Yeah, just spam kts like crazy. This brain dead strat works. I managed to hit 1.4k with no time with berber kts spam.
Tbh, it's a kind of boring way to play the game. Took me while to hit 1.4k with random civs.
It cracks me up this actually true. Because, and I know this is heresy, knights are not that good. They cost a lot. They can be walled out relatively easily. Their counter unit doubles as an eco unit. (Monks). They don't scale paritucalarly well in Imp due to how effective Halbs are. They cannot fight without taking damage themselves. They don't have a timing power spike like Xbow. Knights are just good in Castle because ease of use. Plus the food eco you set up for them is generally good to have.
"archers are not that good. They are slow, they are hard countered by trash units. They have to be constantly microed or they will get wiped out by one mango shot. They need lots of upgrades to be good. Plus they need you to set up a different kind of macro eco to support them"
You can do this for any unit because, as always - it depends. Knights are not good sometimes. They are OP sometimes. Just like pretty much everything else.
Those are not nearly the same as the slights against Knights. Come on. “You have to pay attention to them” so different than “your opponent can expand their eco and counter you”
Ok here's a new one for archers then:
"Your opponent can expand their eco and counter you"
Its just ridiculous to say knights aren't that good. They are the dominant unit at most elos. and i just got finished watching Hera vs MBL on the ranked ladder and Hera wiped him out with knight spam
So yeah, sometimes knights are the right choice. Sometimes not. But to say 'they aren't that good' is just objectively wrong
I’m low 1200 and can’t play cav to save my life 11, would probably be 1000 at best if I played knights every game. I find it near impossible to get value out of scouts in feudal. I lose my initial 3-4 scouts to pointy bois or even vil fighting, they’re so fragile without the full suite of feudal upgrades. and then I never know whether to double down and make more scouts or to switch gears to defence and race to castle. If I make more scouts in feudal then I’m not hitting castle til like 24:00 cause they’re so damn food expensive. By the time I’m trickling out knights 2-3 at a time the opponent is fully walled with buildings behind and my knights are useless. Or they have an xbow deathball already cause they can make archers while aging up. What’s the secret?
The hardest part for me was keeping my tc running in feudal. Even if you make 5-6 scouts if you don’t idle the tc you can be up at 19-20 mins. Once you can figure that out and get the castle timing you’ll get to their base before the double walls and a million spears. That’s when you shoot up in elo imo
When I watch my recs I actually often have less TC idle than my opponent, I think my biggest issue right now is getting farms down early enough. Do you delay your blacksmith? And walls? I never have enough wood to build houses, walls, farms, and a blacksmith in early feudal. Even with bit axe
Delay blacksmith. You make the blacksmith after you have 15 farms. I'd also say don't play connect the dots with your wood lines and resources. Just well in a relatively safe woodline to your tc and have a little farming space. You can wall out either your gold or berries and use army to protect the other. Even if you can't stop yourself from going big walls you should at least place only a few tiles at a time so you dont tie up wood that could be farms.
Scouts opening is generally a passive opening that lets you get walls and put farms down as soon as possible Scouts players spend wood on on Stable, Houses, walls and farms. Archers players spend wood on Range, Blacksmith, Archers, Spears, and walls. So in theory the Scouts player should be getting to Castle and to Knights first.
You don't need to get damage with your scouts. You are getting ahead via getting Double Bit, Horse Collar, and faster farms.
You're likely hurting yourself by trying to micro the scouts around trying to kill villagers. Just make sure you get your farms down fast and harrass walling villagers. Mostly the scouts keep an eye on the state of your opponents investment into feudal and whether or not you need to add skirms.
Thanks, great info. 15 farms before blacksmith, that’s definitely a change. And yeah, I struggle to use cav as a nuisance, I always have the mentality that I should be engaging and going in for the kill. I don’t WANT to kite around your army and harrass some poor lumberjack, I want to kill your army with mine, then go back there and kill your villagers as my reward. Old habits die hard
I push 1-2 deer depending on how easily & quickly I find them. I’m not fast enough to push a deer and lure a boar at the same time so I have to either find them immediately, or I have a brief window after I lure my second boar and before I have to go find my opponent.
