There's another important detail that makes cavalry better at lower Elos that wasn't mentioned. The economy. Especially in feudal, scout play is all food, so you don't need to worry as much about balancing your eco around the right amount of wood and gold for archers, plus more wood to keep building farms, plus farming so you can make your way up to castle. Instead, you _just_ need to keep on wood, adding more farms each time you get 60 wood. Add just a couple on gold, and you'll naturally get up to castle age without any effort. Dead simple.
im personally a big fan of the scout into skirms opening, it gives me early info and initiative with the scouts, a counterunit against archer/spear and a smooth transition into either knights or cav archers since i already got fletching and the stable for bloodlines
@@ns-islandsroblox 8:36. It is a stretch to say that the outcome is *caused* by Lanchester's laws, though the process can possibly be modeled using a variant of them. Lanchester proposed a "linear law" (theta=1) for battles that consist of series of 1v1 fights (such as historical pikeman formations facing one another along a straight front) and a "square law" (theta=2) that applies to scenarios where groups can freely gang up (focus fire) on single units to reduce the enemy firepower, typically using ranged units. With the square law, army strength scales with the square of army size, but only linearly with unit strength. Battles between melee units can in practice be modeled by an exponent theta even less than 1, due to delays in finding new targets, but the possibility of swarming around single targets suggests a higher theta, and highly mobile units can perhaps achieve something in between the linear law and the square law (1 < theta < 2).
Another interesting factor at play here: "pop efficiency". Even though nobody is hitting population cap at this stage of the game, beginner players may be hitting their "apm cap" for army production. Like you mentioned, beginner games usually float a lot of resources, unused. Producing a unit type that is "pop efficient" means that each unit made costs more resources and is stronger compared to alternatives. When beginners are "apm capped", this means that each time they remember to queue up more units, they end up spending more resources from their bank. Each button press converts more resources into usable army. Since they are more limited by the number of buttons pressed than their resource bank, this is an advantage. This is also why Elephant spam is very effective in beginner late games, because someone who massed up elephants basically massed up their APM, and the beginner player reacting to elephants usually fail because they don't have the APM to immediately transition to an army of 100+ pikes and continuously replace them, which is required to not die to elephants.
Not just APM - to produce more units in equal time you're gonna need more production buildings. Even if you're floating res, as a beginner player you're not gonna realize you can just plop down 5-10 barracks to increase production.
I think the most important thing for new players is just to learn hotkeys and the meta (even if they don't want to play it, it is good to know what they are facing). Also, just to play an absolute ton of games to train their unconscious (see Dual Process Theory) to do the monotonous tasks.
This confirms my own experience. Also, going knights has some really good civilization options, especially Berbers are good for beginners, since the cost of knights is reduced, which means that mistakes in the economy setup are not quite as punishing. It's the most managable way to play for me. (ca. 800-900 Elo)
Thank you, Hera! These resources are great help. Came back to play after 10 years. Last night we had a great time with the squad. All these videos are helping me getting back on track and understand current mechanics on the game. Thank you!!
Well, now you hilighted with such precision why the cavalry is easier to play as beginners, it's time for a video about how to deal with a solo knight player. What are the steps a player has to take in each stage of the game in order to survive to a mass of knights? I mean, I feel like the short answer is monks, but I'd love a long answer on the topic 😂
Low elo here. I'm finding archers easier as I can sit them in stand ground and they will keep doing damage or force a reaction while I'm balancing my eco. Scouts on the other hand I needed to pay too much attention to avoid them running under the tc, or realizing I ended up idling my tc or getting housed because my focus was into trying to make damage and turns out that, yes maybe I kill to vills, but ended up with 2min idle tc... and if they build short walls is like they fully stop me. FInally playing scouts into knights, its so food intensive I just don't find the right window to go into castle age, is like all the food I get I ended up using, but with archers is like all i need is 7 farms and 5 in gold and I can be sure I'm going to make it to castle. I don't know, i'm finding archer opening is helping me more (BTW i'm doing mongols with strong feudal aggression going into 1 tc castle age to close the game with a single siege).
