Bro.... your Eagles have 10 pierce armor, and are impossible to kill by archers. Slingers are the single best anti-infantry unit in the game, and the Aztecs had nothing but jaguars. You could have easily crushed both Aztecs and Britons singlehandedly!
Probably should have started using slingers earlier for the bonus against the jaguar warriors. Also slingers are identical to arbalests except one less attack but more armor so very useful in castle age and still almost as effective as arbalests in the imperial age and they are always effective against meso-american civs who are using infantry.
One thing you definitely need to learn is to use the control commands... Always assign your current armies to at least two control groups (one for primary army, one for the secondary, if you have it). Always group-control your villagers (same key if they are together, different keys if they have different tasks like one walling and one building military buildings). And learn the hotkeys to your buildings, because you're way too slow at getting upgrades and building stuff in general. Learn the shortcut to build in general, and at least the shortcuts to the walls, gates, barracks, archery ranges, stables, siege workshops, and castles. Also the garrison/ungarrison and get-back-to-work keys. If you didn't know it, if you press CTRL+[building shortcut key] you can go immediately to the building(s) you have. For example if blacksmith is assigned to the S hotkey, pressing CTRL+S will immediately take you to it, so you don't forget to upgrade. Make a habit of immediately researching upgrades at blacksmith and university as soon as you hit the next age. Learn which units have which upgrades, and prioritize range/attack for ranged units, and defense for melee units (the longer they survive, the more they can kill). And please don't be the guy that says "mmh...I think I'll get THIS upgrade". It's CBA, you have all the res you need for more than an hour of full units production, you don't "choose" which techs to get, you just get them all; the only question is "what do I get first". There are many other things you also need to learn better, to play faster, where to place your buildings to be more effective, and how to play a team game instead of a solo adventure. You almost seem shy in these games, as if you were afraid to tell that idiot red to set you a fricking gate (which he should have done ages ago). Learn how to feed, when to take a fight and when to run, and when to raze. And "study" up on the civs a bit too, maybe on the wikia page, to know strength and weaknesses...you can't seriously not know if incas beat magyar or not.
+Alex DeLarge I don't really understand this notion that things are in a bad way when it was an unranked game and I was my team's mvp, and there's really no way Incas are the best civ in CBA when their post imperial unit roster is so mediocre. There's no point ctrl grouping my units when the churn is so high (1k+ units lost in half an hour for every player) but yes ctrl grouping buildings might save time in some places. Of course I know I have enough resources to research everything. When I say I will research x, it's shorthand for I will get x first and the other techs after. Thanks for the advice, some of it I will take on board, but sometimes people are way too critical on these unranked casual games. My performance in these recordings is quite consistently above the majority of other players and I am just playing for fun anyway. I've banned that other commenter. AoE2 has an unfortunate section of its fanbase who are arrogant and throw around insults instead of constructive advice like yours. It's one of the reasons I'm not an AoE2 UA-camr, just someone who plays and records AoE2 semi regularly.
I appreciate you making good use of my advice. Now...don't take this the wrong way, and I'm not trying to be an arrogant keyboard mastermind of CBA here, but I really am a top-level CBA player, and I assure you, on a scale from below average player, average player, good player, very good player, pro player, elite player, from what I've seen in these games I really wouldn't put you above the average player (in fact, you're missing some basic things that anyone should know/do. Just to mention one, in your saracen video it took you soooo long to get bloodlines, when it's literally the first thing any good+ player would do, second only to an emergency wall). You seem to underestimate the importance of control grouping for efficiency too, but that's more understandable since learning all there is to know about microing takes time, dedication, and you also have to see other players play to realize what certain things imply. I could say the same about the way you patrol, the sub-optimal unit stances and formation you use (if you even use them, I'm not sure), and so on. That being said, I also understand that maybe you're trying to just have some casual fun with CBA, no strings attached, no hardcore stressful time, and no pretenses to be the best player in the world. However, from someone that plays with the best CBA players on steam on a daily basis, and is at least a very good player himself, let me tell you again that you have quite a lot to learn, even basic things, and you have to practice your tasking and multitasking a lot more too. And it's really not that hard to be honest, you just need to have the right mentality (and "I don't really need to control group masses" is not the right mentality :D Make everything count). Also, being score leader doesn't mean MVP in CBA. Score is dependent mostly on kill/death ratio, but an easy counter-example would be a Hun that razes everyone to the ground and will still be score-bottom even though he virtually won the game by himself. If you meant you were MVP from a performance evaluation you made yourself, and not based on the score, I'm not so sure being MVP in a team where Malian doesn't set shit and Saracen doesn't chase down Magyar is really all that meaningful. Although, for what it's worth, you didn't play bad either -- just not something I would call play of the week. As I said earlier...average-ish is where you're currently at, and hopefully one day you'll improve and look back at your games and understand the point of view that more experienced players have when watching your games.