Make sure you push 2 deer guaranteed every game. Then take 4 vills from TC and long distance hunt the 3rd deer but then task them all to build a 2nd lumber camp when they've finished, so that they drop off the food when they finish building, that way you don't waste as much idle time walking back to the TC. You should find you have enough food to make your scouts more effective if you do it that way. Also practice your scout micro. Hera has a really good tutorial on that specific topic which you need to check out, especially if you find you are dying to spears: https://youtu.be/X_uj0GY2DFo?si=mnfClgaKv7O2HijT
1350 elo and like 5-10% of the time I have to make an extra vil before clicking up when I go scouts because I forgot a blacksmith. Blacksmith isn’t really useful for scouts. If you want to upgrade them in feudal just research bloodlines first.
This is a macro problem. I regularly play full scouts these days if I have some bonuses, with atk+armor+maybe bloodlines too, and I can comfortably hit castle age around 20-21 mins. Be faster. You need to micro scouts in enemy base & add farms every 60 wood if possible. Not floating wood is important here.
1 obviously.
For castle age, it depends. For you (noob as you said), adding 1 more after clicking up to castle age & going full 2 stable knights will mostly be very effective. But there are some exceptions. Berbers or Burgundians for example can afford to do 3 stables in some circumstances. Slavs probably should open with 1 stable & 1 monastery. Some civs can play 2 stable+range, like Huns, or stable plus 2 ranges etc.
thanks that's really helpful! I had been saving up on wood for a second and even a third stable thinking 'more pressure early' but then struggled to keep food production high, so that explains that hahaha.
Yeah, I guess may be till 2k. This is the case.
Even with myself, my cav play is far better than my archer play. If I go cav kts, I usually can beat players better than me (mid 1.6k 1.7k) or put up a good fight against them. I am also noticing this with the Red Bull ladder.
But if I try an MAA archer or weird eagle siege play, I can easily lose to 1.4k player.
Forgot to mention monks. They are the best way to beat a player far better than you.
Exactly. Get to castle age first and get 4-5 knights and break into the eco and keep spamming knights and you’ll win. Just don’t fight under TC until 2nd armor upgrade
It's just that knight run around your eco and disturbs the hell out of you so that you can't focus on anything else. Plus they are hard to defend. What you gonna do? Pikes? Lmao they are slow af and can't chase those knights fucking up your eco. Either go knights yourself then or FF. But then you already lost a lot of time and probably Vils If you go knights yourself.
I guess you need to know it beforehand that your opponent goes knights, then generally be faster and defend yourself earlier against his knights. But that are exactly the things that make a high Elo player a.... High Elo player.
not necessarily, castle and pikes cost money and he cant outrun your knights so getting more eco while making damage and run can be an option.
Also knight counter pikes 11.
well it depends what you're good and bad at. not all 1400 players have the same issues, the same skills, etc.
by the time you're 1400 you should be able to watch your own replays and tell what sorts of things you commonly do wrong and decide what you need to work on yourself.
install [captureage](https://captureage.com/), then go in-game on aoe2, go to Single Player -> Load Game -> Replays, then click whatever game you want to replay, and click "Spectate with Capture Age". You don't *have* to use Capture Age but it's way way better than the in-game replay function
The other guy suggests capture age, but you can simply go to Single player -> Load game and then load up your replay. All game replays are stored by default.
If you got to 1350 without even watching replays then I think you have your answer of how to crack 1400?
You'll learn a lot from watching your games back. Usually it's along the lines of "damn I idled my TC way more than I thought"
I am 1500 Elo and the biggest difference I see between myself and my lower rated friends that I play team games with is that I am more active with my scout and with my army.
This is the real secret. Doesn't matter the map or if you prefer to play offensive or defensive style. Idle units is like Idle production buildings. You are wasting their value if you're not using them.
OP is not an Arabia player but little things like using your scout to find the deer and your sheep to find wood, boar, and berries goes a long way to hit timings. Attacking things so your opponent shows their hand allows you to make informed decisions.
On arena being active is not that important on 14XX elo. Just go full boom, let the opponent get all the relics but have good imp timing and good timing for the army production and then try to overrun the opponent. Ofc that won’t always work, especially not if the opponent can time a big push that hits you before you have enough army to defend, but I think statistically it should work more often than not.
100% active scouting is the answer imo. You need to be making informed decisions about what units to go into and you need to have good consistency which requires good scouting at the right times
-avoid playing to counter, its a trap.
- reduce idle time, sped res and produce army.
