As the title says, every build order on earth cuts you loose at this point. I have no idea how to play late game, if I didn’t cripple my opponents economy with a devastating rush in feudal it’s consistently over for me. My economy falls apart, my production falls behind, and I never do a good job of keeping up on techs besides my basic economy and blacksmith ones.
What do I do? Where do I go to learn how to play late game?
There isn’t really any specific advice. Build orders cut short because the game can develop in so many different ways, and different civilization matchups will also largely affect what you should do.
Generally, you want to control as many resources as possible on the map, so if you haven’t already located all the neutral resources, look for them, keep your economy growing, maybe contest relics, at least try to get 2. If you have a good UU (e.g. Mangudai), try to aim to get a castle up.
Furthermore, the enemy playstyle massively affects what you should do. If your enemy isn’t adding a second tc, but going for a one TC all in, you need to mirror that, or at least make more army than normally, so that you don’t get overwhelmed. So keep an eye on your enemy, keep scouting and keep an eye on what he is trying to do.
EDIT: A build order just basically sets you up for a specific strategy. So also be careful with using build orders, because if you build into the wrong unit, then the build order is (at least partially) losing you the game. E.g. you don’t want to follow an archers build order against Britons.
Castle age is the variable. If you’re pocket and you’ve reached castle age quick, going for knights can turn a flank on it’s head and win you the game right there. Generally however, the idea is once you’re in Castle age, you want to expand your eco in size and space using TC’s, but only so far as you believe you’re able to without being killed. It’s an experience thing.
If you’re trying to learn to properly boom up, practice a conventional Fast Castle on Arena. That’s an environment where you don’t have to worry much about military and it’s all about dropping multiple TC’s and then keeping them all running. Once you get that down, where you always have the TC’s queued from the second they’re up, you’ve got booming down.
Once you have that down, it’s literally all up to experience. Sometimes you’ll drop an extra TC and grow your eco, sometimes you’ll need to focus upgrades and military to keep the pressure on/off, and learning how to balance those approaches comes with time. Your goal should be to expand your economy as far as you can without inviting lethal pressure, to make your later pushes more deadly. Keep in mind, a bigger eco means you also need to provide more production for military up-front, so that you can actually spend those resources as fast as you earn them.
There aren’t guides for how you should play Castle age because there is no right answer. Going for no extra TCs/1 extra TC/2 extra TCs can all be decisions that get you killed sooner or later. It’s up to you to decide what the best avenue is and see it to it’s strategical end.
I guess the best way to learn that is trying to go less aggressive in your games and focussing on booming to set up late game. The two major things you basically need is reading the game correctly (like judging how much army you need, do you need to be agressive or is your long-term unit comp better coming down to the decision to add tcs right away in early castle or making army first and then judiging if to push on one tc or adding more) and having good eco management (vil distribution on res mostly) both of which come with experience. One way to learn could be to play maps like arena which start slow and can get quite hectic in early imp.
1 castle on one of the four directions of the tc corners - 3 tcs(4total) on the castle’s corners, 20 initial farms in a perfect square starting at a corner of a tc, make sure to have both mill upgrades before making these farms, spam 40 vills to woodline, while doing that(as soon as enough wood) make two monasteries between the top corners of the top and left and right sides of the tcs, sell enough for two monks, go get relics, make more farms, (up to 48 in a perfect doubled square)
get 115 pop vills, on the way there make another castle close to the largest goldmine and the farms, ensure to start mining, make 4 gates against the farms and monestaries, wall inwards along the edges of the tcs to close off the main castle from outwards attack and to make bunkers for siege, secure a nearby woodline and go to imperial age as quick as possible - Build me an army worthy of Mordor.
as for a build order to get there-
2 houses
6 sheep/boar/dear/food
(Save 4 sheep for the berry pickers and either make farms early or lure deer with the scout to keep them occupied before sending the initial food vills to farms
-this is so the berry pickers won’t need to set up farms until castle age when both farm upgrades are done)
4 wood/1-2 closest stragglers then woodline
4 Berries(10)food +2 houses
4 woodline(8) wood +2 houses +2 pallisades + 1 gate + wall houses
1 berries(11) food
5 stone +2 houses +2 pallisades + wall houses
24 villagers up to Feudal(+scout 25 pop)
Research stone and wood
+4 food(15) (make farms with these)
+7 wood(15)
35 villagers to Castle
For the two encampments - the goal is to close off only the encampments, not surround the resource. Early semiwalls are key to good defense - full walls have their use but are a waste of time in my opinion.