yeah as a beginner/intermediate archer player, i havent got used microing melee units. on stand ground i tell them to attack one buiulding, but then they run around into the TC and get slaughtered. they wont listen to my commands lol
14/15 farms is a good treshold for scouts play. Since unlike with Archers you spend less wood early to make a mining camp, and blacksmith for fletching, your food eco will kick in much sooner. Then you add a mining camp, 5 on gold, blacksmith and click up (You can also get Wheelbarrow after the 5 vils on gold), 14/16 farms and 9 on gold is a solid economy for knights in castle. For the number of scouts I would recommend you to get at least 3/4 and add them until the opponent has a lot of spears or is fully walled (I rarely go above 6/7 personally unless I want to heavily commit into feudal play). As far as micro goes stand ground helps a lot, but you want to eventually learn to jump from them to your TC through hotkeys I guess since you are at low elo idling the TC will help you but 7 farms is way too little for archers in 1v1, you need like 12 to get to castle at a reasonable time and also get a good economy to do anything. Especially as mongols since scouts into Steppe Lancers is their deadliest opening
Have the scouts attack near a lumber camp while you go back home for like 15 seconds at a time. They’ll target a few vills and you place a couple farms
"but ended up with 2min idle tc" the trick is to always use the "select all TCs" hotkey, and *not* the "go to TC" hotkey. That way you can quickly select your TC, add vills to the queue, and then get back to microing scouts, without ever looking away.
Put scouts on defensive near a lumber camp or mining camp and start planning for a counter, like scorpion if you are against civs without camels or own pikes if against camels. I usually go archers against camel civs and full knights scorps against others. I choose lhmer all the time.
I remember the first version of aoe2 , you go to the battle micro your unit go back to your base and just find all your farm eco death , but knight is just sent and forget
Hey Hera I am a noob, not even an average player. I used to focus economy until late game, and create army and fight only after I am fully prepared. Now I am trying to learn to fight early. And Romans became my favourite civ to do so. I can not play archers well for the reasons you stated in the video (micro taking my focus from home and economy) but infantry feels easier to handle for me because they can not be countered with trash units, and Romans have the best generic infantry (or it feels like to me). Knights can be countered by pikes without gold, and yes they can easily run away but this also means pikes can secure areas from knights easily. I mean like you go to raid with knights, pkies come, knights run, and enemy villagers are safe as long as pikes are there. But I can just send infantry in, leave them to fight, not care if they die. And in my low elo, enemies have much harder time to counter infantry than knights, simply because pikes are so cheap. Also with Romans, I get many unintentional wins, while I was just trying to be aggressive and get the upperhand, enemy can not deal with and gets overwhelmed by legionaries and resigns. I should be wrong since I disagree with such a pro like you, but can you please correct my wrongs in this comment?
It's kind of the opposite for me, when I used to play cavalry I was around 900 and couldn't improve but someone told me to play archers and I got to 1400 from learning Archers and timing attacks and stuff. I think a big part about archers is that because you have a mass from feudal age, you can do significant damage when your upgrades kick in which makes it easy for beginners also it's less food intensive
sounds to me that what actually made you improve was taking your time and learning about timing attacks, build orders and unit-interactions. So it wasn't the archers that made you climb. It was you.
One problem I have with Knights: you often cannot perform a direct attack against massed pikemen unless you have greater mass. And it is harder to mass Knights compared to Archers or Pikemen, because they are more costly. What ends up happening to me vs. the AI is when I open Scouts then go to Knights, the AI will overreact and mass produce spears in feudal, so by the time I hit Castle, the opponent has more Pikes than I have Knights. Ironically I have had to run from engagements way more often with Knights than with Archers. Whereas with Archers I can just bring one Mangonel and that will deal with a Skirm mass.
to be fair, the AI cannot properly fight against archers as it doesn't group its units and thus allows you to snipe them one-by-one, making use of your superior range. Even skirmishers die to a blob of crossbows if they engage in like 1v60 combat 11 But yeah, the AI tends to do quite a bit better against knights to the point where I oftentime actually have to tech into something else.
I have been playing for a while but have only climbed to 15xx and have spent a lot of time focusing on just archer play and just knight play. Knight are way easier not just because it's one unit you can spam and patrol in but also because it maintains map control and is mobile enough to hit and run faster. That mobility is huge.
