it is crazy to think that back when this game was released some of our current active player base wasn't even born yet 😮 even some pro players are younger than the game itself!
@dyslexicbatnam1350 The only RTS with active pro scene older than AoE2 might be Starcraft. Yes there are even older games that still have active community but from a career standpoint like Hera making a living, not many games this old you can do that.
i know you said it works with alot of civs but its insane with koreans, the free armor upgrade, the faster stone mining, even the extra villager line of sight is just really great with this phosphoru strategy
"To get wood, all you need is wood " 😂 you're the best Hera, totally loving the daily uploads. Don't forget to take time for yourself. You're not obligated to give us a new video every day, take a day off if needed. Great videos this week!
This is why Hussite Wagons should work so well (Wood and Gold are harvestable, Food needs to be produced). And their UT (movement speed) is also cheap War Wagons cost lot more
Feels in some ways like a "modern" evolution of drush+fc Plumes. But with the realization that it's so hard to stop the Castle from going up and do enough damage that the drush and walling isn't necessary, and the UU can come out even earlier.
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 What about this strategy, wouldn't seige ram with halbs inside be a good counter to war wagons? I think wagons only do 1 damage to seige ram. And when rams get close, the halbs could just deal with them? Oh nevermind, I just realized Tarnished was still in feudal age.
If I remember correctly T90 has said Phosphoru was inspired by YouPudding and then picked it up, made it his own and also made his own new versions of the strategy. I think also is more reliant on it then YouPudding was so plays it more.
RedPhosphoru said he was inspired by Huang in his video on his strat. He watched Huang smashing the game with very little micro and all in strats and that got him into it. YouPudding did make the Sicilian rush work at a high level and RedPhosphoru modified it and went from there.
archer pressure + stonewalls + market to go up not too late. Saw lierreyy do something like that against bohemians fc into uu on arabia and it worked pretty well.
Th problem is, if you do that, your'e making a risky push, so if the enemy doesn't play that game, and instead defends well and go for eco aproach, all of a sudden its you the one doing the all in push, cause of all the resources you've putted into trying to stop his pressumed strategy
@hera although i was not aware of this strategy so i did not do it very well, i've done it a few times before with mamelukes. You can say that mamelukes are an exception because you can buy your food and they cost little food. Also, going on stone early for saracens means you can send more vills to stone to mine more stone than required as stone provides the best market value early game. Reasons mameluke works is actually straight forward 1- as mentioned above seracens buy their food. 2- mameluke ranged melee damage means you cannot wall against them. Meaning, they destroy pallisades insantly, they hit 3 tiles so if yiu housewall they kill the villager building. 3-as mentioned above ranged melee means they destroy houses even and fast. 4- mamelukes kill villagers with 5 hits " if you can afford first blacksmith upgrade" meaning if you break into a woodline with 3 mamelukes you are 2 tapping every villager there without blacksmith upgrades or 5 mamelukes to one tap with. and being ranged makes it easier. Finally market prices means you can even slowly grow your economy as saracens while perma spamming mamelukes. While at the same time completely killing enemy chances ro savw his game with market play
Memelukes dont work: 1. high cost 2. relatively high build time of 23 s 3. food cost is high 4. low range 5. can be countered easily by archers or monks Best units are that take no food and easy to mass, and need no upgrades, eg arambai, conquistadors, rathas , organ guns, koreans are not that great
So, I’m back into the game after 20+ years off. I tried out the Koreans yesterday on Moderate AI (getting my Dark Age down before going to the ladder!) and I was amazed by their flexibility. Might try this strategy as I get more experienced, thanks for showing!
The biggest counter to this strategy is obviously to pick dravidians, they receive 200 w per age, so they can have enough woods for 2 stable, 3 if they wanted to to spam lots and lots of knights into the korean players eco. What is more, dravidians knight ignores armor, so it completely nullify korean's free archer armor upgrades. and they can shred through that free armor easily. Then, the dravidian players can add urumi which counters every pikes that koreans can make. Trust me guys, if hera or anyone else choosed this playstyle then the best strategy is to counterpick it with dravidians.
@@rickl5596 its all about the numbers mason. imo, if you run into his base before he arrives to castle, u got a window of disruption where u get so much value just by keeping him off of easy res. also if u start massing earlier, u have more army ofc. phosphoru works with timings, mes them up and u lose usually
I agree with your idea and would also idle your tc in addition (the second you recognize the strat) to get up to castle age even faster. Thanks for the vid!
I am not pro player so probably my conclusions are terrible but 3 propositions. Each of them is madness in regular game, and argue with basic and advanced tips. But at first need to accept if in the middle of the game opponent started to play go, and you still want to win stick to chees strategy you will loose. Even if its best chees strat. Same here. You need to be more umpredictable than the enemy, expectially if first blood was in your favor. Abuse that. Propositions: 1. When i see enemy in low farm number and in castle age i stop adding my own farms for sure and looking for buy my way up to castle. No matter of costs in market. Most relliable ress is gold at this point. Why ? Because i know i have big vill advantage, so ress advantage and i can be extremally unofficient. And still be way more ress officient than my enemy, so timing focus. On the way of castleage focus on archer because they are cheapest ( in time ress needed to produce them). 2-3 Archery ranges can be even spread on the maps , just not be build interrupted. Timing is the key. just to produce archers when i am on my way up. 1 tc is necessary, after castle crosboww and brodkin arrow priority, then vills. 1 monastery if first wave of archers/crossbow are capable. They dont need to win fights, if they manage to exange 3-4 archers for 1 wagon is good. Its because viper would be forced to move damaged wagons away to heal, so they are not on the field, so more time to monks. So first strat all on timing. Timing castle asap, during that archery ranges 2-3 and mass archers, losses in vills cannot avoid but ok ( good to spread them on the map). Then focus on unit upgrade, then monastery. I think thats good shoot expetially if you start game with barrack n scout like here and do early dmg. My mindset after killing vills and vipers castle age would be: all my buildstrad has no matter, and my eco is called marked. Simply dauta style. No more food units. Market cant compete agains normal well ress balanced strats, but work extremally good againt most of werido ones. Doest work agains saracens, but thats obvious. 2. After vipper hitting castle full skirm production + rush fletching, even if i need to deny vill production. After reaching 30 vills i could even consider stop doing them, putting food into skirms and gathering my way up. With adding a market at some point. 3. Super risky, but no castle rush, still vill production, spread vills on the map almost immidiately then i know whats going on ( about enemy strat) . At least 2 groups for 5 vills each into corners or close to them. And mass some of skirm or archer unit in my tc to better fire protection. My base will be disrupted, but 2-3 groups of wills on the other side of map should be work fine. I am talking at least half pop migration before vipah mass unit and come to my base. And do similar things like here - some units (i would choose skirm/ archer) in forward, when cleaned up mass new in my tc. Game of looses, who lost more and has bebementaltter mental resistance. Why it could work? Because viper cripple his economy at the start massively. After few pickups difference was even bigger. So I can accept my loses on the corners or under my tc in the longrun just because till it happend they make me ress difference. Its stilk advantage to me plus forcing enemy to spread force if he wanna to check / hunt them down after first base hit. Window for safer castletime ev some kind of unit base resistance. In normal game spreading vills on the map in feudal stage of the game is suicidal, but in that kind of game i think it could be really good, even if they are full unprotected. Even viper wont focus on scout the map in that type of game, i deny to believe that. I mean i know vills are probably dead at some point, but i gave myself time to gather ress in crucial moment ( when first wave arrive and i need my way up). And my base is potentially not safe eco at all. Seems pretty helpless but could work. Cmon, viper strat at the beginning looked helpless too, but whem it shift to castle - startworking. Kinda extend that way of thinking. I am sure this all sounds like daut ++, but in madness time you need mad ideas, just to fool your opponent more than he fooling u. True slav theory, trust me :) im sure daut could confirm. Sorry for essay. Feel for all who read.
