Strategy game with no strategy

[Gargarensis]

Applied to this game, the term "strategy" would mean designing the best course of action contemplating the units and buidings you have, your opponent's situation, and the terrain. But it doesn't. Instead, we have a paint-by-numbers game in which you must build *these* tiles of palisade at X minute and seconds, and the only units that matters are the Knight-line, with some Crossbowmen around to ward off Pikemen.

There's no flexibility.
There's no creativity.
There's no variety.

There's only following formulas and obeying what others tell you to do.

[BirbNotBird]

Цитата допису FloosWorld:

Цитата допису TPTI:

The drush is the meta

Wait... how is drushing the meta when deer pushing became more prominent, especially at higher Elo, leading to faster uptimes which effectively make a Drush inefficient?
You have to explain this one.

The beauty of the young yet ignorant individual who thinks he know better than high ELO lol.

Like most of his takes are just nonsense. Even C&C3 and modding community of C&C in general has some open field maps.

[Quintem]

People really like to try and farm Jesters.

Sometimes opinions can be wrong, like thinking the Earth is flat.

[Gargarensis]

Цитата допису Marco:

Hello, I watched your game vs the guy you reported the other day.

How were you able to? Are records of games being stored automatically somewhere?

Anyway, did you take note that the guy stole two of my sheep? That is not something that people at 600 ELO carry out. He did it intentionally, exploring the outskirts of my base because he knew what he was looking for.

Цитата допису Marco:

But what you say is not true,

"What I say" being that there's no strategy in this game. In the replay, you've watched that I was the Lithuanians, and that I had walled with stone. This was part of a strategy that involved advancing to Castle Age and creating an army of Monks. I WAS TRYING to bring a little strategy to this game, and was unable to. Okay, time to soak it up and try again, right? Check wherever the records are being stored and you'll see that in my next match I was able to levy this army of monks and LOST ANYWAY.

Цитата допису Marco:

BTW, you have trash units to counter archers+knights. Peace.

Thanks a lot, I'm too stupid to remember the counter system. Now I'm surely going to win every match, because the issue isn't the difficulty in grasping the bigger mechanichs at all, but remembering how rock-paper-scissor works.

[tattuvamasi]

They call it real-time strategy but really it's a misnomer cause most of the genre emphasizes tactics over strategy. The only real element of strategy in AoE is your force composition. But, real-time tactics is a different genre already so you can't call it that.

[chaoticbalrog]

Also, in real-time tactics, you usually cannot build any more units and need to make do with what you get.

[Okay]

Цитата допису Gargarensis:

Цитата допису Kasbfaäfad:

That's simply not true. 600ish elo take.

What does my ELO have to do with anything, man? Is that your sole argument?

I'll save you time my friend.

This forum communit has high school community, only instead of your genital size, they use their ELO for comparison, since you can actually change that xD

I completly agree with you, I'm an OLD RTS fan. and this is a "build order" game where people just follow formula as you said.
There's also the espect of how fast you can click and how many actions per minute (APM) you can do .
Its more like a FPS game than RTS in that regard.
I also play Coh2 which feels a lot more RTS than this.

You can still have stratagy, but mostly in a team game in lower ELO where things become so chaotic and reach late game and you can be more creative .

But in general if you pick the right civ, learn a specific build order and master it, you can be a "pro" as the kids say today , but you gotta stick to that specific formula all the time.

My advice to you is, keep l learning the game, the counters, the civs.
Learn basic build orders for fast castle or cav rush, mostly so you'll understand them , doesnt mean you have to use them.

And then just stay low elo and play team games, where the APM is lower and you don't get steam rolled by heavy meta build orders all the time.

Latelty I've also been playing a lot of empire wars where you start later so the whole build order thing is less of a factor and there is more stratagy involved.

[OberBefahlKampfParrot`4f]

Dont get me started on the abusive microintensive archer that just shoot and scoot. SO dumb. Archer should need to stand still to fire.

[Mia Wallace]

Цитата допису OberBefahlKampfParrot`4f:

Dont get me started on the abusive microintensive archer that just shoot and scoot. SO dumb. Archer should need to stand still to fire.

they do...

[BirbNotBird]

Цитата допису OberBefahlKampfParrot`4f:

Dont get me started on the abusive microintensive archer that just shoot and scoot. SO dumb. Archer should need to stand still to fire.

They do stand still. I don't know which normal archer line would run and shot. Even calvary archers do that.

Цитата допису Gargarensis:

How were you able to? Are records of games being stored automatically somewhere?

I WAS TRYING to bring a little strategy to this game, and was unable to. Okay, time to soak it up and try again, right?

Sorry for shortening this, but reading the og comment would be more detailed.

AOE2 insights website is where all of it stored.

Sometimes you just met an opponent whose strategy is different but they have way to execute or overcome you. If it's low ELO you should still be able to win with horde of monks.

I recommend checking this series. https://youtu.be/_JpXsduLGUk?si=SCuaRECQJvCYn8I_

Цитата допису Okay:

You can still have stratagy, but mostly in a team game in lower ELO where things become so chaotic and reach late game and you can be more creative.

Admitting that high ELO requires good knowledge and formulas, but with execution I think the game still varies a lot.

It's would be better to think it as people speedrun the game for fun. Don't think too much and be negative, thank.

