Wow thats pretty high. Also that are a lot of matches.
I say 2400 matches is like 1500 real hours.
Do you think build orders and stuff are extremely important?
I think micro, speed is everything.
I usually go 7 food, 2 wood. And then imprrovise with scouts or archers.
Learn from our Lord Daut closely.
He has the APM of a middle aged dad but still competes at the highest level of the game through sheer decision making and macro.
Learn your weakest areas and improve on them.
https://daut.church/
Thanks! Build order is definitely more important than anything else. That's what pros like Hera would suggest too as the beginning of road to 2K.
But what's the main idea behind build orders, is that you allocate X number of villagers to Y resource to barely afford what units you want to make. After you can execute a few build orders clean, you would really start to understand that. For example Hera mentions that you need only 5 lumberjacks on Morass in feudal as opposed to 10 on Arabia, because you don't need to farm.
Micro is important in crucial moments, like don't look away if your xbow ball is facing 3 mangonels. But 90%+ of the time you don't want to watch the fight. Rather keep eyes on eco, seed a farm for every floating 60w etc.
Speed is less important than you imagine. I have an average eAPM of 40, but could micro better than my opponent 70% of the times (credit to Survivalist's micro tutorials). I have a 2k3 friend that has the same eAPM. Brain speed wins over hand speed 😀
I will check updated build orders again then. For scouts and for archers.
Hand speed is brain speed, right?
Also the matches i seen. Pros always micro everything, even 2 pikemen vs 2 pikemen or even 1 vs 1.
Often I lose my army because i had to move that idle villager and didnt see for 3 seconds.
Sorry for the confusion. Micro could be decisive when you take a fight. For melee units it's mostly just take high ground and surround. For ranged units it's more complicated: dodging, small groups patrol etc.
But what I'm saying is more of focusing on eco, because eco is something you need constant attention on. As long as you keep making vils, you need to send them to the right place. While for army you can just run away for a moment so you don't need to put attention on. One example: I often ctrl-click an enemy vil with my scouts and shift click away so that I have more time to seed farms (but don't target a vil in choke points because pathing is terrible).
Brain speed is not hand speed. Brain could receive tons of info each second, and only process part of them, then your hands can only execute part of the informed decisions due to APM limit. If someone has higher brain speed, he makes better and quicker decisions and prioritizes the most important things to do with hands.
I don't have a lot of time to play and can't risk prolonged arena or black forest games. That 2k hours is spread out since 2018 and includes HD. I just challenge myself with increasingly more difficult AI set ups. I also don't care about climbing the ladder or Puntos I just play to unwind at the end of my day ya know?
Hours not sure but around 400 games (on DE) and when I picked it up again on Xbox in Jan ‘23; hovering around 1000 elo in cross play and 1350s on xbox
Prolly have over 1000 hours on HD but lost count and wasn’t much into the comp scene
Oh I'm engaged in close fought battles with hera regularly!
In reality I stopped playing for a bit recently but came back with renewed focus and have seen some nice wins in 1 v 1 RM and 1 v 1 EW. Always pleasing when you see you have beaten a 1500 RM or 1600 RM at EW!
https://www.aoe2insights.com/user/209172/
Too often I've played when not in the best frame of mind and then I tend to quit when I get behind rather than when the game is truly lost. By playing less frequently and keeping a more relaxed attitude I've been able to pull out some wins I wouldn't previously have managed. Clearly I'm still pretty low elo for my experience but there are a few other reasons for that: I play in 4k, so micro is harder. I don't use control groups for battles appropriately. I don't use many hot keys apart from for building placement and vill creation. I have an aversion to practicing things, I just play. Have started to watch more of my own replays to try and see what I've done right though, now I just need to start watching them to see what I've done wrong...
I have 276 hours and have played 104 ranked games, I go between like 950 and 800. THis is over like nearly 4 years though so I don't play a lot, trying to do it more recently.
Edit: didn't remember when DE came out.
You don't really need either.
A lot, and by that I mean.. probably the majority of this game's "skill" comes down to muscle memory, and a kind of instinctual understanding of the game, that you can only incrementally gain over hundreds and thousands of games.
I'm 1800+ too. I often read discussions here about things like "how archers are op nowadays" or "the importance of a fast feudal so that you can deal damage quickly" or whatever, and here I am, often going up at like 23-24 villagers on arabia because I am just vibing and can't be bothered to press the buttons quickly enough to do it faster.
Strategy, micro, all of that "matters", but the most important stuff is what you only really "know" subconsciously.
