After playing a fair bit of RM over the last 3 months, I've noticed patterns of mistakes so i figured i'd make an article (which was originally posted in DM forums a few years ago).
This will not be about unit control. Those tips are for players i assume know how to do decent unit control.
First of all, its important to understand that in imperial age, one of the things that matters is essentially the units combo you are making and how you are using these units. I think this part is covered by a lot of players through experience - but there's more things you need to know.
There is a direct connection between economy balance, unit control and units mix. You will want to reach a minimum of 60 trades as soon as possible: The trade boom allows you to build an entire gold unit army, thus always having a quality army, trash free.
Doing so tends to create a snowball effect - you will start winning more battles, you are killing more units then you are actually losing. This reflect in your economy, you quickly find yourself with an excess of food-wood, which is attributed to the fact you are not wasting units. This allows you to reduce your amount of vills farming and cutting wood - which in turns, increase the snowball effect, because your army gets even bigger, stronger. The fact you aren't wasting probably allows you to even sling your struggling teammates as well!
My favorite bashing is usually paladins against halbs - yes i can hear it: halbs are cost effective, the player making paladins is wasting gold etc. Problem here is - I have unlimited gold, 40 paladins rape 40 halbs. You are going to run out of wood-food trying to my match gold unit output with trash units!
Macromanagement is the art of multitasking large scale operations - when you find yourself with huge group of quality units like mass paladins (40-50+), the power effect of this gold unit is 3x the strength of a group of 10-20 units. You should see how quickly mongols players bail out with their mangs when they see these 100 pals coming.
Which come to the next point - military units output. This one is simple, once you have the economy balance setup with the proper amount of trade carts, you can increase the snowball effect by producing a high rate of units through adding more military buildings. Being able to produce new units close to the battlefield is important, but so is HOW MANY you can produce! A higher output of gold units will inevitably force the opposing players to waste more!
Recap:
60+ trade carts → Mass gold unit army → more units killed, less units lost → less food wood required → less villagers required → more army population → even more units killed, even less units lost (your kill death ratio is increased) etc.
I will provide a team game example of this being applied - I am not the actual player doing it, it is my friend whom i was teaching via skype how to do this step by step during the entire stage of imperial.
http://www.voobly.com/match/view/13052418
He is playing under the name Brighter_Brain - and you will see him progressively apply what has been written here so far - (except for the fact he made far too many trade carts, but let's ignore it).
His opponent - who's fury, keeps making halberdiers and SOs with koreans and gets totally steamrolled late in the game.
It is late, but some things that comes to my head are the following: dont be afraid to sell wood-food, even at 14 a piece to be able to make more trade carts faster.
During a teamgame, you will find that the battle will shift (you either push the opposing team or get pushed). In either cases, you will add military buildings. I personally always assign a group number to the military buildings im using to produce the gold units composing my army. Ie: i make 10 stables initially, these will be group 1 - (select all, CTRL +1). This allow you to move the gather of your military buildings closer to the battle or to a safer spot. Timing is crucial - you want your army to be constantly fighting in bigger numbers versus your opponent.
In either cases (whether you get pushed or you are the one pushing), you will add more military buildings. In the game i provided earlier, the player Brighter Brain adds more stables as the game progress (and as he pushes into the korean base). You want your units being produced to go all to the same place (you dont want idle army that uses your pop and do not do anything). You will add these new buildings to the current group number 1. Heres how it goes: Press 1, hold shift and click on the new buildings being made, then press CTRL 1 again. Voila your number group is updated.
Doing so allows you to constantly rely on 'go to hotkeys' to produce units instead of clicking manually on the 'closer to the battlefield' buildings to produce army.
Another thing: Too many players freakout about playing vs power civs in tight spaces (like BF).
NEWSFLASH MATES: Civs like mongs, celts, koreans etc ALL HAVE TO EVENTUALLY STEP IN THE OPEN. LOL. Swing that 100 paladins in when they do. Don't bother fighting them in that small gap, let them come out!
Another thing: You'll see it in Brighter_Brain's game, but dont OVERMICRO that army. Using patrol is far more effective 90% of the time and your units will not bug.
Last tip for the night: In the event that you do not have trade for X reasons (no market corner mostly), you can rely on the mass farms trick - an eco setup of 30 lumberjacks and 80 farmers will allow you to sell food for gold constantly - even if the price is rock bottom - it allows you to never stop making basic gold units (hand canons, arbalests, champs, huns hcas etc). Basically any unit that doesnt require too much gold can be made constantly.