Oh for the counter strat, i think we have to assume that the counter should depend in the enemy civ. I can see fuedal archer mass can beat many types of trickled castle age units for example. And in some other cases, many other unique units are countered by feudal skirms. While other unique units like ratha are relatively expensive so maybe fast castle knights will beat them... etc etc
As soon as he saw the castle go up, I think he should have headed home, walled heavily and made loads of skirmishers inside the walls to buy time, coming from an 1200 Elo
Fire scouted how Viper was mining stone with 2-3 vills in dark age, when you see that you should go for fast castle monks and mangos imho. The mangos to stop a potential castle drop and/or harass the enemy tc. I'm like 300 elo though so what the heck do I know
@@IceWraith101seems to me the only way is to do a drush into skirms while walling. It can disrupt koreans plan while still having a solid defensive feudal. Skirms counter is scouts or towers, so it means Koreans have to resign their plan. hopefully Hera shares his counter tactic.....
@@bassegoder doesnt work either. You go up too slowly and skirms cant deal damage while war wagons roll over feudal skirms. He can also add siege pretty easily.
@@bassegoder besides what IceWraith101 said, it won't absolutely work vs other civs suitable for this strat, like bohemians. Their wagon will tank skirms like nothing, and monks can't convert them without redemption. It seems even more OP than this
I think another option is to go forward with more vills and tower wood and gold, you can even stone wall the enemy main gold so that he hast to waste time taking the wall down once has the castle up
you have to tower gold and stone. enemy can switch off wood. phosphoru knows how to adapt when stuff like that happens. stone can be used in place of gold. then once a castle is built under protectiong from tC the castle can protect a gold or a wood.
What about archers opening instead of scouts? No longer Viper could have mined stone behind piece of palisade. As I see it, it was only about if Viper could get the needed resources for castle age+castle and nothing else mattered Reminds me of a classical arena smushes and clown ecos behind it 11
Phosphoru usually sells 1 wood one stone to be able to go fc with a tower and then send all to stone when its safe. Archers with scouts would be best but you'd need to get a really good timing. Or militia with archers maybe, so that a tower doesnt guarantee a successful defence. But basically with phosphorus awareness, unless the opponent goes for a counter or phosphoru cant get dng in, he will win most unprepared fights
@@anirbansahavlogs don't you need atleast two towers just to protect stone because opponent can just sit under tower? Forcing multiple towers would have delayed the goal of 650 stone quite a bit. Then you also need to defend the wood.. f1re lost quite a lot of important minutes with opening scouts and not being able to deny stone mining which was the winning condition
@@Calgaryman10 nah just wall in the base, you place tower on the opposite side touching stone and add palisades in base , os they cant sit the tower base and archers are slow by the time archer hits you dont need stone. I have played this strat over 30 times using hindustanis and opponent archer rush is always a easy win.
I recently played a 4v4 arena team game and was Italians flank against Chinese. I lost my flank position to the Chinese's all-in strategy, which overwhelmed me. Now I know that it's a version of this strategy! The player was ALL in, spamming UU after a forward castle drop. I did make some mistakes but the pressure was insane. Later when I saw his eco, he had very few vills and was basically just focused on gold and wood to spam UU. Now this video make me want to try it :P
This is modified version of Hussite wagon strat of Bohemian AI. Bohemian AI produces Halbs and Skirms which may not be needed Wood and gold need to be close by to work for other civs I guess. Wonder what happens if one resource is unprotected by castle
what if fire stonewalled viper's gold? or towered it earlier? The goal would be to delay his resource gathering to give you more time to prepare. It's unorthodox, and requires vils but hey an unorthodox attack might need an unorthodox defense? what about a tower rush? making him spend stone would slow him a little.
Viper's map was also ideal to make this strategy work. Gold as well as woodline that can be protected conveniently from a castle that is in the range of town center.
If he had not let the tower go down, he might also have won. Basically, what seems to be happening is, that, if you can zone the Phosphoru off one of their resources, you win.
But early pressure could work. Drush + a tower in their stone should neutralize the strat... Even if the tower goes down, time is lost for it. And shift into archers... @@VenturaPiano
@@Defy_Gravity I'm pretty sure some darl age shenanigans can disrupt this strat enough, at least for now, because there's no real countermeasure meta developed rather than walling. But lets say a couple of militia + scout and 2 vills, to harass and fix the enemy in place, then palisade their gold and stone, and follow up with feudal aggression, maybe a forward archery or sneaky tower with the two vills
i was 10 vills down yesterday and still won with all in ghulams against huns. Very powerful against archer civs against knight camel civs i play normal.
Maybe wrong, but Fire was in Viper's base all the time, he knew what Viper was going for. What if he built 2 Ranges in Feudal and started massing Skirms on the way up to Castle as a counter to the Skirms? With Viper's non-existent food eco, it would have been hard to make cavalry.