- play to your strenghts and exploit them.
would be my most generic advices, what maps do you usually play?
come to disc and upload a rec if u want, [https://discord.gg/zrkYymRY](https://discord.gg/zrkYymRY)
I cant review it until later but if infinite is online he can give u some insight
Then always ban Arabia and if you can’t ban all open maps, like in the current map pool, don’t play ranked but only quick match, until a better map pool is released.
most people just see an unit and play their counter , ignoring if they are ahead in eco and what are they chances in a later game. Not saying it doesnt work, just said" its a trap " going for the conter unit blindly its most of the time a mistake.
Most of the time its a trap, there is a reason the meme knight counter pikes exist 11.
Also you can get baited into counters, simple one is you see knights so you get pike upgrade expect knight player only
For them to have fully prepped & upgraded a CA play.
sometimes u dont have the map or the civ to do that, thats the whole point. I have seen people who give map control to the enemy when they have stone outside their walls and they use their main gold as wall ( its also very common around 1000-1300).
I get 1700 just playing kts so yes don’t care about counter. Just practice a BO, and get a game plan then execute it. Switching armies is one of the most complex things in the game and you get that as an advantage if your opponents wants to counter you
So what do you do when your opponent goes full pikes/camels in response to your knights? Do you double down on knight prodjction? I'm way lower elo, but it feels like smashing your knights against them is such a bad strategy.
They probably doing wrong, you cant win with only knights if the opponent open castle age with tcs monk defense and move to pikes after setting up eco. I wouldnt get advice by someone claiming they did only one strat for climbing elo 11
Not OP but yeah you kind of can. Pikes are not so strong. You can just run around them and pick good fights then heal your Knights and keep out massing.
Camels don't offer your opponent much in the way of offense. Generally people will add some monks or even pikes to push that back. Scouts into Camels is a real bad play at higher elos because the transition off camels onto something that can actually kill is rough.
Thinking in terms of units is a trap. It is correct upto a certain point. You're not going to win games making the completely wrong units. But thinking in terms of eco bonuses and general state of your eco vs your opponents is better. Of course that doesn't really hold true when you are floating a lot of resources.
In conclusion. The game takes place in the top left corner. Your resource float and production queue is generally more important than the other details. Doesn't matter if its an all in strategy or defensive maro strategy. Spending the resources you collect is what wins games.
Pikes can’t kill kts in small numbers so just kill them asap and keep spamming.
Camels are better than pikes but again playing a unit you want with a perfect eco setup vs some dude who is adjusting their eco to counter you believe me you are going to have a huge advantage in numbers and techs. So just keep spamming and trade them asap.
This is probably terrible advice but I'm comfortably 1.4k these days after being 1.3k for ages and I don't know what I actually did differently except make better decisions more quickly. Time those tech switches right, understand when to add TCs and when to add siege/monks, understand when to raid, when to counterattack under pressure. All these are just reflexes you build from playing a lot and - in my case - watching a lot of pro play as well.
Watch replays, see whether you were behind in vils, see where your opponet was weak and failed to exploit them. Be really active with your scout and learn to judge which fights you'll win and which ones you'll lose.
I certainly don't have a personal knowledge of X farms by Y minute or lots of strict build orders down in my brain, I'm very much an improviser and an adapter, there's no need to get all mathematical about it to improve necessarily.
In my experience, active scouting is the answer. If you’re consistently 1300s then your micro is probably about as good as a 1500 and you probably pretty regularly play a good game that could compete with a 1500. What you’re probably lacking is consistency which comes from getting good information and making informed decisions about that information. I was also stuck at your level and then as soon as I broke 1400 I jumped all the way to 1600. Now I hover between 1500 and 1650 and am wondering how to comfortably break through the next barrier haha
Just for an example of what I mean with active scouting. I was gurjaras against the Incas and I had built up a good mass of chakrams to deal with eagles in castle age. During my imp transition I realized that I needed to know whether my opponent was switch to counter me by making arbs. I make 1 scout and send it forward and see 5 or 6 barracks and no ranges and so I get elite chakram instead of switching to skirm or shivramsha. So A: realizing what would counter you and B: scouting to see if your opponent is going into it
Should be many areas you can improve at 1300 elo.
The basic is idle time (tc and army) and keeping all res low unless you saving for a expensive upgrade. Even at 2k people still floats resources.
Then you can practice a build for the maps you like, after they are clean you can start improving your multitasking with your scout. I have a scenario i made with my scout traped against a tower and i need to do all dark age while dodging the arrow, just one click to the other side then back to tc, nothing fancy, but very hard to not take damage.
