Personally I think most beginners (depending on your definition but below 1000elo) should avoid them as part of an army to convert knights, this is much more important at higher elo's. Low elo isn't determined by these factors and if you're like me will nearly always loose them because i wasn't watching close enough (not enough APM to manage home eco and do monk micro). obviously you can use them to pick relics. This is also why I don't mass too many mangonels, as they are a big cost and if not looked after properly can loose them all. need to improve on other aspects of the game first me thinks 🙂
Survivalist has a great video all about monks that you might want to check out as well. 40 minutes long and packed with some nice information. Here is the link ua-cam.com/video/wPmiuAtsU08/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Survivalist
Can we just take a moment to appreciate that twice in the video as an intermission we see huns with 3 barracks spamming longswords, and 3 idle ranges. In the video about mistakes in castle age. I spilled my coffee laughing, really nice touch there!
The most common mistakes I can point out include- 1. Not knowing when to go for relics. 2. Not knowing how many production buildings I can sustain. 3. Not knowing when to collect stone, when to build 4th tc if needed, when and where to make 1st castle, stone walls, etc. 4. Not knowing where and how often to scout, how many and what units to scout with, making outposts, etc.
This is kinda the point of the game. its ever evolving and what you should've done 1 minute ago is now too late to do and now you should instead do something completely different. Also even at the very top play styles vary quiet a bit. Hera loves Hussars, where as MBL loves Pikes, Mangonels, Monks, skirms. Lierrey loves archers and fast Imping with them into Arbs.
Great summary! To be aware of these things is definitely the first step, unfortunately the multitasking is what I find most difficult, especially when things get messy and there is lot of action! When watching the best player's, the multitasking is definitely something that stands out, even if you compare to really good players.
Yeah, I think there is a certain level needed. Like when I watch T90 I'm like "damn, T90 is so quick", but I then I watch watch Hera and I'm like "damn T90 is so slow" 11.
as a piano teacher what you call multitasking we generally call coordination/hand independance. The way we multitask playing the bass / chords with left hand and play the harmony / melody with right hand is we play each hand seperatly, very slowly, and gradually increase tempo over a few days as the nervous system builds myelin and stuff to make the neural pathways precise and fast. Once left hand and right hand require no thought to be played, play them together, starting slow, increasing tempo over a few days. It's really logical and simple when you think about it, biggest bararier is actually our own patience. Good pianists have actually felt how fast they make progress by taking it step by step and slow, so they compound progress much faster than those working without method. For AOE multitasking, the way i transpose my piano knowledge is to drill the build orders without touching at my army (drill the macro, the "left hand") and then play some games where i focus on the army and micro (from scouting to raiding to focus firing to formations / patrolling into units etc), in effect drilling the micro, the "right hand". Finally, you can go ahead and play your best game possible in ranked mixing macro and micro. The cheat code to learning aoe might reside in changing game speed, slower to faster, but most people including me probably don't have patience for that. Wait, you didn't think you where just gonna HAVE FUN and PLAY A DAMN GAME ? Hopefully you perceive the learning process closer to play than work. If not, you'll stay stuck in low elo, miss the rush of being good at the game, and eventually quit.
Hi, i play this game since i was 7 yrs old, now i am 25, and i can tell you the most important thing are HOTKEYS, when fighting multiple enemies always bind your armies CTRL + 1 +2 +3 +4 etc.. Always build multiple towncenters when hitting castle age and spam C key, they are as good as a castle almost, and you can keep building villagers constantly
@@tom6069 yeee hotkeys are damn important, and just like piano fingerings most people are lazy about them when they're sooo useful and make playing much easier. Very ironic
What I find the absolute hardest is not idling military, I am very paranoid about leaving my base undefended and afraid to forget my eco while moving around with army
As a teacher, I'm very happy to see you do a bit of teaching on your specialist subject. And that, in turn, has given you new content to share back to the community which is also beneficial to your overall views. Spotting common errors and giving whole class feedback is actually very apt for current teaching methods so you're a natural ha: A perfect circle! Love this new content.
Thank you very much for the live coaching on your Twitch. Its AWESOME. I think we all learned a LOT. Keep doing it, please. And congrats for the semi-final at Warlords. Go for the victory.
Thank you for this Hera, my biggest one by far is floating resources. I'm pretty consistent at new TCs and keeping up villager production and growing the economy but then I neglect the military production. Second one is idle military. Or if I do start using military to find some damage I'll neglect the base...
by mid or late castle age, if I've kept my TC(s) running properly, I float resources because I haven't added more production buildings. Being able to click Imp is a surprise more than half the time
@Hera when the last DLC came out you promised us a "So you want to play" episode for each of the new indian civs and I'm still waiting for it, specially Hindustanis and Gurjaras which are my favorite :) if you also make a "Ultimate guide to" these civs it would be even better, love your series man, keep it up!
Great Video! I personally struggle with knowing when to save up for Imp and when to go to stone, maybe you can make a followup video on this one here :)
I'm afftaid there is no universal answer to that its very civ map and situation depedent. As a rule of thump I would say if you are safe at home and maybe wone a big fight or got a good raid on your opponent it is a good idea to focus on economy and get a faster uptime and secure strategic points with castles. But again very civ dependent as Malians (bad endgame) you better keept the pressure up as Mongols it's probably better to get economically ahead and get your strong endgame units out as fast as possible. But I'm a 1200 elo pleb myself so what do I know
Tatoh says in general if you have 70 vills (near 30 mins) you have to decide if go imp (idling military buildings for a while) or keep pushing in Castle age.