Big agree. The first big thing I did when trying to improve was focus on playing cavalry civs and practicing build orders. Now that I've gotten a bit better I've been working on practicing more variety, but cav is definitely my fallback if I'm picking. My absolute worst unit is Monks, and I suspect that a lot of folks at my ELO struggle to make monks work.
I'm about 1200 ELO, and it often feels to me like I'm right on the line where stronger players are more well-rounded, and players who are weaker than me are more one-strat.
I am cav and cav archer player (yeah - I was "Hun-only player" because nationality being Hun-garian 🙂), but archers are not bad because against a scout rush many prepare on lower ELO, but against archer + spear fewer ppl and quickwalling never works. But I basically just do cavarly because that is what I do best and archers very occasionally excect with Persian trashbow that is kind of often. Camels very much counter cav though. You either need a halb+pala combination there or archery or something.
Oh trust me, they know already 😆 Recently Savar or Monaspa is a drug for the 1000 elo range, but the classic paladin is still the most used, you see scouts into knights in every single team game by 2-3 players per team in a 4 vs 4, people just want to snowball into paladins and destroy TCs melee, monks are very rare and usally porly used, siege is not very common, archers usually die before they can reach the deathball mass, cav archers are not common, your low elo player will make tons of pikes who will roun around the map trying to hit the cav The franks cav spammer is the most common type of player you will see (followed by the goth huskarl spammer and the mangudai micro nerd)
I tried man at arms-archers as my default opening when I first started. I'd either screw up the build order or run the man at arms directly into the enemy TC because I was busy managing my eco.
Historically, I've sucked at having a head on a swivel, and microing is undeniably a part of that head on a swivel category. I sucked at FPS games, sucked at brood war because of how much more micro is needed, also absolutely sucked at archer micro in aoe2 despite playing this game on and off for 2 decades. Because of how pitiful my micro is for literally any form of gaming I do, I undeniably prefer going cavalry and going knights. Knights you don't have to babysit because they're hardy and they're fast so it's easy to get yourself out of a pickle. Because you don't have to babysit knights all that much, it's also miles easier to holistically play the game. These are all talked about in the video btw, but it's true for me despite being a veteran of this game.
I always wanted to play Archers as a beginner, now that i switched to georgiens and play Monaspa, i win more often. I just couldnt handle the multi tasking, in a fight i would only focus on micro and not on the economy.
I figured this out for myself a few days ago and started wrecking the AI as Franks all of a sudden even though I'm still pretty bad at the game overall
I am 1200 and have always found it harder. It’s so tough if the enemy makes a full infantry switch. Also if the enemy goes camels it just feels so awkward. Once you learn micro archers seem much easier. If you play archers and they bring out a counter unit it’s very easy to mix in a mangonel or a few knights to beat the skirms or siege
for me i just find cav boring to play honestly. ill use them if i rlly need to, but i much prefer archers or halb+siege or even monks, but just spamming cav into an opponents base is such a boring strat personally which is why i never go for it (that and i dont even play ranked lol).
As a new player to AOE2 how do I deal with my enemy spamming halberd constantly for my knights? I generally send my own pikes or helberd . But is there any other way?
Halberds are late game. As the other poster said, Elite Skirms trade very well against them and they don't cost gold. If you have a lot of gold income, Hand Canons are an even better option. Plus they don't require as many techs.
Hey, could you make a list of all shourtcuts/ key binds you use ? I would like to see your settings if you havent made a Video about ist already. Thank you for your great content
I think walls and Pikemen can easily stop literally nothing but knights. Especially with a few monks put in. Though a lot of low level players don't like walling (especially incomplete walls, which even some pros seem reluctant to do sometimes), making trash units, and going full turtle 🐢 (actually I think a lot of pros are reluctant to go full turtle 🐢 too, even when it is the best play e.g. against civs with terrible eco upgrades like Mongols in the late game or when you are behind/Portuguese on Islands 🏝). So you are probably going to have an easy time. With a few extra units, Franks can be good even in high level games though.
@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana the thing is I get up to castle a lot faster with selling stone and frank eco. They don't have time to make enough monks. And the walls definitely don't hold. Especially if I bring seige
I think most good civs for the map 🗺 could get close. Especially if they use Dark Age or Feudal military 🪖 to slow you down. Though low level players do also love playing their favourite civs on maps they are not good in. @@Dawoud_Shirin
I might have to try that sometime! I like how it sounds. Selling stone early like that to get to castle early would help a lot, considering I already mainly play fast castle into knights as my preferred strategy.