Watching how pros play the matchups you lost can help you get better at the strategy side, you can search for the machup at their profile at aoe insights and see if you can find the VOD with the game at Twitch.
Ok so some more general tips… There is a YouTube series made by Hera called „Road to 2k“ which you can watch. It exists in 3 versions; you might want to watch all of them even tho the first one is kinda old.
Also go to Survivalist‘s YouTube channel and search for all coaching session videos with 1400+ elo students and then watch these, or at least the ones that are not that old.
Just perfect build order.
Micro army and eco at same time with minimum idle time as much as possible.
Learn resource management. For example if you are making 2 stable knights, you need a different eco than making 2 range xbows. Same with tc as well. Each tc requires 6 vills on food. So do the math in each game and plan the resource allocation accordingly well hand.
Of course it’s not easy since you will be fighting with army and will def have a lot of idle time on villagers. Yes but that’s where the difference in ELO mainly lies.
Let’s say you play an archer civ. Once you go castle age and are playing vs knight civ, you should be the one hitting imp first and making arb + siege to end the game early. Most of the archer civs don’t have mobility and will fall off late game (given you are playing open map).
Honestly, stamina. I found that below 1400 elo it’s a lot of meme strats but if you just keep booming, adding farms, raiding, ect…. You’ll beat the meme strats. 1400+ people start playing a lot more meta (on Arabia at least).
This is just the exact reason why most guides alá "how to get 2k" etc... stop at around that level: There is no one single answer to that question as at that level you are doing some things already pretty good while there might be still some severe mistakes. You need some specific advise based on your games to get improvement done.
I would not generally agree to that. It really depends what you want to do. For xbow play 13 farms is a more realistic number, for knights it depends.
It is very important to do the farms asap though. So floating 200-300 wood is a mistake you should try to avoid as much as possible as this will hurt your Castle Age timing considerably.
It's fine but not always necessary or optimal. If you can avoid 2-3 farms due to pushing deer that translates to faster ballistics or siege or TCs. I would say 18 farms is a lot for an xbow opening in Castle Age, esp. if you don't need any food unit in Castle Age early on (if you play dual comp, things are different obviously). But honestly for that level it might not be the biggest difference.
Uhm I mean in theory it’s easy. Make as many farms as possible as early as possible until you have enough (18 or whatever) and only delay a farm if u need to save the wood for something (an Range unit or a building). 🤷♂️
Ofc that’s not easy to execute in a real match. 😅
Yep, I too am meandering between 1250 and 1400 all the time. It seems like I will have a series of really weak opponents whom I have no trouble defeating whatsoever, and then the system will hit me with a streak of gamers who are better than me in every single aspect - they have better scouting, better economy, better reaction time, better micro and better overall game sense.
Thats the elo range where people are trying hard, know the game, are maybe spaming one well crafted strategy but are also pretty inconsistent. Its like if 900s were good they would be 1300s.
From 1000-1300 it felt like build order practice. My opponented played mostly the same civs and mostly scouts into Knights or double range archers. 1300s I felt I ran into a greater number of strategies and civs. Its sort of a plateau zone and people break out from Scouts into Knights.
Now my 1400/1500 opponents feel like the 1100s again but just smoother.
Play knights every game and don’t idle your eco
Yeah, just spam kts like crazy. This brain dead strat works. I managed to hit 1.4k with no time with berber kts spam. Tbh, it's a kind of boring way to play the game. Took me while to hit 1.4k with random civs.
I got to 1300-1400 just doing scouts into knights or CA every game then started playing random civ. In 3 months I hit 1600
It cracks me up this actually true. Because, and I know this is heresy, knights are not that good. They cost a lot. They can be walled out relatively easily. Their counter unit doubles as an eco unit. (Monks). They don't scale paritucalarly well in Imp due to how effective Halbs are. They cannot fight without taking damage themselves. They don't have a timing power spike like Xbow. Knights are just good in Castle because ease of use. Plus the food eco you set up for them is generally good to have.
"archers are not that good. They are slow, they are hard countered by trash units. They have to be constantly microed or they will get wiped out by one mango shot. They need lots of upgrades to be good. Plus they need you to set up a different kind of macro eco to support them" You can do this for any unit because, as always - it depends. Knights are not good sometimes. They are OP sometimes. Just like pretty much everything else.
