In a way, the fact that the gameplay is not perfect makes it better. It gives more confidence showing that it's not the end of the world when few bad things happen (losing scout, a couple of vils...etc). I almost think it'd be a good idea to do that on purpose for some tutorial videos. Thank you for your tips :)
Me after seeing this vid : "this looks doable I'll try it against a hard AI”. Me after my 4 scouts get melted by 3 spearmen and 10 archers : "Well I have knights on the way it'll be fine". Me again, after my knights got stomped by like 10 pikes and 30 archers which then proceed to steamroll me : "well f*ck me this wasn't in the script". I think I'm just too late at feudal so I'll work on that, great vid anyway thank you !
For some reason the AI didnt reacted to the his scout rush, but it usealy reacts pretty good. to me, the strategy is to rush the ai with 5 men at arms in the begging of feudal, then transition to skermishers and archers. doing as much damage as possible to the wood lines
@@Julionp Tower rush is the most effective strategy supported by men at arms. The AI will be confused and it will not know what to do in such a situation.
This is certainly doable, especially vs Hard AI. Make sure you're not idling your TC and that you're going for only villager snipes in Feudal, mostly on the wood lines and golds - you're going to lose your Scouts if you attack the AI's military units is Feudal, and killing villagers will hurt the AI far more - you'll be able to completely clean up the AI's Feudal age army when you have half-a-dozen Knights in Castle age, which you'll probably hit first if you've killed some villagers. To make things easier, perhaps try one of the following civs (personally prefer Lithuanians and Magyars for this strategy, but each to their own) - there are probably better or similar ones (Persians/Khmer/Berbers?), but these are the one's I've had time to try with - I by no means claim to be an expert: Franks : Faster foragers for Dark Age food boost - helps to hit the Age up button, rather than idling the TC. Free farm upgrade starting in Feudal, so small food/wood saving. Cavalry +20% Hit Points, mainly affect Knights from Castle onward, but free HP none-the-less (you don't get access to Bloodlines which would have been better for Scouts I think?). +2 LOS for Knights, meh. Lithuanians : Mainly good for the +150 starting food, that means no TC idling AT ALL in the Dark age so you can get the perfect Feudal times consistently, and should translate to a better eco earlier on. The 150 food also means free Scouts, or upgrade from the blacksmith (+1 attack scouts have an easier time killing villagers :D). Into Castle age, the +1 attack for the Knight line from relics can help (if it's not already over by the time you collect some). Magyars : You don't see any benefit with Magyars until Feudal age really, but free Blacksmith attack upgrades in each age for Cavalry and Infantry will really help to kill AI villagers, and obviously that's a small saving in food (and gold from Castle age). On top of that, you have the -15% cost to the Scout line, only a small saving, but free food none-the-less. The free attack upgrades will do the damage!
@@marcosmercedesn It's all about finding the right balance, but I'm happy to see there are others who like to watch fast. Most just call me crazy. Many would likely call me crazy for watching this at 1x speed.
Very strong man, im surprised the AI didn't create spearmen, he didn't create any military unit at all, just a simple watchtower. Last time i was playing against an Extreme AI he already had 30 crossbowmen and 20 pikemen if i remember in the castle age with a ton of villagers
Whenever I play against the AI it feels like his army just spawns in front of my walls an immediately melts down my whole village in mid feudal. And if I happen to stay alive after that attack I just get destroyed by a bigger rush in imp a few minutes later. Well you gotta be good to beat the extreme, thats why hera can dot it and I cant
Same here. I got about as far as Hera here when all of a sudden my walls were melted by dozens of swordsmen and spearmen and archers, too many to counter with what I had.
Here's my 2 cents worth. We all know you can beat the AI. And we all really appreciate helping us learn the build order. But seriously think about it for a minute. We the noobs ditch the game when the hiccups happen. It doesn't do us any good to see how to do it perfect. We NEED to know how to do it after we lose a scout. And get housed 3 times in dark age. And forget to create villagers. And have holes in our walls, and all of the other crap we do as noobs. The most important thing I learned from this video, was not over-reacting to set-backs. On an unrelated note, on your next game, garrison some rams!!! Black Betty Jam Some Rams!!! 😎😎😎😎
Imo just play and try to follow his build If you fuck up here and there it doesn't matter Just practice the build and try to fix some of your errors. You actually already pointed out what is needed to get better. Experience to not ditch a game comes by living it through and not by watching or reading it.
@david smithe for some reason, I would rather lose 3 games to extreme and learn from it, than win 15 vs easiest. As other people have pointed out, it's a lot like life. I would rather fail in business as a doctor 100 times than ever scrub another toilet. 😎
@david smithe I've been a noob at this game for 20 years. I'm really not good at micro yet. I used to play 8 hour games in college. Back in the days of MSN Zone. Long live the noobs!!!
@@Diegoshadow85but doesn't the ai cheat at the harder difficulty's ? I saw plenty of rts games where the ai gets a bonus to resource gain or extra resources and shorter build times in some cases
Dont forget to read the description. If anyone has any further questions about playing/beating the AI just drop a comment! Also I think the hiccups I had shows that some mistakes are more than ok, sorry for the strong language D:
Hi Hera, read the description, this stood out to me ;) "Hey all, I've been asked " "copy what I'm doing as best " I enjoy your videos im off to watch this one :) As well as no link to Collin haha
The AI is quite incompetent in Feudal and early Castle, my issue is when there are more of them. We usually play with friends and sometimes one flank loses hard, so we have an Extreme AI in post imp pumping out crap at us nonstop, lmao
I think actually the correct way to look at it isnt that AI sucks in feudal or castle but rather the human lags behind more and more as your base and army becomes bigger(going into imp). AI doesnt play amazing, but it plays semi good on every single unit at all times.
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 He is actually quite correct. But i would add that in general it is not that good, i don't remember the last time i lost against the extreme AI, using a multitude of strategies and, although i don't play online, i can say that I am far from a very good player.
Same. But I think for a civ like Mongols, you gotta go for stone early to get Mangudai but I always make that mistake because I try to do a defensive castle and then it gets destroyed by battering rams while I am making archers lol
I always find a good spot to put a mine camp right between gold and stone and the jerk villager always auto mines the stone and I’m like noooOOoo you FOOL
@@denizcantulan4024 lol i did beat the hard AI try to make some army before it attacks you in feudal the ai makes some archery ranges, if it dont attack you the AI will go for knight rush or a crossbow rush. By the way I won I make some big army that counters the AI civ and then I won
I'm glad you uploaded this game to youtube I as a noob don't need to see perfect games in tutorial videos I need to see games where things don't go according to plan so I could learn how to react and know there's still hope when shit hits the fan Thanks :)
I think this video is better than a "perfect" one with a clean build order: It shows that things can happen but you can recover from it and still win (there is no need to resign just because you lost a Vil at the wrong time or your scout or something like that)
greatly explained! I never knew stuff after hitting feudal age, like "13 minutes send your next 5 to gold, wheelbarrow and castle age" Also building tcs on wood and secondary gold instead of main gold Looking forward to more strats. Can u do one of those fc into something? like 15min fc into EW or knights idk
Another easy way. Go archers in feud 10 should do it.. first 10 takes out it's army, continue to make more archers and send them in. Once you killed off his army, find his gold and secure that. At this point it will switch to skrms. So reinforce your army. After that. Slowly start adding more archers to its woodlines to deny it. Next batch start at its farms. Stay outta range of the tc tho. And it should be GG eventually. If not advance and add siege.
I just tried it on teutons vs Very hard AI (very hard and extreme is diffrent in diffrent games, sometimes I stomp it easily, sometimes it puts up a good fight like now and I get crushed). Went feudal 9:51 and then castle at 21:37, it went kinda good at start, but I have manged to get like 4 vill kills with scouts/knights and instead of tower AI had like 10 pikes so I had to flee. Went 3x TC and before I have realised my opp was spamming me with goth champions. I had 3 mangonels ready, but they were not onages so dmg was quite low and they didnt help much. I guess biggest problem for me is spending my resources right away on late castle/imp. There are simply too many things to do then and I just cant manage that. I'm kinda new to aoe2, but these tips were quite helpfull, good content sir. Greetings from Poland. Take care
I am a newbie who only plays extreme AI often (I have started only about a month back). And yes this works perfectly as shown in the video. While I could easily archer or tower rush the ai I was failing at scout rushing. Where I was going wrong: 1) My dark age and early feudal age economy as correct, but I didn't know how to use it efficiently. Wasted wood on archery ranges because I used to panic that the AI will drush. Actually the Ai drush can be easily fended off by microing the villagers so avoid panicking. Don't waste time and wood into archery range just go straight cavalry without being afraid.. adapt if something goes wrong.. it's doable. Secondly after reaching feudal I used to have lots of food, but due to making archery range first I kept it idle. Resources need to be continuously used as Hera suggested. 2) AI can't flush properly if you attack their wood. While I used to attack their wood I didn't micro properly and let my economy slow down. Avoid this. As he says you just disrupt his wood collection. You don't have to necessarily kill. But no matter what your economy pace should continue. 3) I used to go wheelbarrow immediately. I think that slowed down the rates of villagers. I don't know for sure, but making it late probably got me a short burst of food at the beginning of feudal age to get more scouts. 4) wasting lots of villagers unnecessarily on gold in feudal age. 5) not building tc on secondary gold 6) not making knights immediately into castle age. I tend to have gotten confused what exactly to make or how to advance. Thanks a lot. It does work well. I took cavalry civilizations in all my trails but no doubt will work for non cav with knights
first time ever watching heras yt channel (or pretty much anything from heras PoV): 'i messed up', 'im so bad', 'they will never watch my stream'.... looking forward more pleb content :)
If you’re bad like me, but want the achievement, play on black forest and make sure there is only 1 entry point between you and the enemy. Ideally you’d also have a closed area behind you. Start as usual and block off the entry point. For some reason the AI attacks later if they haven’t discovered your TC. Get to Imp as fast as you can and build a wonder, protected by some castles, in the back and Fat Slob the hell out of it. Walls after walls after walls after walls. Then just sit out the timer. (The AI doesn’t cut a path through the woods) I’m a casual by all standards, but I made it work.