Great series/videos/coaching - i always said it’s a shame the top top tier players don’t necessarily try to build up the next gen of aoe2 base or leave a legacy behind (albeit grandiose of a term 😅) by providing direct/indirect coaching along with spicy tips along the way - you are proving me wrong and i’m happy for it - ‘NO MORE WEIRD STUFF’ roger that coach - aofwessex ❤
@@thingsmac in addition to what others have said, your first Folwark is placed for you in Empire Wars. Some times it's up against another resource or otherwise bad for farming. Not ideal.
Hera rules! Hera #4 rule this video. Idle military. My direct inspired quote 'Balance "Need to amass verses need to harass"' IE you need to balance your mil units on harassment of his economy vs. [versus] building up your total mil unit(s) to absolutely crush him or the other team.
Number 4 is an overlooked rookie mistake. To become good at RTS games, it is better to be proactive than reactive. Have a clear game plan and act on it. If you execute it properly, you will force your enemy to react to it, and you can either transition to another strategy or gain a decisive advantage before getting pushed back. Of course you also need to have a Plan B in case things go awry. I guess the main point is: Having a well thought out plan is important and so is the ability to adapt on the fly.
I would add as a suggestion to use the "select all tc" hotkey. My game in castle age improved dramatically after incorporating that (although I am still a noob haha)
For a guy floating around 1300-1400 elo and loosing because of bad castle transition... This video is tailor made for me.... Great content as usual. Keep up the great work
Nice bonus with the longswords🤯🤣. Indirect tip. I tend to produce small army at the start of castle age and add a tc, than I stop the army production focus on economy but not allway have tge 3rd tc on mind and I get overrun since I don't make enough military, and don't have enough production building
Great video Hera! Can you make a video about transition betwen castle age- imperial? I always struggle of whe to decide to click up I normally look for a balance between economy and a good army before clicking obviously depends on the map but never actually get it smooth of when iI should stop creating vills and so
Hi hera. My opinion about floating resources in low elo. Is a very interesting point to focus and improve macro. Key is to check the wood stocks and lumberjacks. In Castle age not more than 250-300 in bank and not more than 20 vills. You can balance the economy with wood control. If You see more than 250-300 wood in bank you choose: farms, buildings, tc, more army, monastery, siege, move vills to other resource, etc Note: disable autofarm
@@die1097 I like to have it on right after i got to imp - Queue some trebs, get at least heavy plow, add some vills to wood and then not worrying about replacing farms while your armies diing somewhere on the map :D
No. 3) is related to another common mistake Viper mentioned, which is not creating enough farms to support villager production + unit choice. E.g. With 3x TC + 2x stable knights, you need 30x farms in order to avoid idle stables and TCs. Lack of castle age farms also delays your imperial timing.
One thing I will say as a long time RTS players is knowing when and how much to stockpile resources, especially gold, is essential. When to save and go for Imperial Age vs commit to more units and an aggressive push is hard to know sometimes but critical for winning games. Lots of unique techs are expensive and it can be hard to save for when you're constantly pumping units. Getting Mangudai from Castle Age with full upgrades to Imperial Age with full upgrades takes over 2100 gold and 2900 food. In isolation that's not a lot but that's also over 30 mangudai worth of gold and wood (time getting food that could be spent on wood). The difference in Castle Age full upgrade Mangudai and Imperial Age full upgrades is *massive* though with +4 attack, +1 range, +2/2 armor, and +2 vs spearmen and siege. Balancing the act of saving for key expensive upgrades with making military and buildings is a hard skill. A lot of players save too much and aren't good at spending, but then in the above average but not great range you often seen poor long term planning. They're so focused on not letting it stockpile that they don't think of when it should.
Hera, you would be the best investor ever. These principles can be extrapolated into real world money management, needles to say. Thanks for the tips as always.
That 5) most common thing puzzles me. I mean its good to have lot of production and all that stuff, however sometimes when u add 3 tcs early and u need a lot of army, u just cant afford anything. So i rather go for monastery, university or siege push and then just casually add some tcs to catch up.. Or dont rather have 1 tc always producing and then adding second before i can click to imp :D
@Hera can you make a video on feudal age army composition for archer civs please. I tend to lose when my opponent uses mass skirmishers. (1200 elo guy) Reason behind this is I can't harras him or do enough damage with archers. How to deal with mass skirmishers in feudal age ? Should we switch with scouts if yes when and how many? Or should we advance to castle around 17th minutes?
I'm around that elo and what I found to work often is to just back off a bit (not throwing away multiple archers just for one vill kill) and getting to castle age ASAP. This opens up multiple options: Early castle you can take fights with upgraded xbows against unupgraded skirms (skirm upgrade takes quite a while, too), but you also have mangonels and knights as an option: knights, even without upgrades, are really good against skirms; you don't need to heavily commit on them. Just evading the skirms and hitting woodines/exposed ressources also works well in any age, because the skirms won't always be in position. And always remember-- a group of xbows is the much more valuable and versatile unit then a bunch of skirms; you are not necessarily "worse" just because his units counter yours ATM.
You can stay with archers. I would pull back to your base, then get him chasing you and move some archers behind a wood line to harass his villagers. Scouts are going to drain too much food. You should be forcing him to spend food on skirmishers and he will have less to go up to castle. Elite skirmisher is a very expensive upgrade in castle and will further hurt him at a time where knights can clean up the skirms easily. Others have offered great advice. If you are in castle and are taking on skirmishers make sure to get thumb ring.
