Tips for Huns?

[Haze (twitch.tv/HazeHowlingwolf)]

Hey there guys! I've played Age2 ever since I was a kid when my older brother played it back on 2006 with some of his college friends. He even told me that to be a pro player at that time, you had to practice getting to Imperial Age in 11mins (holy cow)
After some years I grabbed this Definitive Edition and man, the nostalgia!

Back to the main topic, I always played with Huns, its my brother's fav civilization and I enjoy honoring him by playing with the same civil.
I played some multiplayer games with other friends against CPUs in difficult 3 on random maps Dark Forest, and we got rekt haha! Right now I wanted to train a little more and try to have enough power force to start attacking as soon as possible, cause on most scenarios I get attacked pretty soon and hadnt any military unit yet or just a few.

Right now, this is my standard strat...

• Dark Age: First 3 villagers goes to lumber, spam new villagers to grab sheeps then berry camp while my scout explores as fast as possible (saved his unit with ctrl+1). After getting 10 people on food I fix 10 on lumber next, them increase food units to 15. While the food is increasing to 500 my scout still explores. When all berries and sheeps are collected, I imediately put all food villagers to farms (using the lumber I stocked with those 10 units) and go for Feudal Age.
  
• Feudal Age: Imediately create 5 villagers to build Blacksmith, Barracks and Stables, them put +10 villagers on lumber, food and gold, thus wait for enough resources for Castle Age while exploring with scout.
  
• Castle Age: Again create +5 villagers to build Monastery, University and a new Center, where I build more farms, more villagers on lumber and gold/stones around, at least +10 on each. This is the Age where I start doing my Paladins army.

My strat to attack are Paladins to kill general units and villagers, Bowmans for ranged killing units and villagers, Tarkans to destroy buildings, monks to recover units health and villagers to build castle while I advance. But I feel that I'm wasting too much time to do it, dont know if I'm not taking advantage on something early that can make things easier.

What you guys can tell me? Thanks in advance!

[Awstrd]

Well... TBH I think you need to rethink your whole build order.

From reading your post, some issues you appear to have are:
- You are sending your first villages to lumber, rather than food
- You don't say anything about hunting - it sounds like you are not hunting boar or deer, or doing fishing where possible
- You are putting too many villagers on buildings. (In case you are not aware, having additional villagers building things only adds .2 to build speed. If you have two villagers building something, they will build it at 1.2 speed. Adding a third villager means it gets built at 1.4 speed. So as much as possible, try to have ONE villager building something and others vils getting resources. Whenever you are building something with 5 villagers rather than 1 villager, it means you are building at 1.8 speed rather than 1.0 speed - which is not worth it because 4 of those villagers would be better off harvesting resources instead.

Here is a build order that I would suggest:
1) Have your first villagers build 1-2 houses. Then, have your first 6 villagers harvest sheep. (Its important that you start harvesting food BEFORE you start harvesting wood so that you have enough food to keep making vils at your town centre and ensure your town centre is never idle).
2) Next, make a lumber camp and have 4 vils harvesting wood
3) Make a mill near berries, have next 6 villagers get berries
4) Once vils are done harvesting sheep, lure a boar/rhino to your TC and have 8-9 villagers harvest it. Once that boar is done, to the same with the other one. (There are normally two boar/rhino near your TC)
5) Find your deer/ibex/ostrich patch near your base and build a mill in middle, and have 4 vills harvest them
6) Once you have around 25-27 vils, go to feudal age.
7) Once feudal has started being researched, build a mining camp near gold and put 3 vils on it.
8) Once your basic food resources get exhausted, put the vils on wood
9) If you are playing on Black Forest, there are normally extra boar around the map. Its a good idea to build a mill near them and have 8 villagers harvest the surrounding boar. It can also be worth it to build a dock and 4 fishing ships in the lakes with fish in them.
10) All of this should mean you should have around 800 food and 200 gold when feudal research is done. At this point, you should be able to start researching castle age as soon as you build 2 of the 4 buildings that you need to unlock castle age. You should have around 30 vils when you start upgrading to the castle age.

You should build a house whenever you are a few units away from hitting your pop cap. Again, whenever you build anything, try to do it with ONE villager, rather than several.

Also, your TC should always be doing something - make vils or researching loom.