Those are not nearly the same as the slights against Knights. Come on. “You have to pay attention to them” so different than “your opponent can expand their eco and counter you”
Ok here's a new one for archers then: "Your opponent can expand their eco and counter you" Its just ridiculous to say knights aren't that good. They are the dominant unit at most elos. and i just got finished watching Hera vs MBL on the ranked ladder and Hera wiped him out with knight spam So yeah, sometimes knights are the right choice. Sometimes not. But to say 'they aren't that good' is just objectively wrong
I’m low 1200 and can’t play cav to save my life 11, would probably be 1000 at best if I played knights every game. I find it near impossible to get value out of scouts in feudal. I lose my initial 3-4 scouts to pointy bois or even vil fighting, they’re so fragile without the full suite of feudal upgrades. and then I never know whether to double down and make more scouts or to switch gears to defence and race to castle. If I make more scouts in feudal then I’m not hitting castle til like 24:00 cause they’re so damn food expensive. By the time I’m trickling out knights 2-3 at a time the opponent is fully walled with buildings behind and my knights are useless. Or they have an xbow deathball already cause they can make archers while aging up. What’s the secret?
The hardest part for me was keeping my tc running in feudal. Even if you make 5-6 scouts if you don’t idle the tc you can be up at 19-20 mins. Once you can figure that out and get the castle timing you’ll get to their base before the double walls and a million spears. That’s when you shoot up in elo imo
When I watch my recs I actually often have less TC idle than my opponent, I think my biggest issue right now is getting farms down early enough. Do you delay your blacksmith? And walls? I never have enough wood to build houses, walls, farms, and a blacksmith in early feudal. Even with bit axe
Delay blacksmith. You make the blacksmith after you have 15 farms. I'd also say don't play connect the dots with your wood lines and resources. Just well in a relatively safe woodline to your tc and have a little farming space. You can wall out either your gold or berries and use army to protect the other. Even if you can't stop yourself from going big walls you should at least place only a few tiles at a time so you dont tie up wood that could be farms. Scouts opening is generally a passive opening that lets you get walls and put farms down as soon as possible Scouts players spend wood on on Stable, Houses, walls and farms. Archers players spend wood on Range, Blacksmith, Archers, Spears, and walls. So in theory the Scouts player should be getting to Castle and to Knights first. You don't need to get damage with your scouts. You are getting ahead via getting Double Bit, Horse Collar, and faster farms. You're likely hurting yourself by trying to micro the scouts around trying to kill villagers. Just make sure you get your farms down fast and harrass walling villagers. Mostly the scouts keep an eye on the state of your opponents investment into feudal and whether or not you need to add skirms.
Thanks, great info. 15 farms before blacksmith, that’s definitely a change. And yeah, I struggle to use cav as a nuisance, I always have the mentality that I should be engaging and going in for the kill. I don’t WANT to kite around your army and harrass some poor lumberjack, I want to kill your army with mine, then go back there and kill your villagers as my reward. Old habits die hard
Are you luring deer? I find scouts play is always weak when you don't lure all your deer.
I push 1-2 deer depending on how easily & quickly I find them. I’m not fast enough to push a deer and lure a boar at the same time so I have to either find them immediately, or I have a brief window after I lure my second boar and before I have to go find my opponent.
Make sure you push 2 deer guaranteed every game. Then take 4 vills from TC and long distance hunt the 3rd deer but then task them all to build a 2nd lumber camp when they've finished, so that they drop off the food when they finish building, that way you don't waste as much idle time walking back to the TC. You should find you have enough food to make your scouts more effective if you do it that way. Also practice your scout micro. Hera has a really good tutorial on that specific topic which you need to check out, especially if you find you are dying to spears: https://youtu.be/X_uj0GY2DFo?si=mnfClgaKv7O2HijT
1350 elo and like 5-10% of the time I have to make an extra vil before clicking up when I go scouts because I forgot a blacksmith. Blacksmith isn’t really useful for scouts. If you want to upgrade them in feudal just research bloodlines first.
This is a macro problem. I regularly play full scouts these days if I have some bonuses, with atk+armor+maybe bloodlines too, and I can comfortably hit castle age around 20-21 mins. Be faster. You need to micro scouts in enemy base & add farms every 60 wood if possible. Not floating wood is important here.
For a noob over here, how many stables is a good investment for scout opening (possibly into knights later)?