Im kinda new and my current goal is to beat "hardest" ai. Its quite hard, especially as they show up with hundreds of units somewhere between castle age to imp age. Would using a cav civ help?
I would imagine rushing the AI is the best play, because the AI will either underreact or over react. Stuggling to find a balance. I would imagine Drushing into anything else would be the easiest play. Though it depends on how the new AI works.
AI lacks a brain, so ur best bet is to use a deathball civ like mongols, bohemians, or ethiopians, dravidians, civs which have good siege and/or units that can shred the opponents units regardless of who they are. lets go ethiopians since theyre not a dlc civ, siege has bigger blast radius, so a deathball of scorps, halbs and archers, and bombards with some micro is more than enough to reduce the ai to rubble. bohemians have trash monks (as in, cost food), OP bombards, fast hand canoneers, and amazing halbs. dravidians have machine gun elephant archers, heavy scorpion, and infantry that ignore armor. etc etc the ai is dumb so keeping them in one spot and slowing working ur way through them is the best bet.
u have to rush them, u cant let them boom cause their macro is robotically perfect. their micro is garbage tho, you can out maneuvere and out think them
If you are losing to Hardest AI, you aren't being aggressive enough. Hit them before they hit you, and keep harrasing them until you can build rams or trebuchet to kill their defensive buildings.
I disagree with this take. Cav is the best for beginners if they want to climb elo. If making an arbritrary number go up is not all you live for, then play what you enjoy. I really enjoy the slower, more controlled and methodical gameplay of archers. When I play cav I am way too chaotic and uncontrolled and I get anxious from it. Archer play is cleaner. Keep archer ball alive. Push slowly with castles and trebs. Take map control. Choke the enemy out of the game. Maybe raid with hussars late imp, maybe not. My elo is likely lower than what it could be, but I'm having more fun.
Yeah, but 1,000 elo is not beginners. Look at the games played of a 1,000 elo players many of them range from several hundreds to thousands. Yeah it is the starting elo, but beginners fall out of that range rather quickly, and will need quite a lot of practice to get back to a 1,000 elo.
There's another important detail that makes cavalry better at lower Elos that wasn't mentioned. The economy. Especially in feudal, scout play is all food, so you don't need to worry as much about balancing your eco around the right amount of wood and gold for archers, plus more wood to keep building farms, plus farming so you can make your way up to castle. Instead, you _just_ need to keep on wood, adding more farms each time you get 60 wood. Add just a couple on gold, and you'll naturally get up to castle age without any effort. Dead simple.
Scouts also really scale well towards late game. Hussar raiding is very strong.
I feel the other way around with archers ^^
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
WOLOLOLOL,
Violets are red.
Mic drop
Hussars says hi
11111 had me laughing
Lol good one!
im personally a big fan of the scout into skirms opening, it gives me early info and initiative with the scouts, a counterunit against archer/spear and a smooth transition into either knights or cav archers since i already got fletching and the stable for bloodlines
EARLY, just got into this game and im hooked man. Learning from the best
Welcome to AoE2 😊
You've got a lot of fun ahead of you! I've been playing for 4 or so years and this game still feels SO fresh to me
SOTL liked the Lanchester's law reference
When was it I didn't hear
@@ns-islandsroblox 8:36. It is a stretch to say that the outcome is *caused* by Lanchester's laws, though the process can possibly be modeled using a variant of them. Lanchester proposed a "linear law" (theta=1) for battles that consist of series of 1v1 fights (such as historical pikeman formations facing one another along a straight front) and a "square law" (theta=2) that applies to scenarios where groups can freely gang up (focus fire) on single units to reduce the enemy firepower, typically using ranged units. With the square law, army strength scales with the square of army size, but only linearly with unit strength. Battles between melee units can in practice be modeled by an exponent theta even less than 1, due to delays in finding new targets, but the possibility of swarming around single targets suggests a higher theta, and highly mobile units can perhaps achieve something in between the linear law and the square law (1 < theta < 2).
