In my previous post, I mean FC is usually good for cavalry civ compare with other civ. Under 1.6k 1v1 elo, scout is not that powerful so only a few players will upgrade scout to light cavalry. That means knight is pretty much the only option for cavalry civs in castle age. FC is good for the people who don’t want to upgrade scout.
Full walling is not necessary. You only need to wall your gold if the enemy is a cavalry civ. Only need to wall front if the enemy picked archer civ. Saracens, Britons, Mongols and Tucks are special, I cant FC against these 4.
We cant assume the enemy got nothing to defend his base. He has a scout at least, maybe a spear too. Early 3 SC rush can hardly get a villager kill. He might finish walling if you wait for more scout to come and he can make more units too.
Also, the player who decided to FC only need to focus on his base / economy. It is much easier for low elo players or the people who can’t micro control both offensive and economy
A key part of hotkeys is to use them and delete what you don’t need as well as to add only what you do.
The best way to memorize them is to memorize them as you build them up. My current hotkeys are for the most part one of the two main reasons I’ve reached 1200 and thanks to them I am able to keep up with the demands of the build with excess time and apm to spare.
Deleting the ones you won’t use and slimming down the ones you need to memorize while placing them in positions that make sense is a good healthy thing to attempt rather than memorize hotkeys that are just there and you don’t know why but for some reason ‘have’ to memorize them without reason beyond it’s there.
Currently my hotkeys take into account accessibility and make it much easier to have most of what I need nearby rather than stretching the entire keyboard without reason.
Monk micro is now a breeze, most of what I need is in the bottom left corner of the keyboard which makes everything easy to manage - with the numpad being the research and trade hub.
Also to say I’m ‘stuck’ in 1200 is false, I have room to grow, and so does the build and my experience with it.
I’ve only recently reached it after-all.
Yeah, stuck isn’t the right term. I mean more like, using less hotkeys may slow your rate of advancement. You do what works for you, as you already are, just build up your hotkeys overtime, and you will be fine. Just don’t encourage other people to delete them, although I can see where you are coming from. I personally deleted the market hotkeys, because I found myself pressing them by accident, and I don’t need them very much compared to other ones.
The other reason to delete them all and build them from scratch is so the hotkeys won’t be mixed up with selecting different units or buildings that happen to share hotkeys which hurts effective apm moves.
For instance, training unit hotkeys that may be pressed on accident while attempting that same hotkey for a separate function.
The more effective your hotkeys are at doing what you want them to with less apm the better. Less hotkeys is great for practicing effective use of your time with less distractions and more ability to memorize everything from scratch.
Adding more hotkeys is a good thing as well, but only if you practice them and only if they make sense along with the rest of your existing hotkeys.
For instance: in team games I find that carts should be protected and microed rather than let them die if the enemy breaks into the trade - so I keep a ‘select all tradecarts/cogs’ hotkey near the market hotkey that allows me to send all carts regardless of if they’re idle or not to safety.
Another instance being the select idle military units by spamming A is great for spreading out units in a hellzone grenade fashion towards all parts of the map or a specific direction like in the general direction of enemy siege while maintaining a very spread out chaotic formation so they take minimal damage on their way to the siege.
And (either shift +a or ctrl+a) to select all idle military to get all military working again if idle or to send to one location. Etc
Such instances as these is effectively thinking about whether or not a hotkey is needed.
I agree with @HealFortress that usually learning hotkeys one by one is the way to improve better if you don’t know exactly what you are doing.
But it’s also a good advisor to learn some pattern of hotkey using for your macro skills. And then it makes sense to learn several hotkeys at once for your muscle memory to remember.
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Easier to give advice if you can post some recorded games of you playing tbh
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Obviously. It’s not normal to get the light cav upgrade unless it’s post imperial and you’re planning to go for hussar. And I’m not disagreeing that knights is the right play in Castle age. I’m just saying you may not be able to FC on very open maps so you may need to stay in Feudal a bit longer and make some units before you’re able to transition into knights.
Like i said, on really open maps with forward resources you can’t just straight FC with no drush and no military. It’s too risky with no army to defend. 6 archers with fletching hit your woodline pretty fast (well before you’re ready to click up to castle) and they can easily break through palisades, especially once they get their numbers up to 12+. If it’s an open map it’s likely that the palisades will be too far away for your villagers to get there in time to wall behind and then unless your sideways gate micro is perfect then the archers will either break the palisade or shoot your walling villagers behind. Even if you decided to avoid building the long walls and just do small resource walls then they won’t stop the archers either and you’ll have to run your villagers to TC. Then once the 12+ archers are running around inside your base it’s GG if you have no feudal military to defend.
I find the Interactive Build Order Guide mod very helpful for a good feudal age.
When I play a game immediately after completing a build order scenario, I find I play 100-200 elo better than usual.