So, since I’m pretty terrible at AOE2, I decided to level up my game by practicing against AI. I’ve been playing against a hard AI for maybe a week now and I probably lose every 3rd game or so.
Until today, when I got blown the ■■■■ out like 4 or 5 times in a row and I’ve no idea what’s happening. It feels like the AI is suddenly behaving insanely aggressively (it was aggressive before, but this is something else), dumping a shitton of units at me in Feudal, then somehow going imperial in 36 minutes and flooding me with troops.
So, my qualm is not necessarily with the fact that I’m getting blown out but more like, is anyone else experiencing similar stuff? Like AI is getting a ninja buff? Or am I missing something? I did not accidentally increase the difficulty.
Those games that I lost today I actually used Celts each time (wanted to win at least once with them), while the AI would use Slavs, Indians, Tatars (not 100% about this one), Burgundians and Bohemians.
What is the average uptime for you and the AI over all your games? You mentioned they hit Imp at about 36 mins, is there anything else unusual about their timings?
I normally feudal at around 12 minutes and castle at around 17, AI is slightly faster to feudal, but usually slower to castle (but the times vary hugely, sometimes all the way to 25 minutes). AI almost always hits imperial at around 36, I also do there or thereabouts.
Normally I get hit by a skirmisher/archer attack towards the end of feudal (occasionally there’s a 3-5 scout rush) or when I’m in castle already (so it’s even easier to repel with knights), if not then, then a castle age sustained attack comes and it keeps going into the imperial.
Have you watched any of the replays? Is it possible the AI is hardcore market using or something? All 5 of their civs you mentioned also have really good ecos, except maybe Tatars, so it’s possible they just boomed. It’s also entirely possible that the AI got improved in a recent patch, but I don’t remember seeing anything about it, and they usually just change the extreme AI.
Not sure about the hard AI, but the hardest AI and the extreme AI got a significant early game change in a recent patch (somewhere in the last 6 months).
Now AI can scout rush and sometimes even milicia rush. Before, it was mostly using archers and skirms.
Do you want to improve or just beat the AI? Cause there are tricks to make beating the AI that wouldn’t work on a human player.
Rushing the AI with towers is often a cheese tactic cause it can’t handle it well. Or placing lots of buildings(houses etc) further out from your base, it can get stuck attacking them buying you time to get to castle.
But if you want to beat them in a straight fight, my advice is to keep your army alive, kill a unit of two and back up.
I said “AI can now scout rush and milicia rush”, and you replies “No” becausr “these rushes are poorly executed”. In which world is this contradictory ?
I can also state “AI usually skirms and archer rushes”, I don’t care whether there are 5 units or 20 and whether they arrive at 11:00 or 15:00 to my base, I still call it a rush.
And on your topic, with extreme AI on my computer, its units rarely runs under my TC, it stays out if my TC range.
I understood it as him feeling a difference in how the AI behaves (improvement against his playstyle), and wanted to know if the AI did get changed. Which I believe it did.
The AI (HD) on the other hand will surely never change, and potentially not be able to play properly new civs (since DE) because if that.
On open maps the AI will start attacking in feudal and never stop. A 17 minute castle time is a good idea for a closed map but will get you killed on an open map. I think you’d have better luck attacking in feudal age on open maps.
Well it depends how you define “ability to drush”.
The hard part isnt buidling a barracks and training 3 units. The hard part is actually doing something with them, because you just invested 240 res. And the AI simply does not know this part. Im not sure whether or not it happens to run militia into the TC (hardly ever play vs AI), but thats not needed. Running militia into a woodline and fighting vs 5 vills will clean up the drush in less than 10s without any losses. A drush is supposed to stay alive for several minutes, causing idle time and forcing walls. The AI can’t pull this off. Therefor it does not know how to drush.
I don’t care whether there are 5 units or 20 and whether they arrive at 11:00 or 15:00 to my base, I still call it a rush.
If you call 5 units at min 15 a rush, you are just speaking a different language than anyone else. I mean, go ahead, but none will understand what youre talking about.
For me the ability to scout rush is the ability to go feudal age then making scouts to attack your oppinents while doing it as soon as possible.
Independently on whether it succeeds or not and independently on whether you do it professionaly competitively or not…
Obviously the higher the ELO the better the execution is, but since the opponent is also better, the chance if the better executed rush is not more likely to succeed…
It would be funny to hear you talking about tournaments: “well over the 10 games we got 10 games where feudal age lasted until 20th minutes, among them 3 feudal rushes, plus poorly executed stuff that didnt work, I have no clue what the players had in mind”.
Yep, I’ll go ahead and do it. You can just ignore what I said and keep thinking in your pseudo-elitist way.
I guess you think you are a 1800 1v1 ELO noob right ? You are bad at aoe2 because you have never got less than 1s TC idle time at 25 minutes ? And you never ever made a rush because as “bad” as you are, you getting 4 fletching archers at 12:00 in your opponent base would not be successful if you play against TheViper or Hera ? Because I’m sure they would just get no real damage from you…
In low ELOs (like 500?) I don’t see how it would be a problem for you to that a player beat another one with 6 scouts at 15 minutes while the other was performing his 20 minutes fast castle… The site aoepulse also detects rushes below 600 1v1 ELO, tell me how is that possible according to your standards. Do you really believe they play the way you expect a rush to be ?
Or, if it makes you happy, I can replace the word “rush” by the word “opening”, but it is basically the same. People talk about “knight rush”, even though once in castle age it is questionable to call an attack a “rush”…
I have been having similar issues since the latest update. I was beating the AI consistently, then, the last update has changed something. It’s like the counter units I send against it don’t work. 3 pikemen are killed by 1 knight. Things like that. I am looking at a way to downgrade to the previous version, so I can compare.
Hmm, that’s extremely odd. I just tried some battles in the scenario editor, and even 3 dark age spearmen win against 1 post-imperial paladin, with 2 spearmen alive at the end.