Is the extreme AI less aggressive than the others? Every single time I play against the Hard/Hardest AI they go for feudal aggression with spears, archers and skirms right after I dive in with scouts.
there are different kinds of playstyles. that ai played fc and thats probably the weakest strat they have to offer eventho their flush can be countered by your fc if you wall a little
Not at all, I just got drushed by the Extreme AI the other day, this is something the lower difficulties almost never do. The Hard/Hardest difficulties do tend to go for heavy feudal aggression, but with scouts you should still be able to pick off a few vills using your mobility. Also they normally build up a sizable feudal army before they attack which delays their Castle time significantly and if you wall properly it should not be much of an issue.
It was weird, I usually do this against Hard and they always pop out spearmen I have to run away from. I've made it a habit of getting a few archers out specifically to kill the spears so that my scouts can run free killing vills. If it makes skirms, I don't fight them with my archers, I have my scouts kill them. So scouts beat the skirms and archers beat the spears. That's how I counter the AI's defence from my scout rush. nb: i'm another noob who can't get past Hardest and usually plays for the post-imp war XD
Same whenever I play. Sometimes the AI even began with dark age 3 men harass, not to mention the consistent feudal age aggression or defense with all kinds of unit. How come in this video we barely see any of that from the AI...?
Ez. Go britons, island map, put your opponent on Cumans since they suck on water and imp, infinite resources, post-imp 12 castles around your base or more, wonder, more castles around your wonder, a fuck ton of trebs and longbowmen so no one enters your island. Achieve happiness
Hey hera, thanks for the content. Could you make a video or just answer me with some tips of how should i play nomad ? I mean, the basic starting things and good times to click up to feudal ? I feel like i'm kinda late on everything while playing nomad. Even when i win the game it just feel like i did everything wrong.
Something is wrong here. I know this video has 3 years but I don't believe so much things changed in game that this is completely different now. I do almost the same things and on hard difficulty (hard, not extreme, this is 4/6), few minutes after advancing to Feudal Age (similar timing) I am always attacked by 15 people army. You are not attacked even much later and on extreme difficulty so something is wrong here.
I have defeated extreme/hardest AI with tower rush and sicilian donjon push but had hard time against it in a fair fight in Arabia. For the first time I defeated it in a fair fight, where I showed early feudal MAA rush with bulgarians and managed to take out 3-4 vills and right after that I walled up and started booming but also created skirms+pikes+MAA. Though the AI showed aggression in late feudal with skirms/scouts/archers but I held it well and pushed it back. Game went on till Imperial Age and the key for winning the game was constant villager production which helped me a lot. I made mistakes as I needed to place 3 TCs but I placed only 2 because I was so focused on attacking but I ended up having 100 vills by the time game ended. Felt really good because there was a time where even moderate AI bodied me really hard.
It was so reassuring to see you make a couple of mistakes and still press on. Your hotkey wizardry and micro-military was still blindingly beyond me, but at least I could see what to work on.
I would love to see a late game vs extreme ai. I can consistently beat extreme if i attack early but if i boom and do nothing for 30 minutes there is no coming back ...
That what's happens when you are faster up against the ai. His 1st 2 scouts are in his base just when the ai hits feudal. Then it does react with a tower.
14:38 Lamest excuse I've seen yet: "The shore fish near mine villager appeared all too sleepy." Apart from the strange grammar (maybe they spoke like this in the middle ages), this map has no water at all.
I’m not sure why their was no army in this video. I always get countered by spears even if I hit them before they are in feudal. My feudal time is before the 10 min mark and eventually after I kill a bunch of vills they will start sending spears out.
Tower rush works every time, but you need to hit basic time goals for feudal, esp. in multiplayer where it's you vs multiple AIs. I find that at a leisurely pace I can only make about 17-19 villagers before going feudal, any longer and you risk the teamed AIs from helping out your first tower target. Going offensive early also allows you to prevent your target AI from castling. You need to be able to get up at least two overlapping fire towers to prevent target AI villager take-down defenses and teamed AI responses. Once you have a defensible tower cluster, you can wall it which will occupy both target AI and the teamed AI into castle age which will allow you to further decimate the target AI which should quit by 30 min if you do it right.
I know I am very late to this comment section. First, I want say I am really impressed not only with Hera's well known skills in AOE2 but also how polite and pleasant his attitude is My post is to give some suggestions to people like myself who have given up hope that they can achieve the level of multitasking, APM and execution shown by Hera. I am a noob level player. I am 45 years old and I just don't think I have it in me. I am not going to get faster. Also another note before I give some tips in beating the AI is that I am using an older version of AOE2 which is AOC, so I don't know how well the Hard AI of AOC stacks up against the extreme AI in DE. My post will give tips to beat hard level AI in AOC. Hardest level AI cheats and reaches Castle age in 10 mins. So that is extremely hard to beat. So here go my tips. 1. Choose Huns. It reduces the amount of multitasking greatly. It also saves wood. Some people might think it is a small amount of wood gained from not needing houses but we noobs often task a villager to build a house and then completely forget about him resulting in lot of idle times. 2. Play in slow speed until you get better. It not only helps you avoid mistakes but also it reduces the difference the idle times create when we make mistakes. 3. Try using a larger map. That will delay the first wave of AI units and slow down further attacks a bit as well. 4. Usually once the AI gets going, it spams army units so much. So better players suggest rushing which we noobs can't do because we are slow. So turtling in and defending until the AI runs out of resources is our best option. 5. Try to build a castle first before investing the stone in extra TC's. Because we are not going to boom that efficiently and the castle destroys lots of early attacks giving us time to get the upgrades. Also build the castle within the range of TC fire because you need another 200 stones to research murder holes and make the castles defend themselves. 6. Healing your units saves lots of resources. So use a couple of monks and garrisoning to heal your units. Getting a few conversions can help as well. 7. The AI doesn't break through walls if you have left an unwalled space to enter your base. So try to build pallisade walls and leave an open path right before your castle. That will make the AI send its units towards the castle and waste lots of units to castle fire. And try to add as many castles as you can within range of each other. Once you are confident you have enough castles to defend your base, you can try to add TC's and boom a little bit. 8. The AI usually starts spamming units right away without any upgrades. So try to get some upgrades on your army units. But do the most important upgrades first. Getting upgrades on Castle firing range and ballistics are more important than army unit upgrades. 9. Try to get at least one relic. It is a must if you haven't set the victory condition to conquest and even with conquest the gold generated by even a single relic can be very useful in the long run. 10. Concentrate on destroying siege units that can demolish your castles. You usually need at least a few light cavalry units or knights to do that. Early on, only the ram is the threat. But once AI hits Imperial age look out as much as you can to spot the trebuchets. They can quickly demolish your castle leaving you vulnerable. Getting upgrades that make the castles stronger is good but it can be costly requiring stones. So your first priority with stones should be adding more castles. 11. I should have made this point earlier. Try to get wheel barrow and hand cart before going for lumber camp or mining camp upgrades because the former speeds up everyone. 12. Learn a bit about counter units because certain civilizations like Goths have units that are more resistant to castle fire. So you will need some nonranged units to take care of them. 13. Wait until you see clearly that the AI attacks have slowed down considerably and you have fully upgraded units before going to attack the AI base yourself. Usually it is done best with a few trebuchets and enough strong fully upgraded units to guard the trebuchets. Ranged units are best but if your opponents have units more resistant to ranged units you will need some non ranged units. Usually a mixture of both is better. 14. With Huns, just a bunch of fully upgraded Tarkans and a bunch of fully upgraded cavalry archers are enough because of Tarkan's attack bonus vs buildings. A decent number of Tarkans can take down even a castle. 15. Another point I should have made earlier. Use most of your villagers on food and some on wood in dark age. Don't invest villager time in other resources. Your aim is to reach castle age as soon as possible. So after you get to the Feudal age move some to gold and even make some villagers. You can start taking stone in Feudal age. But make sure it doesn't delay your castle age time. I think that is enough. I will make another post with tips for rushing because even at noob levels it is possible with some more tricks.