Remember that Viper immediately got the upgrades over any vills. Even Botkin. And he has the free archer armor. If he wouldnt, he would buy that too. The non to barely upgraded feudal skirms have no chance
Laming a boar is a fantastic counter. But its still the same problem - you would have to go for the lame before you know that he's going for the strat.
i feel fire did way to much farm, at some point he added scout that were useless and archer armor. Plus he did horse collar too. If he went to gold, use a bit of market he could be up in castle age, no? He doesn't need that good economy since viper one sucks
@@gaetanreinhardt2156 I agree he also had 4 vills in queue at one point. You are going to be ahead in eco norther what even if you idle your own tc. When some is super duper all in then playing standard all in is still less all in.
F1re is good pro but not brilliant, you can see the difference between good and brilliant when they are facing unexpected and need to adapt out from meta. Viper is brilliant pro and it was great example of that here when he broke multiple rules that are set in stone in just a 16 minute game (idling tc, naked fc, 100% eco idle for castle build e.g.)
In card games this would be a burn strategy, as opposed to aggro, combo, and control. But in AoE2. This is just as wild as when people learned that in magic the gathering you could completely ignore development and just only play damage spells to the face. In card games, it eventually settled to a theory where some of these super efficient strategies just hard counter eachother in a rock paper scissors. Flexible strategies end up on the wayside because they are a bit suboptimal in everything.
Fair decks just ended up figuring out they can do something that's unfair to capitalize on their versatility. For example black decks going pitch grief reanimate grief. Not as powerful as reanimate atraxa or griselbrand to win the game but enough to slow the game down and let their fair deck get ahead.
To counter it maybe all in feudal play? Never give the opponent the opportunity nor the ability to get in a position to afford or be able to do the Strat. I would say all in Feudal play based on the CIV Pick. If he picks CIVS that can do the Strat, all in Feudal army pressure pressure pressure. Go for the kill. Probably Archer play to be able to kill Vills easier. I have 0 MP experience and rarely play AoE anymore, but i do love the game and watch alot of Viper and Hera videos/streams. Please let me know Hera your thoughts and opinions on this potential play
As I said on many other occasions already. It feels like Feudal is missing a tool to fight against too greedy castle ages. These kind of builds are only the extension of the already existing timing meta - as it is atm basically impossible to fight against the tech advantage. Ofc it needs to be something you have to commit to - when expecting the opponent to go up too greedy. Meaning if he doesn't it would put you in a disadvantage. One idea ofc would be to add a 2nd TC (at higher cost) to Feudal which would allow to snowball the eco lead before the opponent can push out. But it could also be a military unit designed to be capable of fighting against castle age units with a better eco behind - locked behind a costly tech. Also here again is the soft factor of the extra food from deer pushing involved, which is just enough to make these insanely fast castles possible. Without that these kind of builds would be impossible. And vice versa the free food isn't enough to sustain a prolonged feudal age aggression whtich the requires extra heavy investment in farms. It feels like the current amount of free food on the map is just at a spot where some builds heavily profit from and others don't - and the balance would be better in both directions with either less or more free food on the map. There is one strat how you can counter this kind of castle based all-ins quite effectively: Tower the stone. Force the opponent off of it and therefore don't allow him to get the castle up as quickly. All it needs to do is delay the time when he can place his castle, so you can get up and prepare a counterarmy against his UUs.
All I can think of aside of monks, is building the UU counters. Which with many civs, also counters their unit focus. But I think Im ignorant of a lot of minor details.
The strat requires wood and gold to be protected by the castle. So stone wall in their gold at a cost of say 75 stone. Petards cost some gold but more importantly food which the fc player won’t have. Secondary gold castle location is not protected by the tc and vil losses would be much higher. You probably cause enough delay and damage to stop the snowball.
Would love a vid on this. Weve lost a few times on team games even with both players going it, or one just taking out a flank. Even if you know its coming its so hard to do enough damage with feudal units if they are already up and on the way to a castle. Though obvs at 1100 execution is a big issue on our side!
as soon as you see this shouldn't tower the stone, to force a counter-tower (delaying or even stopping the castle), and harass his stone? It's not a defense, more like a prevention strategy. I feel like the monk strat only works against certain UU, but won't work as well against, say, bohemians or portuguese
I have an idea. What about early pressure like fire did and then you take the castle down by sending all your villagers to kill it? You're gonna have more villagers since you didn't go to castle age and killed some of the enemy's vills. Take loom of course. The castle needs upgrade to attack units that are too close. What do you think, hera?
I am pretty sure double monestry will work pretty well as I encountered this in a gold rush map and won the game. But I am still unable to find a counter for Portuguese and Bohemian with this strategy. At least War Wagon is a bit more expensive and it is a convertible non-seige unit. Some civs are just unable to convert siege because they do not have the tech. Even if the civ has Redemption, it is so expensive and takes time. Moreover, both civs are some of the best monk civ, if your opponent knows you are countering, he can switch to counter your counter with monks. Maybe forcing your opponent into a tower war by taking away his gold and stone can be an option, but if it is too early, you can't be sure if your opponent is going for the strategy, and being too late you will still unable to stop your opponent.
All-in strategies have been common in other RTS like Starcraft; it's more surprising that AoE2 has been the exception and is so reliably macro-oriented. In SC cutting eco for military works often to create effective all-ins, but the AoE2 meta has not been sharp enough to make that work. Defending the all-in has been too reliable compared to the risk for the attacker that people would rather just never cut vill production. Looks like maybe someone finally figured out a way to break that meta.
It seems like the first tells are them going to stone early and being very light on farms. maybe need to keep your scout bouncing around their resources to catch that move to stone.
It's basically brake woodline brake castle by going economic junit Bilt crisis to hope they give up or go woodline hunting till you get the units to win
what if he hide his wood line Viper is on a timer. You have 15 vil lead you hide them in the corner of the map he not gonna find it any time soon. Also a defensive tower can defend for some time, you buy your way up to castle and win
Hey Hera, it has probably been said to you but what if you do a mindgame in ranked by renaming yourself to red phosphorus ? Is that possible ? And if it is would you do a video about it? I feel like that would be funny and entertaining, pls keep me updated if you take that idea in a stream ! I would love to watch that live !
