You missed the all-important AI openings: full skirms vs scouts, two range spear skirm archers mix, and of course, that 4d chess build where you make militia but don't send them across the map.
@@ihmpall uh... Yes it does. Start an Arabia game with goths or Bulgarians against an Incas or vikings extreme AI and hit it with a 20 or 21 pop MAA. Do it 10 times, I guarantee you that you will find 3 militias chilling in the ai's base at least once.
My fav is to make a random Build when the enemy scout shows up and delete it second after it leaves and make the couter to the counter works like 50% times
Great timing with you making these videos. I only started playing again maybe 6 weeks ago, and they've been a great aid in learning the game again. GGs
I have been expecting this kind of content for a long time. Too little atention is brought to these more general but often obscure topics. I would love to hear your take on how te game flow or the stagea a match can go through work.
Good info. I'd love to see more about how to defend aganist these. At low levels these feudal pressure rushes tend to end with one of the players crumbling completely either by losing too many vils or messing up the macro at home.
Dude, overall the content you put out Hera is so enjoyable! Personally I don't even play aoe on a high level - at all. I still get pooped on by hard AI. Still your video's entertain me so much. You basically give insight in your massive aoe brain showing us all sorts of stuff you have in your mental archieve. It's great Hera, thanks for the great content brother.
13:00 I think VERY long ago SMUSH also used to mean "saracen monk rush", when you FC selling stone with their good market rates and then went all-in monks
Hard to get a castle up when you're going for an all-in strat, but getting their old tech Madrasah or whatever it was to make your monks return 70% of their gold cost when killed made Saracen monk/ siege pushes extra viable.
Hey man, congrats on your placing and your performance in TTL 2, thought you played really well. Tournament games between you and Viper are always my favorites, you always push each other to the absolute limit and it's just a joy to watch regardless of who wins with what score!
I've played 1 2v2 ranked game in my life. I'm too scared to play. Somehow, i convinced myself to play ranked. Me and my teammate were on the same brainwave pattern and did a drush in the exact same time without telling each other anything
Nice video but I see you missed my own personal favorite build of a random mishmash of units queued up out of one of each unit production building until hitting imperial age around 45 minutes and slapping down some random castles, getting every single upgrade, and pushing the easy AI down with about 8 trebs supported by a maxed out army around 1h30 mark. What's that build called?
I wonder if my favorite "wall everything extremely early and pretend it's an arena map because I wanted to play arena but rolled another map" strategy is in the list
Thanks for explaining the different builds! I do like to go castle into UU, but what is your recommended pop for this? Is it like 23+2 or something? Missed that from the vid
you mention drush and fast castle, u could have mention the old school "Drush to FC" like just a comment somewhere that explain how u can combine them! great video, Luv from MTL
i'm LOVING this new types of videos you are making hera! specially for low elo noobs like me, i love the tips and deep explanation about the game coming from a pro!
Hey Hera. You probably won’t see this but I directed two new players your way tonight! I played them online and beat them 2v1. They started messaging me “this game is so confusing I don’t know how to play” I sent them your way for some tips and tricks! I’ve been watching for I think 4 years now! Love it
@@ELGUAPOIV haha you missed the point completely bro but you do you! I had someone back out and they wanted to 2v1 me, it wasn’t about beating them, it was about teaching them and pointing them to heras channel boss!
I'm here for the same reason. I like this game a lot but I lost in 10 mins and made the same question for my opponent, and he sent me here. Much appreciated from you veterans!
Thanks Hera, this was a great video. It would also be good to understand the best way to counter each of these rushes. Also how do you counter Saracens TC drop? Thanks
You forgot the ever-popular (at my Elo) fast Feudal trade... but on a serious note good video. Might have been worth mentioning that Men At Arms can take down buildings, which is an advantage over other openings.
One of my favorite aspects of swordsmen! I always feel like I can't do much with scouts other than run around trying to not get caught by a spearman. But then there's archers...and MAA + skirms is too food intensive that early.. In fact, I basically just hate Feudal Age anything and its general existence. It's why Black Forest is so much better than Arabia: you actually get to use your civ's cool, powerful units and fight it out!