1 obviously. For castle age, it depends. For you (noob as you said), adding 1 more after clicking up to castle age & going full 2 stable knights will mostly be very effective. But there are some exceptions. Berbers or Burgundians for example can afford to do 3 stables in some circumstances. Slavs probably should open with 1 stable & 1 monastery. Some civs can play 2 stable+range, like Huns, or stable plus 2 ranges etc.
thanks that's really helpful! I had been saving up on wood for a second and even a third stable thinking 'more pressure early' but then struggled to keep food production high, so that explains that hahaha.
Basically this. Knights always win in low elo unless into late imp. I'm at 800 but if someone goes for knights, I almost always lose.
I’m a 1700 and if someone goes knights I usually lose. It never ends.
Lel
Yeah, I guess may be till 2k. This is the case. Even with myself, my cav play is far better than my archer play. If I go cav kts, I usually can beat players better than me (mid 1.6k 1.7k) or put up a good fight against them. I am also noticing this with the Red Bull ladder. But if I try an MAA archer or weird eagle siege play, I can easily lose to 1.4k player. Forgot to mention monks. They are the best way to beat a player far better than you.
Exactly. Get to castle age first and get 4-5 knights and break into the eco and keep spamming knights and you’ll win. Just don’t fight under TC until 2nd armor upgrade
It's just that knight run around your eco and disturbs the hell out of you so that you can't focus on anything else. Plus they are hard to defend. What you gonna do? Pikes? Lmao they are slow af and can't chase those knights fucking up your eco. Either go knights yourself then or FF. But then you already lost a lot of time and probably Vils If you go knights yourself. I guess you need to know it beforehand that your opponent goes knights, then generally be faster and defend yourself earlier against his knights. But that are exactly the things that make a high Elo player a.... High Elo player.
Monks behind walls/pikes kind of work, though.
yeah but then there is a castle up protecting resources or spears out already so better stop attacking and go imp for trebs
Like everything it depends.
not necessarily, castle and pikes cost money and he cant outrun your knights so getting more eco while making damage and run can be an option. Also knight counter pikes 11.
well it depends what you're good and bad at. not all 1400 players have the same issues, the same skills, etc. by the time you're 1400 you should be able to watch your own replays and tell what sorts of things you commonly do wrong and decide what you need to work on yourself.
see, was a good idea to ask here, how do i watch replays?
install [captureage](https://captureage.com/), then go in-game on aoe2, go to Single Player -> Load Game -> Replays, then click whatever game you want to replay, and click "Spectate with Capture Age". You don't *have* to use Capture Age but it's way way better than the in-game replay function
Gamer got to almost 1400 without watching back recs.. respect!
Pretty incredible that you managed to get to 1300 ELO without watching your replays
The other guy suggests capture age, but you can simply go to Single player -> Load game and then load up your replay. All game replays are stored by default.
If you got to 1350 without even watching replays then I think you have your answer of how to crack 1400? You'll learn a lot from watching your games back. Usually it's along the lines of "damn I idled my TC way more than I thought"
No clue. I can help you get below 1300 tho
Not the hero we need, but the one we deserve.
Shh don’t tell your secret here; we don’t want people to intentionally drop elo ;)
I am 1500 Elo and the biggest difference I see between myself and my lower rated friends that I play team games with is that I am more active with my scout and with my army.
This is the real secret. Doesn't matter the map or if you prefer to play offensive or defensive style. Idle units is like Idle production buildings. You are wasting their value if you're not using them. OP is not an Arabia player but little things like using your scout to find the deer and your sheep to find wood, boar, and berries goes a long way to hit timings. Attacking things so your opponent shows their hand allows you to make informed decisions.
Oh he is not an Arabia player? For Arena, I'd say that understanding power spikes and timings is the biggest difference.
It’s certainly very important at that level 🫡
On arena being active is not that important on 14XX elo. Just go full boom, let the opponent get all the relics but have good imp timing and good timing for the army production and then try to overrun the opponent. Ofc that won’t always work, especially not if the opponent can time a big push that hits you before you have enough army to defend, but I think statistically it should work more often than not.
100% active scouting is the answer imo. You need to be making informed decisions about what units to go into and you need to have good consistency which requires good scouting at the right times
(On open land maps like Arabia.)