That's all for today.
This will not be about unit control. Those tips are for players i assume know how to do decent unit control.
First of all, its important to understand that in imperial age, one of the things that matters is essentially the units combo you are making and how you are using these units. I think this part is covered by a lot of players through experience - but there's more things you need to know.
There is a direct connection between economy balance, unit control and units mix. You will want to reach a minimum of 60 trades as soon as possible: The trade boom allows you to build an entire gold unit army, thus always having a quality army, trash free.
Doing so tends to create a snowball effect - you will start winning more battles, you are killing more units then you are actually losing. This reflect in your economy, you quickly find yourself with an excess of food-wood, which is attributed to the fact you are not wasting units. This allows you to reduce your amount of vills farming and cutting wood - which in turns, increase the snowball effect, because your army gets even bigger, stronger. The fact you aren't wasting probably allows you to even sling your struggling teammates as well!
My favorite bashing is usually paladins against halbs - yes i can hear it: halbs are cost effective, the player making paladins is wasting gold etc. Problem here is - I have unlimited gold, 40 paladins rape 40 halbs. You are going to run out of wood-food trying to my match gold unit output with trash units!
Macromanagement is the art of multitasking large scale operations - when you find yourself with huge group of quality units like mass paladins (40-50+), the power effect of this gold unit is 3x the strength of a group of 10-20 units. You should see how quickly mongols players bail out with their mangs when they see these 100 pals coming.
Which come to the next point - military units output. This one is simple, once you have the economy balance setup with the proper amount of trade carts, you can increase the snowball effect by producing a high rate of units through adding more military buildings. Being able to produce new units close to the battlefield is important, but so is HOW MANY you can produce! A higher output of gold units will inevitably force the opposing players to waste more!
Recap:
60+ trade carts → Mass gold unit army → more units killed, less units lost → less food wood required → less villagers required → more army population → even more units killed, even less units lost (your kill death ratio is increased) etc.
I will provide a team game example of this being applied - I am not the actual player doing it, it is my friend whom i was teaching via skype how to do this step by step during the entire stage of imperial.
http://www.voobly.com/match/view/13052418
He is playing under the name Brighter_Brain - and you will see him progressively apply what has been written here so far - (except for the fact he made far too many trade carts, but let's ignore it).
His opponent - who's fury, keeps making halberdiers and SOs with koreans and gets totally steamrolled late in the game.
It is late, but some things that comes to my head are the following: dont be afraid to sell wood-food, even at 14 a piece to be able to make more trade carts faster.
During a teamgame, you will find that the battle will shift (you either push the opposing team or get pushed). In either cases, you will add military buildings. I personally always assign a group number to the military buildings im using to produce the gold units composing my army. Ie: i make 10 stables initially, these will be group 1 - (select all, CTRL +1). This allow you to move the gather of your military buildings closer to the battle or to a safer spot. Timing is crucial - you want your army to be constantly fighting in bigger numbers versus your opponent.
In either cases (whether you get pushed or you are the one pushing), you will add more military buildings. In the game i provided earlier, the player Brighter Brain adds more stables as the game progress (and as he pushes into the korean base). You want your units being produced to go all to the same place (you dont want idle army that uses your pop and do not do anything). You will add these new buildings to the current group number 1. Heres how it goes: Press 1, hold shift and click on the new buildings being made, then press CTRL 1 again. Voila your number group is updated.
Doing so allows you to constantly rely on 'go to hotkeys' to produce units instead of clicking manually on the 'closer to the battlefield' buildings to produce army.
Another thing: Too many players freakout about playing vs power civs in tight spaces (like BF).
NEWSFLASH MATES: Civs like mongs, celts, koreans etc ALL HAVE TO EVENTUALLY STEP IN THE OPEN. LOL. Swing that 100 paladins in when they do. Don't bother fighting them in that small gap, let them come out!
Another thing: You'll see it in Brighter_Brain's game, but dont OVERMICRO that army. Using patrol is far more effective 90% of the time and your units will not bug.
Last tip for the night: In the event that you do not have trade for X reasons (no market corner mostly), you can rely on the mass farms trick - an eco setup of 30 lumberjacks and 80 farmers will allow you to sell food for gold constantly - even if the price is rock bottom - it allows you to never stop making basic gold units (hand canons, arbalests, champs, huns hcas etc). Basically any unit that doesnt require too much gold can be made constantly.
That's all for today.