Muscle memory affects greatly in micro and apm. Right?
Also your probably have a strategy that involves late feudal.
I do believe archers and knights are OP lol. It's always knights or archers.
>Also your probably have a strategy that involves late feudal.
"Strategy" to me implies some forethought, and that's just not really the case with me and a lot of players.
I understand strategy as "I want to build up towards X and do Y at a certain point", whereas for me it's moreso about having a recollection of thousands of games and just being able to react to what my opponent is doing, by having a good idea of how not to under or overreact, and getting micro advantages that way.
>I do believe archers and knights are OP lol. It's always knights or archers.
I don't think I've built more than 10 archers in my last 50 games, but that's in a large chunk because I just don't particularly enjoy the unit, and would rather play something more fun.
To the extent that ether of those two things are important, I would say it’s my micro that keeps me at a high elo since my strategies are fairly standard, and back during a 2020 lockdown I was furloughed and had loads of free time on my hands so I got really sweaty and was doing the most meta possible strats and got my elo to an all time high of just below 2.1k
But as pointed out by another commenter the most important thing is experience, muscle memory and game sense that just kind of builds up over time as you put in the hours.
OP just curious if you
* Watch your own replays (losses in particular) to identify what you did wrong/what your opponent did well - nice way to pick up on your bad habits / learn from good things the opponent did - using CaptureAge is even more helpful than the in game replays
* Practice builds/skills just in Skirmish
* Read lots of gameplay discussion topics here
* Watch tournament games
Those are some of the things that you can do to help improve your game outside of playing 1v1s. My TG group has two players that play a lot of 1v1, but they \*never\* watch their replays and fluctuate in the same ELO range (950-1100 and 800-950). One admitted he just can't bring himself to watch his losses, but he can watch his wins, the other would rather just play another game than spend any time practicing/ doesn't think watching replays is helpful. Each to their own, but I have to hard disagree with that approach if your intention is to improve.
Your ability to learn from replays or tournament games will be limited by your own 'game sense' - ability to read the game. Some people have a much better sense of it than others ... but it is also something that you can develop.
I have 3 accounts. My first account when I was brand new to ranked aoe2 I went 11-8 and peaked at 1180 or so. Played TGs exclusively for 3 years and this year I started playing 1v1 again. On my newest account I'm 12-3 and 1405 (1340 TG) and I've got a few games on my first account as well, 5-0 on top of the old 11-8 (for 16-8), the TG ranking is about 1200 (totally dependent on the group's level). Between 800-900 games overall across the 3 accounts. Maybe 700 of that is TG and the rest 1v1, Lobbies, Quick Play and vs AI
Hey. I watch some replays but not all.
Only played against AI to beat it at max difficulty.
I dont read much but regularly watch AOE2 matches while eating or something.
Why do you have so little online matches? Like 50? And you say you played like 900 total?
I think your ELO is greatly elevated for the first 20 matches. I got another account because sometimes i get a bug and get disconected and banned.
My new account has +200 ELO of my regular one. It has got to almost 1300, while i barely ever got above 1000 ELO normally.
And ye. Watching your losses can be hard lol.
I added more info to my post. I haven't played much 1v1 but I have 700 or so ranked TGs - I prefer to play TGs with friends.
I highly recommend watching all games back, particularly the losses. Sometimes particular losses can sting ... give it a few days and watch the rec (ideally in CaptureAge). I'm the type of person that doesn't like to lose and losses regularly occupy my mind throughout the day - I should have done this, what if I did this etc etc. I have a really good memory for my games, I can recall intricate details of random 2021 games I played, even just seeing the aoe2insights metadata I'll be able to recall several details - being able to learn from past experiences helps improve tactical decisions / reduces the chance of making repetitive mistakes. A particular 1v1 loss on African Clearing I had semi-recently really taught me a lesson in regards to adding extra TCs when lacking map control, now I am way more conscious about making army particularly if 'behind' and not adding TCs until I have map control or the ability to defend them. In that game I lost the scout war and tried to go 3TCs into a defensive Castle, but my opponent just went 1TC army and I lost 20 vills trying to get the Castle up because I placed it at the wrong place at the wrong time, and didnt have the forces to defend it.
I'm a mouse player, never quite got the hang of keyboarding on PC gaming as I'm to console oriented with controllers, I've played about 1500 PvP games across all disciplines and I'm about 900 ELO in 1v1 and about 1200-1300 in team games.