I'm of the opinion any strategy that has to be blind countered needs to get nerfed. If you have to start the counter before you can even scout the opposition it needs to get fixed.
might be able to counter this by going fast imp. put a lot on Gold and then BUY your way up since gold collects quickly. plan on countering with Imp units or EliteSkirms/Hussar/Halb + monks
I think fire could have house walled a compact base and made it a lot harder to just come in and completely cripple his eco, but prob would just have delayed the inevitable
i could also maybe see this working as cumans, high wood cost low gold cost uu, unexpected fast castle and high hp palisades could all work in favor but then i am not phosphoru he prob tested every civ if any of them could work as well as koreans or bengalis
The castle on both wood and gold helped. Going forward is something nobody does anymore; IoRI used to forward every single game in the day and he would absolutely slay most of the time, including Daut and Chris. Everyone does meta and a good enough player can step outside the box going against the meta to beat meta, and I think doing the same to counter nonmeta works here. .. I wouldn't overthink it... it's a play few people can pull off.. and it's extremely risky too.. Viper will beat Fire all day long but if Fire tried the same, I doubt the outcome is also the same.
You should play a best of 7 with viper and have him do this strat randomly against you in one of those games. Then show everyone how you counter it after discovering it & at what point would you not be able to counter it etc.
Played a ranked at 1200elo recently and someone was doing this, was thrown at first thought he was going for fw castle on arabia... Managed to all in him enough in feudal to stop the castle going up on time and win. That being said, feel like this kind of thing happens on arena all the time. All in forward castle into unique power unit, completely unstoppable if they get through. V frustrating
If I know the opponent is doing this start with Portuguese or Bohemians, are Monks still viable considering I would need redemption (and what if my civ doesn't even get redemption?)
Guys I'm like 950 elo, I wonder what are the most important controls that pros click when they use their ranged army just like here. I usually just click R on some area, or point atack and set next command attack with shift. Any video where it's explained nicely? (I have a feeling this strat is mostly working only because of Viper's almost perfect control of units - just like Hera's)
Well you def see the big mistake Fire made. He over invested into Fuedal army which did nothing after the tower went down. Everything was correct to delay Viper as much as possible but for him to defend 1 of 2 ideas seems necessary. 1. Stone walls, massive stone walls (impractical on this map, but maybe other maps doable) 2. End army pressure and idle TC, sell res or whatever, immediately go castle
BTW, isn't actualy mining stone before mining gold more efficient anyway? You can sell it for more anyway? I was always wondering why players don't do that.
phosphoru is in the process of working on that flexibility issue, tho the problem is that he's just not that mechanically strong lol (apparently something like a 400 elo bump just by refining this strat?)
thats really hard.... but in 16xx ladder i usually counter 2x range xbows or skirm and try to do some damage in feudal and wall later. but its hard decision for F1re. i would say need wall and some good eco for 2x range and siege. :)
My thinking is a bit different. If this newer strategy is the strategy to beat and the more classic approach has so much difficulty against it, then... instead of using the older strategy as the starting point, you use this newer strategy as the starting point. So you look at okay if I am pushing for castle age + unique units like that and my opponent is doing the same thing, how can I gain the upper hand? And then you look for ways to make it more robust and the different branches you can go for and explore all the potential the newer strategy has + how to deal with ways your opponent might try to counter you when you're the only one playing the strat, etc. I am not familiar enough with AOE2 multiplayer to tell you anything concrete, which I think you would know much better anyway so there wouldn't be much point in that; but I hope there's something valuable conceptually in my perspective.
As a former 2080 rating player when The Conquerors was released... I have a lot of joy watching the new generation being so magical with the game.
an OG. Respect
it is crazy to think that back when this game was released some of our current active player base wasn't even born yet 😮 even some pro players are younger than the game itself!
What was your nick? Maybe some people remember you.
MSN gamezone, fun times
@dyslexicbatnam1350 The only RTS with active pro scene older than AoE2 might be Starcraft. Yes there are even older games that still have active community but from a career standpoint like Hera making a living, not many games this old you can do that.
I love that phosphoru has disrupted the game at every level.
Is not it just FC into UU? It is old as AoE 2 itself.
Is phosphoru Hoang like a horse?
@@Igor369it’s not just an FC it’s the greediest FC possible. And its mostly only done with wood gold units.
@@Igor369its FC into UU, with 0 walls, and no vill creation after clicking feudal
its another strat which destroys macro gameplay.
i know you said it works with alot of civs but its insane with koreans, the free armor upgrade, the faster stone mining, even the extra villager line of sight is just really great with this phosphoru strategy
"To get wood, all you need is wood " 😂 you're the best Hera, totally loving the daily uploads. Don't forget to take time for yourself. You're not obligated to give us a new video every day, take a day off if needed. Great videos this week!
Yea he knows that
This is why Hussite Wagons should work so well (Wood and Gold are harvestable, Food needs to be produced). And their UT (movement speed) is also cheap
War Wagons cost lot more
Feels in some ways like a "modern" evolution of drush+fc Plumes. But with the realization that it's so hard to stop the Castle from going up and do enough damage that the drush and walling isn't necessary, and the UU can come out even earlier.
And the UU is way more powerful than even peak plumes, which is crazy to think about
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 What about this strategy, wouldn't seige ram with halbs inside be a good counter to war wagons? I think wagons only do 1 damage to seige ram. And when rams get close, the halbs could just deal with them? Oh nevermind, I just realized Tarnished was still in feudal age.
@@luminatrixfanfiction The issue is that you never get to that point.
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 do you think the same could be done with plumed archers or any other castle unit?
If I remember correctly T90 has said Phosphoru was inspired by YouPudding and then picked it up, made it his own and also made his own new versions of the strategy. I think also is more reliant on it then YouPudding was so plays it more.
RedPhosphoru said he was inspired by Huang in his video on his strat. He watched Huang smashing the game with very little micro and all in strats and that got him into it. YouPudding did make the Sicilian rush work at a high level and RedPhosphoru modified it and went from there.
Phos specced in it cuz it gave him shockingly consistent wins (compared to just playing meta)
archer pressure + stonewalls + market to go up not too late. Saw lierreyy do something like that against bohemians fc into uu on arabia and it worked pretty well.
:o Post a link if you have it please
Th problem is, if you do that, your'e making a risky push, so if the enemy doesn't play that game, and instead defends well and go for eco aproach, all of a sudden its you the one doing the all in push, cause of all the resources you've putted into trying to stop his pressumed strategy
@hera although i was not aware of this strategy so i did not do it very well, i've done it a few times before with mamelukes. You can say that mamelukes are an exception because you can buy your food and they cost little food. Also, going on stone early for saracens means you can send more vills to stone to mine more stone than required as stone provides the best market value early game.
Reasons mameluke works is actually straight forward
1- as mentioned above seracens buy their food.