More advanced tips for noobs Even noobs can reach a level of success against AI with some tricks which might take some more practice to execute properly but completely possible for all noobs.. Believe me, I am a noob who doesn't use a single hotkey. I only use the mouse. I play with one hand only. But I can beat a team of 3 hard AI's (who are allied together so it is 1 vs 3) with around 70% success rate if I use slow speed. I will switch to normal speed after it becomes clear the game is under my control to speed up the game. If I use normal speed my success rate is like 30% with random civs or around 40% if I use Huns. So now I am going to give tips for noobs on how to beat 2 or 3 allied hard AI's. 1. Once again Huns are your best choice. 2. To take on 2 or 3 AI's you will need to defeat at least one AI and slow down the other AI's early on. So you have to rush and attack in Feudal age itself. With the AOC version I use, the Feudal age scout is as useless as the one dark age scout you get. So archers are your main or only choice. 3. Obviously to rush, you have to reach Feudal age very fast in noob times. The AI usually reaches Feudal age around 13 mins. You will have to reach there at least by 11:30 mins. Sometimes if you get lucky, you can get away with later times but mostly not. But there are some ways to do this even as a noob. 4. Naturally, you would like to use a smaller size map (a 2 player map for 3 players for e.g) for rushing as opposed to turtling in. Once you get better you can try with an appropriately sized map. 5. Learn boar luring. It is easy to learn. Even if you don't execute a perfect boar luring like the better players it doesn't matter. The AI does not hunt boars. So this gives you nearly a 700 food advantage. If you got nearby deers, hunt them too. But don't try to lure deers. That is for the pro's. 6. Use some build orders. Not exactly like Pro's. I would suggest putting 7 on sheep and 4 on wood before luring the first boar. Don't worry if you mess up the build order a bit. 7. Even if you don't use hotkeys, use the shift key to set the flags for your scout to follow. That would reduce a decent amount of multitasking. 8. Try to reduce idle TC time as much as possible at least until reaching feudal age. Villager production should be almost continuous. Once again using slow speed helps a lot in this regard until you become fast enough. But don't worry if you can't avoid some idle TC time. you can still pull it off with some idle time. While taking food from boar you might need to force villagers to drop food from time to time to keep villager production. 9. Once you lure your first boar you should be sending all villagers after that to food, whether berries or sheep or boar it doesn't matter. Don't send villagers to any other resource until you click for Feudal age research. 10. As soon as you get 500 food you should click Feudal age. Usually as a noob you would have 22 or 23 villagers at this point. Sometimes if you get lucky you will have only 19 or 20 villagers which won't be enough so you will have to make 3 or 4 villagers as soon as you reach Feudal age. 11. As soon as your scout has found all 8 sheep and two boars you should send your scout parallel to the edge of the map but a bit away from the edge of the map. If your scout travels parallel to all three edges like this other than the one your base is in you can spot all 3 enemies 95% of the time. Rarely you will have to send the scout a bit further away from the edge where you didn't find the enemy to spot him. You don't have to find all three enemies before you reach Feudal age. You can find the second one when you are rushing the first one and so on. 12. Once you click Feudal age research, send 5 or 6 villagers to gold, keep like 4 villagers on food, send two villagers to the middle of the map for forward building and send the rest to wood. You should also be tasking a villager to build barracks while advancing to Feudal age so that once you reach Feudal age the forward builders can immediately start building Archery ranges. This idea of sending two villagers to the middle I stole from TheViper. Earlier I was sending 3 individual villagers to the three enemy bases. This could be better because the archers can reach the enemy base quickly but this fails often because of wolves. 13. Once you reach Feudal age, you have to do a few things. Getting wheel barrow, building 3 archery ranges in the middle, building blacksmith and getting the two archer upgrades and also making archers to send to enemy bases. Now these things need a lot of resources so you will have to intuitively decide what to do first. Obviously building the archery ranges and sending archers are the first priority. Getting the archer upgrades will become important very soon because the AI will start building some military units and attack the archers. Getting wheel barrow will speed up the inflow of resources but itself costs a decent amount of resources. So you will have to decide when to get each one. Over time you will get the hang of it. 14. To be successful with your rush , you will have to send two archers to each enemy's lumber camp and two archers to each enemy's main gold. This is where you need some luck spotting those areas. If you quickly find those areas, your rush will be successful. One important note: Our units are produced with aggressive stance as default. You will have to change each unit to stand ground. When you forget to do this for an archer, he will follow some villager and come under TC fire. 15. Even if you find the lumber camps and main golds, the AI will start gathering from secondary gold. And you will soon find upgraded militias or even long swords men coming at your archers. If long swords men catch your archers in Feudal age, they will easily finish them off and proceed to help their ally AI's similarly. So you should get lucky finding all golds and stones and place at least one archer near each resource. That is hard. That is where the next point becomes important. 16. You can't continue in this strategy for long. You will have to get to castle age as soon as possible. Even when you are attacking like this, AI will reach castle age in like 17 plus minutes. But since AI reaches prematurely it wont have units immediately. But you will see them decimating your units soon. If one AI is successful in decimating your units it will immediately do the same to your units in other Ai bases.Then your rush will totally fail. So you must reach castle age soon. For that, create a few villagers once you finish your archer upgrades in Feudal age. Then task them with farming. At this point you should have plenty of wood and gold. That is the advantage of archer rush. Archers only need wood and gold, so you can stockpile some food. Build a market and sell your extra resources and try to click castle age as soon as possible. You will only reach castle age after 23 minutes mostly even if you get lucky. But that is O.K. The AI won't accomplish much after reaching castle age in 17 mins. It will take some time. 17. Once you reach castle age, immediately get crossbow upgrade and bodkin arrow upgrade. Then you should get second armor upgrade for archer. Then try to build a university and get ballistics. You might not have the resources to do all these things immediately. But if you manage it before any AI has got enough decent army units, you are on your way to victory. Just to make sure spam some more archers to each base and put them next to golds and stones. If you have reached this point before any AI gets out units strong enough to take on your Feudal age archers mostly you will see the AI's resigning one by one. 18. Even if you don't manage to defeat all 3 AI's with your archer rush, if you finish two of them, you can play a 1 v 1 with the remaining AI and win eventually using some of the ideas in my previous post. Even if you manage to defeat just one AI, you might withstand the constant spamming of armies of two AI's and eventually win. 19. To accomplish the above, you need to do some things in your base. Since so far you fully concentrated in your rushing, most probably your base will be defenseless. So you must hurry and make villagers to collect stone and make a castle as soon as possible. You must also make a Monastery and gather as many relics as you can. Moreover you should immediately build a few stables and archery ranges to create army units. Even if you haven't defeated an AI but harmed it enough, it will play a very weak game.Anyways if you follow this you will eventually win the game in a war of attrition. Believe me, the above gives me a success rate of 70% against 3 hard AI's in slow speed and I am a total noob who don't remember even a single hotkey. So if there is any noob here you can do it too. Good luck!
Hera has a whole side of the map open “now i am fully walled”. Me: i got all covered now, all sides Hard AI: you forgot this little whole, i will send my scouts and kill all Vills
Is this strategy still viable? In this game AI hits Feudal at 11:45 or so. In my games they have been hitting feudal at 10:05. By the time your scouts get there they just get mowed down by archers or spearman.
Dark Age - 2 vills make house 1 vill makes house scout in circles 6 vills on food 2:09 - next 3 vills on wood 2:38 - 1st boar - shift left click with town center (4 sheep left) 7 vills on boar 3:57 - build house build berries mill 4 vills on berries 5:14 - Lure second boar 5:20 - Scout Opponent find weak ponts hug woodlines hug hills beware of tc 7:00 - Take rest of sheep 7:30 - Fuedal Age Research Send 5 vills to next lumber camp build House 8:40 - At 60% fuedal age, Build Bararck Free vills on staggler trees If late to fuedal age, make couple farms 9:45 as soon as fuedal age, make stable 10:05 - 3-6 Farm 10:30 Farms around mill Build Few houses Create 3 scout cavalry set gather point near enemy base 11:38 two or three scout attacks hit and run keep making More farms have like total 9 vills on wood hit run, kill isolated villagers 13:00 build gold mine put two on gold mine 14:00 when 5 on gold, get wheel barrow 14:20 - wall up your base with pallisade 15:30 - When wheelbarrow done, click castle age 15:40 - build blacksmith 15:50 - blacksmith cavalry upgrades bloodlines in stable 16:40 - click castle age if not done before 17:00 continue damaging vills with scouts make sure ur fully walled 17:25 - gold mining upgrade send two more vills to gold (berry guy or wall guy) 17:55 - Build Second Stable for two knights in castle age make sure you have blacksmith armourand stable bloodlines 19:20 - achieved castle age Make two knights Add two more TC right away One on woodline One on secondary gold Use 3-4 vills for building each 20:10 get wood upgrades have two stable knights have 3 tc Castle age before 20 min 20:50 Send knights to kill vills keep building farms at town centers keep making vills keep aking houses keep making knights and sending them to kill vills 21:25 - destroy their tower with two knights 21:35 - make more knights 22:45 - 23:07 - forging at blacksmith get second armour upgrade
Great video mate. Would have been great to do this with villager-to-resource info in bottom right of screen above mini-map (rather than scores). Thanks again for these vids. Would be great to see more opening build order tutorials like this on UA-cam. Peace bro
He needs to put it down to Hardest, that difficult always feudal rushes, easy counter is to just go all in on like 20 scouts, role most of their archers and decimate their economy while frantically aging up to castle to continue pushing with knights and rams. And if that doesnt get you the win you will be a in a good place to age up to imperial and treb down remaining castles and TCs
I've played the original conquerors expansion many times against 3 AI's on hardest. I killed the first one with men at arms and towers in a wide circle around his town center so he couldn't get any villagers out alive. Then stealing his farms (villagers can steal unattended farms) and protecting my two bases, full defence untill finishing off with a 100 men fully upgraded army. Half of the times the AI had a bug it didn't attack walls but were always walking around looking for a way trough. The other half of the games were interestingly challenging for me.
