Well first of all, hello! I discovered the DE version of this game quite by accident during the quarantine and it brought so many memories of my school days that I got it right away and been playing a lot these past few days.
I started practicing, watched several tutorials and learned stuff like build orders and unit counters, which were simply beyond me as a kid. I’m now at a level where I can comfortably win on Moderate on several maps. Still doing much better on land to be honest, but I’m working on naval too.
Anyway, since I’m doing very well on Moderate, I thought it was time to try Hard. Aaaand I got destroyed 7 times in a row…
My timings seem to be good, because in all games both me and the AI advance in very close times. Sometimes I go to Castle Age quicker actually. Then somehow just as I have set up my economy boom and I’m about to start fighting, he beats me to Imperial and floods me with troops, which I’m not ready to defend against.
I realize my problem may be a bit of a “git gud” nature and I’m trying several strategies. Though nothing seems to be very effective. I tried a couple of Scout rushes in tree lines or mines in Feudal. I wouldn’t say they went bad, but not good enough to make a difference… All tutorials I’ve seen say to go for the remote Vills, but the AI has them always so packed together that I can barely kill one or two before I need to flee…
I guess I need to either improve my early rushes to disrupt his eco or get better at setting up both my defences and offences after I hit Castle Age. I just have no idea how to do either of these… Any tips…?
Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post!
The AI still has trouble vs tower rushes and lame tactics like walling it in. You can try scout+archer, as it will overreact to your scouts, spam spears, and then you sweep everything with archer, and as it overreacts with skirms you go castle and make knights. If it goes late game remember to build many military buildings and to use hotkeys to easily spam your army because the AI will do the same.
Hmm so combine Scouts with Archers, I can certainly try that, thanks!
I’ve seen laming and I don’t doubt its effectiveness, it just seems to me like a cheap way to win… I’d like to win in a more “normal” way so that I can master the mechanics better.
Could you expand a little on what you said about late game please? Honestly I think that’s where I struggle the most… I feel like I focus too much on booming my economy and in the meantime my opponent starts pressuring me and I have no way to properly defend myself. Then it snowballs from there…
What I mean is, I know how to boom. I’m no expert at it, but I understand how it works. What should I be doing at the same time to set up some defences? When I hit Castle Age I mean.
Again, thanks
What I meant is that you should have several of each type of military buildings, at least 2 of each in Castle, and from there keep adding what you can afford, so that you can speed up your production. It’s really important because the AI will spam buildings everywhere and be able to easily produce from them all at once. Hotkeys will allow you to select them all at once and spam units like the AI does (pro tip: if you have enough ressources hold shift to queue units faster) The Hard AI is limited to 80 villagers only so if you have 100 you should be advantaged (of course training to have around 120 is better for when you will want to try vs the hardest one)
Seems like AI is outbooming you or/and you are not doing fine with unit counters or upgrades
I considered this, but I’m not sure that’s my problem. The more I think about it, the more I think I am too slow in walling and preparing defences because I don’t know how to set up that aspect of the game very well. In my last match, he started pushing and I had considerable resources with a few upgrades researched, but had not pushed out more than a handful military units. It was mostly villagers gathering stuff who were picked off easily. I tried creating units then and there, but anyone that came out was severely outnumbered and killed by the time the next units were created.
- So lets say I have not forgotten to build the military buildings, at what analogy should I be producing military units compared to Vills?
- When is a good time to start pushing out military units in larger numbers?
- The units that I create, should I immediately send out into raids or should I keep them at the edge of my base for safety?
I know there is no definitive answer, but is there a general rule/idea or something that can help me sort of keep track…? Newbie questions these, I know, I’m just a bit stuck on this and I seem to be doing the same mistakes…
If AI beats you in imperial and is not outbooming you then you are not spending your resources fast enough. A well placed castle should stop any castle age push.
I think you should have a decent Castle age military size before going Imp and buying tons of upgrades. Upgrades are only good once you’ve got a sizeable army.
Regarding military production, I just use my guts during Castle, but once you’ve got the number of villies you want you should ensure you’re pop capped as much as possible.
It depends. If your rush is successfull and you feel they are weakned (you killed tons of vill, they almost have no army to defend) then keep pumping the units you tech’ed in and siege weapons if you have them. Otherwise if they have a gigantic army, produce a lot of the counter-unit, place a castle between their base and yours, and go Imp.
