[Collection] Buildorders

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Hi!
Many of you know, I sometimes make specialised buildorders. Most of the time with the bonusses of new patches or ##############
I want to share occasional builds I do for fun here with you.
But this Thread isn’t only for me, but all. So feel free to post your own Builds here you want to share with the community.

Also if you have ideas bu don’t know how to make your own buildorders feel free to ask. If I like the idea I will make a build that’s optimzed for what you want to do.

Please be aware that I usually make “high profile” builds if not asked for making them more forgiving. Some of them are so tight you usually will even get some idle TC time with them.

If there’s interest, I can look to make Buildorders according to the new Buidlorder Meta which Hera describes in his newest Video. Though it would probably be the easiest to just copycat them from the current pro games.

To start, I just made a Buildorder for a 21 Pop Cuman Ramtrush into Boom.

It’s basically only usable on Arena as you need your Walls to protect cause it will heavily delay your Castle Age timing. Also you want to pivot to your Hunt as fast as possible as part of the build is delaying the Mill. So you want to push in your Deer asap. You don’t want to make too many Rams (usually 2-3 rams is enough). It’s really only to buy you as much time as possible to get your Cuman Boom rolling. I figured out Rams and Towers synergize pretty well as to kill the Rams the opponent has to use his vills which then can be targeted by the Towers. Don’t forget to repair the Rams with your Vills when they are attacked by the opponent Villagers, especially if you dive the opponent TC (to do that you need your Towers in range to give firecover to the whole ram, also having at least 3 Rams for that is recommendet). Chose the spots for your Towers wisely. The first is to break in through a gate (the first ram makes that breaking much faster already). After that you need to adapt to what the opponent is doing. Don’t forget you don’t have a followup, so the opponent can actually leave you in. You then have the option to either threaten his TC or try to hit his ressources. If the opponent decides to contain your Trush you have the option to use your rams to threaten a breakthrough or just start a new attempt from another angle.
If the opponent trushes you, you can make the Siege Workshop at home and use the Rams to batter down his Towers. As you are already on stone you should also be able to make countertowers.
Note that at Vill 29 you have the option to put that vill either on Wood or Gold. Wood is to get faster to boom (which I recomment in most situations), but with Gold you can make more Rams and apply more pressure on the opponent. This might be useful in various situations.
After the Buildorder you put more vills on Wood until you can make the 2nd TC. Use the vills from the overloaded 1st Lumber Camp for it, it is designed to be less efficient at this point. With the 6 vills on Berries and 4 on Farms you should have enough food to afford Horsecollar and still sustain VIll production until you have added more Farms.
When you hit about 20 Farms you can make Wheelbarrow and a Market. Don’t be afraid at some point to ilde your TCs and use the Market to get up. You should have a nice eco lead anyways.

Vill To Further Actions
1-3 Houses => Food
4 Food
5 Food
6 Food (Hunt)
7 Lumber Camp
8 Wood
9 Wood
10 Wood
11 Wood
12 House => Wood
13 Food
14 Food
15 Food
16 Food
17 House => Gold Mining Camp
18 Food
19 Food
20 Food
Loom
Up to Feudal after Hunt 3 to Lumber Camp, 1 to Stone mining Camp
at about 25 % send 5 Vills forward
21 Stone Make Blacksmith with the 3 Vills on new Lumber Camp, Trush, DBA
22 Mill Don’t forget to make Houses with the trushers, build a Siege Workshup
23 Berries Wall in your Tower, make a Ram
26 Berries Make 4 early farms with your Shepherds
27 Berries
28 Stone
29 Wood (or Gold)
30 Berries
31 Berries
2 Likes
3

The next one is for Arabia. Mostly TGs, but can be used on 1v1 too. But then be aware that it’s a very specialised build that doesn’t allows for much adaption.
It’s the specialised builds for Mayans to do the currenly more and more popular premill archer Rush. It’s designed for 2 Ranges + ######### with a 21 pop up (which is equivalent to a 20 pop for most other civs).
Imo Mayans are the only civ that can make that work with this timing. Basically all Mayan bonusses come into play. Better Eco with 1 more vill. Cheaper Walls. Cheaper Archers.
But probably the most important is the longer lasting ressources whoch give you almost 300 extra food just from Sheep and Hunt. The only other civ that has a comparable Food Bonus is Tatars, but the Tatars have basically nothing elso that helps here.

