Community Forums > Voobly Community > Age of Empires II: The Conquerors > Random Map > 4vs4 BF 1300 - 1400 advice on improving

4vs4 BF 1300 - 1400 advice on improving

 Luij


Posted 14 March 2014 - 3:51 am
Hi, not sure why but I have not really made any friends on Voobly to play alongside and improve, most of the better ranking players tend not to be very pleasant in game... so I figured I'd make a post.

I'm rated below 1300, played with 1300-1400 for the first time and there is a noticeable difference. I got criticised harshly in this game... I know I didn't do well, my team and most of the specs were abusing me and criticised me for having a fake rating after the game was over. 1200-1300 games I perform quite well but its quite obvious the play is different.

This game I was celts and playing with a lot siege is not something I am very familar with which might have been my problem.

I figured I'd also make Champions alongside the Onagers since there is a bonus. As soon as I encountered p3 and p6 I had problems against the Calvary Archers and Korean special unit. I was surprised to see p2 to make so much siege also, normally I don't like playing with so much siege because its hard to control and costly. We had quite a few problems moving too.

The game didn't go on too long, as soon as p5 & p6 entered p1's base and our traded started to go down I kind of panicked and just started pumping as many Halbediers more as a way to slow them down and soak the damage hoping someone had a strong counter unit as I did not have much gold.

Really would appreciate any advice, thanks you.
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 Th0m


Posted 14 March 2014 - 5:06 am
Luij wrote:
Hi, not sure why but I have not really made any friends on Voobly to play alongside and improve, most of the better ranking players tend not to be very pleasant in game... so I figured I'd make a post.

I'm rated below 1300, played with 1300-1400 for the first time and there is a noticeable difference. I got criticised harshly in this game... I know I didn't do well, my team and most of the specs were abusing me and criticised me for having a fake rating after the game was over. 1200-1300 games I perform quite well but its quite obvious the play is different.

This game I was celts and playing with a lot siege is not something I am very familar with which might have been my problem.

I figured I'd also make Champions alongside the Onagers since there is a bonus. As soon as I encountered p3 and p6 I had problems against the Calvary Archers and Korean special unit. I was surprised to see p2 to make so much siege also, normally I don't like playing with so much siege because its hard to control and costly. We had quite a few problems moving too.

The game didn't go on too long, as soon as p5 & p6 entered p1's base and our traded started to go down I kind of panicked and just started pumping as many Halbediers more as a way to slow them down and soak the damage hoping someone had a strong counter unit as I did not have much gold.

Really would appreciate any advice, thanks you.

Could have potentially walled further up

Your build order isn't efficient

You messed up your boar lure

Your building placement isn't great. You have to consider how you're going to boom, where you're going to build your town-centres, your houses etc. You did this fine in game but your mining camp/blacksmith/market was right in the middle of your future trade route. You have to predict where your trade route is doing to be and make sure you build your buildings out of the way.

Your boom was decent but you also have to consider what kind of army you're making. If you're going to make a lot of siege units, you need more villagers on wood. At one point you had <500 wood but 5000 food<. Whilst your booming, you have to gear up your economy to the units you're making.
You had 40 idle villagers at one point ~ 45 minute mark (this wasn't too bad because you were generally quite good at keeping all your villagers doing something productive but I felt as soon as you boomed your economy and researched Imperial age, you kind of let your econ-management go.)

You do rebuild your lumber-camps but you should rebuild them more often.

Your castles were too close to the walls and could be hit by trebuchets easily.

Your building placement was inefficient, try and minimise the amount of space you use.

You researched siege onagers late - I felt this was odd because you seemed to have a game plan when you made siege workshops and started pumping out mangonel >onagers
You didn't researched Siege Engineers or Chemistry so your siege onagers could never reach their full potential

Your route to attacking p3 (huns) was clogged. You really need to widen it ASAP if you wanted to attack. You also built a mining camp in the middle which made things worse. You should probably start mining that gold after you destroyed huns or at least secured the area.

Your (unique castle unit) woad raiders are better than champions. You should make them instead. You also need to upgrade your units (blacksmith). It's great that you got blast furnace but at most, you got 1 armour upgrade. Consider this: your halberdiers had 1 pierce-armour and the mayan plumed archers you were fighting had 8 attack so each plumed archer dealt 7 damage to one of your halberdiers. Fully teched halberdiers have 4 pierce armour - ie they are dealt 4 damage. 7 damage > 4 damage.
Your attack was stalled so perhaps you should have considered attacking elsewhere or even try and aid grey and blue.