Don't bother researching any economy upgrades (two bit ax, horse collar, wheelbarrow) until you have started to research castle age.

If you don't intent to rush once you get to castle age, you should build additional Town centres so you can make vils faster. I usually build an additional 2 town centres so I have a total of 3.

The point of this build is to get you into castle age as soon as possible so that you can start making knights ASAP. This is by no means the ideal build or best build to accomplish that, but it should help you vs the AI. (I usually do this build and am able to beat extreme AI with it on arabia without rushing or cheesing).

If you have a problem with AI attacking you early, just build a tower about 3 square away from your TC in the direction of the enemy. If the enemy attacks, garrison some vils in the TC/tower. This will be enough to keep the AI at bay until you get to castle age and can build castles and knights. (If you get rushed by 3 militia, attack the militia with 3 vils and your scout/eagle warrior. Each time one of the militia dies, return one of the villagers to resources gathering).

The main point behind this build is to do the following:
1) Get into the castle age ASAP by having the exact amount of resources that you need to get to castle age
2) Avoid getting food from farming as long as possible (this is because farming is the least efficient way to collect food, especially at beginning of the game before you can research economy upgrades)
3) Trying to be efficient by spreading vils out on different forms of of gathering so that they dont get in each other's way

As far as which units you build get - Hun paladins are pretty much always a solid choice. I assume when you say you are building bowmen, you are referring to cavalry archers rather than foot archers? Huns get cheaper cavalry archers and so huns should avoid making foot archers as much as possible. Also, they are helpful for picking off enemy pikeman to protect your paladins. And while using tarkans vs buildings is certainly fun, they can be gold intensive - you may want to make some trebuchets when going up against castles. (Hun trebs get a bonus to accuracy, so they are slightly better than normal trebs). If you want to stick with using Tarkans, try to use them to destroy enemy town centres for maximum effect.

Hope you found this helpful.

[Bubs]

i did for sure

[petercordia]

This guy asked advice specifically for Huns - so no need for houses.

Huns aren't actually very good on Black Forest. If you want to play Huns Black Forest, have fun :) Huns have good attack in Feudal & Castle, and have discounted Cavalry Archers, none of which you can really use on Black Forest, because as long as someone walls you'll only fight in Imperial, after reaching max pop.

PS: it sounds like you're not walling. In black forest it's quite easy to wall and stop your opponent from attacking you. Only works if all your teammates wall too though.

With huns specifically, you want the first 6 vills to food, then 3 to wood (make sure to use your starting wood for a lumber camp), and from there on it depends. Usually 1 to get the board, then 4 to berries (build a mill).

No offence, but you sound inexperienced. If you want to improve your gameplay I recommend looking up "build orders". Build orders are usually presented as a txt format list; Hera has some nice videos on youtube which could help you interpret those lists.

Awstrd above is giving a nice general-purpose Fast Castle build order. I'd also recommend trying a scout rush build order. I'd also recommend the build order guide mod[www.aoezone.net]

[_WALT_]

Forget everything but imperial in 11 mins? how is that possible.

[JoshSA]

Originally posted by _Walt_:

Forget everything but imperial in 11 mins? how is that possible.

That was my thought exactly.

[Bunny]

This is either a highly advanced troll post or you have never played strategy games before.
If you are really willing to learn play the art of war missions (you can find them in the main menu)

[KM89]

Start playing better football!

[Haze (twitch.tv/HazeHowlingwolf)]

Originally posted by Awstrd:

Well... TBH I think you need to rethink your whole build order.

From reading your post, some issues you appear to have are:
- You are sending your first villages to lumber, rather than food
- You don't say anything about hunting - it sounds like you are not hunting boar or deer, or doing fishing where possible
- You are putting too many villagers on buildings. (In case you are not aware, having additional villagers building things only adds .2 to build speed. If you have two villagers building something, they will build it at 1.2 speed. Adding a third villager means it gets built at 1.4 speed. So as much as possible, try to have ONE villager building something and others vils getting resources. Whenever you are building something with 5 villagers rather than 1 villager, it means you are building at 1.8 speed rather than 1.0 speed - which is not worth it because 4 of those villagers would be better off harvesting resources instead.