The Build I designed is very tight. If you want to make it a bit more easy, you can/should make a House and put to wood with the 16th Vill and not the 15th. This gives you a bit more Food to get up and also delays your second Range a bit so your eco isn’t as tight in the begiining of Feudal. Ofc this reduces your army size slughtly, but it probably allows you to get ######### without idling your TC (I had always a bit of idle time after getting ###########
When you stop producing Archers at some point and use the market you can get Castle age Timings below 20 minutes. If you constanly produce you probably will end up at 21-22 minutes.
The build intentionally skips eco upgrades in Horsecollar and Gold Mining. As imo with the all-in nature of the build getting a better timig is just better with it. Ofc you can try to get some at some point, but it will probably be quite late in feudal and you won’t get that much out of them anymore.
Note that with making the mill so late you will then also have a lot of vills (8 exactly) taking the berries. They are basically your only food source then. Distribute them well and make sure you don’t get pushed of the berries (you have a lot of army and your walls should be up).
The build is designed for the standard 2 boars + 3 deer +8 sheep start. If you have more it should only be easier as this would allow you to leave some vills on your TC food after your mill is up, diversifying the food supply more.

Vill To Further Actions
1-4 3 Houses => Food
Loom
5 Food
6 Food
7 Food
8 Lumber Camp
9 Wood
10 Wood
11 Wood
12 Food
13 Food
14 Food
15 House=>Wood
16 Food
17 Mining Camp
18 Food
19 Lumber Camp
20 Wood Drop off Food in TC
Up to Feudal Immediately put 1 more to Gold
+ 4 more to 2nd Lumber Camp
+ 2 Vills to wall/make Houses/Barracks
21 Food DBA, 2 Archery Ranges (with wallers(
22 Gold
23 Gold Blacksmith
24 Gold
25 Gold Archer Attack: Fletching
26 Mill Queue Shepherds to Berries
27 Berries
28+ Gold or Farm
Farms Market

Any Wishes?

Edit: ###### = Flet
ching

5

Not really sure about some details of the BO - I find the 7 on food to start really weird and assume its because vill 7 lures a boar, but thats a weird timing for mayans (your 6 shepherds will have just started the second sheep, so you lose a lot of food to decay). So i lure the boar with the 6th vill already but that might not be consistantly possible (because you are not guaranteed to find the boar that early). Overall, I just find some details a bit unclear.

My bigger concern is that the eco balance does not really work out. You send 11 vills to wood and keep them there, but this just results in a big wood stockpile that i dont understand. By vill 28, you will have about 400 wood extra and you still want us to send 8 vills to berries instead of droping earlier farms? Tbh i dont really get why.

Imho this BO can be improved a lot by

  • not sending so much to wood so early (you have 7 on wood before clicking up). Just send them to food instead, making the click up to feudal more consistent and less reliant on deer pushing (or just a faster uptime, but then you cant afford to keep the 2 ranges running).
  • not sending so much to wood permanently, instead just sending 8-10 to the lumber camps and taking some wood from straggelers while going up; after getting up your infrastructure, you can retask them to either gold for more consistant archer production or farms for a better castle age time.
6

Yes that’s uncommon, agree. But it works out in the end. It’s an unusual Buildorder that tries to get the res you need at the relevant stages of the game.
Taking the boar with the 7th vill is usually the way I do it with a 7 vill on food start. That works when the Boar isn’t too far from your TC. If it’s quite far you can just take on of the 6 vills from the sheep shortly before the 7th vill comes out to lure the boar.

That’s just not possible with that build. You need the deer otherwise you don’t get the food you need. It’s that easy. Ofc this necesarily makes it an “advanced” buildorder. But it’s intended to work on the highest level of competition so… I don’t see how I could simplify it tbh. Cause you just need the deer, there’s no way around it.

11 on wood is a bit much for later feudal age stages. That’s true. But you need them to make all the Buildins in early Feudal. Also the archers cost some wood. When I played it, I didn’t felt like it was too much wood. in early to mid feudal you have enouh stuff to do with it and later I usually just sold some at the market to get up faster (but not more than 200). And then I needed it again as the 8 Vills on Berries were put to Farms.aswell.
For me this worked out, but if you like you can try to improve it.
The market usage is also part of the build. As you can add farms only that late, regardless of if you stop making archers after like 10 or produce continuosly and add more farms (with your berry vills aswell). Your foodbank witll be behind the opponents. So it’s recommended to use the Market to get a comparably fast Castle age timing.

It’s ofc an option. Maybe I will test that at some point with 5+4 on lumber camps and 2 on stragglers until all essential feudal buildings are made. This might probably indeed improve the little bit of food shortage I got with the build at that stage.
I also used the wallers to make houses and made a farm with one of them when he was finished on his side, whilst I closed the leftopen gaps on the back with the other. The houses in the walls also need some wood.