New player here. I give up trying to out-boom Extreme. It's easy in a map like Arena, but in Arabia, I've tried way too many times without success. So Ima try and ruin its economy instead. Thx for the vid!
why the AI did not send a single spear against your scout? when i scout rush, even following this timing, the AI usually spam at least 3 spears zoning me out, or even counter-attacking my base with a feudal army...feels very strange seeing this passive??
it felt like a very "mediocre" level AI, sendind vills out alone, 0 defence outside of a tower, nothing at all to hinder your plan. that's not close to my experience even if my times are pretty close to these
Im still a noob with 10 APM who is scared to paly ranked, but I learned that skirms are my favorite against extreme AI. Easy to fend off early archer/skirm rush from AI and just enough to harass so I can get the upper hand and finish with rams and cavalry
This is cool to see but as some people have said, it would be cool to see how to beat the AI in Imp/postImp. Because with your skill and apm we can't really compete so while this BO works out, we probably need a tutorial on how to beat an ex AI that has time to build up his base and start attacking
Remember the longbow macro in the joan of arc campaign? Now imagine it has 50 longbows and the perfect meat shield to get with it. No way to out macro an ai
all fine and nice, what my porblem with the Ai´s is, that they somewhow make a whole army while being as fast as i am. and when im mid feudal or beginning castle i always get raided until i dont have anything left
I like how I naturally came to do all of these thing's as well on these settings. Nonetheless, I was interested to see if others did it altogether differently than the methods I use.
This seems very easy when there are no enemy military, namely pikemen. Whenever I attack with scouts/knights, even very early, they instantly pump our spearmen followed by a million archers/skirms.
how does that extreme ai didnt made single spear? Anytime i try something against hardest they´ll get instantly 20 counter units. I will never play ranked until i beat extreme ai :D
I beat AI in extreme difficulty, no cheat codes, all fair game... Just my strategy... I start game with 1.5 hour no violence treaty, and I quickly surround there empire with wall in inital of game and left some of my people inside wall... So that they cannot use outside resources and my people inside build castle where the space I get that's not part of their kingdom, also my people build barracks so that I infliter their country from inside with warriors and watch tower and castles... Also my civilians are sucking up their resources which are bound to be part of their kingdom during making of wall... I build my army, suck all rocks from the map and build multiple watch tower, castle outside the wall surrounding there kingdom .... With extra resources and castle and watchtower support inside and outside kingdom whole empire of extreme difficult AI is weaken and for 1.5 hour my military is made stronger and better.. When war comes, even though AI is times faster, lack of resources and castle and watchtower surrounding the kingdom, lack of resources, and sudden interior attack further weaken the AI and than my outside military attacks, and beware, AI beat this plan 2-3 times, but after that, resources of them exhaust and my one plan of building multiple barracks and archery outside kingdom benifit, I have to be fast, continuous make military so AI doesn't jump back... And after that empire weakens and fall.. It's pure human creative method used by many empires around world to crush other kingdomes
Beating extreme AI by feudal rush is ok for me, but if I do fast castle age or fast imp strategies, it will be very hard to beat AI. Any suggestion to fight AI in the late game? thanks a lot~!
The pros never let it get that far lol, my guess would be that they stalemate until resources run out and the human player's supior prioritization will get them the win.
It's actually not that hard, I win post imp fights consistently against extreme AI by just walling up and building towers /castles (towers are really effective) (or no walls, they don't really "go around" your towers that often) and then just take good trades and never forget to boom ~120-140 vils . snipe those trebs and rams and you're fine mostly
The funny part is, that extreme AI doesnt fight back.. but the AI HD as soon as i open with scout rush they mass pikemen, as soon as i go archer rush they open with tons of skirmishers, as soon as i go fast castle they rush me... and i dont talk about extreme AI HD, but the hard/hardest.... so im kinda mad atm...
Ty Hera! Now I know the things that I do wrong. I need to lost my sc to TC and get housed at 20 pop! 11 111 Seriously I think the most important thing is to stay active with the army. Is hard to keep the scouts attacking and moving and the economy controlled at the same time. Now I can beat the hardest IA but not the extreme yet. I will train it with this 20 pop cause always do 21 pop. Greetings!
Thanks for this. Really helpful and well articulated. I'd like to find a balance between rushing and crushing the way you just did in this vid, and going toe-to-toe through to late imperial with the AI on Extreme. A rush victory like this, when i do it can feel a bit formulaic and as though i'm not getting much out of the game. I'd like to win in late game mass army battles, however when i try this the enemy usually overwhelms me in the middle game. So... ...How can i play through to late game (on extreme or hardest AI) but consistently be maintaining a slight upper hand over my enemy, so that i don't get crushed in the process but can still enjoy a long, tactical drawn out war with the AI? How could i best attain that balance from your perspective?
Start the war early, do this kind of aggression so that you can keep ahead while you go to castle. Then in castle, get light cav and knights and other castle-age units to harrass with (heck, even a ram or mangonel if you're ballsy), and slowly increase numbers and variety. The war will slowly grow over the course of the game into an all-our war, all from a small little scout rush at the start.
As mentioned but not particularly highlighted, TIME is the issue. Any EARLY feudal rush should work 1v1 too, and that will also divert any d-rush the AI may launch because the AI will immediately recall its attacking drush units to defend. D-rushes by AIs are kind of common, so this tutorial doesn't really cover that issue. But a strong fast start will basically out do most AIs early. The accumulated advantage of the AI efficiency, (if not intelligence), can overwhelm most players given enough time, so the key is to attack as early as possible and as strongly as possible, before the AI has that momentum. This is also the basic strategy for beating real players stronger than yourself also.
Hera: Advancing to Feudal at 9:41 isn't perfect. I am one second too late.
Me: * Advances to Feudal at 15 mins *
13 mins is OK :)
@@user-wi6vkq21k9a hahahahaha
Well if u hit castle time under 18 mins its fine even 14 minutes to feudal.Assuming u not die to rush :D
@@krystofcisar469 The AI above hard, "hardest" or "extreme", won't forgive you even if you get to castle at 19 or 20. 17 minutes and they'l be there.
In a way, the fact that the gameplay is not perfect makes it better. It gives more confidence showing that it's not the end of the world when few bad things happen (losing scout, a couple of vils...etc).
I almost think it'd be a good idea to do that on purpose for some tutorial videos.
Thank you for your tips :)
Me after seeing this vid : "this looks doable I'll try it against a hard AI”.
Me after my 4 scouts get melted by 3 spearmen and 10 archers : "Well I have knights on the way it'll be fine".
Me again, after my knights got stomped by like 10 pikes and 30 archers which then proceed to steamroll me : "well f*ck me this wasn't in the script".
I think I'm just too late at feudal so I'll work on that, great vid anyway thank you !
For some reason the AI didnt reacted to the his scout rush, but it usealy reacts pretty good. to me, the strategy is to rush the ai with 5 men at arms in the begging of feudal, then transition to skermishers and archers. doing as much damage as possible to the wood lines
@@Julionp Tower rush is the most effective strategy supported by men at arms. The AI will be confused and it will not know what to do in such a situation.
@@arkadiuszjandylewski152 that is just a weakness of AI
I think by approaching standard and hard ways to beat AI is usefull for learning the game.
This is certainly doable, especially vs Hard AI. Make sure you're not idling your TC and that you're going for only villager snipes in Feudal, mostly on the wood lines and golds - you're going to lose your Scouts if you attack the AI's military units is Feudal, and killing villagers will hurt the AI far more - you'll be able to completely clean up the AI's Feudal age army when you have half-a-dozen Knights in Castle age, which you'll probably hit first if you've killed some villagers.
To make things easier, perhaps try one of the following civs (personally prefer Lithuanians and Magyars for this strategy, but each to their own) - there are probably better or similar ones (Persians/Khmer/Berbers?), but these are the one's I've had time to try with - I by no means claim to be an expert:
Franks : Faster foragers for Dark Age food boost - helps to hit the Age up button, rather than idling the TC. Free farm upgrade starting in Feudal, so small food/wood saving. Cavalry +20% Hit Points, mainly affect Knights from Castle onward, but free HP none-the-less (you don't get access to Bloodlines which would have been better for Scouts I think?). +2 LOS for Knights, meh.
Lithuanians : Mainly good for the +150 starting food, that means no TC idling AT ALL in the Dark age so you can get the perfect Feudal times consistently, and should translate to a better eco earlier on. The 150 food also means free Scouts, or upgrade from the blacksmith (+1 attack scouts have an easier time killing villagers :D). Into Castle age, the +1 attack for the Knight line from relics can help (if it's not already over by the time you collect some).
Magyars : You don't see any benefit with Magyars until Feudal age really, but free Blacksmith attack upgrades in each age for Cavalry and Infantry will really help to kill AI villagers, and obviously that's a small saving in food (and gold from Castle age). On top of that, you have the -15% cost to the Scout line, only a small saving, but free food none-the-less. The free attack upgrades will do the damage!
My exact thought process right now
It is *very* rare that I come across a video where 1.00 speed is fast enough.
İt’s almost too fast when pros are playing
I still bumped it up to 2x
@@marcosmercedesn It's all about finding the right balance, but I'm happy to see there are others who like to watch fast. Most just call me crazy. Many would likely call me crazy for watching this at 1x speed.