Also, I could upload a video of some game of mine if you'd like to see a more experience player's PoV. I don't really know any good program to record though (the only one I know makes waaaaay too heavy files for 25+ minutes of footage, and I'm currently not doing well HDD-wise), so if you have some recommendation (and you'd like to watch said gameplay) I could use the advice myself.
+Alex DeLarge Honestly let's just agree to disagree. You know your stuff but I'm pretty sceptical that someone who plays among the best in the world would say the Incas are (roughly) the best civ on this map when they lack the consistently good matchups of the Byzantines, the danger of the Huns or the late game power of the Britons/Franks. Since aoe2hd has no CBA ranking system and no way of prescreening player experience, how do you manage to play with (and know you are playing with) the world's best on a regular basis? I'm also sceptical that the world's best CBA players would be on Steam daily instead of Voobly. I also don't know how someone who watches my videos would think I'm unaware that Incas beat Magyars, I thought I even mentioned it in this video. Still it's not a matchup I would walk through jaguar warriors for. You might well be better than me but I've been playing this map for years and I know I do better than average most of the time. I didn't mention kd ratio but in a match with no castles razed, kills is a pretty informative albeit flawed indicator of impact. If you want to upload your games, I recommend OBS. You can configure your settings to prevent excessively large files, there are guides. I'd be curious to see some games from you and how you play both when winning and losing. Unit stances when patrolling is a thing I need to learn and you're right to bring that up. Not gonna talk about this much more. I respect your opinion but for the most part I'm satisfied with my plays. And if you and the best players in the world have some formal way of organising your games, I'd like to join in sometime. ;)
You're right that Voobly is home of better players than Steam, on average, but that doesn't really mean that people on Steam are shit: a pro on Steam would still be a pro on Voobly. By the way, there is a top player in this very game, but I guess you don't really know any names and didn't recognize him :p Anyway, can you really not tell when you're playing with the best players? It's not hard -- stick with people that play well, and you'll find people that play better; stick with them, and you'll find people that are even better. Friend of friends, and such. At some point you won't find any better players -- that's when you know you've found the top ones out there. Also, the creators of the map (and others credited in its creation) are among the very best ones (creating the map doesn't necessarily imply being good at it, but I think you know what I mean), and those are some of the people I play with (although I usually hang around friends of theirs more than they themselves, but those players are still at least "pro" players, and occasionally elite level). If you see an elite player playing you'll see how they do everything faster, they always see everything, and anticipate your every move (acting fast and coordinated is one of the best signs of a top player). I haven't really watched that many videos of yours to know exactly how you feel about civs :D You did mention something about "I don't know if my units have bonus against Magyar" in this video though, that was what I meant. Incas will always obliterate Aztec with proper micro, and you've seen it yourself in this very game. If you're not convinced we can go for a 1v1 with me being Incas and you Aztec and I'll show you right away lol It's odd that you say you're skeptical about me because I say Incas are one of the best civs out there, because that really just proves that you don't really know how to use them, since I can confirm again that they really are one of the (or THE) most versatile civ in the game, being able to take on most infantry (except teutons (unless teuton has very poor micro) and jap), doing average or even good against ranged units, and having bonus that makes them very good against most cavalry. On top of that, their spawn is large, they start with pre-upgrades, and their unique techs empower their units even more. They have access to the best anti-infantry unit of the game, full arbalests and halberdiers, siege rams with siege engineers, and even keeps, making them actually better than the typical Mayan end game (they do have the worst eagles, but Mayans usually go for arbalests anyway), or at the very least on the same level (and I hope you're not going to argue that Mayans are a great civ); moreover, they imp faster (one of the fastest imp civs, if not THE fastest) at 400. So if you want we can just "agree to disagree", and I won't try to sell you the Incas any further, but maybe you should really reconsider their role, and I'm just gonna leave it at that. We do occasionally play organised games, 4v4 with all known and pro/elite players, but that doesn't seem to happen all that often now that everyone has resumed work/school =/ We still play in a team most of the time - much better than playing with random people. Who knows, maybe one day we'll be one player short and you'll end up on our team, and maybe you'll see how fast everything moves, and how much communication happens on higher levels. I'll try to record a decent game and let you know. In the meantime you can maybe check some videos here on youtube, even non-CBA videos, or PoV games by "above average" players, to have an idea how fast things move. I wanted to link you DoctorWillCU streams to have something to watch in the meantime, but he took them down from twitch =/ (or at least I can't find them anymore) Till then ^^
+Alex Moran thanks man. It depends. If you get the turtle next to your name in the score list, it means your cpu is dragging, even I get this sometimes if there are lots of units on the map. If every other player comes up with a yellow or red symbol next to their name, that means you have high ping and your internet is too slow. If these symbols are next to one other player's name, that means the lag is coming from them. There's always some latency especially on HD version but usually you can at least find the source when lag is super bad.
