It’s been about 2-3 months since I came here for some advice. Back then I needed help to make the jump from Moderate AI to the Hard AI, which I could never beat. I received some very helpful pointers and as a result I’m consistently beating Hardest, even trading matches evenly against the Extreme and also plucked up the nerve to try some ranked games
In trying to improve further, I’m back with a some more questions.
I’ve discovered that I tend to favor Cavalry civs. There are several reasons such as high HP and mobility, but the main one is basically that you can look away to manage your eco for a moment without fear that you’ll lose your entire army to Mangonel shot as is the case with Archer civs…
Now the problem is that I feel as if my play has become too one dimensional using pure cavalry strategies. I’ve learned Scouts into Knights or Scouts into UU/Cav Archers and more often than not that’s enough for the AI. However against human players it’s not really possible to go with 1 type of unit unless you can hit too hard too early and obviously that’s rare.
I guess where this long post is leading is me asking for some tips on Archer use. Is it a matter of becoming much faster play-wise? I mean I really struggle to look to my eco when in Castle Age due to opponent siege… Should I move away from the opponents base every time I need to reseed farms or make a new building for example…?
Also, supposing I start with Scouts/Knights, is there an optimal time for tech switching into something else? I tend to get tunnel vision sometimes and keep making Knights despite my opponent getting some Pikemen on the field… That way I’ve essentially sent food and gold down the drain… For example do I stop making any more Knights the moment I see Pikemen and immediately make something else?
I know these are more complex questions than tips to beat the Hard AI and some may simply come to experience, but again any pointers and advice are very welcome.
You will not progress any further until you learn to use and abuse simple control groups. Simple commands to consider for control grouping, early on make sure your scout is bound to 1. Get used to tabbing between your scout and your TC. That’ll help you get used to tabbing between a forward army and your economy at home, but the trick to doing it well is Spacebar.
Your spacebar (if you haven’t rebound it) automatically focuses your screen on the last sound queue given to you. So, alarm bells ring, spacebar will take you directly to what’s been attacked. This also works for your control groups, since when you select a unit or building it gives you a unit/building reaction. So, after grouping units, pressing the group number and then hitting spacebar will center your screen directly on what you’ve selected, allowing for rapid retasking.
TC button → AA → 1 or, if you need a building or to retask villagers, TC button → spacebar → do the things → 1 → spacebar will get you quickly back into the fight. Get used to doing this all the time, don’t just tab back and forth when you know you need to do something, do it whenever you can manage the APM. Get comfortable with it, it’ll make your micromanagement 1,000x better.
You can also bind TC’s to a hotkey group, if you really want to, but there’s already default “go to next TC” buttons in the options for keybinds, consider resetting those to whatever you think you want TC’s bound to, and it’ll save you the trouble of having to bind them in-game.
I’ve started trying to use control groups, but I know I need a lot of work. It’s easier to manage in the early game when there’s less going on, but it becomes almost impossible by mid-game…
So far I always put my starting Scout on Group 1 and when I do a Scout Rush, I put my Scout party in Group 2. In Feudal Age it’s manageable to jump between them and my eco. I also have changed some Hotkeys from “Go To” to “Select All”. This helps for example when I want a Blacksmith upgrade or sell resources to the Market, because I can do it without my screen jumping to these buildings for no reason.
Things get tricky though in Castle Age, because I have a lot more eco to manage and also a lot more army instead of a single Scout party… There I kinda lose it and don’t know what units to group where… I suppose I do need practice jumping back and forth, that is definitely true.
PS: Can you explain a little more about the Space Bar please? I’m afraid I’ve tasked it to “Select All TCs” it helps me produce multiple Vills faster, but what you describe sounds very convenient!
I think there is no general answer when you should do a tech switch. If you have 20 knights and you see 5 pikes without upgrades you shouldn’t be scared. It depends a lot on the numbers and the upgrades and even then you shouldnt necessarily stop producing knights.
It’s just a mistake if you charge with your knights in a big group of pikes.
Even if pikes counter them you have to remember that your unit is way more mobile. So it is always an option(except if your opponent is full stonewalled)to dodge his army and raid your opponent. This way he will always have to run after you and lose eco at the same time.
If you want to task TC’s to a button, use a number-row button. You can task that to just being “3” and then you never have to control group them. Then it gives you more practice with using the group hotkeys. Just remember not to use CG “#” in game.