Another interesting factor at play here: "pop efficiency". Even though nobody is hitting population cap at this stage of the game, beginner players may be hitting their "apm cap" for army production. Like you mentioned, beginner games usually float a lot of resources, unused.
Producing a unit type that is "pop efficient" means that each unit made costs more resources and is stronger compared to alternatives. When beginners are "apm capped", this means that each time they remember to queue up more units, they end up spending more resources from their bank. Each button press converts more resources into usable army. Since they are more limited by the number of buttons pressed than their resource bank, this is an advantage.
This is also why Elephant spam is very effective in beginner late games, because someone who massed up elephants basically massed up their APM, and the beginner player reacting to elephants usually fail because they don't have the APM to immediately transition to an army of 100+ pikes and continuously replace them, which is required to not die to elephants.
Not just APM - to produce more units in equal time you're gonna need more production buildings. Even if you're floating res, as a beginner player you're not gonna realize you can just plop down 5-10 barracks to increase production.
bro is putting out everything except the persian douche counter that he said he'd put 7 days after the original video
because it has no counter
Underrated comment
😂😂😂😂 coming soon
I think the most important thing for new players is just to learn hotkeys and the meta (even if they don't want to play it, it is good to know what they are facing).
Also, just to play an absolute ton of games to train their unconscious (see Dual Process Theory) to do the monotonous tasks.
This confirms my own experience. Also, going knights has some really good civilization options, especially Berbers are good for beginners, since the cost of knights is reduced, which means that mistakes in the economy setup are not quite as punishing. It's the most managable way to play for me. (ca. 800-900 Elo)
Thank you, Hera! These resources are great help. Came back to play after 10 years. Last night we had a great time with the squad. All these videos are helping me getting back on track and understand current mechanics on the game. Thank you!!
Well, now you hilighted with such precision why the cavalry is easier to play as beginners, it's time for a video about how to deal with a solo knight player. What are the steps a player has to take in each stage of the game in order to survive to a mass of knights?
I mean, I feel like the short answer is monks, but I'd love a long answer on the topic 😂
Low elo here. I'm finding archers easier as I can sit them in stand ground and they will keep doing damage or force a reaction while I'm balancing my eco. Scouts on the other hand I needed to pay too much attention to avoid them running under the tc, or realizing I ended up idling my tc or getting housed because my focus was into trying to make damage and turns out that, yes maybe I kill to vills, but ended up with 2min idle tc... and if they build short walls is like they fully stop me. FInally playing scouts into knights, its so food intensive I just don't find the right window to go into castle age, is like all the food I get I ended up using, but with archers is like all i need is 7 farms and 5 in gold and I can be sure I'm going to make it to castle.
I don't know, i'm finding archer opening is helping me more (BTW i'm doing mongols with strong feudal aggression going into 1 tc castle age to close the game with a single siege).
yeah as a beginner/intermediate archer player, i havent got used microing melee units. on stand ground i tell them to attack one buiulding, but then they run around into the TC and get slaughtered. they wont listen to my commands lol
14/15 farms is a good treshold for scouts play. Since unlike with Archers you spend less wood early to make a mining camp, and blacksmith for fletching, your food eco will kick in much sooner.
Then you add a mining camp, 5 on gold, blacksmith and click up (You can also get Wheelbarrow after the 5 vils on gold), 14/16 farms and 9 on gold is a solid economy for knights in castle.
For the number of scouts I would recommend you to get at least 3/4 and add them until the opponent has a lot of spears or is fully walled (I rarely go above 6/7 personally unless I want to heavily commit into feudal play).
As far as micro goes stand ground helps a lot, but you want to eventually learn to jump from them to your TC through hotkeys
I guess since you are at low elo idling the TC will help you but 7 farms is way too little for archers in 1v1, you need like 12 to get to castle at a reasonable time and also get a good economy to do anything. Especially as mongols since scouts into Steppe Lancers is their deadliest opening
Have the scouts attack near a lumber camp while you go back home for like 15 seconds at a time. They’ll target a few vills and you place a couple farms
"but ended up with 2min idle tc" the trick is to always use the "select all TCs" hotkey, and *not* the "go to TC" hotkey. That way you can quickly select your TC, add vills to the queue, and then get back to microing scouts, without ever looking away.
