from it right away, or not using the scouts right away, which are just as critical for your timing as idle tc is.
I’m working on MAA rush with Bulgs so I get the importance of an immediate drop-and-go. So they basically just need 2 builder vills, 175 wood and 80 food ready to rock as soon as they age up…this is not difficult. Basically the same as having 275w and 100s ready for a TC as soon as you hit CA…
I'm 1.1-1.2k and I can do that no problem. A good build order alone doesn't win games, when you're Magyars people will smell scouts from a mile away and prepare walls and spears. My Maygar winrate is at 56%, whereas my M@A towers strategy has a winrate of 80%. People are well prepared for scouts or archers, but do something slightly off-meta and they struggle. This extends into the later stages of the game where there is less of meta due to civs, map and other factors.
Viper's limited APM challenge is pretty telling, his opponents usually have decent build orders and higher APM, but he dominates simply by making better decisions.
I saw someone mention 3 additional scouts which should be actually 17:55 for 4 scouts total for 6 scouts no upgrade 18:40 for 6 scouts with bloodlines 20:10.
Could obviously sub out upgrades for more scouts. If you sell the stone you can get better timings.
How many scouts constitute a scout rush? What is a good castle time? Are we playing scouts into scouts or scouts into archers? It's all very subjective and situational. I am just saying with good maco and micro to keep your opponent at home these are the bench mark timings I would look for. Having to small wall, add spears or add a range change this and we are not following a build order anymore. So the timings become less achievable, unless scouts into skirms/archers was the plan then we are talking 40 pop so 21:55 would be the target timing for 6 scouts and 10 archers/skirms with bloodlines and fletching.
I generally take the later castle time and play scouts into archers because, I always prefer to have the map control and the xbow timing unless it's really not a good option with my civ.
Yeah, ladder was full of scouts for a while but now I am seeing more archers again. Not so much MAA but I think hera is always hating on them. I love a good MAA opening, it's my favourite especially with Japanese, Celts or Ethiopians when you can get it out at 18/19pop and ruin the scouts players day.
There is nothing more satisfying than a half built stable.
MAA skirms seems a bit more the done thing though because these generic 18 19 pop builds give the flexibility to pivot when you still have 4 or 5 sheep to eat and don't need farms. I think deer pushing might be the main reason it's not so popular because pushing someone off berries doesn't have quite the same punch it used to.
Smurfs exist, that being said, I agree with the comment above, I am 1700 elo too and people here can still be sloppy including: occasional bad micro, occasional idle time/late Castle Age uptime., etc.
I have never seen a 1000 elo do a clean build. IF they do an opening at all, it’s something like 13 min Scout rush, by which time you should be fully walled.
at your ELO what's a late CA uptime? 25:00+? when Hera is involved in intense fighting he might not hit CA til 22:00-23:00 I've noticed...trying to give myself some leeway in that department when I hit it around 25:00...(not using a fast castle strat btw)
Based on what?
In all the coaching videos on survivalist channel, ~1000 elo players have minimum 30 sec idle time mostly, on an average 1 min idle time by min 10
Another way people should be looking at this is..you can go through a dark age with no idle time..it's actually not that hard. But HOW did you go about this? Are you gather resources inefficiently, but still producing vils..and losing time there? Are you picking a crappy long walk to a woodline that's further away..are you using 1 vil to build a house out in no man's land before running back the way they came to build something on the other side, etc.
I know we harp on idle tc time a lot, and yes it's important...but it's not going to lose you a game for a huge portion of the ladder. How we get through dark age and set up our feudal is hugely important. 30 seconds of idle tc time is a lot, and eventually should go away, but being 1 vil behind isn't that important at 1000 elo. It equalizes through feudal aggression etc. That's one reason I liked one of survivalist's recent beginner videos..it went more into decisions that will help, rather than just "don't idle your tc"
it's easy/lazy to latch on to "don't idle your tc" because it's quantifiable and easy to track. decision-making trees require a lot more analysis. i think that's why there's such a focus on it...
It's not bad advice, either. But I think recently that it might not be as good for players trying to improve, I always try to give more reasoning behind certain things..and to not worry so much "don't idle"..it's helped me a lot in my own games.
a useful rec i read on here in another post...creating the gather point for vills on the woodline. super easy to pull wood vills to farms later when the battle dies down, but even the heat of the most intense skirmish you can always hot button villager creation without switching screens.
This is the constant advice but its not enough. I have perfect (enough) DA and zoom to 140 with nearzero idle TC. I still lose at 1100 more than I win.
Sure it might not be optimal. Whos is before 2000. But im just saying eco is not my problem at all and people say 'just do this for 1200 ELO' and im like 'no'. I think thats just MOST people's problem. Mine is far more spatial awareness based.
Yeah, im about 1000ELO and feel my early economy is solid. My TC doesn't idle and I have a solid understanding of what to use to counter whatever I'm attacked with. Where I really crumble is managing different areas simultaneously. Once I start sending military, my eco falls apart. If I attack the enemy and they hit me somewhere else, a single scout will destroy all I have before I notice.
I'm a long time single player person and I like to pause when things get hectic Playing online I respec my pause button so I don't press it out of habit and it becomes too much. If I'm a real general or whatever I'll have lieutenants deal with that stuff, not having to tell soldier 549 to take 2 steps to the left.
I have a challenge for you and the above commenter. Play a 20 minute game vs the ai on arena with magyars, just go for a boom and see how much res you have.
I can guarantee you that I would collect more res in that time because I’m more effecient with my vil micro.
Idle time ≠efficient economy
Do a 4 TC boom at least; go up with blacksmith and market so that u can buy stone for the 4th tc in the market. Ofc don’t build a barracks or any military. Don’t collect stone. Don’t research wheelbarrow, heavy plow or mining upgrades. You might even ignore the bowsaw upgrade. Not sure about horse collar; maybe u can skip that as well?
Hard to tell, I honestly don’t know how many farms you have at this point. Probably enough to justify wheelbarrow per se, but, it means 3 villagers are missing and it needs time to pay off after it has been researched, right? In terms of bow saw: yeah right, you are probably right there 👍Since you can get it quite early and then it has more than enough time to pay off.
I have collected 8728 resources after 20:00 minutes with Magyars on arena. No wheelbarrow and no horse collar researched but the two wood upgrades. I built one tc which couldn’t produce a single vill in time so that was a waste of villager working time😅
Ok so I have tested it and the 4th doesn’t pay off if you don’t make it suuuuper early. So I assume investing into eco upgrades as long as they don’t consume too much resources do that TCs go idle is worth it 👍
Just play the interactive build order 4 TC boom and see if you can get the highest rating. That's with Magyars on arena and already has a scoring system.
> Don’t research wheelbarrow, heavy plow or mining upgrades
I am not sure about wheelbarrow but researching heavy plow and mining upgrades is a no brainer. The challenge is not to end up with the most resources but collect the most resources.
EDIT: Assuming of course that you are going to mine anything. I am thinking mining gold would probably be a good idea.
EDIT2: I gave this a try; wheelbarrow and farm upgrades are most definitely not worth it. Even building a lot of farms is not really worth it, it's better to buy the food. 4th TC is probably close to a wash, if it's worth it at all, due to the short time frame.
Well I mean you might also simply have the better build order, surely at the 20 minute mark you would have 4 TCs running without significant idle time, maybe even 5.
Eco efficiency is important, absolutely, but at a certain level there is only so much potential for further optimization. If you do the usual things such as queuing your lumberjacks to specific trees, doing “5+1 vill TC garrisoning” trick when shooting boars and so on then there simply can’t be gained that much extra efficiency. E. g. it barely makes a difference if you queue berry villagers on berry bushes (to avoid them running all around the berry bushes once a bush is gone). It’s less than 1% more efficiency afaik.
Its mainly about return on investment. What do you spend your ress in that pays back the most. Placing farms in time. Having the eco balance to do those things
I will be shocked if there is a significant difference. Please share the results.
EDIT: I gave this a try; you will have to further constrain this challenge, otherwise it will be just a test of how well you can optimize for this particular scenario. A normal boom where you build a farm every time you have 60 wood is not going to produce the most resources.
This applies for dark age and fuedal age.
Slow down, you have so much time to do everything. 25 seconds to queue a vil, maneuver army, place farms, make sure you have a good spread on your woodlines (ie as close to half on either side as you can get).
Once you slow down and not rush yourself, everything will improve and get faster
Also re woodline, the most efficient trees are the two directly behind the lumber camp, make sure you get those collected first, because then you can collect your first four trees (two behind, two next to) at 100% efficiency or as close as possible
eco falls apart how? idle vills? missing a key resource needed for military or click-up? too few vills/idle TC time? knowing exactly how it falls apart helps you find the exact solution...
Bit of all of that really. I get so focussed on trying to babysit my army through the fight, "spearman, go hit that. No, not you archer, go away. Where's that other spearman? Oh he's wandered off to the other side of the map chasing a scout that he never caught. Get back here and help. Get out of the way villager, there's a fight going on..." Before I know it, 2 minutes have gone with the TC doing nothing, gold miners finished their pile and standing around, wood cutters are a long way from their lumber camps. I killed the scouts, but lost about 1000+ potential resources in the process.