11
Very strong man, im surprised the AI didn't create spearmen, he didn't create any military unit at all, just a simple watchtower. Last time i was playing against an Extreme AI he already had 30 crossbowmen and 20 pikemen if i remember in the castle age with a ton of villagers
I just started AoE2, but for me it feels like AI real level is very random
@@JohnIdlewood videos old. now ai is much better
Whenever I play against the AI it feels like his army just spawns in front of my walls an immediately melts down my whole village in mid feudal. And if I happen to stay alive after that attack I just get destroyed by a bigger rush in imp a few minutes later. Well you gotta be good to beat the extreme, thats why hera can dot it and I cant
Same here. I got about as far as Hera here when all of a sudden my walls were melted by dozens of swordsmen and spearmen and archers, too many to counter with what I had.
Cs you didn’t pressurize the economy and had idle tc
@@ihmpall what do you mean with idle tc?
@@AR-so6ch idle town center ... Not building villagers
@@jabberwocky9968 lolll
Here's my 2 cents worth. We all know you can beat the AI. And we all really appreciate helping us learn the build order. But seriously think about it for a minute. We the noobs ditch the game when the hiccups happen. It doesn't do us any good to see how to do it perfect. We NEED to know how to do it after we lose a scout. And get housed 3 times in dark age. And forget to create villagers. And have holes in our walls, and all of the other crap we do as noobs. The most important thing I learned from this video, was not over-reacting to set-backs.
On an unrelated note, on your next game, garrison some rams!!! Black Betty Jam Some Rams!!! 😎😎😎😎
Imo just play and try to follow his build
If you fuck up here and there it doesn't matter
Just practice the build and try to fix some of your errors.
You actually already pointed out what is needed to get better.
Experience to not ditch a game comes by living it through and not by watching or reading it.
That's a solid life lesson in general. So many of those I learned from playing Aoe II as a teen.
@david smithe for some reason, I would rather lose 3 games to extreme and learn from it, than win 15 vs easiest. As other people have pointed out, it's a lot like life. I would rather fail in business as a doctor 100 times than ever scrub another toilet. 😎
@david smithe I've been a noob at this game for 20 years. I'm really not good at micro yet. I used to play 8 hour games in college. Back in the days of MSN Zone. Long live the noobs!!!
@david smithe nah. I'm a bit too sadistic for that
How To Consistently Beat the Extreme AI?
Just tower rush LOL
Just kidding, great video
Wdym just tc drop them
I also wall their base in with wooden walls and keep the gold out, so its villagers wont be able to get any gold.
@@Setzer.1 Funny that AI recovers from it definitely faster than players would do :D
Awe, I love it when new players find AoE 2! Good luck Mr. Hera!
UA-camrs: "don't rush the extreme AI. Play it safe, build walls and push."
Hera: "how about I do it anyway?"
Ummm...tower rush is the one sure way to beat extreme ai in my experience.
@@rickl5596 Yea but the point is not to cheese AI but win it in "fair fight".
@@Diegoshadow85but doesn't the ai cheat at the harder difficulty's ? I saw plenty of rts games where the ai gets a bonus to resource gain or extra resources and shorter build times in some cases
Not the de ai, although the old aoe2 ai did on hardest difficulty@@Assassin5671000
Dont forget to read the description. If anyone has any further questions about playing/beating the AI just drop a comment!
Also I think the hiccups I had shows that some mistakes are more than ok, sorry for the strong language D:
Hi Hera, read the description, this stood out to me ;) "Hey all, I've been asked " "copy what I'm doing as best "
I enjoy your videos im off to watch this one :)
As well as no link to Collin haha
@Hera When I play against ai , even if I'm on time to raid , the ai is ready with spearmen for scouts and skirmishers for archers
So how did you actually win this game? Did the AI surrender? I didn't see you destroy their TC
@@warba98 yes they surrendered. U dont need to kill their tc to win
Spoiler: he uploaded it to UA-cam
The AI is quite incompetent in Feudal and early Castle, my issue is when there are more of them. We usually play with friends and sometimes one flank loses hard, so we have an Extreme AI in post imp pumping out crap at us nonstop, lmao
Same here
Might do a follow up whee i beat it by going fast castle and giving it time to build up, we'll see
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 would be really helpful! The AI just gets to extreme when not controlled early on. Many thx for your vids @Hera !!!
I think actually the correct way to look at it isnt that AI sucks in feudal or castle but rather the human lags behind more and more as your base and army becomes bigger(going into imp). AI doesnt play amazing, but it plays semi good on every single unit at all times.
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 He is actually quite correct. But i would add that in general it is not that good, i don't remember the last time i lost against the extreme AI, using a multitude of strategies and, although i don't play online, i can say that I am far from a very good player.
Glad you still posted on youtube. Helped me improve a lot. I know how to do a FC easy, but find very difficult to rush properly. Thanks.
what's FC?
@@kira0703 fast castle
I'm improving at moderate. But yes I always go for stone and gold too early, that's my mistake.
Same. But I think for a civ like Mongols, you gotta go for stone early to get Mangudai but I always make that mistake because I try to do a defensive castle and then it gets destroyed by battering rams while I am making archers lol
Same, also I don't start making military until castle age
@@jphallow78 man that literally just happened to me, but with the Britons.
I was able to keep the enemy from having an workers on the map and they still were able to spam cav and skirmishers and I lost :) fun game
I always find a good spot to put a mine camp right between gold and stone and the jerk villager always auto mines the stone and I’m like noooOOoo you FOOL
Seeing you, a top 5 pro, getting housed was enough to get me to subscribe. Thanks for walking through your strategy. Learning a lot!
I'm struggling so much with Hard AI.
Ur not the only one I can’t win against them, lol
Me and the bois just lost a 3v1 against hard ai
@@denizcantulan4024 lol i did beat the hard AI try to make some army before it attacks you in feudal the ai makes some archery ranges, if it dont attack you the AI will go for knight rush or a crossbow rush. By the way I won I make some big army that counters the AI civ and then I won
@@AFreeMat. adres ? i want to send you a sticker
Improve your times, best way to beat ai
I'm glad you uploaded this game to youtube
I as a noob don't need to see perfect games in tutorial videos
I need to see games where things don't go according to plan so I could learn how to react and know there's still hope when shit hits the fan
Thanks :)
Glad you decided on uploading it anyways. It was a lot of fun and still educational. perfect mix!
Good guy hera always linking creators from chat and the dudes he plays. Super cool community 👍
I think this video is better than a "perfect" one with a clean build order: It shows that things can happen but you can recover from it and still win (there is no need to resign just because you lost a Vil at the wrong time or your scout or something like that)
This is brilliant! So glad you channel got recommended
haha, loved how he lost it at the 7 minute mark and started playing crazy fast.. well that escalated quickly for the beginners
greatly explained! I never knew stuff after hitting feudal age, like "13 minutes send your next 5 to gold, wheelbarrow and castle age"
Also building tcs on wood and secondary gold instead of main gold
Looking forward to more strats. Can u do one of those fc into something? like 15min fc into EW or knights idk
Another easy way. Go archers in feud 10 should do it.. first 10 takes out it's army, continue to make more archers and send them in. Once you killed off his army, find his gold and secure that. At this point it will switch to skrms. So reinforce your army. After that. Slowly start adding more archers to its woodlines to deny it. Next batch start at its farms. Stay outta range of the tc tho. And it should be GG eventually. If not advance and add siege.
I just tried it on teutons vs Very hard AI (very hard and extreme is diffrent in diffrent games, sometimes I stomp it easily, sometimes it puts up a good fight like now and I get crushed). Went feudal 9:51 and then castle at 21:37, it went kinda good at start, but I have manged to get like 4 vill kills with scouts/knights and instead of tower AI had like 10 pikes so I had to flee. Went 3x TC and before I have realised my opp was spamming me with goth champions. I had 3 mangonels ready, but they were not onages so dmg was quite low and they didnt help much. I guess biggest problem for me is spending my resources right away on late castle/imp. There are simply too many things to do then and I just cant manage that. I'm kinda new to aoe2, but these tips were quite helpfull, good content sir. Greetings from Poland. Take care
I am a newbie who only plays extreme AI often (I have started only about a month back). And yes this works perfectly as shown in the video.
While I could easily archer or tower rush the ai I was failing at scout rushing.
Where I was going wrong:
1) My dark age and early feudal age economy as correct, but I didn't know how to use it efficiently. Wasted wood on archery ranges because I used to panic that the AI will drush. Actually the Ai drush can be easily fended off by microing the villagers so avoid panicking. Don't waste time and wood into archery range just go straight cavalry without being afraid.. adapt if something goes wrong.. it's doable.
Secondly after reaching feudal I used to have lots of food, but due to making archery range first I kept it idle. Resources need to be continuously used as Hera suggested.
2) AI can't flush properly if you attack their wood. While I used to attack their wood I didn't micro properly and let my economy slow down. Avoid this. As he says you just disrupt his wood collection. You don't have to necessarily kill. But no matter what your economy pace should continue.
3) I used to go wheelbarrow immediately. I think that slowed down the rates of villagers. I don't know for sure, but making it late probably got me a short burst of food at the beginning of feudal age to get more scouts.
4) wasting lots of villagers unnecessarily on gold in feudal age.
5) not building tc on secondary gold
6) not making knights immediately into castle age. I tend to have gotten confused what exactly to make or how to advance.
Thanks a lot. It does work well. I took cavalry civilizations in all my trails but no doubt will work for non cav with knights
My tip would be if you're planning on Knight rushing, prioritize the forging upgrade. It allows knights to kill villagers in 4 hits instead of 5.
first time ever watching heras yt channel (or pretty much anything from heras PoV): 'i messed up', 'im so bad', 'they will never watch my stream'.... looking forward more pleb content :)
Compared to most players (like me) that forget houses
several times in a game, for you forgeting once is no big deal.