No offense, but why would you not use slingers against the Aztecs? Slingers when fully upgraded are actually one of the most effective anti-infantry units in the game. They attack faster and with more accuracy than hand cannons, and they have +10 infantry attack (the same bonus that hand cannons get), which means that against infantry they're actually better. They're also almost as good as arbalests when massed, except for missing 1 base damage, although they do have more pierce armor because of couriers, cost a bit less, and have a tiny bit more health. Overall they're a pretty good unit, especially to just back up Elite Eagles. Overall, it's fair to say that the Incan counter-army of Slingers, Eagles, and Kamayuks is among the most powerful late game armies in the game, especially on CBA where siege weapons are not an issue.
I hope I don't come off sounding condescending here. I'm just trying to spread knowledge of the glorious Incan Master race. Also, Incas can be a powerhouse on CBA (given they aren't fighting like Franks, Britons, Chinese, Teutons or something). Because they have a rapid spawn of good cavalry and infantry counters. Obviously they can't fight things like archers or teutonic knights, but they handle almost every other civ pretty well, and they don't need a lot of kills to age up quickly. The most non-intuitive thing about them is that they don't raze buildings very well at all without good micro (which can be hard to achieve if you're attacking bottom of the map gates anyways due to not being able to path right up to the gate very easily.).
+Rovsea - I should have covered this more, but I didn't build slingers at first because the Aztecs had no vils and I was more concerned about teal and grey massing archers. I started switching to them towards the end. I might like the Incas more if massing Kamayuks was actually an option late game, but unfortunately in CBA they're stuck with halberdiers which are super resource efficient (limited relevance) but not so population space efficient.
lol the previous comment was kinda harsh, but I have to say, you definitely have margin for improvement :D Incas are probably the single best civ of CBA, or at very least in the top 5 depending on play style and skill level. In this game you played, only castle/imperial age briton would beat you if played properly lol
red was definitely a huge noob plus he had a good civ but never backed off those purple gates. sucks to see you go down like that. def could've whomped em. cheers
Hey Norovo, I've only just started watching your vids, i'm really enjoying them, i was wondering if i could join one of your west europe diplomacy games one time! Add me on steam if you would? Or just send me a message :) Yours sincerely, Wabinator
i've been wanting to play way more AoE II than I have lately. The diplomacy games seem really interesting, so i figured i might give it a shot and see if i can join in. :)
You're so polite and calm hahaha. If I'd be playing and red was not listening, I would've spammed and raged my head off.
I like your Cba videos man cheers from Chile
+Tatan Morello Thanks man! :)
Bro.... your Eagles have 10 pierce armor, and are impossible to kill by archers. Slingers are the single best anti-infantry unit in the game, and the Aztecs had nothing but jaguars. You could have easily crushed both Aztecs and Britons singlehandedly!
Probably should have started using slingers earlier for the bonus against the jaguar warriors. Also slingers are identical to arbalests except one less attack but more armor so very useful in castle age and still almost as effective as arbalests in the imperial age and they are always effective against meso-american civs who are using infantry.
