I often play with a friend who is even more of a noob than I am. Usually he gets rushed, panics and relocates his TC next to mine. Afterwards, the game is mostly a very long 2v1 in which I eventually lose.
I found a lot of information on how to get better at 1v1 games, especially on Arabia. This really helps while playing. However, I can’t find much specifically about team games.
For example, let’s say my opponent plays Britons and I know he has archers. I attack him with skirmishers in feudal age. However, one minute later, his ally comes to kill all my skirmishers with three scout cavalry. How can I avoid that? Should I just not attack him with skirmishers? Should I always have multiple types of unit with every attack just in case?
So: any advice? Is there any guide specifically about team games? How do you keep track of everything happening on the map? If your ally is still alive, should you first both target one player and then the other one, should you each target one player, or should both of you target both players at the same time? Should one player be raiding or both? It seems to me that team games are so much harder and more complicated than 1v1…
Generally speaking you have one player going for archers and the other going for cavalry. If team games have more players usually the flank (player on the outside) goes for archers and the pocket (player on the inside) goes for cavalry.
So you and your friend should decide on who prefers cavalry and who prefers archers. Let’s say you are playing Arabia 2v2 and you decided to go for scouts and your friend goes for archers. Download the interactive build order guide on the mod center (you can find it when clicking the little gear next to your name in the main menu) to practise how to perform a scout rush/straight archer build order.
Don’t forget to build a market so you have shared exploration or pick Portuguese to get shared exploration starting in Dark Age.
Now for the who fights who question: You kinda answered it yourself: you lose when you get in a 2v1 after your friend dies. So why not try the same against your opponent? Your friends archers kill spears and your scouts kill skirmishers. After you transition to Castle Age you pump out knights and your friend goes crossbow. Generally speaking you want to prefer gold units in team games because they pack more punch and in late imp you can trade to keep up the gold income
Also check high level team games on YouTube to get an idea
Good luck!
2v2/teamgames are a lot different than 1v1 for a few reasons:
-There is infinite gold, which makes gold units viable as a lategame plan.
-two armies means a lot more damage, weakening walls. While its really rough to break even 1 lair of pallisade walls in feudal in 1v1, this regularly happens in 2v2.
-Since you face two armies at once, counter units are overall a lot weaker (as you noticed when going skrims…)
For those reasons, team game meta us usually as follows (not that this doesn’t mean there are no other possible strategies; just that this is what you usually go for on standard maps such as arabia):
One player goes archers (into xbow/arbs or into CA/UU), the other goes scs into kts. In 3v3/4v4 you decide based on position: They player further away from the enemy goes cav (“pocket”), the player close to the enemy goes archers (“flank”). In 2v2 position matters less, but the roles stay the same: One player goes archers, one player cav.
You try to link up your armies, as they cover each others weaknesses. Try to know where the other team has their army, this is easiest if you follow their archer player with your scs. If they attack you, you can either defend or just rewall/tower (the player hit WILL take some dmg) and counterattack. The decision what to do depends mostly on the map: If you got easy rewalls and save golds and your army is accross the map anyway, just hit them harder than they hit you. If you are vulnerable and your armies are nearby, defend.
Usually you stay on kts/xbow without making any other unit until late castle age at least. In imp you start mixing in trash/siege to support your pushes. At this point it starts beeing more about map controll (which is hugly important because of securing traderoutes) and your army number matter a bit less.
There was a 2v2 world cup which just ended, watch a few matches to get a better idea! I would advise to mostly watch the arabia/valley matches, as they are the most standard maps - stuff like chaos pit is so messy, you wont really get an idea of how usual 2v2 go.
If your friend is a lot worse than you you will have to live with the fact that you lose if you can’t 1v1 your opponent while also crippling your friend’s opponent.
I actually played all of my teamgames so far with a friend who’s 11xx in 1v1 (I’m 17xx). The best thing you can teach your friend is to die as slowly as possible - and he will be dieing if the game is close. If he doesn’t die, you will win anyway, so we don’t need to talk about that.
The 2nd thing, and maybe even more important, is that he needs to learn rebooming very fast. Once he lost his base, get to 4-5 TCs asap and then get to 100+ vills asap to become relevant again. If he gets decent at that you can start playing.
For you I would advise you to not play greedy booming strategies. Play with heavy military focus, but also not completely all in (I like to get fast to a 2nd TC in Castle Age, but delay the third one). So you will always be the strongest player on the map. Then make use of your military. The best thing you can do is hitting your friends opponent and setting him back this way. If he loses some vills (and army) your friend might be able to handle him.
So your biggest problem is probably that there’s quite a difference between normal 2v2s and 2v2s with big differences in the players strength.
To give more specific help it would be helpful to know the 1v1 rating of you and your friend. If the difference is just 100-200 it should still be pretty close to normal 2v2s. But if it’s 500+, like in my case, the game changes a lot.
Also if you’re a 17xx with a 11xx you can carry in a different (usually more agressive) way than a 13xx can while playing with a 7xx.
From my experience adding the elo’s should give a good approximation of how the game is going to go. We lost to 2 14xx players (I played too greedy there though^^), but below that it’s usually pretty easy for me to carry. But certainly don’t expect to win a 2v2 against players who are close to you in skill if your friend is not.
The result: The more you play, the higher your elo, while still having no skill. You probably notice this. So you end up with unbalanced teams and you must pray you are on the winning team. They issues with the ranked ladder were the reason for me to stop playing team games. You will never get into a good game.
Communication with your team mates. For example: Flanks in most games will go archers, pockets scouts into scouts. You need to attack together and defend together. But in my experience most TG players lack communication skills, if you arent playing as premade.