Just a small question: why are the drush and the man-at-arms rush so different? Are there downsides to starting with a drush, and then go for man-at-arms if your initial 3 militia survived?
they are different because they hit at different times and with different amounts of power. U absolutely can go for a drush then upgrade them to man at arms later, but then the man at arms upgrade comes in later than if u just went for the maa directly. That being said, every strat has its pros and cons
After seeing the thumbnail, I was thinking that being able to build improvized palisade-like bridges across rivers for a raid would be an awesome addition to AoE
Saw you wrote something about it on twitter already, but still going to mention it here: I'd be interesting in a video (or multiple) about dealing with certain military situations. For example playing against an all in, (monk+) siege push, triple stable etc. on Arabia/Arena. :)
If you drop a range right away in Feudal, what buildings are you building in Dark Age? I always build a lumber camp and a mill and focus on food to get to Feudal. Don't usually have enough wood to build a barracks til Feudal.
I mostly play 19-20 pop straight archers, i think it´s kinda fast, but maybe it´s better to go for maa first and then archers? sometimes the opponent is already walled and I'm not sure what to do then
I wonder how meta is to be slightly misleading with a meta strategy. Like pretending to want to start with one and instead doing another. It might cost half a minute or a minute more because you waste 1-2 units and the resources needed for it and maybe the building, but for that you can mislead and confuse the opponent. In intermediate play I had some success with it, but maybe in the highest tiers that half minute delay with the first attack might make it not worth it (because that could be enough for the opponent to finish walling or to start applying pressure)?
Isn't Trush more commonly seen as a maa trush these days ? It's way more threatening than a trush as you can kill buildings and you force military rather than just towers so your opponent can't rush to castle faster than you.
Great Video, thanks Hera. I am still wondering if Drush counters MAA or the other way around. Lierrey said in a video long time ago, drush has the upper hand because it hits earlier and holds the MAA at home. Recently I heard you commenting on Live Stream in one situation, that you go for MAA because you expect a drush of your enemy. I am confused now.
Thanks Hera, great video ! You mentioned 20 pop for archers and scouts but in your discord channel the build order (latest is Oct) is stil 21 or 22 pop. What am I missing ?
For M@A opening - is it ever better to destroy the mill/lumber camp than chase fleeing villagers? I've noticed 3 M@A are very quick to take down buildings. Thanks for the video!
Destroying buildings or forcing repairs is good value. Go for military buildings too. Best (assuming they take care of their vils) is to stay alive and be annoying for a long time
Can I put in a request for a vid that talks about effective responses to these openers? My biggest weakness is tower rushes because I find them so unintuitive. How do I punish a player doing that? Same with a drush. How do I make an opponents drush not only ineffective but also turn his aggression into a boon for me?
can we have a build up order( and maybe some adapting details) for those strategy. everytime i try to drush, i ruined my own eco instead of disturbing my opponent's.
Excellent! But in a map like arabia how do you decide wich strategy to follow? I lesrned scouts, archers and finally m@a+archers and I don't know when is better to play one over the others.
Depends on your´s and opponent civ. Build order alone gives you nothing. But since men at arms/scouts w. archers are pretty muc hstrongest feudal comp i think you can do that every game :D
I've heard some confusion around the term "flush" meaning "feudal rush", seeing as it refers to an archer rush specifically, at least in today's use. I'm wondering if it might have meant "fletching rush" originally, and then kind of got mixed up over the decades? Great video by the way! I always second guess what pop to click up at for different builds.
Next time, do a video about my favorite builds please - TC drop, vil rush, etc. All that stupid stuff that if done correctly gets you no gg from the opponent.
I love the late game, with tons of units, big fights and chaos, its sad that most of the meta strats are rushes, consisting of finishing the game the soonest possible, its like people its scared to play the actual game
The latest guy i would look for information about this game, no real explanation on any video with multiple examples of counters, how to switch villager tasks depending on situations etc
Hera, don't u think that the units should lower their efficiency (attack speed/ move speed/ gathering rate) while on low health? Exampl: -5% with 60% hp, -7% with 30%hp and -10% with 10% hp spreaded throughout the upper factors as a whole?