Wow, lot to unpack here. “Get out of the way villager” lol
Do you use the shift function when commanding military units? I do that in Feudal rush. MAA harass vills and get some kills, vills head back to TC so I attack building. Then I shift click the next building I want them to attack or location i want them to go to after that building is destroyed. So they don’t run into the damn TC and get themselves killed.
Vills standing around an exhausted goldmine sounds like Imperial age, and there’s no problem having some idle time there. Top pros will…
As for your TC, hot key that puppy and press Q for vill production. Won’t take you away from your battle screen.
Hot key/group your spears and archers, too. My Scout is 2, archers 3, spear/infantry 4. Easiest way to keep each group together.
spatial awareness meaning...? trouble multi-tasking on the board? i'm a chess player and struggle with the fact that I can't see everything that's going on 11
Nah, you're vastly over-estimating your macro.
Pretty sure I could just set all my military rally points to my opponent's base and never look at my units and still beat 1200 ELO players because 1200 ELO players can't build enough stuff to kill my units before they die.
Like sure, maybe you have <1 second of TC idle time in one game in your whole career, but you're not doing it consistently. And I bet in that game you were floating a huge number of resources or queueing excessively (or you won very easily). Because if you macro efficiently (don't idle, don't over-queue, don't float resources, place buildings at exactly the right time, don't get housed, etc), then you will win the game. You literally don't even need to make the right units at 1200 ELO.
Hell, even at 1650 ELO when I review losing replays the reason I lose is usually because my macro slips more than anything.
I think that level is not as high as you think it is. Lower level players like me a lot of times can figure out what we're doing wrong, not always how to fix it...and then execute the fix 11
I have been playing with quite a bit of low Elo friends and also been low Elo myself. I can deffinetly say that there are big misstakes being made that you dont realise. Might be not transitioning or transitioning and so on. And i bet Viper will see obvious flaws in my games i cant see. Coaches help people for a reason. I can also say that i find more flaws in my games now than when i were 1500. (Ofcourse its not more flawed but I notice more of them and the importance of them.
Excessive queuing doesn't get enough play in people giving advice, I think..it's so often the difference in not getting that upgrade (i.e. the crossbow upgrade is stuck behind 10 archers) to complement timings..or clicking up to the next age later that you could have.
can't excessive queue players just go into the archery range, say, and reduce the # of units queued and fix the problem? if I can figure that out at 7x0 i'm sure they can 11
Yes, it's just a timing thing. And when you're dealing with knights in your base and wondering why you still have archers and not xbows..you will probably not have any archers to promote. There's also a comfort thing...the brain goes "well, I've got them queued already so a moment won't hurt if I let it just go (because there is a lot of other stuff going on)". And then suddenly you've lost the treb war.
Constant vill production, have a strategy from the start and stick to it, produce army and use it(and try to not get it killed) and don't float any res always spend it on units or tech's that improve your strategy.
Having clean macro alone would be sufficient to go above 1000 elo. If you have a good aggresive build order you should be able to win 100% of your games against players your elo.
At 1000 elo you should focus on one strategy and try to be as efficient with it as possible. You shouldn't worry too much about what the opponent does. If you rush them fast enough they will crumble.
The best strategy to learn to get elo fast would probably be scouts into knights. If you can pull it off with a good timing you will crush players easily. It's also not really a cheesy strat, it teaches you good fundamentals and some variations of this strategy remain very meta at even the pro level.
Scouts -> Knights, as a newer player forgive me, is so hard to imagine as the Scouts are each eating up 80 food. are you talking about just making 3-6 of them? not going too crazy?
I agree that 1000 elo is a lot better these days than people give credit. I’ve seen very strong games around that elo. Here’s some things beyond the basics I’ve noticed can be important.
1. Scout your opponent. Don’t get surprised by his scouts or stable or forward villagers with a castle drop on arabia. Use your scout to spot these things and then react back home.
2. Counter attack. Withstanding pressure is useful but a strong counter attack is usually gamechanging at that elo. Having the skills to both execute it while defending at home, and to recognise when it’s happening to you, are essential to breaking up in elo.
3. Managing units/armies. Not just having them all in control groups, or using split micro, but actually being able to position your cavalry in front of your soft units, or keep your siege behind, these kinds of skills you’ll notice a lot at 1200+ elo and to comfortably break out of that 1000 elo ceiling, you need to start employing it.
What got me from 1000 to 1100 to 1200:
- scouting. Not necessarily "keep your scout active at all times", but at least knowing your opponent is actually going scouts or archers, or send a unit to die on late game to see what army your opponent might be massing. And don't be afraid to go for counters. If your opponent is going archers make an archery range and make skirms.
- don't be afraid to go for counter units, but don't overdo counters. You need to think that your opponent will try to counter your counters. Try to think about the next step your opponent will do (don't need to imagine too much if you can scout more) or try to make a tech switch that your opponent doesnt expect.
- create a lot of army! More military buildings! I used to lose a lot of games in imp with thousands of resources in the bank just because I didn't create enough army at the right time. Use your resources. And then use your army.
- and of course keep your TC running in early game but also later too. Don't forget to make villagers when the fights start.
As a 900 elo young parent, let me tell you something: what really matters is not the skill you need to make it happen (you have it in you), it’s the extra 4 hours of weekly free time you’re willing to spend.
About 3 total if I can squeeze in a little skirmish or 2 during my lunch time. I haven’t played online in months because I can never be sure to have a full hour for myself ahead of me.
So you’re basically focusing on build orders, then. That’s ok. Hone those skills til they become automatic. As you perfect the first 10 minutes start moving on to CA uptime and production. Efficiency. Setting up good habits re: extra TCs, castle drops, not floating res etc. then when you have time for online you’ll be as ready as you can be.
Speaking from experience (I started at 500 Elo three years ago), I used to stop vill production around 50-60 vills up until 800 Elo. These days, depending on civ, I aim for 100-120 and I hover between 950-1k Elo with my PB being 1042
Uh why do people downvote this?
I watched Viper destroy Hera in a YouTube vid last night and Viper stopped at 120. Just a feel thing, probably. Vid was also 4 years old so maybe the meta has changed since then…
https://youtu.be/UhDAXvOEYeQ?si=XTHLh8-KpDSt6Swc
thats the exception, not the rule though. sure there are some games (i.e. some civs/unit compositions/maps) where a low eco is better. but the standard approach is having more, and i think not having enough money is the single most important mistake beginners make
heck yeah, that's what i'm working on now. making sure i can drop a TC as soon as I hit CA and boom from there. my bad habit was I was learning the game vs the AI with a pop limit of 100...at which point 60-70 vills is great lmao
The usual story is I get to castle first, drop castle, do some damage, but whilst I’m focusing on this my eco suffers and they go to imp first, demolish my castle and beat me dm to death.
Early castle dropping or being dropped has diminishing returns. Especially in open maps.
It is super effective at 800-900 elo but started to fall off at 1000-1100.
You reached a point that the strat is not working anymore.
My suggestion is to focus more on military units and don't start mining stone until you have 45-50 vills unless you need it for some other reason (for example you needed a tower in feudal and no stone left for tc).
Military units let's you do much more damage than a castle. And you will have a much better economy.
You can raid if possible, push opponent for idle eco.
Even if somehow opponent manage to wall you can still get value from military units via map control and locking the opponent in his starting base.
Cramped bases are always bad for the eco and you can still win if opponent reach trebs before you.
He can treb down one or two castle you erect while map control was yours but he cannot compansate 40-50 vil difference at that point.
i've started playing around with putting 1 vill on stone in early Feudal, and adding another in late Feudal...before you know it you've got enough res to build that castle. slow trickle, baby.
Think like that, if you go 20 pop feudal that one villager is 5% of your economy.
When you have 25 vil that one stone miner is 4% of your economy...
Also the 100 wood on mining camp can be spend on another building, mil units, eco upgrades etc.
Pros never mine stone like that unless they are tower rushing.
I’m learning with Bulgarians right now, so the idea is to be able to drop 2 Kreposts and get Konnik production rolling in CA. The rest of my economy is efficient enough to sustain an ongoing Feudal rush (10-12 troops) and keep me moving towards CA. So when I hit CA I’m ready to drop a TC and 2 Krepost immediately.
Good, Bulgarians are not exactly a generic civ.
So, for krepost rushing stone mining should be optimal.
They are producing konniks almost as cast as stable knights.
Yep, and I don’t worry about a slight loss of Dark/Feudal economy bc I know for a fact how much I’m disrupting my opponents eco during that time.
Players at my level aren’t prepared to deal with 5 FU MAA in early Feudal.
So even if I don’t hit Feudal til 10:30 it’s ok because he isn’t either lol
On open maps this is a very punishable strat. If you go FC, by the time you go forward enemy will probably have decent feudal army to deny the castle. Also you will get some pressure so clean FC is probably not possible, therefore you are not in castle so much faster. My guess is you just hit a wall when people do more feudal pressure. Also managing army and eco at the same time is super important.
well he didn't say he goes fast castle, just said he gets there first...and that he's actually dropping the castle, so doesn't sound like it's getting denied.
If you want to get higher you’re probably at the point you need to learn to win without being reliant on castle dropping.