The thing is, as weird the build make look for aesthetics, it does it’s job. You get out the most archers with ######### at any stage of the game than with any other build I have seen so far. Plus you even get walled. That’s what I aimed for.

Well the whole point of the Build is skipping the mill so you can actually afford all the stuff that early and with this few vills. There is no place for early Farms in this build as there is no Mill. The mill is only added at the perfect time when the other free food ressource run out. And that is also the time where you don’t have to make other essential buildiings anymore and you therefore can use all your wood to add farms.

As I said, the build is about getting 2 Ranges running with ######### with a 21 pop (= 20 pop for almost all other civs) uptime. It’s a built thats optimized for the current TG flank meta. It’s just not possible to make the same stuff with any other civ than Mayans.

8

See, this is where I dont agree with you.
The reason you send 6 to food at the start is that this number is needed to keep the TC running. The reason you sometimes start with 7 is because if the 7th vill lures the boar, he will arrive just about in time for the second sheep to be fully or at least mostly gone, but for Mayans, this does not work out because their sheep have essentially more food.

Next up, you send 7 vills to wood in dark age. This wood will only be relevant once you hit feudal. Again, you collect res that you dont immediatly need and my big question is…why?

You even say that there is no way around the relying on perfect deer pushes, when i just told you the very simple solution of taking more food before sending so many too wood.

Overall, its not a bad build. Its pretty solid, as its very close to a standard flank BO. However, all the changes you make to the standard BOs dont click for me. You go to wood earlier than with usual build, without needing more wood in dark age. You click up pretty late as a result, without getting too much compensation. You delay your mill more than normal, despite floating the wood for a while before that. You send more to wood and less to gold with the intent of abusing the market, but that would be more efficient when going for more gold in the first place.

Imho what this build lacks is both purpose and streamlining. Why would you choose this build over the more standard 18pop archers, what is the plan behind that (or to be more precise, why is it worth beeing nearly 1 min later to feudal for a bit more consistant archer production?). And if there indeed is purpose, it needs lots of streamlining; I already mentioned some things, eg sending less to wood early on, using the straggeleres instead of having 11 on wood all of feudal, getting the mill earlier to unlock farms and spend your wood, and so on.

10

Can you wall with your 18 pop archer builds?
When can you add the 2nd range and the blacksmith + ######### there?
Not speaking about i’ve seen a lot of times people don’t even having enough wood to immediately make an archery range with these or placing the barracks too late and so on. My build allows for a way smoother placement of the buildings cause guess what? You got WOOD!

Maybe you prefer it like this. But I think this Mayans build (maybe with some little tweaks here and there) is the strongest flank opener in the current meta.

Maybe it floats some wood at some times, but it’s only to have that wood awailable at the stages when you need it. The idea with the Stragglers is good. But I don’t think there’s much room for other improvement tbh.

Have you ever considered after shooting the boar to just put 2-3 vills back to the sheep to finish it and queue them to the boar? it’s 3 easy clicks.
It’s standard procedure actually to actually try lure the boar a bit ahead of time. It’s better this way than if your vills get idled or have to start a new sheep cause your lure got delayed.

12

A bit more humility would serve you well. There is currently a huge team game tournament going on and nobody in the gold league uses builds that are as slow as the one you propose (on arabia, before this gets taking out of context…). If you try this versus opponents with crisp BOs and good execution, you die very quickly.

Yeah, the early walls might be something you usually can’t afford with faster builds. And for beginners, there might actually be a point in using a weaker, slower build at first and wall more before they learn how to defend with superior military. But your build is not this, because if you want it to be easy, you need to take food a bit earlier instead of all that wood in dark age (making the click up way easier); and it most certainly is a long shot away from the strongest build out there.

I am not saying that players below 1500, below 2000 or below 2200 are not allowed to post their BOs; it can be fun to discuss them. But if players way above your (and my) rank do stuff differently, we should ask ourselves why instead of just telling us that our builds are the strongest.

13

In germany we have a name for people like you. “Levitenleser”

Somebody who’s basically permanently occupied by dressing others down and tell them how bad they would be.

When I wouldn’t think my build would be an improvement and counter the mentioned builds I wouldn’t have any purpose to post it. Maybe I’m wrong. But I think the current builds out there haven’t emerged from a reflective analysis of the meta gamaplay. They emerged from the idea to make the standard buildorders faster. My build tries to catch the underlying concepts and, hit the necesary timings with the eco and improve it at the same time by adding walls to it.

Maybe the walls arent necesary at the pro level. But for all other levels I can tell you with such a tight build that is so reliant on certain ressources the walls are just essential.