I play archer civs quite often so if opponent counter hard, usually i jsut pull back and rush for castle age. If he massed enough skirms you should have few minutes faster uptime and thus you can crush skirms with +2 crossbowmen with siege. I mean even elite skirm without +2 armor dies to crossbowman (if u dont let them die ofc :D
Insufficient production buildings and thereby floating resources is my #1 at 1250 elo, transitioning from booming to making military, and I see it in other players all the way up to 1800. I was watching an 1800 player the other day floating 2k wood and 2k food in early imp with 30 Mangudai and 1 Stable at 150 pop. The game continued for another 15 minutes until he finally dropped some stables and started making Hussar.
As around 1000elo this banking is biggest problem. Whole game is fine but as soon as i hit imp its either floating res and not really having time to spend it or having weak eco and buying trebs and upgrades. Hussar uprages costs a lot gold tho.
I see a lot of people under utilizing siege in castle in favor of amassing a lot of units. Never underestimate the capped Ram + light Cav spam. God forbid you’re a civ like the poles with the obuch
I've done 4 so much recently. it completely confuses you and messes up just about everything. also, I've had knight civs completely overwhelm me before I've got enough camels or pikes to stop them. if you have enough knights you can push through pikes and camels easily. especially with civs like burgundians and teutons.
I am very new to AoE2, in general how many villagers should you aim to have before going up into the next age? i know it varies from playstyle and civs, but just a general outlier? and how many should you have by imperial age, when reaching the housing limit? is there a guide somewhere for this?
"daFuq is 3TC?!" okay, my takeaway here is that; I have never played this against another human, and given this I never will. Thanks for this life-advice.
I so often get a good lead in feudal then just sit about not doing much in castle and throw. I've lost games where I'm 8 vills ahead hitting castles 11
usually from wood. If you followed a proper build order, you should have just enough on food/gold to keep 1 tc + your military production going. On the way to castle age you stock pile a ton of wood, so you can take villagers from wood and use them to build tc, you then add farms to sustain production from these tcs
My bad habits are * focusing too much on long walls rather short tree lined walls(I like to turtle and play a.i only. *floating resources, I usually have thousands of each upgrade besides stone. So like 3k wood or 3k+ gold and no relics collected. * early picking upgrades. I always end of picking upgrades early without a military. * I find myself always lacking military but yet I'm a God with economy every game. (so I need to try and make a military building my civ is good with and make a couple here n there for a small force of idk 20 men during castle. *I get overwhelmed easily with my thought process, always been that way tho. I can't multi-task well but love age of empires. I have 2k hrs on age 2 against a.i only👍🏻and own every age game. Not a fan of 3 and 4. But meh. I play them.
For tip 2 I have to ask; if you're building an army to play defensively and boom/out-eco your opponent, doesn't sending them halfway across the map leave you incredibly open and vulnerable to any enemy attacks? I started trying to scout/control the map with my army because I noticed all the good players seem to do it but like 30 seconds after my skirms left my base, enemy archers came raiding and I lost :(
It's situational, if you spend 1.5k resources making units but your opponent focuses solely on a boom, they can afford an extra tc over you/eco upgrades earlier and snowballs into a 1 or 2 minute faster imp and before you know it, you're fighting arbs and trebs just as you get to imp. That's where the town patrol comes in, you can react quicker and avoid loosing eco :) if your army poses enough threat to them when raiding it can also stop them hitting you or at the very least, further reinforcements.
you can send just 1 unit ahead to check what the enemy is up to, this is what i do xD Preferebly one that has a big LOS, like a scout/ light cav, monk or even a vil to build an outpost. i call them "the messenger" unit. They never come back :( But it helps a lot, especially when the enemy is massing a big army but they're just sitting on their butts.
I'm pretty good at investing in only the techs I need at the blacksmith. I don't buy them all for the sake of it. However, every other mistake he pointed out is something I need to work on
As a low elo player (~ 1200) i want to mention that a market it pretty op there. It happes alot that my respurces are unbalanced, hence I use the market to counter that.
for the mistake 4 rather than i play counters i make army of 35 knight and 25 horse archer and while fighting i control the archers i find that army too powerful especially if i play tatars i increase horse archers to 35 is that a good tactic or not
I do all of them. I had no idea that you have to produce villagers continuously. How do you manage to keep clicking and producing when you have to manage fights and micro your troops and everything...like howww
I do most of the mistakes, I tend to only make TC, I do use my army but mostly to attack the enemy, I do not get useless techs tho, neither float resources too much. If floating resources, I move villagers instead of selling those resources
Nice, thank for clearing thing on floating rss, my friend with 1k hours only against ai always bitching when fight against hard ai,a he got rushed but his rss keep floating and wont produce units and sometimes this frustrating especially just against ai. Funny moments with him when play on michi he literally hoard rss 200k++ and refuse attacking because he think we gonna lose when rss got 0 aaand i just yolo 1 vs 2 hard ai and take half hour to win..... His rss not even go down to 150k, wasting 4 hour just for farming lol
My biggest issue is even though my opponents wreck my base with just 2-3 knights all the time, I always feel like I can’t move out with less than 6 knights because just 1-2 will die and not do anything. So by the time I have my mass, they are already raiding me or have too much in defense set up.
A knight can kill a lots of vils so its good to send one time to time to the enemy base while you are defending also the wont notice because they a too much concentrated in the atack
But when I make TC, I die to initial heavy siege, monk and xbow play. Opponent then drop castle and boom behind. Also, sometimes isn't it better to idle for a while to click imp or get upgrade. Like having 30farmers or so? Regarding floating resources. There are instances when I am so focused on army control, I float resources, usually wood or gold. Is it justified to have a higher army mass and push with some floating resources (readjust by market a bit later)?