@@ryans8122 I still think that it would make the gameplay more interesting and force the more often use of monks which would probably lead to lowering their cost to 80 or 75g
Meta is shorthand for metagame, a generally agreed-upon good strategy by the community. This is term is ubiquitous across pretty much every competitive gaming community.
Got 8 ranked wins in a row yesterday all quit before castle age went with vikings because they have 20 percent more hit points on there infantry so you only have to build the barracks anyway smash a blacksmith down soon as you can upgrade infantry and attack with 5 infantry units and they all ended up quiting before castle age 😂
Elo? I like playing vikings or infantry civs in general, but i dont think 5 men at arms alone is any scary unless you got some sick timing on that. Literally only thing that opponent must do is place some walls and make few archers. To be fair I think this is the most fun way to play the game :D Infantry and monks are units of style :D Every bozo can win with paladin.
@@krystofcisar469 oh I just started playing on Xbox since it came out I dropped alot of games at start till I've learnt this tactic back up to 1100 points basically I'm using vikings 15 pop age up to feudal at 9 min right now sure I could learn to do it faster maby but not sure how and then with the 20 percent hit points they have on infantry and first blacksmith upgrades everyone quiting before they can get to castle age and I'm way ahead on that part
These are all highly appreciated..it's just great , accessible fundamentals for the game that comes with no stress. Many thanks!
U got it!
You missed the all-important AI openings: full skirms vs scouts, two range spear skirm archers mix, and of course, that 4d chess build where you make militia but don't send them across the map.
can we have militia?
we got militia at home.
militia at home: literally militias standing around at home
Extreme ai doesn’t do this
@@ihmpall uh... Yes it does. Start an Arabia game with goths or Bulgarians against an Incas or vikings extreme AI and hit it with a 20 or 21 pop MAA. Do it 10 times, I guarantee you that you will find 3 militias chilling in the ai's base at least once.
@@lbridetI ythe w
My fav is to make a random Build when the enemy scout shows up and delete it second after it leaves and make the couter to the counter works like 50% times
Great timing with you making these videos. I only started playing again maybe 6 weeks ago, and they've been a great aid in learning the game again. GGs
Thank you for all these amazing guides!!
Np enjoy!
I have been expecting this kind of content for a long time. Too little atention is brought to these more general but often obscure topics. I would love to hear your take on how te game flow or the stagea a match can go through work.
Good info. I'd love to see more about how to defend aganist these. At low levels these feudal pressure rushes tend to end with one of the players crumbling completely either by losing too many vils or messing up the macro at home.
I'm a noob, I see enemy I tower
Dude, overall the content you put out Hera is so enjoyable! Personally I don't even play aoe on a high level - at all. I still get pooped on by hard AI.
Still your video's entertain me so much. You basically give insight in your massive aoe brain showing us all sorts of stuff you have in your mental archieve.
It's great Hera, thanks for the great content brother.
Thanks Hera, just started playing on Xbox for the first time in a decade and your videos give me the edge in the battlefield!
I love so much your content Hera, so chill and detailed
13:00 I think VERY long ago SMUSH also used to mean "saracen monk rush", when you FC selling stone with their good market rates and then went all-in monks
Hard to get a castle up when you're going for an all-in strat, but getting their old tech Madrasah or whatever it was to make your monks return 70% of their gold cost when killed made Saracen monk/ siege pushes extra viable.
Thanks for the new content.
I play 3 mostly but will never stop playing 2.
Cannot wait for your vods about the new ancient return to Rome mod.
My favorite - Turks fast imp attempt straight into GG 😂. Now seriously great video thanks
Hey man, congrats on your placing and your performance in TTL 2, thought you played really well. Tournament games between you and Viper are always my favorites, you always push each other to the absolute limit and it's just a joy to watch regardless of who wins with what score!
I was looking into trying anything other than scout rushes, thanks for putting this together!
Your welcome!!
Great content. You are so good explaining as much as playing!!
You missed the dark age gg opening, very effective one of the fastest. jokes aside fantastic work bro, another great video.