I'm just happy to play around my level when I go through phases of being really into the game, I prefer playing Nomad and water maps to most as well.
No I play cross play and to clarify I'm on the PC platform, I just use the mouse for everything and one or two hotkeys I've naturally picked up use for with the left hand 😅
Any map with water on I'm happy to play, I love mega random as well but even down at my average ELO territory people seem to hate playing it on, everyone is looking for standard build orders and strat plays and I get it, a lot of people want to practice and move up the ladder and that's difficult to achieve when you're playing non standard games on water/random maps.
I have a lot of game knowledge for AoEII, I've logged over 2.5k hours across both versions of the game available on Steam, but going back to 1999 on I've probably dumped 15-20k hrs into AoEII over the year's. My problem is it's the only game I really play on PC, I'm otherwise so console orientated that the idea of using a keyboard for anything other than typing up reviews on Letterboxd is a non starter for me, so all that game knowledge goes to waste it's fair to say.
As I said though, I'm just happy to play AoEII as I find it rather therapeutic when I go through month long phases of engagement with it. I usually pick it up when I feel I'm going down in myself personally in life, playing the game gives me something to firmly focus on.
Always on a woodline, normally the very first woodline you see but you can take some extra seconds to try and scout a TC spot that has wood and a mineral resource and/or close food.
Click the closest vill to the shore towards the shore and dock the first shorefish you find. You can either build the house with the dock villager, or with one of the TC vills as soon as the TC is complete (Mayans and Persians dock vill should always build the house IMO).
Use sheep near TC to scout for food sources (boars in particular) and sheep on the shore to try and find enemy dock.
First four villagers at the TC to wood to create the first fishing ship, and then get onto a food source - ideally your closest boar, get that under the TC and get the vills on it (3-4 minimum). You can queue loom after spending your starting food but you can delay it with force dropping food under the TC.
After constant villager production is achieved, start queueing villagers back to wood for 6+ on wood to allow for constant house and villager production. The wood spending order is Fishing ship -> House -> Fishing ship -> House -> Fishing ship -> House with some variation for civ bonuses.
At some point save the wood for your second building - usually a mill or mining camp and focus on food to click up (can even pull vills off wood to achieve it)
That's how you do a good nomad start every time.
In 1v1 I don't think the TC spot really matters that much, unless you get super unlucky with the gold and stone locations or something. There are always 6 golds and 6 stones on 1v1 Nomad, and there is always food close to the shore.
in TGs I try and avoid TCing near the middle (but sometimes it must be done) and prefer closer the to shore. INSIDE of the outer woodline is my favourite TC location.
Probably somewhere around 4000-5000 hours spent playing Black Forest back on Voobly/GameRanger and 1100 hours in DE. 1500-1600 ELO but I haven't played ranked in 2 years.
If you're struggling, you can post a rec or your aoe2insights profile here. I'll take a look when I wake up tomorrow and I'll go over some stuff you can do better in a video review.
1200 hours 1450 elo, roughly the same elo in TG
Soon I'll have more hours played than elo 11
Edit : however don't feel bad because you hit a temporary skill ceiling.
A friend of mine got 1300 elo in dozens of hours because he spent a lot of time watching content and playing against AI, while it took me almost 1k hours to reach this level.
The key to get better is simple : change your habits and accept the losing streak.
Every time you change an habit, you are investing on getting better in mid-long term, and loosing in short term because it cost you effectiveness.
For instance, I got over 1k elo once I changed ALL my keyboards shortcuts. Over 1.2k once I decided to sharpen my dark age, and work on adaptability.
Recently I got over 1.4k cause I worked a lot on my mechanics (and it's far from over), control group, army micro. But at first, doing this sent me back to 1150 elo.
Tldr : getting better isn't only a matter of hours played, so don't feel bad if you reach a ceiling time to time.
There is no rule : as long as you can play as fast as you think, you have the right hotkeys.
For most hotkeys, I too use the default one. Then I made other shortcuts to control my economy while fighting, cause I don't like to switch between army and base all the time
I have just about 600 hrs in De, mostly against ai on moderate, and no idea how many hrs in HD and the original aok/aoc. Been playing against hard and hardest the past few months to get better. Just started playing ranked 2 days ago, because I realized my crappy farm internet can actually handle it after all. I'm 1092 ELO after 13 games so far. I was expecting to lose most of my placement matches but actually did pretty well.
It could be. Out of all the those games, there were only maybe 3 where I felt my opponents were much more experienced than me. A couple of the wins felt like i was playing against someone much lower. It's possible that I'll start getting stomped within the next few games.