Thank you for the Tutorial!
Good stuff, Hera. Thanks!
Nice. Was just looking for tips on scouts to knights. Thank you! Now time to start practicing! :)
If you’re bad like me, but want the achievement, play on black forest and make sure there is only 1 entry point between you and the enemy. Ideally you’d also have a closed area behind you. Start as usual and block off the entry point.
For some reason the AI attacks later if they haven’t discovered your TC.
Get to Imp as fast as you can and build a wonder, protected by some castles, in the back and Fat Slob the hell out of it.
Walls after walls after walls after walls. Then just sit out the timer. (The AI doesn’t cut a path through the woods)
I’m a casual by all standards, but I made it work.
Wow this has been really really educational, thanks spirit of the law hera!
Is the extreme AI less aggressive than the others? Every single time I play against the Hard/Hardest AI they go for feudal aggression with spears, archers and skirms right after I dive in with scouts.
there are different kinds of playstyles.
that ai played fc and thats probably the weakest strat they have to offer eventho their flush can be countered by your fc if you wall a little
No clue personally, but it can just be that you were late with your scout rush or that you didnt do enough damage
Not at all, I just got drushed by the Extreme AI the other day, this is something the lower difficulties almost never do. The Hard/Hardest difficulties do tend to go for heavy feudal aggression, but with scouts you should still be able to pick off a few vills using your mobility. Also they normally build up a sizable feudal army before they attack which delays their Castle time significantly and if you wall properly it should not be much of an issue.
It was weird, I usually do this against Hard and they always pop out spearmen I have to run away from. I've made it a habit of getting a few archers out specifically to kill the spears so that my scouts can run free killing vills. If it makes skirms, I don't fight them with my archers, I have my scouts kill them. So scouts beat the skirms and archers beat the spears. That's how I counter the AI's defence from my scout rush.
nb: i'm another noob who can't get past Hardest and usually plays for the post-imp war XD
Same whenever I play. Sometimes the AI even began with dark age 3 men harass, not to mention the consistent feudal age aggression or defense with all kinds of unit. How come in this video we barely see any of that from the AI...?
Nice video Hera!
Ez. Go britons, island map, put your opponent on Cumans since they suck on water and imp, infinite resources, post-imp 12 castles around your base or more, wonder, more castles around your wonder, a fuck ton of trebs and longbowmen so no one enters your island. Achieve happiness
Hey hera, thanks for the content. Could you make a video or just answer me with some tips of how should i play nomad ? I mean, the basic starting things and good times to click up to feudal ? I feel like i'm kinda late on everything while playing nomad. Even when i win the game it just feel like i did everything wrong.
I recently made a guide on my channel on how to play Nomad. It goes over the general build and guidelines, with some pro-level input.
I recommend colin's guide!
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 you are such a humble man👍👍😸
I will download twitch to just subscribe you bro💓
Ok, im back i just tried: Extrem and Hardest difficulty, the AI creates enemy units unlike your game that they seem relax
Something is wrong here. I know this video has 3 years but I don't believe so much things changed in game that this is completely different now. I do almost the same things and on hard difficulty (hard, not extreme, this is 4/6), few minutes after advancing to Feudal Age (similar timing) I am always attacked by 15 people army. You are not attacked even much later and on extreme difficulty so something is wrong here.
Great video love the brief freakout you're the man
I have defeated extreme/hardest AI with tower rush and sicilian donjon push but had hard time against it in a fair fight in Arabia.
For the first time I defeated it in a fair fight, where I showed early feudal MAA rush with bulgarians and managed to take out 3-4 vills and right after that I walled up and started booming but also created skirms+pikes+MAA. Though the AI showed aggression in late feudal with skirms/scouts/archers but I held it well and pushed it back. Game went on till Imperial Age and the key for winning the game was constant villager production which helped me a lot. I made mistakes as I needed to place 3 TCs but I placed only 2 because I was so focused on attacking but I ended up having 100 vills by the time game ended. Felt really good because there was a time where even moderate AI bodied me really hard.
thanks for uploading it anyway, still super helpful
I only watch you on yTube! Good to know you are still human! Your speed is ridiculous!
The AI extreme makes your scout die in auto exploring, the scout goes right away to its demise.
It was so reassuring to see you make a couple of mistakes and still press on. Your hotkey wizardry and micro-military was still blindingly beyond me, but at least I could see what to work on.
I would love to see a late game vs extreme ai. I can consistently beat extreme if i attack early but if i boom and do nothing for 30 minutes there is no coming back ...
How to beat the extreme AI which doesn't react to any of the scouts or knights.
That what's happens when you are faster up against the ai. His 1st 2 scouts are in his base just when the ai hits feudal. Then it does react with a tower.
Scout: Dies
YTuber: That was completely intentional
14:38 Lamest excuse I've seen yet: "The shore fish near mine villager appeared all too sleepy." Apart from the strange grammar (maybe they spoke like this in the middle ages), this map has no water at all.
The cursing around @6:30 was hilarious .
A lot of us are either drunk or stoned or both. Can you get intoxicated and then show us how to play?
Hahaha 3 years ago and this comment is still gold
Can’t stop laughing with the scout and house😂 nice video tho very well explained and not a cheesy strat that abuse ai
what's cheesy strat
can u do a match with patched up AI and show it while pointing out differences?
been 8 months almost and there's been some improvements
Thanks man! Never thought I'd be able to beat extreme
You still wont, if you are a minut later in this build order the ai will destroy you
I’m not sure why their was no army in this video. I always get countered by spears even if I hit them before they are in feudal. My feudal time is before the 10 min mark and eventually after I kill a bunch of vills they will start sending spears out.
Tower rush works every time, but you need to hit basic time goals for feudal, esp. in multiplayer where it's you vs multiple AIs. I find that at a leisurely pace I can only make about 17-19 villagers before going feudal, any longer and you risk the teamed AIs from helping out your first tower target. Going offensive early also allows you to prevent your target AI from castling. You need to be able to get up at least two overlapping fire towers to prevent target AI villager take-down defenses and teamed AI responses. Once you have a defensible tower cluster, you can wall it which will occupy both target AI and the teamed AI into castle age which will allow you to further decimate the target AI which should quit by 30 min if you do it right.
I know I am very late to this comment section. First, I want say I am really impressed not only with Hera's well known skills in AOE2 but also how polite and pleasant his attitude is
My post is to give some suggestions to people like myself who have given up hope that they can achieve the level of multitasking, APM and execution shown by Hera. I am a noob level player. I am 45 years old and I just don't think I have it in me. I am not going to get faster.
Also another note before I give some tips in beating the AI is that I am using an older version of AOE2 which is AOC, so I don't know how well the Hard AI of AOC stacks up against the extreme AI in DE. My post will give tips to beat hard level AI in AOC. Hardest level AI cheats and reaches Castle age in 10 mins. So that is extremely hard to beat. So here go my tips.
1. Choose Huns. It reduces the amount of multitasking greatly. It also saves wood. Some people might think it is a small amount of wood gained from not needing houses but we noobs often task a villager to build a house and then completely forget about him resulting in lot of idle times.
2. Play in slow speed until you get better. It not only helps you avoid mistakes but also it reduces the difference the idle times create when we make mistakes.
3. Try using a larger map. That will delay the first wave of AI units and slow down further attacks a bit as well.
4. Usually once the AI gets going, it spams army units so much. So better players suggest rushing which we noobs can't do because we are slow. So turtling in and defending until the AI runs out of resources is our best option.
5. Try to build a castle first before investing the stone in extra TC's. Because we are not going to boom that efficiently and the castle destroys lots of early attacks giving us time to get the upgrades. Also build the castle within the range of TC fire because you need another 200 stones to research murder holes and make the castles defend themselves.
6. Healing your units saves lots of resources. So use a couple of monks and garrisoning to heal your units. Getting a few conversions can help as well.
7. The AI doesn't break through walls if you have left an unwalled space to enter your base. So try to build pallisade walls and leave an open path right before your castle. That will make the AI send its units towards the castle and waste lots of units to castle fire. And try to add as many castles as you can within range of each other. Once you are confident you have enough castles to defend your base, you can try to add TC's and boom a little bit.
8. The AI usually starts spamming units right away without any upgrades. So try to get some upgrades on your army units. But do the most important upgrades first. Getting upgrades on Castle firing range and ballistics are more important than army unit upgrades.
9. Try to get at least one relic. It is a must if you haven't set the victory condition to conquest and even with conquest the gold generated by even a single relic can be very useful in the long run.
10. Concentrate on destroying siege units that can demolish your castles. You usually need at least a few light cavalry units or knights to do that. Early on, only the ram is the threat. But once AI hits Imperial age look out as much as you can to spot the trebuchets. They can quickly demolish your castle leaving you vulnerable. Getting upgrades that make the castles stronger is good but it can be costly requiring stones. So your first priority with stones should be adding more castles.
11. I should have made this point earlier. Try to get wheel barrow and hand cart before going for lumber camp or mining camp upgrades because the former speeds up everyone.
12. Learn a bit about counter units because certain civilizations like Goths have units that are more resistant to castle fire. So you will need some nonranged units to take care of them.