Thank you Hera .... Always for the amazing content
Don’t forget my fellow LELs no opening is worth it if you idle your TC
I've played 1 2v2 ranked game in my life. I'm too scared to play. Somehow, i convinced myself to play ranked. Me and my teammate were on the same brainwave pattern and did a drush in the exact same time without telling each other anything
Nice video but I see you missed my own personal favorite build of a random mishmash of units queued up out of one of each unit production building until hitting imperial age around 45 minutes and slapping down some random castles, getting every single upgrade, and pushing the easy AI down with about 8 trebs supported by a maxed out army around 1h30 mark. What's that build called?
I wonder if my favorite "wall everything extremely early and pretend it's an arena map because I wanted to play arena but rolled another map" strategy is in the list
Your opening made aoe sound like chess. Very inspirational
Thanks for explaining the different builds! I do like to go castle into UU, but what is your recommended pop for this? Is it like 23+2 or something? Missed that from the vid
you mention drush and fast castle, u could have mention the old school "Drush to FC" like just a comment somewhere that explain how u can combine them! great video, Luv from MTL
i really wanted to see all the strats that you can go for in this meta
Okay, now we need a video about counter-play these strats!
i'm LOVING this new types of videos you are making hera! specially for low elo noobs like me, i love the tips and deep explanation about the game coming from a pro!
Hey Hera. You probably won’t see this but I directed two new players your way tonight! I played them online and beat them 2v1. They started messaging me “this game is so confusing I don’t know how to play” I sent them your way for some tips and tricks! I’ve been watching for I think 4 years now! Love it
I did see this! And thank you so much man, word of mouth goes a long way for my channel
Wow, good job beating 2 noobs. You are amazing
@@ELGUAPOIV haha you missed the point completely bro but you do you! I had someone back out and they wanted to 2v1 me, it wasn’t about beating them, it was about teaching them and pointing them to heras channel boss!
@@GoIndyGo18 Good job beating them. That is awesome.
I'm here for the same reason. I like this game a lot but I lost in 10 mins and made the same question for my opponent, and he sent me here. Much appreciated from you veterans!
amazing vid!
11:25 - making the walls as soon as you make a house; nice tip, thanks
Thanks Hera, this was a great video. It would also be good to understand the best way to counter each of these rushes. Also how do you counter Saracens TC drop? Thanks
lol the ones I found more interesting are the ones that causes the more headaches LOL Archer, Scout and Man-at-arms rush sounds really good
You forgot the ever-popular (at my Elo) fast Feudal trade... but on a serious note good video. Might have been worth mentioning that Men At Arms can take down buildings, which is an advantage over other openings.
One of my favorite aspects of swordsmen! I always feel like I can't do much with scouts other than run around trying to not get caught by a spearman. But then there's archers...and MAA + skirms is too food intensive that early.. In fact, I basically just hate Feudal Age anything and its general existence. It's why Black Forest is so much better than Arabia: you actually get to use your civ's cool, powerful units and fight it out!
You missed another FC strat:
Fast Castle into GG.
very popular as pocket^^
This combined with the top5 would be fun. There is top5 scout rush civs and archer rush but the others dont exist yet.
So much love for your content Hera, 🌸🥰
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 🌸🎸🌸🎸🌸💕🎸🌸🎸🌸
Just a small question: why are the drush and the man-at-arms rush so different? Are there downsides to starting with a drush, and then go for man-at-arms if your initial 3 militia survived?
they are different because they hit at different times and with different amounts of power. U absolutely can go for a drush then upgrade them to man at arms later, but then the man at arms upgrade comes in later than if u just went for the maa directly. That being said, every strat has its pros and cons
maybe a video/videos on how to defend vs the various rushes??
After seeing the thumbnail, I was thinking that being able to build improvized palisade-like bridges across rivers for a raid would be an awesome addition to AoE
I’ve always thought that! Even 20 darn years ago! Crazy small bridges never made it into the game, especially with all the newer DLCs
Saw you wrote something about it on twitter already, but still going to mention it here: I'd be interesting in a video (or multiple) about dealing with certain military situations. For example playing against an all in, (monk+) siege push, triple stable etc. on Arabia/Arena. :)
Yess!! Planning them soon
You didn't mention the fast imp into GG 😁
very useful tips, I just reached 9k elo after watching this :P
great video as allways, could you please do a video of how to defend a militia or man at arms rush? i=
"Scout rush [...] is extremely stable. * No pun intended." LoL!