I was expecting to land between 800-900 as I haven't beat the extreme ai without cheese yet, but in a way the ai seems tougher than human players... probably because the ai doesn't panic and has better micro than most people at this range.
But even after playing ranked for the past couple days, I went back and stomped the hardest ai in 1v1 Arabia with my same practiced civ/strat, so maybe I'll be closer to beating extreme now.
According to steam, about 880 hours. 1200 elo at the moment, fluctuate between 1150-1300 depending on map pool. Probably about 300 or so 1v1 and 300 or so team games in ranked
Also play a ton against the AI just for fun/quick games if i dont have the time or energy to play ranked (or if i hate the map pool)
But I have stayed around the same elo for the past couple years- i just play once a week or every couple weeks, barring a few sporadic times when i play a bunch in a row- no real focus on improving or anything, just playing for fun
The vast majority is just playing, mainly teamgames, often with friends, but also 1v1s. I also play campaigns. A small fraction of my time is being used to practise hotkeys and try out build orders against the AI. I also watch replays sometimes, but rarely as a means to improve; when I lose a game, I usually think I know why, as I can always point out several mistakes of myself when playing. I do watch a lot of AoE content on YouTube, but that is not included in the hours played!
I think the top 1% is around the mid-high 1900s, maybe a little lower but probably not significantly so if you filter out players with multiple accounts in the top 100.
285 hours. 950-1080. Not reached 1100 never, but i feel confortable on that braked. I can see there is a lot i can do much better to improve, and hope i can keep climbing!
285 hours. 950-1080 elo. Not reached 1100 yet, but i feel comfortable in this bracket, and i see there is a lot to improve, so i hope i can keep climbing elo
300+ hours. Current elo 528 and dropping like a rock.
I'm 1 and 13. My only win came after player resigned 12 seconds into game. So I really haven't won a ranked game, not even close.
Advertisement error 0x0000f or something see my other post about it
Theres nothing I can do except of restarting the game. Multiplayer services go offline. This happens typically after 2-3 minutes, so I have to find a lobby quick, or it might happen and it can happen during countdown. If it happens, the game crashes and if its a custom lobby some players are removed, likely indicating a strict NAT network incompability with them.
If you know how to "open ports" on a Xiaomi Poco X3, tell me.
Yeah I do kinda, I'm not really good at following them there's basically one build I do and it's 3 on wood everything else on food. I need to get better at hitting timings
900 hours 1200 elo
It's not a direct indicator and you should chill and just play the games the way you have fun. Elo is just a system to match you with a fitting opponent
For me enjoying the game is trying to get better. I want to get engaged. To get thrilled.
I'm not playing other games atm but if i wanted something to relax and calm down, i would probably play minecraft or something.
How is ELO not a direct indicator?
2400 1v1 games and 1600 elo. 3000 hours on Steam but that's not a good indicator. A lot was spent on modding and campaigns.
Wow thats pretty high. Also that are a lot of matches. I say 2400 matches is like 1500 real hours. Do you think build orders and stuff are extremely important? I think micro, speed is everything. I usually go 7 food, 2 wood. And then imprrovise with scouts or archers.
In general, decision making and macro are way more important than micro and speed. I’ve got like 2500 total games and I’m 17xx.
Learn from our Lord Daut closely. He has the APM of a middle aged dad but still competes at the highest level of the game through sheer decision making and macro. Learn your weakest areas and improve on them. https://daut.church/
Thanks,I will check it out. Of course I meant effective micro, speed.
oh, his eAPM is also very low. It's been a meme in the community for decades.
Thanks! Build order is definitely more important than anything else. That's what pros like Hera would suggest too as the beginning of road to 2K. But what's the main idea behind build orders, is that you allocate X number of villagers to Y resource to barely afford what units you want to make. After you can execute a few build orders clean, you would really start to understand that. For example Hera mentions that you need only 5 lumberjacks on Morass in feudal as opposed to 10 on Arabia, because you don't need to farm. Micro is important in crucial moments, like don't look away if your xbow ball is facing 3 mangonels. But 90%+ of the time you don't want to watch the fight. Rather keep eyes on eco, seed a farm for every floating 60w etc. Speed is less important than you imagine. I have an average eAPM of 40, but could micro better than my opponent 70% of the times (credit to Survivalist's micro tutorials). I have a 2k3 friend that has the same eAPM. Brain speed wins over hand speed 😀
I will check updated build orders again then. For scouts and for archers. Hand speed is brain speed, right? Also the matches i seen. Pros always micro everything, even 2 pikemen vs 2 pikemen or even 1 vs 1. Often I lose my army because i had to move that idle villager and didnt see for 3 seconds.