13. Wait until you see clearly that the AI attacks have slowed down considerably and you have fully upgraded units before going to attack the AI base yourself. Usually it is done best with a few trebuchets and enough strong fully upgraded units to guard the trebuchets. Ranged units are best but if your opponents have units more resistant to ranged units you will need some non ranged units. Usually a mixture of both is better.
14. With Huns, just a bunch of fully upgraded Tarkans and a bunch of fully upgraded cavalry archers are enough because of Tarkan's attack bonus vs buildings. A decent number of Tarkans can take down even a castle.
15. Another point I should have made earlier. Use most of your villagers on food and some on wood in dark age. Don't invest villager time in other resources. Your aim is to reach castle age as soon as possible. So after you get to the Feudal age move some to gold and even make some villagers. You can start taking stone in Feudal age. But make sure it doesn't delay your castle age time.
I think that is enough. I will make another post with tips for rushing because even at noob levels it is possible with some more tricks.
More advanced tips for noobs
Even noobs can reach a level of success against AI with some tricks which might take some more practice to execute properly but completely possible for all noobs.. Believe me, I am a noob who doesn't use a single hotkey. I only use the mouse. I play with one hand only. But I can beat a team of 3 hard AI's (who are allied together so it is 1 vs 3) with around 70% success rate if I use slow speed. I will switch to normal speed after it becomes clear the game is under my control to speed up the game. If I use normal speed my success rate is like 30% with random civs or around 40% if I use Huns. So now I am going to give tips for noobs on how to beat 2 or 3 allied hard AI's.
1. Once again Huns are your best choice.
2. To take on 2 or 3 AI's you will need to defeat at least one AI and slow down the other AI's early on. So you have to rush and attack in Feudal age itself. With the AOC version I use, the Feudal age scout is as useless as the one dark age scout you get. So archers are your main or only choice.
3. Obviously to rush, you have to reach Feudal age very fast in noob times. The AI usually reaches Feudal age around 13 mins. You will have to reach there at least by 11:30 mins. Sometimes if you get lucky, you can get away with later times but mostly not. But there are some ways to do this even as a noob.
4. Naturally, you would like to use a smaller size map (a 2 player map for 3 players for e.g) for rushing as opposed to turtling in. Once you get better you can try with an appropriately sized map.
5. Learn boar luring. It is easy to learn. Even if you don't execute a perfect boar luring like the better players it doesn't matter. The AI does not hunt boars. So this gives you nearly a 700 food advantage. If you got nearby deers, hunt them too. But don't try to lure deers. That is for the pro's.
6. Use some build orders. Not exactly like Pro's. I would suggest putting 7 on sheep and 4 on wood before luring the first boar. Don't worry if you mess up the build order a bit.
7. Even if you don't use hotkeys, use the shift key to set the flags for your scout to follow. That would reduce a decent amount of multitasking.
8. Try to reduce idle TC time as much as possible at least until reaching feudal age. Villager production should be almost continuous. Once again using slow speed helps a lot in this regard until you become fast enough. But don't worry if you can't avoid some idle TC time. you can still pull it off with some idle time. While taking food from boar you might need to force villagers to drop food from time to time to keep villager production.
9. Once you lure your first boar you should be sending all villagers after that to food, whether berries or sheep or boar it doesn't matter. Don't send villagers to any other resource until you click for Feudal age research.
10. As soon as you get 500 food you should click Feudal age. Usually as a noob you would have 22 or 23 villagers at this point. Sometimes if you get lucky you will have only 19 or 20 villagers which won't be enough so you will have to make 3 or 4 villagers as soon as you reach Feudal age.
11. As soon as your scout has found all 8 sheep and two boars you should send your scout parallel to the edge of the map but a bit away from the edge of the map. If your scout travels parallel to all three edges like this other than the one your base is in you can spot all 3 enemies 95% of the time. Rarely you will have to send the scout a bit further away from the edge where you didn't find the enemy to spot him. You don't have to find all three enemies before you reach Feudal age. You can find the second one when you are rushing the first one and so on.
12. Once you click Feudal age research, send 5 or 6 villagers to gold, keep like 4 villagers on food, send two villagers to the middle of the map for forward building and send the rest to wood. You should also be tasking a villager to build barracks while advancing to Feudal age so that once you reach Feudal age the forward builders can immediately start building Archery ranges. This idea of sending two villagers to the middle I stole from TheViper. Earlier I was sending 3 individual villagers to the three enemy bases. This could be better because the archers can reach the enemy base quickly but this fails often because of wolves.
13. Once you reach Feudal age, you have to do a few things. Getting wheel barrow, building 3 archery ranges in the middle, building blacksmith and getting the two archer upgrades and also making archers to send to enemy bases. Now these things need a lot of resources so you will have to intuitively decide what to do first. Obviously building the archery ranges and sending archers are the first priority. Getting the archer upgrades will become important very soon because the AI will start building some military units and attack the archers. Getting wheel barrow will speed up the inflow of resources but itself costs a decent amount of resources. So you will have to decide when to get each one. Over time you will get the hang of it.
14. To be successful with your rush , you will have to send two archers to each enemy's lumber camp and two archers to each enemy's main gold. This is where you need some luck spotting those areas. If you quickly find those areas, your rush will be successful. One important note: Our units are produced with aggressive stance as default. You will have to change each unit to stand ground. When you forget to do this for an archer, he will follow some villager and come under TC fire.
15. Even if you find the lumber camps and main golds, the AI will start gathering from secondary gold. And you will soon find upgraded militias or even long swords men coming at your archers. If long swords men catch your archers in Feudal age, they will easily finish them off and proceed to help their ally AI's similarly. So you should get lucky finding all golds and stones and place at least one archer near each resource. That is hard. That is where the next point becomes important.
16. You can't continue in this strategy for long. You will have to get to castle age as soon as possible. Even when you are attacking like this, AI will reach castle age in like 17 plus minutes. But since AI reaches prematurely it wont have units immediately. But you will see them decimating your units soon. If one AI is successful in decimating your units it will immediately do the same to your units in other Ai bases.Then your rush will totally fail. So you must reach castle age soon. For that, create a few villagers once you finish your archer upgrades in Feudal age. Then task them with farming. At this point you should have plenty of wood and gold. That is the advantage of archer rush. Archers only need wood and gold, so you can stockpile some food. Build a market and sell your extra resources and try to click castle age as soon as possible. You will only reach castle age after 23 minutes mostly even if you get lucky. But that is O.K. The AI won't accomplish much after reaching castle age in 17 mins. It will take some time.
17. Once you reach castle age, immediately get crossbow upgrade and bodkin arrow upgrade. Then you should get second armor upgrade for archer. Then try to build a university and get ballistics. You might not have the resources to do all these things immediately. But if you manage it before any AI has got enough decent army units, you are on your way to victory. Just to make sure spam some more archers to each base and put them next to golds and stones. If you have reached this point before any AI gets out units strong enough to take on your Feudal age archers mostly you will see the AI's resigning one by one.
18. Even if you don't manage to defeat all 3 AI's with your archer rush, if you finish two of them, you can play a 1 v 1 with the remaining AI and win eventually using some of the ideas in my previous post. Even if you manage to defeat just one AI, you might withstand the constant spamming of armies of two AI's and eventually win.
19. To accomplish the above, you need to do some things in your base. Since so far you fully concentrated in your rushing, most probably your base will be defenseless. So you must hurry and make villagers to collect stone and make a castle as soon as possible. You must also make a Monastery and gather as many relics as you can. Moreover you should immediately build a few stables and archery ranges to create army units. Even if you haven't defeated an AI but harmed it enough, it will play a very weak game.Anyways if you follow this you will eventually win the game in a war of attrition.
Believe me, the above gives me a success rate of 70% against 3 hard AI's in slow speed and I am a total noob who don't remember even a single hotkey. So if there is any noob here you can do it too. Good luck!
@@johnprakash6033 almost nobody plays AoC anymore so this isn't very useful. AI is much better in HD version
Hera has a whole side of the map open “now i am fully walled”.
Me: i got all covered now, all sides
Hard AI: you forgot this little whole, i will send my scouts and kill all Vills
Is this strategy still viable? In this game AI hits Feudal at 11:45 or so. In my games they have been hitting feudal at 10:05. By the time your scouts get there they just get mowed down by archers or spearman.
Dark Age -
2 vills make house
1 vill makes house
scout in circles
6 vills on food
2:09 -
next 3 vills on wood
2:38 -
1st boar - shift left click with town center
(4 sheep left)
7 vills on boar
3:57 -
build house
build berries mill
4 vills on berries
5:14 -
Lure second boar
5:20 -
Scout Opponent find weak ponts hug woodlines hug hills beware of tc
7:00 -
Take rest of sheep
7:30 -
Fuedal Age Research
Send 5 vills to next lumber camp
build House
8:40 -
At 60% fuedal age, Build Bararck
Free vills on staggler trees
If late to fuedal age, make couple farms
9:45
as soon as fuedal age, make stable
10:05 -
3-6 Farm
10:30
Farms around mill
Build Few houses
Create 3 scout cavalry
set gather point near enemy base
11:38
two or three scout attacks hit and run
keep making More farms
have like total 9 vills on wood
hit run, kill isolated villagers
13:00
build gold mine
put two on gold mine
14:00
when 5 on gold, get wheel barrow
14:20 -
wall up your base with pallisade
15:30 -
When wheelbarrow done, click castle age
15:40 -
build blacksmith
15:50 -
blacksmith cavalry upgrades
bloodlines in stable
16:40 -
click castle age if not done before
17:00
continue damaging vills with scouts
make sure ur fully walled
17:25 -
gold mining upgrade
send two more vills to gold (berry guy or wall guy)
17:55 -
Build Second Stable for two knights in castle age
make sure you have blacksmith armourand stable bloodlines
19:20 -
achieved castle age
Make two knights
Add two more TC right away
One on woodline
One on secondary gold
Use 3-4 vills for building each
20:10
get wood upgrades
have two stable knights
have 3 tc
Castle age before 20 min
20:50
Send knights to kill vills
keep building farms at town centers
keep making vills
keep aking houses
keep making knights and sending them to kill vills
21:25 -
destroy their tower with two knights
21:35 -
make more knights
22:45 -
23:07 -
forging at blacksmith
get second armour upgrade
"I bullshitted the Scout..." [when housed].
