I’m 1000-1100 elo player, recently moved to 1200. Which will probably be short lived.
My weakness is definitely Feudal age usually due to my lack of aggression. I usually go too short on military and only partially wall trying to go FC. I struggle to find the balance of eco/ military in Feudal. How do you know how much your opponent is investing in feudal? Constant scouting? I do not use control groups or with my scout so that could help possibly. What’s a typical pop to go up with a decent military?
I usually try to wall wood and gold back to TC. I rarely go scouts since it’s heavy on food and getting to castle is my strong suit. Any advice would great, thanks!
Currently?
Just be agressive yourself. Use the standard buildorders.
Put your TC and production buildings in control groups so you can queue while using your military + scouting. This alone will already give you a big enough benefit to climb the ladder.
Always full wall if you’re going FC unless you’re sure your opponents is also going FC, ideally you want to click up or boom behind something whether that is military, or walls otherwise you are venerable. fast castle strategies are countered by feudal age pressure so your strategy should be about buying time and walls are good for buying time. In my experience archer range blacksmith with full wall can counter most pressure excluding towers. While scouting is important, I think the ability to interpret the information you do have while using your own game sense to predict what your opponent is going to do is how most pros avoid being surprised. Also don’t be afraid to use a plan B some maps are just not for fast-castling
Lack of aggression is not your weakness around your elo, but you need to FC properly
If your enemy is not going to drush and he is a cavalry civ, You only need to wall your gold, pull back your lumberjacks and chop TC tree 1min after he hit feudal, 24+ 1 with feudal loom immune to 21p scout and the slower ones
If your enemy is archer civ and he did not pick Saracens or Britons, you only need to wall front . While his archers are walking around or dealing with your wall, you can reach castle age safely
If you can see your opponent is investing heavily into food units like scouts or skirmishers with upgrades then you know he’ll be stuck in feudal for a while. Click on his units to check what upgrades he has. If he has bloodlines, armour, forging etc. then you know it’ll be heavy feudal aggression.
Not necessarily. Depends on the map. It’s a mistake to FC every map with a cav civ, you might just die to feudal aggression because you’ll have no army to defend. He is talking about 1v1, not team games.
The extra food of Lith is better for Drush, but the eco bonus is not as strong as the mentioned civs
Many players pick relic as soon as they hit castle age, it will delay economy and castle age push
it is not like what you thought. FC is decided when enemy is not going to drush.
My FC is almost finished when I see my opponent is investing heavily into food units,
Let’s not talk about the extreme example such as Khmer FC or Mongols 18p. By the time castle age just started researching under the 24+1 FC strategy, normal 21p sc rush can only have 3 sc without bloodline. How can I know if he is going full feudal ?
Well said. I usually go arch and sit behind walls. But it’s not hard to pressure walls after the nerf. I like that walls were nerfed though. Scouting is probably key which I am below average at. Does everyone use control groups and then press SPACE bar to select their scout?
I’m currently pushing into the 1200’s (varies between 1140-1236 atm) same as you - you may benefit from being even more defensive and then adding in an offense here and there to fit into it. Currently I’m still trying to master the defensive style I’ve chosen, but once I reach that point I will attempt to add in offenses that fit both my style and whatever civ is using the style at the time.
My point in this for you is to continue mastering the defensive style and attempt to try variations until you find every basic art that works and push them to 11 while keeping resources spent to a minimal amount.
Currently in the end or near the end of dark age I wall the berries and my stone mines, and for the woodline either palisade or stone walls/both. And then add a tower against the middle of the trees at the start of feudal age and against the mining camp along the edge nearest the stone but not in the way of the miners dropping off. Anything beyond 2-3 towers would be generally for the town center farms if the opponent is going all in feudal archers - in which case the towers must be placed carefully to maximize their defensive area - too much and you’ll hurt the amount of time it takes to gain a castle, which is well and able to be delayed in favor of mangonels and additional town centers for anti archers.