[Okay]

Цитата допису OberBefahlKampfParrot`4f:

Dont get me started on the abusive microintensive archer that just shoot and scoot. SO dumb. Archer should need to stand still to fire.

That requires a lot of micro, and attention, which leaves them open to sneak raids , which you should do vs unmobile blobs of archers.

[Plokmijnuh]

AoE2 has common build orders but a build order is essentially a strategy or game plan. It doesn't always work and you have to scout and adapt accordingly as the game progresses.

If you notice the other player gathering gold or stone in the dark age with the starting scout that's a clue that the enemy is likely going to attempt an Archer rush in the first 15 minutes or do a tower rush.

Also Arabia is classic because it involves map control with a balanced start for each side. There is neutral "no man's land" stone/gold tiles towards the center if you push out and control territory.

Woodlines and initial stone/gold only gets you so far if you don't get map control.

You say walling is mindless. But Hera has a great guide for dark age where he talks you through the concept that the pros don't tell you which is they are thinking ahead when quick walling in dark age to limit idle eco time.

A villager building walls is not collecting resources. Also you need houses, barracks, blacksmith etc, so sometimes players put that as wall sections.

Sometimes you can't wall a big area and need to small wall to control resource flow for
Castle Age so you can make plays. This means you protect your closest Gold and stone mines so the enemy can't push you away with feudal archers or crossbows in early castle age.

You don't wall just to wall, you wall to protect and stabilize the early eco from a feudal rush and have adaptability/room for growth/expansion in Castle Age.l

Sometimes you can do strategy by garrisoning created units in the stable, barracks, archery range. That way the enemy knows you have military but not the unit composition.

Obviously Feudal Age has limited units but Castle Age has more options. You can also quick wall and hide a archery range in your base and deny the enemy from scouting it and so on.

There is strategy to the game and sure you can sometimes win games by just pre determining to do a tower rush or fast castle and drop a castle but that doesn't always work.

[Moist Butt]

I honestly dont get all the hate on build orders from the low elo/casuals.

Its not really that complicated. They are proven to be effective at the game including other rts like SC/WC. You wonder why people jump up when they are shooting a basketball into a hoop? You can be "creative" and stand still for all I care and call that creative. At the end of the day, higher skill expression in many things become very structured. They might be called different things like technique, methods, process and more but it doesn't change the goal. They are meant to help you achieve something or do something more effectively.

[FloosWorld]

Цитата допису Moist Butt:

I honestly dont get all the hate on build orders from the low elo/casuals.

Its not really that complicated. They are proven to be effective at the game including other rts like SC/WC. You wonder why people jump up when they are shooting a basketball into a hoop? You can be "creative" and stand still for all I care and call that creative. At the end of the day, higher skill expression in many things become very structured. They might be called different things like technique, methods, process and more but it doesn't change the goal. They are meant to help you achieve something or do something more effectively.

As someone who refused to use them myself for the longest time (that was before I started ranked): it's somehwat a mentality that you then can't have "fun" anymore because you're strictly following something from a spreadsheet then.

The beauty of AoE compared to other RTS tho is that maps are randomly generated, so you will always have variety.

[Moist Butt]

Цитата допису FloosWorld:

Цитата допису Moist Butt:

I honestly dont get all the hate on build orders from the low elo/casuals.

Its not really that complicated. They are proven to be effective at the game including other rts like SC/WC. You wonder why people jump up when they are shooting a basketball into a hoop? You can be "creative" and stand still for all I care and call that creative. At the end of the day, higher skill expression in many things become very structured. They might be called different things like technique, methods, process and more but it doesn't change the goal. They are meant to help you achieve something or do something more effectively.

As someone who refused to use them myself for the longest time (that was before I started ranked): it's somehwat a mentality that you then can't have "fun" anymore because you're strictly following something from a spreadsheet then.

The beauty of AoE compared to other RTS tho is that maps are randomly generated, so you will always have variety.

And that type of thinking never made sense to me. Just because u do something more structurally doesn't mean its not fun anymore. And obviously if u want to play the game a certain way there's nothing wrong in it. Its just a bad take imo to imply that if u are following a build order u can't have fun.

Again going back to my basketball analogy using proper techniques doesn't mean u cant have fun. An elementary kid that never touched a basketball is going to have a lot more "interesting" passes, dribbles, and shots compare to an NBA players that know the techniques. It isn't logical to say the NBA players is having less fun just because they use the techniques and therefore are more structured to their approach of the game.

[BirbNotBird]

Цитата допису Moist Butt:

Its just a bad take imo to imply that if u are following a build order u can't have fun.

Yea, you can have fun even if you are in high ELO or low ELO. It's always weird that some low ELO players just like picking on the tiniest things, while proposing something that they really don't understand well, like:
+ Limit each player to have only 5 monks.
+ Scouting and Laming shouldn't be a thing.
+ etc...

Customers can go and know what burger is bad, but very few have the capacity to be a chef replacement. Heck, some suggestions can be really weird from other customers' perspectives. Same thing applies to meta in gaming, it's meta because it's "optimized" by pro players know how the game works more than casuals.

Must everyone follow the meta? Nah, there are plenty low ELO legends out there. Ace of Emerald rushes to mine every patches of stones and gold. Darkelf assigned villagers based on gender for roleplay. It's fun to watch, because it's a different experience from high competitive plays.

Do what makes you fun really, instead of creating a pseudo "Which side you are on", folks.