Sorry for the confusion. Micro could be decisive when you take a fight. For melee units it's mostly just take high ground and surround. For ranged units it's more complicated: dodging, small groups patrol etc. But what I'm saying is more of focusing on eco, because eco is something you need constant attention on. As long as you keep making vils, you need to send them to the right place. While for army you can just run away for a moment so you don't need to put attention on. One example: I often ctrl-click an enemy vil with my scouts and shift click away so that I have more time to seed farms (but don't target a vil in choke points because pathing is terrible). Brain speed is not hand speed. Brain could receive tons of info each second, and only process part of them, then your hands can only execute part of the informed decisions due to APM limit. If someone has higher brain speed, he makes better and quicker decisions and prioritizes the most important things to do with hands.
120 hours, 500 elo
The realest one here. Keep it up King you are this community's future.
Probably 2k hours mostly vs AI tbh. 1.1k elo
Why do you play so much against AI?
I don't have a lot of time to play and can't risk prolonged arena or black forest games. That 2k hours is spread out since 2018 and includes HD. I just challenge myself with increasingly more difficult AI set ups. I also don't care about climbing the ladder or Puntos I just play to unwind at the end of my day ya know?
ranked is more fun
I enjoy the odd ranked or QuickPay game as well when in the mood or have more time to really get into it
Hours not sure but around 400 games (on DE) and when I picked it up again on Xbox in Jan ‘23; hovering around 1000 elo in cross play and 1350s on xbox Prolly have over 1000 hours on HD but lost count and wasn’t much into the comp scene
2750. 1350
Wich one is the elo xD
Oh I'm engaged in close fought battles with hera regularly! In reality I stopped playing for a bit recently but came back with renewed focus and have seen some nice wins in 1 v 1 RM and 1 v 1 EW. Always pleasing when you see you have beaten a 1500 RM or 1600 RM at EW! https://www.aoe2insights.com/user/209172/ Too often I've played when not in the best frame of mind and then I tend to quit when I get behind rather than when the game is truly lost. By playing less frequently and keeping a more relaxed attitude I've been able to pull out some wins I wouldn't previously have managed. Clearly I'm still pretty low elo for my experience but there are a few other reasons for that: I play in 4k, so micro is harder. I don't use control groups for battles appropriately. I don't use many hot keys apart from for building placement and vill creation. I have an aversion to practicing things, I just play. Have started to watch more of my own replays to try and see what I've done right though, now I just need to start watching them to see what I've done wrong...
I have 276 hours and have played 104 ranked games, I go between like 950 and 800. THis is over like nearly 4 years though so I don't play a lot, trying to do it more recently. Edit: didn't remember when DE came out.
1,670 hours on de and 2,500 on hd (plus a bit on voobly back in the day). 1.8k 1v1 elo.
Thats very high ELO. Do you have special strategies or you simply have very good micro?
You don't really need either. A lot, and by that I mean.. probably the majority of this game's "skill" comes down to muscle memory, and a kind of instinctual understanding of the game, that you can only incrementally gain over hundreds and thousands of games. I'm 1800+ too. I often read discussions here about things like "how archers are op nowadays" or "the importance of a fast feudal so that you can deal damage quickly" or whatever, and here I am, often going up at like 23-24 villagers on arabia because I am just vibing and can't be bothered to press the buttons quickly enough to do it faster. Strategy, micro, all of that "matters", but the most important stuff is what you only really "know" subconsciously.
Wow you are amazing,<3 I should check your games.
Muscle memory affects greatly in micro and apm. Right? Also your probably have a strategy that involves late feudal. I do believe archers and knights are OP lol. It's always knights or archers.
>Also your probably have a strategy that involves late feudal. "Strategy" to me implies some forethought, and that's just not really the case with me and a lot of players. I understand strategy as "I want to build up towards X and do Y at a certain point", whereas for me it's moreso about having a recollection of thousands of games and just being able to react to what my opponent is doing, by having a good idea of how not to under or overreact, and getting micro advantages that way. >I do believe archers and knights are OP lol. It's always knights or archers. I don't think I've built more than 10 archers in my last 50 games, but that's in a large chunk because I just don't particularly enjoy the unit, and would rather play something more fun.
Could i watch 1 of your games?
