i know most people here will say the secret to beating extreme AI is early aggression. However, this is impossible if you are playing 3v3 or 4v4 as a flank against extreme AI because the pocket will always hit you in feudal with knights (FC - in about 15 - 16 mins). Since you can’t FC yourself - as their flank will hit you with archers, you are forced to turtle and build defenses, which is obviously a losing strategy against extreme AI. The extreme AI always outproduces me (I’m always villagers behind because my micro/macro is not perfect like the ai). Any legitimate tips outside of tower rush in this case, which is the same as to let the extreme AI boom?
BTW, I always can beat extreme AI in 1 v 1 or 2 v 2 because of early aggression (no pocket knights), and as pocket because I can defend the flank AI well. Thanks
AND i am also pissed that sometimes the other AI flank just can’t defend itself (luck of the draw) and wastes the game for me.
Go for a closed map as Arena and go for castle age pressure. The AI seem to have a terrible BO for this kind of maps. I have beaten the AI on extreme on this map in 1v2 with this strategy. I would assume that the AIs on your team are capable of winnng against the 3th AI on enemy side.
Also you can use taunts to influence what units the AI makes. That might help too with defeating the enemy.
Only if you are above a certain level, maybe elo 1600 +, below that level turtling, slowly outboom and invest into a strong lategame comp is better.
If you chose to play with ai in your team, always use them as flank, because they just don’t understand what a pocket should play like. And if you play flank vs AI just wether the storm and try to force them attacking you and not your teammates (with pe chinese walling).
Yeah as a flank vs 4 extreme AI you might have probs in doing that while defending.
Completely disagree. The main weakness of the AI is their early game. If you are able to exploit this weakness with an early attack, then you can easily beat the AI. If you dont manage to exploit this weakness and let the game go to late game, then beating the AI is much stronger.
Note: With exploiting the early game, i dont mean a tower rush. But it can be just the basic 21 pop scout rush or some basic archer rush. Nothing too fancy at all. You can easily beat the AI with those strategies. Late game it is insane micro compared to their early game. Beating the AI in the late game is much tougher.
It would be a fun experiment to have an AI in ranked to just see how well it behaves and if it improves over time. Defeating the AI is much easier if you know you play against the AI, so you can exploit their weakness. If you dont know you play against the AI, then it is already much harder. As result i dont think the AI will end up with a rating of 800 elo (even i do think any 800 elo player that goes aggressive can beat the extreme AI), but their rating might be aroud 1000 elo, might be even higher. Lower level player tend to play too passive, so the AI is more likely to get to the late game, which is their strongest stage.
you can also go for a super fast castle (24 or less pop) and castle drop the pocket player as a civ with a good rush UU. Conqs or Jannis both work extremely well. Scout ahead and wall the bare necessities in towards your TC and otherwise just hit your timings and you can turn the Pocket’s fast knights on it’s head.
As is the weakness of lower elos, too ;). 800 elo player with good early agression is just 1200 elo player. That’s how it is.
Yeah in team game vs 4 extreme AI this is suicide mission. Not that it can’t work, but you sacrifice yourself basically for your team. And I doubt you can make a 24 pop fc as flank unpunished.
Can be, sometimes the AI makes exactly the right thing against them. Maybe this strat works, but other oftb strats won’t.
Because the AI tends to overextend their agression in feudal. But it’s not a good advise in a teamgame for sure. There the full turtle mode and waiting for your teammates to outboom the opponent is better.
Or jus play pocket, it’s way easier to execute with and against extreme ai.
When I played this, I sent 2 vills each in feudal to add some defences to my ai teammates so they can hold much better. Besides it hurts myself, the flanks hold much better and I have time to boom into a strong lategame comp.
And the AI, besides strong micro, has problems dealing with really strong pushing comps because they don’t understand the concept.
Some 800 elo players are all or nothing. They go all in in feudal, but neglict there eco fully. If the face a walled base, they are nowhere. If the enemy is still open, they most likely win. Those players are clearly no 1200 elo.
Not really sure if players below 1000 elo can do a 24 FC build and have the resources to drop a castle. 24 pop FC is pretty tight. I assume you meant 22+2 FC and not 24+2 FC
Arena makes sure there is no feudal war. You can just go for some 15-16 minutes FC build and drop a castle. The AI wont really have much military at that moment, since they tend to be much slower to castle age.
I was able to beat 1v2 extreme AIs on Arena with early castle age pressure, when i was about 1000 elo. I never tried TGs with/against AIs, but i think this strat is still working. At least you can weaken 2 AIs, so your allies can double team the last enemy and over run that AI. Then both allies can help you finishing up the other 2 AIs. At least in theory this should work.
I think you can also wall up and go for a FC build on most open maps. This way enemy knights dont really have a change to punish you, but you might have to deal with your opponents flank army, which might be tough. Some drush + FC build could be the solution to just get the extra time you need to pull of the FC.
not really, when I say that the AI is bad, I mean I can comfortably give the AI a minute headstart (1:15 [edit because math at 5 in the morning, I give them three vill lead when my head was on straight], or three villagers worth, to be exact, of complete idle time) on Extreme and be confident I can win. I know this because I did it on a whim just to be sure that I could and wasn’t at all surprised that them having a minute advantage didn’t suddenly make their abject lack of tactics any less relevant to the gamestate. of course, for relevance this was on arabia.
correct. But just one castle in early castle age can blow up the early play and really set the pocket back. worst case scenario when the flank really piles on pressure, you just drop the TC on the forward resources you castled and keep pushing. I don’t really know what the average joe player is willing to go through to solve their problem that they’ve annunciated here on the forums. I’m just putting out options.
also. I used to be really bad at booming on Arena and the like because I learned a 24 pop FC by heart just playing the game and would either go immediately into monks or a castle drop every game. Then I realized that if I went up a few vills later I could actually like, make an economy behind it, which was a good thing to learn eventually. Gotta start somewhere, yeah?
I try to make advises which help on all elo.
I know that e AI is really weak and struggles against almost everything vs a goot player.
But for players which are just a bit better than the extreme AI, many things won’t work. And besides I know that there are some out of the box strats work perfectly against the ai becaus they just do the wrong thing, there are also out of the box strats where the ai reacts perfectly and a not so skilled player will run into probs.
And I understnad why the early agression strat in a 4v4 teamgame will make things very hard for many players, because it will trigger the whole enemy team to fokus on him at some point.
Exactly the prob the TO describes.
THIS. When I have paladins + halberdier and the AI has imp camel + xbow, why does it retreat when I kill 10 camels and then hard switches to ele archer + HC lmao.
Unless you have a really solid grasp of game knowledge (knowing what to hit with scouts/where and why) and the ability to micro units while sending forward scouts/m@a/archers without hurting your eco development at home (no idle tc, not getting housed, not getting whacky resource balance, not forgetting upgrades), sending forward these kind of rushes against the Extreme AI is worthless. You will most likely do less damage to the AI than the damage you cause to your own eco by paying too much attention to your scouts, and too little attention to your eco.
If you really insist on rushing the AI, then just go for an all in rush. Go do a persian douche or a tower rush. That way having a bad eco at home won’t be as big of a problem, because you’ll crush the AI build order, thus setting it back more than setting yourself back more.