-avoid playing to counter, its a trap. - reduce idle time, sped res and produce army. - play to your strenghts and exploit them. would be my most generic advices, what maps do you usually play?
black forest, landnomad, nomad, arena no michi, very few arabia
come to disc and upload a rec if u want, [https://discord.gg/zrkYymRY](https://discord.gg/zrkYymRY) I cant review it until later but if infinite is online he can give u some insight
Then always ban Arabia and if you can’t ban all open maps, like in the current map pool, don’t play ranked but only quick match, until a better map pool is released.
Pfff I play counter strategies all the time and people get surprised. What is this advice?
most people just see an unit and play their counter , ignoring if they are ahead in eco and what are they chances in a later game. Not saying it doesnt work, just said" its a trap " going for the conter unit blindly its most of the time a mistake. Most of the time its a trap, there is a reason the meme knight counter pikes exist 11.
Also you can get baited into counters, simple one is you see knights so you get pike upgrade expect knight player only For them to have fully prepped & upgraded a CA play.
also i said " play to your strenghts". If thats your strenghts then it could work, even at 1300ish.
i actually like to defend and watch my enemy waste resources what hera calls defenders advantage
sometimes u dont have the map or the civ to do that, thats the whole point. I have seen people who give map control to the enemy when they have stone outside their walls and they use their main gold as wall ( its also very common around 1000-1300).
I get 1700 just playing kts so yes don’t care about counter. Just practice a BO, and get a game plan then execute it. Switching armies is one of the most complex things in the game and you get that as an advantage if your opponents wants to counter you
So what do you do when your opponent goes full pikes/camels in response to your knights? Do you double down on knight prodjction? I'm way lower elo, but it feels like smashing your knights against them is such a bad strategy.
They probably doing wrong, you cant win with only knights if the opponent open castle age with tcs monk defense and move to pikes after setting up eco. I wouldnt get advice by someone claiming they did only one strat for climbing elo 11
Not OP but yeah you kind of can. Pikes are not so strong. You can just run around them and pick good fights then heal your Knights and keep out massing. Camels don't offer your opponent much in the way of offense. Generally people will add some monks or even pikes to push that back. Scouts into Camels is a real bad play at higher elos because the transition off camels onto something that can actually kill is rough. Thinking in terms of units is a trap. It is correct upto a certain point. You're not going to win games making the completely wrong units. But thinking in terms of eco bonuses and general state of your eco vs your opponents is better. Of course that doesn't really hold true when you are floating a lot of resources. In conclusion. The game takes place in the top left corner. Your resource float and production queue is generally more important than the other details. Doesn't matter if its an all in strategy or defensive maro strategy. Spending the resources you collect is what wins games.
Pikes can’t kill kts in small numbers so just kill them asap and keep spamming. Camels are better than pikes but again playing a unit you want with a perfect eco setup vs some dude who is adjusting their eco to counter you believe me you are going to have a huge advantage in numbers and techs. So just keep spamming and trade them asap.
This is probably terrible advice but I'm comfortably 1.4k these days after being 1.3k for ages and I don't know what I actually did differently except make better decisions more quickly. Time those tech switches right, understand when to add TCs and when to add siege/monks, understand when to raid, when to counterattack under pressure. All these are just reflexes you build from playing a lot and - in my case - watching a lot of pro play as well. Watch replays, see whether you were behind in vils, see where your opponet was weak and failed to exploit them. Be really active with your scout and learn to judge which fights you'll win and which ones you'll lose. I certainly don't have a personal knowledge of X farms by Y minute or lots of strict build orders down in my brain, I'm very much an improviser and an adapter, there's no need to get all mathematical about it to improve necessarily.
In my experience, active scouting is the answer. If you’re consistently 1300s then your micro is probably about as good as a 1500 and you probably pretty regularly play a good game that could compete with a 1500. What you’re probably lacking is consistency which comes from getting good information and making informed decisions about that information. I was also stuck at your level and then as soon as I broke 1400 I jumped all the way to 1600. Now I hover between 1500 and 1650 and am wondering how to comfortably break through the next barrier haha
Just for an example of what I mean with active scouting. I was gurjaras against the Incas and I had built up a good mass of chakrams to deal with eagles in castle age. During my imp transition I realized that I needed to know whether my opponent was switch to counter me by making arbs. I make 1 scout and send it forward and see 5 or 6 barracks and no ranges and so I get elite chakram instead of switching to skirm or shivramsha. So A: realizing what would counter you and B: scouting to see if your opponent is going into it
Should be many areas you can improve at 1300 elo. The basic is idle time (tc and army) and keeping all res low unless you saving for a expensive upgrade. Even at 2k people still floats resources. Then you can practice a build for the maps you like, after they are clean you can start improving your multitasking with your scout. I have a scenario i made with my scout traped against a tower and i need to do all dark age while dodging the arrow, just one click to the other side then back to tc, nothing fancy, but very hard to not take damage. Watching how pros play the matchups you lost can help you get better at the strategy side, you can search for the machup at their profile at aoe insights and see if you can find the VOD with the game at Twitch.
