# A few questions about 1v1 by a new player **URL:** \ **Category:** II - Discussion\ **Created:** [May 31, 2021, 8:44am UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/a-few-questions-about-1v1-by-a-new-player/132230 "2021-05-31T08:44:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![Green4uu](https://forums.ageofempires.com/user_avatar/forums.ageofempires.com/green4uu/32/75756_2.png) [@Green4uu](https://forums.ageofempires.com/u/Green4uu)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2021, 8:44am UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/a-few-questions-about-1v1-by-a-new-player/132230/1 "2021-05-31T08:44:04Z")
Hi, I am a new player at around 1150 elo and I am trying to learn this game intuitively without looking up any build orders or similar really, but there are many things that raise a question when I play: 1. managing castle age economy is something I generally struggle with. Depending on army composition, you want a different number of farmers etc., for example, 2 Stable Knights is different from trying to mass Crossbow. Are there any empirical rules here? E.g., to get out 2 Stable Knights, you need about 20 farmers and around 12 on gold, or something like that 2. I often struggle defending my villagers in mid-castle age and onward. When I watch streamers like DauT or Viper, I think the biggest difference between me and them is that they wall more tightly and have a lower villagers/TC ratio (in other words, most of their villagers in mid-castle age are always close to a TC so they are easy to defend). Any tips here? I feel that overall I tend to be too spread out around the map. 3. I sometimes struggle to keep constant production of Villagers and especially units. My idle time regarding Villagers is highest in mid- to late-Feudal Age as I try to either have aggression or defend. My unit of choice production typically can have idle time in early Castle Age. Any tips here to have better multi-tasking, or is it something that comes with experience? I generally use control groups, 5 for all TCs and 3 for primary and 4 for secondary unit 4. this is perhaps a bit more specific, but I recently gave up on maining all civs because I realized that build orders are unit-dependent, so it’s not worth for me to learn for example how to get out Mangudai as soon as possible (requires to go early to Stone) if I don’t plan on playing Mongols. Anyway, one of the civs I decided to main is Malay as I feel they have fairly interesting options and can be strong without necessarily being noob-friendly like Franks. Most of my losses with Malay have been to some high-mobility builds such as mass Mangudai, mass Tarkan, mass cav archer and so on. Are Malay naturally weak to mobility/cavalry archer civs? Intuitively I feel the only 2 counters Malay have to mobility are Halberdier (which requires you to chase down cavalry around the map inside your own eco, which I feel is a lot of micro for not so high reward), Skirmisher (which I feel is not an actual Cav Archer counter in 1v1s because Cav Archers can easily run away) and defensive Castles. Of these 3 options, I feel the only practical one in 1v1s is defensive Castle. Opinions here? I find that if I get to mid-Imperial Age as Malay vs say Mongols, I can’t win because I get picked apart on different parts of the map. This is all for now, I might post more later, thanks in advance for the responses! --- _[View the full topic](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/a-few-questions-about-1v1-by-a-new-player/132230)._