I won’t say it’s better than being offensive - but I believe that having a great defense is key to being on the offense with little need to worry about home beyond the need to garrison/ungarrison at the needed times.
(The berry walls have the berry villagers construct the 3rd and 4th house in places where they will become a part of the wall automatically)
Here’s a preview of my style
This one is my first person gameplay when going against the extreme ai, note that it’s not 100% perfect, will add 1 vs 1 ranked later.
And this one is a playlist from Poop Lord who casts my games from time to time which contains ranked gameplay from both myself and others who attempt my style.
Feel free to steal any techniques if you find them useful.
I prefer to counter as many enemy actions as possible without the need to scout it out.
Sometimes. I also tend to just double tap the number key to jump to the control group. Basically, put the scout on control group 1 when the game starts, scout you resources, push deer if you can do that and don’t mind sacrificing scouting time, and then scout the enemy. Continually scout them, especially if you see a barracks or anything like that early. If there is a drush incoming, you have to keep track of it constantly, if you already knew it was happening, you could counter with your own drush, or just small wall all your resources and click up Feudal, then typically invest in archers as a good counter. Depending on your civ and situation, you may want to use a drush opening yourself, men at arms, archers, or scouts. Continually create villagers while using your military. I find using a Select All TCs hotkey is very helpful for doing this, as it lets you select your town centers without actually jumping to them, so you can control military and queue villagers at the same time. If you can, use the Feudal pressure to try and gain an eco lead and click up to Castle. If you have archers, especially in decent numbers (Anything above 8, or even less), you probably want to try and keep them alive, so you can turn them into Crossbows in Castle Age. If you use scouts, don’t worry too much if they die, it’s nice if you can keep them alive, but typically if you open scouts, you are likely to transition into knights or cav archers anyway, so any leftover scout cav won’t typically be that useful. Make sure to scout with them. Hope that kind of helps a bit.
Ok but first you said FC is decided because you are a cav civ?? Obviously on closed maps like Arena and BF then yes, FC is the standard play. But FC on open maps is situational; you shouldn’t just decide to FC only because you’re a cav civ. It can be the right move sometimes, yes, but only if you have the right map for it and you are able to wall your base easily. If you have a super open map and / or forward gold then FC is usually the wrong play, because really long walls will delay your castle age time and waste wood. And it’s unlikely you’ll be able to finish walling before his first units arrive in early Feudal. Also if you’ve scouted the enemy’s base and it’s super open, you can often overwhelm him with fast scouts before he’s walled and it can be gg long before Castle age. It’s a mistake to leave an unwalled enemy base without attacking it in Feudal. Waiting until you fast castle allows him too much time to wall up. I think if there’s an opportunity to finish the game sooner and more easily, you should always take it.
Practice Man@arms into archers build order. Or 19 pop straight double range archers with Ethiopians if you’re not good at microing your Man@arms without your eco suffering. Rewatch your recorded games to see what you’re doing wrong. Usually it’s not spending wood fast enough and idle TC during fights. Your resources should be as close to zero as possible unless you’re saving for the next age or if you need buildings, units or upgrades. Archers builds are a good way to be aggressive in Feudal without sacrificing your castle age advance time since they only cost wood and gold meaning you can save your food for castle age and fletching. Also make sure you use hotkeys for everything. I have a gaming mouse which has 2x extra buttons. One is set to go to TC and the other is set to select all land military. So while I’m fighting I can click the mouse extra button and press C to make more villagers without looking at the TC.
I suggest deleting all hotkeys except important ones such as menu types - suggest to also switch delete function to backspace for deleting singular and ctrl+backspace for delete all.(reason being the delete function is easily clickable on the numpad while hitting up the market, which may end in you deleting the market)
Nice. I just use Space for go to next idle villager and Alt+Space for select all idle villagers (useful after you’ve been raided or when a gold pile runs out).