This is what spacebar defaults to. “Go to selected object.” It’s meant to be the counterpart button to the CG’s, since getting control of the units doesn’t center the map on them. You press the CG button for the units you want to take control of, and then Spacebar to immediately center your screen on them.
If you aren’t using this hotkey to snap back and forth, it’s going to be a real nightmare to try to micromanage everything since you have to physically move your screen to the units, or back to your TC.
The “Go to next TC” button (it’s a side mouse button by default) snaps to the TC when you use it, which isn’t always what you want in combat, but you could rebind that to “select all TC’s” if you wanted, with the intent of just using spacebar to snap back to base if you need to micro some villagers.
If you get used to tabbing between groups and TC’s regularly, you’ll be more able to keep your TC running without losing your army to a mangonel. If you don’t, best stick to knights rather than losing your archers to scroll back and make villagers or lose the game to micro your archers at the cost of your economy.
If you don’t like using the spacebar, simply double tap the number of the control group and it does the same (e.g. 1 1).
As to your main question, playing archers comes with all sorts of advantages as well as drawbacks you mentioned. You do indeed need to keep more of an eye on an Archer army. What I see pros do, usually, is that if they are at the front with xbows, and an enemy mangonel is present, that they make sure their archers are not marching forward as they look away to their eco. This way there is less chance of running into mangonel fire.
If you’ve mastered scouts into knights and encountered a lot of countering with spears, it might be an idea to play with skirms/archers in feudal after your scout rush. Going skirms can counter the opponent if he’s making archers, while going archers yourself means that the latter cannot make spears since they’ll get sniped. Not only that, having a few ranged units at the start of Castle Age means you can counter pikemen, making your knight rush even more dangerous.
A few pikemen shouldn’t be a problem for your knights. Simply keep running around their base, fine openings and snipe vills. You can always run away from pikemen. And if your opponent splits them up to cover more ground, you can easily pick off lone pikemen. If he then masses pikemen, you could consider tech switching, either into xbows (if your civ has arb it works best), skirmishers or pikemen (as secondary unit, depends on whether the opponent is making cavalry or not), or CA (but since it takes time to mass them, you need to know you are ahead, like if you killed a bunch of vills with your knights).
For the rest, the midgame is all about adapting, so play knights if possible but sometimes other options can be preferable.
good to know. I just always used spacebar since it’s useful if you need to look at something, not do something, and don’t need to change selection, as you can pan over to a wall right quick, then snap back, even if the unit isn’t hotkeyed.
I didn’t know the “Go to Selected Object” thing was something to be done.
The way I set it up now is that I use the default “H” if want to jump between individual TCs and Space if I want to Select All TCs for quicker Vill creation or if I want an upgrade without my screen jumping to a TC while I’m doing something else.
My mouse has 2 side keys. I bound one of them to Control to group units faster (though as I said I suck at this when mid-game arrives and there’s plenty to do). The other key I bound to Shift. The idea was to make it easier to queue multiple units at the later stages, though I can tell I don’t use it as much as I intended.
I’ll try to experiment a bit with this “Go to Selected Object” thing and see how it works out. So far, to jump to the action I double tap the Ctrl number and it takes me there. This works wonderfully in Feudal, but badly in mid-game when I create more units than I can honestly manage in Ctrl groups… I’m starting to worry, it’s simply a matter of me needing to get faster
Yep that’s what I do, or try to at least. As I said above, it’s just tough in mid-game because I create more military units and I find it difficult to manage multiple military groups… I can handle the eco plus a Scout party in Feudal for example, but eco plus 3 groups Knights/Siege/Monks is still beyond me… Maybe I just need to git gud/faster lol
I like what you suggest though. Yes, I’ve kinda mastered Scouts into Knights. I wouldn’t say my execution is perfect, but it is reasonable and I definitely know the mechanics. Mixing Skirms sounds fine, because the do well against Pikes too. Plus if you somehow lose them, at least they don’t cost gold. Their mico is similar to Archers so it’s good first step. I think Hera has a nice video showing this strategy, I’ll see if I can track it down
As for your last point, I really hope I can improve this. I always think exactly that before a game, when the Pikes come, just send the Knights to his eco. Frustratingly though, I always seem to get tunnel vision and focus on the one spot where the opponent pressures me… Essentially I worry that if I send the Knights elsewhere, the Pikes will have a clear path to my eco. I have to work on this.