Flooding halberdiers to stem the tide is fine in the short term but it soon became clear it wasn't achieving anything. You were buying time but you weren't doing anything with the time that you bought.

After you lost your trade, your pop dropped to 110 and never higher. You should never ever have a low population. If you can't achieve anything militarily, at least grow a bigger economy.
Remember, you can always use the market to get gold.
When mayans/aztecs/koreans broke into blue's base, you have to recognise that your entire half of the map is open. You have to wall up to prevent your economy being harassed.

Finally your game plan: I think you should have made siege rams&siege onagers with woad-raiders & halberdiers or paladins.

Much of the above comes with experience so I think the best thing you should do is just play more games. The only real problem you have is game knowledge

Celt Siege Onagers should have chemistry and 8+1 range. The +1 range makes a big difference.
Always fully teching the units you make.
Woadraiders > Champions
Siege Onagers can cut down forests REALLY fast
You didn't really work to your civ strengths when making your army.

So the first thing you should do is familarise yourself with the different traits each civ has.
Then you should set yourself targets like: for the next 10 games I'm going to make sure I don't block my trade route with blacksmith/market until it becomes second nature
Then you could practise luring your boar perfectly until it becomes immaculate
Then you could practise rebuilding lumbercamps say every 5/10 minutes
Then you could learn the build orders required for black forest games
Then you could learn the different way blackforest games are played - walling as far as you can, rushing, slinging etc.
Then you could work on gearing up your economy as efficiently as you can to produce the units you plan to make in the future

All of this comes with experience. The only thing I would recommend you should do is learn the strengths/weakness of all the AoC civs, the rest will come with game time.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination
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 Luij


Edited 14 March 2014 - 9:45 pm by Luij
Th0m wrote:
Could have potentially walled further up

Your build order isn't efficient

You messed up your boar lure

Your building placement isn't great. You have to consider how you're going to boom, where you're going to build your town-centres, your houses etc. You did this fine in game but your mining camp/blacksmith/market was right in the middle of your future trade route. You have to predict where your trade route is doing to be and make sure you build your buildings out of the way.

Your boom was decent but you also have to consider what kind of army you're making. If you're going to make a lot of siege units, you need more villagers on wood. At one point you had <500 wood but 5000 food<. Whilst your booming, you have to gear up your economy to the units you're making.
You had 40 idle villagers at one point ~ 45 minute mark (this wasn't too bad because you were generally quite good at keeping all your villagers doing something productive but I felt as soon as you boomed your economy and researched Imperial age, you kind of let your econ-management go.)

You do rebuild your lumber-camps but you should rebuild them more often.

Your castles were too close to the walls and could be hit by trebuchets easily.

Your building placement was inefficient, try and minimise the amount of space you use.

You researched siege onagers late - I felt this was odd because you seemed to have a game plan when you made siege workshops and started pumping out mangonel >onagers
You didn't researched Siege Engineers or Chemistry so your siege onagers could never reach their full potential

Your route to attacking p3 (huns) was clogged. You really need to widen it ASAP if you wanted to attack. You also built a mining camp in the middle which made things worse. You should probably start mining that gold after you destroyed huns or at least secured the area.

Your (unique castle unit) woad raiders are better than champions. You should make them instead. You also need to upgrade your units (blacksmith). It's great that you got blast furnace but at most, you got 1 armour upgrade. Consider this: your halberdiers had 1 pierce-armour and the mayan plumed archers you were fighting had 8 attack so each plumed archer dealt 7 damage to one of your halberdiers. Fully teched halberdiers have 4 pierce armour - ie they are dealt 4 damage. 7 damage > 4 damage.
Your attack was stalled so perhaps you should have considered attacking elsewhere or even try and aid grey and blue.

Flooding halberdiers to stem the tide is fine in the short term but it soon became clear it wasn't achieving anything. You were buying time but you weren't doing anything with the time that you bought.

After you lost your trade, your pop dropped to 110 and never higher. You should never ever have a low population. If you can't achieve anything militarily, at least grow a bigger economy.
Remember, you can always use the market to get gold.
When mayans/aztecs/koreans broke into blue's base, you have to recognise that your entire half of the map is open. You have to wall up to prevent your economy being harassed.

Finally your game plan: I think you should have made siege rams&siege onagers with woad-raiders & halberdiers or paladins.

Much of the above comes with experience so I think the best thing you should do is just play more games. The only real problem you have is game knowledge

Celt Siege Onagers should have chemistry and 8+1 range. The +1 range makes a big difference.
Always fully teching the units you make.
Woadraiders > Champions
Siege Onagers can cut down forests REALLY fast
You didn't really work to your civ strengths when making your army.

