u/appappappappappa

I've been trying to learn Arena and since pretty much 80-90% of matches are against this exact same strategy and I have lost to it every single time (at least unless I go for a very aggressive castle drop / similar rush myself) I watched and tried to implement all the tips from Hera's video.

I did the second layer of wall (and later on even a third), defend with mangonel and monks, then try and take a lead in eco then push it back.

Thing is they just make a second castle further forward and it's does so much damage. You lose all resources on the front of your base (potentially all gold and stone access if you're unlucky). Then you also lose that second layer of walls. I got ahead in eco but it didn't matter.

The monks were moderately useful, but still unless you get a tonne of monks, you are only really going to convert 5-10 units at best over the whole period you're defending. The siege did pretty much nothing, the castles out range the mangonels, and can shoot down the walls. So there is nothing to shoot at until their army breaks in, at which point the siege is totally exposed.

Basically, while I do love Hera's videos, I feel like a lot of what he's saying is not that useful because he's an extremely strong player, playing against other extremely strong players. The reality at lower elos is that defending against a forward castle drop is 10x harder than executing a forward castle drop (same deal as with the 1TC all in phosphoru stuff).

Does anybody have advice for me intermediate (1200-1300 elo) players on defending castle drops? Or an Arena do you just have to do that strat same as everyone else and that's all there is to it? I have tried defending against it 10-20 times at this point and I have never succeeded.

I have just reviewed some replays and I've noticed this happening a few times where steppe lancer can beat infantry at a crazy numbers disadvantage when they stack on one space. The infantry kind of bundle around when attack move and just get shredded...

What are you supposed to do against them? The example that made me realise this was particularly shocking as I would sure it would be an easy cleanup... had 2:1 numbers of long swordsman and just got destroyed, I killed maybe 2 for my whole army...

I am seeing it more and more frequently, honestly feels like another super easy and op unit in early castle age... Great at raiding, shreds walls, hard to micro against... idk, I really feel like all these additions are adding very little to the game apart from new ways to cheese.

I honestly don't even see anyone defending them as balanced. It seems to be a broadly accepted fact that you can boost your elo a lot by just playing one of this small selection of strategies.

It was funny at first, but now everybody does it all the time and it is boring. Yes everyone knows that you can go FC into UU plus a couple of mangonels and your opponent has to play 2x better than you to win.

Why don't they just fix it at this point? Does anybody enjoy it? Is there a case to be made that they are balanced?

They are very easy to pull off, so something like that being overpowered is just a disaster for a competitive game...

In my quest to get used to playing other maps (because unlimited bans seems like it's never going to be a thing). I have once again tanked my elo by starring Nomad.

I like to play aggressive as much as possible because I feel my strength is when the game is complicated and off script. Problem I'm finding on nomad is that I find that everyone plays the same opening of TC + dock + fishing ships and zero army. I have tried deviating from this but the loss of food from the fishing ships is devastating.

Are there any viable strategies other than this one? I feel like the closed maps are already very fast castle focused, I was hoping nomad would be different.

I am finally getting a bit better at closed map strategies (still feels like cheese but whatever).

Thing is, it still just feels boring even though I'm not getting crushed. I do Japanese FC into infantry plus rams and half the time opponent just resigns as soon as I get in... It just feels like wasting 10-15 mins just for nothing to happen...

I thought I would try to mix it up by going for like a sneak behind / forward base and then shock attack on Arena and fortified clearing. I have been trying it with Japanese for the faster attack infantry.

I practiced it in skirmish quite a bit to work out the timings / vill numbers and I can get a really good number (around 20) quite quickly without much wasted time/resource.

Even with a few games with good execution and opponent being greedy with only palisade walls it just doesn't really work. The feudal units just feel way too weak even in mass. They can obviously get to castle and either place defensive castle or even just go for whatever UU they were planning to make.

Can anything like this work? Or do you just have to go fast castle on these closed maps? I'm not saying it should be the best strat ever, but it feels like if opponent goes full greed, no army and poor scouting, it should be possible to punish somehow.

I post here often with my experiences and looking for advice. I will not say any opinions because I just get drawn into debates which is not productive.

I just want to get through this rut I'm in which is characterized by losing a lot to all-in strategies.

Things I've tried:

1. Doing them myself to learn the counter. This inflated my elo a lot, eventually I start losing but I don't really get much of a clear takeaway other than once I get to 1400 (my usual is around 1200) the level of execution of my opponents is high enough that the strategy doesn't matter.
2. Scouting. I have gotten much better at this, but even when I see it coming I still lose a lot.
3. (assuming I scout that it's an all-in) Walling up. I just find that a hoard of early castle knights / UU or whatever melt the walls. It helps only to prevent a really really bad forward castle position.
4. (assuming I scout that it's an all-in) Heavy feudal pressure. This sometimes works, but you can still get so much military if you a) sell stone / other res at the market and b) turtle up super small. I will say that if they have a bad map, I have found the feudal pressure a bit more effective.
5. (If I don't succesfully scout / realise it's an all-in). In this instance I really don't see any hope of winning without an enormous skill differential.