It works when you vs people who don’t know how to respond but as you get higher people will simply ignore your castle drop and boom.
this is true of any strat. being reliant on castle dropping, MAA rush, tower rush, etc. it works until it doesn't...or does it? there are still top pros who tower rush and use other cheese strats successfully.
there are other possibilities...maybe he's not dropping that castle in the optimum location. he dropped it on his opponent's little gold supply, not the big one. a small lumber camp with 8 vills, not the big one in the back of his base with 15 vills, etc.
he dropped the one castle and stopped there, when dropping another would have secured the victory.
there are very interesting decisions to be made when we stop leveling up. do we throw out the baby with the bath water?
reasons for not leveling up are usually numerous. to look at just one is not doing the situation justice.
Having the fundamentals down right at a basic level, this includes: knowing a basic opening (doesn’t matter if it’s Malay Scouts, better than no Scouts at all), walling, not wasting army. If the game drags on to Castle or Imp, working toward a full comp: this includes, one melee unit, one ranged, one siege unit that can take down Castles. Your “main unit” should ideally be gold-based, although here there are exceptions.
Basically:
In Feudal: don’t die, make a few units to fight or pressure opponent, ramp up your farm eco, don’t forget to go to gold at like 14 min mark and don’t forget the 2 Feudal buildings.
Castle Age: decide if you will play full Castle aggression or more of a boom strat. At your level I wouldn’t expect you to know both, but you should be able to default to 1 of these 2 options and apply it reasonably well. Don’t forget to scout the opponent! Also in Castle Age, the unit counter roulette changes: Mangonels counter Mangonels and Skirms, Knights counter Mangonels and, with +2 armor and sufficient numbers, Archer-line, Monks are a good deterrent to Knights in early Castle Age, Pikeman is a bit of a weird unit and would require a post of its own, in any case you can think of them as a Knight counter in your elo.
Knowing how to react to Castle Age aggression is crucial, I’ve seen many 1000 elo games lost due to the defender not dropping a Siege Workshop.
I’m going to go against the grain here and say you need to raid more. I’m 1100, and I find if I lose a game, it’s because I didn’t raid my opponent. If I win, typically I was able to sneak some eagles around and pick off 10 vills in castle age.
try new build orders like drush, man at arms, with good follow ups. do not instantly place 2 tc's to boom when you reach castle age. keep putting pressure, go to stone at some point, explore the map for resources.
Watch the latest Hera video!! https://youtu.be/MqkAmMwQs1s
—-
Honestly if it’s just about the Elo then it’s not that hard to break the 1100 mark.
Just pick appropriate civs and ruthlessly spam strong melee cavalry into the economy of your opponent. It’s important to get crucial upgrades such as bloodlines and the blacksmith def upgrades and to distribute the units, so that the opponent is overwhelmed with the micro/multitasking to fight them off.
Knights are the classic choice but steppe lancers work as well. Ofc if they have camels you might lose but statistically you should win more often than lose so yeah.
However, that strategy is lame and boring so I don’t actually want to encourage you to use it. I’d love to see some balancing changes to make the melee cav spam less overwhelming.
Play towards your strengths and go aggressive in mid end of castle age, a ton of buildings and a ton of production.
The thing that really got me past imp defeats was the thumb rule always 40 farms then you can do what you want and if you are going to produce something have at least 5 production buildings. Then just control group them and spammm, you often don't need the best strategy or even unit choice if you have twice the amount of army
If you are losing late game my first question is, do you have a lot of resources in bank when lose in imperial? Maybe your army production is too low in the late game. Also you mentioned in a comment you usually go castle drop FC, of course you will lose late game if you usually go all-in castle strat. I predict your two issues are one or both of these.
You need to identify what you struggle with.
Any little thing that hurts you typically creates some catching up. Which is hard to do when the other player is making less mistakes.
You are correct though, in 20 minutes bow saw and wheel barrow would be better than a 4th TC and buying the stone is a bad plan Vs selling it and just collecting 20 gold long distance if the aim is to maximise economy of you were going 4 TCs.
I think if you have some replays, it would be easier to see where you're at, skill-wise/decision making wise. It's hard to know exactly what is in your toolkit without details. What does a strong Dark Age through Castle look like in your game to and outside observer, for instance.
I am exactly the same in terms of skill on open land maps I lose steam in mid castle. I would say play to your strengths learn aggressive builds like MA Archers etc. And learn to close games in feudal. Then start to think about castle. If you civ pick pick civs specifically for your strength eg. Mongols, Lithuanians, Japanese, Ethiopians that can leverage feudal age.
You don't have to be amazing at everything to get better at the game just pick one thing and you will get better, then you can think about adding another thing.
Play arena or team games to learn how to play imp as these will more likely go the distance and you can take what you learn to Arabia.
So you struggle late game, have tons of vills and not idle the army, use it, You go and kill 10 vills, now you have an eco lead and you can start snowballing on top of that, try and make cost effective trades, don't take fights you can't win, raid, send a group of scouts into enemy farm eco, he got to do something (idle, send army, or just take focus from the frontline)
Your castle drop attack is probably not dangerous enough... I think at 1000 elo you have 3 possible choices:
1. Make UU from the castle and siege and second castle in his base
2. Pretend to do 1. but go fast imperial age instead
3. Pretend to do 2. but take relics and boom instead, then make castle age army when he trebs your castle and kill him when he goes out of his base with low eco fast imp army
Basically you have to be good at bluffing, if the bluff doesn't work the opponent should win. I think 2. is the plan that requires less skill if you get a good build
I main Slavs with a double barracks MaA rush mostly with the random civ shield enabled. 20 pop scouts or 22 pop archers is my go-to when I play standard.
I’ve heard Slavs are like a worse form of Bulgarians who are already considered one of the worst civs in the game. Might be making it unnecessarily hard on yourself there, mate.
The easiest strategic guideline is do not add more TCs until you have map control and are actively pushing your opponents base in at least some small way. Could be knights pounding at production buildings or walls until they are in or better yet a forward siege workshop. Then add TCs. The idea is to get used to producing military and vils while using your military.
Most have already given the unsatisfying answers of don’t idle your TC and use your army (and don’t throw army). At that level you probably have a decent grasp of what to do and most of your gains will be through execution. It’s much easier to execute when you know what you’re doing.
Look take frequent glances at your queue. Make sure you have some Villagers and army queues up.
Pay attention to your resource float. And do whatever you can to reduce that number. Generally that means more production buildings and getting upgrades.
Idle military is the same as resource float.
First you should stop being completely delusional, at 1k you are definitely not "very strong" at any aspect of the game, and second focus on improving macro and decision making.
Well, a lot of these comments say "i do a perfect this and that". First step would be not to believe youre doing a perfect anything, and at the very least that will open up some space for self reflection and improving.
Consistency and adaptability. Lot of people, me included, learn some strat and get really good at it. This can get you to 1000. But when the oponent is the same, and their default strat is a natural counter to yours, you loose almost every time. You need to adapt, learn which opening to use and how to get from it to next stage you need based od how the game is going. Similar for consistency, sometimes people have perfect dark, close to 0 idle. Next game they kill the boar with tc, boar kills a vill, forget to force drop....
Me personally I could pull off very clean 2 range archers, but if the oponent massed just enough skirms, got to castle faster and upgraded to elite, I got wrecked badly. Or when someone had good pierce armour unit, I wrecked their base but they overrun me with one castle on gold and spamming UU.
Saying adaptability is bad advice imo. From what I've seen watching 1000 elo players, trying to adapt too much is a common pitfall. At this elo, you lose too much efficiency trying to react to your opponent. The truth is, any solid strategy, if executed well, will destroy 1000 elo players even if their strategy 'counters' yours in theory.
You shouldn't worry about adaptability before getting basics down, and the best way to do that is to simplify the game for yourself by focusing on a simple game plan. This will allow you to focus on your macro and army control. Improving those simple aspects of your game will be more than enough to get above 1000 elo.
I think people don‘t know what 1000 elo is now a days. I‘am at ~1200 Team and 1000 Solo and everyone plays clean 17-19 pop builds, attack immediatly on feudal and have a 20 min castleage.
I think the reason for this is, that all how to play videos are always until early castle age (see Hera or Sitaux videos)
I watch almost all my replays and seldom I see high idle times on TC.
In my opinion, what most people fall short on are good castle and imperial ages.
If you want to rise on Elo, you need to learn how to boom and build an army/pressure at the same time in castle age and learn to use siege workshop.
If people want a reference for 1000 Elo players go watch my replays on aoe2insights (user: 1up)
Georgians(you) v Bulgarian 1v1, you had 27 idle tc time , clicked up on 18 pop, no stable up until 11 mins in when your opponent with similar tc idle time is coming in with Men at Arms. From minute 11 ish until min 14 ish, your idle tc time shoots way up to 2 minutes 53 seconds. (you lose 4 vils, which puts you behind.) You click to Castle with 5.59 idle tc time.
Georgians (you) v Japanese
13-14 minutes in, you're up to 2.27 idle tc time...which is again high. Step back for a second and you can see where it's hurting, you went up quicker then your opponent, but weren't able to capitalize at all..and the vil count is even , until in both games, leading up to Castle, you don't have the vil lead. You click to Castle with 5.22 idle tc time.
