Beginner tips?

[Larry]

Playing unranked and I'm lacking behind a lot.

A few general questions:

How do I check chat?
How do I chat to everyone?
How do I chat to my team?
How do I chat to a specific person?

What should my build order be?

Starting build order is:

2x houses
2x villagers
scout manually around base for resources
Set all villagers to food(Sheep, etc.)
When 6x villagers on food rest on wood(For 10 on wood)
Feudal Age
6 on gold
6 on stone
Build military buildings

I'm having a lot of trouble keeping my economy going strong beyond the initial ten minutes. I just don't know where I should be focusing on. Meanwhile the players I come against have massed a bunch of skirmishers / knights while I'm looking at six or so military if I'm lucky.

Is there any specific units I should be focusing on as a noob? Skirmishers seem solid and cheap? Should I also focus on knights then toward siege?

[Whakahoatanga]

Good guide which helped me a lot:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=137161998

[Quintem]

Originally posted by Whakahoatanga:

Good guide which helped me a lot:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=137161998

This guide is out of date in places, has odd/old builds orders glancing over it. I do not recommend.

This is a little on the older side, but is much more modern.

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

Even then it's still out of date slightly now. The adjustments from this to slightly more optimal builds is minor compared to the dark age builds in the written guide.

[Hexi]

First of all, your build order and the units you go for should depends on your civilisation and the map. For open maps like arabia you want to play aggressive and age up to feudal quickly and make units that are good for harassing your opponent. You should go for scouts or archers, scouts are easier to use as a noob. Skirms are for only defending against enemy archers and you should not make them unless you have scouted out that your opponent is making archers.

And IDK where you got that build order from or if that one you came up with yourself but its straight terrible. You should not be mining any stone before castle age unless you are going for a tower rush and you should only be mining gold once you want to age up or if you are going for man at arms or archers.

Use these two build orders depending on the map:

Open maps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngeJv2JNJHY

Closed maps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsTNM7j6fs4

There is also a mod called "the interactive build order mod" which makes learning build orders a lot easier since it have voice lines telling you when you need to do things.

If you want to go for a castle drop or defensive castle instead of a boom on the fast castle build order, you can put around 12 villagers onto stone as you age up.

Also I'd say the biggest thing for any build order is to always keep your town center running and never stop making villagers. You can train villagers more effectively using hotkeys, "ctrl + shift + h" is select all town centers by default and "q" is to train a villager by default.

[DesertRose92]

A very basic BO

H (Select Town Center) -> SHIFT + Q (train 5 Villagers)
2 Houses (1 House is build by 2 Villagers)
6 Sheep
4 Lumber Camp -> Wood (you can try to decrease it to 3)
1 House -> Mill -> Berries
1 lure Boar
3 Berries (so 4 in total) / 1 lure Boar (not sure exactly which Villager you want to send)
1 Wood Villager builds a House and goes back to Wood
the rest on Food (Sheep + Boar)
get a feeling for when you are 25 seconds away from 500 Food -> Loom
Feudal Age

As soon as you click Feudal Age send 5-6 Villagers to a new Lumber Camp, 1-3 to the first Lumber Camp (so you have around 9-11 on Lumber Camp Wood), 4-6 stay on Food, 2 go to build, the rest go to the trees next to your TC
2 Villagers start to build Houses, Palisade Wall, 1 Barracks around your TC (use Forests and other obstacles to reduce the length of your wall).

In Feudal Age, get the Wood and Farm upgrades, get 1 Archery Range or 1 Stable