I think this discussion is over.

14

Well I assumed you wanted to discuss your BOs since you posted them in a forum - the place meant for public discussions. But saddly, you reject any serious discussion and once again, you just made up stuff when you noticed you were wrong.

But it is amazing to me how much stuff you make up now. Levitenleser is not a german word, not really. Since “Leviten” and “Leser” are german words and german has no restrictions on compound words, you can ofc form it, but it isn’t used; it has no “Duden” entry and hardly ever appears in printed books, in fact, it appears about 25times less often than “Age of Empires” (censorship wont let me paste the link here but just look it up on Ngram, its rather funny).
The few times people use the word it also has a different meaning than what you imply: Someone who harshly, but rightfully critizices people. Maybe it has some more use and a slightly different meaning in some local dialect, but “in german” the word is certainly not used in the way you claim it is.
More on topic, you claim that your build is meant as a counter to the fast 18pop archer build that flank players on arabia use. However, this can’t be true because just this morning, you asked if 18pop archer can afford double range production and +1 (it can), so do you really claim to have created a counter to a build which you dont even know? You also oppened by stressing how your build skips horse collar and gold mining (something every flank player does and has done for years), further showing how oblivious you are to the team game meta - if every build does it, why mention it as a speciality of your build?

Im not writing this to show how wrong you are (although I have to admit it kinda is funny), but because I actually like discussing BOs. But a discussion of BOs is not possible if a player does not want to hear the downsides of a build (and think about ways to fix those) and instead makes up some stuff about how its all on purpose, even when he obviously never thought about those points before.

19

You know what helps against the urgent need to criticize others?
Make your own stuff. Get rid of the restrictions you build up in your head. Get rid of the fear of being laughed at, criticized and what else of the others.
When you allow yourself to make your own things your need to criticize others miraculously evaporates.

If you know it so much better, why don’t you post your own BO and we make a poll which is better?

20

I work as a curator. Making stuff and putting it out there is litteraly my job. But there are two key differences between us. I dont curate just anything. I know where my field of expertise is, and the further away a topic is from my field of expertise, the more careful I am in research and the more I search out other experts.
The second one is more important. I see critique as a gift. If someone critizices my work, a double check, and when they are right, I fix it.

This is what I dont understand: Why do you assume critique to be hostile? I genuinly dont understand why you post BOs here, if not to get critique to improve them.

21

Well it’s definitely not Buildorders Mate :wink:
At least not if you don’t even try. I was terrible at buildorders when I begun. Now I feel quite comfortable making even unusual buildorders with putting 7 on food initially.
Why don’t explain that to you? Because you wouldn’t understand it anyways. Just try the build and you will see how it performs.

The build also works fine with putting 1-2 on stragglers after clicking up to feudal (instead of putting them on 2nd lumber camp). Maybe it’s even a bit smoother than as you can put them to food once you have all the wood for the necesary feudal buildings.

22

If this is supposed to be an insult, you failed. Yes, I know where my field of expertise is and yes, it is not AoE2 BOs. I never claimed it was, and why would it be? The highest rank i have ever been was 800, usually i sit around top 1.3k; I never played in a tournament and never worked closly with a professional player. Its very obvious to everyone that I am no expert and there is absolutly no need to stress this.

However, I am still good enough to have spotted several mistakes in the build you posted at first glance, one of them so obvious you even had to admit it by now,while you sadly refused to seriously discuss the other ones. Which kinda brings me back to my question from earlier, why do you post BOs in a forum if not to criticially discuss their potential for improvement?

24

Sorry, but you failed to express what you see as “mistake” imo.
Please learn to accurately describe what you criticize, without this shilly-shally. Then we can start discussing.

Edit:

Ok I initially read this wrong. I read you said i didn’t armit 11. But you said actually I admitted somthing.
And you want that I admit to everything you say i did “wrong” in your eyes. Whilst you don’t even reply to anything when I actually said that you actually put out absolutely weird demands on the buildorder.
I’m done with you. You only want me to confess some made-up “mistakes” you arbitrarily define.

That’ won’t happen, sorry. I don’t know why you want me to subject to your arbitrary demands. Forget it. I won’t waste my time with your weird demandings anymore. It’s not even about the BO you only have a personal ad aversion against me. I don’t know why but that doesn’t give you the permission to stalk me through my postings and put weird demands on what I should do or not.

25

At first you were pretty reluctant:

Later, you wrote

and

So you agree with one of my points, I concluded. If this is wrong, im sorry, but you really made it seem like you did. If someone points out an improvement to your build, that means your original build did have a mistake in it. Im really not sure why this grinds your gears so much. Admiting mistakes is nothing bad?