2- mameluke ranged melee damage means you cannot wall against them. Meaning, they destroy pallisades insantly, they hit 3 tiles so if yiu housewall they kill the villager building.
3-as mentioned above ranged melee means they destroy houses even and fast.
4- mamelukes kill villagers with 5 hits " if you can afford first blacksmith upgrade" meaning if you break into a woodline with 3 mamelukes you are 2 tapping every villager there without blacksmith upgrades or 5 mamelukes to one tap with. and being ranged makes it easier.
Finally market prices means you can even slowly grow your economy as saracens while perma spamming mamelukes. While at the same time completely killing enemy chances ro savw his game with market play
I guess that just loses to defensive towers - mamelukes do not have enough range nor PA to kill vills under towers.
@@CG-eh6oe build time too slow for mameluks, best UUs for this build are from
Burmese
Portuguese
Bengalis
Koreans
Hindustanis
MameLuke's are easily countered by trash units though
Memelukes have no pierce armor. Wagons have 5 PA to boot
Memelukes dont work:
1. high cost
2. relatively high build time of 23 s
3. food cost is high
4. low range
5. can be countered easily by archers or monks
Best units are that take no food and easy to mass, and need no upgrades, eg arambai, conquistadors, rathas , organ guns, koreans are not that great
So, I’m back into the game after 20+ years off. I tried out the Koreans yesterday on Moderate AI (getting my Dark Age down before going to the ladder!) and I was amazed by their flexibility. Might try this strategy as I get more experienced, thanks for showing!
Koreans? more like Wagonians
The biggest counter to this strategy is obviously to pick dravidians, they receive 200 w per age, so they can have enough woods for 2 stable, 3 if they wanted to to spam lots and lots of knights into the korean players eco. What is more, dravidians knight ignores armor, so it completely nullify korean's free archer armor upgrades. and they can shred through that free armor easily. Then, the dravidian players can add urumi which counters every pikes that koreans can make.
Trust me guys, if hera or anyone else choosed this playstyle then the best strategy is to counterpick it with dravidians.
Should work but has one issue : tournament settings with bans and or snipes makes this matchup VERY unlikely.
@arn0000 dravidians arent often banned on land tournies though
@@GoldenSkeeter still need to get the matchup. it aint like viper knew the enemy civ when picking his civ.
I don't know. Whenever I play it the opponents knights can't stand up to my early hussite wagons.
@@rickl5596 its all about the numbers mason. imo, if you run into his base before he arrives to castle, u got a window of disruption where u get so much value just by keeping him off of easy res. also if u start massing earlier, u have more army ofc. phosphoru works with timings, mes them up and u lose usually
I agree with your idea and would also idle your tc in addition (the second you recognize the strat) to get up to castle age even faster. Thanks for the vid!
15:12 "any unit that doesn't cost gold"? I guess he meant to say any unit that doesn't cost food. Btw Viper nailed it
We are witnessing history! This Puts the whole game on his head and brings new life to the game. There will probably be balance changes very soon😂
I am not pro player so probably my conclusions are terrible but 3 propositions. Each of them is madness in regular game, and argue with basic and advanced tips. But at first need to accept if in the middle of the game opponent started to play go, and you still want to win stick to chees strategy you will loose. Even if its best chees strat. Same here. You need to be more umpredictable than the enemy, expectially if first blood was in your favor. Abuse that.
Propositions:
1. When i see enemy in low farm number and in castle age i stop adding my own farms for sure and looking for buy my way up to castle. No matter of costs in market. Most relliable ress is gold at this point.
Why ? Because i know i have big vill advantage, so ress advantage and i can be extremally unofficient. And still be way more ress officient than my enemy, so timing focus.
On the way of castleage focus on archer because they are cheapest ( in time ress needed to produce them). 2-3 Archery ranges can be even spread on the maps , just not be build interrupted. Timing is the key. just to produce archers when i am on my way up. 1 tc is necessary, after castle crosboww and brodkin arrow priority, then vills. 1 monastery if first wave of archers/crossbow are capable. They dont need to win fights, if they manage to exange 3-4 archers for 1 wagon is good. Its because viper would be forced to move damaged wagons away to heal, so they are not on the field, so more time to monks. So first strat all on timing. Timing castle asap, during that archery ranges 2-3 and mass archers, losses in vills cannot avoid but ok ( good to spread them on the map). Then focus on unit upgrade, then monastery. I think thats good shoot expetially if you start game with barrack n scout like here and do early dmg.
My mindset after killing vills and vipers castle age would be: all my buildstrad has no matter, and my eco is called marked. Simply dauta style. No more food units.
Market cant compete agains normal well ress balanced strats, but work extremally good againt most of werido ones. Doest work agains saracens, but thats obvious.
2. After vipper hitting castle full skirm production + rush fletching, even if i need to deny vill production. After reaching 30 vills i could even consider stop doing them, putting food into skirms and gathering my way up. With adding a market at some point.
3. Super risky, but no castle rush, still vill production, spread vills on the map almost immidiately then i know whats going on ( about enemy strat) . At least 2 groups for 5 vills each into corners or close to them. And mass some of skirm or archer unit in my tc to better fire protection. My base will be disrupted, but 2-3 groups of wills on the other side of map should be work fine. I am talking at least half pop migration before vipah mass unit and come to my base. And do similar things like here - some units (i would choose skirm/ archer) in forward, when cleaned up mass new in my tc. Game of looses, who lost more and has bebementaltter mental resistance.
Why it could work? Because viper cripple his economy at the start massively. After few pickups difference was even bigger. So I can accept my loses on the corners or under my tc in the longrun just because till it happend they make me ress difference. Its stilk advantage to me plus forcing enemy to spread force if he wanna to check / hunt them down after first base hit. Window for safer castletime ev some kind of unit base resistance.
In normal game spreading vills on the map in feudal stage of the game is suicidal, but in that kind of game i think it could be really good, even if they are full unprotected. Even viper wont focus on scout the map in that type of game, i deny to believe that. I mean i know vills are probably dead at some point, but i gave myself time to gather ress in crucial moment ( when first wave arrive and i need my way up). And my base is potentially not safe eco at all.
Seems pretty helpless but could work. Cmon, viper strat at the beginning looked helpless too, but whem it shift to castle - startworking. Kinda extend that way of thinking.
I am sure this all sounds like daut ++, but in madness time you need mad ideas, just to fool your opponent more than he fooling u. True slav theory, trust me :)
im sure daut could confirm.