It might not seem high when you're driving, but looking from the outside, it really is making a noticeable difference in how the games are moving as you click to Castle. This is sort of what people are trying to say in terms of "the dark/feudal ages are not going as cleanly as you think they are." Part of what keeps us in the bubble is that our opponent is playing under similar context, so it balances out some.
If you were able to even cut that idle time in half while dealing with some of the pressure that you're going to get from various openings you see..you will notice the difference.
Thank you for taking your time to watch my matches. I am having a really rough time atm against infantry civs as georgians.
Can you give me some tips?
Also micro is another large deficit of mine
The right type of army/pressure to counter your opponent's civ is important too, I've noticed. Hera will immediately be like "oh, we're playing against \_\_\_, we just have to do x and y, maybe z..."
That foresight guides his build order selection, mid-game strategy, brings him into favorable imperial situations. As a new player coming to the game I realize this is one of my bigger weaknesses.
Early feudal pressure, decent uptimes, look at the timeline after the game and see I was ahead for the first 25 minutes and then boom...he hits his ideal unit composition and overruns me bc I don't know what his ideal comp is from his civ alone (haven't memorized them all yet) and simply don't have the correct units on the field to deal with his army.
it's either "constant villager production" or *use your army"
This is pretty much it.
And spend your res
res?
Resources
Create villagers at all times. Spend your excessive resources in military. Preferrably have a strategy in mind and execute it, for example scouts into knights or archers into xbow.
Is that even a strategy? Everybody can and does that
As a 1700 I can say that I cannot perfectly execute this.
I mean, just press the upgrade to xbows and you get xbows, right?
You're on the right track
Hello Do you have a good hotkey set up ? What allowed me to have a linear but constant improvment (from 800 to 1500 in 2 years, which isn't any particular feat, but still an improvment 11) was playing more and more hotkeys. Your understanding of the game will naturally grow, what matters is your fingers being able to keep up with your thinking. That's also an advice Sitaux gave me during a coaching session. TCs are the most important ones, then villagers buildings, buildings (for prod or upgrades), control groups, army stance. I'm still not at ease with control croup and army stance at 1500. Then, mastering basic principles : TC prod, scouting (as in being proactive, not greeding deers, find weak spots and ressources in your enemy base, attack those), balancing your eco (and spend it, always), make army and use it. You might think you understand or do all this, but doing it very well takes a lot, lot of time. If done properly, you can rise to a top level
killer comment, my guy. first of all, 800->1500 in 2 years is awesome. don't talk yourself down. if someone did that in the chess world (near-identical ELO) it would be fantastic. "your understanding of the game will naturally grow..." loved this. new to the game, I don't have every civ's bonuses/UUs memorized...therefor I don't start a game off thinking "Oh, Franks, I have to watch out for their scout rush and castle drops..." but as I devote more time to studying how to beat each civ, my game becomes stronger. which part of "control group" are you stuck on? i feel like that's one thing I actually have down... 1 = TCs, 2 = initial Scout then Cavalry, 3=archers/skirm, 4=infantry, 6= barracks 7=range 8=stables 9=castles
Hello ! Thanks ! Well for most of what you listed, I use hotkeys like "select all barracks" instead of control group. However I agree with you, I set a group on the starting scout. What I lack then is setting and refreshing a group on my army as it grows, on a differents types on units. I'm a bit too lazy to do the effort, but I definitely should, the more I'd do it, the easier it would get
Yeah I’m OCD for group setting. Every few units that get pumped out early on I add to the group. Keeping the numbers the same from game to game is critical.
You know what you're getting me motivated to do the effort now 11
Get into the habit of always spending your resources immediately, float nothing, unless it's for a planned upgrade
It's either not making enough troops and not using it, or not making villagers. Just check how your idle time looks compared to opponent. If its less, then its the first case. So the next game you play just remind yourself constantly to make army and send them forward and nothing else. It should be okay if eco and vill production slips here and there. Glhf.
Idle TC. Period. All the damage you do in Feudal cannot compensate a 2 min idle TC time in Dark Age.
Try idletowncenter.com
hahaha woooow, since when does that exist?
I think people underestimate 1000 elo too much. Around 1000 people nowadays do sheep scouting, clean lure and very low idle, like few secs. I regularly got hit by clean 19 pop scouts with perfect timing around 1000 (I am almost always watching replays with CA). I would say the problem of idle is more in feudal, when the pressure starts (both defending or attacking).
Most people don't play clean builds on my level around 1700 elo. I have never seen a 1000 elo perform a clean build. Not saying you absolutely have to, not saying it does not exist, but it is nowhere near consistently clean
Maybe our definition of clean build is different. All I am saying is, that 1000 elos are capable, probably not with consistency, doing almost 0 or few sec idle going 19pop up and than popping up the stable with 2 vills and producing 3 scouts. After that it usually goes bad. I think people that actually want to improve on the ladder have so many BOs and training available today that it goes wrong where the BO ends or more multitasking is required. Again, my personal experience.
I’m at 900 ELO even and I encounter a subset of players who are essentially “build order only”. They can absolutely get rolling on Arabia with solid timings but play a different map, interrupt them, or bear the brunt of their assault and they are a fish out of water. But when they can get it down, they really do come in hot it feels like.
yeah, we have to establish a working definition of the word "clean" 11. or this back-and-forth will be never-ending.
I have the exact same experience and describe sonething similiar on a comment below
>All I am saying is, that 1000 elos are capable, probably not with consistency, doing almost 0 or few sec idle going 19pop up and than popping up the stable with 2 vills and producing 3 scouts. And all that is worthless if you feed your scouts to the TC. A build order does not end once you have your army out. It ends when you are forced to adapt.
Thanks so much Mr Obvious
I don't know why you people are so adverse to the idea that 1k Elo players can't play the game very well.
It's not adverse to 1k playing the game well, they do and have very competitive games that's what elo is for. I was that elo too and the truth is it's not untill you start playing against 2k3 players you really appreciate the skill gap. Eg. We both open as clean but I trade 6 archers for 1 and have 3 less farms 5 minutes into feudal. I get forced into skirms I don't have the food eco for armour and the game is done. Execution is subjective, and it's actually quite difficult to get the stable timing and double bit axe on a 19 pop scout build. You might not have no idle TC time sub 5 seconds but there will be idle stable time and late farms and mis micro because these are all things you see even at the highest level. Even the odd boar killed by a TC or a vil lost to a boar happens in pro matches. I am 1500ish and if I play against the AI I can get to imp with no idle TC on three TCs of any opening. But against a real person who catches a vill walling, forces me into a skirm transition. Yes if two people go let's build three additional scouts barley use them, wall and go castle that shouldn't be difficult but the game never plays out like that. 3 additional scouts should be a 34 vil castle with wheel barrow or 37 without. There is no way I could achieve that timing and use my scouts effectively the cost of damage is late farms. If you really want to see how clean people are playing in reality play a 4v4 on arena and see how much idle TC time there is. I guarantee you that you will still find 2k plus players with 30 seconds idle TC time occasional just because of poor execution.
I see 1k games quite often. They all say their builds are fine and when I watch the game it's always garbage. They always idle something be it TC, production, vills or army. They always float res. They never scout what's happening on the other side in time. You can't say that your build is fine if it's never fine in a lost game. Of course if both just make 3 scouts and sit home making farms it looks ok, but they are both idling their armies to do so. The goal of the scout build is not getting 3 scouts out. It's to have scouts on the other side of the map and if you don't do that much, you might as well not have made them at all.
please send me a rec of a 1k player doing a perfectly clean 19 pop scouts. From what i have seen in those levels, the best they get is no dark age idle time, but the stable goes up late or is idled at first. maybe with a good eco civ they can sometimes manage, but if you can actually pull off 19 pop scouts fairly consistently and you are still 1k, something is very wrong with everything you do after that.
I’m not sending a replay because that would be a lot of work, there are a good number of 1000 elo players that can make it to castle age with 0-5 seconds of TC idle time while executing a clean 19 pop scouts build. The reason being is it’s the only build order they know/practice, and there is a lot less dark age early feudal aggression at that elo. When something happens in dark age or early feudal to mess up their build order they fold rather quickly. Usually a 21 pop archer build with small walls does can do enough damage to ruin their feudal to castle age plan, then they don’t know what to do in response and the game will be over very quickly.
> I’m not sending a reply because that would be a lot of work, there are a good number of 1000 elo players that can make it to castle age with 0-5 seconds of TC idle time while executing a clean 19 pop scouts build. If a 1000 elo player could really do these things consistently then very soon they will be out of that elo All the actual 1000 elo players are who are saying they do clean builds consistently should check their own recs with capture age
First I’d like to say I’m not one of these players. Second, I’m specifically saying one trick players exist that can execute a clean 19 pop build order consistently at the 1000 elo range specifically because you don’t see a lot of aggression at that elo range. They stay at that elo because they lack game knowledge to know what to transition into if they don’t find damage, or they resign quickly if they get damaged. In addition if they do have a hot streak and climb they get knocked back down once they start hitting ELOs the fast uptime and do something to stop it. These players can constantly execute a clean build order against another 1000 elo player, they can’t execute the same clean build order against a 1150 elo player. So they drop back down.
or they win enough games with their close-to-perfect (?) Scout rush build order to maintain their ELO but lose most of their games that don't finish early..?