TC's being on the list was a bit odd. Nothing wrong with going 1 TC if you're going heavy on aggression. 3TC is just a bit safer and in a 1TC v 3TC game 3TC is probably going to win more often. But 1TC play is perfectly viable. That said, if you're dying to siege monk and xbow all the time you probably aren't defending properly. You need to make your own mangos and your own monks and maybe add a knight or two later on. If Opponent is on 3 TC then you should be winning with the defenders advantage. If the opponent is on 1TC behind and you're on 3, and then opponent "drops a castle and boom behind", well you should have at least a 5 minute headstart with the boom, so in that scenario you are miles ahead and should just be winning every time. If you aren't then something else is wrong. As for idling: almost never a good idea. Occasionally a 1 minute idle to age up can be worth it. But almost never. Better to build farms. Better to use the market. As for floating resources: no. Don't do it. Have enough production buildings. Have them in a control group. Then you can requeue them without looking away from the fight. If you're floating wood you have to make more farms. Just practice. Don't float and don't idle.
I´d never go 3 tcs on open map unless i got defensive castle or some army production before. Floating wood is essential to my late game :D rather sell it than be dry whne u need siege units...
what i do is fast castle, then i build a castle as soon i reach castle, then start making military, build a few petards for his walls, build 5, 6 rams , i have killed a lot adversaries doing this, just one TC
Odd question: Any tips for managing rally points? My eco gets really messy because I don't know where to put them once my vill count is close to 100. Especially from my first TC, since all the close resources are mostly used up. Btw, I'm ChiRho_AoE and yes again, I was joking today in chat. 11
im just old for multitasking and realy cant spend my resources when things get messy. but i found a strat that works for me . focusing on one unit and spam it until you hurt enemy. like hussars civs. etc. it took me 1300 but if i ever play another civ or strat boom im down to 700. XD
Wow! I got a perfect score for the first time,i didnt got such perfect score in my studies as well.Imagine how terrible i am when i am doing all 5 mistakes
Hera what do you think of Auto Queue ? With the AOM Retold in the works, what advice would you give to developpers ? How do you think AQ impacts AOM ranked ? If you boot up AOM and try to play it what does it feel like to you as a pro to have AQ ? would be awesome if you made a detailed video on this subject, it's funny that one of the biggest castle age mistakes could be solved by AQ. Some proponents say AQ takes away skill expression... I'm not convinced it's a good trade off, AQ allos for more focusing on micro, on macro, you have more energy to actually be creative with the game imo. + It's quite frustrating for newer players to develop that habit... Thx for your vides again
Hera it would be awesome if you made a video about monks, when and how to use them. As a beginner I tend to avoid them...
Personally I think most beginners (depending on your definition but below 1000elo) should avoid them as part of an army to convert knights, this is much more important at higher elo's. Low elo isn't determined by these factors and if you're like me will nearly always loose them because i wasn't watching close enough (not enough APM to manage home eco and do monk micro). obviously you can use them to pick relics. This is also why I don't mass too many mangonels, as they are a big cost and if not looked after properly can loose them all. need to improve on other aspects of the game first me thinks 🙂
Survivalist has a great video all about monks that you might want to check out as well. 40 minutes long and packed with some nice information. Here is the link ua-cam.com/video/wPmiuAtsU08/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Survivalist
ua-cam.com/video/wPmiuAtsU08/v-deo.html
I'm 1650 ELO and also rarely use monks actually, I prefer the boom/snowball effect, my APM isn't bad but when I go monks, my macro suffers 😅
Only time i use them is to get relics
Can we just take a moment to appreciate that twice in the video as an intermission we see huns with 3 barracks spamming longswords, and 3 idle ranges. In the video about mistakes in castle age. I spilled my coffee laughing, really nice touch there!
The most common mistakes I can point out include-
1. Not knowing when to go for relics.
2. Not knowing how many production buildings I can sustain.
3. Not knowing when to collect stone, when to build 4th tc if needed, when and where to make 1st castle, stone walls, etc.
4. Not knowing where and how often to scout, how many and what units to scout with, making outposts, etc.
Not knowing that not knowing
@@ihmpall to know or not to know, that is to know.
Great list!
A rd. 2 video on these timings would be great!
I second that list and maybe would add not securing your eco afte expanding
This is kinda the point of the game. its ever evolving and what you should've done 1 minute ago is now too late to do and now you should instead do something completely different.
Also even at the very top play styles vary quiet a bit. Hera loves Hussars, where as MBL loves Pikes, Mangonels, Monks, skirms. Lierrey loves archers and fast Imping with them into Arbs.
Great summary!
To be aware of these things is definitely the first step, unfortunately the multitasking is what I find most difficult, especially when things get messy and there is lot of action!
When watching the best player's, the multitasking is definitely something that stands out, even if you compare to really good players.
Yeah, I think there is a certain level needed. Like when I watch T90 I'm like "damn, T90 is so quick", but I then I watch watch Hera and I'm like "damn T90 is so slow" 11.
as a piano teacher what you call multitasking we generally call coordination/hand independance. The way we multitask playing the bass / chords with left hand and play the harmony / melody with right hand is we play each hand seperatly, very slowly, and gradually increase tempo over a few days as the nervous system builds myelin and stuff to make the neural pathways precise and fast. Once left hand and right hand require no thought to be played, play them together, starting slow, increasing tempo over a few days.
It's really logical and simple when you think about it, biggest bararier is actually our own patience. Good pianists have actually felt how fast they make progress by taking it step by step and slow, so they compound progress much faster than those working without method.