Sorry for essay. Feel for all who read.
As the old saying goes: (from Tribal Wars)
Villages don't win wars; Army Does.
Oh for the counter strat, i think we have to assume that the counter should depend in the enemy civ. I can see fuedal archer mass can beat many types of trickled castle age units for example. And in some other cases, many other unique units are countered by feudal skirms. While other unique units like ratha are relatively expensive so maybe fast castle knights will beat them... etc etc
Archers get eaten alive by wagons
As soon as he saw the castle go up, I think he should have headed home, walled heavily and made loads of skirmishers inside the walls to buy time, coming from an 1200 Elo
Fire scouted how Viper was mining stone with 2-3 vills in dark age, when you see that you should go for fast castle monks and mangos imho. The mangos to stop a potential castle drop and/or harass the enemy tc. I'm like 300 elo though so what the heck do I know
Then you die to potential korean tower rush+archers. Viper also scouting fire.
@@IceWraith101 it's really tricky!
@@IceWraith101seems to me the only way is to do a drush into skirms while walling. It can disrupt koreans plan while still having a solid defensive feudal. Skirms counter is scouts or towers, so it means Koreans have to resign their plan.
hopefully Hera shares his counter tactic.....
@@bassegoder doesnt work either. You go up too slowly and skirms cant deal damage
while war wagons roll over feudal skirms. He can also add siege pretty easily.
@@bassegoder besides what IceWraith101 said, it won't absolutely work vs other civs suitable for this strat, like bohemians. Their wagon will tank skirms like nothing, and monks can't convert them without redemption. It seems even more OP than this
I think another option is to go forward with more vills and tower wood and gold, you can even stone wall the enemy main gold so that he hast to waste time taking the wall down once has the castle up
you have to tower gold and stone. enemy can switch off wood. phosphoru knows how to adapt when stuff like that happens.
stone can be used in place of gold. then once a castle is built under protectiong from tC the castle can protect a gold or a wood.
What about archers opening instead of scouts? No longer Viper could have mined stone behind piece of palisade. As I see it, it was only about if Viper could get the needed resources for castle age+castle and nothing else mattered
Reminds me of a classical arena smushes and clown ecos behind it 11
Phosphoru usually sells 1 wood one stone to be able to go fc with a tower and then send all to stone when its safe. Archers with scouts would be best but you'd need to get a really good timing. Or militia with archers maybe, so that a tower doesnt guarantee a successful defence. But basically with phosphorus awareness, unless the opponent goes for a counter or phosphoru cant get dng in, he will win most unprepared fights
one tower solves this, the answer is scouts and towers or fast castle.
@@anirbansahavlogs don't you need atleast two towers just to protect stone because opponent can just sit under tower? Forcing multiple towers would have delayed the goal of 650 stone quite a bit. Then you also need to defend the wood.. f1re lost quite a lot of important minutes with opening scouts and not being able to deny stone mining which was the winning condition
@@Calgaryman10 nah just wall in the base, you place tower on the opposite side touching stone and add palisades in base , os they cant sit the tower base and archers are slow by the time archer hits you dont need stone. I have played this strat over 30 times using hindustanis and opponent archer rush is always a easy win.
@@anirbansahavlogs okey! I'm just opposing to spark discussion. How important you think is the base/resource layout for this strat to work?
I love this coming out the same day T90 releases a video showing RP mind gaming and going for a feudal scout rush and aging up appropriately lol
3:00 T90 and Hera’s uploads today are really vibing!
I recently played a 4v4 arena team game and was Italians flank against Chinese. I lost my flank position to the Chinese's all-in strategy, which overwhelmed me. Now I know that it's a version of this strategy! The player was ALL in, spamming UU after a forward castle drop. I did make some mistakes but the pressure was insane. Later when I saw his eco, he had very few vills and was basically just focused on gold and wood to spam UU. Now this video make me want to try it :P
This is modified version of Hussite wagon strat of Bohemian AI. Bohemian AI produces Halbs and Skirms which may not be needed
Wood and gold need to be close by to work for other civs I guess. Wonder what happens if one resource is unprotected by castle
this is probably insanely good with mangudai, although koreans has to be one of the best picks, considering free armor and faster stone mining.
no not good mangudai needs a lot of upgrades and build time is very slow
@@anirbansahavlogs yeah good point
Typically some of the best civs for it are Burmese, Bengalis, Koreans, and Portuguese, although a few others can do it also.
@@rovsea-3761 - Bohemians? Free mining. Fevor vills move faster. Hussite wagons are cheaper than War Wagons
@@dannyv.8545 Bohemians make sense as well, yes.
what if fire stonewalled viper's gold? or towered it earlier? The goal would be to delay his resource gathering to give you more time to prepare. It's unorthodox, and requires vils but hey an unorthodox attack might need an unorthodox defense? what about a tower rush? making him spend stone would slow him a little.
I was about to say, „Viper’s day to retire”, but then I would say, „Viper advanced to another level 😂”
Viper's map was also ideal to make this strategy work. Gold as well as woodline that can be protected conveniently from a castle that is in the range of town center.
Hera you are serving it as a fcking drama but even i know how to counter it. scout early!
If he had not let the tower go down, he might also have won.
Basically, what seems to be happening is, that, if you can zone the Phosphoru off one of their resources, you win.
This strat is prevalent at all elos on ladder right now. A guide on dealing with it would be great!
THE WAY TO COUNTER THIS IS TO BLOCK your rival from getting his BERRIESor taking away some MEAL INCOME in the beggining of the match
Nah he didn't take many berries
But early pressure could work. Drush + a tower in their stone should neutralize the strat... Even if the tower goes down, time is lost for it. And shift into archers... @@VenturaPiano
@@bassegoder if strats like this invite early rush play at the pro level then Im all for it
@@Defy_Gravity I'm pretty sure some darl age shenanigans can disrupt this strat enough, at least for now, because there's no real countermeasure meta developed rather than walling. But lets say a couple of militia + scout and 2 vills, to harass and fix the enemy in place, then palisade their gold and stone, and follow up with feudal aggression, maybe a forward archery or sneaky tower with the two vills
Man I love these games with Hera's input. Still love the 4 vs 1 more but this is a close second!