After quite a bit of practice I am still more-or-less hard stuck against these strategies. Any other recommendations for things to try / examples from other's experiences are very welcome.

I need some advice because I am just hard stuck at this point and aoe2 which I used to love playing has slowly become less and less fun as my elo reached around 1200 (more like low 1400s if I just do "cheese" all-ins) and I have found myself considering dropping the game (which would be a shame, as I've invested over 500 hours and I used to really enjoy it).

Recurring issues I am having which are sapping the fun out of the game:

1. A small number of strategies are very common and feel much stronger and easier than anything else. Basically some small collection of all-in strats. When I play these my elo goes up a lot, when I don't I lose. Even when my elo drops, I've noticed that at any elo >1000 I have a pattern that I lose 70-80% of my games against these strats (unless I am doing the same).
2. Non-arabia maps could be fun but you are mostly matched against "specialists". I love the non-arabia maps and I think there can be interesting strategy and variety there. Problem is I find whenever I pick them I get matched against players who (as confirmed on aoe2insights) play that map / map-type as their main. This means what could be fun just ends up being a stomp.
3. Game replay review has become very repetitive and I struggle to find new insights. Honestly I used to enjoy the review even more than playing the game itself. But now I find I lose to the same strats, in the same way, over and over again. I know what I should do based on reading online and my own ideas, but I still lose anyway. Most of these losses are because the counter is much harder to execute than the strat itself (I'm thinking e.g. monk micro, mangonel micro, etc. or more macro things like sometimes boom/defend is the correct strategy but still is much harder).

I've asked individually about some of these things before but I'm curious if overall I am alone in this feeling or if others are stuck in the same way?

I don't want to drop this game, I think it's amazing, but the reality I have to accept is that the fun and variety has definitely gone down since I reached "mid" elo. Anybody else broken through a similar phase?

Most of my experience trying to get into TG black forest is attempting to boom and then having our opponents just turn up with e.g. massed elephants and just walking into our base and then gg shortly afterwards.

I'm not here to talk about the strategic mistakes that lead to that situation - I just feel like at around 1100 TG elo this must be happening a lot and I wonder how people don't get bored of it? Basically nothing happens?

What's most interesting is typically these players are playing pretty much 100% BF and if you look in their games, you can see a bunch of their wins happening at 42-45 minutes, which is where they first attack after their build order ends. So clearly it happens a lot...

Every match is a complete stomp and my rating is just all over the place. 1100-1400 range (but upper range only achievable with cheese strats).

I don't know if it's just me but I feel like every match is just totally unbalanced... I get about 25% of games where it's actually competitive and close - the rest are just stomps and there is no competition.

Surely I'm not the only one feeling like this? It really makes it very unrewarding playing ranked.

It's supposed to be a strategy game but with literally zero skill or thought you can easily wall off the crossings and then the only way to play is contest water. Water is extremely snowbally and is basically gg once you lose it because there is no way to use land army for anything. 15 range cannon galleons across the width of the map honestly might be the dumbest thing added to any game all time.

So bad I had to use move my perma-ban from Arena...

I've noticed more and more I'm getting matches where I take some early damage and fall behind and then I just kind of survive but I don't know how to get back into the game?

Like I know they can't kill me now, but by the time they hit imperial they will have more tech and more upgrades and then I will just die. What kind of approaches should I consider for trying to get back into the game?

As I was losing a lot on strategy type issues, I decided to just full commit to just looking up known strong civ + composition + strategies online and start by just playing those regardless of what my opponent does.

I have gone almost +200 elo and way past my previous all time high (previous high was 1180, I am now high 1300s but seem to be plateauing) in about the last 3-4 weeks (29 games).

Thing is it feels kind of like "fake" improvement. All I did was just copy some thing that I read online. None of my mechanics / execution / game sense / strategy improved, but now my rating is higher than I thought it would be for a long time (maybe ever).

Anyone else been in this situation? Now I'm not even sure how I should track my improvement anymore...

I'm not talking full trolling, but where I have a clear and sustained lead but they just refuse to die and spread out TCs and castles everywhere, keep trying to raid all over the place, hiding in the corners etc.

I just had one where we reached over an hour in game time and I just resigned to review replay and then queue next despite 70 population lead. I just get bored and it takes me forever to grind them down.

Partly I think I just don't know the post-imp strategy and even with higher apm, more economy more military etc., if my opponent knows the meta for being very very slow and difficult to kill there is not much I can do (my k/d is absolutely horrific from that game lol). I am not a patient player and I would rather lose and queue again than win very slowly.