Put scouts on defensive near a lumber camp or mining camp and start planning for a counter, like scorpion if you are against civs without camels or own pikes if against camels. I usually go archers against camel civs and full knights scorps against others. I choose lhmer all the time.
I remember the first version of aoe2 , you go to the battle micro your unit go back to your base and just find all your farm eco death , but knight is just sent and forget
Hey Hera I am a noob, not even an average player. I used to focus economy until late game, and create army and fight only after I am fully prepared. Now I am trying to learn to fight early. And Romans became my favourite civ to do so. I can not play archers well for the reasons you stated in the video (micro taking my focus from home and economy) but infantry feels easier to handle for me because they can not be countered with trash units, and Romans have the best generic infantry (or it feels like to me). Knights can be countered by pikes without gold, and yes they can easily run away but this also means pikes can secure areas from knights easily. I mean like you go to raid with knights, pkies come, knights run, and enemy villagers are safe as long as pikes are there. But I can just send infantry in, leave them to fight, not care if they die. And in my low elo, enemies have much harder time to counter infantry than knights, simply because pikes are so cheap. Also with Romans, I get many unintentional wins, while I was just trying to be aggressive and get the upperhand, enemy can not deal with and gets overwhelmed by legionaries and resigns. I should be wrong since I disagree with such a pro like you, but can you please correct my wrongs in this comment?
It's kind of the opposite for me, when I used to play cavalry I was around 900 and couldn't improve but someone told me to play archers and I got to 1400 from learning Archers and timing attacks and stuff. I think a big part about archers is that because you have a mass from feudal age, you can do significant damage when your upgrades kick in which makes it easy for beginners also it's less food intensive
looks like the case of different strokes for different people
sounds to me that what actually made you improve was taking your time and learning about timing attacks, build orders and unit-interactions. So it wasn't the archers that made you climb. It was you.
Can we get a video on formations, stances, and patrol/atk move/ctrl atk?
One problem I have with Knights: you often cannot perform a direct attack against massed pikemen unless you have greater mass. And it is harder to mass Knights compared to Archers or Pikemen, because they are more costly.
What ends up happening to me vs. the AI is when I open Scouts then go to Knights, the AI will overreact and mass produce spears in feudal, so by the time I hit Castle, the opponent has more Pikes than I have Knights.
Ironically I have had to run from engagements way more often with Knights than with Archers. Whereas with Archers I can just bring one Mangonel and that will deal with a Skirm mass.
to be fair, the AI cannot properly fight against archers as it doesn't group its units and thus allows you to snipe them one-by-one, making use of your superior range. Even skirmishers die to a blob of crossbows if they engage in like 1v60 combat 11
But yeah, the AI tends to do quite a bit better against knights to the point where I oftentime actually have to tech into something else.
I have been playing for a while but have only climbed to 15xx and have spent a lot of time focusing on just archer play and just knight play. Knight are way easier not just because it's one unit you can spam and patrol in but also because it maintains map control and is mobile enough to hit and run faster. That mobility is huge.
I like that humility at the end. I wonder how much is too many horses for a few pikemen.
i started playing 1 month ago, and im battling in 1100 ELO as britons archer player :) I do see how cav is much easier/better but i love archer
if u like playing archesr i highly recommend bulgarians and spanish, 2 of the best archer lines in the game!!
(i havent taken my pills yet)
LOL. i always beat spanish as britons, they get wrecked@@apan990
I'm around 1000, and love my camel skirm comps. Best of both worlds
Big agree. The first big thing I did when trying to improve was focus on playing cavalry civs and practicing build orders. Now that I've gotten a bit better I've been working on practicing more variety, but cav is definitely my fallback if I'm picking. My absolute worst unit is Monks, and I suspect that a lot of folks at my ELO struggle to make monks work.
I'm about 1200 ELO, and it often feels to me like I'm right on the line where stronger players are more well-rounded, and players who are weaker than me are more one-strat.
So true, being stomped by cavalry at 1k made me intermediate monk micro-er and I always pick civs that got camel option :D
This video is exactly what I needed. Thanks!
I am cav and cav archer player (yeah - I was "Hun-only player" because nationality being Hun-garian 🙂), but archers are not bad because against a scout rush many prepare on lower ELO, but against archer + spear fewer ppl and quickwalling never works. But I basically just do cavarly because that is what I do best and archers very occasionally excect with Persian trashbow that is kind of often.