For AOE multitasking, the way i transpose my piano knowledge is to drill the build orders without touching at my army (drill the macro, the "left hand") and then play some games where i focus on the army and micro (from scouting to raiding to focus firing to formations / patrolling into units etc), in effect drilling the micro, the "right hand". Finally, you can go ahead and play your best game possible in ranked mixing macro and micro.
The cheat code to learning aoe might reside in changing game speed, slower to faster, but most people including me probably don't have patience for that.
Wait, you didn't think you where just gonna HAVE FUN and PLAY A DAMN GAME ? Hopefully you perceive the learning process closer to play than work. If not, you'll stay stuck in low elo, miss the rush of being good at the game, and eventually quit.
Hi, i play this game since i was 7 yrs old, now i am 25, and i can tell you the most important thing are HOTKEYS, when fighting multiple enemies always bind your armies CTRL + 1 +2 +3 +4 etc.. Always build multiple towncenters when hitting castle age and spam C key, they are as good as a castle almost, and you can keep building villagers constantly
@@tom6069 yeee hotkeys are damn important, and just like piano fingerings most people are lazy about them when they're sooo useful and make playing much easier. Very ironic
What I find the absolute hardest is not idling military, I am very paranoid about leaving my base undefended and afraid to forget my eco while moving around with army
My currently common mistakes is forgetting to build multiple Military buildings and then being overrun by an opponent that does that perfectly lol
As a teacher, I'm very happy to see you do a bit of teaching on your specialist subject. And that, in turn, has given you new content to share back to the community which is also beneficial to your overall views. Spotting common errors and giving whole class feedback is actually very apt for current teaching methods so you're a natural ha: A perfect circle! Love this new content.
Thank you very much for the live coaching on your Twitch. Its AWESOME. I think we all learned a LOT. Keep doing it, please. And congrats for the semi-final at Warlords. Go for the victory.
Thank you for this Hera, my biggest one by far is floating resources. I'm pretty consistent at new TCs and keeping up villager production and growing the economy but then I neglect the military production. Second one is idle military. Or if I do start using military to find some damage I'll neglect the base...
by mid or late castle age, if I've kept my TC(s) running properly, I float resources because I haven't added more production buildings. Being able to click Imp is a surprise more than half the time
This Town Watch before/after changed my view(strategically wise and literally). Very important tech that I neglected. Thank you!
@Hera when the last DLC came out you promised us a "So you want to play" episode for each of the new indian civs and I'm still waiting for it, specially Hindustanis and Gurjaras which are my favorite :) if you also make a "Ultimate guide to" these civs it would be even better, love your series man, keep it up!
Good video. Getting back into the game recently, only 30% winrate vs. hardest ai, definitely caught myself making a few of these!✌🏼 Cheers mate!
Great Video!
I personally struggle with knowing when to save up for Imp and when to go to stone, maybe you can make a followup video on this one here :)
Yes, I always have had a problem with this. I’m either way late or just remember out of panic and go up without an actual plan
I'm afftaid there is no universal answer to that its very civ map and situation depedent. As a rule of thump I would say if you are safe at home and maybe wone a big fight or got a good raid on your opponent it is a good idea to focus on economy and get a faster uptime and secure strategic points with castles. But again very civ dependent as Malians (bad endgame) you better keept the pressure up as Mongols it's probably better to get economically ahead and get your strong endgame units out as fast as possible. But I'm a 1200 elo pleb myself so what do I know
Tatoh says in general if you have 70 vills (near 30 mins) you have to decide if go imp (idling military buildings for a while) or keep pushing in Castle age.
@@die1097 that is actually a really useful benchmark
If you don't wanna overthink it, just idle at 80 vils until you can click up and then keep making vils until 100-150 vils
this is why i like campeigs, so relaxed, just boom a bit, atk a bit, smoke just a little bit of weed. but thanks as always for the vid
Great series/videos/coaching - i always said it’s a shame the top top tier players don’t necessarily try to build up the next gen of aoe2 base or leave a legacy behind (albeit grandiose of a term 😅) by providing direct/indirect coaching along with spicy tips along the way - you are proving me wrong and i’m happy for it - ‘NO MORE WEIRD STUFF’ roger that coach - aofwessex ❤
I constantly am a culprit of all 5 mistakes lol, but these videos certainly help identify them! Thx
Biggest one: Getting upgraded completely. I'm guilty of all of them regularly. Thanks, this is going to help me out a lot.
#1: Not picking Poles
Why didn't Pros select them more in RB Wololo? I'm a fan but I've suspected I've been missing a memo
@@thingsmac Ew is too agressive for Poles. They want time to prepare their base for Folwarking and in EW thats easier to deny which hurts them a lot.
Poles are almost impossible to stop if you reach castle age on an even footing. 60% is ridiculous.
@@thingsmac poles demand defending a bit before its op. Not so simple
@@thingsmac in addition to what others have said, your first Folwark is placed for you in Empire Wars. Some times it's up against another resource or otherwise bad for farming. Not ideal.
Hera rules!
Hera #4 rule this video. Idle military.
My direct inspired quote
'Balance "Need to amass verses need to harass"'
IE you need to balance your mil units on harassment of his economy vs. [versus] building up your total mil unit(s) to absolutely crush him or the other team.
Number 4 is an overlooked rookie mistake. To become good at RTS games, it is better to be proactive than reactive. Have a clear game plan and act on it. If you execute it properly, you will force your enemy to react to it, and you can either transition to another strategy or gain a decisive advantage before getting pushed back.
Of course you also need to have a Plan B in case things go awry. I guess the main point is: Having a well thought out plan is important and so is the ability to adapt on the fly.