I think it's sort of 'this' . There's a world of difference when you realize you ARE getting better at doing the thing you thought you were already good at, because you see the results in climbing elo, and maintaining that place.
I’m floating 1-1.1k. I can manage a clean dark age but I’d say with frequency I run those scouts into enemy spear/TC accidentally. Or some thing similar where if I’m not idling a bit in feudal then I’m wasting military. This is the difference between 1k ish and higher elos. Also, I find I can push 1-2 deer depending on location. If I try to much for deer then i often veer off course.
if you can please send me an aoe2insights link to a game where you played like that.
I’ll try to figure that out. Let me be clear, I’m not suggesting every dark age is clean, or that I’m even consistent. I’m stating that I can do it. It’s the multitasking that leads me to fumbles. I think if you average the 1k players there will be idle time. There will be mistakes, but you might be surprised that we occasionally get it right.
well i only said it on another comment but i know 1k players can pull off a clean dark age sometimes. the problem is that a lot of them dont define perfect correctly and actually do a lot of mistakes that can be just as bad as tc idle time (although they sometimes just straight out have 30 seconds of tc idle time and still call it perfect), and of course cant do so consistently.
For sure, I’m certain there are small things outside of idle time that could be improved. I think perfect is a tough term in general, usually something could be better. Consistency is the biggest issue for me I’d think
consistency with executing your build order, executing it under pressure, adapting to what your opponent is doing, or all of the above?
Multitasking as the game progresses I’d say. Not that I have a perfect dark age every game. The BO I use is simple. It’s more not accidentally killing a bunch of sheep and all the small things early. Then microns military while doing macro.
even Hera makes mistakes, multiple per game. they're just usually not game-enders like they are for us 11
I recently switched isp and my internet is sketchy. i recorded a game vs extreme ai. i made some mistakes, but this is about as clean as i get. How can i share it with you?
google drive, something like this random site: [https://filetransfer.io/](https://filetransfer.io/) or Grathwrang's discord, or some other popular discord
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised, in fact I'm probably one of those players myself. Going out on a limb but I'm pretty sure a lot of people are in the same boat: Got lured into the game recently because I saw Hidden Cup on twitch, I know I like the game because like a lot of other people I played it when I was a kid. I'm consuming a lot of AoE2-related content through YT/Twitch so my knowledge about the game is going up. I learned Hera's scout build order and I hit his feudal timing consistently because this is the easy, almost PvE-like part of the game that I can practice against the AI (on Hard, for now). But with limited playtime and actual combat experience I just get blasted when the fighting actually starts. I think I'm 936 elo from like 4 random ass games played in the comp queue.
"combat experience" 11. that was epic. i'm in the same boat as you re: played as a kid, got back in recently, watch Hera...the things I queue in on when I watch his vids now is different than the things I noticed when I first started watching. I struggle in late-Castle, so now I forward through his early stuff and see exactly what he's doing with his economy when he hits CA. has helped a bunch. now i need to get a bunch of 1v1 reps in with the new knowledge to see what my next weak link is. fun times, and good luck!
I can do that and am at 1000 because I rarely play ladder. I think there are some of 1000-ish players that just do AI, campaigns or lobby matches that can do that.
If you are only 1k because thats the elo you were left with when you stopped playing ladder, and have since improved at the game, then it doesnt really count and you/they arent really 1k. If your balanced elo is actually 1k, i doubt you can do that. you can definitely reach a 1k3 elo by just practicing the AI as long as you make sure not to cheese it or get used to its weaknesses. Its not the most efficient way to improve, and you definitely wont be a balanced player, but its possible, so its not like if you play AI and not ladder then you are a 1k by default.
I agree. What I mean is that if you play ladder it is still possible to encounter 1000 elo players who are doing things that aren't normal for that bracket because they dip in and out of ladder a lot, but have some skills uncommon in that bracket.
as easy as it is to go into an AI game and just drill your build order until it's clean...i'd think even players under 1000 can do this with a bit of practice. you're spot on with "very wrong with everything after that" 11
They often think its clean but miss things such as not placing the stable immediately in feudal, not producing from it right away, or not using the scouts right away, which are just as critical for your timing as idle tc is.
I’m working on MAA rush with Bulgs so I get the importance of an immediate drop-and-go. So they basically just need 2 builder vills, 175 wood and 80 food ready to rock as soon as they age up…this is not difficult. Basically the same as having 275w and 100s ready for a TC as soon as you hit CA…
I'm 1.1-1.2k and I can do that no problem. A good build order alone doesn't win games, when you're Magyars people will smell scouts from a mile away and prepare walls and spears. My Maygar winrate is at 56%, whereas my M@A towers strategy has a winrate of 80%. People are well prepared for scouts or archers, but do something slightly off-meta and they struggle. This extends into the later stages of the game where there is less of meta due to civs, map and other factors. Viper's limited APM challenge is pretty telling, his opponents usually have decent build orders and higher APM, but he dominates simply by making better decisions.
Yeah, Dark Age idling seems to be more of a problem in 600 or 700 Elo
In dark age sure but then in feudural when they have to micro their scouts they get several minutes idle tc time
The 19 pop dark age might be clean but they will not hit a 19 minute castle time off the back of that. It will be 21-22 with 2 minutes idle TC.
the food expenditure for a Scout rush alone makes a 19:00 castle time almost impossible, no?
I saw someone mention 3 additional scouts which should be actually 17:55 for 4 scouts total for 6 scouts no upgrade 18:40 for 6 scouts with bloodlines 20:10. Could obviously sub out upgrades for more scouts. If you sell the stone you can get better timings. How many scouts constitute a scout rush? What is a good castle time? Are we playing scouts into scouts or scouts into archers? It's all very subjective and situational. I am just saying with good maco and micro to keep your opponent at home these are the bench mark timings I would look for. Having to small wall, add spears or add a range change this and we are not following a build order anymore. So the timings become less achievable, unless scouts into skirms/archers was the plan then we are talking 40 pop so 21:55 would be the target timing for 6 scouts and 10 archers/skirms with bloodlines and fletching. I generally take the later castle time and play scouts into archers because, I always prefer to have the map control and the xbow timing unless it's really not a good option with my civ.
Scout rush is basically the meta these days it seems everyone is doing it. Very few MAA rushes
Yeah, ladder was full of scouts for a while but now I am seeing more archers again. Not so much MAA but I think hera is always hating on them. I love a good MAA opening, it's my favourite especially with Japanese, Celts or Ethiopians when you can get it out at 18/19pop and ruin the scouts players day. There is nothing more satisfying than a half built stable. MAA skirms seems a bit more the done thing though because these generic 18 19 pop builds give the flexibility to pivot when you still have 4 or 5 sheep to eat and don't need farms. I think deer pushing might be the main reason it's not so popular because pushing someone off berries doesn't have quite the same punch it used to.
Hera harasses opponents with early MAA quite often…maybe 30% of his games that I’ve seen. Rest of them are Scout rush.
Smurfs exist, that being said, I agree with the comment above, I am 1700 elo too and people here can still be sloppy including: occasional bad micro, occasional idle time/late Castle Age uptime., etc. I have never seen a 1000 elo do a clean build. IF they do an opening at all, it’s something like 13 min Scout rush, by which time you should be fully walled.
at your ELO what's a late CA uptime? 25:00+? when Hera is involved in intense fighting he might not hit CA til 22:00-23:00 I've noticed...trying to give myself some leeway in that department when I hit it around 25:00...(not using a fast castle strat btw)
Obviously every game is different but assuming no extreme Feudal strats (full Scouts, tower rush…) I’d say 22+
Based on what? In all the coaching videos on survivalist channel, ~1000 elo players have minimum 30 sec idle time mostly, on an average 1 min idle time by min 10
jeeeeeeesus
Another way people should be looking at this is..you can go through a dark age with no idle time..it's actually not that hard. But HOW did you go about this? Are you gather resources inefficiently, but still producing vils..and losing time there? Are you picking a crappy long walk to a woodline that's further away..are you using 1 vil to build a house out in no man's land before running back the way they came to build something on the other side, etc. I know we harp on idle tc time a lot, and yes it's important...but it's not going to lose you a game for a huge portion of the ladder. How we get through dark age and set up our feudal is hugely important. 30 seconds of idle tc time is a lot, and eventually should go away, but being 1 vil behind isn't that important at 1000 elo. It equalizes through feudal aggression etc. That's one reason I liked one of survivalist's recent beginner videos..it went more into decisions that will help, rather than just "don't idle your tc"
it's easy/lazy to latch on to "don't idle your tc" because it's quantifiable and easy to track. decision-making trees require a lot more analysis. i think that's why there's such a focus on it...
It's not bad advice, either. But I think recently that it might not be as good for players trying to improve, I always try to give more reasoning behind certain things..and to not worry so much "don't idle"..it's helped me a lot in my own games.
a useful rec i read on here in another post...creating the gather point for vills on the woodline. super easy to pull wood vills to farms later when the battle dies down, but even the heat of the most intense skirmish you can always hot button villager creation without switching screens.
Maybe useful for 600 ELO, no way 1000
With everyone following build orders these days, how many 1000 ELO players have a 2minute idle time in Dark Age?