A new era of gameplay is invented. Fast castle followed by regular gameplay.
i was 10 vills down yesterday and still won with all in ghulams against huns. Very powerful against archer civs against knight camel civs i play normal.
with bengalies a 21 vills fc works too, beacause the civ give you 2 vills for pass to the next age, and the rathas are very versatile
Militia line needs more dmg vs buildings in feudal
Maybe wrong, but Fire was in Viper's base all the time, he knew what Viper was going for. What if he built 2 Ranges in Feudal and started massing Skirms on the way up to Castle as a counter to the Skirms? With Viper's non-existent food eco, it would have been hard to make cavalry.
Wagon counters skirm better than knight counters pike 11
Remember that Viper immediately got the upgrades over any vills. Even Botkin. And he has the free archer armor. If he wouldnt, he would buy that too. The non to barely upgraded feudal skirms have no chance
Feudal age skirms suck
Laming a boar is a fantastic counter. But its still the same problem - you would have to go for the lame before you know that he's going for the strat.
i feel fire did way to much farm, at some point he added scout that were useless and archer armor. Plus he did horse collar too. If he went to gold, use a bit of market he could be up in castle age, no? He doesn't need that good economy since viper one sucks
@@gaetanreinhardt2156 I agree he also had 4 vills in queue at one point. You are going to be ahead in eco norther what even if you idle your own tc. When some is super duper all in then playing standard all in is still less all in.
F1re is good pro but not brilliant, you can see the difference between good and brilliant when they are facing unexpected and need to adapt out from meta. Viper is brilliant pro and it was great example of that here when he broke multiple rules that are set in stone in just a 16 minute game (idling tc, naked fc, 100% eco idle for castle build e.g.)
I'm 850 elo and lost to this exact strat yesterday. Will try fc monk next time but very keen to see a more in depth counter video
I honestly don't think its a viable strategy for you as an 850 player because monks need to be micro'ed, but good luck anyway!
Haha I'm sure you're right 😂 last time I tried to go monks ended clicking about 8 on 1 unit and didn't go well
just wall up viper's gold mine instead of forward range, it should be easy? I bet if fire encounter this next time , he'll do this too
In card games this would be a burn strategy, as opposed to aggro, combo, and control. But in AoE2.
This is just as wild as when people learned that in magic the gathering you could completely ignore development and just only play damage spells to the face.
In card games, it eventually settled to a theory where some of these super efficient strategies just hard counter eachother in a rock paper scissors. Flexible strategies end up on the wayside because they are a bit suboptimal in everything.
Fair decks just ended up figuring out they can do something that's unfair to capitalize on their versatility.
For example black decks going pitch grief reanimate grief. Not as powerful as reanimate atraxa or griselbrand to win the game but enough to slow the game down and let their fair deck get ahead.
To counter it maybe all in feudal play? Never give the opponent the opportunity nor the ability to get in a position to afford or be able to do the Strat. I would say all in Feudal play based on the CIV Pick. If he picks CIVS that can do the Strat, all in Feudal army pressure pressure pressure. Go for the kill. Probably Archer play to be able to kill Vills easier.
I have 0 MP experience and rarely play AoE anymore, but i do love the game and watch alot of Viper and Hera videos/streams. Please let me know Hera your thoughts and opinions on this potential play
As I said on many other occasions already. It feels like Feudal is missing a tool to fight against too greedy castle ages. These kind of builds are only the extension of the already existing timing meta - as it is atm basically impossible to fight against the tech advantage. Ofc it needs to be something you have to commit to - when expecting the opponent to go up too greedy. Meaning if he doesn't it would put you in a disadvantage.
One idea ofc would be to add a 2nd TC (at higher cost) to Feudal which would allow to snowball the eco lead before the opponent can push out. But it could also be a military unit designed to be capable of fighting against castle age units with a better eco behind - locked behind a costly tech.
Also here again is the soft factor of the extra food from deer pushing involved, which is just enough to make these insanely fast castles possible. Without that these kind of builds would be impossible. And vice versa the free food isn't enough to sustain a prolonged feudal age aggression whtich the requires extra heavy investment in farms. It feels like the current amount of free food on the map is just at a spot where some builds heavily profit from and others don't - and the balance would be better in both directions with either less or more free food on the map.
There is one strat how you can counter this kind of castle based all-ins quite effectively: Tower the stone. Force the opponent off of it and therefore don't allow him to get the castle up as quickly. All it needs to do is delay the time when he can place his castle, so you can get up and prepare a counterarmy against his UUs.
All I can think of aside of monks, is building the UU counters.
Which with many civs, also counters their unit focus.
But I think Im ignorant of a lot of minor details.
The strat requires wood and gold to be protected by the castle. So stone wall in their gold at a cost of say 75 stone. Petards cost some gold but more importantly food which the fc player won’t have. Secondary gold castle location is not protected by the tc and vil losses would be much higher. You probably cause enough delay and damage to stop the snowball.
Would love a vid on this. Weve lost a few times on team games even with both players going it, or one just taking out a flank. Even if you know its coming its so hard to do enough damage with feudal units if they are already up and on the way to a castle. Though obvs at 1100 execution is a big issue on our side!
as soon as you see this shouldn't tower the stone, to force a counter-tower (delaying or even stopping the castle), and harass his stone? It's not a defense, more like a prevention strategy. I feel like the monk strat only works against certain UU, but won't work as well against, say, bohemians or portuguese
It works wonders with hindustanis against archer civs almost a guranteed win.
they have ratha?
I have an idea. What about early pressure like fire did and then you take the castle down by sending all your villagers to kill it? You're gonna have more villagers since you didn't go to castle age and killed some of the enemy's vills. Take loom of course. The castle needs upgrade to attack units that are too close. What do you think, hera?
What if you did an old school msn zone flush. Going first for the stone then gold.
I am pretty sure double monestry will work pretty well as I encountered this in a gold rush map and won the game. But I am still unable to find a counter for Portuguese and Bohemian with this strategy.
At least War Wagon is a bit more expensive and it is a convertible non-seige unit. Some civs are just unable to convert siege because they do not have the tech. Even if the civ has Redemption, it is so expensive and takes time. Moreover, both civs are some of the best monk civ, if your opponent knows you are countering, he can switch to counter your counter with monks.
Maybe forcing your opponent into a tower war by taking away his gold and stone can be an option, but if it is too early, you can't be sure if your opponent is going for the strategy, and being too late you will still unable to stop your opponent.
All-in strategies have been common in other RTS like Starcraft; it's more surprising that AoE2 has been the exception and is so reliably macro-oriented. In SC cutting eco for military works often to create effective all-ins, but the AoE2 meta has not been sharp enough to make that work. Defending the all-in has been too reliable compared to the risk for the attacker that people would rather just never cut vill production. Looks like maybe someone finally figured out a way to break that meta.