Camels very much counter cav though. You either need a halb+pala combination there or archery or something.
Oh trust me, they know already 😆
Recently Savar or Monaspa is a drug for the 1000 elo range, but the classic paladin is still the most used, you see scouts into knights in every single team game by 2-3 players per team in a 4 vs 4, people just want to snowball into paladins and destroy TCs melee, monks are very rare and usally porly used, siege is not very common, archers usually die before they can reach the deathball mass, cav archers are not common, your low elo player will make tons of pikes who will roun around the map trying to hit the cav
The franks cav spammer is the most common type of player you will see (followed by the goth huskarl spammer and the mangudai micro nerd)
I tried man at arms-archers as my default opening when I first started. I'd either screw up the build order or run the man at arms directly into the enemy TC because I was busy managing my eco.
So do camels just not exist then or what 11
Historically, I've sucked at having a head on a swivel, and microing is undeniably a part of that head on a swivel category. I sucked at FPS games, sucked at brood war because of how much more micro is needed, also absolutely sucked at archer micro in aoe2 despite playing this game on and off for 2 decades. Because of how pitiful my micro is for literally any form of gaming I do, I undeniably prefer going cavalry and going knights.
Knights you don't have to babysit because they're hardy and they're fast so it's easy to get yourself out of a pickle. Because you don't have to babysit knights all that much, it's also miles easier to holistically play the game. These are all talked about in the video btw, but it's true for me despite being a veteran of this game.
One downside for me starting as cav player - once you try archer civ you are depressed how slow those are :D
I always wanted to play Archers as a beginner, now that i switched to georgiens and play Monaspa, i win more often.
I just couldnt handle the multi tasking, in a fight i would only focus on micro and not on the economy.
gracias por esos consejos!!! para los que somos manquitos nos sirve un monton!!! saludos
I figured this out for myself a few days ago and started wrecking the AI as Franks all of a sudden even though I'm still pretty bad at the game overall
This is gold!
I am 1200 and have always found it harder. It’s so tough if the enemy makes a full infantry switch. Also if the enemy goes camels it just feels so awkward. Once you learn micro archers seem much easier. If you play archers and they bring out a counter unit it’s very easy to mix in a mangonel or a few knights to beat the skirms or siege
for me i just find cav boring to play honestly. ill use them if i rlly need to, but i much prefer archers or halb+siege or even monks, but just spamming cav into an opponents base is such a boring strat personally which is why i never go for it (that and i dont even play ranked lol).
Nice video but, why were camels entirely omitted?
Camels don't feel good to use against anything other than cavalry or archers. They are niche because they are an expensive counter to knights.
@@GuardianTacticianthey're cheaper than knights only 55f 60g so not expensive
Please, make tier list for unique civ units
knights actually op in low elo
As a new player to AOE2 how do I deal with my enemy spamming halberd constantly for my knights? I generally send my own pikes or helberd . But is there any other way?
Try scorpions or skirms
Halberds are late game. As the other poster said, Elite Skirms trade very well against them and they don't cost gold. If you have a lot of gold income, Hand Canons are an even better option. Plus they don't require as many techs.
Yeah what these guys said is true but sometimes adding your own champs/halbs is fine as well if you are a civ that doesn't get good upgrades on skirms
awesome vid
i love siege and archers, no video about cav will make me prefer it
Siege is pretty difficult for beginners imo
but cavalry play is boring as hell. I'm playing for fun, and there's nothing more fun than countering knights.
Honestly, I have 1200-1300 Elo and constantly loosing to archer civs :) I'm still like "one step behind" the oponnent. (Mostly playing bulgarians)
Confirmed - 1100 elo here - all my ranked wins are knights & scirm & siege with either liths, teutons, or burgundians.
need next video about "why villagers are best for begginers" pleeeease
bro didn't even mention camels. but camels are basically weak knights that do bonus damage to other cavalry units.
was looking for this comment...
scouts and then full ca + hussar
You didn't speak about camels as counter unit
Hi What do you charge for coaching?
No love for Man-at-Arms.
Say "hello" to camels.
"MMEEEAAAUUUGGHH!"