I would add as a suggestion to use the "select all tc" hotkey. My game in castle age improved dramatically after incorporating that (although I am still a noob haha)
It's also more relaxing than cycling through all the buildings.
sure thing, unless u misplace your gatehr point :D Cycling is the move :D
Just started playing AOE2, still playing vs DE ai before I go into ranked while I get a handle on the game and your videos have been hugely helpful
This is probably the most relevant video I've ever seen
For a guy floating around 1300-1400 elo and loosing because of bad castle transition... This video is tailor made for me.... Great content as usual. Keep up the great work
This was a slap in the back of the head. Mistakes 2,3,4 and 5. lol
These videos are soo useful! Please keep making them!
Nice bonus with the longswords🤯🤣. Indirect tip. I tend to produce small army at the start of castle age and add a tc, than I stop the army production focus on economy but not allway have tge 3rd tc on mind and I get overrun since I don't make enough military, and don't have enough production building
This is so good ! Thanks for this hera ♥️
Great video Hera! Can you make a video about transition betwen castle age- imperial? I always struggle of whe to decide to click up I normally look for a balance between economy and a good army before clicking obviously depends on the map but never actually get it smooth of when iI should stop creating vills and so
Hi hera. My opinion about floating resources in low elo. Is a very interesting point to focus and improve macro.
Key is to check the wood stocks and lumberjacks.
In Castle age not more than 250-300 in bank and not more than 20 vills.
You can balance the economy with wood control.
If You see more than 250-300 wood in bank you choose: farms, buildings, tc, more army, monastery, siege, move vills to other resource, etc
Note: disable autofarm
Disabling auto farm before castle age was a big game changer for me :D
@@krystofcisar469 is difficult if you need wood for other buildings or something. Specially is your under pressure
@@die1097 I like to have it on right after i got to imp - Queue some trebs, get at least heavy plow, add some vills to wood and then not worrying about replacing farms while your armies diing somewhere on the map :D
No. 3) is related to another common mistake Viper mentioned, which is not creating enough farms to support villager production + unit choice. E.g. With 3x TC + 2x stable knights, you need 30x farms in order to avoid idle stables and TCs. Lack of castle age farms also delays your imperial timing.
Thx you, excellent video as always!
I have fallen into the trap of trying to counter my opponent right away. Thanks for the tip!
I feel like 1 and 3 go hand in hand. I forgot to drop more military and thus float res. Sometimes just having more production wins games.
One thing I will say as a long time RTS players is knowing when and how much to stockpile resources, especially gold, is essential. When to save and go for Imperial Age vs commit to more units and an aggressive push is hard to know sometimes but critical for winning games. Lots of unique techs are expensive and it can be hard to save for when you're constantly pumping units. Getting Mangudai from Castle Age with full upgrades to Imperial Age with full upgrades takes over 2100 gold and 2900 food. In isolation that's not a lot but that's also over 30 mangudai worth of gold and wood (time getting food that could be spent on wood). The difference in Castle Age full upgrade Mangudai and Imperial Age full upgrades is *massive* though with +4 attack, +1 range, +2/2 armor, and +2 vs spearmen and siege. Balancing the act of saving for key expensive upgrades with making military and buildings is a hard skill. A lot of players save too much and aren't good at spending, but then in the above average but not great range you often seen poor long term planning. They're so focused on not letting it stockpile that they don't think of when it should.
Good point. Most of the best unique techologies is bascially unaffordadble is you not bank thinking about it...
I do all, specially upgrading everything in blacksmith before I start making units
Hera, you would be the best investor ever. These principles can be extrapolated into real world money management, needles to say.
Thanks for the tips as always.
I know about all of this -- my mistake is that I have less apm than a severely amputated turtle on sedatives 11
i learn so much from these.
That 5) most common thing puzzles me. I mean its good to have lot of production and all that stuff, however sometimes when u add 3 tcs early and u need a lot of army, u just cant afford anything. So i rather go for monastery, university or siege push and then just casually add some tcs to catch up.. Or dont rather have 1 tc always producing and then adding second before i can click to imp :D
@Hera can you make a video on feudal age army composition for archer civs please.
I tend to lose when my opponent uses mass skirmishers. (1200 elo guy)
Reason behind this is I can't harras him or do enough damage with archers.
How to deal with mass skirmishers in feudal age ? Should we switch with scouts if yes when and how many? Or should we advance to castle around 17th minutes?
I'm around that elo and what I found to work often is to just back off a bit (not throwing away multiple archers just for one vill kill) and getting to castle age ASAP. This opens up multiple options: Early castle you can take fights with upgraded xbows against unupgraded skirms (skirm upgrade takes quite a while, too), but you also have mangonels and knights as an option: knights, even without upgrades, are really good against skirms; you don't need to heavily commit on them. Just evading the skirms and hitting woodines/exposed ressources also works well in any age, because the skirms won't always be in position. And always remember-- a group of xbows is the much more valuable and versatile unit then a bunch of skirms; you are not necessarily "worse" just because his units counter yours ATM.
When you see a bunch of skirms, wall up, go to Castle, 3 TC boom.
You can stay with archers. I would pull back to your base, then get him chasing you and move some archers behind a wood line to harass his villagers. Scouts are going to drain too much food. You should be forcing him to spend food on skirmishers and he will have less to go up to castle. Elite skirmisher is a very expensive upgrade in castle and will further hurt him at a time where knights can clean up the skirms easily.
Others have offered great advice. If you are in castle and are taking on skirmishers make sure to get thumb ring.