"Hera he does know some stuff, believe it or not".
Hilarious!
13:52 :D I hope so! Apart from that, thank you very much. I will learn about shortcuts more, that is my weak point. Thanks again! :)
Best wanted not wanted mistake ever.
I've learnt how to consistently beat hard AI in Black Forest. I'll get there once lmao.
@@blaubeer8039 i mean... i play standard but i always win by conquering them :)
Great video mate. Would have been great to do this with villager-to-resource info in bottom right of screen above mini-map (rather than scores).
Thanks again for these vids. Would be great to see more opening build order tutorials like this on UA-cam. Peace bro
you can see that next to the res on the top left though!
"I have a pretty good time."
The game: NO. FORGOT THE HOUSE. HOUSED. >:)
@Hera, I'd love to see you play with the very same strategy in another video, while AI invest into feudal units rather than just going fast castle
He needs to put it down to Hardest, that difficult always feudal rushes, easy counter is to just go all in on like 20 scouts, role most of their archers and decimate their economy while frantically aging up to castle to continue pushing with knights and rams. And if that doesnt get you the win you will be a in a good place to age up to imperial and treb down remaining castles and TCs
Thanks, I finally beat the hard AI with this strategy. In hindsight it was too easy with this simple strategy
I will not, cannot, shall not micro to this degree, ever.
It is not needed tbh, as long as u understand the concepts of the game, micro isnt that importnat
I've played the original conquerors expansion many times against 3 AI's on hardest. I killed the first one with men at arms and towers in a wide circle around his town center so he couldn't get any villagers out alive. Then stealing his farms (villagers can steal unattended farms) and protecting my two bases, full defence untill finishing off with a 100 men fully upgraded army. Half of the times the AI had a bug it didn't attack walls but were always walking around looking for a way trough. The other half of the games were interestingly challenging for me.
Very good video! I think this is helpfull for most players.
Holy cow this actually works, nice
New player here. I give up trying to out-boom Extreme. It's easy in a map like Arena, but in Arabia, I've tried way too many times without success.
So Ima try and ruin its economy instead. Thx for the vid!
ok, I've just finished watching this video, let's go try it
I only played on Hardest and still, by 17 mins, I got wasted by several archers and skirmishers
How did he get all his farmers to go back after the forced drop off at the tc?
I wonder this too
This may be late but hotkeys. He used the garrison key and the go back to work key.
I finally got good enough to beat the standard old AI lol, baby steps.
why the AI did not send a single spear against your scout? when i scout rush, even following this timing, the AI usually spam at least 3 spears zoning me out, or even counter-attacking my base with a feudal army...feels very strange seeing this passive??
it felt like a very "mediocre" level AI, sendind vills out alone, 0 defence outside of a tower, nothing at all to hinder your plan. that's not close to my experience even if my times are pretty close to these
Im still a noob with 10 APM who is scared to paly ranked, but I learned that skirms are my favorite against extreme AI. Easy to fend off early archer/skirm rush from AI and just enough to harass so I can get the upper hand and finish with rams and cavalry
This is cool to see but as some people have said, it would be cool to see how to beat the AI in Imp/postImp.
Because with your skill and apm we can't really compete so while this BO works out, we probably need a tutorial on how to beat an ex AI that has time to build up his base and start attacking
Remember the longbow macro in the joan of arc campaign? Now imagine it has 50 longbows and the perfect meat shield to get with it. No way to out macro an ai
Yeah you have to beat the ai before imp or you're screwed
@@sushi3377 yeah true, I've improved a lot since that post, but honestly, I still lose to extreme ai when I don't drugs or attack fast
LoL The stay in character part kills me
Dude how come the IA doesn't have any soldiers by castle age?
all fine and nice, what my porblem with the Ai´s is, that they somewhow make a whole army while being as fast as i am. and when im mid feudal or beginning castle i always get raided until i dont have anything left
I like how I naturally came to do all of these thing's as well on these settings.
Nonetheless,
I was interested to see if others did it altogether differently than the methods I use.
Those apm are sick. I can barely keep up with what he's doing.
This seems very easy when there are no enemy military, namely pikemen. Whenever I attack with scouts/knights, even very early, they instantly pump our spearmen followed by a million archers/skirms.
how does that extreme ai didnt made single spear? Anytime i try something against hardest they´ll get instantly 20 counter units. I will never play ranked until i beat extreme ai :D
YESS DUDE i managed to sub 20' castle and beat hard ai
good tut :]
I beat AI in extreme difficulty, no cheat codes, all fair game... Just my strategy... I start game with 1.5 hour no violence treaty, and I quickly surround there empire with wall in inital of game and left some of my people inside wall... So that they cannot use outside resources and my people inside build castle where the space I get that's not part of their kingdom, also my people build barracks so that I infliter their country from inside with warriors and watch tower and castles... Also my civilians are sucking up their resources which are bound to be part of their kingdom during making of wall... I build my army, suck all rocks from the map and build multiple watch tower, castle outside the wall surrounding there kingdom .... With extra resources and castle and watchtower support inside and outside kingdom whole empire of extreme difficult AI is weaken and for 1.5 hour my military is made stronger and better.. When war comes, even though AI is times faster, lack of resources and castle and watchtower surrounding the kingdom, lack of resources, and sudden interior attack further weaken the AI and than my outside military attacks, and beware, AI beat this plan 2-3 times, but after that, resources of them exhaust and my one plan of building multiple barracks and archery outside kingdom benifit, I have to be fast, continuous make military so AI doesn't jump back... And after that empire weakens and fall.. It's pure human creative method used by many empires around world to crush other kingdomes
can I have thus timer by any chance ingame? or is this a streaming thing?
Beating extreme AI by feudal rush is ok for me, but if I do fast castle age or fast imp strategies, it will be very hard to beat AI.
Any suggestion to fight AI in the late game? thanks a lot~!
How well would you do against a post imperial extreme AI
The pros never let it get that far lol, my guess would be that they stalemate until resources run out and the human player's supior prioritization will get them the win.
It's actually not that hard, I win post imp fights consistently against extreme AI by just walling up and building towers /castles (towers are really effective) (or no walls, they don't really "go around" your towers that often) and then just take good trades and never forget to boom ~120-140 vils . snipe those trebs and rams and you're fine mostly
How does Hera hop his camera between units?
The funny part is, that extreme AI doesnt fight back.. but the AI HD as soon as i open with scout rush they mass pikemen, as soon as i go archer rush they open with tons of skirmishers, as soon as i go fast castle they rush me... and i dont talk about extreme AI HD, but the hard/hardest.... so im kinda mad atm...
Ty Hera! Now I know the things that I do wrong. I need to lost my sc to TC and get housed at 20 pop! 11 111
Seriously I think the most important thing is to stay active with the army. Is hard to keep the scouts attacking and moving and the economy controlled at the same time. Now I can beat the hardest IA but not the extreme yet. I will train it with this 20 pop cause always do 21 pop. Greetings!
How do you jump around the map so fast?
Thanks for this. Really helpful and well articulated. I'd like to find a balance between rushing and crushing the way you just did in this vid, and going toe-to-toe through to late imperial with the AI on Extreme. A rush victory like this, when i do it can feel a bit formulaic and as though i'm not getting much out of the game. I'd like to win in late game mass army battles, however when i try this the enemy usually overwhelms me in the middle game. So...
...How can i play through to late game (on extreme or hardest AI) but consistently be maintaining a slight upper hand over my enemy, so that i don't get crushed in the process but can still enjoy a long, tactical drawn out war with the AI? How could i best attain that balance from your perspective?
Start the war early, do this kind of aggression so that you can keep ahead while you go to castle. Then in castle, get light cav and knights and other castle-age units to harrass with (heck, even a ram or mangonel if you're ballsy), and slowly increase numbers and variety. The war will slowly grow over the course of the game into an all-our war, all from a small little scout rush at the start.
What was the error around 7 mins?
As mentioned but not particularly highlighted, TIME is the issue. Any EARLY feudal rush should work 1v1 too, and that will also divert any d-rush the AI may launch because the AI will immediately recall its attacking drush units to defend. D-rushes by AIs are kind of common, so this tutorial doesn't really cover that issue. But a strong fast start will basically out do most AIs early. The accumulated advantage of the AI efficiency, (if not intelligence), can overwhelm most players given enough time, so the key is to attack as early as possible and as strongly as possible, before the AI has that momentum. This is also the basic strategy for beating real players stronger than yourself also.
This was a great explanation and tutorial. Maybe now I stand a chance against the moderate AI. 🤣
What's the fun in winning this way? I like building towers, castles, seige, etc.