I clicked, I liked, I watched
Hey, could you make a list of all shourtcuts/ key binds you use ? I would like to see your settings if you havent made a Video about ist already. Thank you for your great content
I literally got to 1500 ELO with franks.. early market sell stone 3 stable knights. Very hard to stop
I think walls and Pikemen can easily stop literally nothing but knights. Especially with a few monks put in.
Though a lot of low level players don't like walling (especially incomplete walls, which even some pros seem reluctant to do sometimes), making trash units, and going full turtle 🐢 (actually I think a lot of pros are reluctant to go full turtle 🐢 too, even when it is the best play e.g. against civs with terrible eco upgrades like Mongols in the late game or when you are behind/Portuguese on Islands 🏝).
So you are probably going to have an easy time.
With a few extra units, Franks can be good even in high level games though.
@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana the thing is I get up to castle a lot faster with selling stone and frank eco. They don't have time to make enough monks. And the walls definitely don't hold. Especially if I bring seige
I think most good civs for the map 🗺 could get close. Especially if they use Dark Age or Feudal military 🪖 to slow you down.
Though low level players do also love playing their favourite civs on maps they are not good in.
@@Dawoud_Shirin
I might have to try that sometime! I like how it sounds. Selling stone early like that to get to castle early would help a lot, considering I already mainly play fast castle into knights as my preferred strategy.
What about camels?
Im kinda new and my current goal is to beat "hardest" ai. Its quite hard, especially as they show up with hundreds of units somewhere between castle age to imp age. Would using a cav civ help?
Welcome to AoE2. What difficulty are you comfortable playing on? Are you using a build order?
I would imagine rushing the AI is the best play, because the AI will either underreact or over react. Stuggling to find a balance.
I would imagine Drushing into anything else would be the easiest play.
Though it depends on how the new AI works.
AI lacks a brain, so ur best bet is to use a deathball civ like mongols, bohemians, or ethiopians, dravidians, civs which have good siege and/or units that can shred the opponents units regardless of who they are.
lets go ethiopians since theyre not a dlc civ, siege has bigger blast radius, so a deathball of scorps, halbs and archers, and bombards with some micro is more than enough to reduce the ai to rubble.
bohemians have trash monks (as in, cost food), OP bombards, fast hand canoneers, and amazing halbs.
dravidians have machine gun elephant archers, heavy scorpion, and infantry that ignore armor.
etc etc
the ai is dumb so keeping them in one spot and slowing working ur way through them is the best bet.
u have to rush them, u cant let them boom cause their macro is robotically perfect. their micro is garbage tho, you can out maneuvere and out think them
If you are losing to Hardest AI, you aren't being aggressive enough. Hit them before they hit you, and keep harrasing them until you can build rams or trebuchet to kill their defensive buildings.
More 1v3/4 vids pls
Camels, Genoese crosbowmen, steppe lancers and that Inca's unique unit...
Those are some hard counters to knights, in my opinion...
So which one is better ? Ao2 ao3 ao4 ? I'm confused which one to plau
its up to you. Try them all and chose which one is more fun for you
Aoe2 is the most popular you should play aoe2
Aoe2 is the most balanced and doesn't have as many weird gimmicks as the other two
How was the private coaching for the "just horny" player (Einfach Geil)? We need details.
I disagree. Creeping forward with stone walls and longbowman behind it is the best. lol
I disagree with this take. Cav is the best for beginners if they want to climb elo. If making an arbritrary number go up is not all you live for, then play what you enjoy.
I really enjoy the slower, more controlled and methodical gameplay of archers. When I play cav I am way too chaotic and uncontrolled and I get anxious from it.
Archer play is cleaner. Keep archer ball alive. Push slowly with castles and trebs. Take map control. Choke the enemy out of the game. Maybe raid with hussars late imp, maybe not.
My elo is likely lower than what it could be, but I'm having more fun.
I agree 100% I like to fight in one place and have ranged units rather taken raiding in 20 different places at the same time
CAMELS
Camels pike & knight, you're still ok
0:19
Yeah, but 1,000 elo is not beginners. Look at the games played of a 1,000 elo players many of them range from several hundreds to thousands. Yeah it is the starting elo, but beginners fall out of that range rather quickly, and will need quite a lot of practice to get back to a 1,000 elo.
Like , and plz Help Ukraine