Examples:
Save your resources, heal units often, and outlast your opponent.
Strike in full force as he/she weakens and you are fully ready to remove them from the planet.
Scortched earth tactics their treelines (or any you won’t be using)
Healing/Conversion Fortress - 29melee, 20 ranged, 11 monks, square formation, stand ground
use alongside other formations, know when to retreat and know when to change formations and break off/reform, etc - be aware that the monks do sometimes venture out of the square, keep a close eye on them until this bug/feature gets fixed
yeah this isn’t even remotely practical at any sort of decent skill level. that type of sim city might be practical at lower levels, but won’t fly elsewhere.
This is really funny.
I posted this some days ago.
By using build order people just copy some strategy, without really knowing why and when it really works. This is why just learning build orders isnt good. All build orders stop at some point. Most of them in feudal or early castle age. Learning the idea behind build orders is much better then just learning a build order.
Sounds like you like to play agressive in Feudal. So, basically, as I understand the game, if you don’t do great damage in feudal, you should rush the up to castles and keeping with the pressure, because if your enemy reach Castle age early than you with a good eco could crush you with Castle age army, or win the boom race. If you do a good pressure then you can start think of booming if you see you can’t no win the match in CAstle age.
The agression pay off, but a good defensive playstyle pays much more (look Hera’s matches against Viper).
Two stable knights, one range for skirmishers or archers, sometimes the other way around. Keep everything producing, and just spend all resources you are left with on whatever seems useful. Keep your units interacting with the other guy if possible without getting slaughtered, so they might stay at home and not raid your base. If you feel like you can pull if off, drop a castle on their face. Go up to imperial after a while to deliver the final blow.
Then die to a massive cavalier raid in your base you didn’t spot for at least five full minutes. That’s what I usually do.
I confirm… Once I lost a winned game because of 3 light cavs that killed 60 of 80 vils… I just noticed when my resources run out…So sad…
Simple advice, do what you hate your oponents doing to you once they hit castle.
this is epic… just EPIC!
So you’re telling my to play a cav civ and mass knights? 11
short answer: build TCs, create vills, create knights, continue attacking.
longer answer: it sounds like you’re getting overwhelmed. You mention you’re getting the eco and blacksmith upgrades, so the only important upgrades you’d be missing are the unit upgrades.
You say your unit production lags behind your opponent’s, and it sounds like the villager production is also lacking. Easiest way to fix this is to get used to the select-all-TCs, select-all-barracks, select-all-stables, select-all-blacksmiths, and all the other select-all hotkeys. If you don’t have the select-all hotkeys tied into your muscle memory yet, do yourself a favour and select some good custom hotkeys. The default select-all hotkeys are completely unworkable imo.
If you really want to learn to play the late game, it might also be good to play some games on Arena & the water map of the week. You’ll perform far below your current ELO at those maps, so you could opt to play those games under an alt account.
added one more pic of camps and a statement on the healing fortress setup
No. That means his current ELO is inflated. So actually should feel free to balance his ELO by playing those maps 
Guys I just won a game that went to imp playing defensively 
I’m so proud of myself 11
congrats 
20characterminimum
Maybe you don’t put enough attention to macro because you’re too busy microing.
Some tips to improve can be
One link I’ve found very helpful is this:
https://aoe2-de-tools.herokuapp.com/villagers-required.html
That basically tells you how many villagers you need to put on every resources to afford to produce stuffs.
You can also check this video for a more in-depth analysis of macro aspect of the game:
