Best way to learn?

[Stephen]

Been playing for 3 days straight in multiplayer and seem to get rolled 80% of the time by people level 200+ in 3v3s. Been able to put up a decent fight but majority of the time I don't know what to do. I think I do good with my economy but struggling with the balance of military too.

Is there anything I should be doing or even some videos I should be watching to learn? I play French and English but tried to focus English now since french seems to get countered easily.

[Modragor]

Depending on the civ, map (water, no water) and strategy you want to play, the build varies.

Put your scout on 1 with strg+1 and your town center on 2, so you can switch fast between both. Your scout always moves and collects sheep, brings them back to your TC. Never stop buliding villagers until you have between 80 -120 of them.

Some basic build to get into feudal within 5 minutes looks like this:

6 vills on food (sheep)
3 vills on gold (build house and mining camp)
2 vills on food (sheep)
5 vills on wood (build wood camp)
3 vills on berries (build mill)

As soon as you hear the knocking sound for age up you build your landmark with 5 villagers to get up fast. The next villagers depend on the strategy you want to play. For bow rush with British put your villagers on food an wood only, for knights with French put them on food and gold.

Now you are in feudal, building troops and villagers continously and can go on with your next villagers the way you want. For example go more on wood and stone for another town center.

Also learn the counter system:

Spears counter horses
Horses counter bows
Bows counter spears
Crossbows counter armored units
Man at arms counter bows and spears

For more builds and knowledge there are channels like BeastyQT, DeMuslim, Aussie Drongo or Age of Noob. Also some of them stream live on Twitch. Or search for build orders and the civ you prefer. Have fun.

[Soccer]

English is a good choice.

Use the sheep around the base. go for sheep not other food, because of the higher gathering rate and protecting form town center. In comparriosn to the poster before me, i would suggest going on 2 wood early 1rst you don´t run out of sheep before your scout brings more. 2nd. you can go for early barracts for a sworts men to defend or attack. Do not build farms to early. use all your sheep gathered by scout and don´t let him be killed. build a 2nd scout if he is. Communicate with your teammates.

Then scout your opponent. does he build defense buildings? does he has a weak spot for some rush?

Whitch army does he has? build counter. maybe a a strategic tower to protect our gold/wood.

Balance? Well continously build villagers. Spend ressources you have left on army. Wood can be transformed to food with farms, a good time to switch is in feudal, not before (IMO).

[Many-Named]

check videos on YT, no need to reinvent the wheel and discover everything by yourself

[Bubs]

H also goes to the main town center and cycles between others. So you don't need to hotkey it (by doing 'ctrl+number' to hotkey to).

Scout has a button to, but I always put it to my cav button, because i put a scout or 2 with my knights to give better sight. Careful of doing that with horsemen, btw, because they will be slowed by him.

I would hotkey he market though, buying and selling can make or break a game, most of the time.

Anything you hotkey will show up as a number on the left side of the screen. Sometimes it's faster to click that rather than hit the key. Maybe just for me because I play in the dark, but w/e.

[Soccer]

q is for building villagers and w for scout.

Whats also very important is where your put your defense tower or defense landmark.

[Runaan]

I made a little video for english 3v3/4v4
It will make you win a lot of games. By minute 15 you can swarm the opponent with MAA.

Take a look if you want. Hope it helps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIaNpft3FH8

[Migromul]

England has 2 Lnadmarks, which are fortresses (e. g. you don't need stone for them) and can build all units except monks in fortresses (including artillerie)
It also has a special landmark for special banner-armis (e. g. 5 units or more atonce) which includes speical units only available there. You must decide however, if you want that, or the fortress.

Outposts and fortresses buff units near them, if the enemy comes near.

Fields can proviide addtional gold (sadly not stone...) and are more effective than those of other nations. You need them near a mill, however.

I think a good way to learn England and any other nations is to follow the warpath-opjectives. They get more and more difficult. If you can achieve all of them, you should be prepared for medium multiplayer. (3 goals of the warpath are against the AI. ) The warpath must be fullfilled in order.

Your longbows are your bread-and-butter-units. They can defend against cavallery (this is an active-skill however) and they can regenerate out of combat. AND they're ranged.

But you also have a swordfighter in Age 1... (not a Spearfighter, hoever.) The spearfighter in Age II comes with the upgrade.

[Nocturnal Immersion]

Remember that you are playing a complex game that has effectively been out for decades since this plays like AOE 2. There is plenty of advice on how to get started, but the main thing you need is to go easy on yourself and don't give up. You are near the skill floor and the average player is going to beat the crap out of you from experience alone. Keep it up and hopefully the MMR system will sort you down against comparable players.

If you were picking up SC2, it would be even harder on you. RTS's are very hard. Almost everyone sucks at them, and for good reason. Some just suck less than others. Eventually you will suck less too.