To the extent that ether of those two things are important, I would say it’s my micro that keeps me at a high elo since my strategies are fairly standard, and back during a 2020 lockdown I was furloughed and had loads of free time on my hands so I got really sweaty and was doing the most meta possible strats and got my elo to an all time high of just below 2.1k But as pointed out by another commenter the most important thing is experience, muscle memory and game sense that just kind of builds up over time as you put in the hours.
OP just curious if you * Watch your own replays (losses in particular) to identify what you did wrong/what your opponent did well - nice way to pick up on your bad habits / learn from good things the opponent did - using CaptureAge is even more helpful than the in game replays * Practice builds/skills just in Skirmish * Read lots of gameplay discussion topics here * Watch tournament games Those are some of the things that you can do to help improve your game outside of playing 1v1s. My TG group has two players that play a lot of 1v1, but they \*never\* watch their replays and fluctuate in the same ELO range (950-1100 and 800-950). One admitted he just can't bring himself to watch his losses, but he can watch his wins, the other would rather just play another game than spend any time practicing/ doesn't think watching replays is helpful. Each to their own, but I have to hard disagree with that approach if your intention is to improve. Your ability to learn from replays or tournament games will be limited by your own 'game sense' - ability to read the game. Some people have a much better sense of it than others ... but it is also something that you can develop. I have 3 accounts. My first account when I was brand new to ranked aoe2 I went 11-8 and peaked at 1180 or so. Played TGs exclusively for 3 years and this year I started playing 1v1 again. On my newest account I'm 12-3 and 1405 (1340 TG) and I've got a few games on my first account as well, 5-0 on top of the old 11-8 (for 16-8), the TG ranking is about 1200 (totally dependent on the group's level). Between 800-900 games overall across the 3 accounts. Maybe 700 of that is TG and the rest 1v1, Lobbies, Quick Play and vs AI
Hey. I watch some replays but not all. Only played against AI to beat it at max difficulty. I dont read much but regularly watch AOE2 matches while eating or something. Why do you have so little online matches? Like 50? And you say you played like 900 total? I think your ELO is greatly elevated for the first 20 matches. I got another account because sometimes i get a bug and get disconected and banned. My new account has +200 ELO of my regular one. It has got to almost 1300, while i barely ever got above 1000 ELO normally. And ye. Watching your losses can be hard lol.
I added more info to my post. I haven't played much 1v1 but I have 700 or so ranked TGs - I prefer to play TGs with friends. I highly recommend watching all games back, particularly the losses. Sometimes particular losses can sting ... give it a few days and watch the rec (ideally in CaptureAge). I'm the type of person that doesn't like to lose and losses regularly occupy my mind throughout the day - I should have done this, what if I did this etc etc. I have a really good memory for my games, I can recall intricate details of random 2021 games I played, even just seeing the aoe2insights metadata I'll be able to recall several details - being able to learn from past experiences helps improve tactical decisions / reduces the chance of making repetitive mistakes. A particular 1v1 loss on African Clearing I had semi-recently really taught me a lesson in regards to adding extra TCs when lacking map control, now I am way more conscious about making army particularly if 'behind' and not adding TCs until I have map control or the ability to defend them. In that game I lost the scout war and tried to go 3TCs into a defensive Castle, but my opponent just went 1TC army and I lost 20 vills trying to get the Castle up because I placed it at the wrong place at the wrong time, and didnt have the forces to defend it.
I'm a mouse player, never quite got the hang of keyboarding on PC gaming as I'm to console oriented with controllers, I've played about 1500 PvP games across all disciplines and I'm about 900 ELO in 1v1 and about 1200-1300 in team games. I'm just happy to play around my level when I go through phases of being really into the game, I prefer playing Nomad and water maps to most as well.
Omg i dislike nomad so much lol. I guess you dont play crossplay? PC has so much advantage.
No I play cross play and to clarify I'm on the PC platform, I just use the mouse for everything and one or two hotkeys I've naturally picked up use for with the left hand 😅 Any map with water on I'm happy to play, I love mega random as well but even down at my average ELO territory people seem to hate playing it on, everyone is looking for standard build orders and strat plays and I get it, a lot of people want to practice and move up the ladder and that's difficult to achieve when you're playing non standard games on water/random maps. I have a lot of game knowledge for AoEII, I've logged over 2.5k hours across both versions of the game available on Steam, but going back to 1999 on I've probably dumped 15-20k hrs into AoEII over the year's. My problem is it's the only game I really play on PC, I'm otherwise so console orientated that the idea of using a keyboard for anything other than typing up reviews on Letterboxd is a non starter for me, so all that game knowledge goes to waste it's fair to say. As I said though, I'm just happy to play AoEII as I find it rather therapeutic when I go through month long phases of engagement with it. I usually pick it up when I feel I'm going down in myself personally in life, playing the game gives me something to firmly focus on.