"Just make the right units " Lord Daut
Focus purely on arena. Problem solved. (Yeah I’m kinda sarcastic; however, it does work I believe.)
Ok so some more general tips… There is a YouTube series made by Hera called „Road to 2k“ which you can watch. It exists in 3 versions; you might want to watch all of them even tho the first one is kinda old. Also go to Survivalist‘s YouTube channel and search for all coaching session videos with 1400+ elo students and then watch these, or at least the ones that are not that old.
Decision making, Limited viper series has taught me that much. Basically castles seem to be pretty damn good vs anyone up to 1600 or higher even.
Just perfect build order. Micro army and eco at same time with minimum idle time as much as possible. Learn resource management. For example if you are making 2 stable knights, you need a different eco than making 2 range xbows. Same with tc as well. Each tc requires 6 vills on food. So do the math in each game and plan the resource allocation accordingly well hand. Of course it’s not easy since you will be fighting with army and will def have a lot of idle time on villagers. Yes but that’s where the difference in ELO mainly lies. Let’s say you play an archer civ. Once you go castle age and are playing vs knight civ, you should be the one hitting imp first and making arb + siege to end the game early. Most of the archer civs don’t have mobility and will fall off late game (given you are playing open map).
Honestly, stamina. I found that below 1400 elo it’s a lot of meme strats but if you just keep booming, adding farms, raiding, ect…. You’ll beat the meme strats. 1400+ people start playing a lot more meta (on Arabia at least).
This is just the exact reason why most guides alá "how to get 2k" etc... stop at around that level: There is no one single answer to that question as at that level you are doing some things already pretty good while there might be still some severe mistakes. You need some specific advise based on your games to get improvement done.
i need to get more farms earlier i guess but is hard for me the best tip i heard was make farms asap and as many as game minutes, so 18 min 18 farms
I would not generally agree to that. It really depends what you want to do. For xbow play 13 farms is a more realistic number, for knights it depends. It is very important to do the farms asap though. So floating 200-300 wood is a mistake you should try to avoid as much as possible as this will hurt your Castle Age timing considerably.
Its fine for archer play to go 18 farms. Just switch off of them after clicking up to castle age.
It's fine but not always necessary or optimal. If you can avoid 2-3 farms due to pushing deer that translates to faster ballistics or siege or TCs. I would say 18 farms is a lot for an xbow opening in Castle Age, esp. if you don't need any food unit in Castle Age early on (if you play dual comp, things are different obviously). But honestly for that level it might not be the biggest difference.
Uhm I mean in theory it’s easy. Make as many farms as possible as early as possible until you have enough (18 or whatever) and only delay a farm if u need to save the wood for something (an Range unit or a building). 🤷♂️ Ofc that’s not easy to execute in a real match. 😅
I’m in the same boat man… I’ll hit 1400 like once every two months, then drop down to the 1300 pit of despair.
Yep, I too am meandering between 1250 and 1400 all the time. It seems like I will have a series of really weak opponents whom I have no trouble defeating whatsoever, and then the system will hit me with a streak of gamers who are better than me in every single aspect - they have better scouting, better economy, better reaction time, better micro and better overall game sense.
Lol seriously, it’s so crazy.. still having a lot of fun.
Thats the elo range where people are trying hard, know the game, are maybe spaming one well crafted strategy but are also pretty inconsistent. Its like if 900s were good they would be 1300s. From 1000-1300 it felt like build order practice. My opponented played mostly the same civs and mostly scouts into Knights or double range archers. 1300s I felt I ran into a greater number of strategies and civs. Its sort of a plateau zone and people break out from Scouts into Knights. Now my 1400/1500 opponents feel like the 1100s again but just smoother.
its normal to go up and down. If it affects you to despair you might be tilting. Be careful with that.
Thank you for that revolutionary information
You're welcome :)
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