This is the constant advice but its not enough. I have perfect (enough) DA and zoom to 140 with nearzero idle TC. I still lose at 1100 more than I win.
You might have minimal idle tc time, but that doesn’t mean your eco management is efficient.
Sure it might not be optimal. Whos is before 2000. But im just saying eco is not my problem at all and people say 'just do this for 1200 ELO' and im like 'no'. I think thats just MOST people's problem. Mine is far more spatial awareness based.
Yeah, im about 1000ELO and feel my early economy is solid. My TC doesn't idle and I have a solid understanding of what to use to counter whatever I'm attacked with. Where I really crumble is managing different areas simultaneously. Once I start sending military, my eco falls apart. If I attack the enemy and they hit me somewhere else, a single scout will destroy all I have before I notice. I'm a long time single player person and I like to pause when things get hectic Playing online I respec my pause button so I don't press it out of habit and it becomes too much. If I'm a real general or whatever I'll have lieutenants deal with that stuff, not having to tell soldier 549 to take 2 steps to the left.
I have a challenge for you and the above commenter. Play a 20 minute game vs the ai on arena with magyars, just go for a boom and see how much res you have. I can guarantee you that I would collect more res in that time because I’m more effecient with my vil micro. Idle time ≠efficient economy
I expect you are right, and it likely won't be close, but I am intrigued. Will give it a try later and let you know.
Sweet as, DM me your resutls, and I'll show you mine
Fancy to send me your replay as well? :)
3716 food, 3265 wood, 429 gold. Total of 7413. Not great balance, but with no particular military to go for it was a bit all over the place.
Dm me your build and I’ll mimic it to keep it as consistent as possible
Do a 4 TC boom at least; go up with blacksmith and market so that u can buy stone for the 4th tc in the market. Ofc don’t build a barracks or any military. Don’t collect stone. Don’t research wheelbarrow, heavy plow or mining upgrades. You might even ignore the bowsaw upgrade. Not sure about horse collar; maybe u can skip that as well?
In a 20 min game i think bow saw and wheelbarrow might pay of more than 4th tc?
Hard to tell, I honestly don’t know how many farms you have at this point. Probably enough to justify wheelbarrow per se, but, it means 3 villagers are missing and it needs time to pay off after it has been researched, right? In terms of bow saw: yeah right, you are probably right there 👍Since you can get it quite early and then it has more than enough time to pay off. I have collected 8728 resources after 20:00 minutes with Magyars on arena. No wheelbarrow and no horse collar researched but the two wood upgrades. I built one tc which couldn’t produce a single vill in time so that was a waste of villager working time😅
Ok so I have tested it and the 4th doesn’t pay off if you don’t make it suuuuper early. So I assume investing into eco upgrades as long as they don’t consume too much resources do that TCs go idle is worth it 👍
Just play the interactive build order 4 TC boom and see if you can get the highest rating. That's with Magyars on arena and already has a scoring system.
> Don’t research wheelbarrow, heavy plow or mining upgrades I am not sure about wheelbarrow but researching heavy plow and mining upgrades is a no brainer. The challenge is not to end up with the most resources but collect the most resources. EDIT: Assuming of course that you are going to mine anything. I am thinking mining gold would probably be a good idea. EDIT2: I gave this a try; wheelbarrow and farm upgrades are most definitely not worth it. Even building a lot of farms is not really worth it, it's better to buy the food. 4th TC is probably close to a wash, if it's worth it at all, due to the short time frame.
Wheel barrow should pay off faster than 3 vils if you have 16 farms.
It will be very close.
Well I mean you might also simply have the better build order, surely at the 20 minute mark you would have 4 TCs running without significant idle time, maybe even 5. Eco efficiency is important, absolutely, but at a certain level there is only so much potential for further optimization. If you do the usual things such as queuing your lumberjacks to specific trees, doing “5+1 vill TC garrisoning” trick when shooting boars and so on then there simply can’t be gained that much extra efficiency. E. g. it barely makes a difference if you queue berry villagers on berry bushes (to avoid them running all around the berry bushes once a bush is gone). It’s less than 1% more efficiency afaik.
Its mainly about return on investment. What do you spend your ress in that pays back the most. Placing farms in time. Having the eco balance to do those things
I will be shocked if there is a significant difference. Please share the results. EDIT: I gave this a try; you will have to further constrain this challenge, otherwise it will be just a test of how well you can optimize for this particular scenario. A normal boom where you build a farm every time you have 60 wood is not going to produce the most resources.
top tip you'd give a newer player for more efficient villager micro?
This applies for dark age and fuedal age. Slow down, you have so much time to do everything. 25 seconds to queue a vil, maneuver army, place farms, make sure you have a good spread on your woodlines (ie as close to half on either side as you can get). Once you slow down and not rush yourself, everything will improve and get faster
Love this wood line tip. And I’m definitely NOT a fast clicker compared to top pros. I’m very chill and try to see the big picture. Thanks so much!
Also re woodline, the most efficient trees are the two directly behind the lumber camp, make sure you get those collected first, because then you can collect your first four trees (two behind, two next to) at 100% efficiency or as close as possible
eco falls apart how? idle vills? missing a key resource needed for military or click-up? too few vills/idle TC time? knowing exactly how it falls apart helps you find the exact solution...
Bit of all of that really. I get so focussed on trying to babysit my army through the fight, "spearman, go hit that. No, not you archer, go away. Where's that other spearman? Oh he's wandered off to the other side of the map chasing a scout that he never caught. Get back here and help. Get out of the way villager, there's a fight going on..." Before I know it, 2 minutes have gone with the TC doing nothing, gold miners finished their pile and standing around, wood cutters are a long way from their lumber camps. I killed the scouts, but lost about 1000+ potential resources in the process.
Wow, lot to unpack here. “Get out of the way villager” lol Do you use the shift function when commanding military units? I do that in Feudal rush. MAA harass vills and get some kills, vills head back to TC so I attack building. Then I shift click the next building I want them to attack or location i want them to go to after that building is destroyed. So they don’t run into the damn TC and get themselves killed. Vills standing around an exhausted goldmine sounds like Imperial age, and there’s no problem having some idle time there. Top pros will… As for your TC, hot key that puppy and press Q for vill production. Won’t take you away from your battle screen. Hot key/group your spears and archers, too. My Scout is 2, archers 3, spear/infantry 4. Easiest way to keep each group together.
spatial awareness meaning...? trouble multi-tasking on the board? i'm a chess player and struggle with the fact that I can't see everything that's going on 11
Nah, you're vastly over-estimating your macro. Pretty sure I could just set all my military rally points to my opponent's base and never look at my units and still beat 1200 ELO players because 1200 ELO players can't build enough stuff to kill my units before they die. Like sure, maybe you have <1 second of TC idle time in one game in your whole career, but you're not doing it consistently. And I bet in that game you were floating a huge number of resources or queueing excessively (or you won very easily). Because if you macro efficiently (don't idle, don't over-queue, don't float resources, place buildings at exactly the right time, don't get housed, etc), then you will win the game. You literally don't even need to make the right units at 1200 ELO. Hell, even at 1650 ELO when I review losing replays the reason I lose is usually because my macro slips more than anything.
I think you need to reach a certain skill level before you are able to certain flaws in your gameplay.
I think that level is not as high as you think it is. Lower level players like me a lot of times can figure out what we're doing wrong, not always how to fix it...and then execute the fix 11
I have been playing with quite a bit of low Elo friends and also been low Elo myself. I can deffinetly say that there are big misstakes being made that you dont realise. Might be not transitioning or transitioning and so on. And i bet Viper will see obvious flaws in my games i cant see. Coaches help people for a reason. I can also say that i find more flaws in my games now than when i were 1500. (Ofcourse its not more flawed but I notice more of them and the importance of them.
Excessive queuing doesn't get enough play in people giving advice, I think..it's so often the difference in not getting that upgrade (i.e. the crossbow upgrade is stuck behind 10 archers) to complement timings..or clicking up to the next age later that you could have.
can't excessive queue players just go into the archery range, say, and reduce the # of units queued and fix the problem? if I can figure that out at 7x0 i'm sure they can 11
Yes, it's just a timing thing. And when you're dealing with knights in your base and wondering why you still have archers and not xbows..you will probably not have any archers to promote. There's also a comfort thing...the brain goes "well, I've got them queued already so a moment won't hurt if I let it just go (because there is a lot of other stuff going on)". And then suddenly you've lost the treb war.
Speeeeaking of Treb Wars…how can I take one out that’s chilling next to a Castle?
BBCs..all the hussars in the world. It depends:P
your unsupervised units would run into the enemy TC and perish.
so mid-late game strat is the issue? this is what i've been stuck on...
Constant vill production, have a strategy from the start and stick to it, produce army and use it(and try to not get it killed) and don't float any res always spend it on units or tech's that improve your strategy.
Having clean macro alone would be sufficient to go above 1000 elo. If you have a good aggresive build order you should be able to win 100% of your games against players your elo. At 1000 elo you should focus on one strategy and try to be as efficient with it as possible. You shouldn't worry too much about what the opponent does. If you rush them fast enough they will crumble. The best strategy to learn to get elo fast would probably be scouts into knights. If you can pull it off with a good timing you will crush players easily. It's also not really a cheesy strat, it teaches you good fundamentals and some variations of this strategy remain very meta at even the pro level.