Here is a build order that I would suggest:
1) Have your first villagers build 1-2 houses. Then, have your first 6 villagers harvest sheep. (Its important that you start harvesting food BEFORE you start harvesting wood so that you have enough food to keep making vils at your town centre and ensure your town centre is never idle).
2) Next, make a lumber camp and have 4 vils harvesting wood
3) Make a mill near berries, have next 6 villagers get berries
4) Once vils are done harvesting sheep, lure a boar/rhino to your TC and have 8-9 villagers harvest it. Once that boar is done, to the same with the other one. (There are normally two boar/rhino near your TC)
5) Find your deer/ibex/ostrich patch near your base and build a mill in middle, and have 4 vills harvest them
6) Once you have around 25-27 vils, go to feudal age.
7) Once feudal has started being researched, build a mining camp near gold and put 3 vils on it.
8) Once your basic food resources get exhausted, put the vils on wood
9) If you are playing on Black Forest, there are normally extra boar around the map. Its a good idea to build a mill near them and have 8 villagers harvest the surrounding boar. It can also be worth it to build a dock and 4 fishing ships in the lakes with fish in them.
10) All of this should mean you should have around 800 food and 200 gold when feudal research is done. At this point, you should be able to start researching castle age as soon as you build 2 of the 4 buildings that you need to unlock castle age. You should have around 30 vils when you start upgrading to the castle age.

You should build a house whenever you are a few units away from hitting your pop cap. Again, whenever you build anything, try to do it with ONE villager, rather than several.

Also, your TC should always be doing something - make vils or researching loom.

Don't bother researching any economy upgrades (two bit ax, horse collar, wheelbarrow) until you have started to research castle age.

If you don't intent to rush once you get to castle age, you should build additional Town centres so you can make vils faster. I usually build an additional 2 town centres so I have a total of 3.

The point of this build is to get you into castle age as soon as possible so that you can start making knights ASAP. This is by no means the ideal build or best build to accomplish that, but it should help you vs the AI. (I usually do this build and am able to beat extreme AI with it on arabia without rushing or cheesing).

If you have a problem with AI attacking you early, just build a tower about 3 square away from your TC in the direction of the enemy. If the enemy attacks, garrison some vils in the TC/tower. This will be enough to keep the AI at bay until you get to castle age and can build castles and knights. (If you get rushed by 3 militia, attack the militia with 3 vils and your scout/eagle warrior. Each time one of the militia dies, return one of the villagers to resources gathering).

The main point behind this build is to do the following:
1) Get into the castle age ASAP by having the exact amount of resources that you need to get to castle age
2) Avoid getting food from farming as long as possible (this is because farming is the least efficient way to collect food, especially at beginning of the game before you can research economy upgrades)
3) Trying to be efficient by spreading vils out on different forms of of gathering so that they dont get in each other's way

As far as which units you build get - Hun paladins are pretty much always a solid choice. I assume when you say you are building bowmen, you are referring to cavalry archers rather than foot archers? Huns get cheaper cavalry archers and so huns should avoid making foot archers as much as possible. Also, they are helpful for picking off enemy pikeman to protect your paladins. And while using tarkans vs buildings is certainly fun, they can be gold intensive - you may want to make some trebuchets when going up against castles. (Hun trebs get a bonus to accuracy, so they are slightly better than normal trebs). If you want to stick with using Tarkans, try to use them to destroy enemy town centres for maximum effect.

Hope you found this helpful.

Thanks alot! This will surely help me now, since I didnt had much reference to train!
The thought of "farm is the least efficient way to collect food" didnt past my mind, so I will without doubt look for boars/deers, since the only animal I gave attention was the sheeps. And the part about the build speed? For a noob like me it was mindblowing (insert mindblowing meme here)
Your point was really solid about "rushing to castle age asap" to build paladins, I'll start practicing it right away!
The "trade tarkans for trebs" is interesting, tarkans are really expensive, I'll try it too!
About the archers, yeah... I was using foot archers, didnt thought about that part of Huns where cavalry archers are cheaper.

Overall, thank you really much for giving me those pointers, you saved my future experience for this game o/

[Haze (twitch.tv/HazeHowlingwolf)]

I admit i'm pretty much inexperienced even though I played this game for years back in 2008 to 2013ish, but like I said in my last reply, I really didnt had a reference to train properly. But now with those tips from Awstrd and petercordia, this will change real quick!
Thanks alot!