One thing you definitely need to learn is to use the control commands...
Always assign your current armies to at least two control groups (one for primary army, one for the secondary, if you have it). Always group-control your villagers (same key if they are together, different keys if they have different tasks like one walling and one building military buildings).
And learn the hotkeys to your buildings, because you're way too slow at getting upgrades and building stuff in general. Learn the shortcut to build in general, and at least the shortcuts to the walls, gates, barracks, archery ranges, stables, siege workshops, and castles. Also the garrison/ungarrison and get-back-to-work keys.
If you didn't know it, if you press CTRL+[building shortcut key] you can go immediately to the building(s) you have. For example if blacksmith is assigned to the S hotkey, pressing CTRL+S will immediately take you to it, so you don't forget to upgrade.
Make a habit of immediately researching upgrades at blacksmith and university as soon as you hit the next age. Learn which units have which upgrades, and prioritize range/attack for ranged units, and defense for melee units (the longer they survive, the more they can kill). And please don't be the guy that says "mmh...I think I'll get THIS upgrade". It's CBA, you have all the res you need for more than an hour of full units production, you don't "choose" which techs to get, you just get them all; the only question is "what do I get first".
There are many other things you also need to learn better, to play faster, where to place your buildings to be more effective, and how to play a team game instead of a solo adventure. You almost seem shy in these games, as if you were afraid to tell that idiot red to set you a fricking gate (which he should have done ages ago). Learn how to feed, when to take a fight and when to run, and when to raze.
And "study" up on the civs a bit too, maybe on the wikia page, to know strength and weaknesses...you can't seriously not know if incas beat magyar or not.
+Alex DeLarge I don't really understand this notion that things are in a bad way when it was an unranked game and I was my team's mvp, and there's really no way Incas are the best civ in CBA when their post imperial unit roster is so mediocre. There's no point ctrl grouping my units when the churn is so high (1k+ units lost in half an hour for every player) but yes ctrl grouping buildings might save time in some places. Of course I know I have enough resources to research everything. When I say I will research x, it's shorthand for I will get x first and the other techs after.
Thanks for the advice, some of it I will take on board, but sometimes people are way too critical on these unranked casual games. My performance in these recordings is quite consistently above the majority of other players and I am just playing for fun anyway.
I've banned that other commenter. AoE2 has an unfortunate section of its fanbase who are arrogant and throw around insults instead of constructive advice like yours. It's one of the reasons I'm not an AoE2 UA-camr, just someone who plays and records AoE2 semi regularly.
I appreciate you making good use of my advice. Now...don't take this the wrong way, and I'm not trying to be an arrogant keyboard mastermind of CBA here, but I really am a top-level CBA player, and I assure you, on a scale from below average player, average player, good player, very good player, pro player, elite player, from what I've seen in these games I really wouldn't put you above the average player (in fact, you're missing some basic things that anyone should know/do. Just to mention one, in your saracen video it took you soooo long to get bloodlines, when it's literally the first thing any good+ player would do, second only to an emergency wall).
You seem to underestimate the importance of control grouping for efficiency too, but that's more understandable since learning all there is to know about microing takes time, dedication, and you also have to see other players play to realize what certain things imply. I could say the same about the way you patrol, the sub-optimal unit stances and formation you use (if you even use them, I'm not sure), and so on.
That being said, I also understand that maybe you're trying to just have some casual fun with CBA, no strings attached, no hardcore stressful time, and no pretenses to be the best player in the world. However, from someone that plays with the best CBA players on steam on a daily basis, and is at least a very good player himself, let me tell you again that you have quite a lot to learn, even basic things, and you have to practice your tasking and multitasking a lot more too. And it's really not that hard to be honest, you just need to have the right mentality (and "I don't really need to control group masses" is not the right mentality :D Make everything count).
Also, being score leader doesn't mean MVP in CBA. Score is dependent mostly on kill/death ratio, but an easy counter-example would be a Hun that razes everyone to the ground and will still be score-bottom even though he virtually won the game by himself. If you meant you were MVP from a performance evaluation you made yourself, and not based on the score, I'm not so sure being MVP in a team where Malian doesn't set shit and Saracen doesn't chase down Magyar is really all that meaningful. Although, for what it's worth, you didn't play bad either -- just not something I would call play of the week. As I said earlier...average-ish is where you're currently at, and hopefully one day you'll improve and look back at your games and understand the point of view that more experienced players have when watching your games.