I play archer civs quite often so if opponent counter hard, usually i jsut pull back and rush for castle age. If he massed enough skirms you should have few minutes faster uptime and thus you can crush skirms with +2 crossbowmen with siege. I mean even elite skirm without +2 armor dies to crossbowman (if u dont let them die ofc :D
Insufficient production buildings and thereby floating resources is my #1 at 1250 elo, transitioning from booming to making military, and I see it in other players all the way up to 1800.
I was watching an 1800 player the other day floating 2k wood and 2k food in early imp with 30 Mangudai and 1 Stable at 150 pop. The game continued for another 15 minutes until he finally dropped some stables and started making Hussar.
As around 1000elo this banking is biggest problem. Whole game is fine but as soon as i hit imp its either floating res and not really having time to spend it or having weak eco and buying trebs and upgrades. Hussar uprages costs a lot gold tho.
I see a lot of people under utilizing siege in castle in favor of amassing a lot of units. Never underestimate the capped Ram + light Cav spam. God forbid you’re a civ like the poles with the obuch
you can't get capped ram in Castle age, unless you're Cumans
I've done 4 so much recently. it completely confuses you and messes up just about everything. also, I've had knight civs completely overwhelm me before I've got enough camels or pikes to stop them. if you have enough knights you can push through pikes and camels easily. especially with civs like burgundians and teutons.
I am very new to AoE2, in general how many villagers should you aim to have before going up into the next age? i know it varies from playstyle and civs, but just a general outlier? and how many should you have by imperial age, when reaching the housing limit? is there a guide somewhere for this?
Most commonly you have 20 and click up to fuedal age. In a long game, you might have at least 80, but maybe around 100-120 vills top.
i do some 1 tc aztec pressure for relics and 38 pop fast imp Portuguese 4toria but yeah generally i add 2 tcs
You guys are making it to castle age?!?!?
"daFuq is 3TC?!"
okay, my takeaway here is that; I have never played this against another human, and given this I never will.
Thanks for this life-advice.
Town Patrol resource cost was reduced to 400 in a previous DE update (100 gold cheaper, it's now 300 gold & 100 food).
So expensive, cant remember last time i researched it :D
I so often get a good lead in feudal then just sit about not doing much in castle and throw. I've lost games where I'm 8 vills ahead hitting castles 11
I do make the extra TCs, but most of the time I don't know where I should pull the villagers from to make them.
usually from wood. If you followed a proper build order, you should have just enough on food/gold to keep 1 tc + your military production going. On the way to castle age you stock pile a ton of wood, so you can take villagers from wood and use them to build tc, you then add farms to sustain production from these tcs
My bad habits are
* focusing too much on long walls rather short tree lined walls(I like to turtle and play a.i only.
*floating resources, I usually have thousands of each upgrade besides stone. So like 3k wood or 3k+ gold and no relics collected.
* early picking upgrades. I always end of picking upgrades early without a military.
* I find myself always lacking military but yet I'm a God with economy every game. (so I need to try and make a military building my civ is good with and make a couple here n there for a small force of idk 20 men during castle.
*I get overwhelmed easily with my thought process, always been that way tho. I can't multi-task well but love age of empires. I have 2k hrs on age 2 against a.i only👍🏻and own every age game. Not a fan of 3 and 4. But meh. I play them.
Age of empires arguing against wealth consolidation
For tip 2 I have to ask; if you're building an army to play defensively and boom/out-eco your opponent, doesn't sending them halfway across the map leave you incredibly open and vulnerable to any enemy attacks?
I started trying to scout/control the map with my army because I noticed all the good players seem to do it but like 30 seconds after my skirms left my base, enemy archers came raiding and I lost :(
It's situational, if you spend 1.5k resources making units but your opponent focuses solely on a boom, they can afford an extra tc over you/eco upgrades earlier and snowballs into a 1 or 2 minute faster imp and before you know it, you're fighting arbs and trebs just as you get to imp.
That's where the town patrol comes in, you can react quicker and avoid loosing eco :) if your army poses enough threat to them when raiding it can also stop them hitting you or at the very least, further reinforcements.
you can send just 1 unit ahead to check what the enemy is up to, this is what i do xD Preferebly one that has a big LOS, like a scout/ light cav, monk or even a vil to build an outpost. i call them "the messenger" unit. They never come back :( But it helps a lot, especially when the enemy is massing a big army but they're just sitting on their butts.
I think another mistake people do is not making any military (especially in closed maps) and get castle dropped on the face
ty hera!
I'm pretty good at investing in only the techs I need at the blacksmith. I don't buy them all for the sake of it. However, every other mistake he pointed out is something I need to work on
As a low elo player (~ 1200) i want to mention that a market it pretty op there. It happes alot that my respurces are unbalanced, hence I use the market to counter that.
i really miss „thinking about imp too early“
LOOOOOOOOOOOOL THE HUN LONGSWORDS!! NAUGHTY EDITOR
Thanks for this video. es oro:D Vamos Argentinaa :p
Hera, I would love to see a video on top 5 common mistakes in the Feudal Age.