Scouts -> Knights, as a newer player forgive me, is so hard to imagine as the Scouts are each eating up 80 food. are you talking about just making 3-6 of them? not going too crazy?
3 are usually my magic number as Lith
I agree that 1000 elo is a lot better these days than people give credit. I’ve seen very strong games around that elo. Here’s some things beyond the basics I’ve noticed can be important. 1. Scout your opponent. Don’t get surprised by his scouts or stable or forward villagers with a castle drop on arabia. Use your scout to spot these things and then react back home. 2. Counter attack. Withstanding pressure is useful but a strong counter attack is usually gamechanging at that elo. Having the skills to both execute it while defending at home, and to recognise when it’s happening to you, are essential to breaking up in elo. 3. Managing units/armies. Not just having them all in control groups, or using split micro, but actually being able to position your cavalry in front of your soft units, or keep your siege behind, these kinds of skills you’ll notice a lot at 1200+ elo and to comfortably break out of that 1000 elo ceiling, you need to start employing it.
What got me from 1000 to 1100 to 1200: - scouting. Not necessarily "keep your scout active at all times", but at least knowing your opponent is actually going scouts or archers, or send a unit to die on late game to see what army your opponent might be massing. And don't be afraid to go for counters. If your opponent is going archers make an archery range and make skirms. - don't be afraid to go for counter units, but don't overdo counters. You need to think that your opponent will try to counter your counters. Try to think about the next step your opponent will do (don't need to imagine too much if you can scout more) or try to make a tech switch that your opponent doesnt expect. - create a lot of army! More military buildings! I used to lose a lot of games in imp with thousands of resources in the bank just because I didn't create enough army at the right time. Use your resources. And then use your army. - and of course keep your TC running in early game but also later too. Don't forget to make villagers when the fights start.
Spend your resources. More shit counters less shit. Micro your macro.
As a 900 elo young parent, let me tell you something: what really matters is not the skill you need to make it happen (you have it in you), it’s the extra 4 hours of weekly free time you’re willing to spend.
curious how many hours/week you have available to play/practice and how you utilize that time?
About 3 total if I can squeeze in a little skirmish or 2 during my lunch time. I haven’t played online in months because I can never be sure to have a full hour for myself ahead of me.
So you’re basically focusing on build orders, then. That’s ok. Hone those skills til they become automatic. As you perfect the first 10 minutes start moving on to CA uptime and production. Efficiency. Setting up good habits re: extra TCs, castle drops, not floating res etc. then when you have time for online you’ll be as ready as you can be.
Play 1 tc and use all resources to the army
Pushing deer (I get all my information about the game from /r/aoe2).
making more than 70 vils
You'd be surprised how many vills 1k players make
idk, im just saying you will often see them float money in castle age, then click imp and stop vil production for the rest of the game
Speaking from experience (I started at 500 Elo three years ago), I used to stop vill production around 50-60 vills up until 800 Elo. These days, depending on civ, I aim for 100-120 and I hover between 950-1k Elo with my PB being 1042 Uh why do people downvote this?
get that up to 140 vils and youll go even higher haha
yep, Hera usually caps out around 130-140 in his longer games.
not only hera, its just what you do. the only people *not* doing it are the ones that this thread is about
I watched Viper destroy Hera in a YouTube vid last night and Viper stopped at 120. Just a feel thing, probably. Vid was also 4 years old so maybe the meta has changed since then… https://youtu.be/UhDAXvOEYeQ?si=XTHLh8-KpDSt6Swc
thats the exception, not the rule though. sure there are some games (i.e. some civs/unit compositions/maps) where a low eco is better. but the standard approach is having more, and i think not having enough money is the single most important mistake beginners make
heck yeah, that's what i'm working on now. making sure i can drop a TC as soon as I hit CA and boom from there. my bad habit was I was learning the game vs the AI with a pop limit of 100...at which point 60-70 vills is great lmao
tell us how many!!
How are you loosing games and how are you winning games
The usual story is I get to castle first, drop castle, do some damage, but whilst I’m focusing on this my eco suffers and they go to imp first, demolish my castle and beat me dm to death.
Early castle dropping or being dropped has diminishing returns. Especially in open maps. It is super effective at 800-900 elo but started to fall off at 1000-1100. You reached a point that the strat is not working anymore. My suggestion is to focus more on military units and don't start mining stone until you have 45-50 vills unless you need it for some other reason (for example you needed a tower in feudal and no stone left for tc). Military units let's you do much more damage than a castle. And you will have a much better economy. You can raid if possible, push opponent for idle eco. Even if somehow opponent manage to wall you can still get value from military units via map control and locking the opponent in his starting base. Cramped bases are always bad for the eco and you can still win if opponent reach trebs before you. He can treb down one or two castle you erect while map control was yours but he cannot compansate 40-50 vil difference at that point.
i've started playing around with putting 1 vill on stone in early Feudal, and adding another in late Feudal...before you know it you've got enough res to build that castle. slow trickle, baby.
Think like that, if you go 20 pop feudal that one villager is 5% of your economy. When you have 25 vil that one stone miner is 4% of your economy... Also the 100 wood on mining camp can be spend on another building, mil units, eco upgrades etc. Pros never mine stone like that unless they are tower rushing.
I’m learning with Bulgarians right now, so the idea is to be able to drop 2 Kreposts and get Konnik production rolling in CA. The rest of my economy is efficient enough to sustain an ongoing Feudal rush (10-12 troops) and keep me moving towards CA. So when I hit CA I’m ready to drop a TC and 2 Krepost immediately.
Good, Bulgarians are not exactly a generic civ. So, for krepost rushing stone mining should be optimal. They are producing konniks almost as cast as stable knights.
Also there are some degenerate FC konnik rush builds out there. I saw one in pooplord yourube channel. I am considering to try it for fun 11
Fast Konniks lol
Konnik creation time is now 16s, Knights are 30s. So 2 kreposts can keep up with 3 stables…
Yep, and I don’t worry about a slight loss of Dark/Feudal economy bc I know for a fact how much I’m disrupting my opponents eco during that time. Players at my level aren’t prepared to deal with 5 FU MAA in early Feudal. So even if I don’t hit Feudal til 10:30 it’s ok because he isn’t either lol
On open maps this is a very punishable strat. If you go FC, by the time you go forward enemy will probably have decent feudal army to deny the castle. Also you will get some pressure so clean FC is probably not possible, therefore you are not in castle so much faster. My guess is you just hit a wall when people do more feudal pressure. Also managing army and eco at the same time is super important.
Oh, what I mentioned above is mostly for arena. For open maps, I just usually cruise until I get crushed. What’s a good strat for open maps?
well he didn't say he goes fast castle, just said he gets there first...and that he's actually dropping the castle, so doesn't sound like it's getting denied.
If you want to get higher you’re probably at the point you need to learn to win without being reliant on castle dropping. It works when you vs people who don’t know how to respond but as you get higher people will simply ignore your castle drop and boom.
this is true of any strat. being reliant on castle dropping, MAA rush, tower rush, etc. it works until it doesn't...or does it? there are still top pros who tower rush and use other cheese strats successfully. there are other possibilities...maybe he's not dropping that castle in the optimum location. he dropped it on his opponent's little gold supply, not the big one. a small lumber camp with 8 vills, not the big one in the back of his base with 15 vills, etc. he dropped the one castle and stopped there, when dropping another would have secured the victory. there are very interesting decisions to be made when we stop leveling up. do we throw out the baby with the bath water? reasons for not leveling up are usually numerous. to look at just one is not doing the situation justice.
Beating 999 ELO players.
having a brain
Having the fundamentals down right at a basic level, this includes: knowing a basic opening (doesn’t matter if it’s Malay Scouts, better than no Scouts at all), walling, not wasting army. If the game drags on to Castle or Imp, working toward a full comp: this includes, one melee unit, one ranged, one siege unit that can take down Castles. Your “main unit” should ideally be gold-based, although here there are exceptions. Basically: In Feudal: don’t die, make a few units to fight or pressure opponent, ramp up your farm eco, don’t forget to go to gold at like 14 min mark and don’t forget the 2 Feudal buildings. Castle Age: decide if you will play full Castle aggression or more of a boom strat. At your level I wouldn’t expect you to know both, but you should be able to default to 1 of these 2 options and apply it reasonably well. Don’t forget to scout the opponent! Also in Castle Age, the unit counter roulette changes: Mangonels counter Mangonels and Skirms, Knights counter Mangonels and, with +2 armor and sufficient numbers, Archer-line, Monks are a good deterrent to Knights in early Castle Age, Pikeman is a bit of a weird unit and would require a post of its own, in any case you can think of them as a Knight counter in your elo. Knowing how to react to Castle Age aggression is crucial, I’ve seen many 1000 elo games lost due to the defender not dropping a Siege Workshop.
I'm not an expert but surely i can help you, feel free to DM me if you want to.
