AOE-II 1600 Game China vs Huns WK

[guitarizt]

During game I was surprised he was able to eco and pressure so much. I felt like I couldn't pressure back. The only thing I can think of is going more monk heavy?

 

[IamJeo]

Him "pressuring" you was mostly due your inactivity, of sitting inside your base (granted, on an important hill) despite having camels vs his kts, a completely positional advantage for the enemy that You freely gave him by not making any useful army. The pressure you felt had very little to do with economy or military advantage for one or the other in early castle age. At 32-33mins you both reach 100pop nigh simultaneously, him having Upped to 3 TC booming with just a few moments later than you, resulting in ~5-8 villager difference to your favor: a negligible amount.

Your economies were at every point, from castle age onwards, almost exactly the same (he had a little bit less wood, but as Huns he saved a bit so there's that).

The problem there was gold control due which you eventually GGed, having lost control of your extra piles. Both of them were Fwd or somewhat far away, so your choice to add 2 TCs and boom was imo very questionable, when you couldn't secure either extra goldpile (the more Fwd one being shadowed by a cliff, inviting a mangonel there).

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Before all that ^ you made lots of mistakes though.

1. GBing the scout form his base before getting a read of what he is doing in Feudal: due scouting-score difference you clearly were afraid of a drush (based on terrible building positioning), which you knew wasn't coming at 9:40 when you checked his main gold, and before that, you seemingly saw hints of 2 LCs, trending thoughts towards a stable war. Well, 10:30 you never checked the front of his base and merrily walked sc back without any notion if there be walls, stable or ranges up. Not nice. What if he FC (back gold, walled?) or something? (which, if were the case, towering his only woodline that had 2 LCs would be nice and it'd still remain a HUGE weakness in his map, one you should have attempted to capitalize on even later, like with xbows.)
2. While Upping to Castle, no gold-army transition in mind (a majestic 1-3 gold miners without 1st tech while upping ) even though you're clearly expecting Xbow/CA or kts from the Huns player. Bottom line, your map was pretty crap for booming => you need army to keep yourself (gold access) safe, map control, yet you basically prepared to do no army, Arena style. Castle age brings with it a large variety of things to use gold on, and since you didn't know what the opponent was going for, you probably should do strong (=gold-based) army as a precaution. You can boom even with a bad map if you have army advantage: "oh, he has crap or no army, I'll get good gold units like mangonel and kts or a pack of xbows, sit outside his base on a hill or extra resource so he cannot boom well while I boom safely at home myself " should have been Your thinking but you gave it to Tongo instead.
3. Lots of wasted resources to +2/+1 eskirms and even Uni+Ballistics initially, when facing +1/+2BL kts, without having scouting info on the latter.
4. Yeah, the monks... total of 17 conversions, only one of which was a spear, rest camels as far as I saw. Ouch. A very sad thing you had no ranges, +2/+1, Uni+ballistics completed by the time you first saw monks in the field, Xbows are known to be such a bad unit vs monks, right? You also jumped to stone, obviously wanting chukonus in Imperial? So why not go Chi-cheap ThumbRing+Balli xbows vs expected CA/Xbow/KTs of Huns?