If you drop a range right away in Feudal, what buildings are you building in Dark Age? I always build a lumber camp and a mill and focus on food to get to Feudal. Don't usually have enough wood to build a barracks til Feudal.
I mostly play 19-20 pop straight archers, i think it´s kinda fast, but maybe it´s better to go for maa first and then archers? sometimes the opponent is already walled and I'm not sure what to do then
If it's walled and you got both maa and archers you should be able to break in using the maa and keeping them from rewalling with the archers
2 men at arms are fine for that.
I wonder how meta is to be slightly misleading with a meta strategy. Like pretending to want to start with one and instead doing another. It might cost half a minute or a minute more because you waste 1-2 units and the resources needed for it and maybe the building, but for that you can mislead and confuse the opponent. In intermediate play I had some success with it, but maybe in the highest tiers that half minute delay with the first attack might make it not worth it (because that could be enough for the opponent to finish walling or to start applying pressure)?
Thank you my lord!
Damn, this is great!
Isn't Trush more commonly seen as a maa trush these days ? It's way more threatening than a trush as you can kill buildings and you force military rather than just towers so your opponent can't rush to castle faster than you.
At least not in arena.
if you could make some real quick BO for water maps or nomad ones
Have Hindustani had theor halbs removed? I cant remove them but tier tree says they have halbs.
Great Video, thanks Hera. I am still wondering if Drush counters MAA or the other way around. Lierrey said in a video long time ago, drush has the upper hand because it hits earlier and holds the MAA at home. Recently I heard you commenting on Live Stream in one situation, that you go for MAA because you expect a drush of your enemy. I am confused now.
Pretty sure man at arms is kinda the counter BUT its extremely hard to play it out
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Alright, thank you for that quick answer!
Thanks Hera, great video ! You mentioned 20 pop for archers and scouts but in your discord channel the build order (latest is Oct) is stil 21 or 22 pop. What am I missing ?
Those are slightly outdated
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 any chance to have an updated build orders for us ?
For M@A opening - is it ever better to destroy the mill/lumber camp than chase fleeing villagers? I've noticed 3 M@A are very quick to take down buildings. Thanks for the video!
This is a question I ask myself when Japanese or goth, who can torch buildings insanely fast.
Destroying buildings or forcing repairs is good value. Go for military buildings too. Best (assuming they take care of their vils) is to stay alive and be annoying for a long time
We need more scholar in our university, glad you can teach more
do we have data on how often each of those strategies are played?
Can you recommend a 20 pop archer build (that works for Mayans?) I use an old 23 pop build into 2 ranges, which is fine but a bit slow!
What are the names of the mods you use to improve UI?
Hera, you need to continue your ultimate guide civs for all of them bro!
Can I put in a request for a vid that talks about effective responses to these openers? My biggest weakness is tower rushes because I find them so unintuitive. How do I punish a player doing that? Same with a drush. How do I make an opponents drush not only ineffective but also turn his aggression into a boon for me?
Where can I get good modern build orders?
Where can I learn the updated builds you mentioned? Still on 22 pop scouts...
Will make them soon
can we have a build up order( and maybe some adapting details) for those strategy. everytime i try to drush, i ruined my own eco instead of disturbing my opponent's.
What about horsecolar? What meta with arche play, do i pick it up asap after 1st range and blacksmith or delay till castleuptime for exmpl?
if opponent is on fires why not add a demo to the galleys?
Excellent! But in a map like arabia how do you decide wich strategy to follow? I lesrned scouts, archers and finally m@a+archers and I don't know when is better to play one over the others.
Depends on your´s and opponent civ. Build order alone gives you nothing. But since men at arms/scouts w. archers are pretty muc hstrongest feudal comp i think you can do that every game :D
discord link not working
where do i get these 20pop archer build orders?
Like literally everywhere, everybody does that :D
You forgot the new 8 pop scouts. Poop lord is the new Hera
Ahn i was thinking when its worth to get “suplies”? Its early feudal, or only to mass units?
Supplies is only worth it if you want to commit to the militia line.
