Multitasking Eco and Army

[GrizzGolf]

Any tips and tricks to help me remember to keep building units to provide an eco to keep building my army? For real some people have 40 farms and I always have 12-14. I never have enough wood.

[Experienced Noob]

I think it's just a lot of practice. Eventually you get into a rhythm of flipping back and forth between your eco and military, and you know when it's safe to do so. You also get a feel for keeping your eco balanced.

You can always ctrl+number your TC(s). When you press the number instead of the H hotkey, it'll bring up your TC in the bottom of the screen so you can queue up villagers without looking away from a battle.

It really helps to know your hotkeys and set them up in a way you feel comfortable with. I always set mine up so they're all on the left side of the keyboard so I can reach them with my left hand without having to look down at the keyboard. Number as much stuff as you need to.

[aflashman]

Is it considered okay to use keyboard macros in this game?

[aflashman]

My advice is to learn the hotkeys and just get in the habit of continually queuing farms and checking that you have no idle villagers.

I haven't played in ages, but when I do I continually cycle though everything, usually in the same order. Check idle villagers, queue farms, queue military units, tech upgrades check scouts, check armies - rinse and repeat.

You need to know hotkeys and use ctrl groups. You can do all the above in under 15 secs. And you do it constantly.

[Jineapple]

Originally posted by afLaSHman:

Is it considered okay to use keyboard macros in this game?

generally no, one input should equal one output.

[GrizzGolf]

Thank you for the tips. I actually printed off of these!

[IamJeo]

Hotkeys (=HKs), and a rhythm. Normally gameplay consists of both these genres: economy maintaining and military production and control.

It would be good to practice pure booming to get adequately fast in doing the eco-part (H+C+C+C H+C+C+C, tap idle vill, make buildings/houses/mills/farms check TC gather points, repeat etc), which typically is done between military production/maneuvers. Once you can do this faster, you will have more time to maneuver army around, scout, and so on, increasing the effectiveness of your gameplay considerably.

Personally I have not developed a stable method yet, but simply learned form watching recs: I can adjust my rhythm for spots of a build I notice having idle time or other flaws, for example I had a geat tendency to forget villager production for a full minute right after Aging Up (add a mental note to do one H+C there next time), or idling military production heavily while starting to raid the enemy. Once you see these things in your own recorded games, then you can start to improve on them.

You can actually practice the Hotkey-presses you'd do in a game for real, while watching the recorded game: watch the recs Locked in your own POV, but scroll through the production buildings (and even press the make-unit HKs even though they arent doing anything, to get the feel for it), TCs(H+C+H+C or H+A+H+A+H+A etc, depending on HKs, also see where the TC gather points are located, on what resource, can see on minimap), smith (you are making upgrades too right after Upping, to get power-spike advantages, right? If not, then why not?), mill/lumber camp (get the damn wood upgrades absolutely immediately every time you reach a new Age... also are you maybe seeding lots of farms but have no horsecollar? => fix) and other things you think you might be forgetting when playing.

Especially take note on minimizing idle-time of everything, especially TC and military production, often happening, to me at leas,t during extensive combat phases or when trying to raid to a maximum effect. If for example in the rec you see your own screen staying focused on one point for a long time, then use the HKs to check whether you have an idle area of eco/army somewhere.

One thing to keep in mind here, when starting to get faster in gameplay:

"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."
- Bruce Lee

______________________

Tl;dr no, rly read it :P also check the sections Tips and Tricks and Mentality towards the end of AoC Advanced Noob Guide-v2.8 By [LTP]PsychoMantis_ http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=137161998
for more quality things. In fact if you rly read this first, go read those sections before reading my non-pro advice and suggestions. :)