It is not. I’m being honets with my feelings.
I’ve marshalled my thoughts. The path is clear: I shall advance to Feudal Age with 40 villagers. That is the beginning; without that, I’m nothing. If anyone can contribute ideas to carry out this strategy, I’ll welcome them. I have but one option left: keep trying that, until it yields its fruits.
Why are you even here? People have told you what to do to improve. Go play the Art of War tutorials or something. Your strategy is objectively terrible to be honest. If that’s how you want to play, go ahead, but then you kind of shouldn’t be asking people how to improve if you’re not interested in their advice.
Gee, you’re saying there’s absolutely no way to win with the strategy I propose? You could give it a go to see for yourself. In fact, it’s experienced players who will have the last word on whether it’s feasible, but said players should first put it into practice.
Against a skilled opponent, there is indeed no way this will ever work. Let’s look at four maps that could be candidates for this:
Modern Arabia is super aggressive in almost every situation. Feudal Age pressure will typically arrive at your base by 12 to 14 minutes. If you advance with 40 vils you literally won’t hit Feudal until 18 minutes. And that’s never going to happen, there’ll be towers all over your base, and scouts or archers everywhere long before you get anywhere near that point. If you try and wall up, they’ll just hit Castle roughly when you hit Feudal probably, and then kill you with knights and siege and monks. This’ll never work here.
You might think that with stone walls to hinder early aggression, you’ll be ok. Wrong. People will normally go for a Fast Castle on Arena, but that’s not guaranteed. Competent players will reach Castle Age somewhere between 13 and 15 minutes in most cases. From that point, they can kill you easily. If they don’t come and kill you straight away, they’ll boom. With three Town Centers, they’ll rapidly catch up and outpace your economy, at which point they will crush you. Won’t work here.
Maybe without land aggression you’ll be ok? Still not happening. If you try and fish, they’ll kill it with military and a much faster Feudal time. If you don’t fish, they will, and your eco will suck compared. Either way, they’ll have full map control for the entire game, you’ll never be able to take water, and you’ll be ground into dust basically. Not happening.
There’s literally no way to attack early on Michi. It sounds like the perfect map, surely? Not a chance. Because you can’t be aggressive, almost everyone will Fast Castle into boom, or Fast Imp into onager cut or something like that. Whatever they do, it’ll kill you well before you reach Castle Age most likely. A good fast Imp will literally be in Imp about 20 minutes, only a few mins after you’re in Feudal. A good Fast Castle boom can have probably double your eco (if not more) by 20 minutes. You might have a better dark age eco. But you’ll be so slow to the other ages it won’t matter, people will easily catch up and kill you. Even in the map where you’d expect it to do best, it’ll still be terrible.
Conclusion: Doesn’t matter what map you play. This basically will never work. Unless there’s weird gameplay settings, the strategy is terrible. I’m not even going to test it, I can tell you that right now it’ll never work. And if it does, it’ll be at a ridiculously low level where anything could work.
Thanks for your thorough response, but I must insist. Sometimes things look one way on paper, but on practice they can surprise you.
That’s definitely not going to happen. After 20 years, if this was good, it’d be part of the meta. It’s really not good, I can promise you that.
Have you considered that the “meta” is all about advancing as quickly as possible? I mean, not with 10 villagers because that would result in not having any resources for Feudal. But… what if the build orders are designed for a world which has lost the capacity of waiting?
The build orders are designed to let you get economic damage on the opponent as soon as possible, and compete for map control, so that you gradually snowball the economic and/or military lead you need to win. In the case of Fast Castle boom build orders, they’re designed to let you grow your economy as quickly as possible, giving you the macro setup required to convert the economic advantage into a military one, which you then snowball to try and win. Why would it even matter if they’re designed for a world that has lost the capacity of waiting? They’re how the game is played, properly, because they work. Very well.
My point is that my strategy of 40 villagers Feudal age will never be tried out because people don’t want to wait that much. It will never be given a chance.
No, it’ll never be tried because you’ll be dead before you can do anything with the res you gather that way.
ok, start with 2 houses, and keep 6 vils on food minimun to keep vils production. Go first for herdables, after eat all of them go for berries.
After first 6 en food, send vils to wood. Use at least 2 vils to progressively wall your base (Be sure your main gold and stone are inside walls). Use two layers of palisades if you feel better with that.
While you are walling and accumulating vils on wood. Put farms (use vils from wood).
Once you have 15 farms you should stop building farms . Keep 15 in wood and put 5 in gold and stone. You should have enough food to go feudal and then “Fast Castle”.
The key is walling too much. By feudal you could wall with stone if necesary.
Hope it helps you. I’m done here.
It takes a while for the ranked matchmaking to get you settled with people your level, You’ll have to keep playing until your winrate is about 50% for that, usually the elo will adjust to you within the 20 first matches.
I’d say douching is your best bet to go 40 vils in dark age with a chance of winning. Watch Rubenstock games for inspiration
The only way you can win with 40-50 dark age villager strategy is to be super super aggressive in dark age. Use this game as a blueprint. It’s a troll strategy and it probably won’t work because at your level you will most likely be unable to multi task enough to keep producing villagers while also focusing on attacking your opponent. On the other hand, low level opponents are terrible at dealing with super early pressure and have a tendency to quit too early so it might just work.
Some people have guessed that I have problems in my real life; that I hate my life, and not this game. That was spot-on. I’m troubled in a few areas, one of which is the “personal” one that got some of my posts flagged.
So, what do I do to have some contentment? Play videogames. I usually sit down believing that the videogame I’m about to launch is easy. Because I don’t play to have fun. I play to win. Then, the calamity befalls. I’ve gotten angry with RTS, and with fighting games, and with first person shooters. But also with puzzle and adventure games, genres which we could call “tame”. I swear at the screen, I punch the desk. You know.
I won’t compare my emotional state when playing videogames to a volcano, nor to a rabid animal. Actually, it’s a calm ocean. Picture an ocean, blue, and smooth. You dive in it. You keep going. You don’t stop the immersion. Then you realize you’re in to deep and don’t know how to go out again for air. This is my current situation with AOE2.
You can go out for air, just do a Build Order.
Last night I put in practice advancing to Feudal with 40 villagers. I lost. I’m done. I will never cease hating this f****ing game. Although there’s something I’d like for you to clarify. There’s the “Fast Castle” strategy. I gather that it’s purpose is to enable Knights and castles as early as possible. Is there also a strategy that involves advancing to Castle later? Like, providing a benefit for staying in Feudal a little longer? That would be in line with what I’m trying to do; if I could somehow thrive in Feudal I might drop this useless strategy I’m onto now.
Literally everybody has told you that this is a terrible strategy. You need to get to feudal with 18-22 vils, in open maps, 22-25 on closed maps and 22-27 on ultra closed maps. You didn’t listen. That’s on you, I don’t feel any sympathy for you here.
That would be Fast Feudal paired with early aggresion and basically the build order we’re trying to tell you for a while now.
What map are you playing? And what made you think 40 villagers is a good strategy? Who and where did you learn that from and what made you think it was going to be successful?