Also, I could upload a video of some game of mine if you'd like to see a more experience player's PoV. I don't really know any good program to record though (the only one I know makes waaaaay too heavy files for 25+ minutes of footage, and I'm currently not doing well HDD-wise), so if you have some recommendation (and you'd like to watch said gameplay) I could use the advice myself.
+Alex DeLarge Honestly let's just agree to disagree. You know your stuff but I'm pretty sceptical that someone who plays among the best in the world would say the Incas are (roughly) the best civ on this map when they lack the consistently good matchups of the Byzantines, the danger of the Huns or the late game power of the Britons/Franks. Since aoe2hd has no CBA ranking system and no way of prescreening player experience, how do you manage to play with (and know you are playing with) the world's best on a regular basis? I'm also sceptical that the world's best CBA players would be on Steam daily instead of Voobly.
I also don't know how someone who watches my videos would think I'm unaware that Incas beat Magyars, I thought I even mentioned it in this video. Still it's not a matchup I would walk through jaguar warriors for.
You might well be better than me but I've been playing this map for years and I know I do better than average most of the time. I didn't mention kd ratio but in a match with no castles razed, kills is a pretty informative albeit flawed indicator of impact.
If you want to upload your games, I recommend OBS. You can configure your settings to prevent excessively large files, there are guides. I'd be curious to see some games from you and how you play both when winning and losing. Unit stances when patrolling is a thing I need to learn and you're right to bring that up.
Not gonna talk about this much more. I respect your opinion but for the most part I'm satisfied with my plays.
And if you and the best players in the world have some formal way of organising your games, I'd like to join in sometime. ;)
You're right that Voobly is home of better players than Steam, on average, but that doesn't really mean that people on Steam are shit: a pro on Steam would still be a pro on Voobly. By the way, there is a top player in this very game, but I guess you don't really know any names and didn't recognize him :p
Anyway, can you really not tell when you're playing with the best players? It's not hard -- stick with people that play well, and you'll find people that play better; stick with them, and you'll find people that are even better. Friend of friends, and such. At some point you won't find any better players -- that's when you know you've found the top ones out there. Also, the creators of the map (and others credited in its creation) are among the very best ones (creating the map doesn't necessarily imply being good at it, but I think you know what I mean), and those are some of the people I play with (although I usually hang around friends of theirs more than they themselves, but those players are still at least "pro" players, and occasionally elite level). If you see an elite player playing you'll see how they do everything faster, they always see everything, and anticipate your every move (acting fast and coordinated is one of the best signs of a top player).
I haven't really watched that many videos of yours to know exactly how you feel about civs :D You did mention something about "I don't know if my units have bonus against Magyar" in this video though, that was what I meant.
Incas will always obliterate Aztec with proper micro, and you've seen it yourself in this very game. If you're not convinced we can go for a 1v1 with me being Incas and you Aztec and I'll show you right away lol
It's odd that you say you're skeptical about me because I say Incas are one of the best civs out there, because that really just proves that you don't really know how to use them, since I can confirm again that they really are one of the (or THE) most versatile civ in the game, being able to take on most infantry (except teutons (unless teuton has very poor micro) and jap), doing average or even good against ranged units, and having bonus that makes them very good against most cavalry. On top of that, their spawn is large, they start with pre-upgrades, and their unique techs empower their units even more. They have access to the best anti-infantry unit of the game, full arbalests and halberdiers, siege rams with siege engineers, and even keeps, making them actually better than the typical Mayan end game (they do have the worst eagles, but Mayans usually go for arbalests anyway), or at the very least on the same level (and I hope you're not going to argue that Mayans are a great civ); moreover, they imp faster (one of the fastest imp civs, if not THE fastest) at 400. So if you want we can just "agree to disagree", and I won't try to sell you the Incas any further, but maybe you should really reconsider their role, and I'm just gonna leave it at that.
We do occasionally play organised games, 4v4 with all known and pro/elite players, but that doesn't seem to happen all that often now that everyone has resumed work/school =/ We still play in a team most of the time - much better than playing with random people. Who knows, maybe one day we'll be one player short and you'll end up on our team, and maybe you'll see how fast everything moves, and how much communication happens on higher levels.