Biggest mistake I often did, is an idle army and then my opponent got time to expand and improve
First like ! Thanks for posting Hera
for the mistake 4 rather than i play counters i make army of 35 knight and 25 horse archer and while fighting i control the archers i find that army too powerful especially if i play tatars i increase horse archers to 35 is that a good tactic or not
I think my biggest mistake is idling my production buildings and over micro and then in imp I stockpile too much, if I'm fully walled
I do all of them. I had no idea that you have to produce villagers continuously. How do you manage to keep clicking and producing when you have to manage fights and micro your troops and everything...like howww
I do most of the mistakes, I tend to only make TC, I do use my army but mostly to attack the enemy, I do not get useless techs tho, neither float resources too much. If floating resources, I move villagers instead of selling those resources
Thank you 👍🏽🙏🏼
Nice, thank for clearing thing on floating rss, my friend with 1k hours only against ai always bitching when fight against hard ai,a he got rushed but his rss keep floating and wont produce units and sometimes this frustrating especially just against ai. Funny moments with him when play on michi he literally hoard rss 200k++ and refuse attacking because he think we gonna lose when rss got 0 aaand i just yolo 1 vs 2 hard ai and take half hour to win..... His rss not even go down to 150k, wasting 4 hour just for farming lol
My biggest issue is even though my opponents wreck my base with just 2-3 knights all the time, I always feel like I can’t move out with less than 6 knights because just 1-2 will die and not do anything. So by the time I have my mass, they are already raiding me or have too much in defense set up.
exactly my issue! how to play vs raids? how to play if being or feeling outnumbered?
A knight can kill a lots of vils so its good to send one time to time to the enemy base while you are defending also the wont notice because they a too much concentrated in the atack
But when I make TC, I die to initial heavy siege, monk and xbow play. Opponent then drop castle and boom behind.
Also, sometimes isn't it better to idle for a while to click imp or get upgrade. Like having 30farmers or so?
Regarding floating resources. There are instances when I am so focused on army control, I float resources, usually wood or gold. Is it justified to have a higher army mass and push with some floating resources (readjust by market a bit later)?
TC's being on the list was a bit odd. Nothing wrong with going 1 TC if you're going heavy on aggression. 3TC is just a bit safer and in a 1TC v 3TC game 3TC is probably going to win more often. But 1TC play is perfectly viable. That said, if you're dying to siege monk and xbow all the time you probably aren't defending properly. You need to make your own mangos and your own monks and maybe add a knight or two later on. If Opponent is on 3 TC then you should be winning with the defenders advantage. If the opponent is on 1TC behind and you're on 3, and then opponent "drops a castle and boom behind", well you should have at least a 5 minute headstart with the boom, so in that scenario you are miles ahead and should just be winning every time. If you aren't then something else is wrong.
As for idling: almost never a good idea. Occasionally a 1 minute idle to age up can be worth it. But almost never. Better to build farms. Better to use the market.
As for floating resources: no. Don't do it. Have enough production buildings. Have them in a control group. Then you can requeue them without looking away from the fight. If you're floating wood you have to make more farms. Just practice. Don't float and don't idle.
I´d never go 3 tcs on open map unless i got defensive castle or some army production before. Floating wood is essential to my late game :D rather sell it than be dry whne u need siege units...
Can you make a video on how to handle monk + siege push effectively?
- Which ones you do?
- Yes.
excelent video
How can we get coaching and what is the cost?? 900 ELO player, but feel like I could be higher
I do all 5 .... even the honorable mention. I need to practice more!
Floating res is definitely my biggest mistake. Either that or my economy balance is awful so I find myself consistently using the market
what i do is fast castle, then i build a castle as soon i reach castle, then start making military, build a few petards for his walls, build 5, 6 rams , i have killed a lot adversaries doing this, just one TC
Nice background music
Odd question: Any tips for managing rally points? My eco gets really messy because I don't know where to put them once my vill count is close to 100. Especially from my first TC, since all the close resources are mostly used up.
Btw, I'm ChiRho_AoE and yes again, I was joking today in chat. 11
Build town centers by the neutral gold & stone and mine it all before the other player does
Nº 5: Negleting Towncenters
Hoang: Am I a joke to you?
To be fair Hoang focuses on Town centers, enemy Town centers :)
Which one am I making? All of them.
im just old for multitasking and realy cant spend my resources when things get messy. but i found a strat that works for me . focusing on one unit and spam it until you hurt enemy. like hussars civs. etc. it took me 1300 but if i ever play another civ or strat boom im down to 700. XD
Noted, I definitely make all of this mistakes
Forgetting tcs is why I play as cumans to remind me early and having army sitting. Yea guilty af
Genial!
Big brain: Can't float resources if you don't gather resources (idle TCs)
Wow! I got a perfect score for the first time,i didnt got such perfect score in my studies as well.Imagine how terrible i am when i am doing all 5 mistakes
Hera what do you think of Auto Queue ? With the AOM Retold in the works, what advice would you give to developpers ? How do you think AQ impacts AOM ranked ? If you boot up AOM and try to play it what does it feel like to you as a pro to have AQ ? would be awesome if you made a detailed video on this subject, it's funny that one of the biggest castle age mistakes could be solved by AQ. Some proponents say AQ takes away skill expression... I'm not convinced it's a good trade off, AQ allos for more focusing on micro, on macro, you have more energy to actually be creative with the game imo. + It's quite frustrating for newer players to develop that habit...
Thx for your vides again
What’s 3tc ?
Why 3 town centers? You already make enough villagers from two?
Floating Resources. Get 1000 wood for nothing is my Best hability xD
Honestly? I don't make any of these mistakes.
Because I never get to the Castle Age.
im so proud i dont make any of those mistakes!
I hope in the future dont death before reach the castle age
Good thing i do all of them.
I definitely queue 45 longbows at a time😅
7:51 OMG my ocd...
They should bring back the 2v2 world cup tourney for AOE2
I was thinking about that. EW duo would be great as well!
I prefer 3v3
@@IndexInvestingWithCole I just love the 2x2 way to play. Archers+knights fighting each is so cool
why does your game look so much clear and beautiful than mine, even i have ultra graphics?