How much APM is required?

[Jace]

How much APM is required to play at an average level?

[JoshSA]

Don't know an exact account, but I'm guessing a fairly high amount. The start of the game determines 90% of wins. If your APM is low, you get off on the wrong start and then get rushed really early on by one of the following:

1. Drush (militia attacking you in the early game)
2. Men at arms rush in early feudal
3. Scout rush in early feudal
4. Archer rush is feudal
5. Trush (tower rush in early feudal)
6. Inca villager rush

I love and hate that the game requires so much APM, but over time I'm hoping my APM gets better.

[Lord Commander]

The hard part (for me at least) is not about APM, but its multitasking, so many different things to do, they don't necessarily require very high APM, but you need to stay focused and you can easily panic or feel overwhelmed...

[JoshSA]

Originally posted by Lord Commander:

The hard part (for me at least) is not about APM, but its multitasking, so many different things to do, they don't necessarily require very high APM, but you need to stay focused and you can easily panic or feel overwhelmed...

Yeah that's another way of looking at it. I think they go hand in hand.

Do you use hotkeys? Are you following a youtube guide or anything?

[Jace]

Thanks for the info.

[Dalv]

You can do well with less than 100 APM as well. In AoE2 there are many actions to be taken, but you have time for them.

[Sol4rSky]

thankfully Aoe 2 isn't APm based like starcraft (that's what ruined it for me in that game).

High APM in general is overrated, if you watch starcraft pro players you;;ll see them do so many actions, 80% of them being useless .


Same story here, someone could have high APM but if you spam H and 1 during the intro phase where you're waiting for vills to be created it won't do ♥♥♥♥, your scout will run as fast as it normally does, your vills will be created the same.

What will matter is useful APM which doesn't need to be out of this world, the right actions are more important than random spamming binds.
\

Originally posted by JoshSA:

Don't know an exact account, but I'm guessing a fairly high amount. The start of the game determines 90% of wins. If your APM is low, you get off on the wrong start and then get rushed really early on by one of the following:

1. Drush (militia attacking you in the early game)
2. Men at arms rush in early feudal
3. Scout rush in early feudal
4. Archer rush is feudal
5. Trush (tower rush in early feudal)
6. Inca villager rush

I love and hate that the game requires so much APM, but over time I'm hoping my APM gets better.

i disagree, it doesn't have much to do with high apm as much as it does with your mind set and what actions you decide to do next and the order you choose. You're dealing with workers that come out one by one and once set on a resource you usually won't bother with them so the right actions are more important along with SCOUTING which can be qued with shift anyway.

Sometimes i have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ starts where i mess my economy by not adressing on the right resources early on. I'd say high apm is more useful in battles but that's something to be gained and used in bursts.


(take note, after awhile, being fast on getting workers to work, i think that's normal to do and not something to be praised on high apm) more like fast response rate.

[🍮]

the amount of apm required to play at an average level is the average amount of apm. i suggest losing the word "requirement" somewhere. also noone knows the average amount of apm unless our keystrokes are being captured by the dev and entered into a database. it doesnt matter anyway. all that matters is you play the game and have fun. the game isnt too hard if thats what youre worried about. its pretty easy to play. if you want to be the best player in world or something thats a whole different thing. i HIGHLY recommend the game if you dont own it. its truly fun and the improvements to the user interface such as auto farm seeding are great.

[ShakeNBakeUK]

Originally posted by Jace:

How much APM is required to play at an average level?

the more the merrier ^_^
100-150 is prolly "average"
pros have 300ish

[JoshSA]

Originally posted by The Hospitaller Knight:

thankfully Aoe 2 isn't APm based like starcraft (that's what ruined it for me in that game).

High APM in general is overrated, if you watch starcraft pro players you;;ll see them do so many actions, 80% of them being useless .


Same story here, someone could have high APM but if you spam H and 1 during the intro phase where you're waiting for vills to be created it won't do ♥♥♥♥, your scout will run as fast as it normally does, your vills will be created the same.