Not 1 by 1. You can either send Light cav/Knights by groups of say, 5, if you know you will be able to make them run around their base to pick of villies and keep the AI busy, or do the same with cav archers if you’re confident you will be able to keep them alive (they avoid danger easier than melee cav but require more attention on your part and more technologies)
Make sure you have the global queue option enabled. It allows you to see how much villager, military and tech you are currently producing, and is useful to ensure you leaving too many buildings idle.
I would like to thank you both very much for taking the time to offer your insights!
I had no idea you can watch replays of AI matches, I thought this was only possible to rewatch multiplayer matches. This coupled with your ideas has made it a lot more clear what I do wrong.
It turns out that even though my timings are sort of ok, I tend to hoard resources without realizing it. Meanwhile during Feudal, the AI barely has 50-100 of each resource, but it’s always doing something with it. The result is I hit Castle Age quickly, sometimes quicker than the AI, but it does me no good when I do this with 2/3 the total population and barely any military units. I may have the resources to spend, but I have no time to spend them when I’m being attaked and my Vills forced into their TCs…
So this was a huge help, thank you again! Seems I have a lot of work to do, but at least I know where I need to improve now 
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My strategy to beat Hard AI is building a base nearby the enemy as soon as I reach castle age. The base includes a castle and military buildings. Most of the time enemy AI’s archers come near the case and die.then my offense starts.
As soon as I reach Castle Age (or very soon after) I only have enough stone for 1 Castle. So unless you are mining stone with plenty of Vills during Feudal, do you mean you put your single Castle that much forward and away from your base? Isn’t that a little risky…?
If you can bait them into commiting suicide into it then it’s worth it. However, a defensive castle will work just fine, as long as it’s placed where the AI is most likely to attack from.
It’s good that you’re able to keep up with the AI, but the time to castle/imp can be a pretty deceptive metric. There are build orders that let you click imp before 21 mins. You have to consider how strong is your economy when you click and so on.
If you do go for an early atk you need to do significant dmg to their economy to make up for the resources you have invested into the rush. If you spend most of your time running away and not enough time killing stuff, then you’ll end up far behind. But it won’t feel that way because you’re attacking, it doesn’t feel like you’re losing even though you’re falling further behind. A scout rush is somewhat hard to pull off against the AI because scouts are really weak and the AI has perfect micro to respond to it. A knight rush is a bit more reliable. The AI though will build counter units, so your rush will become less effective the longer you fight on a single comp; & transitioning between comps is fairly advanced.
Keep in mind it takes time to train units. If you wait until you see a massive army knocking on your town to train units then it’s already too late. You have to prepare to defend, not just react to an attack. As soon as you secure enough resource income to sustain villager production for your boom, you can start pumping out military units.
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No it is not risky while playing against AI. I agree that it’s risky against human players unless you drop the castle near opponents TC while he is still in feudal.
Also if you want to win by playing defensively then build a castle near your base in a strategic point and wall as much as you can.
Try to create a choke point near the castle.
Also you need to boom with min three TCs while playing defensively. I use the build order suggested in Art of War. 25 - 27 vills in dark age. Play art of war before you play against Hard AI. I usually hit castle age in 17 min using this build order.
Start creating military once you hit castle age and villager production should not stop.
Using hot keys is really important.
For me winning defensively is difficult compared to winning offensively. My win rate is lesser in the former case.
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Tips from a pro (Hera) on beating the extreme AI. Tips will help too for hard AI.
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Thank you, I will try that. I have no trouble keeping the TC busy in the early game, but that gets a bit trickier in Castle Age because there are multiple TCs. It becomes even trickier when you have to start attacking as well. To be honest I still have a bit of trouble keeping track of TCs and offensive moves at the same time. Usually when I gather some troops for an attack or raid, I tend to forget about home… It’s not that I leave idle Vills, I assign everybody somewhere, but I can’t also keep creating as well. Guess it’s a matter of practice.
The same happens to me. It’d be really cool a multiplayer map where a civilization could be controled by two players at the same time, one micromanaging troops while other expanding the base.
It’s already the case. If you select the same colour as another player you will both have control over the same civilization. However role division is entirely up to the players, so be sure to know who does what before attempting this.