Anyway, you wanted to see a list of the mistakes the build has. I kinda did that earlier, but its a bit hard to give a list of mistakes without hearing a clear purpose and missing some details (like the mentioned boar timings); you clarified some things in the meantime, so there it is (in order of the build, not in order of importance).

-Taking the boar with the 7th vill is weird, as discussed above. It means you have to let some food rot under your TC, either by ignoring the 2nd sheep (which will not be eaten at this time) or by finishing the sheep and taking the boar a bit later (letting the more important hunt rot). This could be fixed by sending the 7th vill to lumber and taking boar with the 8th or 9th vill, or by sending the 6th vill to get the boar early (but that wont be consistantly possible, as you might not have scouted it yet at this point). It probably would be best to use either the 6th vill (if you find boar fast) or else the 8th vill and just shift around the rest of the BO.

-You take WAY to much wood early on. You simply dont need it; you dont spend it on anything. Send 3 or 4 to wood and collect food a lot faster. This allows to click up earlier or, if you want to keep your slow approach, make for a much more consistant and easier to execute build; eg if you fail a deer push, you can still click up without your TC going idle.

-While going up to feudal, you still take lots of food. What for? You need 150 food when reaching feudal; 6 vills on food generate a lot more than that. Finish your hunt, then take straggler wood first before going back to food.

-We already talked about the 11 vills on wood. 9 or max 10, are enough, you only need wood in early feudal but you can get that bit extra from stragglers; its way more efficient than sending them to a lumber camp and keeping them there to sell the wood later on.

-You delay the mill a lot. What for? Once you have your BS up and another 100 wood in the stockpile, you can send vills out to berries.

-You delay your farms a lot too. There is no need for this. The faster you get your farms down, the more food you can take off of them and the fewer farms you need to click up to castle. Once you have your Mill, you should spend extra wood immediatly to place your farms instead of waiting until your berries run out.

You might think that some of those are pretty nitpicky. And you would be right. But the reason that BOs exist is the allow for perfect eco managment. Not 80%, that can be done on the fly by knowing a few simple things like knowing you need to have 6 on food to keep TCs running. For a good example, I once saw Hera on his stream sending a 5th vill at a seemingly random timing. Chat asked why, and his answer was “berry timing, just watch”. Seconds before he hit castle, the berries ran out and he sent them to the location he wanted to place his TC. Thats why BOs exist, to get perfect timings like this.

26

As I revived my project for estimating the best Booms with a mathematical approach, I started also to make individual Buildorers for some specific civs that have meaningful bonusses.

Here I have one with Tatars, a 23+2 Pop FC into directly 3 TC booming. When executed perfectly you get no idle time. Once again the build requires you to push 3 deer and eat 2 boars and 8 sheep from your starting ressources. It puts 3 on Gold which then can be used on the market to buy either Food or stone. It’s also required in early castle age to buy a little bit of food to sustain the production.
In the continuation I think you should try to get Heavy Plow and Wheelbarrow before adding new TCs ar at least before adding more farms than needed to sustain the 3 TC production.
Don’t forget that your TC building Vlills won’t automatically collect from the sheep, you need to direct them. I left 5 on the sheep on one of the TCs and added 2 more from the TC on the other one so they expire at different times.

I’ve also found a video of Viper with the old Tatars when they got 2 extra sheep in Feudal. He tried to make it even a 22+2 but then he didn’t had enough Wood though to add TCs and Bowsaw immediately after hitting Castle. I think with the nerfed Tatars the 22+2 is no longer viable. It’s 300 free food less that Tatars have now.

My build puts 5 on berries, which will lead them to expire quite soon into castle age. But there is enough wood to gradually put them to farms. The build leeds to some straggler chopping, but only for a brief transitional phase between finishing sheep and reaching castle. Right at the time you want to have some extra wood income to make TCs, trechs and Farms.

Vill To Further Actions
1-3 Houses => Food
4 Food
5 Food
6 Food
7 Lumber Camp
8 Wood
9 Wood
10 Wood
11 House=>Wood
12 Food
13 Food
14 Food
15 Food
16 Mill
17 House => Berries
18 Beries
19 Beries
20 Beries
21 Mining Camp
22 Gold
Up to Feudal
23 Wood Make Market / BS with Lumberjacks
24 Gold
Up to Castle DBA, House, Divide your TC vills into two 5er teams
Horsecollar, Queue them to Stragglers after the Sheep
Send the teams out shortly before Castle to built TCs right away
Famers Bow Saw

idk if the build has useful applications. Tatars aren’t a good arena civ where this could be applied.