A long time ago, a wise man said "Celts eat TC."
Now we have this.
imo the logicial conclusion to this meta arc is that maa or fwd 2 range archers will come back into the meta. laming too
It seems like the first tells are them going to stone early and being very light on farms. maybe need to keep your scout bouncing around their resources to catch that move to stone.
It's basically brake woodline brake castle by going economic junit Bilt crisis to hope they give up or go woodline hunting till you get the units to win
what if he hide his wood line Viper is on a timer. You have 15 vil lead you hide them in the corner of the map he not gonna find it any time soon. Also a defensive tower can defend for some time, you buy your way up to castle and win
Hey Hera, it has probably been said to you but what if you do a mindgame in ranked by renaming yourself to red phosphorus ?
Is that possible ? And if it is would you do a video about it?
I feel like that would be funny and entertaining, pls keep me updated if you take that idea in a stream !
I would love to watch that live !
I'm of the opinion any strategy that has to be blind countered needs to get nerfed. If you have to start the counter before you can even scout the opposition it needs to get fixed.
might be able to counter this by going fast imp. put a lot on Gold and then BUY your way up since gold collects quickly. plan on countering with Imp units or EliteSkirms/Hussar/Halb + monks
I think fire could have house walled a compact base and made it a lot harder to just come in and completely cripple his eco, but prob would just have delayed the inevitable
With Romans you don't even need Castle, just go with Siege Workshop and spam scorpions :)
straight archers, then get lucky killing the stone vills
What a mastapiece! Hoang feels goosebumps!
Indeed ridiculous, very aggressive
depending of what unit is, just keep on full feudal , fc monks or fc cav
What going on with your Headset? Why do they blink in RGB?
i could also maybe see this working as cumans, high wood cost low gold cost uu, unexpected fast castle and high hp palisades could all work in favor
but then i am not phosphoru he prob tested every civ if any of them could work as well as koreans or bengalis
nah build time slow and needs lots of upgrades for any cav archer unique unit, exception is arambai.
@@anirbansahavlogs ww is also cav archer, same goes for bengali uu
It seems to me that cav archer uu are the best sort of unit for this strategy
I have been playing with a chu ko nu version of this. Mixed results.
How about plume archers or rattan archers?
Memb and F1Re is like the best casting combo.
The castle on both wood and gold helped. Going forward is something nobody does anymore; IoRI used to forward every single game in the day and he would absolutely slay most of the time, including Daut and Chris. Everyone does meta and a good enough player can step outside the box going against the meta to beat meta, and I think doing the same to counter nonmeta works here.
.. I wouldn't overthink it... it's a play few people can pull off.. and it's extremely risky too.. Viper will beat Fire all day long but if Fire tried the same, I doubt the outcome is also the same.
You should play a best of 7 with viper and have him do this strat randomly against you in one of those games.
Then show everyone how you counter it after discovering it & at what point would you not be able to counter it etc.
The castle has to be on gold and wood, so I think the tower around 16 minutes in game should've been coming up much earlier.
Played a ranked at 1200elo recently and someone was doing this, was thrown at first thought he was going for fw castle on arabia... Managed to all in him enough in feudal to stop the castle going up on time and win. That being said, feel like this kind of thing happens on arena all the time. All in forward castle into unique power unit, completely unstoppable if they get through. V frustrating
If I know the opponent is doing this start with Portuguese or Bohemians, are Monks still viable considering I would need redemption (and what if my civ doesn't even get redemption?)
The legend has done it again.that viper
Yes, please make a video on how to counter this strategy. Im 1500-1600 1v1 elo. Thank you, love your content
Guys I'm like 950 elo, I wonder what are the most important controls that pros click when they use their ranged army just like here.
I usually just click R on some area, or point atack and set next command attack with shift. Any video where it's explained nicely?
(I have a feeling this strat is mostly working only because of Viper's almost perfect control of units - just like Hera's)
maybe archer open cud counter to completely shut down eco
yeah this really sucks. if a naked fc cannot be disrupted, and a crippled economy can still win afterwards, thats a problem.
Well you def see the big mistake Fire made. He over invested into Fuedal army which did nothing after the tower went down. Everything was correct to delay Viper as much as possible but for him to defend 1 of 2 ideas seems necessary.
1. Stone walls, massive stone walls (impractical on this map, but maybe other maps doable)
2. End army pressure and idle TC, sell res or whatever, immediately go castle
It isn’t against the rules of the game. It’s basicly sacrificing economy for early army.
BTW, isn't actualy mining stone before mining gold more efficient anyway? You can sell it for more anyway? I was always wondering why players don't do that.
phosphoru is in the process of working on that flexibility issue, tho the problem is that he's just not that mechanically strong lol (apparently something like a 400 elo bump just by refining this strat?)
I'll believe it's a legit strat at the highest level when someone pulls ot on you in an S tier tourney and wins
thats really hard.... but in 16xx ladder i usually counter 2x range xbows or skirm and try to do some damage in feudal and wall later. but its hard decision for F1re. i would say need wall and some good eco for 2x range and siege. :)
Tower the stone of opponent id say
As soon as I see no military I also do market and go up.
I died once to Burmese FC in a ranked ladder game at 15+ elo.
How would you counter this if you have a civ without redemption?
Geez, this would be insane with Mongols in the hands of a pro
so could you do this with mayans aswell? Or berbers? Does it need to be a tanky uniques unit you think?
That's what i'm talking about, that's why he's the GOAT, THE GOATTT
Red Phosphoru is the best thing that happened to AoE2 in the last 2 years!
They call it the phosphoru but really it’s the phosphoang
whats next? Hoang playstyle in pro?
My thinking is a bit different. If this newer strategy is the strategy to beat and the more classic approach has so much difficulty against it, then... instead of using the older strategy as the starting point, you use this newer strategy as the starting point. So you look at okay if I am pushing for castle age + unique units like that and my opponent is doing the same thing, how can I gain the upper hand? And then you look for ways to make it more robust and the different branches you can go for and explore all the potential the newer strategy has + how to deal with ways your opponent might try to counter you when you're the only one playing the strat, etc.
I am not familiar enough with AOE2 multiplayer to tell you anything concrete, which I think you would know much better anyway so there wouldn't be much point in that; but I hope there's something valuable conceptually in my perspective.