So the first thing you should do is familarise yourself with the different traits each civ has.
Then you should set yourself targets like: for the next 10 games I'm going to make sure I don't block my trade route with blacksmith/market until it becomes second nature
Then you could practise luring your boar perfectly until it becomes immaculate
Then you could practise rebuilding lumbercamps say every 5/10 minutes
Then you could learn the build orders required for black forest games
Then you could learn the different way blackforest games are played - walling as far as you can, rushing, slinging etc.
Then you could work on gearing up your economy as efficiently as you can to produce the units you plan to make in the future

All of this comes with experience. The only thing I would recommend you should do is learn the strengths/weakness of all the AoC civs, the rest will come with game time.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination

Hi, thank you for your detailed advice.

Yea I had no idea that I would end up using so much wood. Also I didn't upgrade to siege onagers because I thought the upgrade cost wood instead of food, knowing I didn't have much wood I thought I couldn't upgrade...

I had no idea I had so many idle villagers until rewatching the replay again :(
How was my build speed? I don't use hotkeys but I know it is something I need to learn.

Are Woad Raiders better than Champions vs against p3 and p6 army?
I think in my mind they had less pierce armour. How about fighting infantary do Woad Raiders still do better?

I noticed in higher rated games bomboard towers seem to be very popular. I personally never build them as it costs a lot of stone, is this something I should also focus on?



Also I was wondering if p2's army mix ideal because he was so heavy in siege, again it is something I avoid but not sure on.
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 Th0m


Posted 15 March 2014 - 1:13 am
Luij wrote:
Hi, thank you for your detailed advice.

Yea I had no idea that I would end up using so much wood. Also I didn't upgrade to siege onagers because I thought the upgrade cost wood instead of food, knowing I didn't have much wood I thought I couldn't upgrade...

I had no idea I had so many idle villagers until rewatching the replay again :(
How was my build speed? I don't use hotkeys but I know it is something I need to learn.

Are Woad Raiders better than Champions vs against p3 and p6 army?
I think in my mind they had less pierce armour. How about fighting infantary do Woad Raiders still do better?

I noticed in higher rated games bomboard towers seem to be very popular. I personally never build them as it costs a lot of stone, is this something I should also focus on?


Also I was wondering if p2's army mix ideal because he was so heavy in siege, again it is something I avoid but not sure on.


Sure that's understandable - just gotta keep playing games and make a mental note of what drains your resources the most etc. Fair enough - most researches require food.

Your idle villager count wasn't too bad as you had already boomed. Perhaps you could switch to the show "economic related stuff" option say every 5 minutes.

It's hard to judge another players build speed through the rec viewer but don't worry about this too much. You'll get faster with experience - literally muscle-memory. Using hotkeys obviously help but you also have to be comfortable with them so take it one step at a time.

Woad raiders are especially good against p3/p6. Woadraiders are slightly faster than champions and fast units are really good at attacking war wagons, generally - faster units are better at taking down archer units eg. teutonic knight vs champion. Yeah I'm 100% sure woad raiders do better although I don't know their stats off the top of my head. Basically your unique unit is better than its complimentary unit from barracks/range/stable.

Bombard towers are great at stopping an army without siege. You cannot attack bombard towers without siege but siege rams destroy them pretty quickly. However as you mention, they do take away a lot of stone. If you're koreans for example, war wagons are core to your army and if you take away stone from making castles, you lower the amount of war wagons you can pump out so there is a trade off which you do need to balance. You'll encounter some players who mass bombard towers and some who don't. If you're against someone who had good siege (celts/mongols etc) I'd suggest you build fewer bombard towers, if you're against someone who has a massive army without siege, I'd suggest you build bombard towers.

Well when p2 rudely told you to help p1, he was able to hold 2v1 against p3/p6 so his army composition was fine that game however p3/p6 didn't really build their armies well at all. P6 was koreans and if he maxed out his siege onagers and massed war wagons, he would have completely flattened p2's siege. I personally wouldn't look too closely at what your allies/enemies are making because their army composition is just wrong.
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 Blake


Posted 1 April 2014 - 6:59 pm
Imo u need to watch few recs of good boomers and try to copy paste what they do. Do it lots of times in single player and u ll see huge difference quite fast. Try also to spec games with 17++ players in order to see the post imp fights. What they do with each civ, how they use their army.
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 Diablo_lYlastA_


Posted 1 April 2014 - 7:50 pm
poke a hole in the sky and hope more resources fall from the sky


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