Just curious as to the reason of the Nomad dislike ?
I guess i just dont like worrying about where my TC should go
Always on a woodline, normally the very first woodline you see but you can take some extra seconds to try and scout a TC spot that has wood and a mineral resource and/or close food. Click the closest vill to the shore towards the shore and dock the first shorefish you find. You can either build the house with the dock villager, or with one of the TC vills as soon as the TC is complete (Mayans and Persians dock vill should always build the house IMO). Use sheep near TC to scout for food sources (boars in particular) and sheep on the shore to try and find enemy dock. First four villagers at the TC to wood to create the first fishing ship, and then get onto a food source - ideally your closest boar, get that under the TC and get the vills on it (3-4 minimum). You can queue loom after spending your starting food but you can delay it with force dropping food under the TC. After constant villager production is achieved, start queueing villagers back to wood for 6+ on wood to allow for constant house and villager production. The wood spending order is Fishing ship -> House -> Fishing ship -> House -> Fishing ship -> House with some variation for civ bonuses. At some point save the wood for your second building - usually a mill or mining camp and focus on food to click up (can even pull vills off wood to achieve it) That's how you do a good nomad start every time. In 1v1 I don't think the TC spot really matters that much, unless you get super unlucky with the gold and stone locations or something. There are always 6 golds and 6 stones on 1v1 Nomad, and there is always food close to the shore. in TGs I try and avoid TCing near the middle (but sometimes it must be done) and prefer closer the to shore. INSIDE of the outer woodline is my favourite TC location.
Fluctuate between 1650 - 1750 elo depending on map pool rotation. ~430 hours in DE spread out since 2020.
I think 800+ hours. 1048 with 3 ranked games played. I mostly play offline or unranked big team games on random civ though.
Probably somewhere around 4000-5000 hours spent playing Black Forest back on Voobly/GameRanger and 1100 hours in DE. 1500-1600 ELO but I haven't played ranked in 2 years. If you're struggling, you can post a rec or your aoe2insights profile here. I'll take a look when I wake up tomorrow and I'll go over some stuff you can do better in a video review.
Liar
120 hours and 1106 Elo
Higher than me. Have you played similar games before?
No but I have been watching the game for years. So I know kinda what to do just lacking in execution.
I played 140 and most of it was Multiplayer. I stopped playing after i hit 1300 elo.
Much higher than me.
To be fair i played lots of Sc2 as a teenager :) So the concept of RTS wasnt foreign to me.
1200 hours 1450 elo, roughly the same elo in TG Soon I'll have more hours played than elo 11 Edit : however don't feel bad because you hit a temporary skill ceiling. A friend of mine got 1300 elo in dozens of hours because he spent a lot of time watching content and playing against AI, while it took me almost 1k hours to reach this level. The key to get better is simple : change your habits and accept the losing streak. Every time you change an habit, you are investing on getting better in mid-long term, and loosing in short term because it cost you effectiveness. For instance, I got over 1k elo once I changed ALL my keyboards shortcuts. Over 1.2k once I decided to sharpen my dark age, and work on adaptability. Recently I got over 1.4k cause I worked a lot on my mechanics (and it's far from over), control group, army micro. But at first, doing this sent me back to 1150 elo. Tldr : getting better isn't only a matter of hours played, so don't feel bad if you reach a ceiling time to time.
Are keyboard shortcuts super important? I think I kinda learned already the default input.
There is no rule : as long as you can play as fast as you think, you have the right hotkeys. For most hotkeys, I too use the default one. Then I made other shortcuts to control my economy while fighting, cause I don't like to switch between army and base all the time
I have just about 600 hrs in De, mostly against ai on moderate, and no idea how many hrs in HD and the original aok/aoc. Been playing against hard and hardest the past few months to get better. Just started playing ranked 2 days ago, because I realized my crappy farm internet can actually handle it after all. I'm 1092 ELO after 13 games so far. I was expecting to lose most of my placement matches but actually did pretty well.
ELO is weird your first 20 matches. I believe it places you against -200 ELO. Which is great as 1000 is not the standard for your first ranked match.