I only use it if i go 2 barracks men at amrs.
Missed the ultra classic! Forward barracks, mass Militia, destroy his buildings and add second barracks for more Militia! 20+ is a good number
I've heard some confusion around the term "flush" meaning "feudal rush", seeing as it refers to an archer rush specifically, at least in today's use. I'm wondering if it might have meant "fletching rush" originally, and then kind of got mixed up over the decades?
Great video by the way! I always second guess what pop to click up at for different builds.
fletching rush is a good way to look at it 11. thanks for the words bro glad it helps
Now do every non-meta opening
It's pretty outdated at this point, but Resonance22's "break the meta" series is great if you want to see recordings of that kind of thing.
why no fast imp strategy?
07:40
My elo level: didn't understand the pun
I think the nomad start should be included here as well.
You forgot the noboar opening, when you eat the boars with tc, and go fast skirmishers😅
how about starting with a good conversation while both booming our economy
My favourite is the fast Imp into GG
Tower rush is the most entertaining form of play
Next time, do a video about my favorite builds please - TC drop, vil rush, etc. All that stupid stuff that if done correctly gets you no gg from the opponent.
Oh I always gg a vill rush. Bring back Socotra!
8:09 didn't know they made some villagers gay, that's great
What about the Toxic Archer Rush (TAR) 11 (Alt title: Fastest Archer Rush).
Edit: It's popular with 1600-1800 elos. Some of them it's all they do 11
What s about that?
How does that work?
Where is the fast imp amigoo
Tower rush is by far the most fun
I love the late game, with tons of units, big fights and chaos, its sad that most of the meta strats are rushes, consisting of finishing the game the soonest possible, its like people its scared to play the actual game
The latest guy i would look for information about this game, no real explanation on any video with multiple examples of counters, how to switch villager tasks depending on situations etc
I lost 4 matches of 4v4 pvp tonight...everyone did castle rush which was...annoying.
Where is FI into GG?
U don tseee that on arabia or open maps :D
You missed the fish boom.
What about „fast gg“ ? 🤭
Hera, don't u think that the units should lower their efficiency (attack speed/ move speed/ gathering rate) while on low health? Exampl: -5% with 60% hp, -7% with 30%hp and -10% with 10% hp spreaded throughout the upper factors as a whole?
It makes logical sense but AoE isn't meant to be realistic and it would be too big of a change to keep current players happy
@@ryans8122 I still think that it would make the gameplay more interesting and force the more often use of monks which would probably lead to lowering their cost to 80 or 75g
thats another way to buff poles and poles are already the best for a while
This thumbnail looks like a blurry pizza
The eagles opening
how many pop for a maa rush with a generic civ ? 22 still good ?
22 is ok, im doing 20 pop myself these days
How about defining acronyms when you use them. Not everyone knows what META stands for.
Meta is shorthand for metagame, a generally agreed-upon good strategy by the community. This is term is ubiquitous across pretty much every competitive gaming community.
where be my fast imp of my Lithuanian drush
Got 8 ranked wins in a row yesterday all quit before castle age went with vikings because they have 20 percent more hit points on there infantry so you only have to build the barracks anyway smash a blacksmith down soon as you can upgrade infantry and attack with 5 infantry units and they all ended up quiting before castle age 😂
Elo? I like playing vikings or infantry civs in general, but i dont think 5 men at arms alone is any scary unless you got some sick timing on that. Literally only thing that opponent must do is place some walls and make few archers. To be fair I think this is the most fun way to play the game :D Infantry and monks are units of style :D Every bozo can win with paladin.
@@krystofcisar469 oh I just started playing on Xbox since it came out I dropped alot of games at start till I've learnt this tactic back up to 1100 points basically I'm using vikings 15 pop age up to feudal at 9 min right now sure I could learn to do it faster maby but not sure how and then with the 20 percent hit points they have on infantry and first blacksmith upgrades everyone quiting before they can get to castle age and I'm way ahead on that part
@@krystofcisar469 I'm on 11 win streak right now loving it 😁 sure it will get harder thoe right as I level up I guess
@@1hp_strayed 3 months later, how has it gone?
why does the icon of this video look like a pizza