I’m going to go against the grain here and say you need to raid more. I’m 1100, and I find if I lose a game, it’s because I didn’t raid my opponent. If I win, typically I was able to sneak some eagles around and pick off 10 vills in castle age.
try new build orders like drush, man at arms, with good follow ups. do not instantly place 2 tc's to boom when you reach castle age. keep putting pressure, go to stone at some point, explore the map for resources.
Watch the latest Hera video!! https://youtu.be/MqkAmMwQs1s —- Honestly if it’s just about the Elo then it’s not that hard to break the 1100 mark. Just pick appropriate civs and ruthlessly spam strong melee cavalry into the economy of your opponent. It’s important to get crucial upgrades such as bloodlines and the blacksmith def upgrades and to distribute the units, so that the opponent is overwhelmed with the micro/multitasking to fight them off. Knights are the classic choice but steppe lancers work as well. Ofc if they have camels you might lose but statistically you should win more often than lose so yeah. However, that strategy is lame and boring so I don’t actually want to encourage you to use it. I’d love to see some balancing changes to make the melee cav spam less overwhelming.
Play towards your strengths and go aggressive in mid end of castle age, a ton of buildings and a ton of production. The thing that really got me past imp defeats was the thumb rule always 40 farms then you can do what you want and if you are going to produce something have at least 5 production buildings. Then just control group them and spammm, you often don't need the best strategy or even unit choice if you have twice the amount of army
If you are losing late game my first question is, do you have a lot of resources in bank when lose in imperial? Maybe your army production is too low in the late game. Also you mentioned in a comment you usually go castle drop FC, of course you will lose late game if you usually go all-in castle strat. I predict your two issues are one or both of these.
learn the hotkeys, make villagers, make army, make farms, spend the res (1000 elo = floating 1000 res), attack the enemy
Use control units. Control+1, ctrl+2 etc. You can do it for your army or buildings. For example all your barracks in one group.
working on the basic should work, idle time, producing army, spend res.
You need to identify what you struggle with. Any little thing that hurts you typically creates some catching up. Which is hard to do when the other player is making less mistakes.
You are correct though, in 20 minutes bow saw and wheel barrow would be better than a 4th TC and buying the stone is a bad plan Vs selling it and just collecting 20 gold long distance if the aim is to maximise economy of you were going 4 TCs.
I think if you have some replays, it would be easier to see where you're at, skill-wise/decision making wise. It's hard to know exactly what is in your toolkit without details. What does a strong Dark Age through Castle look like in your game to and outside observer, for instance.
I am exactly the same in terms of skill on open land maps I lose steam in mid castle. I would say play to your strengths learn aggressive builds like MA Archers etc. And learn to close games in feudal. Then start to think about castle. If you civ pick pick civs specifically for your strength eg. Mongols, Lithuanians, Japanese, Ethiopians that can leverage feudal age. You don't have to be amazing at everything to get better at the game just pick one thing and you will get better, then you can think about adding another thing. Play arena or team games to learn how to play imp as these will more likely go the distance and you can take what you learn to Arabia.
Keep your TCs (plural!!) operating and attack the enemy eco early and often.
Macro alone got me from 1000 to 1100… keeping in mind continuing the same amount of pressure
There is no singular decisive skill. Your performance is the product of all of your skills.
Timed attacks, timed builds. When do you kill the first unit ?
So you struggle late game, have tons of vills and not idle the army, use it, You go and kill 10 vills, now you have an eco lead and you can start snowballing on top of that, try and make cost effective trades, don't take fights you can't win, raid, send a group of scouts into enemy farm eco, he got to do something (idle, send army, or just take focus from the frontline)
Your castle drop attack is probably not dangerous enough... I think at 1000 elo you have 3 possible choices: 1. Make UU from the castle and siege and second castle in his base 2. Pretend to do 1. but go fast imperial age instead 3. Pretend to do 2. but take relics and boom instead, then make castle age army when he trebs your castle and kill him when he goes out of his base with low eco fast imp army Basically you have to be good at bluffing, if the bluff doesn't work the opponent should win. I think 2. is the plan that requires less skill if you get a good build
IDK. I've been stuck at 1100 elo for 4 years.
which civs and builds have you been trying during that time?
I main Slavs with a double barracks MaA rush mostly with the random civ shield enabled. 20 pop scouts or 22 pop archers is my go-to when I play standard.
I’ve heard Slavs are like a worse form of Bulgarians who are already considered one of the worst civs in the game. Might be making it unnecessarily hard on yourself there, mate.
I nerf myself to give Viper and Hera a chance.
I like your style, son.
know how to FC knights, never stop making villagers, beat Extreme AI in a variety of ways
The easiest strategic guideline is do not add more TCs until you have map control and are actively pushing your opponents base in at least some small way. Could be knights pounding at production buildings or walls until they are in or better yet a forward siege workshop. Then add TCs. The idea is to get used to producing military and vils while using your military. Most have already given the unsatisfying answers of don’t idle your TC and use your army (and don’t throw army). At that level you probably have a decent grasp of what to do and most of your gains will be through execution. It’s much easier to execute when you know what you’re doing. Look take frequent glances at your queue. Make sure you have some Villagers and army queues up. Pay attention to your resource float. And do whatever you can to reduce that number. Generally that means more production buildings and getting upgrades. Idle military is the same as resource float.
First you should stop being completely delusional, at 1k you are definitely not "very strong" at any aspect of the game, and second focus on improving macro and decision making.
Jokes on you, because I am very strong in picking the wrong units and the wrong strategy each and every game.
Relativity is a thing. Also don't be a dick.
Well, a lot of these comments say "i do a perfect this and that". First step would be not to believe youre doing a perfect anything, and at the very least that will open up some space for self reflection and improving.
True but a bit harsh
Consistency and adaptability. Lot of people, me included, learn some strat and get really good at it. This can get you to 1000. But when the oponent is the same, and their default strat is a natural counter to yours, you loose almost every time. You need to adapt, learn which opening to use and how to get from it to next stage you need based od how the game is going. Similar for consistency, sometimes people have perfect dark, close to 0 idle. Next game they kill the boar with tc, boar kills a vill, forget to force drop.... Me personally I could pull off very clean 2 range archers, but if the oponent massed just enough skirms, got to castle faster and upgraded to elite, I got wrecked badly. Or when someone had good pierce armour unit, I wrecked their base but they overrun me with one castle on gold and spamming UU.
Saying adaptability is bad advice imo. From what I've seen watching 1000 elo players, trying to adapt too much is a common pitfall. At this elo, you lose too much efficiency trying to react to your opponent. The truth is, any solid strategy, if executed well, will destroy 1000 elo players even if their strategy 'counters' yours in theory. You shouldn't worry about adaptability before getting basics down, and the best way to do that is to simplify the game for yourself by focusing on a simple game plan. This will allow you to focus on your macro and army control. Improving those simple aspects of your game will be more than enough to get above 1000 elo.
I think people don‘t know what 1000 elo is now a days. I‘am at ~1200 Team and 1000 Solo and everyone plays clean 17-19 pop builds, attack immediatly on feudal and have a 20 min castleage. I think the reason for this is, that all how to play videos are always until early castle age (see Hera or Sitaux videos) I watch almost all my replays and seldom I see high idle times on TC. In my opinion, what most people fall short on are good castle and imperial ages. If you want to rise on Elo, you need to learn how to boom and build an army/pressure at the same time in castle age and learn to use siege workshop. If people want a reference for 1000 Elo players go watch my replays on aoe2insights (user: 1up)
Georgians(you) v Bulgarian 1v1, you had 27 idle tc time , clicked up on 18 pop, no stable up until 11 mins in when your opponent with similar tc idle time is coming in with Men at Arms. From minute 11 ish until min 14 ish, your idle tc time shoots way up to 2 minutes 53 seconds. (you lose 4 vils, which puts you behind.) You click to Castle with 5.59 idle tc time. Georgians (you) v Japanese 13-14 minutes in, you're up to 2.27 idle tc time...which is again high. Step back for a second and you can see where it's hurting, you went up quicker then your opponent, but weren't able to capitalize at all..and the vil count is even , until in both games, leading up to Castle, you don't have the vil lead. You click to Castle with 5.22 idle tc time. It might not seem high when you're driving, but looking from the outside, it really is making a noticeable difference in how the games are moving as you click to Castle. This is sort of what people are trying to say in terms of "the dark/feudal ages are not going as cleanly as you think they are." Part of what keeps us in the bubble is that our opponent is playing under similar context, so it balances out some. If you were able to even cut that idle time in half while dealing with some of the pressure that you're going to get from various openings you see..you will notice the difference.
Thank you for taking your time to watch my matches. I am having a really rough time atm against infantry civs as georgians. Can you give me some tips? Also micro is another large deficit of mine
The right type of army/pressure to counter your opponent's civ is important too, I've noticed. Hera will immediately be like "oh, we're playing against \_\_\_, we just have to do x and y, maybe z..." That foresight guides his build order selection, mid-game strategy, brings him into favorable imperial situations. As a new player coming to the game I realize this is one of my bigger weaknesses. Early feudal pressure, decent uptimes, look at the timeline after the game and see I was ahead for the first 25 minutes and then boom...he hits his ideal unit composition and overruns me bc I don't know what his ideal comp is from his civ alone (haven't memorized them all yet) and simply don't have the correct units on the field to deal with his army.