For me it is Obsidian Arrow tech for Maya(ns) that gave archers huge bonus against buildings.
I remember Mayan Archers + Saracens Ally you didn't even need Siege to destroy buildings.
I'm a mega noob. I can only win when I rush the enemy and hope I can kill them before they kill me.
I make walls, castles, have an army, but I just cannot defend in this game at all.
Any defensive buildings I make get treb'd/mangonel'd/bombard cannon'd down with a deathball of units. In team games I am often throwing over 1000 units into a meat grinder to stop the push. It works like one out of every 15 times.
Other times, I just havea hole blown in my wall and 20 knights/mangudai run and kill all my villagers or trade. I build halberd, but the cavelry do the time tested strategy of running past them.
I've found that making small paths can slow them down, and get clogged up with my units before they get deep into my base. But then I'm pushed back and helpless from the treb/bombarbs
In open or closed maps, team or 1v1, it's the same deal. Although this issue is mostly in team games. Open maps I actually have a bit more of a chance because on closed maps people just wall off and boom and kill me
So I've watched many, many tournaments across multiple titles. There is some very crazy skilled people out there...
Recently I've fallen in love with AoE2 again, despite being a noob. I am actually blown away by this man's domination of the scene. I used to watch Viper years ago, and he was also very, very good.
Then I stumbled upon Hera's recent win against Leierey. Holy, mother, of, gosh. To come back against an insurmountable wall like him and STILL making a come back? I was at the edge of my seat.
Dare I say? Hera might actually be the single most dominant eSport player I've ever seen. Genuinely gob smacked by his skill. And I used to play competitive FPS many years ago at a very high level, so I can appreciate talent when I see it.
I recently started playing this game for the first time since playing Age of Empires 1 in like 2008 when I was 7.
I am really interested in getting competitive but I feel stuck in a way. I can beat moderate AI and sometimes hard AI. I know what a perfect dark age looks like. I know how to do a fast castle build. But after practicing I still just get obliterated in any online match ranked or not.
Other than practicing vs AI, what could I do to improve besides boring stuff like practicing dark age. Are there certain things I could try do in online matches where even if I lose, I learned something new? Should I just spam ranked until I atart winning even if it means dropping to 100 elo? I just want to weave some fun stuff in with the boring dark age practice and AI matches so I dont lose interest. It really looks like the further you go in this game the more fun it is
EDIT:
Wow, so many responses! Thanks for the support y'all this community seems great.
I’ve just begun playing ranked and looking for a solution an army control issue I notice. Let’s say I broke into a base with some cav and want to figure out where I can harass/kill vills. The enemy base layout is compact and filled in such a way that it’s hard to not right click onto a building/ farm etc when really I’m looking for them to move to a point and then freely target units.
This also may come up if I have a group of crossbows circling behind an enemy base. Their walls/buildings are in the foreground and I want to move my crossbows right up to the closest tile of the wall to range vills inside but I am clicking on the tall barracks for example.
Is there any kind of command/hotkey to ensure you ignore everything but the “move to” command? Or do I just have to micro that cav group to the exact open tile and find some open ground for those crossbows?
Context: ~1000 ELO
Viets have no hand cannoners, no heavy scorps, so how do you counter infantry spam? The only times I win is when I go all in from the start with aggressive feudal (scouts + towers). I usually go up to castle age with a large lead in score, but as soon as goths have a castle and a tiny bit of economy, they pikes kill my cav, and my archers are useless against their unique unit. In a couple minutes, I lose the game.
It’s been 92 days since the console version of aoe2 has been in varying degrees of completely broken. Units, building foundations, and your displayed resources are often invisible. The game is nearly guaranteed to crash if you click Imperial Age. The dev team has said “we are aware of the problem” and not much else. It feels like a Thoughts and Prayers type of energy without planning on actually fixing it. This feels like a small game, but the Age of Empires franchise has sold more than 1 billion dollars in games and dlcs. They have the resources, but have chosen to ignore the issues on console.
Often the response from the community on Reddit has been “just get a pc”, but I feel like that misses the point. Holding each other accountable includes Microsoft and the dev team and the community of players. We all love aoe2, I truly believe it’s the best game of all time. I’m not sure if there’s anything to be done besides being annoying and making posts, so here goes nothin
[LAST SPOILER WARNING]
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Welp there we go.
After winning 16 S Tier tournaments in a row, Hera will not win Warlords V after being eliminated ny Lewis in the Round of 12, not even making it to the quarterfinals.
The streak had to end at some point, but sure he will be back even stronger and keep being the number 1 contender in every tournament he plays. This streak is an incredible achievement and I'm sure this record will stand for a long while, maybe forever.
But it felt like he just wasnt as locked in as he usually is, being a bit slower to everything and a bit more sloppy. Should be mentioned that he focused a lot on Warcraft 3 the last few weeks, even winning a whole tournament.
But I'm also happy that now the other incredible skilled and hard working player get a chance to reward themselves. With Hera out and Viper being on vacation and playing from laptop, Liereyy seems like rhe clear favorite, but who do you think is gonna take it now?
No disrespect to Lewis, I'm a firm believer that Lewis sweeping him is a huge fluke and robs Hera of truly accomplishing what their capable of. I've spent the last few days in pure disbelief and it just doesn't make sense to me. I've spent the entire regular season watching Hera play great aoe2 it's just not fair.
If the Hera lose again I will face that Lewis deserved the win, but I am just 100% sure it was a fluke and does a big disservice to Hera and the aoe2 competitive scene.
https://www.aoe2insights.com/match/479357394/#overview
If the castle goes up halfway through do I just give up and fall back? He kept sending waves of villagers and military until it went up, and I was in big trouble when it went up.
I just had a really bitter loss, I already know some jerkoff is gonna comment ‘just play perfectly 4hed’ so, yes, I will try to play perfectly next time. Anyway, I like playing Chinese, but this game ran me into a terrible situation of facing a composition of Bombards, mixed arb/skirms, and halbs. What in the world was I supposed to do about this? Light cav eat shit, that’s your best bet as far as I can tell against bombards. No siege weapon you can make is of any use
Link takes you to the AoE2 website which says there is server maintance on May 14th (thursday last week) but nothing about today/tomorrow. Anyone know what's up?
I get this community is quite special as we play mostly Aoe2 and not much anything else, but I'm curious about what other games you spend hours on. I personally became quite fond of They are Billions and the Two Point studios ones. For some reason no other Aoe game hss interested me a single bit haha.
I am seeing a lot of doom takes after today's games, but I think people are missing the bigger picture. Hera's loss might a good thing for his career.
Hera has been competing non-stop, including the recent WC3 tournament with Grubby last weekend (which also introduced aoe2 through him to a lot of new players). That kind of cross-game grind takes a toll on focus and mechanics. Losing here forces a break he probably needs but wouldn't take on his own.
Also worth noting, he finished 9th and walked away with $2500. Best case scenario: he rests, sorts whatever personal/professional stuff has been on the backburner, and comes back hungrier for more S-tiers.
This isn't the end of anything, just another career checkpoint. And of course, congratz to Lewis, he worked hard towards this!
I want to make a mod where my villagers wear conical straw hats. Does this exist already?
If not then I'll make it myself. At least for when the villagers are farming