I'll try to record a decent game and let you know. In the meantime you can maybe check some videos here on youtube, even non-CBA videos, or PoV games by "above average" players, to have an idea how fast things move. I wanted to link you DoctorWillCU streams to have something to watch in the meantime, but he took them down from twitch =/ (or at least I can't find them anymore)
Till then ^^
more diplomacy???? pls
+Ozymandias when I have time. Those can take quite a while
great vid man! i was just wondering, because my stutters and lags a lot in multiplayer, i see yours do not, how did you fix your multiplayer lag?
+Alex Moran thanks man. It depends. If you get the turtle next to your name in the score list, it means your cpu is dragging, even I get this sometimes if there are lots of units on the map. If every other player comes up with a yellow or red symbol next to their name, that means you have high ping and your internet is too slow. If these symbols are next to one other player's name, that means the lag is coming from them.
There's always some latency especially on HD version but usually you can at least find the source when lag is super bad.
can you give me the link to download this?
No offense, but why would you not use slingers against the Aztecs? Slingers when fully upgraded are actually one of the most effective anti-infantry units in the game. They attack faster and with more accuracy than hand cannons, and they have +10 infantry attack (the same bonus that hand cannons get), which means that against infantry they're actually better. They're also almost as good as arbalests when massed, except for missing 1 base damage, although they do have more pierce armor because of couriers, cost a bit less, and have a tiny bit more health. Overall they're a pretty good unit, especially to just back up Elite Eagles. Overall, it's fair to say that the Incan counter-army of Slingers, Eagles, and Kamayuks is among the most powerful late game armies in the game, especially on CBA where siege weapons are not an issue.
I hope I don't come off sounding condescending here. I'm just trying to spread knowledge of the glorious Incan Master race. Also, Incas can be a powerhouse on CBA (given they aren't fighting like Franks, Britons, Chinese, Teutons or something). Because they have a rapid spawn of good cavalry and infantry counters. Obviously they can't fight things like archers or teutonic knights, but they handle almost every other civ pretty well, and they don't need a lot of kills to age up quickly. The most non-intuitive thing about them is that they don't raze buildings very well at all without good micro (which can be hard to achieve if you're attacking bottom of the map gates anyways due to not being able to path right up to the gate very easily.).
+Rovsea - I should have covered this more, but I didn't build slingers at first because the Aztecs had no vils and I was more concerned about teal and grey massing archers. I started switching to them towards the end.
I might like the Incas more if massing Kamayuks was actually an option late game, but unfortunately in CBA they're stuck with halberdiers which are super resource efficient (limited relevance) but not so population space efficient.
I think archer and eagles with Incas are like a death combo
What version is it?
lol the previous comment was kinda harsh, but I have to say, you definitely have margin for improvement :D
Incas are probably the single best civ of CBA, or at very least in the top 5 depending on play style and skill level. In this game you played, only castle/imperial age briton would beat you if played properly lol
red was definitely a huge noob plus he had a good civ but never backed off those purple gates. sucks to see you go down like that. def could've whomped em. cheers
why do you place your gate behind and not inside the wall?
To minimise the surface area that can be attacked by melee units to one tile instead of four tiles. Helps you defend.
ah, ty :)
im so annoyed by those walls
What do you use to record? pretty good quality.
+Leif Henriksen I use OBS
By the way, when do you usually play? It would be fun to catch a game with you.
+Rovsea - I usually play on a whim so can be any time, I'll try and sort out viewer games sometime though
you could have pushed the Magyars player early coz their paladins are unstoppable
What on earth is CBA?
+Sam Jenkins yo. It's the most popular custom map in Age of Empires 2 - kind of like what DotA was to Warcraft
red: Ma porca madonna
ahahahha
that red is too noob
Hey Norovo,
I've only just started watching your vids, i'm really enjoying them, i was wondering if i could join one of your west europe diplomacy games one time! Add me on steam if you would? Or just send me a message :)
Yours sincerely,
Wabinator
+Wabinator Hi Wabinator, glad you like them, I'm going to try and make a system for sorting out community games soon :)
i've been wanting to play way more AoE II than I have lately. The diplomacy games seem really interesting, so i figured i might give it a shot and see if i can join in. :)