What will matter is useful APM which doesn't need to be out of this world, the right actions are more important than random spamming binds.
\

Originally posted by JoshSA:

Don't know an exact account, but I'm guessing a fairly high amount. The start of the game determines 90% of wins. If your APM is low, you get off on the wrong start and then get rushed really early on by one of the following:

1. Drush (militia attacking you in the early game)
2. Men at arms rush in early feudal
3. Scout rush in early feudal
4. Archer rush is feudal
5. Trush (tower rush in early feudal)
6. Inca villager rush

I love and hate that the game requires so much APM, but over time I'm hoping my APM gets better.

i disagree, it doesn't have much to do with high apm as much as it does with your mind set and what actions you decide to do next and the order you choose. You're dealing with workers that come out one by one and once set on a resource you usually won't bother with them so the right actions are more important along with SCOUTING which can be qued with shift anyway.

Sometimes i have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ starts where i mess my economy by not adressing on the right resources early on. I'd say high apm is more useful in battles but that's something to be gained and used in bursts.


(take note, after awhile, being fast on getting workers to work, i think that's normal to do and not something to be praised on high apm) more like fast response rate.

Yeah there's a good chance I'm attributing the difficulty too much to APM and not enough to multi-tasking. However, I still believe you need a good APM, because I've destroyed (and been destroyed) in battles where we have the same units and upgrades but a single scout can confuse all the ranged units into focusing on him and then they all miss their shots while the other player's archers destroy your units. - All this takes APM, because if you're micro-ing your army then your economy takes a hit, unless if you have the APM to jump inbetween economy and battles.

So you're spot on that the high APM is in "bursts". But I think this game is decided on one or two engagements per the average game. It's so hard to recover from a bad start / early battle. So the those high APM bursts are so important that it makes APM count.

[Ubby]

Originally posted by The Hospitaller Knight:

thankfully Aoe 2 isn't APm based like starcraft (that's what ruined it for me in that game).

High APM in general is overrated, if you watch starcraft pro players you;;ll see them do so many actions, 80% of them being useless .


Same story here, someone could have high APM but if you spam H and 1 during the intro phase where you're waiting for vills to be created it won't do ♥♥♥♥, your scout will run as fast as it normally does, your vills will be created the same.

What will matter is useful APM which doesn't need to be out of this world, the right actions are more important than random spamming binds.
\

I know this isnt in AOE2 topic, but i disagree on starcraft 2 being APM based, similar to this game. There's a very popular twitch VOD of a youtuber and streamer named WinterStarcraft reaching the second highest rank with below 100 actions per minute. I'd recommend you give starcraft another go, playing smarter rather than harder. I will leave a link to the video if you do end up interested in Starcraft again. <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlobOqR9c8s

As for AOE, of course top tier players will rely on faster actions and outmicroing their opponent, however any player below this level will benefit more by making sure that their economy is stable, their population stays below the cap and they get tech and military at suitable times. Play smarter rather than harder and you will get better much quicker.

[Super Cosmic Space Magnet]

I'm not sure, "average level" is pretty subjective.. I don't think the game is as micro-intensive as something like Starcraft, at least not in the sense that every unit has special abilities that MUST be played around (with the exception of the Onager). Or if you play Nomad.

[Shin_Hell]

Exactly like JoshSA said, an average APM is just fine, it's much more important how you spend your APM in the game

[Altrix]

Originally posted by Jace:

How much APM is required to play at an average level?

What kind of a question is this anyway? Why would you think the average level player has any better than average level APM? It's like asking "are good players good? are bad players bad?"

[CockAndBallTorture]

I'm going to step in and actually give an answer to this topic.
Redbull's Wololo tournament (biggest to this date) just ended and they gave us clear numbers:
top 10 players in the world play at around 75 apm (more methodic players that commit to their actions and macro) and 110 apm (micro intense players) with peaks varying 120 to 180 during important fights.

Now the average Joe's,
I'm 1200 and my average apm is 70
Mate #1 is 1100 and his apm is 90
Mate #2 is 900 and his apm is 95

So my two cents on it after playing the game virtually since release is that, you'll find yourself an strategy that adapts to your playstyle. and after you master that you'll have the knowledge to learn new strategies.

The macro/army administration is completely different from other games like Starcraft, so don't be intimidated by those high numbers some pro players for those games have

so most importantly, just have fun, Age of Empires it's complex in it's simplicity

[BluePlayer10]

Check out the website aoeinsights and you can see the Effective APM of top players throughout the game and compare it to your own profile.

EAPM is used more in aoe as far as I can tell.