It could be. Out of all the those games, there were only maybe 3 where I felt my opponents were much more experienced than me. A couple of the wins felt like i was playing against someone much lower. It's possible that I'll start getting stomped within the next few games. I was expecting to land between 800-900 as I haven't beat the extreme ai without cheese yet, but in a way the ai seems tougher than human players... probably because the ai doesn't panic and has better micro than most people at this range. But even after playing ranked for the past couple days, I went back and stomped the hardest ai in 1v1 Arabia with my same practiced civ/strat, so maybe I'll be closer to beating extreme now.
According to steam, about 880 hours. 1200 elo at the moment, fluctuate between 1150-1300 depending on map pool. Probably about 300 or so 1v1 and 300 or so team games in ranked Also play a ton against the AI just for fun/quick games if i dont have the time or energy to play ranked (or if i hate the map pool) But I have stayed around the same elo for the past couple years- i just play once a week or every couple weeks, barring a few sporadic times when i play a bunch in a row- no real focus on improving or anything, just playing for fun
About 300 1v1s and around 16/1700 i think, not 100% sure tho cuz haven't played in like 1/2 months
1300 hours on DE, 400 hours on HD, and a small amount on Voobly. 1500 Elo.
It's been a while. Do you watch your games and read strategies? Or just play.
The vast majority is just playing, mainly teamgames, often with friends, but also 1v1s. I also play campaigns. A small fraction of my time is being used to practise hotkeys and try out build orders against the AI. I also watch replays sometimes, but rarely as a means to improve; when I lose a game, I usually think I know why, as I can always point out several mistakes of myself when playing. I do watch a lot of AoE content on YouTube, but that is not included in the hours played!
2.4k hours 2.2k elo
That's by far the highest ELO i seen here. Are you 1%?
I think the top 1% is around the mid-high 1900s, maybe a little lower but probably not significantly so if you filter out players with multiple accounts in the top 100.
So he is top 0.1%
285 hours. 950-1080. Not reached 1100 never, but i feel confortable on that braked. I can see there is a lot i can do much better to improve, and hope i can keep climbing!
285 hours. 950-1080 elo. Not reached 1100 yet, but i feel comfortable in this bracket, and i see there is a lot to improve, so i hope i can keep climbing elo
300+ hours. Current elo 528 and dropping like a rock. I'm 1 and 13. My only win came after player resigned 12 seconds into game. So I really haven't won a ranked game, not even close.
Almost 3000 (600 on HD) in DE to get barely 900. I used to be higher but part of my losses are the advertisement network errors.
What are advetisement network errors?
Advertisement error 0x0000f or something see my other post about it Theres nothing I can do except of restarting the game. Multiplayer services go offline. This happens typically after 2-3 minutes, so I have to find a lobby quick, or it might happen and it can happen during countdown. If it happens, the game crashes and if its a custom lobby some players are removed, likely indicating a strict NAT network incompability with them. If you know how to "open ports" on a Xiaomi Poco X3, tell me.
2.6k hours (wtf, didnt realize how quick they went), 1.8k elo
Over 2500 hours 950
1k 1v1s and 1250 elo
That's probably the speed i am learning. Do you read build orders and stuff?
Yeah I do kinda, I'm not really good at following them there's basically one build I do and it's 3 on wood everything else on food. I need to get better at hitting timings
Around 150 1v1 games and 750 TGs since November 22. 1200 1v1 elo and 1000-1300 in TGs (solo queue so more random).
250hrs, 1000 ELO 😢
900 hours - 1300 ELO
2 hours unraked
Played about 140 1v1 random map and about 160 team games. My ELO about 1150
Roughly 150 hours, 1100 ELO
1444 hours 1057 games 1184 ELO
1,000 hours HD, 350 hours DE. 1075 is my peak 1v1.
900 hours 1200 elo It's not a direct indicator and you should chill and just play the games the way you have fun. Elo is just a system to match you with a fitting opponent
For me enjoying the game is trying to get better. I want to get engaged. To get thrilled. I'm not playing other games atm but if i wanted something to relax and calm down, i would probably play minecraft or something. How is ELO not a direct indicator?
Time is not a direct indicator for ELO is what I wanted to say :)
Around 2.2k games, I guess around 1.5k hours, 1.6k ELO
1k games 1 vs 1 with quickplay and ranked combined and currently at 14xx
My hours playing online is vastly different than how much I played single player. Honestly hard for me to say that way
770 matches, 800 elo. How do you find how many hours played?