Are there any go-to compositions for late-imp which are quick at killing players like this? I basically have infinite res and very little need to defend, I just want to go next...

I have found pikes kind of suck and I had read that monks are a strong counter to knights. I am struggling to get it to work.

• Lone monks in open battle - seem more or less useless, if you are lucky you get one conversion before they have dived.
• Monks behind walls - a bit better, but they are so slow and the knights can just go to a different bit of wall / base.
• Monks hiding in the TC - I have honestly not found many use cases for this. If knights are right next to my TC I am probably dead anyway.
• Massed monks - I had a couple of times when this was devastating, but more often it has gone terribly because they are very vulnerable to other military (e.g. scouts, ranged units, siege etc.).
• Monks + pikes - I guess this is strong in theory, but the micro load is too much for me and my eco can suffer (or I just mess it up lol).

Basically it seems both weaker and more difficult than just making my own knights. I am kind of just sick of always making knights but nothing else seems close in terms of power.

I got completely crushed by this strategy and my new policy has been whenever I see a strat I lose to, I try and play it the next game.

It has really opened my eyes to how easy these 1TC all-in strategies are. I have won 4 back-to-back with this strategy on 2 Arena and 2BF (me and my teammate have been trying to learn closed maps).

I don't want to keep doing it because it is a bit boring for us because all 4 games I just show up with the rams + samurai and then about 5 mins later max they just resign. I also had a similar experience with the organ gun rush where my win rate with portuguese is 4/5 with that strat...

My execution of the strategy isn't even good - I did not practice the build order or anything. I think it is just such a power spike and it's so difficult to scout and defend it at our level (around 1100 TG). Honestly it just feels broken - in fact feels like every all-in 1TC play has felt the same way. They're too easy and too strong I think because you do not need to think or adapt, you have a simple plan and only a very good response will lead to a successful defense.

My question is, how can anybody at 1100 TG elo defend this? Does anybody else have a similar experience?

Not sure if I'm just too dumb or what but I just cannot break through around 1100-1200 elo. Every game I feel like I watch the replay, read online, sometimes ask here and attempt to learn what I should have done but I do not improve.

My weakness is clearly on the strategy, but every game I seem to make the wrong strategy call, or I get some new scenario which I need to the add to the long list of exceptions to the already long list of rules.

I am especially weak to the very common strategy of small feudal pressure into 1TC forward castle. I have faced this so so many times and I still die to it unless my opponent's execution is really poor. I tried doing it myself and I went +100 elo but even then I just get to a high enough elo where I lose to people doing the same thing just quicker / with some additional cheese / UU counter I didn't know about.

I just don't know what I should do to improve anymore, it used to be very clear with things like less idle TC, not floating resources, making sure to scout opponent etc. but I do all of those basics well now (or at least, better than most of my opponents from what I see in the replays - especially idle TC which is often very bad for these 1TC all-inners).

Did anyone else hit a similar wall when the strategy starts to become the weak link? How did you break through it?

I beat my opponent to castle, took zero damage from their archer rush. Pushed with two handed swordsman and skirm (skirm to counter xbow, swordsman to start destorying buildings and things).

They just went 4 battle elephants plus the leftover xbow and then just completely rolled me. I tried skirm + pike but they still crushed.

How can you convert an advantage in that situation? I was ahead 5 vills plus 3 mins earlier to castle age but somehow they completely flipped the game around within a few minutes of reaching castle age. In the end they just spammed elephant plus cav archer and I could not beat it even with higher apm, more villagers and building pike plus skirm which is supposed to be the counter unit.

Honestly learning this game is the worst sometimes, you do so much right and your opponent does so much wrong and yet you still lose and you cannot even understand why.

Edit: I just checked, KD at the end was 90K vs 330D - and I had fully upgraded counter units. How can they even be called counter units at that point?

Just had a game where my opponent went 1TC imp with almost no army which I thought makes sense to punish with all in castle age. He was xbow so I was knight plus skirm plus mangonel.

Thing is they just went mangonel and monk and then it's gg? At one point I had 60 military to their 15 but I can't get in the walls, I can't go under their castle, I can't go near their monks (because they can just hide in the TC / castle).

What are you supposed to do? I have been trying to play more castle age pressure but it feels so weak.

I've been watching Hera's coaching, reading a lot about strategy / tactics / civs etc. online, practicing different micro mechanics, reviewing replays, learning how to adapt, having a balanced eco etc. etc.

I really think I have improved on so many of those areas but at the end of the day I still lose easily to just a standard all-in UU build order or something. That has never changed, even though I have learnt the supposed counters etc.

I'm just thinking at this point if most of this stuff I've learnt about only really matters if you have enough time to play 1000s of games? At my rate of improvement I just don't ever see these things making a difference.